Movies of Myself

When we sleep, I keep the lights on.

One of the best compliments I've ever received was when my friend Nicole asked me to a birthday party a few years ago. I wouldn't know a single other person attending, and there would be quite an array of people there, but she invited me because I was "such a versatile talker, you could go with the flow anywhere -- at a presidential gala or at a pig roast." 

Now, this was especially touching because rarely had my long-windedness and puerile devotion to random and/or obscure topics ever been described in a flattering light. And you know, it really changed the way I saw myself. Instead of being just a shallow ditch of meaningless facts about serial killers and Pokemon (that's bad), I was perhaps a versatile and inviting conversationalist (very good!). So I started to embrace my passion for seemingly trivial knowledge, which in turn led me to a deeper appreciation of so many things, including my very own self. I never told her, but this little shift made such a difference. So wherever you are, Nicole, thank you thank you. I wish you peace and love.

In accordance with all of this I wanted to talk to you guys about my latest band crush, a British electro indie pop group called Wave Machines. Their songs are quite diverse and they deliver each one of them SO well. It's not varied as say, Atlanta rap followed by polka music, but they run the whole gamut of indie sound. They do fun sharp dance in a most addictive fashion, mix in some 70's disco crooning, then ease it on down to a slower, atmospheric sound to close things out. I'm thinking these guys can do anything and this is just their debut album. I am officially inviting them to this party.

I Go I Go I Go - Wave Machines

Keep the Lights On - Wave Machines

Dead Horses - Wave Machines

Wave If You're Really There is out now on Neapolitan records.

The Reeling

The other day my friend was telling me how simultaneously intrigued and repulsed he was by Chia Barack Obama and it reminded me of a time years ago when I was living part time in the House on Gainsborough.

I tried unsuccessfully for weeks to buy an original Chia Pet. I went to several branches of Long's Drugs, but they only ever had Chia Tasmanian Devil which, let's just face it, is like probably the worst Chia besides Chia Guy. Finally I compromised by picking up a Chia Gourmet Herb Garden, god knows why because there was nothing remotely Chia-esque about it and it would've been much cheaper and rewarding to grow herbs in regular pots.

One day I got a call from the Jangers saying that the House on Gainsborough would be fumigated for termites the next morning (I wasn't staying there that week.) She assured me that all my clothes, books, craft supplies, etc were safely covered and stored away and that the house would be inhabitable  again shortly.

I didn't give Chia Herb Garden a thought until the day I went back to the house and saw the shoots, which had finally attained a respectable cutting height, wilted to a pathetic huddle from a week of dehydration. Not that I'd recommend eating fumigated herbs anyways unless you want extra limbs growing out of your kidneys or something. But that was was my first and last Chia experience and I always regret that it didn't turn out better.

I picked up the terra cotta dish of dead Chia greens and walked it out to the trashcans. On the way I freaked out upon seeing several crows sprawled dead on the lawn, also victims of the fumigation. I squeaked and jumped up straight in the air, only to trip over another lifeless bird which was on the driveway and land on my right knee, tearing the hell out of my favorite jeans before ending up almost eye to eye with yet another enormous dead bird several feet away. That was a strange and sad day in Beckieland, completely forgotten until now.

It makes me wonder what other things lie hidden away in my mind, ready and waiting to bloom back into consciousness with a hint of a spark and some patience.

The Reeling - Passion Pit

All Time Greats - Automatic For The People

This is the first post in a new (and hopefully continuing) series which celebrates my absolute favorite albums. These are my desert island discs, the ones that made all the difference. I hope you will love them as much as I do, and perhaps you do already.

We start with Christmas, 1992. My aunt said I could pick out any album I wanted for a holiday present and I chose R.E.M.'s latest, Automatic For The People. It was one of the very last albums I would buy on cassette. I remember being intrigued by the transparent yellow tape it was recorded on, a tape which I thoroughly wore down in the years following its purchase. That cassette lived in my Walkman for the next ten months. In fact it was basically all I listened to during the summer of 1993 and so it is indelibly tied to long, hot days and ponderous, sweltering nights.

It was a transitional time for me, fraught not only with the inevitable challenges of high school, but also with ups and downs at home. My parents were always at odds, at least that's what it seemed like the little that I saw them. I mostly lived wherever my grandparents did and I spent most of my time reading, writing and listening to music. I remember countless late summer evenings sitting out by the pool in the darkness, looking at the moon with R.E.M. and wishing I was somewhere else.

Automatic For The People was a popular album, with radio singles like "Man On The Moon", "Drive" and, of course, "Everybody Hurts", with which I'm sure you are perfectly familiar, even if you've never owned this album. It's a song which always seems to come on the radio at the right time, to reassure you that this too shall pass. 

But this album is best experienced in its entirety, as one engrossing tale from start to finish. Trust me, I've listened to the whole thing hundreds of times and it never gets old. As a naive teenager, I thought this album is what life must be like once you grew up. And I was right. The songs may reflect on a lifetime of experience ("Try Not To Breathe"), or on one evening's seemingly mundane events ("Nightswimming") but they give a sense of freedom and loss, of longing and peace. They say that no matter how weird and wearying the world gets, it is still worth loving.

Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.

Try Not To Breathe - R.E.M.

Find The River - R.E.M.

Pick up here and chase the ride.
The river empties to the tide.
All of this is coming your way

---.....---.....---.....---

Automatic For The People on Amazon Digital Download

Out of Nothing

I think the important lesson, the one that was so hard to master, and the one I keep coming back to for shelter again and again is this: all things considered, I wouldn't change a thing. Everything does happen for a reason. I am at peace with that and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Ashes - Embrace   

Awesome fricking song. Emo 2K9, over and out.

Every now and then, nothing wrong with a rose view.

I have such a wild tendency to squeeze in as many extraneous details and overembellishments in almost everything I do, that it is a almost physical joy and relief to me when I can stop and appreciate something simple for the absolute wonder that it is. Something fleeting and usually overlooked. Something real.

Oh, cause blue skies are coming, but I know that it's hard.

Each year there seems to be one album that strikes such a deeply emotional chord with me that I can barely stand to listen to it.

Now, I'm not talking about the Timely albums, the ones that come along when you experience some big life change and seem to know exactly what you're going through and exactly what to say to you. I've had my fair share of those (i.e. Death Cab's Transatlanticism, Tegan & Sara's The Con) and I treasure them. But the Timely albums you want to hear non-stop. In fact, you listen to them exclusively and ignore everything else. It's painful, but cathartic. It helps get you through.

What I'm talking about is a rare situation when, for no apparent reason, an album pierces me straight through the heart at the very first listen and just wrings me dry every time I hear it. I feel like the songs are just squeezing the carefully hidden and most defenseless parts of my being and it's simply gut-wrenching. That doesn't mean I don't come to love the albums. Last year it was The Walkmen's You & Me that did it, and that ended up on my top ten albums list for 2008. Still, just seeing the album cover sends my heart right into my throat, chokes me up without having to hear a note of it. 

This year I see the same thing happening with Noah and the Whale's newest, The First Days of Spring. The record title sounds so fresh and innocuously sweet, doesn't it? That's what I was expecting when I first set it to play a month ago. Yeah, about two minutes in I felt like they'd dropped a boulder on my head. I haven't been able to listen through once yet without completely losing my shit. But it is a tremendously good album and so I wanted to let you know about it, because I never tried to spread the goodness of You & Me last year and I regret that. These albums are worth listening to. If you can get yourself to listen. xoxo

The First Days Of Spring - Noah and the Whale

Blue Skies - Noah and the Whale

and in reparation:

If Only It Were True - The Walkmen

I needed some time to figure out my share.

