Cleveland Love

you got a sackful of candy, and all I got was a rock.

2012-01-18T16:30:00.003-05:00

Everybody loves us, everybody's getting kind of old.

I'll leave the re-branding to the bright young things, but at the risk of being mistaken for people that I'm most assuredly not or sharing a hashtag with Machine Gun Kelly, I've decamped to another little corner of the Internets as we await the great totalitarian curtain to come crashing down despite all "I really don't want to do this but it's for your own good" absurdity that will no doubt issue from the Powers That Be, who also signed the indefinite detention act (where's the outrage on that?) after hemming and hawing too.

It'll be a little different, maybe some personal, less regional, definitely more ephemeral, because there's stuff I've found I like that I want to share with others without being quite so pigeonholed. So, if you care to follow, mark your bookmarks here because that's where you'll find me.

this is getting old and so are you

2012-01-10T21:47:00.008-05:00

The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.

Jane Austen at least left behind some perfect jewels of novels about a world even smaller than my own, and all I have is some poetry, some fragments of novels, a corner of the internet of dubious quality and copious angst that started out with a processing of my feelings of city, homeland, place, and, like someone who starts reading Zinn after a diet of perpetual red-blooded Murkan jingoism, there is more out there than this rust belt town like so many others.

One of my good friends and neighbors was on a panel last night that was ostensibly meant to discuss writing in the context of region but mostly turned into an analysis of boosterism vs. coming to terms with the legitimate and deep problems of the city, which only peripherally has anything to do with writing at all, though maybe it was an understood subtext as I'm sure damn near everyone who has a blog remotely related to the region was in the bar that night and so much of what was said, my own voice added to the fray despite the shyness that almost kept me from going.

And I look around the room, and we're all products of a technocratic society, of multiple degrees, of time to read blogs at the office desk or coffeeshop, and probably have a degree in liberal arts or social sciences, because like me, everyone who talked was in the information fields to some degree, or writing a book, and the vast majority were white, don't have kids in the school system, and could choose what neighborhoods we live in rather than getting stuck somewhere, and are generally between the age of 18 and 35, forgetting that not everyone is in our position.

We can talk about innovation all we want, and being positive and seeing the good things, but blogging about the groovy things we do doesn't change the school system, the party machine and power structure that siphons away millions of taxpayer dollars to the pockets of millionaire cronies for stadiums and casinos and urban playgrounds for the well-heeled, tax breaks for "nonprofits" whose directors make six figures and token gestures to "the children." The innovation has not trickled down to the masses, and even something so world class as the Cleveland Clinic prefers to build swanky campuses in Dubai while closing the emergency room in East Cleveland because of the cost-benefit analysis.

When I muster up the guts and foolishness to bring this up, there are blank stares and someone in the back starts yelling that if I don't like it so much and if I'm so negative why don't I just move and in the noise of that I retreat to my seat to scrawl passive aggressively on a halfsheet of notebook paper and observe the drama that transpires as people not-so-subtly snipe at each other and we're not talking about writing anymore, and people are ranting and before it can get too crazy it's time for the bands to go onstage and I'm out of there.

I've made an effort here to put down the roots that were already growing, to build a life, because I don't believe I can change the world or even change the city but I can at least try to do something in my own small sphere, without attaching some kind of deep significance to it. I've attempted to understand every corner of this city from the lakefront mansions to the abandoned factories, learned about immigrant communities and housing projects, and listened to a lot of people talk who aren't from my age group, income bracket, or socioeconomic strata. With everything, it's way more complicated than black or white or political party or personal taste. There's legitimate celebrations and equally valid grievances that are damn near impossible to distill coherently.

It's hard to "give back" to the community when you're working a couple jobs and trying to stay afloat. It's hard to "innovate" when there's no loans or capital to start with, or the prerequisite palmgreasing and red tape. What I might want is not what my neighbor might need because we're at different places in life.

What I do in my world is not for Cleveland personified, I'd do this anywhere, this is just where I ended up. But I'm tired of boosterism and bitching and honestly regret that I've pigeonholed myself into this regional corner. I may still post here, but I came away feeling disconnected from both sides, like the microcosm of the "love it or leave it" bumper sticker slogan mentality that comes with most kinds of patriotism and provincialism that ultimately shuts down the conversation and chokes out the life.

We still sound like the desperate girlfriend whose tries to overcompensate with the insecurity by talking about how great and unique she is and how beautiful she is. Cleveland is not my Paris just like I'm not Megan Fox or whoever you dudes think is hot. Let the others do the talking and stop with the self-absorbed conversation because it's boring and old.

For those who want to continue to follow the musings and randomness, I'll continue it somewhere else with hopefully a wider scope. I'm really glad that this has enabled me to meet some really fabulous people but I just want to drop out of the conversation that brought me here at this point.

like spinning plates

2012-01-09T13:44:00.003-05:00

This, that, that other thing, the strangeness of being in the middle, yet at the bottom, of being the adult in the situation, of trying explain things without sounding condescending, wondering how I'm the young kid, but I'm the one who seems more grownup even if I listen to power chords and have no children or grandkids, and I guess that kind of feels good in away that I'm able to negotiate this terrain and that my skin gets thicker by the year, but the irony upon irony is both delicious and sour.

lazing

2012-01-08T20:04:00.003-05:00

Crashing early on a Friday night, finishing up the whole cleaning the old apartment thing, taking an excursion with one of my homegirls to Oberlin on a sunny winter day, to drive through farm country listening to Soundgarden and Quicksand, walk around, catch up on life, gaze at sundry beautiful wares and artifacts at the art museum. Got all geeky over fragments of Turkish pottery and Durer prints. Oberlin might be a bit too hippie for my square self to dwell in, but it's a nice little place, and given that it was one of the first colleges to admit women and people of African descent, their activist cred is way better than my alma mater's.

Skipped out on watching the end of the football game, drank a lot of tea, slacked around last night with some kindred souls talking about everything, it wasn't like much happened this weekend, but what happened was good.

out from under

2012-01-06T09:23:00.003-05:00

Some changes afoot, arcane decisions of the powers that be, attendant absurdity with relatively decent results for yours truly, who now can chortle more at seekers in search of membership into the Esoteric Order of St. Drogo, which contrary to popular belief, is purely for imbibement of the Kynge's Brewe and the accompanying commentary of Sundry Important Issues, and not for anything resembling bunga-bunga. Lay off those old blues records, boomers, sometimes a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.

best of the blotter: chickens and suspicions

2012-01-03T15:13:00.002-05:00

CHESTER ROAD, THEFT : Rush Inn called to advise that a picture of the Cleveland Browns and two sets of antlers had been unscrewed, removed from the bathroom wall and stolen on Nov. 14.

DETROIT ROAD
A man waiting for the bus at the intersection of Detroit and Westwood avenues was yelling that he was going to visit the Pope, noting the Jesus Christ had entered his body at around 8 p.m. Nov. 3. Police advised the man to keep to himself while waiting for the bus to arrive.

THEFT, BRIDGESIDE DRIVE: A resident called police on Dec. 22 at 12:19 a.m. to report that a light-up Abominable Snowman was stolen from their yard. In its place, the culprits left a chicken decoration that did not belong there. An officer reported taking the errant chicken into custody and transporting it to the police station.

THEFT, BIG CREEK PARKWAY: Police are paying special attention to a resident’s property after a complaint of rock theft.

The female resident called police Dec. 20 after the rocks were stolen from her yard. Officers found a single thin tire mark in the grass like that a wheelbarrow might make.

According to the resident, this is not the first time this has happened. She valued her collection of rocks at $7,000.

A woman called from Chatman Drive about 10:30 p.m. April 14 saying she saw a man who seemed high or drunk yelling "Siamese cat" very loudly. The man was heavyset and his his 20s.

HOAX WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION, VENTURE DRIVE: Someone mailed an envelope containing a suspicious grainy substance to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, 5550 Venture.

The FBI determined that the substance was split peas. Police have no suspects.

Bomb squad deployed

Bomb technicians from five communities responded to a report of a “suspicious white powder” in an old military can in the 1600 block of Elbur Avenue at around 3:30 p.m. July 31. It turns out that the can contained the remains of a cat that had decomposed.

settle down

2012-01-02T14:12:00.003-05:00

So, all solved with the great door debacle, so far so good, though in search of draperies and plastic sheeting for the windows to keep the drafts away while trying to get the last ends tied up at the old place and unpack at the new. Winter's come and it's beautiful. As much as I enjoy the coffee and snark of the mornings, I wish I had another week off.

psychic refugee

2011-12-31T19:24:00.002-05:00

stir-crazy here, going somewhere just to go, keep it low-key, hope it all gets straightened out, hoping the dread is overblown because this isn't starting out too well, at least there's a couple couches to crash on in the meantime.

drink a cup of kindness yet, and say goodbye to our regrets...

2011-12-31T16:56:00.003-05:00

It always comes together, everything working out except for that whole business of the lock on the apartment not locking and then being impossible to open. I called the landlady, and she says she'll change it and call me back but that was several hours ago now so I'm pretty much just waiting and starting to wonder what is going on and if I made a mistake.

Who knows, and everything seems to be closed except the swanky establishments, and didn't feel like being the three's a crowd extra with my friend and her new boyfriend. I appreciate the thought, but sometimes that just makes it more awkward, wondering what, if anything, to do next. Everything seems fraught with social peril, but I know it's just me this time.

Resolutions? I got out of Ohio, maybe I can try to get out of the country for a few days this time. Otherwise, not much. It'd be cool to start a band this year and have it click, I guess, maybe get back into the world of zinery to share the love of arcane artistry and general strangeness. Learn more, consume less, I don't know anymore. The time just keeps slipping away.

and I swore I'd never go there again.

2011-12-30T22:52:00.002-05:00

Another year another move, boxes piled up, everything in the middle room, wondering how I ended up with so many paintings, why half of them suck and why I feel so shy about sharing my art and end up piling the canvases in the corner.

So grateful yet stressed on the eve, hoping this will be the last one for awhile, hoping those who said they'd show up actually do, getting better at this kind of thing, feeling bad about putting others out but I make it up to them in cash or booze or coffee or furniture.

I have plans for New Year's Eve should I choose to take them, but my throat is getting sore, and I'm between three houses, drinking tea with a little Anubis dog resting her head on my lap. If I wouldn't be a neglectful parent, maybe I'd consider canine ownership, there's a loyalty there that's strange and sweet.

Sleep before the storm, needed so much.

a life spent waiting in cement

2011-12-30T22:23:00.003-05:00

When women complain about how men don't have feelings, I wonder if they listen to Jawbreaker.

That being said, I can't remember how many times I've felt like this.

Been hearing about you.
All about your disapproval.
Still I remember the way I used to move you.
I wrote you a letter.
I heard it just upset you.
Why don't you tell me?
How can I do this better?
Are you out there?
Do you hear me?
Can I call you?
Do you still hate me?
Are we talking?
Are we fighting?
Is it over?
Are we writing?
We're getting older.
But we're acting younger.
We should be smarter.
It seems we're getting dumber.
I have a picture
of you and me in Brooklyn.
On a porch, it was raining.
Hey, I remember that day.
And I miss you.

give it away now

2011-12-29T20:43:00.005-05:00

The piles of boxes keep rising, more and more of life in compartments, inventorying the legacy of inheritance and consumption, as words of gospels and epistles of sharing with others come to mind, of he who has two of something giving to the one that has none, and the thing is there's not just two, there's three there's four there's six. I didn't realized the extent of possessions until it's all pulled out of closets and from under the bed and laid out in front. Most of it was given to me, but to whom much is given much is expected right? So what does one person need with all this?

And it's liberating to pile these things to send along, to let go, to hold what is in one's hands lightly.

I take a break from this because one of my good friends from way back, my partner in geekness and grunge calls me to hang out with him and what I assume to be the companionship of his girlfriend, but I think it's possible it was a blind date setup or something. Props to his smoothness I guess, for good conversation over coffee and punk rocking it up old punks style standing in the back and nodding along while the Kids pogoed away. Nothing will come of it but getting to be geeky with a new soul was nice for a change. I wonder if it's bad that I've gone so long without the sentimental and the romance that I can't feel it for anyone anymore.

other places

2011-12-26T21:23:00.003-05:00

Enough of culinary goodness and conversation as I leave the house to walk in the woods where the palette is grey and grey and brown under the relentless clear azure to be alone with the thoughts and with God because people are exhausting as much as I enjoy them and it feels strange to have this much time unstructured, time to be alone and hover in that transitional time of years turning over and living out of a backpack at the homes of others while my life's possessions reside in boxes and in piles for others to sort through to see if they need anything or can give it to someone who does.

