Tuesday on My Mind

It's been a rough week, but there's always something better around the corner, right? I think--I hope--that people and lives have astounding capacity for growth and change. To be a little less nebulous and a little more reassuring, everything is okay. But I felt like I should post something since it's been a little while, so here is a photo I found from January 2010.

To quietude and contentment.

Backyard in Platte County, Missouri

Upswing?

Alright.

Okay.

After a cold, two ear infections, a sinus infection, mono, and stitches...I think I'm on the upswing now (knocking on the wooden table as I type this). Really. I got my stitches out today. What's better is that I got to spend my day yesterday with a bunch of my remarkable family, talking and eating and sitting around. My cousin gave me a henna design around my wound, which made it look a hundred times more cool and intentional.

But I have a paper to write, and I've had more than several cups of coffee already today, so I'll keep this very short.

Here is a photo of some sassy polydactyl cats, just because their paws look like they have little opposable thumbs.

Country Life

I went for a walk today, along the road where I grew up. It was delightful. My neighbor's cows, whom I've named Claude and Édouard, were especially friendly today and they kept licking my hand when I stopped to pet them. I never knew this, but cow tongues are surprisingly rough and abrasive and strong. Almost painfully so. Later, when I got up to leave, the cows followed me all the way to the end of their enclosure.
I'll be paying them another visit very soon.

With A Little Help From My Friends

Joe Cocker died today. Considering that for a good majority of my childhood I watched The Wonder Years before bed, here is Joe Cocker's cover of The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends," from Woodstock 1969.

Snitches Get Stitches

...and so do people who faint and hit their heads at the grocery store.

I was accompanying my lovely sister to Price Chopper and trying to find Orangina in the juice aisle. The next thing I remember is waking up surrounded with paramedics with a big puddle of blood under me. And now I have four stitches in my face.

Truth be told, this makes me feel pretty tough, especially since I also have mono.

But I still cried like a baby.

Crash

My sister and I were just at a convenience store when a truck crashed through the brick wall and broke the windows. No one was hurt, but there was a little girl an aisle over from where all the glass and bricks fell. She was okay, but to put it simply, it was scary and unexpected.

That is my Friday in a nutshell.

Goodbye Stranger

Not to be trite and predictable, but...

-"Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp, from Breakfast in America (1979)

I fly home to Kansas City tomorrow, where my cat and bed await me. My goals for break are, in approximate order:

1. Catch up with my family and friends and cat and favorite climbing trees
2. Sleep and read and maybe recover from mono before getting my wisdom teeth out. Also, it would be nice if this full-body rash went completely away, but I'm not holding my breath on that count, especially since it's calmed down a lot in the past week and I should be less vain anyway
3. Write a final paper on Robert Lowell
4. Finish a final project for my other poetry class
5. Prepare for ESPAÑA
6. And probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting because I'm still pretty focused on packing, to be honest

Stuff.

I'm packing up my dorm room right now, and I can't help but wonder...

How did I end up with so much stuff?

A small sampling of the mess that is my room

Thinking about this, of course, brings to mind...

I'm just tryin' to find a place for my stuff.
This is one of my favorite George Carlin routines; this specific version is from his set at Comic Relief in 1986. What a guy.

Regardless, I am incredibly eager to be going home the day after tomorrow, and am trying to get all of my loose ends tied up and my goodbyes in before that. It's a lot to do in two days, but I feel optimistic and up to the challenge.

Charlotte Mittnacht (The Fabulous Destiny of...)

Surviving.

- DeVotchKa, "Charlotte Mittnacht (The Fabulous Destiny of...)," from How It Ends (2004)

Finals Week

Finals week is nearly upon us, and with that comes a whole slew of emotions and obligations that I can't even begin to process. Mainly I've just been trying to sleep and not scratch my hives while retaining my sanity. I'm extremely excited to go home, but very nervous to say goodbye because a) I hate goodbyes and b) it's very unclear when I'll next see a lot of people here.  That's the way it goes, though, and that's okay.

Anyhow, because I know I won't have time to write a well-reasoned post every day this week, and that most of the things I post will likely be songs, here is the first:

- "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin from That's All (1959)

"High on Life"

I have mono and am covered in hives. As you can imagine, I'm pretty whiny at the moment and am therefore not going to editorialize this any more than necessary.

