Aún Camino

Three years ago today, my Grams would've been a century old. Also three years ago today, I finished hiking the Camino de Santiago. While I've been feeling especially mushy and reflective about this for the last month, today is strangely quiet. Anticlimactic. Life marches on, and while I'm still figuring out my spirituality (among other things), I know I've grown since the hike. I've become an adult, one I hope my grandma would've been proud of.

For all of it, I'm pretty darn grateful.

Pilgrims' Mass, Easter Sunday

Mama Says

My sweet friend Alejandro showed me this act Ibeyi last week, and I'm sold. The group consists of twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz. At 22 years old, they're a force to be reckoned with.

This song in particular was written for the sisters' father, Anga Díaz, who was a part of the Buena Vista Social Club.

- "Mama Says" by Ibeyi, from Ibeyi (2015)

Para Qué Sufrir

- "Para Qué Sufrir," by Natalia Lafourcade, from Hasta la Raíz (2015)

Con Flores

- "Nuesta Canción" by Monsieur Periné, from Caja de Música (2015) 

Rendezvous Girl

With each day, I'm more aware of the value and finitude of my time. To be honest, I'm discouraged and frightened, because I know that I have an obligation to myself to take my interests seriously. While I still take time every day to write something small, I haven't felt focused enough to make (or even read) anything remotely substantial in several weeks. And though a couple of weeks is only a snap of the fingers, I still feel an enormous anxiety about the passage of time.

I wish I could write some sort of sweet, immediate resolution to that, but I can't. Even if I could, it would be unfairly inauthentic and performative. Today, I will try to simply sit with these thoughts, rather than overanalyzing them in search of a solution.

While I'm sitting, though, I'll listen to Santigold, and dance modestly in my seat.

- "Rendezvous Girl" by Santigold, from 99¢ (2015)

For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike

I found this poem a few days ago. If you like it, you can find more about its author, Laura Kasischke, on her website. Hell, if you really like it, you could even send her a note saying as much. I'm beginning to realize it never hurts to let people know when you like the things they make. Regardless, here is a poem she wrote.

"For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike"

I'll tell you up front: She was fine—although
she left in an ambulance because
I called 9-1-1

and what else can you do
when they've come for you
with their sirens and lights
and you're young and polite
except get into their ambulance
and pretend to smile?

"Thanks," she said to me
before they closed her up. (They

even tucked
her bike in there. Not
one bent spoke on either tire.) But I

was shaking and sobbing too hard to say good-bye.

Later, at a party, I imagine her telling her friends, "It

hardly grazed me, but
this lady who saw it went crazy. . ."

I did. I was
molecular, while
even the driver who hit her did
little more than roll his eyes, while

a trucker stuck at the intersection, wolfing
down a swan
sandwich behind the wheel, sighed. Some-

one touched me on the shoulder
and asked, "Are you all right?"

(Over
in ten seconds. She
stood, all
blonde, shook
her wings like a little cough.)

"Are you
okay?" someone else asked me. Uneasily. As if

overhearing my heartbeat
and embarrassed for me
that I was made
of such gushing meat
in the middle of the day on a quiet street.

"They should have put her
in the ambulance, not me."

Laughter.
Shit happens.
To be young.
To shrug it off:

But, ah, sweet
thing, take
pity. One

day you too may be
an accumulation

of regrets, catastrophes.
A clay animation
of Psalm 73. (But 

as for me, my feet. . .) No. It will be
Psalm 45: They

saw it,
and so they marveled; they
were troubled, and hasted away. Today 

you don't remember the way
you called my name, so
desperately, a thousand times, tearing

your hair, and your clothes on the floor, and
the nurse who denied your morphine
so that you had to die that morning
under a single sheet
without me, in
agony, but 

this time I was beside you.
I waited, and I saved you.
I was there.

- Laura Kasischke, from The Infinitesimals (2015)

Marathon

"Marathon"

                                                Petals

on a river, a tree in blossom, one

pink bud—unopened—falls

& is carried downstream & out

to sea. From

above the other petals seem to 

carry it. Closer—

this is our map, these our

footprints, we

grew up drinking this water. At the

start there

was doubt, we lit a torch, no one

believed we would

make it. Closer—

the legs, the heart, the lungs. It's

too soon to say

we were lucky, it's too soon to say

anything

until the cloud is pulled back

from the sky, until the ringing is

pulled back from the bells. Look—

everyone we've ever known

runs without thinking

not away but into the cloud, where we are

waiting

-by Nick Flynn, from My Feelings (2015)

Know What I Want

- "Know What I Want," from Por Vida by Kali Uchis (2015)

Dark Matter

I just found this clip in which the GZA raps about space in a classroom, because he thinks that maybe kids will respond to music. I personally find the notion crazy--why on Earth would a bored kid unchallenged by her education feel moved by hip-hop? Sarcasm aside, I think the idea is creative and overdue and likely to be effective. If I ever have kids, they will most certainly be listening to science raps on a regular basis.

The album Dark Matter, which inspired this clip, is due out in the fall of 2015. Until then, he's touring American universities to discuss the relationship between art and science, as well as working with New York City public schools to revamp education through the use of music.

Welcome to the Working Week

- "Welcome to the Working Week" by Elvis Costello, from My Aim Is True (1977)

I share this because I'm beginning to learn that this whole nine-to-five business is kind of bullhockey. I love my job, the people in my office are generous and communicative, and I feel like I am doing something meaningful and fulfilling. The difficulty, which I've realized most people live with on a day-to-day basis, is coming home at 5:00 p.m. and being too tired to do anything except sit around and maybe read. Work is tiring, even sedentary office work (not to mention hard manual labor). Maybe eventually, I'll find a really cool job where I can work different hours and not sit in an office all day.

This week, I will try to channel that jaded fatigue into productivity, and will do my darndest to post more here.

Additionally, I saw this really awesome aerial sculpture on the Rose Kennedy Greenway last night. It's called "As If It Were Already Here" and was designed by an American artist named Janet Echelman. Though I took quite a few photos yesterday (I'm trying to take at least one every day), the only photos I have of the sculpture are from my cell phone, and here they are.

As always, thank you for reading this!