I played around with the new baritone guitar because the people downstairs weren't home, though all my attempts at real songwriting were really nothing except noise and noodling. A few adjustments of the tone and reverb resulted in a pleasing crunch of distortion and satisfying waves of sludgy wavering tremolo like the blackened waves of Lake Erie breaking on the littered beach, the coherence elusive.

there's not much to say, just the unexpressible.

navidad

2011-12-25T22:47:00.003-05:00

The rituals continue cyclical, shifting with age, as we're no longer required to do cutesy little kid Christmasy things like sing "Away In A Manger" to bemused nursing home residents, or plays for the grownups involving costumes made of 1970's colored bath towels and faded bedsheets, until we retreated to the basement to run around and be ninja turtles or whatever, buzzed on sugar.

Most of us are older now, old enough to drink or vote. There's fifteen years between me and the youngest, skinny with glasses and bangs like I once was, her room pink and glittery, an island in a house of sports trophies and pennants. She's a sweet and awkward kid who seems somewhat younger than her tweenage cohort, whose girliness is still ballet slippers and fairies instead of celebrity crushes and lipgloss. She tells me about her dance classes, that she likes to draw, and that she built these fairy houses out of silk flowers and cinnamon sticks for her dolls but seems embarrassed that what she perceives to be her cool older cousin sees this part of her world.

I tell her it's really cool, and I mean it, though I wish her imagination had been stretched even further, that there were more books in the house to be absorbed by osmosis instead of videogames. I wish I had copies to give her of all the fantasy novels I read when I was her age, all the Robin McKinley and Lloyd Alexander paperbacks checked out countless times from the library and read over and over. I wish she had volumes of fairy tales (she'd never heard of Andrew Lang) with illustrations by Bilibin and Dulac and that she'd read the Lord of the Rings instead of just watching the movies. Maybe this will come with time.

I end up missing the vigil this year, because this time we're actually enjoying each other's company and talking about what's actually going on with us even though the ones my age take the cynicism further than I do into borderline paranoia, as we roll dice over a board of the world map and snark about imperialist stoogedom. There is choir music on the radio as I drive home and I commune with the Divine on Route 2 to the crystalline voices floating through the static under the dark skies.

I wake up with scratchy eyes and whisper through the microphone as the others sing, and tonight I find I enjoy the company of pretty much everyone, and as the wine bottles empty, no one's arguing about Iran, but we're talking about books and I don't even know what's on the bestseller list because I've been reading about the Balkans and medieval people and Herodotus so I end up cooing over the baby and trying to speak wisdom into the lives of The Kids who are still caught up in nascent hipsterdom or high school hierarchies remembering when I thought I knew it all.

The drive back to the soon-to-be neighbor's house is quiet, and there's more lonely souls than I remember wandering the street, empty buses, a solitary figure framed in the laundromat window, a pack of young punks scowling beneath the awning of a cell phone shop. The cats are hungry and the street is quiet. A week ahead of sleeping, friends' cats, and packing boxes, feeling like a wanderer with a pile of clothes and sundry in the trunk, grateful for the introversion.

the end of the week

2011-12-23T16:55:00.002-05:00

Gifts exchanged, moving soon, boxes stacked, pets watched, piling items to give away, needing to find a suitable old church for midnight mass and a gift for my cousin who appreciates the same weirdness, looking forward to hanging out and sleeping in.

it's just rain

2011-12-21T14:34:00.003-05:00

I should know by now that dark clouds in the distance and the multiblued sky mean something, but we got caught in the rain walking back through downtown with my sweater wrapped around my face babushka/hijab style and I've never been more thankful for the space heater beneath my desk.

It feels like April and not mere days before Christmas, even the rain was warm, not that I'm complaining, because I prefer this to spinning across four lanes of I-90 like that one time three years ago when somehow God saw fit that we didn't die.

There are boxes piled up everywhere in the apartment, the unneeded and broken beginning to be purged, last minute details needing to be considered and planned for, meals cooked from miscellaneous cans to lessen the clutter of the freezer, and drink coffee and dig through journalist's papers and photo albums of times long gone amazed that I get paid to this, and that I have an entire week off with no plans whatsoever.

I want to get to the art museum again, and to the greenhouse, and to drink coffee on the balcony at the West Side Market watching the world go by, to grasp the return of inspiration to write something worth reading, and catch up with those I never get to see.

So much of last year was coming to terms, healing of wounds, and I came to embrace solitude for both its beauty and protection, because those who are alone are less likely to be hurt by others. My lack of pursuit turned into a kind of fleeing, and only recently have I been able to crawl out of the introversion, only to feel that life has passed by, with everyone in my shrinking circles married or dating or getting the heck out of a dying city.

Sometimes I wonder what's left.

and death's dark shadows put to flight

2011-12-17T10:30:00.003-05:00

We were the youngest by far, entering late through the side door past the aged faithful, as the organ played Bach and we settled in on the far side in the corner, lost in meditation gazing up at the blue ceiling, the candles illumining, the scriptures read once more, the chants of Advents past in Latin, the words of hope in a time as turbulent as this if not more, if Josephus was right... overreaching and bloated imperial powers, corrupt local authorities sucking the people dry, religious strife between rival factions, and lunatic fringe groups all fighting for domination, of voices in the wilderness, dreams deferred and hopes longed for.

I don't know why someone arranged O Come O Come Emmanuel in a major key because the whole longing for redemption and salvation in a dark world is lost when it's kind of maudlin, but otherwise, the austerity of a stripped sanctuary devoid of ornamentation was good for my soul that still resonates to the liturgical cycle yet is relieved not to sit there awkwardly during Communion because they didn't have it, because I feel it's disrespectful to take the body and blood if one does not believe it to be such.

We return to her house and drink tea at the kitchen table, pondering the state of the world, our residual Catholicism within our certain ethnic blood as her roommates disappear up the stairs laughing in Amharic, the dog and cat chase each other around the tree, and the time slips deeper into night and I drive home through cold streets revived even in near-sleeplessness.

They could care less about you, they could care less about me

2011-12-16T16:21:00.005-05:00

The number of people I'll even talk politics is down to one hand. I don't want to hear the partisan ranting. Both sides say the other side's wimpy or crazy but a vote that has the potential to screw over anyone who pisses off The Powers That Be was pretty damn close to unanimous. But it's different when the other side does it, right Dems? Oh he's not doing enough to keep us safe and he's a wuss, Reps? We can argue about abortion and gay rights but look at what we're doing to the rest of the world.

Have you crawled out of the echo chamber at all and taken a look around in the last six months to a year to ten years? Didn't think so.

I couldn't sleep last night, and lay awake staring up into the darkness feeling the despair of inaction, the weight of encroaching authority, of two minutes hate involving abstract enemies, of a population so numbed by pleasure and violence, every year seems more and more like a brave new world in 1984. I used to think my distrust was just an adolescent pose, now it's only grown more intense.

it still doesn't feel like Christmas

2011-12-15T22:11:00.002-05:00

Not that I'm complaining about the lack of snow. It's pretty awesome and I can't help but think of this.

half-hearted

2011-12-15T20:22:00.005-05:00

Too somnambulant to think straight, too antisocial to talk, too brain-dead to read or write, and it's dead in here except for the local freeloader who claims to be a man of God but I know better. I know too much, which is my strength and undoing.

It's hard for me to keep my mouth shut sometimes, but there is a place for everything, and this is not the place. It's hard for me as a believer to listen to the sanctimony and the lies, the manipulations, a life of false piety and preying prayers.

The blood is angried up, but it's not a pleasant feeling. There's too many scumbags all the way around.

The Powers That Be continue to justify the unjustifiable, the same old same old goes on, in half an hour I'll be out of here.

guitarded

2011-12-12T15:21:00.002-05:00

So I've been wanting a baritone guitar for awhile, because I love the sound thanks to Corin Tucker and Ian Mackaye and countless others. I like the possibilities of being an octave lower, of being able to play bassline-like or heavy chords and have the advantages of the higher end too.

And there's someone selling one on Craigslist that looked really nice so I emailed the guy about it and through the course of the correspondence I asked about giving it a try as far as playing goes and he kind of flipped out and said that these were collector's items and if I played it it wouldn't be in mint condition anymore and how if I wanted to "test drive" instruments I'd be better off going somewhere like Guitar Center.

Well, okay then. Last time I checked, the majority of people who own instruments intend to play them, right? I mean, it'd be like buying a car without taking it for a drive to see if it actually runs. I'd want to know that the pickups work, and the neck feels good and the tone is what I want, which is why I don't buy things like this over the Internet. I'm sure that being a female didn't help my case either, because we all know that ladies never play anything except piano, violin, or an acoustic guitar like they're in Lilith Fair.

So I'm a little miffed and also glad that the Red Flag of Douchebaggery has been raised so I know better, and say never mind and omit the "sorry I asked," and got an email back about how he was glad I was being honest about not being a "serious buyer."

Really now. If I wasn't serious, I wouldn't have inquired, right? But yeah, I guess I'm not worthy or not serious, because guitars are meant to be in glass display cases and collected like sports cars and baseball cards instead of played. Who would ever do that? How could I be so dumb?

little things

2011-12-11T21:32:00.004-05:00

the ache in my jaw, the boxes in the front room, the social obligations of consumeristic holidays, the final exam in three days, all things will pass, and that week of slack is looking less and less like one, but being able to sleep in for a week straight will be a beautiful thing.

shivered

2011-12-10T18:06:00.003-05:00

The chill piercing marrow, the darkness comes so quickly, the apathy of sleeplessness and I almost didn't go anywhere last night, curled up on the couch drinking tea and watching movies like the true bachelorette that I am but it was right around the corner and I'm glad I showed up, because sometimes you go and hang out with people you don't know and it sucks so much you want to run out screaming and then other times like this one, it ends up being pretty awesome, and more of the geekiness slips out but no one seems to mind.

And now to study, to shake the ennui, to get through the season and remember the light.

dulcet

2011-12-09T09:03:00.006-05:00

I have yet to figure out if geekery is inevitable, as me and my youngest sister were raised in the same household and exposed to the same influences as children and I absorbed all the books and music that sent me plummeting down rabbit holes of history and subculture even further, yet none of this never quite caught on with her.

My mom likes pretty classical music: Bach and Vivaldi, and my sisters and I rollerskated around the basement to "Beethoven's Greatest Hits" scratched slowly to death on a plastic Fisher-Price turntable. Since part of my learning process involved home education, she'd take us to organ recitals at Trinity Lutheran or find cheap tickets for the orchestra or Apollo's Fire, and while I'm not so adept as to pick out a composer's work most of the time, it's something I still like, even if my tastes in the non-electrified realm tend to veer more towards the cathartic melancholy of Arvo Part or medieval polyphony.

But I love live music, and old churches, and things that are free so my parents and sister and her friend, and we sit there. My dad falls asleep because he's been up since 3am and prefers Zeppelin, and I soak in the golden glow of the light, the carved marble angels and the perfect mesh of strings, the intertwining baroque melodies, loving that it's not just the older folk enjoying the concertos, but crusty activist kids, and bandannaed bikers and those of us with peon jobs who can't afford the tickets to Severance but like to get our culture on nonetheless.

It makes me think of my old roommate and coming home to her playing Tchaikovsky on the viola, back before everything kind of imploded. I wonder how she's doing. I wish I could feel a sense of closure as the music concludes with carols about God and sinners reconciled. It's hard for me to believe in the brotherhood of man and world peace when it seems impossible to make amends with someone with whom there should theoretically be no grievance and maybe it's the sentimentality but I long to be the peace as much as I can, I've done what I can but it never seems to be enough.

unwitting

2011-12-06T08:40:00.002-05:00

A paper in need of revision, books uncracked due to the winding down of the semester and the tiresomeness of digesting selective narratives. It's said I need to know these names and dates, but drained of all vitality, this process fails to ignite the spark.

In between the patronizing tone of the textbook, I've been reading Ryszard Kapuściński's 'Travels With Herodotus' and Herodotus, the "Father of Lies" himself. The writing of both is beautiful and captures the wildness of the world, and the stuff of legends and truth stranger than fiction.

We joke that one could make a fantastic doom metal concept album based on Herodotus's observations. "Fish-Eaters and the Crystal Coffin," "Snakes With Wings," "The Dead Are Buried in Honey." And I know not everything has to be literary, but I like the visceralness, the writing about people and the tales they tell, that make these distant times come alive in a way that didactic sermonizing and names and dates cannot.