Because this made me smile, and maybe it will make you smile too, here is a nice little video of Lou Reed interacting with some reporters in Australia in 1974.

Shakespeare and Shostakovich

That title was a deliberate attempt to seem sophisticated and knowledgeable, I'm just nodding to that fact up front.

Right now, I'm finishing up a painful paper about Shakespeare's representation of gender within As You Like It, and as such I'm trying to find some good study music. I began listening to some Shostakovich fugues, which were quite conducive to efficient writing. Then I found this amazing album of Shostakovich's jazz suites and now I'm on fire. Not literally, obviously, but this essay is finally coming together.


This specific piece always reminds me of the Nintendo 64 game Mission Impossible. There was a level on that game where you had to infiltrate this Russian palace by finding the sheet music for this song. When the pianist began to play the song, it distracted the ambassador you had to sneak past or something like that. Also, more recently, it makes me think of the end of Eyes Wide Shut, but that's a completely different can of worms that we won't open today.

In the spirit of college and paper-writing and gray rainy weather (and quite frankly, because I don't have time to format/type up anything cool today), here are some study tunes, in case you too are suffering through the uptown problem of surviving finals and the burden of receiving a fine education

 

- "Waltz No. 2" from The Suite for Variety Orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich

Excerpts from a Sixth-Grade Diary, pt. 1

I was looking through an old journal that I have, and though I realize this is incredibly self-involved and inconsequential (who cares what I wrote in my diary in 2006?), it seemed funny so I thought I'd share it.

From August 1, 2006:

"I'm feeling sort of happy-sad right now. I'm listening to Jazz [a 1979 album by Queen], and reading Fight Club. It's sort of funny, but it's kind of depressing when you realize that stuff like this is going on in the world."

I guess as a twelve-year-old I thought the world's biggest problems were underground consensual fighting organizations and men feeling uncomfortable within their own perceptions of masculinity. If only.

The backside of that page, because if there's
one thing I've always loved, it's stickers.

Keepin' Up

After a weekend of sleep and relaxation, I feel much better, though I still feel like I've been lagging on this blog. Also, I just received clearance from the college to study abroad, so I will most certainly be in Spain next semester. Hooray!

Here's a song I like, because that's all I seem to have time for these days.

-"Lucky" by Radiohead, from OK Computer (1997)

Break (?)

A professor in my department just walked by me in the hallway and told me that I "need to take a break." And maybe he is right. So I'm trying to do that with the justification being that I missed no class or work this semester and that perhaps I need to. Hell, maybe I don't need to. Maybe I just want to and deserve to. But that's a hard realization (for me, anyway).

Because I bought my plane ticket home this morning (I'll be back in K.C. in thirteen days!), I'm in the midst of packing my room up right now, namely my books. This means that I have to decide which two or three books I want to take with me for the next few weeks, and this decision has become much harder than it needs to be. I'm in the middle of Another Bullshit Night In Suck City by Nick Flynn right now, and his writing is fairly remarkable. He doesn't overwrite or try to compensate for anything, which I like quite a lot. So I have that, but seeing how I ended up sleeping in the Charlotte airport on my way home two years ago, I'm not taking the risk of being without another book.


Regardless, and because that rant was fairly self-indulgent and unnecessary, here is a beautiful piece of music as recompense. The piano in this song couldn't be better.

-"Miles from Nowhere" by Cat Stevens, from Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Wedding Bells

True country music reigns supreme (over country-pop, anyway, but let's not get started on that).

-Hank Williams, "Wedding Bells" (1949)

Illin' Like A Villain

I'm the sickest I've been in four years and milking it for all its worth.

Basically, I have two ear infections and a sinus infection, which is kind of a relief considering that I was chalking up my sadness and discomfort to a common cold. That said, I'm on antibiotics and I already feel as though I'm on the upswing. I should be feeling much better in a day or two. Most importantly, there are also people who might as well be angels or something like that looking out for me, because I have been feeling the love from a lot of my friends and family. Thank you!

But I should keep this short, because I am at work and that seems kind of important too.

No Time

Whenever I go back home to Missouri, I always make a point to listen to the album American Woman at least once, because it reminds me of being a blissfully ignorant high-schooler (as opposed to a blissfully ignorant college student). The music is great, of course, but I like how it makes me think of the person I used to be: impatient to see the world, perpetually fatigued, and in love with my bedroom--I couldn't even guess how many hours I spent there, drawing and reading and making weird clay models.