Mid Week Mini Music Mix
 
I learned a really important lesson this past week, my dears. A simple one, but very, very important. It was a lesson in translation and in looking past what seems obvious.

My friend came over for dinner one night last week and, because she'd been having a rough time of it lately, I cooked up something nice. I made sure that the meal had lots of little touches. I had plenty of good drinks and good music. And you know what? Within five minutes of her arrival she is in a mood. She's dissing on my food and making remarks about how pretentious my wine choice is.

I am seriously confused, because she's never once acted this way. And I am seriously peeved, because she's the one who suggested the hangout in the first place. Here I'd gone and taken so much time and care and she's saying my gorgeous crimini mushrooms look slimy?? Trust me, I was all sorts of ready to throw a verbal uppercut to her chin. I had my claws out and was giving them one last run through the sharpener so they'd be EXTRA fierce.

And then I actually looked at her face and saw that her eyes were so very sad. I knew in an instant that she didn't mean any of the things she was saying. That, really, it was all she could do to stand there and say anything. So I just smiled a big smile and said we definitely didn't need to eat my pasta. I'd be happy to go anywhere. She said she didn't want to do that so I sat her down, made her a drink and asked her to read me some fun tidbits from Us Weekly while I finished putting dinner together. I urged her to talk about a trip she was going to take soon, about books she was reading and we discussed some concerts we wanted to see. Soon she was chattering away and we had a great night, a wonderful time. She loved dinner and we laughed ourselves silly.

The things she said had hurt me, but instead of smacking her back with a snide retort I took just a second to listen to all the things she wasn't saying. I realized she was asking for help, without even knowing it. I don't know what made me withdraw, but in one second I not only saw that she needed a boost, but I also remembered the many times she had turned my own sour glowers and evil bickering around with a smile and with grace. So I'm not saying to suffer fools gladly. I guess sometimes you just have to look closer at who's actually suffering. Peace and love, guys.

Shotgun - Pete Yorn - This one I found thanks to Carolyn. I didn't even realize that Pete Yorn had a new album out! The record is chock full of the heart and the good songwriting I expect from him. Really enjoying this lately.

Animal - Miike Snow - This album was passed to me from Steph who knows that I cannot get enough of awesome electro-pop in my life right now. I highly reccomend this Swedish trio's self-titled debut. It's fun and awfully addicting.

Longform - The Dodos - I absolutely loved this San Francisco's band debut from last year and they're back with more of the lively, jangly, percussion-driven indie rock that got me so excited. Their songs build and build and move.

Sleepyhead - Run Toto Run (Passion Pit Cover) - I hope you guys got all hooked up on Passion Pit like I instructed a few weeks back. "Sleepyhead" is officially my song of the summer. Here's loveable cover of it from British band Run Toto Run. It's not the sonic wonderland of the original but it does have the sweetest female vocals and even a bit of xylophone.

I reach out through the border fence, come down, come talk to me.

Woke up early today and talked to my dad on the phone. He was moving things around in the family room, getting ready to set up his big new flatscreen tv. Happy father's day, indeed. Then I went on a short run around the neighborhood, up around a hummingbird garden and I saw a family walking along, picnic basket and pie box in hand.

I thought a lot about my grandpa, who always encouraged the silly and whimsical making of mud pies along with actual meat pies and fruit pies, and who liked nothing more than the slow savoring of any of the aforementioned kinds. He was also the first to insist when you were due to eat humble pie and it didn't bother him to concede if he needed a slice himself.

He was, perhaps, the most graciously accepting person I've ever known. The least likely to be undone by his frustrations, the most likely to swim along with them and incorporate them into his quiet school of thought. I was thinking, too, that these would be good things for me to learn more about.

And I was listening to this, a song that Peter Gabriel wrote for his daughter (one of my very favorite songs ever, actually) and wishing I could talk to my grandpa just one more time:

Come Talk To Me - Peter Gabriel

Love Letter to Los Angeles, Part I

If I say the word "home", what do you think of?

Even though I haven't lived there for four years, I think of Los Angeles.

I can't help it. When I'm deplaning from the rear staircases at Burbank airport, when my car rolls past the Ventura border and the sky becomes the first light grey of a smog-tinged concrete gradient, I think it every time.

I'm home.

This is not to say that I didn't hate L.A. viciously the last couple of years that I lived there. Everything seemed so fake and insincere. You've never seen mean, arrogant greed like it in your life. You've never seen such cruel stupidity. If one more person looks me up and down today to see what brand names I'm wearing, I decided, I am getting the hell out of dodge. That day four people gave me the fashion once-over, didn't even try to hide it.

So you see, there is no place like it. Because on the other side of the coin you've never seen so many astonishingly beautiful people who all just want to live their good lives. You've never seen so many extraordinary hopes and dreams pressed so closely together, floating from the minds of people who absolutely believe that life can and should be gorgeous. Despite the rotten shallows, there is no place so full of light, no place that compares.

It's funny, because it took leaving Los Angeles to make me see the city for what it really is. I had to miss L.A. to learn to see the real stars amongst all the streetlights. A single moment two years ago made me realize what Los Angeles means, to me.

I was driving in my mom's car from Pasadena out to meet my ex in Culver City for some Cuban chicken at Versailles. At that moment I was curving the big round from the delightful crazy twists of the 110, past the Westin Bonaventure, past those enormous weird paintings of the Philharmonic musicians with their instruments, past the Staples Center and the green monster of the Convention Center.

I merged onto the 10 West and pulled up level between two cars. On my right was a drop dead dazzling bleached blonde woman in a huge black Mercedes SUV, talking animatedly on her cell phone with a diamond on her hand that was worth enough money to feed a normal family for about 20 months. On my left was a beige-colored classic American car, a slightly shabby low rider in every sense of the word. Two handsome young Latino men in the front seat sang blithely along to the Mariachi music blaring out of its windows as we rolled past the exit for Inglewood. The juxtaposition was perfect.

Right then it's like I reached out and put my finger on the pulse of Los Angeles. And right then I knew that I would never ever understand a city the way that I understood L.A. Even if its pulse was weak and thready at times and I had to push up its Gucci sleeve and poke around under a stack of bangle bracelets from Kitson, I would always be able to find it. I would always be just a moment away from feeling its glossy and hopeful heart beat in unison with mine.

Here Should Be My Home - No Age

Evil that just does not exist.

So I'm sure most of you (at least those in the U.S.) have heard by now that the California Supreme Court decided today to uphold Proposition 8, the ban against gay marriage. I read this news at lunchtime and it has frustrated and upset me all day to no end. Though I am not surprised, every time I think of it I get so sad I want to scream and cry at the same time.

I've not written much about political, spiritual or moral beliefs and issues here. It's just never quite fit with the tone I'd like to maintain on this site and besides, I'm okay with people believing what they want. But I just can't let this pass by without a word.

Personally, I find it absurd to even try to label homosexuality as something wrong. I firmly believe that sexual orientation is not something we choose and so I would feel overwhelmingly strange blaming someone for it, finding them somehow guilty or sinful of a quality that they are born with, that fundamentally cannot change.