But it's only one more week, and the skies grow darker, and I feel so detached from all this business of holidays and stripped of all real creativity. Here's hoping it comes back, and here's some sonic beauty for the meantime

these shrouded temples

2011-12-05T14:47:00.004-05:00

The pallor of grey and mists obscuring cathedral spires and housing projects in the distance. "It's disgusting" she says, just as I say I love this. If it was still daylight upon the end of my shift, I'd be out tromping through the cemetery taking photos of angels through the gauze of condensated rain.

Instead, I feast on leftovers and the communal coffeepot. Such is the glory of the Peonage, especially given that I broke Rules We All Forgot About 4.126 involving accidentally dropping a cussword in class in regards to United States foreign policy. Randal was of course amused, I'm of the school of thought that while salty discourse is more effective in small doses, there's no other way to describe despotic nations that we deal with as either being on the shitlist (Libya, Venezuela) or not (Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia).

Oh well. Either I'm not as worried about how I'm perceived or I was slightly amused to be reprimanded for a slip of the tongue when my classmates are talking about how we should drill everywhere and blow things up but this is where I am totally like my dad, or something. Oh well. If I'm the Jennifer Finch of the class, so be it.

winter sun

2011-12-03T12:42:00.002-05:00

Cherishing the last days of hoodie weather while driving around the old haunts of Parmastan running sundry errands and listening to loud tuneage with the windows down while I still can, drinking massive quantities of coffee with my mom to compensate for the insomnia of loose siding clank and the unwanted company in the walls that kept waking me up at strange hours. In less than a month I'll be in a new place, and despite the stress of packing up and trekking to the next almost-hood over, the change is welcome. It's time to go.

insomnambulant

2011-11-30T23:17:00.003-05:00

nothing written makes sense therefore sound.

squeamish

2011-11-29T08:40:00.007-05:00

The warm-weather reprieve meant that my furry friends went out to play but the chill of last night sent them running back into the house and I lay in bed listening to the scratching going up the ceiling, the clanking among the leftover pots and pans in the closet under the stairs, a knife in the middle of the kitchen floor, and my half-hearted trolling of Craigslist for new places to live has become a more urgent quest.

I haven't told my landlord yet because I have no idea when or how and hoped to leave the college-kid lifestyle of moving every year behind, but there are the vermin, and the small kitchen, and I can't walk to the next block over at night, and I get a new sex offender registry notice every few weeks in my mailbox which makes me more suspicious of these sketchy men hanging out in the alley that empties out across the street from me and the guy who wanders up the street wearing a t-shirt that says 'The Voices In My Head Don't Like You,' knowing that they probably don't.

I never used to be so skittish, but it's so painfully evident that I live alone in the almost-hood and I pick the streets I walk down depending on who's hanging out on the corner and how often I get hollered at. I wasn't raised with fear of the city, and I'm not really afraid the way others are, but I feel the vulnerability of being female, young, and unaccompanied too keenly here for comfort.

And then last night, I'm trying to plug up the holes in the apartment with steel wool, and stick some in between the window and the cardboard wedged in there and end up disturbing a nest of the critters that have caused me a month of sleepless nights, and I feel the squirming bodies beneath the cardboard as I'm trying to keep them from coming out of the wall and figure out what the hell to do and end up stumbling up to the attic to peel away the insulation and drop green kibbles of poison down into where I know they're swarming, and end up crashing at the neighbor's house. It's the first night in months I've slept like the dead. I need to get out.

bleak and bright

2011-11-28T08:46:00.003-05:00

Strange dreams and scratching noises, the back screen door slamming, hoping that the engine revving outside my window isn't my car being driven off, wondering what that noise is in the stairwell, waking up to find a kitchen knife in the middle of the floor, I need to get out of here, and despite sea changes not so rich and strange, I am reminded of the love that I am surrounded by and that I'm not as stuck as I sometimes feel, that there are ways to survive and still live.

So I got introverted in the woods, taking paths arbitrarily based on bodies of water and groves of pine and birch.

The sun was fading ever so slowly and the golden light filtered down into the valley.

My mom used to take us here when we were kids to go hiking, and then me and one of the guy friends came up here late one night to climb the stairs of the overlook and it was so dark we could barely see each other and the forest was alive in ways that reminded me of childhood fairy tales.

I felt euphoric in the solitude, fragments of verse and hymn echoing, that though the wrong is oft so strong God is the ruler yet.

I never used to care that much about getting out to the woods, in part not having transportation for so long but I crave it now. Maybe it's living in a place of concrete and rust, needing green, needing the canopy of trees, and the inverse reflecting of the waters, a place that still feels primeval even with the roads on each side and the light pollution that obscures the stars. There is beauty even in the trees stripped of leaves, the peeling bark, the eroding cliffs adorned with ferns, the marshy lowlands. Here it is easier to get alone, to feel small in a way that's not crushing and strangely beautiful.

there can be no other means to the end...

2011-11-25T18:32:00.007-05:00

A year older and I look in the mirror and the lines across my forehead and between my eyes get deeper, the smile lines at the end of my eyes more defined, and everyone's way more excited that I came into the world almost three decades ago than I am, and I'm able to distract myself long enough that it lifts the cloud of melancholia for a few hours before it settles in again.

There are feelings so strong that I feel paralyzed, even if I know they're not completely grounded in reality, that heavy sense of failure, of mediocrity, of trappedness, of being alone and unloved. I know it's not due to a lack of anything. I have everything I need and enough to share, and I lived with six roommates and dated people and felt the same as I do coming home to an empty apartment,looking at other places to live and feeling the economic constraint of underemployment, of wondering if life will always be like this, fighting off the loneliness, despairing over the creative arts in search of catharsis, the endless dark nights of the soul. I've done everything I can, and I don't know what else to do.

just to wake up tells me, hell I must be brave

2011-11-23T13:27:00.004-05:00

As I watched desert warriors play songs of protest and assertions of humanity, the drone of electric guitars, the heartbeat catharsis of calabash and djembe, the voices drawn out and chanted, as the hippies and hipsters and boomers and the girls in hijab sway and clap. They've had lives I can't imagine and struggles I can't comprehend and I'm tired from being awake from so long and zone out with my eyes closed, taking in this sound. Desert Sessions aren't just for swanky stoner rockers, after all...

I wake up exhausted, staring at the ceiling, asking for divine sustenance because it's not in me. Exhaustion and depression, post-quarterlife crisis of conscience and existence, further torpedoed by monumental shifts of power meaning more frustration for yours truly. It's not that it's so bad, but just with everything else, with the pent-up frustration, I ended up in tears today, but thankfully there was class-cutting and city-wandering and spiritual introspection as therapy to put things back into perspective.

And Mia Zapata's fabulous cut-too-short punk rock fury. It still kills me that for all the female-fronted punk bands, the Gits don't get more attention. I loved this stuff as a frustrated art kid, and as I've gotten older and dealt with more suck, it's stuck for me.

the last minutes

2011-11-21T16:44:00.002-05:00

Cramming the first draft of a paper, trolling for citations, a brief interlude in Pittsburghia with friends from the old days. We listen to Creedence and the Stones just like old times, watch hockey, laugh, drink, play broomball Clerks-style on the balcony between two houses, walk up to the overlook at Mount Washington to gaze over the glittering metropolis nestled among rivers and hills. This little tradition has lasted eight years now and what I love about this little crew of people is their openness to others, the conversations had, and the way that we keep cycling back into each others' lives every few years.

I'm thankful that others have driven and that I can sleep in the car, lulled by the sound of 90's tuneage, waking up the next morning in need of caffeine, still feeling somnambulant and warm.

And then it's back to the daily grind after the lack of sleep, as we debate kinder gentler machine gun hands in class and I say too much incoherently, but I just can't agree with seeing the world through the binary of men and women, and it means nothing to me. Was I ever idealistic about people in large groups? Even in my days of starry eyes I don't think I ever was.

And the last hour is brutal, piles of things beyond my control and pay grade and ability because I can't be magical and compliant all the time, and I find myself getting angry, feeling resentful being constantly patronized, trying to hold in the angry salt eyes until I can be out of this building because I'm tired, praying for grace to keep calm and put things in perspective, trying to be thankful for what I've got yet resentful for feeling used, though that's the way of life for the peonage. I guess we're human resources and that's what we're there for. It's the ennui of perky holidays and innate nature sneaking up, just two more days til painting and sleeping in and just being away.

next week, I'll be twenty-eight

2011-11-18T08:45:00.002-05:00

I'm still young...

Age being relative, that is, the lines beginning to indent the skin, ten years of adulthood and how things have changed, the idealism burned away, the abstract raging against machines replaced by greater knowledge and subsequent despair, knowing that these cycles of depression and creative undulations, of faith and doubt, will always be there in one form or another, that there will be ways to continue to create and do so in ways that are ever more beautiful and well-executed and that despite living alone or in the company of others, even with an ever-comforting divine reassurance, there will still be some degree of loneliness. It's the human condition and I'm learning to accept it.

I always get depressed on the day of birth for no real good reason, probably some degree of seasonal bleakness and the onset of holiday consumerism (what's up black friday), and that nameless angst that always seems to hover. It'll be fine, I just need to get through.

it's rant time again.

2011-11-17T13:23:00.004-05:00

So I haven't really been following this anti-bullying bill business in part because I think such bills are ridiculous. Kids, being kids, are generally mean and ruthless, especially to anyone who sticks out for any reason, and usually the Powers That Be either ignore this kind of thing ("You need to toughen up, kid") or turn it into this self-righteous moral crusade to show that they care about the children.

But I didn't know there was an attempt to add a religious exemption in there too. I get that it's kind of been co-opted as a "gay issue," which I find kind of irksome because this is a human issue and a common decency issue. One of my friends is a social worker at one of the local psych units and told me that "if I was thirteen, and I got picked on in school and then I came home and saw that someone had made a Facebook group making fun of me and all my friends joined and were writing all sorts of bad stuff about me, I'd want to kill myself too."

It's terrible that GLBT kids get picked on, yet they're not the only ones, it's hard to be a minority of any kind in a hostile environment, be it due to religion or language or skin color (or differing tone within that skin color) or just looking different. No amount of legislation is going to change that despite any presumed best intentions. I would hope that teachers and powers that be would have the sense to not enable and encourage (because that does happen so often) but it's hard for me to be so optimistic having dealt with my own share of awful teen years.

But what the hell, people? Especially you religious folk out there who like to talk about how you're persecuted. So it's ok to beat up the gay kid because you've got some "deeply held belief" that their personal choices are wrong? There's a lot of people who have a deeply held belief that you're crazy, does that make it ok to give you a hard time? And what about this whole loving your neighbor business? Jesus said a lot more about loving people even if they treat you like crap or are different than you than anything resembling the implications of what's being advocated. What's in the water up there? Even the most fundie of the people I've met in my short time on earth might have some strange ways of looking at the world, but usually don't tend to advocate being nasty to other kids (usually they just don't put their kids in public school to shelter them from that BIG BAD SECULAR HUMANIST WORLD but that's a whole other story).

The fact that there's debate on who's a protected class and who isn't smacks of handicapping for the Suffering Olympics and really makes me even more cynical about the dumbassery of our elected officials and the education system. And regardless of what your personal beliefs or family structure is, you really should be raising your kids to not be mean to other kids, not that it'll always stop them, but it really does start at home, not thinking your kid is so damn special and right all the time, and being a good example, and not encouraging them to be hateful.

And it seems like grandstanding on all sides, and I wonder what all these people were like when they were teens. Were they the bullies, or the bullies' minions (those who stand by or chime in out of some combination of power and fear of being the next victim), or the kids who just kind of drifted through, or the kids that got picked on and now that they have power, dammit, they're going to use it to get back at the ones lower on the pecking order or the ones above them or maybe there's an idealistic "well maybe if I do this it won't happen to someone else."

But we're a nation of bullies in a world of bullies, overcompensating for the glaring flaws by mocking the flaws of others and doing the geopolitical equivalent of beating them up after school or sending our minions to do it next. It happened in New York the past couple days, and it's been happening in our country since Columbus and all over the world when one group doesn't like another and decides to beat them up and take away what they have, be it dignity or stuff or both. Is that ever going to change? I wish it would, but nothing indicates that it will.

click and clique

2011-11-16T13:07:00.005-05:00

Less nervy this time, showing up and plugging in. No worries of doing cover songs for which I have disdain that smacks of unadmitted musical judgment. She has demos on her laptop recorded with a synth, like larva waiting to explode the chrysalis in glory, and my hands stretch into chords, coaxing out reverb-drenched riffs, bending strings, fingers gliding up and down the frets.