But I digress.

The song below, "No Time," originally appeared on The Guess Who's 1969 album Canned Wheat, but this version is from American Woman (1970). If you're at all into blues-/psychedelic-rock, my official endorsement is that you should give it a listen sometime. But now that I've sufficiently babbled, here's "No Time."

Creativity and Addiction

I was glossing over this poem by Bukowski today, and thinking about how much I dislike his romanticization of addiction and suffering as necessary to the creative process, when not ten minutes later I encountered a similar sentiment from recently-sober filmmaker Lars von Trier. Before I get ahead of myself, here is the poem in question:

"The Replacements"

Jack London drinking his life away while
writing of strange and heroic men.
Eugene O'Neill drinking himself oblivious
while writing his dark and poetic
works.

now our moderns
lecture at universities
in tie and suit,
the little boys soberly studious,
the little girls with glazed eyes
looking
up,
the lawns so green, the books so dull,
the life so dying of
thirst.

-Charles Bukowski, from Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993

Now, Bukowski likely held a nuanced view of addiction, I'm not arguing otherwise. But, I think the notion that accomplished and capable artists are made great by their suffering, whether that be mental illness, or addiction, or abuse...it just seems ridiculous to me. For every Plath or van Gogh, there are hundreds of individuals with similar experiences who will never come close to fulfilling their potential. These artists were great in spite of, not because of, their ailments.

So. It only makes sense that I was more than a little concerned when I read this article in which von Trier says that "There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?" Obviously, the man has every right to express concern over how his substance use (or lack thereof) might affect his artistic process, but I find his claim to be absurd. Look at Tom Waits, or James Ellroy. I mean, obviously I have little credibility in this discussion, not having ever struggled with or recovered from a serious substance addiction, but I think that to equate creativity with suffering is to limit one's own ability to produce work.

But that's just one girl's opinion.

And This Is What We Call Progress

This album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, often takes me back to high school. When I was a junior, my parents drove me all the way down to the Ozarks (a three-and-a-half hour drive each way) because of a Scholastic writing competition in which I'd taken part. They agreed to drive me to this over-the-top resort called Tan-Tar-A so that I could accept an honorable mention award or something like that. I remember feeling like it was a fairly ridiculous request at the time (even more so in retrospect), but my parents insisted on taking me down to accept my hard-earned piece of congratulatory paper. So they did.

On the way home, late at night, I remember laying in the back seat of my mother's red Honda Civic, listening to this album. The sleepiness I felt, mixed with the dreaminess of the album, made a weirdly strong and lasting impression on me. I can't hear this album now without thinking of driving through mountains and fields and dark rainy night.

Here is "And This Is What We Call Progress."

- From The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night (2010)

Mother and Daughter

This is pretty cool:

Ugne Henriko, a photographer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, recreated a series of photos of her mother from the '70's. The contemporary recreations, with Henriko taking her mother's poses, are astounding.

 

For the full series and other photos, you should visit Ugne Henriko's website here.

Memory

This is "Memory," a very brief story by H.P. Lovecraft, written in 1919 and published in 1923:

In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great upas-tree. And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move forms not meet to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands. And in trees that grow gigantic in crumbling courtyards leap little apes, while in and out of deep treasure-vaults writhe poison serpents and scaly things without a name.
Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets of dank moss, and mighty were the walls from which they fell. For all time did their builders erect them, and in sooth they yet serve nobly, for beneath them the grey toad makes his habitation.
At the very bottom of the valley lies the river Than, whose waters are slimy and filled with weeds. From hidden springs it rises, and to subterranean grottoes it flows, so that the Daemon of the Valley knows not why its waters are red, nor whither they are bound.
The Genie that haunts the moonbeams spake to the Daemon of the Valley, saying, “I am old, and forget much. Tell me the deeds and aspect and name of them who built these things of stone.” And the Daemon replied, “I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, for it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man.”
So the Genie flew back to the thin horned moon, and the Daemon looked intently at a little ape in a tree that grew in a crumbling courtyard.

Fish in the Dish

The magic of funk revival.

Also, I love the numerous shots of silhouetted/shiny women that this video editor decided to place alongside the music. It really makes me believe that the fish in question really does belong to Sharon Jones.