I just cannot fathom looking my gay friends in the eyes and telling them that I believe I am a morally superior person to them. I can't imagine saying that they do not deserve the same rights as I do, that their love and their relationships aren't as good as mine. Tell them that they aren't equal to myself as humans?? How and why?

I think perhaps Paul Newman puts it best:

I’m a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being… by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

I Was Married - Tegan & Sara

Gathered in my loose ends, switched off the light.

Last night I had to write something down so I reached for a notebook on my nightstand. A notebook in which, for a few months in the fall of 2007, I used to jot down a few words to describe what I'd done and how I'd felt each day. I flipped through these entries and it made me realize how easy it is to forget everything.

I hadn't thought about 90% of the things that happened during that time since they occurred, but all it took was the few scribbled words, just a handful altogether really, to bring back a world of memories, good and bad. I have made mistakes, yes. But I have also seen beautiful, wonderful things.

Just in the space of a random week and a half plucked from the notebook I: saw Interpol live, ate warm chocolate cupcakes (baked to order), bought a pair of blue heels that I fell in love with, carved a Hello Kitty jack o lantern, made paper flowers and butterflies, walked a corn maze, ate stunning Japanese food, watched a friend cry out of pure happiness, drove by my old college apartment, got a great massage, spread luscious bone marrow on toast and watched Broken Social Scene rock the Fillmore. All of this in just ten days. So much of it forgotten til now.

I can't stop thinking about what we keep with us and why. And what we are meant to let go of and how it will help us forgive (especially ourselves). I think I've been doing things wrong. I've been actively trying to forget most everything, assuming it will lead to healing, when what it's done is to rob me of the richness of my experiences. It throws a veil over all the loveliness I've known, clouds all the important things I've learned. I have the pages of a notebook to thank for showing me this. A list of good things and bad. Memories, words and living.

You or Your Memory (demo) - The Mountain Goats

Close your eyes and use your mouth and tell me about your song.

I've been in a weird mood lately where I always want the utter opposite of what I'm doing. I'll spend hours curled up in a little ball reading in bed, just wishing that I'd accepted an invitation to go out or asked one of my peeps if they wanted to grab a bite. And then as soon as I'm out I am diffident and artless, always happy for the company but a little misplaced inside myself.

I have been trying to work on a personal writing project more lately. It is demanding and thrilling as I try to grab and put down these words inside my head and it is a struggle in many ways. Even here there is the remarkable ambivalence that tugs at me in all directions. I feel the mysterious need to retreat and shut things out so I can hear the words more clearly while, at the same time, I feel the need to act out a hundred huge things, things wild and loud, almost like this:

"Lessons Learned" - Matt & Kim
Matt and Kim - New Music - More Music Videos

Everything fades from sight because that's alright with me.

I love days like this. Texting my sister all morning who is on vacation in Vancouver while I eat maple banana oatmeal. Reading Wendell Berry poems about birds and lawnmowers. Going to lunch in my favorite dress, drinking watermelon beer and walking by South Park on a day that feels like summer. Singing in the car, singing like crazy. Vanilla bean ice cream and the Discovery Channel, talking history and spirituality while the cookies that were supposed to go with the ice cream bake (but who can wait?). Then home to read things that made me burst out laughing and to finish something simple and pretty, something that I actually need. Washing the ink off my hands, brushing my hair. And now, with the cool night air breezing in the open windows, about to lie down on my bed that smells like meadow flowers and clover and listen to Guided By Voices. I love days like this.

I Am A Scientist - Guided By Voices

I liked curtains and eucalyptus.

"Early, we heard new birds in the weightless darkness, a velvet envelope, we lost sense of the words of fingers and lashes. The birds we called villagers, accidents, birds.

I liked curtains and eucalyptus. Lights in the rain. But skin and hair in their ceaseless adjustments become green hills, a warm ocean, complete, round horizon. I floated the way a heart floats in a body, the way life is buoyed by the blood without difficulty or rest; played with slight motion, once with the hand of a doll or toys I pulled near to me in fever, now the underside of your arm where the flesh is thin and hot, stems, watered silk, polished bannister. It isn’t all of love but beauty.

The marvel of glass and water. Siren, storm, footstep. Music and pictures. How all things change inside a person, settle and ride."

-Killarney Clary

Just felt like posting something pretty :) Hope all y'all have a lovely and relaxing spring weekend.

And the northern sky looked like the end of days.

Last April I was in Southern California and there was a fire. I asked to go see that fire and, afterward, I did not know if I was sorry that we went. It was magnificent and sad and scary and humbling. The thing that sets wildfires apart from most natural disasters is that you can stand quite near and watch them unfold, feel the great force of them, but know that, unless you are living in the hills where they blaze, they most likely cannot touch you.

The other strange thing about wildfires is that everything springs up bright and beautiful in the years that follow, green is greener, trees and plants rich and lush. The land's repeated baptism by fire. Three months after this Sierra Madre fire, Big Sur was up in flames, and I naturally put off a Death Cab for Cutie inspired trip to the area. Perhaps now is the time to venture out and see what the area looks like.

Death Cab just released the video for "Grapevine Fires" and it is a lovely, bittersweet little thing. It makes me think about the things I'd save in a fire.

Grapevine Fires

Music That Was Always Getting Louder

“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.

I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Duc Vien

My family always celebrates Chinese New Year in Los Angeles by going to a Buddhist temple. On New Year's Day, the temple is packed with families in their bright, brand new clothes and shoes. Children wear traditional costumes, friends greet each other happily. People wait in lines to get their fortune told and to receive plates of hot vegetarian lunch.

I've missed this tradition so much in the past few years and was excited that New Year's Day falls on my Monday day off for 2009. I seized the opportunity to visit a local Vietnamese place called the Duc Vien Buddhist Pagoda, a place I'd never even driven by before.

The grounds were packed. Hundreds of people walked from altar to golden altar in the courtyard in front of the pagoda, incense sticks billowing smoke from their hands. Little boys in silk brocade jackets threw cracker snaps on the asphalt with glee. Family groups clustered around a large square of picnic tables chatting and eating steaming bowls of pho and sharing paper bags of cha gio (the to-die-for fried Vietnamese spring rolls.)

I picked my way through this sea of revelers, camera in hand, taking everything in. I made my rounds to the altars, walked in the gardens, had a small lunch. I was in a distinctly strange state of surrender to the place, as if I could palpably touch the spirit of this day. At the same time I felt utterly isolated, with no family nearby and all my friends at work. I was trying to step into the cultural rhythms of the country where I was born, but don't have a single memory of. It was hours of listening to, and mostly understanding, conversations in a language that I can barely speak a dozen frustrating words of.

And at last I ended up in the pagoda itself. It was cool and calm inside, a vaulted ceiling over a room filled with stiff wooden chairs facing an altar with three enormous statues. Only about twenty people were ever in there at a time, each one stopping for about five minutes to pray. Only a couple of people sat in the chairs. Most paid their respects kneeling on the bamboo mats near the back of the room.