I love that it's not just verse-chorus-verse that there are pieces and parts and interludes. Having to keep time and remember how all these go together is a new thing compared with Peter-Hooking basslines to try to make pedestrian suburban punk sound more interesting. Maybe I'm more of a prog-head than I'll admit, but I love that I have the freedom to let out my inner J. Mascis that it's more than three chords. No vocals yet but hopefully those will be forthcoming and something beautiful. I'm more into catharsis than aggression these days, and if this all falls through the ability to string chords together and maybe pair those with some verbiage seems like a less mysterious art now that it's been tried.

We are still shaping, trying to figure out the sonics, turning notes into chords, and I'm scrawling out chord progressions, codes of letters and numbers on pieces of notebook paper, adding minor chords, attempting to flesh out these skeletal ideas into something I hope I can say I love as much as what I've heard others do. I'd love to do something this beautiful.

I saw this band open for Agalloch earlier this year and wasn't expecting something so incredibly beautiful with a name like that, which is probably the point. Really should have bought the album then, but there's a new record coming out, and I fell in love with the cathartic crunch and shimmer of guitars and sinuous basslines and I'll make good I promise this time.

I guess one never knows how these will work out, but the act of stepping out and getting over the nervousness to see what happens has been liberating in itself, and gives me another thing to look forward to after sitting at a desk and pushing papers, ivory tower style, negotiating the tricky terrain of a world of grownups who still jockey for position in the pecking order, whose words and demeanor belie an ultimate dishonesty and embarrassing insecurity.

My circle has always been open to some extent to those with some degree of compassion and a lack of pretension, as I try not to judge others based on tastes or initial appearance, but when someone wants to join the Order of St. Drogo, someone who's denoted other compadres as being "weird"(if you think that about him, than I'm sure you're saying it about me) and seems more interested in gleaning workplace gossip and being in good with the Powers That Be, I'm not inclined to extend the invitation. It's not the economics or the upper echelon with which I take issue, but the lack of trust. Besides, this is the coffee pot of Peonage not the water cooler, no juicy gossip, just the indulgence of lifelong geekery for the stranger side of all things. And, of course, that's just too weird.

More and more I find myself putting up walls, weighing each word so carefully, smiling wide to distract from my narrowed eyes, because I know that if I don't care for someone, it's really hard to hide. I don't know how to truly be dishonest.

And I sit in the halls of power, listening to the conversations of those above, as wording is shifted and the dialogue is not born out of genuine feeling but a constant mental calculation, and I see the masks drop enough to recognize them as such, finding what is underneath so distasteful that the coverings seem like they make sense.

it's all blueprint, it must be easy.

2011-11-15T14:33:00.004-05:00

Rumblings of probably not-reckonings heeded, the darkness that comes so early, the quiet street where nobody seems to live, haunted by ghosts of gentrifiers past, of immigrants and regular folks, boarded up buildings.

But I drive through the rain to make art, and my fingernails have taken a beating from scrubbing with all that acetone and pumice and I show the new student the treasure trove of colored powders and jars of jewel-toned glass like raw-hewn gems. The time goes by so quickly and I'm trying to decide between hues of ruby, amethyst, aquamarine, amber. There will be time for all of these and more.

And tonight, music. I am past the feelings of insecurity, of not being cool enough, of not being good enough, even though I'm not as technically proficient as I once was, which tends to happen when one's tastes shift from reading the John Petrucci columns in Guitar World to listening to the squalling guitars of Repeater for the first time. I know more what I'd want to do.

What I wonder is if this is what I want to do.

It's said there's only two types of music: good and bad, and to some extent this is true. But anyone who has any shred of geeky love for tuneage knows that the strands of genre can be split indefinitely. What kind of 'rock' does your band play? Does it jangle, does it plod, does it shred, does it shimmer? Do you want to save the world or smash it or just get laid? Does it matter? Are you pop-punk or old-school punk or crusty punk? Is your metal classic/thrash/black/death/core/whatever?

Does it matter? Do we get along? We don't have to see things the same way, but are we wired to mesh so well that the creative sparks fly? There's been so many times where it hasn't despite our best efforts. When I didn't know what to play, when Ithought your lyrics sucked, when you all wanted to play Bikini Kill, when you were all friends and I was the interloper, when you said I was ok for a girl. , when me and the drummer decided we didn't want to play with them anymore and quit, when you were a drama queen and maybe I was too and we didn't get along as friends let alone as bandmates, those times I waited for practice to end so we could wander in the woods and be existential beneath the stars and trees.

And now my vision is focused, and I still dream of weekend warrioring, of getting off work to make noise like I did so long ago and dreamed. I miss it so much in these times when the art and the writing just don't coalesce. And maybe by now I'm just getting too old.

unbalanced pieces

2011-11-12T07:19:00.002-05:00

Awakening on a couch more comfortable than my bed to the cats running, it's cold outside, and maybe it's the artificial sweetener accidentally ingested making my head feel foggy, wondering how the brain processes all these things, the physical, the mental, the spiritual because sometimes the little clarity I have is blurred and I mumble and grumble incoherently to God as I sit up and realize the sun's already risen but it's not all that late.

I tried to play guitar last night, between the ringing of the phone, couldn't find it in me to be social to do anything functional as the Paper From Hell's day of reckoning gets closer, someone knocked on the door and scared me last night but it was just the kid across the street. I felt bad, but I didn't want to open the door either.

But the sun is out, and I will go in pursuit of coffee and relating and being, wondering how I let a little Lanegan/Patton jam pass me by the first time around.

dead cells

2011-11-11T15:14:00.003-05:00

I could write...

...about those who defend the indefensible. Of cults of sports and personality, of men in power who do horrible things and those who enable it.

...about the awkward moments of feeling fake when dealing with fake people, of self preservation and the fragile dynamics of small talk.

...about hearing so many people talk about the military and how much good it does for kids and shudder inwardly, knowing that if I say anything I'll sound crazy.

...about how I haven't been writing my paper.
...about how I haven't been writing anything else.
...about how I haven't written someone a letter because I'm too shy to.

...about the pending weekend.

I just don't know what to say. Did I ever?

my dear lady disdain

2011-11-09T22:04:00.005-05:00

There's a certain small meanness of being low on the totem pole and part of the out crowd, of being in a position of vulnerability, of being more or less powerless and frustrated and maybe more bitter than one would like to admit.

And I saw the janusian two-faced-ness of yet another, who exists in a world of networking and schmoozing of pleasant shallowness only to backbite out of earshot as I attempt to defend the quirkiness of my fellow peons as the bile in my gut churns with the acid of the coffee and I need to be polite to this person because it keeps the world spinning, even if I mean it as little as they do.

I feel like that kid in O'Connor's short story 'Temple of the Holy Ghost' making fun of the priest at her church and the stupid neighbor boys and the ditzy schoolgirls and coming to the realization that for whatever freakiness and ugly we have in us there is something beautiful and of God in each of us too, even though in all honesty it's damn near impossible to see sometimes if I speak truthfully.

So I think about him, and how I do the same thing, with different people, every day and while I could justify it, how different is it, even if they kind of give me the creeps or they say stupid and ignorant things, and who am I to denigrate, hypocritical in frowning upon it in others, having been on the receiving end all too often, and so many of the things I've said and thought that were just wrong, wrong, wrong, and how is that made right, because apologizing to someone by saying "I wasn't very nice to you and you wouldn't have ever known if I never said anything" just creates more drama, and I guess the next best thing is going and sinning no more I guess? Is that even possible? Or like all other unrealistic ideals made undoable in perfection due to our inherent suckness, something to aspire to?

best of the blotter: Don't Fear The Reaper

2011-11-08T20:40:00.003-05:00

A Drake Road resident called police Halloween night when her 11-year-old son came home from trick-or-treating with a can of beer.

The boy pointed out the house where he received the beer.

Police spoke with a resident, who said when she arrived home, there were 10 or 15 kids at her house without permission. They took off running when she arrived.

She said she was not sure which of the teens offered beer to a trick-or-treater, but said she would speak to her sons about it.

The 11-year-old's mother said she did not want to pursue criminal charges. Police disposed of the beer.

OVI, LAKE ROAD: Police stopped a car on Lake Road near Columbia Road Oct. 30 at 12:44 a.m. for a traffic violation. The 33-year-old woman driver, who was dressed like Goldilocks, admitted she had been drinking at a costume party. After taking a field sobriety test, the driver was arrested for operating a vehicle while impaired. She will face charge in Rocky River Municipal Court.

An Avon teen may have gotten a bit too realistic with his Halloween costume.

Someone in the North Doovys called Avon Police around 6:17 p.m. Monday, during trick-or-treating time in town, that a boy about 14 years old, wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans, was walking along the road carrying a real scythe.

Police talked with the boy, who took the scythe home.

weekend warriors

2011-11-08T18:46:00.004-05:00

I didn't make any money for the station during our annual fundraising thing, due to being on so early and everyone in Cleveland who still listens to terrestrial radio being poor.

Well, you're on really early and it's when a lot of blue collar people go to work," says a professorial looking friend of the DJ after me. "Blue collar people usually don't listen to college radio anyway."

OH REALLY.

It's not like I haven't run across this attitude in other places, and it seems prevalent among the multiply college degreed that make up the fields of academia and technocracy. The people who listen to Springsteen and Billy Bragg and talk about solidarity "working people" when it's a convenient talking point involving unions that they're not even in, yet condescend and disparage those whose hands are cracked and dirty at the end of a ten-hour day as ignorant of the finer things in life because they don't sit around all day reading blogs at work. "Well they probably listen to Nickelback and drink beer and watch football and don't read books."

Well how the hell do you know? And so what if other people do? No one's making you conform to that. And I wonder if they have any friends outside of their profession or income demographic or political affiliation, honestly, because when things are painted with this broad of a generalized brush of cultural snobbery, my Inner Parmastani kid gets mad because it's so condescending and at least in my experience (which admittedly might be both biased and also lucky), not totally true.

And it's funny, because a good amount of my callers are warehouse workers and third shifters who want to hear King Sunny Ade or really liked that Siouxsie and the Banshees song or would have loved to have a pair of those tickets to see that band but they work second shift and can't go. I think of people like my dad and his friends, my friends who are also peons who can talk as smart as any PhD scholar who just never had the opportunities or ambition or the convenient accidents of birth.

There is so much more nuance than credit is given, so many brilliant minds without the letters after their names who don't even give themselves credit for their brilliance because they like what they like and have nothing to prove. The poets whose brilliance will blush unseen in desk drawers or shared by a handful of others, the musicians whose gifts never leave the living room, the artists whose canvases are stacked in a corner and given away to friends, the infinite basement rockers with day jobs and sometimes kids who get their catharsis out on the weekends and after dinner.

But I hold my peace, because I haven't had my morning coffee, I don't know this person and will probably never see them again, and there are some battles just not worth fighting. This is our noise too.

progress progress pleasant myth

2011-11-07T16:16:00.003-05:00

One of the great perks of academic peonage is the ability to take free classes and keep the brain from atrophying, though what good it does for my cortices might be cancelled out by the blood pressure, released only by doing my best to not laugh or start talking too much.

I love that we have these discussions and I'm sure people wonder what planet I'm from too with some of the things I think and say but sometimes these perspectives are either so bizarre I can't even parse them out or they're so caricatureistic that I just kind of shake my head and wait until the end of class to vent with Randal about the Ayn Rand acolyte, the Che-obsessed undergrad who can't believe that Stalin would ever do anything bad, the older gentleman who still believes in some archaic concept of law and order and neoconnery, the other who believes that the world is getting better and someday we'll all hold hands and kumbayah and brings EVERYTHING back to the KKK.

As a country, yes, we're not as institutionally racist and that's a really good thing, but is it any better in the rest of the world? Sub-Saharan Africans in post-Gaddafi Libya are getting massacred, the Bhutanese who say they're the happiest country in the world are uprooting their Nepali kindred, the Bantu Somali were enslaved by the ethnic Somali up through the 1930s and still endure discrimination there, and when they immigrate elsewhere.

You really think it's better? Same shit, different place no matter what book you read or statistics you throw my way. How do you live this long and travel the world and be so educated and yet be so constrained by the narrowness of your personal experience? I just don't understand.

And I speak up and say we've all got dirty hands here, that all this talk of rights and universalities is semantics, and that no one treats everyone justly.