-"Fish in the Dish" by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, from Naturally (2005)

American "Barbarisms"

From H. L. Mencken's The American Language, pages 25-26:

Captain Basil Hall, who was here in 1827 and in 1828, and published his 'Travels in North America' in 1829, was so upset by some of the [linguistic] novelties that he encountered that he went to see Noah Webster, then seventy years old, to remonstrate. Webster upset him still further by arguing stoutly that 'his countrymen had not only a right to adopt new words, but were obliged to modify the language to suit the novelty of the circumstances, geographical and political, in which they were placed.' The lexicographer went on to observe judicially that 'it is quite impossible to stop the progress of language--it is like the course of the Mississippi, the motion of which, at times, is scarcely perceptible; yet even then it possesses a momentum quite irresistible. Words and expressions will be forced into use, in spite of all the exertions of all the writers in the world.'

'But surely,' persisted Hall, 'such innovations are to be deprecated?'

'I don't know that,' replied Webster. 'If a word becomes universally current in America, where English is spoken, why should it not take its station in the language?'

To this Hall made an honest British reply. 'Because,' he said, 'there are words enough already.'

Webster tried to mollify him by saying that 'there were not fifty words in all which were used in America and not in England'--an underestimate of large proportions--, but Hall went away muttering.

The Trees of Wellesley

Here are some photos I took in October. The film itself was some expired Kodak UltraMax 400 that I got for a steal at the SoWa market a few months back.

From a secret perch in the forest

Secret perch, pt. II

It's a relief to be able to remember how lovely this place is sometimes, even when it's high-pressure, bureaucratic, or just plain sad.

A Few Snotty Usage Errors

We all make linguistic mistakes. It happens. If you're really good at debating, you can even argue that your mistake is really a form of linguistic evolution, and that precriptive grammar is bollocks. I do this quite a bit, which makes the following post fairly hypocritical. To argue the importance of the following list, however, I would like to point out that the differences listed, in some cases, are rather necessary for clear communication. For instance, as in #4, to say that you "saw a person hung" means that you saw a living person suspended, and that person continued to live through the suspension, which is generally not (in my limited experience) what people mean when they say that they saw someone "get hung."

So here are a brief few of my least-favorite usage errors, thanks to every writer I've read and every fastidious English major I've ever known.

1. Electrocute
• To be electrocuted means to die from exposure to electric shock. If a person gets zapped while trying to get a piece of toast from the toaster with a fork, chances are she is shocked (and not electrocuted).
2. Nauseous vs. nauseated
• "Nauseous" is an adjective that means "to bring about a state of nausea," as in:
•  The convenience-store bathrooms were stinky and rather nauseous.
• "Nauseated" means "to feel a sense of nausea" as in:
•  I went to the stinky, nauseous bathroom and immediately felt nauseated.
• To say "I feel nauseous" is to imply (at least according to prescribed definition):
• I feel so disgusting and unappealing that any poor soul to encounter me would likely run screaming to the nearest bathroom, trash can, or bush.
3. General use of trademarks to describe generic products
• Jell-O, Xerox, Band-Aid, and Kleenex are respective brand names for gelatin dessert, photocopiers, adhesive bandages, and facial tissues. When these trademarked brand names become so commonly associated with their associated generic product, the trademark becomes genericised and therefore no longer belongs to its creator, which seems rather unfortunate--after all, the person who coined the term "Jell-O" shouldn't be punished for inventing such a catchy term. This bothers me much more than it probably should.
4. Hanged vs. hung
• "Hung" is both the past tense and past participle of the verb "hang," and it can refer to any object (animate or otherwise) which is suspended or dangled. "Hanged," on the other hand, is a bit more specific, in that it refers to a being which has been killed by hanging. A person who is being hung above a crowd on a bungee cord cannot be said to be hanged unless she dies as a result. Therefore, it is correct to say:
• The puce-green streamers were hung from the rusty rafters in the old prison gym.
• The wrongly-convicted prisoner was hanged before a small crowd in Lansing.
• I had no idea this this difference existed at all until seventh grade, when I went to my first concert. Upon coming home, I exclaimed to my dad, "It was so cool! Alice Cooper hung himself!" The mistake was promptly corrected.
  
5. Internet
• This one's a bit controversial (so controversial, in fact, that it has its own Wikipedia page), but I personally like to capitalize "Internet," as it is technically a proper noun.*
  
  *Full disclosure: I don't always capitalize "Internet," especially if I'm typing on a cell phone or feeling generally lazy, which is much more often than I'd dare to admit, especially in this post on the public space of the Internet.