I, who grew up never attending any Buddhist services, found myself on my knees as well, my palms pressed together, the tips of my index fingers resting lightly against my lower lip. My head swam. I was high and low all at once, thinking of grievances decades past, intensely grateful for the chances I'll have this year, smarting from pains fresh as the chrysanthemum blooms clustered all over the altar, missing my grandather with a fierce lonesomeness. The heavy sweet cloud of incense smoke pressed and drew back continuously from the the doorways. I was surrounded by people and hadn't made a sound for hours. And all of a sudden tears were streaming down my face, fast and silent. I was stunningly overwhelmed and had no power to stop them. I was not praying, I was not thinking. I was neither happy nor sad, just crying. It was New Year's afternoon and I was kneeling on a woven mat in a room in San Jose, strangers beside me, feeling as if I could almost palpably touch the spirit of my life. Someone came up beside me and put their hand on my shoulder. I didn't turn to look at them.

Waxing and Waning

I have always loved the moon. I have always sought it out, remarked on its progress, tried to understand it in some way, any way. I've noticed lately that keeping track of moon cycles has become a broader way of telling time for me. The moon is 6% full today and will wane to a new moon in just a couple of days. But I am struck by the memory of people exclaiming over the extravagant heaviness of the last full moon. That feels like just a few days ago and so, my mind skips lightly over the things that have come and gone in the weeks since the moon was actually at its fullest, skimming over all the places I've gone, not daring to linger too long amongst the things I've felt. Time is a strange adversary that I wrestle with constantly, who always pins me down in, well, the briefest bits of itself. Hours, minutes and seconds – I stagger under their weight.

I like the moon's cyclical turnings, the notion of moving always towards something big and then back for another beginning. I feel it this month especially. I have learned grave things about myself which I won't forget. I have laughed with abandon, cried unexpectedly. I have had pure sweetness. And I am ready to turn the page in a couple of days.

The lunar New Year is coming up this weekend, which is an even broader way to mark our little bit of time. Walking through the forest the other day I came upon this split tree trunk, its rings an open display of history. I traced my finger over the number of years that I could lay claim to and thought of making a dot on each line, maybe drawing a symbol to represent the major happening of each year; my life in a collection of pictograms. But again I dare not linger too long in the past. My finger points to this year, to this bundle of waxings and wanings, to now. And when I look back in twelve months I want to be able to draw a symbol of vibrant hope. A star maybe or a heart, or pure fire.

She gave me these feathered breaths.

About a year after I moved to the Bay Area from Southern California my mom suddenly started calling me a lot, like four or five times a week. She works the graveyard shift, so the only time we were both free to talk besides weekend afternoons was when she took breaks or ate dinner at work. Neither of us had that much to say to each other and it always felt suspiciously like she was checking up on me even though I was way past the point of checking-upableness.

Eventually though, the calls slowed down to about twice a week and, for the past six months, she's only been calling about once a week, if that. Whenever she does we have ourselves a chat fest, catching up on anything and everything that's been going on, talking for a couple of hours. I tell her about the cards I'm making and the new fun places I've discovered. She catches me up on family news and talks about her ballroom dance class.

She didn't call this weekend and, when I really wanted to talk to her on Sunday, I remembered she'd gone in for some sort of work project. It suddenly dawned on me that my mom is a pretty fun friend. Don't tell her I said that, though. And don't tell her I miss talking to her a lot. She'd only gloat and say, "yeah, you miss talking to me" and my sister and I would have to roll our eyes for, like, eight years. Momo's got a day off on Wednesday. I can't wait to see what she's been up to.

Oh! My Mama - Alela Diane

Hey, you good ones.

When did Thanksgiving become my favorite holiday? At some point, between the audacious frights of Halloween and the hollow and stress-filled commercial leanings of Christmas, this day of food, family, friends and gratitude settled right into the center of my heart.

Maybe because for a long time it was the only day each year when I would actually stop to think about the good things in my life. For thirty damn years I kept the mindset that I was meant to be skeptical and isolated and semi-depressed at all times. I don't think I was often openly negative, but the feeling was like a veil that I'd become so used to, I never noticed it clouded my vision anymore. I saw the things I expected: shadows and breakdowns.

Then things actually did start to break for reals, to the point where I was pretty much lost and had to scramble like a madman to hang on to what was left. And just when I thought I had a grip on things again, well, that's when the wheel really started to turn. I got shattered completely, breathless and bloodless. Not just into a pile of sharp glass shards, but into a puddle of dust. Not a word or thought remained that made any sense. But no more guilt either, no anger, no blame. Nothing in the way.

And damn was life bright and beautiful all of a sudden. I felt like someone plopped me down in a neverending field of wildflowers and said my only responsibility was to walk around and look at them. That was my life all of a sudden; light everywhere, love everywhere. And it's maintained itself, this whole past year.I still have no idea what I'm doing but fucking hell, if most of it isn't awesome. Even shitty days are fine because they pass so fast and besides, all I want to do is reach out for the sweetness I can seize onto and teach myself patience waiting for the slow good things that come.Because they will come. It still shocks me, because I was closed off to it for so long; at times I feel pummeled by goodness, and I am grateful every minute for that.

Some days I stop and think, “why the hell are you so happy? It's not like anything great happened today. What reason do you have to feel like this?” Well, how about everything? That's what I'm most grateful for this year: finally being open to happiness. When I am alone, when I'm in a room with one person or at a table with six of you or standing around with thousands of people, I feel it all around me, serenity that can barely be touched. I know I sound like a drug-addled cult member, but I'm willing to live with that.

It all reminds me of one of my favorite songs:

Always Love - Nada Surf

I do hope it brings some sweetness to your Thanksgiving.

<3

Misery Business

Am I the only person who doesn't like to talk to their hair stylist? I got my hair cut last week and realized that, not only did I lack the stereotypical desire to confess all of my latest juicy exploits, I really didn't want to speak with her at all.

Not that I don't like my new stylist. She's great. But I just want an hour where I can relax and let my mind wander. I gave brief, noncommital answers to all her questions at first, but to no avail. She was determined to chatter ceaselessly about whether it would rain on Halloween night, how gallingly untimely the death of her first husband was and why it's best not to cook stuffing inside a Thanksgiving turkey. And did I mention that her first husband died young? He passed away suddenly thirty years ago, when they were both quite young That's three times, equaling the number of instances she interjected it during my haircut. This is a tragic and hugely affecting occurence, yes. But three times in an hour to a virtual stranger while you're on the job, thirty years after the fact? How deeply she is defined by her sorrow.

You know, I've finally learned how valuable adversity can be, especially the life-changing variety. If certain things (which at the time felt apocalyptic) hadn't happened to me, I'd be about 1/100th as smart and 1/1000th as strong as I am. And while, like every last one of you, I hope that nothing even remotely negative ever happens to be again ever, never ever, not once ever okay, well, I still wouldn't go back and do a single thing differently. I know that the hard part is what made me, and I acknowledge the weighty ghost of that. But I'll be damned if I cling onto it like some precious thing and press it as introduction into the hand of everyone I meet.

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths

I'm a junkyard full of false starts and I don't need your permission.

Don't ever stop to think about anything because, if you do, you might see that we're doing is constantly treading the line between good and bad, okay and not okay. And that line is so very, very thin and fine, and the metal that it's made of is so mercurial, that it will soften, bend and spill when it senses that you're lingering for even a minute.  It knows you, knows how weak you are and knows as well how you'll blame yourself for flailing about, trying to regain balance, trying to remember what this is all about.