Classroom lessons World War Two
Atrocities against the Jews
Never again our solemn vow
That's why we all share Cambodia
Isn't it great how far we've come since then?

And I can't help but bow my head and cry
It took so long to finally realize
That all our hopes are based on such gross lies

Dialectic's shit
Evolution's crap
Time and time again the masquerade is
Shown for what it really is:
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth

Progress, progress
Pleasant myth
That makes my life worthwhile

the wood between the worlds

2011-11-07T08:37:00.006-05:00

As an English major who spent more time reading the works of dead crackers than doing anything resembling creative writing both out of shyness and disdain for those who wanted to be the next Bret Easton Ellis or Thomas De Quincey, I got a decent dosage of medievals and Romantics that I alternated adored and was infuriated by.

Wordsworth might have said he wandered lonely as a cloud and found some daffodils, but his sister was most definitely along for the ride, as their diaries show, but she was conveniently written out of the picture to maintain the image of the loner among nature.

I've been rediscovering Annie Dillard after a long time of not maybe understanding, maybe not getting out into the almost-wilderness enough, obsessed with crumbling concrete dying from neglect rather than the world outside continually dying and reborn.

“Concerning trees and leaves... there's a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud and flower. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one. A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air.”

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”

So Saturday I was introverted, and I know these days are getting shorter and colder and more brutish, so I went out to the woods where we played as kids. Our parents would walk along the concrete path and we would run along the side, scampering over huge trees fallen across the creek, making our way across stones to the island in the middle of the creek as runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad or Robin Hood's merry band or the kids in Narnia, so immersed in this world of water and trees and imagination even with the suburbs on the top of the hill and the road running along the other side. It's still as beautiful as I remember it.

The summer I graduated, me and one of my friends used to come here, because it was so close by, and me and him would sit by the water and ponder, or lay on the picnic tables and stare up at the pine trees soaring so tall and straight over us. It felt like time was fluid, an endless eternal tap when it was already beginning to drain away.

This was so good for my soul, so when I got out of church, I did it again, driving out to Medina and wondering why every road now has the name of some poor kid who died in the army, stopping at Worden's Homestead, knowing that the ledges had to be nearby.

I'd only been there once, probably fifteen years ago, when we walked from my parents' friends house through some back yards and back woods to end up in a quiet place in the middle of a forest strewn with hanging Jungle Book vines in a place with carvings not quite Olmec, but ancient seeming enough for a part of the country where the ancients did not see it fit to build. The path behind the farmhouse is not well-marked, but I followed the couple in front of me in, and made my way across.

I wonder what the carver of these stones thought when he came upon them for the first time, and shaped and incised these rocks with sweat and fervor. The deformed Sphinx remains cryptic, the faces unidentified, the symbology of cross and schooner arcane.

I return up the path to the back of the property, where assorted playhouse-sized outbuildings disintegrate and a crucified effigy is sprawled on the ground, awkwardly formed, with a bulky torso and a crown of rusty nails. Attempts at getting a good shot were made but ultimately unsuccessful.

And from there I went to the much more populated Whipps Ledges, which was crawling with children, dogs and rock climbers. I walked the periphery and the then along the top, knowing I'd be unable to capture the grandeur completely.

“After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”

“What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.”

And now I'm back at the daily routine, and I wonder why I didn't do this more, because of the euphoria of atmosphere, movement, and the created order at its most beautiful.

“There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time-- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature-- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”

deferment

2011-11-06T20:26:00.003-05:00

Building skyscrapers of procrastination like an Ani song, I want to do everything but write this paper, even though it's interesting subject matter, but how does one condense an entire literary culture into 8-10 pages? I've never been a super-achiever but writing's one of the things I don't suck at academically, and so it's disorienting to get B's on my work even if it's not the most effort-intensive work and the course isn't for credit as it is.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table at a friend's house, where they've left me ice cream in the freezer and there is canine companionship and tea. I found the last holdout of rodentia behind my refrigerator attempting to gnaw its way through the metal towards the culinary delights of freezerburned hot peppers from the garden last year and the cucumbers molding in the crisper drawer.

It's hard to cook when your kitchen is small already and feels gross due to its unwanted inhabitants. So I cleaned the back up with the vacuum and threw the uneaten rat poison into the hole with a pair of tongs and call my dad and vent about the little bastards. A few minutes later I hear little teeth munching away and I'm past the point of feeling bad.

I figure this is one of those Important Life Lessons which are generally unpleasant but "build character" and there's no way in hell I ever want to be a homeowner even if I wonder if I'll be living in grungy cheap apartments in aesthetically pleasing but ultimately sketchy environs hoping that nothing really bad happens. I picked up this book at a library booksale because I'm eternally amused by vintage graphic design and have a terrible sense of humor but also because it looked like it was full of practical knowledge for old houses like the double I live in.

And now, another week, a week of working two nights, feeding cats, walking dogs, writing this paper, wondering how I used to write four or five at a time, though I guess it was the only thing I was doing then...

It was too beautiful outside this weekend to sit around inside, and I wandered through the woods alone, picking my paths carefully so I don't become a statistic through either my clumsiness or someone's ill intentions, with my camera aimed at the sparkle of creeks and the shimmer of the last leaves clinging golden to bare branches and the textures of sandstone ledges. Pictures in abundance tomorrow for those who care, but I was exhilarated to be wandering through piles of fallen leaves surrounded by trees and rocks as far I could see on a sunny Sunday afternoon in November in a t-shirt. These times are too good to let them slip away.

cut the kids in half

2011-11-04T15:25:00.005-04:00

A longer writing, condensed and self-censored, of a not-so-daily grind of constant absurdity on the part of both customers and powers that be, of conversations treading different ground, of procrastination and existential ponderings of the way things are and deconstructing the idealism of my surroundings and finding ways to laugh at things like cat vomit on library books and the absurdity of those we serve, and ourselves.

I tried to be creative tonight, but my brain was racing too wildly to focus on picking one color of glaze to paint a teacup and I don't want to dump my cognitive craziness on unsuspecting artistes, and sometimes I wonder if it freaks people out, that ultimately I will say the wrong thing and totally offend someone or they'll get sick of my rants about third world countries and their favorite politicians, because I don't believe in excusing the unexcusable no matter who it is.

And people talk politics and rant about those awful Democrats and scumbag Republicans and I just want them all to shut the hell up. I hate Election Day with every fiber of my being because one party runs the state into the ground and the other runs the city into the ground and then each of the two takes their turn running the country into the ground but I guess it's like that everywhere right?

Governments do shitty things to powerless people, give the perks and the power to their cronies, and the everyday schlubs are left in the middle, paying taxes, pacified by entertainment or too tired or burned out to even bother trying, grabbing for any bone thrown their way and keeping anyone else from getting close.

I feel like my generation is the kids in a loveless marriage and my country is two selfish and immature parents in a marriage falling apart, where the big shiny house built up so fast is a mess and the credit card bills from years of buying the newest shiniest brightest thing are coming in and there's no money left to pay. In every marriage, it's the fault of both sides, and in this case, they're the same people ultimately, but they'd never admit to that, and they're screaming at each other, dangling promises and baubles for the kids, playing them off of each other, instigating fights that distract from the matter at hand, and the spite fences between us and the next door neighbor. It's for the kids, they say, but they're ultimately thinking only about themselves and what they can get before all of it's gone, because it's all going to be gone someday.

Sometimes the kids will take sides, they'll be loyal to one or the other or whichever one fits their immediate needs. Sometimes they just go and hide in the room or in the treehouse in the backyard with fingers in the ears wanting this big long nightmare to go away.

girls go to mars

2011-11-03T14:33:00.003-04:00

Once upon a time, I wanted so badly to be in a band. Via my dental work at Case by a rockabilly-loving resident, I was hooked up with his prof's daughter who played the drums. They lived in a very nice house in Berea with a room off to the side full of amazing guitar gear and a four-track recorder.

We attempted all sorts of sounds and projects, and at that time I didn't know how to sing (ah the wonders of embracing the alto and learning to transpose to different keys since!) and we had a revolving door of acquaintances with which we played, often with varying results, some lasting longer than others because sometimes they really didn't know how to play and just wanted to say they were in a band or they were in bands with other people or whatever.

After the short-lived punk band in which I played bass and we quit before playing a show that wouldn't have happened anyway, there was a brief all-girl project that resulted in a cassette tape with some Bikini Kill covers and our attempt at sounding like a Kim Gordon-fronted Sonic Youth track. For all the feminist rhetoric of my bandmates, that soon also went down in flames as I really don't like Bikini Kill and wanted to play something with more than four chords, and one of the other girls started dating some guy because most of the uber-feminist-I-don't-need-a-man girls usually end up doing. For those of us who prefer the company of the male species but always seem to end up being the platonic homie, this is frustrating in its irony but that's a whole other post.

I have not played these tapes for anyone for obvious reasons. After that, my drummer friend got sick of all this and went off to an Ivy League college and out of all my former bandmates, I'm still in touch with only one, incidentally the one who took the band breakup the hardest.

Ten years later, I'm driving back to Berea and getting utterly lost. I've been itching to play music in a more noise-making capacity for awhile now, so thanks to the strange connections made over fiber optic cables and a shred of musical commonality, I'm plugging my guitar in, tweaking the tone knobs on the amplifier and my distortion pedal as we try to find some common ground between my absurd college radio eclecticism and ultimate corporate rock tendencies that mesh well with the 90's rocking of the rhythm section and I wonder what the singer who's a few years younger than us and got the whole thing started thinks since none of us are really metalheads or at least that's not the style we play or it's not always that kind of metal.

We settle on the Cure and on Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' because it's something everyone knows, and while my fingers are used to strumming from doing church music and bluegrass, I find that all those years of noodling on my dad's Gretsch in the basement haven't been for naught, as my fingers loosen and I have the back of bass and drums and rhythm guitar courtesy of the girl who just arrived.

I'm tremolo-picking on the upper frets and noodling through pentatonics, bending strings and sustaining notes with the whammy bar and letting the tremolo from my ancient amp reverberate like crush with eyeliner. While the others take a break, me and the bassist mess around with songs that we grew up hearing on the radio but turning them into something more feminine and melancholic and find that our voices harmonize well.

I wonder what this may or may not coalesce into, because there are so many dynamics and so many unknowns and so many ways in which tastes converge and also don't. I don't understand the love of Kittie when there are infinitely better and more interesting women making music. I still don't know how one gets through 20+ years in American subcultural life without ever hearing a song by Nirvana or Alice in Chains, or maybe I'm just more irrelevant than I first thought. It's highly possible.

I'm pondering the infinite strands of subculture and taste beneath the all-encompassing tag or rock and or roll. I have the certain sounds I like, and the things I play, and while I can break out of that, it's still where I ultimately come back to. I want to play songs that would move me if it wasn't me.

I love melodic vocals and strange harmonies, glorious layers of distortion, sinuous basslines and insistent drums. I love guitars that shimmer, crunch, and cry. I'm feeling old and past the point of wanting to make it good, and for now, I will play well with others, and see what comes.

All I know is that I still want to be Kristin Hersh when I grow up.

So how did you end up here?

2011-11-02T09:01:00.001-04:00

Being a Clevelander I ask this question of all people who settled here from much swankier and warmer climes. Usually they don't know how they got sucked into the Rust Belt vortex and that's understandable.

Same with this little corner of the Internets... Moral of the story is that what you're looking for probably isn't on here, except for my well-documented disdain for a certain Soundgarden frontman's solo material and maybe some gravestones.

cleveland call girls for sexy
things baby racoons play with
back in the days did prostitutes hang out on prospect ave in cleveland
chris cornell hate
cleveland east vs west
blaspheming
homework for kindergarten ms.ryan's class ps.165q
art beautiful obscure love statues tombstones
darkthroning
exotic women from the middle east in stained glass
quiet places in cleveland at night
amateur jailbait
tuna blotter
Deer Attack People
banana thieves
drug names on tombstones
victorian robber baron
barbie boadicea
sexy big game huntresses
pantheism female forest spirit

so small

2011-11-01T16:20:00.000-04:00

There are more dead souls residing in this city than the living, and even among the living sometimes that seems a bit debatable.

This does mean there's quite a few old-school cemeteries with huge trees and statues of angels and ornate family vaults. When I was little before the presence of subculture in my consciousness, me and my friend up the street would have her dad take us to old graveyards half-hidden in the woods where we'd go through looking at the stones marveling at the oldness and the quiet. And now, I always stop to wander through the rows of stones whenever I go anywhere, because each place is different, and I try to conjure up the stories so cryptic in the semantics of epitaphs, the size and intricacy of the sculpture, the mementos left saying that they have not been forgotten.