I'm curious as to whether anyone who's reading this feels similarly about these or other common prescriptive misusages. If you're feeling particularly fired up about the difference between "horde" and "hoard" or "Champaign" and "Champagne," please leave a comment or send me a note! Especially considering that you trudged through this rather tiresome post, I'd love to hear about your linguistic sore spots as well.

I Call Your Name

For all the drugs and debauchery, The Mamas & the Papas somehow managed to make some wonderful music. This song was originally written by John Lennon and released by the Beatles on their Long Tall Sally EP in 1964. The Mamas & the Papas covered it for their first album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, which came out just two years later in 1968.

You have to give them some credit for their idiosyncratic album covers:

That's more than enough background, though. Here is "I Call Your Name," as performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967:

Who Said It Was Simple

I'm trying to spend the evening reflecting on how, no matter how hard I try, there are simply experiences that I will never truly understand, because of my race, or my gender, or my sexuality, my education level, my socioeconomic class, my physical ability...

Here's a poem by Audre Lorde.

* * * * *

"Who Said It Was Simple"

There are so many roots to the tree of anger   

that sometimes the branches shatter   

before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march   

discussing the problematic girls   

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes   

a waiting brother to serve them first   

and the ladies neither notice nor reject   

the slighter pleasures of their slavery.   

But I who am bound by my mirror   

as well as my bed

see causes in colour

as well as sex

and sit here wondering   

which me will survive   

all these liberations.

 -Audre Lorde, from From a Land Where Other People Live (1973)

Pie Fight '69

If you're only gonna watch a few minutes of this, the good part starts at 3:10.

"Carloads of hippies protesting culture vultures threw more than 500 pies at spectators and police to make a shambles of the opening of the San Fransisco Film Festival."

Pet Grief

Dancing the morning away.

- The Radio Dept., "Sleeping In," from Pet Grief (2008)

Animal.

Sweet Annie, my truest and kindest love.

I had a nightmare last night that she died, and it was very scary. So this morning I called my dad to ask how she is, and he told me that she is not only alive and well, but that she found a partial deer carcass to play with. How typically rural-Midwest. Also, I'm exhausted so sorry if this doesn't make sense.

Cooking with Cormac McCarthy

Pasta. Plain. But Good.

INGREDIENTS:
Pasta.
And salt.
And water.
And Fire.

DIRECTIONS:
Place the pasta in the water and the salt in the water and the water in the pot and the pot on the fire.
In the pot? The fire in the pot?
No. The water in the pot. The pot on the fire.
The pasta in the water?
Yes, in the water.
And the salt in the fire?
No. The salt in the water.
And the water on the fire?
No. The water in the pot and the pot on the fire. Not the water on the fire. For then the fire will die and dying be dead.
Nor will the water boil and the pasta will drain dry and not cooked and hard to the teeth.

The salt falls nor does it cease to fall.
The water boils. So be it.
Cease from placing your hand in the boiling water. Place your hand in the boiling water and it will cause you pain.
Much pain?
Very much pain.

In the pot the bubbles bubble up and bubble some more. The bubbles are bubbly. Never more bubbly bubbles bubbling bubbliest. And having bubbled the bubbles still bubbly.
Or bubblier?
Or bubblier.
Across the kitchen a board intended for chopping. Here. Take it. Chop.
What will I chop? There are no ingredients to chop.
Just chop. Don’t cease from chopping. To chop is to become a man.

After 10 minutes. The pasta stiff and dry and upright no more. The pasta lank and wet and soft. In the eternal damp of water.
Pour water free like some ancient anointing. The pasta left alone in the pot. Alone and naked.
The salt? Where’s the salt?
The salt is gone. Lost to the water and gone forever.
I grieve for the salt.
It is the salt for which I grieve.

Tip the pasta out.
The pasta?
Yes. Tip it out. Onto.
A plate?
Yes. And stop.
Finishing your sentences?
Yes.
Why?
Because it’s so.
Irritating?

Nothing in your memory anywhere of anything so good. Now the pasta is eaten. Disappeared. The pasta disappeared as everything disappeared. As the comma disappears and the semicolon disappears and the inverted comma disappears and the apostrophe disappears and the adjectives and the pronouns all disappear.
Leaving just full stops and And.
And And?
And And.
And And.