Who cares what any of this means. Tomorrow it will have changed. A little more of one thing, a lot less of something else. In a month the numbers will shift again. In a year it will mean something else entirely. In five? Dust maybe, at best, that little shaft of light that looks in between those two curtains that won't meet in the middle. Is it good to be happy for no reason? Is it as treacherous as untenable sadness? How is it that there's everything and nothing to lose at the same time.

It's best, I think, not to think of these things. They'll only lead to a nervous step, then the slip. It's better just to keep on, as wholly as possible. The goal being, somehow, to be entirely thoughtful without ever thinking about it. Or writing it down.

Coming Up Roses - Elliott Smith

I Better Be Quiet Now - Elliott Smith 

Elliott Smith (8.6.69 – 10.21.03)

The skies are blinking at me. I see a storm bubbling up from the sea.

Night Drive s.o.c.

The drive from my house to Berkeley or San Francisco is 45 minutes each way without traffic. I think this is the perfect amount of time. Long enough so that you can listen to a decent amount of music and think about lots of things, but not long enough to tire. Before gas prices went crizznazy, I used to make this drive on a weeknight all the time, just for kicks. Sometimes I wouldn't even get out of the car once I got up there. I'd just turn around and come straight back. Recently, a string of events has me headed northerly quite often, and I am enjoying the drives.

What I thought about coming home last night:

costumes for a puppy dog, I should stop being so paranoid, I really wish I had a crystal geyser lime sparkling water, there's a couple that I know who seem remarkably unsuited for each other and yet it seems to work, it's too bad all the tshirts at the Stars show were grossface, what happened to my two sticks of long gum, I've been chewing so much gum lately and it makes my jaw hurt, actually right now these shoes hurt and I can feel little teeny blisters forming all on the balls of my feet, do I like ice cream or not like ice cream and how come I can't tell?, right now I don't like it because I can't imagine ever being hungry ever again, I still really like david sedaris but think he's lost a bit of his funny, seriously I only want to eat oranges and celery soup this week or maybe loquat soup, wait what exactly is a loquat again?, something terrible happened to me a few years ago and I haven't thought about it in forever why am I thinking of it now? I guess the fact that the thought brings only a dull ache rather than a knife twist through the heart is something to actually feel good about, I wonder if my sister is making good use of her camera, I want to take some pictures of the taiwanese tea, and

oh this is a great song, jesus louiseus is this ever a dark, moody, cool, sexytimes, awesome song:

Closer - Kings of Leon (I listened to it on repeat almost the whole way)

Cereal Story

The entire time I was growing up, my grandpa and I sustained a contentious battle over breakfast cereals that came to a head almost every week. See, I tired of things very, very quickly and each of our supermarket outings found us repeating this conversation:

b: I'd like to buy some (insert any one of twenty or so cereal names here. Though more often than not, I asked for Frosted Flakes.)
g: I told you last week that we couldn't buy a new cereal until you finish the last box. Which is the same thing I told you already the last two weeks. So you are now three half boxes of cereal behind.
b: But Frosted Flakes, Grandpa! Frosted. Flakes.
g: Fine, but you better finish every single last flake in this box, young lady.
b: Of course!

Soon we'd end up with seven or eight half boxes of different cereals and he and my grandma would start eating Cookie Crisp and Golden Grahams for most of their meals. Eventually Grandpa started quietly manipulating my cereal choices, knowing he'd end up eating more of them than I did.

b: You know what sounds good? Fruity Pebbles.
g: (Recalling that I'd already abandoned Trix and Froot Loops in the past month.) Well, I heard on KTLA news that Fruity Pebbles gives you cancer. What about Cap'n Crunch?
b: Yeah! Cap'n Crunch! But let's get the one with no crunchberries. They're awful.
g: No crunchberries? But that's the best part!
b: No, no, Grandpa. They taste yucky.
g: Okay. Hmmmm....looks like they stopped making the kind without crunchberries. Tough luck, missy. Guess you'll just have to pick them out.

It wasn't until I was in college and doing all my own grocery shopping that I realized they'd never actually stopped producing plain Cap'n Crunch (and that I could stop avoiding Fruity Pebbles).

In a couple of weeks it will be the three year anniversary of Grandpa's passing. How I miss him and wish that I could sit down and talk and laugh with him over a bowl full of crunchberries.

The stars in their slowness took us by surprise.

I am knee deep in work and, somewhere nearby, someone is firing off big crazy fireworks.

Under my window a couple walking their daschund has stopped to listen to the show and they are talking about hiking equipment and about how they would like to go to Yellowstone. The man keeps saying "the Rolex of hiking boots".

It makes me think of the story Eli told us years ago about how his high school presented a Rolex watch to him for being valedictorian and how, on that very same graduation night he accidentally left it on the roof of his car and drove off, never having once taken it out of the box. He told us this without a single ounce of ruefulness.

The new Calexico album is playing and it makes me all swoony. It both fans up and tampers down my ruefulness. While I work I'm trying to find advice for a friend who has asked for my opinion even though I have no good counsel to give. My thoughts vacillate too quick and wild between the most minute detail and the biggest sweeping picture to see anything for what it truly is. But I'll prattle endlessly to try and hide this. I talk a lot; maybe I should go back to listening.

Sometimes that's the only advice: keep listening. Joey Burns is singing about "ships drifting out of tune" and there is Eli's remembered voice. In the flower beds outside the sprinklers are turning on and the couple is rushing off, wet and laughing and taken aback, and above everything there is the incessant booming thunder of fireworks.

House Of Valparaiso - Calexico

Slowness - Calexico

Buoyancy

I have several copies of this poetry collection, one of the few books I read regularly. I turn to it, and my other Coleman Barks translations of Rumi, almost religiously; with both faith and fervor. These words must be read repeatedly, so fleeting is the feeling they contain. They remind you constantly to live, and that fire dies out so easily in the drizzle of our everyday lives. Each time I turn the pages, they nudge me right into life again.

I keep one copy in a breakdroom drawer at work, for afternoon inspiration. Three weeks ago I saw it on the lunch table and figured that one of my co-workers was flipping through it. This past week I found a small stack of loose leaf papers in the drawer, with bunches and snippets of the poetry hand-copied on both sides.

I finally realized that our dear refugee is using the Rumi as writing practice. She's enrolled in an English language class which meets several times per week and, in addition to filling out the vocabulary and grammar worksheets she's constantly poring over, she's been writing out pieces from my book.

I wonder if she understands a single word of it. In a way, it's perfect. To learn letters by rewriting the modern adaptation of the words of a 13th century Sufi mystic. There is poetry, there is life, in this. "Does sunset sometimes look like the sun's coming up?" What could this say to her? Last week she asked us what "if" means. I want to say, it means to keep asking.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

The Sweetest Thing

Do you know, the thing with good cherries is that you must have the patience to wait until they are perfectly ripe, and oftentimes this will take days. If you try one the first day they're home, a good cherry will be already be very, very good and then you start thinking, who wants to wait?

Especially because you'll lose a few of them in waiting. That's the sign. A few will start to bruise and pucker and it will seem like such a shame, but that just means it's finally time. I can't really think of anything else to compare the simple, glad lusciousness to. I'll only say that it is outrageously worth the wait to wake early on a Saturday morning, eat a bowlful of perfect cherries, feel sunlight and be lucidly greedy for sweetness.

Oh, Sweetheart - Shout Out Louds

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends.