There's a distance that is comfortable, as I have no family members there, and the history is often distant enough that it becomes like a park, a neutral space to linger and be introverted. I wonder if I've turned into a cliche this weekend, as I drove from one to the other on my day off, listening to of all people Nick Cave, snapped photos of stone angels under golden trees framed by the light of the late autumnal sunset.

I told a friend of mine this as we turned the corner to the one on Riverside because I'd seen a sign for a place called Babyland. It's an old place, with an imposing red stone gatehouse with gothic accents galore, so I assumed that Babyland would be similarly archaic.

I was not expecting what we found instead.

Rows of wooden crosses with names and Our Beloveds. Stillbirths and kids that died a day old, granite-etched faces of bright eyes and big smiles and lives cut short. And who decorates a cemetery for Halloween? I'm disoriented by the teddy bears encased in cellophane hanging from hooks. I walk through snapping pictures and trying to glean some meaning, but I just don't understand.

In the old cemeteries, it was common to see the names of children who lived a few weeks or a couple years, and that was the way it was, for every ten kids, maybe five made it. We don't think about it that way now. What also got me was that all of these names were clearly kids from the neighborhood, black and Puerto Rican and the occasional Greek or Romanian.

What were the stories here as fresh as the newly unearthed dirt and the ungrimed silk flowers? Is this another way of grieving that I don't understand? When my grandma would take me to the cemetery with her I would collect rose petals from her garden and scatter them on my youngest sister's grave. My parents never did get a headstone. It was too hard to think about, I guess.

How many of these kids would be in kindergarten right now if they had been born in a place with less pollution and more favorable circumstances? I don't know, and I feel like I'm treading in a place where the grief is still raw. I'm no longer a tourist. I'm an interloper, and I'm glad there's no one here besides us.

mysterious strangers

2011-11-01T11:09:00.000-04:00

I'm not huge into Halloween, as my monsters this year seem to have more to do with mid-twenties angst, economic constraints, and the less glamorous side of city living. Still, there is always the comedie humaine of Craigslist as the awkwardness of men and women only gets more interesting when everyone's dressed up and either in or out of character.

To the 4 different girls I saw dressed up as Annie Hall last night - w4w - 32 (Cleveland Ohio)

I don't know why all of a sudden it's in vogue to be a 23yr old dressed up as Annie Hall, but you might have saved yourself the money you spent on a hat you will probably never wear again, and just gone as Zoey Deschanel, cause it's the same damn thing. Also, you should aspire to date better men, Woody Allen as a boyfriend sucks. And please promise yourself right now to never make a movie with Jack Nicholson.

I get a little offended when people think that I'm a Woody Allen movie person, because hopefully I don't come across too much like a brilliant yet neurotic and pathologically selfish loser. I really hope that's not the case.

Bonnie + Clyde's Wonder Woman 10/28/11 - m4w - 38 (Lakewood)
Date: 2011-10-31, 9:55AM EDT
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Hey Wonder Woman! Wow, you really are sexy and cute at the same time. Each time our eyes met, I got flustered. I'm kicking myself for being intimidated by your friends and the other guys drawn to you. Since Friday night, I just keep seeing your brown eyes, great figure in that little red, white and blue outfit; and most impressively, your bright smile which you flashed at me several times. I wasn't wearing a costume but I was drinking rum & coke. Tell me what color my shirt was........I saw you checking out my arms.. lol Let's connect Wonder Woman. Maybe I can be your Superman!

this makes me think of a terrible soft rock ballad by the All Sports Band that is sadly not on Youtube, and also this cinematic gem.

Werewolf at the Chamber Saturday 10/29 - w4m - 36 (Lakewood)
Date: 2011-10-30, 3:01AM EDT
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You: You're a great dancer, funny, and polite. You're about 5'10", nice solid build, and if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say you're about 5 years younger than me and good-looking without the makeup, ears and fangs.

Me: I'm 5'10" without the high heels that I ditched a couple times, full-figured with short dark hair (some of it was pink tonight), wearing a purple jacket, lace t-shirt, and shiny red/black pants. I was with a friend who's the same height and was dressed as Lady Gaga.

I was having a really rough night till you started dancing with me. You made me smile. Thank you.

As it's the Chamber, no Twilight jokes here, just that there was something kind of sweet about this one.

And outside of Clevelandia, here's more tales of missed chances in the Rust Belt.

Frida drew a bleeding heart - m4w - 27 (MOCAD)
Date: 2011-10-30, 1:05PM EDT
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Frida, you drew that amazing bleeding heart on me and even though my costume is gone it's still there. This is the first missed connect I've ever posted, really regretting not having talked to you more. How amazing, when a painter and a piece of paper can come together like that.

Oh art kids, I hope you find each other.

Also, Jay and Silent Bob seemed to be universally big this year, probably because any pair of average looking dudes around my age can look and act like them without any trouble.

Your mischevious eyes at Tops - m4w - 29 (Grand Island)
Date: 2011-09-23, 4:42PM EDT
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You were a beautiful brown haired woman, I was a dorky, bowling shirt clothed silent bob impersonator with great glasses. Your black hooded sweatshirt was adorned with what appeared to be neon writing, and your eyes lit up with mirth or mischief when you looked my way.

We exchanged glances a few times, finally nodding at one another in passing. I wondered by your expression if my hair was a mess or my shirt had something on it.

Well, was it my hair?

Your half smile melted my eyeballs out of my head, and I hope that whomever you smile like that for appreciates it as I did.

* Location: Grand Island
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Not only that, but the chicks seem intrigued by that dynamic duo.

Looking for Jay & Silent Bob from the town ballroom party this weekend - w4m - 26 (buffalo)
Date: 2011-11-01, 9:24AM EDT
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anyone know jay & silent bob from those parties and possibly know how to reach either of them???? PLEASE???? any info would help. a name, a number, a facebook page, ANYTHING!

looking for silent bob. i was the red-head standing next to you waiting to signup for the contest. i tried talking to you, but you remained in character and just smiled and waved at me. i'm hoping we can get together and actually TALK a bit, you're pretty cute!! 8-P

if you remember me, tell me what my costume was!! 8-)

i'm also throwing a party this week and I'd love it if you guys could make it! please get back to me asap if you see this or anyone can help me track him down!! thank you xoxoxoxo

And this really isn't Halloween related, but the sheer wastedness and embodiment of OSU bro-ness made it priceless.

Party Bus - From 7/11 to Park Street - m4w - 24 (Downtown Columbus)
Date: 2011-10-30, 5:14AM EDT
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Soooo... I was totally blacked out and I forgot your name. You live at waterford, teach something, and love New York like 50 cent. I'm still pretty drunk and won't remember posting this, but email a brother and we will get a cup of tea..

M

PostingID: 2676163433

Meanwhile, while dude is so drunk he doesn't remember that he's looking for lurve, other souls are for glitter girls who rock and roll and appear to be dating losers. It's strangely reassuring that this cuts both ways across the great divide of heteronormativity.

Hot Blonde at Skully's!!!!!!!!! - m4w - 39 (Columbus)
Date: 2011-10-30, 9:51PM EDT
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Halloween costume party at SKULLY'S on High Street this past Friday 28th. You were wearing a white ROLLING STONES t-shirt with glitter on your face.....some guy was all over you & I could tell you weren't into it.......you need a rocker......(me)......NIRVANA came on & you dug it, Mr. cool didn't get it.....he was either too drunk or..well, his actions spoke for themselves. If you were a couple, please forgive me, but I nor any of the people I was with saw it or understood it. Anyway, if you see this, by all means I'd love to hear from you. You were STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!

Thurston and Kim have called it quits, life is not usually a Sonic Youth video, but dream on rocker dude who loves the capital letters and exclamation points and it's an excuse to post the song below.

as the wind blows a dead leaf

2011-10-31T16:24:00.006-04:00

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
but all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

sometimes you just want to be away

2011-10-28T22:28:00.002-04:00

I've been in constant movement, attempting to keep my word and keep commitments, not saying I can do what I can't, juggle small obligations, and there is only so much I can say I can do, I've learned to not try to do too much, be all things, and so that's why the sudden cases of introversion come over me, where I look for a chance to get away, to clear my brain, to take a walk outside or retreat to somewhere safe and quiet. It's nothing against anyone, it's just needed to survive.

beauty and then some

2011-10-28T09:03:00.005-04:00

Academic peonage has its benefits as we are able to order piles of gorgeously colorful tomes and indulge every urge of our intellectual and creative ids.

I've loved stained glass as long as I could remember, but Harry Clarke took things to a whole other level. I really don't know how he languishes in such obscurity.

and the book illustrations! I wish I could draw with that kind of gorgeous detail.

In my late 20s, I've found that I've rediscovered things I loved in childhood that I didn't have access to after reading all the books in the library that looked interesting and not having access to things like OhioLink and the Internet.

My sister and I loved fairy tales as a kid, Perrault, Andersen, The Brothers Grimm, and Andrew Lang, and my grandparents had faded volumes with fraying cloth bindings and I loved the illustrations which had so much drama and detail and the more obscure tales, leading to reading lots of fantasy. I still have volumes of this stuff at home that I picked up at sundry booksales and such. I never realized that Russia had such amazing illustrators in the 19th century.

I wish there was an paint-by-number set, but I'm getting plates of these ones etched, even if the content seems a bit strange for hanging on the living room wall. That Art Nouveau sensibility while evoking illuminated manuscripts and folk art, it's just a beautiful thing.

Vasilisa the Beautiful is not just pretty, but she's smart too, and given that Halloween is three days from now, this feels somewhat appropriate.

I stumbled across Virginia Sterrett's work and it reminded me of that sense of wonder I had when I first started reading such things.

and of course, Dulac's take on Poe...

I also wanted to be a ballerina when I was seven, and jumped around my parents' living room to Tchaikovsky and roller-skated with my sister in the basement to those greatest hits classical records (Beethoven's Biggest Hits) slowly destroyed by a Fisher-Price turntable that my dad refused to let us put his records on. He's a smart man.

Vrubel's Swan Princess reminds me of the Trina Schart Hyman book of the folktale I got from the library when I was little, but more impressionistic...

And, as an arty kid with a religious bent, Victor Vasnetsov is a balm for my soul, an antidote for the Thomas Kinkades of the world.

Evelyn Paul's illustrations are lovely, understated and that medieval-evoking thing going on as well,

And Kay Nielsen, who died in poverty, leaving behind some incredible beauty as well.

And this, this is beautiful too.

best of the blotter: Tiki Torches, Trashed Teletubbies, and Vicious Chihuahuas

2011-10-27T16:53:00.004-04:00

ARSON, SHELDON ROAD: Someone at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 22 set off a tiki torch fuel can inside a traffic cone and put it on top of a trunk lid of a Chevrolet parked in the lot by Arcadian Lake Apartments at 2:30 a.m.

There are no suspects.

OVI, COLUMBIA ROAD: Police stopped a car on Columbia Road near Lake Road Oct. 23 at 1:52 a.m. after the driver nearly caused an accident, according to police. An officer suspected the 27-year-old man — who was dressed like Tinky Winky, a character on the children’s TV show “Teletubbies” — had been drinking. The driver said he was coming from a Halloween costume party in North Olmsted and admitted to drinking beer, police said. After an officer administered field sobriety tests, the driver was arrested for operating a vehicle while impaired. He will face charges in Rocky River Municipal Court.

WELFARE CHECK, PROSPECT ROAD: Police received word of an elderly man slumped over in his vehicle at 10 p.m. Oct. 23.

Accordion music was playing inside the vehicle and when a passerby called out to him, the man did not react.

When an officer arrived, it was learned that the man had simply fallen asleep after an exhausting day. The officer followed him home, ensuring his safety.

STRONGSVILLE

A 40-year-old Bluffside Street man called police at 3 a.m. Friday to say he'd been assaulted in a bar, but then thought the officer who arrived was a taxi to take him to get some food.

The man told police an officer had already given him a ride home.

Police determined the man had been drinking at the Islander in Middleburg Heights and that police in that city had driven him home.

BEACHWOOD

Week-long Chihuahua chase ends in groundhog trap

Sunday, Oct. 9, 10:20 a.m. — A puppy got stuck in a cage that was set to catch a groundhog in Baywood Estates. The police report noted that it was a mean Chihuahua they have been trying to catch for a week. The animal warden responded and took the animal.