-Cormac McCarthy, from the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair

"Pedantic Humour"

From A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler, 1927 (p. 426-27):

PEDANTIC HUMOUR. No essential distinction is intended between this & POLYSYLLABIC HUMOUR; one or the other name is more appropriate to particular specimens, & the two headings are therefore useful for reference; but they are manifestations of the same impulse, & the few remarks needed may be made here for both. A warning is necessary, because we have all of us, except the abnormally stupid, been pedantic humourists in our time. We spend much of our childhood picking up a vocabulary; we like to air our latest finds; we discover that our elders are tickled when we come out with a new name that they thought beyond us; we devote some pains to tickling them further; & there we are, pedants & polysyllabists all. The impulse is healthy for children [and undergrads] & nearly universal--which is just why warning is necessary; for among so many there will always be some who fail to realize that the clever habit applauded at home will make them insufferable abroad. Most of those who are capable of writing well enough to find readers do learn with more or less of delay that playful use of long or learned words is a one-sided game boring the reader more than it pleases the writer, that the impulse to it is a danger-signal--for there must be something wrong with what they are saying if it needs recommending by such puerilities--, & that yielding to the impulse is a confession of failure. But now & then even an able writer will go on believing that the incongruity between simple things to be said & out-of-the-way words to say them in had a perennial charm; it has, for the reader who never outgrows hobbledehoyhood; but for the rest of us it is dreary indeed. It is possible that acquaintance with such labels as pedantic & polysyllabic humour may help to shorten the time that it takes to cure a weakness incident to youth.

An elementary example or two should be given. The words homeopathic (small or minute), sartorial (of clothes), interregnum (gap), are familiar ones:--To introduce 'Lords of Parliament' in such homeopathic doses as to leave a preponderating power in the hands of those who enjoy a merely hereditary title./While we were motoring out to the station I took stock of his sartorial aspect, which had changed somewhat since we parted./In his vehement action his breeches fall down & his waistcoast runs up, so that there is a great interregnum.

These words are, like most that are much used in humour of either kind, both pedantic & polysyllabic. A few specimens that cannot be described as polysyllabic are added here, & for the larger class of long words the article POLYSYLLABIC HUMOUR should be consulted:--ablution; aforesaid; beverage; bivalve (the succulent); caloric; cuticle; digit; domestics; eke (adv.); ergo; erstwhile; felicide; nasal organ; neighbourhood (in the n. of,=about); nether garments; optic (eye); parlous; vulpicide.

I got this book over the summer of 2013 at Second Story Books in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It's fun to read, in part because of its language--this entry in particular made me laugh because for all its degradation of wordiness, it's not very concise itself. But perhaps more importantly, I think this book provides a fascinating commentary on linguistic change, and a very specific (i.e., from an old white educated man's perspective) snapshot of where the English language was less than a hundred years ago.

Maybe one day I'll write my own dictionary of English usage. For now, though, I should probably just stick to regurgitating others' ideas on the Internet.

I swear I didn't make that up.

Taller Than You Are

Sunday study jams for eking out a final page of poetry analysis. You gotta love that first-wave Jamaican ska.

-Lord Tanamo, "Taller Than You Are," 1964

Deer Ticks (Rural Confession No. 1)

If you're easily disgusted or averse to ticks, consider this sentence your warning.

A few weeks ago I was telling someone that I didn't really like golden raisins because they remind me of those swollen yet shriveled deer ticks I used to pick off of my dog Annie in the summer. I didn't think this was a particularly peculiar stance, but the person I was with acted so surprised and disgusted that I realized a lot of people have never even seen a tick, let alone been bitten by one. I guess they're a bit less common if you don't live in the middle of nowhere.

Regardless, I feel like tick bites built character in me as a small child. One summer day, when I was in late elementary school, I remember coming inside after running around in some tall grass outside and looking in the mirror that hangs in my parents' foyer. To my absolute horror, there was a tick attached to my eyelid. My eyelid. I kid you not. The thing had bitten right into my right eyelid, and I promptly lost my cool. I'm pretty sure I called my mom at work, and she told me to get my older sister to pull it off since her fingernails were much longer than mine. Not wanting to wake my sister up, and (mainly) being a stupid and cocky kid who thought she was entirely self-sufficient, I pulled it off myself. I don't remember how I did it, but I'm fairly certain I didn't do the smart thing of using my left hand to hold my eyelid taut while I pulled with my other hand; I just went for it and I think it hurt a lot less than I'd been expecting.

