The Sun -

Another Great CD Reorganization happened last night. There's about a foot of dining room table that's occupied not by CDs but by various correspondence materials, but the rest is all music. I keep all of the records in 6 black cases of 72 and 4 black cases of 96. Jacket sleeves get slotted in behind the CD; experience has shown that this process does not unduly injure the disc. The organization process is strictly alphabet; the alphabet is law. I realize that were it not for this system - say, if I organized by genre or by artist - that I wouldn't need to remove every CD every time it came time to update.

Take note that I don't do this whole process every time I pick up a new CD. Hopefully it's clear enough that I'm not that preoccupied with music to realize all of my anal-retentive urges. Which are legion. No no: only when I've accumulated a good number of CDs does it become time to do a Great Reorganization. Typically this good number is around 30, but last night it was over a hundred easy. Insert Visa / Mastercard joke here. Ahem!

So what happens is that

1) The new CDs are separated and stacked by alphabet.

2) All of the CDs come out of their cases. In the picture, the Zs are in the upper right and head back down through the alphabet as you approach the camera and scan down from right to left. Like an Egyptian Torah, you might say.

3) As you go through the process of, say, removing the Ss from their slots and laying them on the table, you insert your new Sufjan Stevens and your new Stars and your new Sigur Ros in the appropriate spot.

4) By the time everything's been laid on the table, it should be fully alphabetized. Now put everything away!

It takes hours, and is thankless. Once in college however I did this project with the caveat that I couldn't replace a CD until I had listened to it. CDs all over the floor, bookshelves, dresser, windowsills. Still it was a worthy project, as I rediscovered the likes of the Replacements and certain less famous Pink Floyd cuts. If I did that now, and figuring a conservative 40 minute running time per CD, I would have to listen to music 24 hours a day for over 22 days.

*

Looking at these CDs, I think of a friend of mine, David Eldridge, to whom I owe a great deal of credit for teaching me what's what about quality rock, roll, and Sam Cooke. Not to open a very large, mythological, mist-filled screechy box or anything, but I was in college somewhat intimidated by how much David knew about music - not to mention psychology, contemporary American fiction, Spanish, and Bridge. This intimidation was to the detriment of our friendship, as I allowed myself to get worked up to the point where I had to distance myself from him at times. Considering that we lived together, this was difficult and often awkward to do.

The upshot of all this is that I wonder to what degree, if any, Jon felt towards me the way I felt towards David. I was never angry with David for knowing all of the fascinating stuff he knew, and neither do I think Jon was angry with me for knowing the (unfascinating, if humble W could chip in for a moment) stuff I knew. But often I felt inadequate to David should anyone think to hold us and our accomplishments up side-by-side. It took me years to get over this scenario of envy and self-incrimination, although I can say happily that I have. As to Jon, this scenario ran deeper and longer in every way, because for God's sake we were brothers. I was the academic, the good kid, the one who spent his free time inventing new starfighters for Star Wars space simulators that hadn't been designed yet. Complete with specifications such as armament and shield rating. Jon, on the other hand, was the more recalcitrant student, the more touch-and-go, let's-try-this-and-ditch-it-if-it's-lame sort of kid, the boy outside practicing throwing well-balanced knives at tree stumps. I'm unsure to what degree his development took shape in opposition to my own. Just tonight I spoke with a friend about the possibility that one's political leanings might tend to lean away from those of one's parents; in this case that might apply to the difference between Jon and I. I'm not blaming myself, or Jon, for reacting to each other in the ways that we did; how else could we act except for how we acted, and reacted? Rather, I am perhaps beginning to understand how Jon could have felt about me, or how he felt about himself in relation to me, his big brother. If I could talk to him now, I would want him to grasp the fact that I don't have it as together as he maybe thinks I do. (Granted, he's largely the cause of that, but why should I rub that in.) I wonder if what would make any difference to him.

The other day in the basement I found a Mead composition journal - you know, with the marble black and white design - which had in the NAME and SUBJECT spaces on the front the name "Jonathan Lobko" and the subject "Planetary Study." This caught my interest, because Jon never studied astronomy or anything like it as far as I knew, and plus I had always been the amateur astronomer in the family. I opened it, and its spine cracked with the sound of old glue giving way for the first or second time. The journal was pristine, and all of its pages were blank except for the very first one. In pencil, Jon had written as a heading "Our Solar System", and on the first line the entry "The Sun -". That's all. Broke my goddamn heart.

It occurs to me that I will keep this journal for the rest of my life.