Everything's white, now so are the smiles

2011-10-26T08:43:00.005-04:00

When I was underemployed and depressed, I used to spend my days off riding the bus down to the library, reading graphic novels and scrawling terrible writing in the Arcade over a cup of tea and a falafel wrap.

I love this city because it's home and familiar but my illusions have been dissed, as Randal so eloquently put today, and I know exist in a disillusion that is comfortable in the reality of the situation, but not entirely unhappy, as I've carved out a decent little life in this strange part of the world.

I've never been a boosterific type, and will probably change the title of the blog soon, because what I write has less to do with the city and more with the inner world and the outer world at large. I know there's a part of me that is provincial and intimidated by the ambitious, that is completely okay with not achieving great social status, and figures it's better to expect nothing than think the world is at my fingertips.

But I can't help but roll my eyes as I watch this, because I walk these streets on a regular basis and it never looks like this, even on a summer afternoon at the peak of lunch hour. I've seen maybe one food truck ever downtown and it was for Wilson's Tamales, which goes everywhere. I've seen one person walking their dog in the last four years. There hasn't been a crowd at an Indians game that big since 1997. The president of CSU (which has a nice campus believe it or not) said he was going to live downtown but opted for a swanky mansion in Shaker. So who are we kidding here?

I know this is to make us look cosmopolitan, but the part of the city that is world class is a few miles east where the gardens, museums, and the universities converge, not at the overpriced gimmicky bowling alley (my Inner Parmastani says that new ones that aren't smoke smelling and looking like 1959 are phony by default) or restaurants I can't afford or aren't interested in. $5 for a serving of ramen noodles? That's a week worth of vending machine ramen lunch or a month of Top Ramen from Aldi's. I'm probably outing myself as not the target demographic, because even though I'm relatively young and artsy and educated (ding ding ding!), I'm also poor and prefer a kibbie from Aladdin's if I'm downtown or a gyro from Frank's Falafel around the corner.

And seriously, this is almost all rich and young, and mostly very very white people. Over half of this city is African-American, and there's other sizable non-cracker ethnic communities as well. Also, most of the Bright Young Things are gone. They live in Chicago. I blame this factor in part for my perpetual spinsterhood. My friends are all 6-10 years older than me and usually married, and therefore aren't as likely to leave. If they're trying to leave they're usually stuck. I don't expect them to show people who are homeless or maybe work in a profession that isn't White Collar Technocrat, but that's a lot of our downtowners, the Peonage in varied states of dress.

We're downtown too. And while we deal well in snark and purty photos of things falling apart and the center unable to hold, at least we tell the truth, or something. It's so overblown.

verminator

2011-10-25T19:41:00.004-04:00

The house feels haunted, with the scrapings and creakings, the little running feet, the rustles in the attic, the presence unseen but apparent. I keep thinking of the mice in the Nutcracker, that there's a huge one taller than me lurking in some hidden part of the house that will come out and take revenge for deaths of the one whose neck was broken in a trap and the other one stuck on the glue that I put out of its misery with a plastic bag and a trash can. And a slipper hurled at its head won't do the trick.

I wish we could coexist, but with the one-two punch of disease and eating my food, that can't happen. It's one thing to swat at wasps and another to premeditate with poisons and traps. I sleep on the living room couch because it's far away from where they hide, but I know it doesn't matter. It shouldn't freak me out a little bit but it does, and I want the damn things gone.

I also want a cat, but I feel like my motivations for pet ownership aren't completely pure, and it just makes me feel more spinsterly than I already am.

One of my coworkers tells me that it's better that I feel bad than take pleasure in the death of lesser creatures, and she's probably right, but there's something that makes me so queasy nonetheless.

angry up the blood

2011-10-24T16:45:00.004-04:00

I've been warming up to the class a lot more, though I wish we were in a room with ten of the people who don't talk as much but when they do generally have more to say, and that we could go more in depth than we do sometimes.

I used to wonder how we got so stupid in this country and I understand more and more that there are people out there who consider themselves decent and open-minded human beings who due to a sense of exceptionalism and superiority, seem to have no problem with blowing places halfway around the world to smithereens with 7-year-old-level answers like THEY STARTED IT, or THEY DID IT TOO WHY CAN'T WE.

Right.

You can still be on the theoretical good side of history and be very, very wrong. There's two people in the class who are German, one whose father had to walk home 5,000 miles from a POW camp in Stalin's Russia and whose mother survived the bombing of Dresden, and another who was 15 when the war ended and fills in the names and dates with striking details pulled from his memories.

And we can talk about genocides and gulags as something other people do, but maybe we don't have death camps, but we have black sites, we haven't nuked anyone, but someone can push a button and predator drone someone halfway around the world. Are we as a country morally superior to our enemies? Everyone thinks they are, be they AMERICA OF GOD AND FREEDOM or those who want to take out the Great Satan. Everyone thinks they're the heroes and they're willing to send out schlubs to get themselves killed while they sit back and watch.

I'm sick of hearing about Occupy Wall Street because it's so fucking self-absorbed. Yeah, life is hard here, trust me, I know this, but your lifestyle makes liFe pretty damn hard for everyone else who ends up with a lot of suck because your car needs gas and you need the new iPhone whose metals come from Congo. We are the 1% of the rest of the world, people, especially white people with college degrees and parents with some means.

We'd do a whole lot better we stopped occupying all these other places all over the world, but that won't happen because the government (does it really seem to matter anymore if it's Bush or Obama if you really step back and look at what's actually going on) and their tandem corporations have a lot to gain from our adventuring.

It's getting better all the time someone tells me, and maybe it is for him personally, but how can you really look at the downward spiral and see that, is your myopia so strong you can't see past your immediate experience? I just don't know.

nonstarters

2011-10-23T19:37:00.005-04:00

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl. They knew each other for a very long time, because when they were seven, the girl splashed him during a game of Marco Polo at a pool party and he dunked her most unchivalrously, which made her cry. But she kind of deserved it. He doesn't remember this at all.

Ten years later they meet again, part of a group of pretty good kids who did pretty good kid stuff like parent induced social activities for their betterment as good Christian kids although the girl smuggled in a tube of hair mascara and Alice in Chains cassettes and dyed everyone's hair green, and his best friend had a stash of Slayer CDs in his closet, despite his parents views on Lavey affiliated hard rockers the Eagles. Later their group of friends would do good kid things like laser tagging or ice cream at Friendly's and getting kicked out of the Southland strip mall by security for drinking half gallons of ghetto tea in the Giant Eagle parking lot or hang out in someone's basement or bedroom drinking pop and complaining about their parents.

They liked some of the same bands and didn't like some of the same bands and he was partially responsible for her transition from fledgling metalhead to the punkier side of things by loaning her lots of CDs. He also dated her best friend, broke up with her, and they lost touch.

Five years later, they meet once more, and find out they have a lot in common, and like to do similar things, but don't have anyone else to do them with. So they start hanging out, because he has a car and she doesn't, and they go see shows together on an almost weekly basis. His dad thinks they're dating, but they're not, because besides liking most of the same bands, they really have nothing else to talk about and he likes girls who are more girly. She's cynical but he's even moreso, neither for reasons that are terribly concrete besides being mad at "The System" and when not working he maintains a constant state of entertainment immersion that kind of freaks her out because while she finds Mystery Science Theater funny too, she doesn't want to watch it all the time and needs some time to be quiet and existential.

He moves away to another state, and she realizes she doesn't miss him all that much. There was nothing besides a love of good music, which only goes so far, despite what any hipster love song about mixtapes would say. She can talk about bands and guitars as good as any record store clerk, but finds herself less and less motivated to as she has less to prove. She gets a slot on college radio, still goes and sees her favorite bands and sings along to all the songs she knows, but it doesn't mean as much as it once did.

She doesn't want a compadre for the mosh pit anymore, because she's too old to mosh. She doesn't want someone who likes some obscure scene in some random town, she wants to talk about God and books and history without always coming up with concrete answers. The love of tuneage becomes a springboard to other things deeper rather than the end of the pool that seems deep compared to the baby pool, but is only maybe three feet or so.

And she still doesn't know what this all means.

caffeinenation

2011-10-22T00:09:00.003-04:00

The need for caffeine and the urge to write have me sitting in the corner, attempting to conjure up verse and rust belt writing because I'm feeling existential and the paper from hell is finally done, so I'm people watching all the lonely souls of Clevelandia too young to drink too old to stay at home, who are too busy with their own drama to really pay attention.

It's one of those nights where the cold and the unspooling of continual thought makes for things maybe worth scrawling about. The conversations about life and love and trying to think in a sad city where sometimes we get so tired that it's hard to. But tonight I am too awake and too verbose to try and paint, too alert to kick back and be entertained by a screen so I take the long way down Lorain past the dollar stores and dive bars, the boarded up buildings, the halal markets and Irish pubs, to sit in the corner at Common Grounds, to write poetry alone like a teenager.

I was invited to a birthday party tonight, but I'd rather be among strangers where it's not expected to socialize, where there's caffeine instead of alcohol, and nobody thinks they're cool. When I'm at parties like that the last thing I want to do is be around people, I get this freaked out urge to disappear into the backyard or sit on the porch, wishing I had the excuse of cigarette breaks to be introverted, wanting to take a walk with the other person there who feels antisocial, amble around the block in the cool October air and talk about everything and nothing.

Thinking about wars and rumors of wars, of American exceptionals and the provincialism of small cities with big orchestras and bigger problems, so many things I wish I could say before the battery on my laptop dies, but I'm tired, and I've written, so it's a beautiful thing.

do I dare disturb the universe?

2011-10-20T08:59:00.002-04:00

The small graces of late night conversation, of the catharsis of admittance in a safe place, and the resultant laughter when resolution has been reached and we can laugh about things various and sundry. Venting and laughter are needed for survival, it seems. I drive home through the rain feeling like a weight has fallen from me, at least for the short run. My apartment smells like mint in my attempt to eradicate the rodentia, and there's a voicemail on the phone that could mean anything but probably won't mean much given my track record of brief attempts and longtime platonics. We shall see...

invasion

2011-10-18T13:27:00.002-04:00

A skitter across the floor as I left for work, a small mammalian body disappearing into the woodwork. Oh dammit. So after art class I'm at Home Depot looking at a vast array of traps and rat poisons, trying to figure out what I can stomach. I don't want the buggers in my house, but it's hard for me to consider killing things with beating hearts, if that makes sense, but there's those cheapo little wooden traps and I read that mint and bay leaves are smells they don't like so I place sprigs and roots ripped from the garden on the shelves in the kitchen, in the pantry, behind the fridge, feeling vaguely hippie and superstitious and stay up way later than planned vacuuming up the scat and tossing out tainted food.

It really could be worse, but it's so gross, and I fall asleep hoping I don't hear anything die.

holding sand

2011-10-17T15:40:00.004-04:00

Did you get any good pictures?
I got one.
Yeah, none of mine came out because of those drunk guys...

Not even the absurdity and general jerkitude of aging bros (how these dudes got married is beyond me) getting wasted to alternative-ish rock played by veterans of the NY straight-edge scene while yelling out requests for Quicksand and the Gorilla Biscuits that were understandably ignored could get in the way of reliving my years of gauged ears and still-existent teen angst straddling the world of radio rock and the first dives into the underground.

Everyone else seemed to be about my age, the longhaired Quicksand fans excepted. The drunks were annoying and we were relieved when they went back to the bar because we could watch the band without them in front of us, but I was in good company with my long-time female companion in rockingness Kristy and the guy standing next to me with whom I exchanged grins and eye-rolls and later numbers when a mutual affinity for exploring rocky parts of the Cuyahoga Valley and the dulcet sounds of Kyuss was discovered.

I like my weird tuneage, but my standby has always been loud guitars and the perfect alchemy of anthemic melody, cathartic angst and dissonance. There's a new record, one that's not bad, but I think most of us were there for the old stuff, cheering as the opening chords to 'Travel by Telephone' rang out, nodding along to the extended jams of 'Everything Has Its Point,' singing every word of 'Undercovers On.' I wonder how many other people hear have had this album soundtrack their teenage drama and growing-up angst the way it has for me, the way we hang on every word and chord change, waiting for the crescendo of guitar and drums.

They end with the cover of 'How Soon is Now?' and while I've never been a huge Smiths fan, I've loved this song and this cover especially and I'm damn near euphoric as we belt out "I'm human and I need to be loved" and Walter tells us to go home (and presumably cry and want to die perhaps). It ended the night perfectly and we drive home listening to Faith No More, spaced-out and laughing as the world feels full of possibilities once again.

it won't begin until you make it end...