Anyhow, this post didn't really have a point. I was just eating some granola and the raisins in it reminded me of summertime in Missouri.

I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms

Just happiness here. (Dedicated to my bear, Franklin.)

"I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms"
-The Modern Lovers, from The Original Modern Lovers (recorded in 1973; released in 1981)

Also, meet Franklin. He's rather soft and really all this twenty-year-old needs in the way of arms.

King of Spain

Hometown heroes, straight outta Cambridge, Massachussetts.

-Galaxie 500, "King of Spain," from Today (1988)

I love this album very, very much. There's something wholly atmospheric about it. The whole thing is on YouTube, so if you decide you like this song enough, give it a listen. It's space-y and distorted and thick and melodic and entirely worth the forty minutes.

Also, apparently Conan O'Brien provided the drum kit that Damon Krukowski played in their early days. Cool.

Snow

It's snowing!

...Alright, so it's really more of a wintry mix of snow and rain that's barely sticking, but it's there and I'm excited.

Winter is, for me, a great time to excuse my introverted nature with weather and sentiment (because it's easy to argue that most people don't want to venture outside in the elements when the elements are railing from the sky, that winter is a time to hole up with a good book and a warm beverage). I love winter a lot. It feels quiet and peaceful and still in a way that the other seasons can't, and it reminds me of insane short stories about people losing themselves in the rain and the snow, like "The Overcoat" or "The Wendigo." But maybe that's just my tendency to pop-cultural reference coming out. I'm really trying to tone that tendency down so that I can seem like less of a pretentious jerk.

Anyhow, I spent the morning--which was an hour earlier than I expected thanks to the time change, how nice--listening to Lindisfarne and reading and watching my window. This song feels right for today.

 

-Lindisfarne, "Winter Song" from Nicely Out Of Tune (1970)

Burn, Don't Freeze

Welcoming in November and rain and gray cold today. The weather report says it could snow tomorrow. That seems a bit far-fetched to me, but I'm awaiting winter with eager open arms no matter the precipitation.

I also have been trying to take more photos recently but that's really hard, especially when you're like me and really bad at loading film or seeing things worth capturing and framing them honestly and aesthetically. But it's something I'm working on, and that's all one can really do.

Harvard Square on a Friday night in early September

Also, because the title of this post is "Burn, Don't Freeze," here is that song. It's not really relevant to the above post but it's a damn swell song to my ears.

 

-Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock (1999)

Expulsion

Perhaps I'm stretching the word "expulsion" beyond the physical, but I've been carrying around ideas and thoughts and observations for the last twenty years, and they seem to be bursting up to the surface like underwater bubbles, exhaled by some adventurous scuba diver.

I'm aware that this post is making little sense, but I'll publish it anyway.

The short version:

Today I decided, with certainty, that I am going to write the things that I feel that I need to write, not from spite, but because those things are going to battle around inside my brain until I can get them onto paper.

So I'm going to write a poetry thesis.

And now I am done with self-seriousness and contrived metaphor, if only for the evening. If you read this far, thank you and I'm sorry.

An Open Love-Letter to Halloween

Dear Halloween,

You are, without a doubt, my favorite holiday. That's not to say that you're perfect, because you're not, but your imperfections are what make you perfect in my sentimental eyes. I love that you give every shut-in a chance to rally a friend to watch Blood Feast because getting out of the house isn't that much fun anyway, or to eat candy excessively and then get really bad stomachaches afterward. I love that you give people a sensible reason to scare others, or to walk around unfamiliar neighborhoods in dangerously sight-obscuring masks, or that you let everyone feel like they're five again. I love that you give every loser a chance to be Ferris Bueller or Jill Valentine, if only just for one day.

In short, I love you a lot. Thanks for giving me a free twenty-four hour pass to Being Cool.

