You know a relationship's in trouble when...

...after an absence, it's as if you don't know one another at all.

I let my iPod lie quiet and unused for almost two months. I just wasn't into it, I guess. When I charged it up again, I set it to shuffle (as I normally do), and it started spitting back music that just didn't fit me now. Funkster music I used to love, I guess, with whiney scenesters professing their unrequited love for the most perfect vinyl accessories.

I was like: "Whose music is this? It is v. crappy."

I made some playlists for myself, especially since I was doing so much running over the last month or so, but I tell you, I'm just not as good at it as the beanPod...or, at least, as the beanPod That Was. I kept skipping songs I didn't like, hoping against hope that the little guy would get the idea and begin, perhaps, to know me again.

Then somewhere outside the freightyards of Gary, it happened...it was just like it used to be: the beanPod knew what I wanted even though I was unsure myself. He stopped playing Franz Ferdinand and the Arcade Fire, and started playing Sigur Ros, Four Tet, and the Cocteau Twins (which is the perfect music for rail travel, which you, too, may discover outside the freightyards of Gary) - dreamy, confused music like you've woken from a winter's nap and it's already grown dark, like you are too heavy to rouse and re-integrate and the world seems like you're viewing a shadow box of charming trinkets, double-stick-taped to a velveteen surface.

And that's when you know a relationship's worth diamonds, when it shows you yourself like you didn't even know you were, and the depth of the moment would move your heart to your throat, except you find it's been there all along.



Mmmmm...heart.