It's funny to me how quickly social energies can run out. I've been pretty busy the past few weeks, traveling about, working on all sorts of projects and keeping constantly on the move physically and mentally. This past week I realized I was getting tired, so I tried to hold on to the last portion of my good energy, hoarding it like a last cup of water on a hot day. But then a couple of personal incidents occurred and they broke a hole in the side of my cup and everything came spilling out quick as a whistle. I could almost physically feel the last bit drip away late Friday night after another Rock Band session (which sucked a little. I have plateaued at the Hard singing level. I don't sing nearly loud or well enough to do well at Expert.) I was suddenly too drained to make even one more word of conversation so at midnight I decided just to walk home. I needed the time by myself.

The last few days it's like I've hit a wall. I just prefer to do little things alone, hoping to recharge the happy batteries. I excused myself from a group of ladies going to see the Sex and the City movie. I've never been a dedicated fan of the show and starting work on some cards just seemed like a better decision. I received two emails about and one verbal invitation to some cherry festival in Sunnyvale. Normally this would be just my cup of tea, but this weekend I chose to take a long run and curl up for some reading instead. Worst of all, on two (almost three!) separate occasions I gave away a pair of tickets to see The National/Modest Mouse/R.E.M. at the Greek. I can't even stomach going to buy groceries, much less wedging myself into a bowl of eight thousand other folks. I just flat out turned my back on two of my favorite band (cheers, R.E.M.)

I feel so conflicted about this. On the one hand, I know this self-imposed solitude will be short-lived so I'm not worried about it. In fact, I think it's kinda nice that I want to spend some time with myself to relax and refresh. I'm glad that I know myself well enough to judge when I'll be bad company and I'm really proud that I'm not forcing myself to go out and pretend that it doesn't feel like work. On the other hand, I know I'm missing out on a lot of fun times plus, frankly, feeling all used up is a little dreadful in its own right. What's making it all so difficult is that I actually do worry about this. And then I get annoyed that I worry about it. And then I get peeved that I'm annoyed. And none of this helps me feel refreshed in the least. And maybe I should work instead on not thinking about this at all. Which I guess can start right now.

The Sound of Life's Sweet Bells

I've been thinking a lot about gratitude.

This is the first time in my life I have finally started learning to be properly grateful. Grateful not just for particular people, objects or happenings, but thankful as well for the countless other things which each treasured item is connected to.

I'm thankful for the ridiculous cotton hobo purse I've been carrying with the oranges and pears printed on it because a stranger stopped me in the street to exclaim that it made her feel like Spring, and that in turn made me happy for the gladsome tone of her voice when she said the word "pears", for the sun on our faces, for the shiny red bicycle that happened to be sailing past right then, for the time J and I rode our new bikes to get apple pie and milkshakes at Twohey's and on the way back I completely blanked on how to engage the brake and wiped out on a brick planter and the whole time I was yelping, "Oh no nonononooo nonoooooo."

The connections flow one after the other, like some dam has burst and so now beauty flows into every damn corner. The gratitude for so many things surprises me constantly. The gratitude for the connections themselves is like a little mushroom cottage I step into again and again.

I've been thinking, too, about how little we know and understand how these countless connections tangle together to make up our lives. I'm trying to stop cursing the bad things that come and go so harshly--precisely because of that. Because they go. And because something that makes you cry out in fear and pain today will somehow, just like the most gorgeous sunny day, hook onto a million other things swimming around you. And eventually you'll look back and think thank God that happened because I wouldn't have made it right here otherwise. I'm trying to stop judging things that happen. (Except for the person who keeps stealing/throwing away my tea stuff at work. Because that is just diabolical. You know that afternoon tea makes my day. And congrats on only taking the filter part of my glass pot. Sophia gave that to me, so I am justifiably enraged. Your days are numbered.)

There's no time to judge. I have to jump into the fray and just keep up. Last Saturday morning I had fresh juice but I'd run out of bread. It was a perfectly warm morning and I was excited about the Kentucky Derby and about Maker Faire. I literally jumped for joy onto my bed to open the window. Only I misjudged the distance and kicked the shit out of my foot against the wooden bedframe. I think I stood for 10 minutes on the mattress muttering "holy fuck" and looking painfully out into a lovely day. I iced my sprained toe down with popsicles while I caught up with friends on the phone.

This has all made me more conscious of how I spend my time, has made me more willing to take everything in, even if I'm just watching What Not To Wear. It has made me keep yanking myself back into now, because I tend towards dreaminess and drifting off like an unclutched balloon. Right now I am about to leave for the library, I am feeling guilty for wanting to buy more bottled water, I am typing out this long poem at the end of an already overlong post and hoping that you are having a very good now:

Lead
by: Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break
your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Waking up at dawn to find I lost my crown.

Woke up at four a.m. the last couple of nights, right in the midst of minor panic attacks. Not sure why. My heart was racing and semi-pounding with that deep, dull thud that usually only comes when some emotional tragedy occurs; that ache that reaches down to your soul; when you feel like, literally, your heart is breaking into pieces.

It's one thing to have that happen when bad news reaches your ear. It's quite another to wake up from deep soothing sleep to this feeling and have no clue what's going on. Imagine being bounced from a convertible into a pool of sharks. Imagine reaching into a paper bag with a cookie in it and having it bite your hand.

Both nights I sat blinking in the dark in staggering despair for thirty minutes, then was able to go back to sleep. It kind of made me feel like this song makes me feel:

A Smile That Explodes - Joseph Arthur

This is one of my favorites. Not easy listening, but endlessly sad and beautiful.

See and Hear Week - Day7

Just leave the sad guitar in its hardshell case.
Leave the worried look on your lover's face.
Let the orange embers in the fireplace remain.

Everything it must belong somewhere.
A train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs.
Everything it must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.

I Must Belong Somewhere - Bright Eyes

See and Hear Week - Day 6

So tell me again, what am I feeling?
You know me so well.
So what am I feeling.
And how can you tell?

I've got a feeling you don't know.

Bloodless - Tom McRae

See and Hear Week - Day 5

Say anything,
but say what you mean.
When you whisper you want this
your eyes tell the same.
We are gaining speed.
I can barely breath.
I'm caught in suspension.

Suspension - Mae

See and Hear Week - Day 4

Of all the letters I never sent
and all the time we haven't spent.
Could I please, could I please?
You always said I'd play games I know I'd lose.
You always said that's the life I'd choose.

Shade of a Shadow - Teitur

See and Hear Week - Day 3

My paper heart.
My ink and pen.
I know it's hard to keep believing.
It's hard believing, it's hard believing.
It's hard believing!
Oh, isn't it?

My Broken Hand - The Black and White Years

See and Hear Week - Day 2

Since I haven't taken communion during mass for about, oh, sixteen years, I wasn't made aware until just this morning that the Catholic Church had moved the observation of St. Patrick's Day to this past Saturday, so as to not interfere with Holy Week. Ah, well; drinks on me.

The face forgives the mirror.
The worm forgives the plow.
The questions begs the answer:
Can you forgive me somehow?

All The World Is Green - Tom Waits

See and Hear Week - Day 1

I will be unable to share much narrative in the next while, as I must devote 99% of my storytelling skillz towards other writing deeds. But I have not forgotten you, my babies. Shall we do some photo and music catch-up instead? Word.

And in the morning after the night, I fall in love with the light.
It is so clear I realize and here at last I have my eyes.

The Orchids - Califone

Honk if you still have faith in the world.