Gearing up, late '70's style

Discovery ("Long, Long, Long")

One of the most pivotal moments in my musical discovery came during Christmas of, let's call it 2007. That sounds about right. I would have been thirteen and in eighth grade at the time. Unbearably awkward and uncomfortable, as are I think most people at that age, I found immense comfort in music--again, as most people do. So for Christmas that year, my dear sweet parents asked me what I wanted, and I handed them a list of albums by bands that I liked. I discovered a lot of music at that time by listening to Nights with Alice Cooper on 99.7 KY (which is, sadly, no longer operating under that same classic rock format). But to get to the point, I heard Mister Alice playing songs by bands like The Yardbirds, Jethro Tull, and KISS, and to my impressionable adolescent mind there was nothing better. My parents, recognizing this appreciation, got me the albums I'd asked for. They were, if I recall correctly:

London Calling by The Clash
Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Led Zeppelin IV (or whatever you prefer to call it) by Led Zeppelin
Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
Self-Titled by The Beatles

...and I believe one other album--maybe Bryter Layter by Nick Drake? I can't remember, but it's written down somewhere.

So this post is heading, as most of mine do, to a YouTube video of a song that I like. And while I was reading the other night, listening quietly to the second half of The White Album, I began reflecting on my first strong experiences with music (such as the junior-high winter described above). That led me to thinking about the specific album I was listening to, and what a fine, fine song "Long, Long, Long" is. I'd argue that it's one of the best songs on the album, and I love a lot of songs on that album. There's something so emotional and heartrending in the way George Harrison sings it that can't really be described (which is, I suppose, a description in itself). It took me a long time to appreciate it, though. When I first listened to the entire White Album, I was most interested in songs like "Julia" and "Blackbird": predictably enjoyable and comfortable songs with acoustic guitar and quiet vocals. I think I probably found "Long, Long, Long" to be creepy and weird. It's remarkable how time can change thoughts and opinions like that.

Enough blathering. Here's the song:

Janine

A strange and lovely love song, recorded at The Knitting Factory:

"If you were the Baltic Sea and I were a cup"

"Janine" by Soul Coughing, from Ruby Vroom (1994)

"At Sunset"

While I was nosing around at the Grolier this weekend with my mom, I came across a poem called "How I Am" by Jason Shinder. I'd never heard of him before, so I did some reading (of course) and found out that he died in 2008 of cancer. He wrote in these journals before he died, journals he called “cancer diaries.” It seems remarkable to me that, even in the face of mortality, he was able to maintain a realistically optimistic perspective on life: “The hours are left for vanishing and also for joy and for blessing and gratitude.”

Here is a poem he wrote.         

* * * * *

“At Sunset”

Your death must be loved this much.

You have to know the grief—now.
Standing by the water’s edge,

looking down at the wave

touching you. You have to lie,
stiff, arms folded, on a heap of earth

and see how far the darkness

will take you. I mean it, this, now—
before the ghost the cold leaves

in your breath, rises;

before the toes are put together
inside the shoes. There it is—the goddamn

orange-going-into-rose descending

circle of beauty and time.
You have nothing to be sad about.

 

by Jason Shinder, from Stupid Hope (2009)

The End

The West is The Best.

From The Doors' self-titled album, 1967

Solitude

I just tried writing a really lengthy and self-important post about what solitude means and then I realized it was drivel so I stopped.

But basically, I think that solitude is a great, great thing. There is so much to be gained from spending time alone with oneself, and speaking personally, I am much happier when I'm able to have those moments alone than when I'm spending consecutive hours with others (even if those others are people I love and care about). Which is not to say that I don't love being around people I love, because I do. I simply feel more content and ordered when I can have sufficient time alone. That's basically the pared-down version of the huge long thought that was in my head.

And because I am me and can't state a thought without some musical association, here is a Grandaddy song:

- "Disconnecty," from Just Like the Fambly Cat, 2006

Saint Casimir

I preface this post with an admittance of ignorance--even when I try to write things about the past, or my family, or any number of things, I realize that my ability to do so honestly and accurately is continually and inevitably obstructed by memory. Like anyone, I remember things as I would like to and have no idea what the truth really is at any given time. So. Even though I found this thing I wrote and am sharing it with the Internet here, it's clearly not my place to definitively claim anything more than a subjective understanding of events outside of myself, especially since half the time I don't even understand what the things I make mean.

Sorry for the convoluted explanatory apology above. Here is a stanza of something I wrote, and maybe something I will continue to work on and revise if I feel so compelled.

Inky trees hunch above me,

cowering from the wind

of a ruthless Chicago winter.

The sky is impossibly blue and thin

and as cold as cracked skin.

Everyone is gone,

and I berate myself

for wondering if my dead

great-uncles will receive special stead

in Heaven for dying so young

under their only country’s saint--

Death doesn’t work that way,

I don’t think.