Let me just say that, working at the McDonald's by Harris Ranch along Interstate 5 in Calfornia, there is a woman named Stephanie who is one of the kindest people I've ever met. I was graced by her generosity of spirit late last Friday evening when Theo (my MINI Cooper) came to a sudden shuddering stop at the drive-through window of said McDonald's.

I was pretty surprised, to say the least, at the abrupt death of my car battery. After all, Theo had spent most of the last week in the auto shop getting the car version of a body massage: oil changed, engine serviced, brand new front brakes and tires installed, hellajillion dollars spent--all in preparation for a little jaunt from San Jose down to Los Angeles. One of the diagnostic checks run on my Cooper was a battery inspection. I quote to you directly from the motor specialists' report: "BATTERY IS: GOOD".

Well, everything was smooth and dandy for the first two hours of our drive. Then we made a quick pit stop for gas and food, and the next thing you know, Theo is making all manner of alarming noises and two McD's cashiers are pushing our car out of the drive-through lane. It's 9:30 p.m. We're still almost 250 miles from our destination. In fact, we're basically in the middle of nowhere. You can imagine my shock, frustration and um, panic.

But thank goodness for Stephanie. She offered immediately to let us use her jumper cables and even spent a good twenty minutes on the phone with her dad (he's a mechanic) in a makeshift car diagnostics conference call. After Chris got the two batteries hooked up and had Theo started again she told us to call her if we needed any other help that night or if we needed her to come get us along the road. She even gave us her cell phone number.

We eventually made our way very nervously down to Southern California where, with the much-appreciated help of Chris' dad, Theo got a new battery the next morning. I really don't know what we would've done that night without the altruism of a sweet McDonald's cashier, though, and it gives me a true sense of both gratitude and faith. There are still people out there who wouldn't hesitate to selflessly help a stranger in need. I only hope I can take this goodness and somehow send it back out.

Right Round

What's been tugging on my heartstrings since my new record player arrived last week:

• "Promising Light" from The Creek Drank the Cradle. Iron & Wine + vinyl are a match made in freaking heaven, especially this first album which is already fairly low-fi. It begs to be played on a turntable on a Sunday morning.
• The part in "City Middle" off of Alligator that goes "Parking your car, you said, 'I'm overwhelmed.' You were thinking out loud, you said, 'I'm overwhelmed.'" It just floats and haunts.
• The beginning of Death Cab's "Transatlanticism", when it's just the sound like a train coming in from the distance. Oh. My. Word. And I usually get annoyed when one album gets split into two records, but in this case, there's one side where the only two songs are this and "Passenger Seat". It's almost too perfect to be allowed.
• This: Look For Me (I'll Be Around) - Neko Case This is from a Tsururadio vinyl rip of Blacklisted. (Lots of other great things over there, too.)
  
• The entirety of The Joshua Tree. I bought this on vinyl the year it was released, saved it and kept it in great condition. For some reason, it was the only record I brought with me when I moved and it sounds terrific on the Stackomatic. "Where the Streets Have No Name"? Simply incredible.

And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust.

I had so longed to see snow this holiday. Real snow, heaps and piles of it. Just for a day, just for a few short hours. I was willing to drive and find it, but right before Christmas I started to get sick and haven't gotten a smidgen better since. Nothing more than a bad cold, but more than enough to make the idea of standing in a snowbank seem decidedly unwise.

I remember weeks of winter in the past when I would sit at the window and watch snow falling down for hours, swirling against the glass and then flying right back out again to settle on housetops, on bare branches, on closed eyelids, on every available surface, regardless of anything. It never failed to amaze me how absolutely quiet the snow made it seem. You could step outside at two in the morning into snow that came almost to your knees, a quarter moon the only light at all, and your breath was the only sound you would hear. And it sounded like the first breath you ever took, the first breath ever taken by anyone.

Sometimes what I liked best was to go back into the house and watched the snowfall fill my footprints back up. Something utterly fragile and fleeting filling back the hollowed emptiness of itself, if you would only have the patience to wait for it, until it erased every trace of what had happened. 

There is a song that, although it never mentions frost or ice or even the winter's chill, makes me think of walking in the snow:

To Build a Home - The Cinematic Orchestra

Patrick Watson's vocals are breathtakingly perfect in this beautiful song about time and memory. It speaks to me of the steps we take along the paths we choose, and how those steps both freeze us and fill us back up with love.

The Year in Pictures

   

      

 

 

   

It's a strange and amazing thing to look over 12 whole months worth of Flickr and pluck a photo from each month. "That happened this year???", I kept asking myself. I had forgotten so many little things. My enjoyment of photography has grown by leaps and bounds in the past four months or so after I finally figured out and connected with my little pink camera. I think 2008 will be the year I finally invest in a DSLR and see where it takes me. Not that you need a really fancy camera to truly capture the essence of, like, deep-fried Coke. But it can't hurt.

I'm Going Out Sleepwalking

A picture, a song and a poem for Winter:

2:45 a.m. - Elliott Smith

Snow
by: Louise Glück

Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
scraps of white paper
blow over the railroad ties.

My father liked
to stand like this, to hold me
so he couldn't see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us.

Beyond Good and Evil

We got an issue of Time magazine at work a couple of weeks ago and we can't stop talking about it.

The cover story is about morality and goes over the incredible range of cruelties and kindnesses that humans bestow upon each other. We can make judgments upon these actions because we are capable of empathy and the article makes the argument that, despite the fact that people may stray from what they feel is morally sound, "moral judgment is pretty consistent from person to person." So understanding morals doesn't keep us from being jerkfaces, but there is jerkface awareness.

The article also includes a morality quiz, and this is what has us all in a tizzy. These theoretical questions about what you would do in certain life-threatening situations have long been one of my least favorite aspects of philosophy. They're just agonizingly painful scenarios and I am infinitely grateful that I haven't ever had to face something like them. The first is the worst:

Scenario 1: The Crying Baby

It's war time, and you're hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you're found, you'll all be killed immediately. A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Assume that the parents of the baby are unknown and not present and there will be no penalty for killing the child. Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would?

All week we were walking around the office asking each other "Would you kill the baby? Seriously, would you??"

Human Behaviour - Bjork

Everything in its right place.

Have you read the Puddlegum article about the connection between Radiohead's OK Computer and In Rainbows? Personally I find it rather farfetched, but I did burn a mix cd combining the two albums as suggested, and it made for some mighty fine listening. Certainly it didn't convince me of any grand Radiohead Masterplan, and ultimately, I think I connect more right now with the songs and words in Kid A, but tracks like "No Surprises" and "Let Down" reminded me of how insanely wonderful OK Computer is.

There was also this song:

Karma Police - Radiohead

and it shook me up. I don't know if you remember the end of this song: "For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself." Well, that's me in a nutshell lately.

The past few months I've been perfectly fine. I dare say I've even been happy a lot of the time. But I've felt more and more disconnected to the world and I'm not exactly sure why. I can't express what I truly mean and I'm not getting 100% out of any experience. There's a little layer of who knows what separating me from everything, like I'm rolling around in a paper-thin bubble. It's a very curious feeling; not sad, just weird. The best way I can think to describe it is that I have lost awareness.

When I realized all of this last week, it's like I snapped back into my own head. I hadn't been frustrated but now I am (and trying to make up for lost time, too). So I think it's time I staged a riot against myself. Here's a last short playlist o' wallowing, and I will see you on the other side:

Needle in the Hay - Elliott Smith

Follow You Down - The Twilight Singers

This is a Low - Blur

Lists Week! Day 1 - By any other name.

Nicknames Which I Have Known:

• Bee
• Rebobo
• Nurse
• Crafty
• Beckaroni and Cheese
• Maki
• Beckmenistan
• Biz
• Beblox
• Jerrybean
• Beckie Doodle Went to London
• Baylor
• Mechabeckie

Call My Name Out - Matthew Jay

And now you have come to inherit it.

Do you ever buy things on a whim, that you've never seen before, never knew you wanted? And maybe even now you're not sure you actually want it, but, nevertheless, you have it. You are compelled. I used to do this a LOT with music. That's how I first came upon Death Cab and Hem, just to name a couple of my more significant random finds.

I picked up an album in this way last week: Palo Santo by Shearwater. Now, I suppose it's not entirely fair to say that this album was foreign to me. I had downloaded a couple of tracks from it last year when it made its way around the mp3 blogs, but never had the chance to listen to them. But as I walked past it at the Campbell Rasputin I suddenly found my hand reaching out for it, and before I knew it  I was scrutinizing it, already knowing I would buy it.

The version I have is a deluxe re-release, a beautiful little box. And the music inside? It is not like anything I have ever heard. I don't know how to describe it. Shearwater is an offshoot of Okkervil River, but I can't say they're all that similar. From the band's own bio: "There seems to be some kind of narrative thread, but it's broken, frayed, frozen, while hanging over everything there's a sense of mystery that no one could be bothered to clear up or even acknowledge. It's like a transmission you're only picking up part of, but you're listening closely, because it's telling you when and exactly where the missile is going to hit."

I suppose this is what I want right now. To stop feeling so drained and restless. To do things I've never done before. To see hear and feel things I've never experienced.

My favorite song on the album by far is Red Sea, Black Sea. It is exhilarating and overwhelming. Forceful and frantic. Whether he is going to burst out into darkness or into light, I don't know. But something has to happen. Listen to this LOUD.

Daily Affirmations

So Joel is convinced that he has special powers. He thinks he can make things pop up in his life just by thinking of them. His latest conquest, according to him, is the opening of the new Specialty's (he caught my Specialty's fever after the Peanut Buttter n Stuff smorgasbord) on North First Street in San Jose.

b: I think it opened last week but I only got the email today. We should go over, stat.
j: No way did they open a Specialty's. I was just reaching into my lunch sack last night and I felt a big lumpy heap and I thought, "for the love of everything please let this be a Specialty's cookie. If only it was a Specialty's!" Of course it wasn't.
b: How could it have been? You pack your own lunches!
j: I know. But see??? I made them open that branch. I wanted it just SO bad.
b: Your craving for a cookie went back in time and allowed a thousand different little shifts in thought and action, thereby enabling the existence of Specialty's San Jose?
j: That's exactly what I'm saying. I planted the seed of that store.
b: You should write to them so they can thank you and give you a free sandwich.

I'm always trying to tell him, in my party pooper fashion, that these coincidences don't truly exist. Each of us think about a dozen things every minute, which translates to however many megaheczilliontrillion things each day. I think it's actually unusual that things we randomly think about don't manifest themselves more often. But I'm also a lumpy heap of cynical right now, too. I'm no enemy of positive thinking. It helps until it hurts. It's funny but complicated. So much more so than, say, the joy brought by a peanut butter sandwich.

Chorus and verse: "High Life", Counting Crows

I often find myself listening to a lot of Counting Crows in the days before I travel down to Los Angeles. It is music I connect very strongly with Southern California, and with driving.

Perhaps this is because my old car cd player went mysteriously wonky at the tail end of 2000, refusing first to play any mix cds I recorded, then actually unable to play most cds at all. There was only a brief handful of discs that would function in that player, and one of them happened to be This Desert Life, Counting Crows third album and by far my favorite recording of theirs. I think it's very strong for them musically and lyrically--Adam Duritz can be a poet, and he will never top what he's done here. Every song (with the exception of jangly, throwaway single "Hangin' Around") hits you where it counts.

One my favorite love songs is from this album: High Life

It is one of the rare instances when I have heard romantic lyrics and felt them to be entirely heartfelt and revelatory. And real. Especially the first verse:

All my friends got flowers in their eyes*
but I got none this season.
All of last year's blooms have gone and died.
Time doesn't give a reason.
Hey baby, do you ask yourself sometimes
what you need to be forgiven?
Everything that you've ever done wrong
is the reason that I'm driven
straight to you.

That last line just floored me the first time I heard it and grasped it's meaning; the expression of the idea that someone loves you because of everything that you are. Not just for all the shiny, happy best parts of ourselves that we put out there, but also for the things we wish we could change. For always leaving the radio on too loud, for sometimes not knowing the right thing to say, for feeling lonely when it's very late at night. Because without these things, we aren't ourselves. And to know that people can accept us not only despite these things, but because of them--that's huge. Not to say we should be stagnant, floating forever in bad waters. But we can try to understand that things happen for a reason. Reading that reason is how we'll be forgiven.

*Bonus points because this first line echoes the beginning of the Remy Zero (friends of the Counting Crows') song "Life in Rain": "I once had marigolds for eyes."

A word to say about things today and fallen leaves.

A Picture:

A poem:

Waves in August
by W.S. Merwin

There is a war in the distance
with the distance growing smaller
the field glasses lying at hand
are for keeping it far away

I thought I was getting better
about that returning childish
wish to be living somewhere else
that I knew was impossible
and now I find myself wishing
to be here to be alive here
it is impossible enough
to still be the wish of a child

in youth I hid a boat under
the bushes beside the water
knowing I would want it later
and come back and would find it there
someone else took it and left me
instead the sound of the water
with its whisper of vertigo

terror reassurance an old
old sadness it would seem we knew
enough always about parting
but we have to go on learning
as long as there is anything

and a song:

River Man - Nick Drake

Grace marks your heart.

I think I would like to go for a drive today. It is raining and I am feeling very thoughtful and I would like best to drive around and listen to some music. Especially music that has to be played at a disturb-your-neighbors volume to be appreciated, like this song:The Unwinding Cable Car - Anberlin

I wasn't sure what to expect when Steph gave me the new Anberlin cd, Cities, last week in an album swap. I have a delicate musical sensibility, drawn usually towards tears and sweetness, and their previous material was too screamo for me. But Cities is working the same type of magic as the Mae album did a couple of years ago; that tender, poignant interplay of innocence and experience.

It makes me think of the always strange struggle of figuring out what we want. Of course, there are the blatant desires, everyday and always wants: I want my sister to always be happy, I want to see 300 (in IMAX!), I want my friends to know that I love them, I want a Tokidoki LeSportsac bag, I want to take Chris up to Napa.

But then there is always that restless feeling, the not knowing. How are you supposed to know that you want to go stand alone on the pier? Or that today you'd like to smell Lily of the Valley and tell someone that they are beautiful. You don't, and I think it's the way we deal with the not knowing that changes our lives. How far will we go to find Lily of the Valley (you cannot replicate that scent chemically, you have to find the real thing). Who will we share it with, what will it mean?

There are lines from this song which Steph pointed out too that say, at least partially, what it means:

This is the correlation of salvation and love.
Don't drop your arms, I've got your heart.
With quiet words I'll lead you in.