2011-10-16T17:43:00.005-04:00

As rusty as the city as I call home, as rainy as the water on my windshield, blackclad and bluemooded, thankful for the empathy and the hugs of those in my world who understand who've been there too, yet hoping that the spell of sadness passes soon. So familiar, but it's getting old.

minty

2011-10-14T21:10:00.003-04:00

A cup of peppermint tea, and the apathetic revision of the Purgatorial Paper, glad that I cut class today to be outside in the October sun, that there was art making and art-walking. Looked at paintings so well-executed and generic. The conspicuous consumption innocuous status symbol, like cracker jazz but executed in oils and framed expensively instead of bloodless guitar and Kenny G saxophone. Still lifes of wineglasses and saxophones in luxurious settings, landscapes or seaside villages stripped of mystery and patina.

I find myself smirking at the artist descriptions, like oh you're so unique because you paint half naked women with a palette knife. Deep, man. I did that in my art major days. Everyone else is wearing suits except for me and my sister and her friend. They ignore us. He's snarking about "rich people" and itching to tag every street sign and lamppost before he moves away, she doesn't say much, because upstairs is the apartment of her friend who got murdered this summer. I try to pet the little foofoo dog and it shies away from me, afraid of my janitor keyring and leather jacket. We part ways.

And so I'm here in the corner, too brain-drained to write creatively, nothing to really say, because I've come home every night this week and gone to sleep. A birthday party for the bro-in-law tomorrow, Rival Schools on Sunday night. I haven't gone to a show every weekend since I was a grad student. I still don't know how to plan, but life seems to go on just fine.

color and sound

2011-10-11T13:55:00.003-04:00

A day off spent in Oberlin, walking paths through the woods with my friend and her daughters and as-yet-unborn son, as we catch up and the kids are picking purple flowers and scarlet leaves. Our progress is slow due to the little feet walking alongside us but we crunch the leaves, inhale that certain autumn smell, stop to listen to the symphonic drones of cicadas, frogs, and birdcalls.

I wander around the square a bit before heading over to the art center to pick up my plates and jewelry pieces, which will then be immersed in nail polish remover to get the toner off. I forgot to reverse the image of this Harry Clarke illustration, but the detail on this came out so beautiful that it almost doesn't matter.

Picked up Christine in Shaker and we went up to Coventry to hang out and wait for the Wild Flag show to start. The last three shows I've been to have been metal bands therefore mostly dudes, but this crowd was low-key and energetic in the right way. The encore seemed a bit rushed and when Carrie said that Cleveland's a big city compared to, say, Omaha, we realized that Omaha actually has more people than we do.

It seriously warms my heart watching other women rock out. I'm not sure why. It just does.

low-res from someone else in the audience last night.

higher res from another show:

Drove home with my ears ringing and wondering how I'd function today but caffeine works its wonders and I've got tonight to crash.

I'm small, like a superball...

2011-10-10T09:50:00.004-04:00

As I need the caffeine and want to check email, the coffeeshop up the street is a nice morning refuge, where I can sit in the corner and watch the world go by, thankful that despite the serious drama of the weekend, there are some things to look forward to, art-making and live music (hopefully with pictures to follow), beautiful fall weather outside. Sometimes the only thing one can do is keep on going.

you didn't look so good and you didn't feel so well...

2011-10-09T21:39:00.009-04:00

I didn't drink all the way through my college years, except for the occasional post-work glass of wine over dinner and the Big Lebowski with Tegan, due to watching countless freshmen girls in my dorm go out for their first weekend away from their parents' house and then stumbling home at 3am half dressed and wasted. There were certain weekends where I would walk through downtown late at night past the bars and house parties, subcultural androgynous in a hoodie pulled up, bandanna over my hair and leather jacket that gave my skinny frame some bulk, and see from a distance the combination of girls dressing to impress, male piggery and alcohol and know that this could only end badly for those involved.

I remember being out with some people who lived down the street from me shortly after I moved onto that street in Kent and got locked out of my apartment. He was in my English class the previous semester and we got along well but there was pressure on me that raised the mental red flag, and when we were all sitting around and they started trying to get ahold of their dealer, after he kept pouring me glass after glass of cheap red wine that I kept leaving behind the endtable when he wasn't looking, I slipped out, hoping my landlord left the key under the mat (he did) and figuring that if he didn't I'd find another place to crash because I knew that where I was wasn't safe.

Knowing that date rape or something like it happened to someone you love is even worse, and every time this has happened, it's hit even closer to home. I know that this isn't preventable, that the strong have often taken advantage of the weak, that people make bad decisions every day that lead to things they never thought would happen to them. I wish I could shake the girls I know and scream "what the hell are you doing?" and inflict some serious injury on the male species that somehow feel entitled to take what someone's not willing to give when in sound mind. I know that isn't the answer. I wish I had one.

the phone's off the hook but you're not

2011-10-08T21:41:00.006-04:00

I can't untangle all this, and this isn't the place to do it. I'm pretty pissed for good reason I think.

it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it

2011-10-06T15:46:00.003-04:00

So I've kind of been following the 'Occupy Wall Street' thing and then the 'Occupy Cleveland' thing, and of course the whole 'Arab Spring' along with my preferred mix of geopolitical ephemerals and the local machinations.

Given that we haven't darkthroned through the city in a little while and the weather was favorable, we decided to amble down to the Free Stamp (which is an ugly piece of public art by the way) and observe the protestations against the Man in the park with the Free Stamp across from the federal building.

I saw protests every other week when I lived in Kent during the Bush years and this was more or less the same thing. Abstract slogans directed against big abstract entities, acoustic guitars, bongos, signs, people just kind of hanging around, people that I know but not really well. Slogans about coming together and changing things and people cheering and instead of feeling thrilled about the possibility of a better world, I realize once again that I just can't believe in it, much in the way I'm sure that my friends are bemused by my embrace of so-called "organized religion."

Having been immersed in reading history among other things recently, I really don't feel like anyone has solutions. Every revolution begins idealistically with flowers and hugs and celebrations, but there are the inevitable power struggles that follow, the old guard and structures of corruption find ways to assimilate within a new framework, and things get ugly and violent because ultimately the same structures that cause suffering will continue to exist. We say we won't get fooled again, but meet the new boss same as the old boss.

I feel old too, and I feel like I look like an undercover cop or something because I'm in my work clothes and so is Randal, even if we're not corporatistas. I wonder if I'm defanged because of my working-stiff-ness but I was just as cynical about this stuff as an equally naive college kid even then, before I really had to deal with unions and overlords and feel like a pawn in the class wars of the boomers.

It's hard for me to take people with an anticapitalist/anticorporate stance seriously when they're texting on their iPhones made with metals from war-torn countries by a big corporation and posting updates to Facebook. Adbusters had some degree of subcultural cool when I was 16 before I realized that they're just marketing a whole other meaningless brand, not to mention that they make their non-brand shoes in China too. I don't want Kalle Lasn running my country any more than I want Barack Obama or Random Republican or whoever. There's a lust for power and control over minds I see there that I find disturbing as well, the kind of thing that draws in disaffected youth and makes them feel enlightened and part of something.

Last time I checked, the drug war was still going on, a whole lot of countries are getting predator droned and we're still in Afghanistan and shady CIA business is still going on. But money talks and those without the scratch are ultimately voiceless until the lives of those in power are threatened. I fear the angry mob just as much as the powers that be. People who think too much are screwed either way.

And I'm looking at the Key Tower, at the Cleveland School District Headquarters, the Municipal Courthouse to the north, and thinking about how if we were really going to raise hell about something, it shouldn't be this abstract raging against the corporate machine, but against the bureaucracy and the unofficial power structure that have screwed over this city with blatant chutzpah for the last forty years. Start local and work your way out. There's plenty of bad to go around in this city within the party machine alone.

Raise some hell about the RTA or the corporate welfare to sports team owners or the Cleveland Clinic not treating the people who live across the street or the slum landlords or the corrupt bureaucracy that keeps anything from getting done or the schools that disenfranchise generations of kids or the gouging by the Water Department.

But wait, that would involve actually having to do something instead of caring a lot.

boys go to jupiter and get more stupider

2011-10-04T08:48:00.003-04:00

Doing an early morning radio slot means that few listen, and fewer call. Occasionally I've gotten some weird ones, or the ones who want to one-up my musical acumen, or the "hey who is this band/song/singer?" or the ones who want to hear Rammstein or 80's house 12-inch singles or Tenacious D. Sometimes I get creeps too, but I don't give my name out, and I don't take calls over the air so I don't have to deal with too much most of the time.

As it's early in the morning, I don't tend to play anything heavy until I wake up, so it's mostly African grooves, Britpop, and trip-hop, though recently it's been a lot more moody alt-rock more and more. A lot of this includes female vocals just because I like the way they sound, not because I'm Kathleen Hanna 2.0 but more because bands like Echobelly and Throwing Muses and they don't get much play elswhere.

This morning, I gave away tickets to see Wild Flag, who I'm going to next week, and got a call from someone who used my playing of mostly female musicians to rant about the superiority of Manly Men of Manliness and Manly Music over the perceived weakness of the fairer half of the human race, and that our day was coming and someday we would be "put in our place" or something because things were going to change in 2012. I thought he was joking but then I realized that he really was this ridiculous and so I was laughing at him and being half-asleep snarky about how proud I am of him to be asserting what's always been his until he hung up.

I was planning to amp it up a little bit, but figured that it'd be a good time to dedicate some good loud and girlish tuneage to the dude, so hopefully no one's lurking in the parking lot waiting to ambush me next week.

Seriously Youtube? No actual version of 'Golden Ocean?' Ah well, I played this 50 Foot Wave cut too.

And the Bellrays, because if this is the new incarnation of Racist Caller, I might as well mess with him even more.

He didn't call back, but someone else did wanting to know more about one of my favorite Kristin projects so score one for the ladies, right? That's what I thought.

valhalla here I come

2011-10-03T11:18:00.005-04:00

I haven't roadtripped to another city to see a band play since I was a lowly undergrad, but tagged along with my other metalhead homie and one of his friends for a trek down to Columbus. It's starting to make sense to me why there's a lot of acts skipping Cleveland, because almost any Columbus venue that books heavier bands seems to be infinitely nicer than Peabody's.

I-71 is a terribly dull stretch of highway, but it was enlivened by the small car driving next to us covered with decals of horses and puppies and an action figure glued to the dent on the rear bumper. I did want to take a picture, but Sam was driving fast and the guy driving looked creepy as heck anyway. After an incident a few years ago with a decidedly more clean-cut posse in which some driver thought we were the Devil's spawn and waved a plastic cross at us all the way down 480 to about Twinsburg, I didn't want to incur the wrath of any crazed soul in the boonies once more.

I am so accustomed to Cleveland venues, which are usually grungy and sometimes in parts of the neighborhood where you hope your car won't get broken into, so it was weird to get off the highway and drive through some industrial by-ways only to find the venue off of a main street next to a Kroger and across from some very upscale-looking apartments.

The interior of the place reminded me of the kind of place that has glammy drag shows but I guess it's a goth club, though it was nice to see that there were couches and places to sit down and chill to get away from the noise, and the room where the bands were playing was nice and big. Soundgarden was being played over the PA between sets which was strange given the acts on the bill but not entirely unwelcome either.

Really enjoyed Junius, because I'm a sucker for angst and shimmery shoegaze guitars with an extra bit of crunch. It's nice to have openers that are actually enjoyable as opposed in fifteen minutes this will be over because it's gone on way too long.

I didn't know the first two songs Alcest played (I think they came from the EP) but I felt damn near euphoric when I heard the opening chords of Ecailles de Lune and Solar Song. Two of the dudes next to me where screaming out "FUCK YEAAHHHH!" at the most transcendentally beautiful moments, which was just weird to me, because this is the sound that washes over oceanically though I possibly don't understand the inner workings of the metal bro psyche so maybe I'm missing something. Their other friend with them who was wearing a Burzum shirt looked both surly at the lack of troo kvltness (as this kind of thing is more Faerie than Satan) and the antics of his friends, though his time to get his inner berzerker on was coming.

As came up in the conversation in the car, I'm not really much of a metalhead. I dip my toes in, but I will probably never swim out into the deep end of the Fjord of Viking Testosteronia anytime soon. Props to Enslaved though, for having actual songs and not taking themselves too seriously, and such, even if I did duck out and chill outside and people-watch.

We went looking for food, found none, drove home, and I slept in the backseat, waking up to see an incredible night sky, white clouds, Orion on his side, so beautiful.

And now it's back to the daily, but I feel alive again.

into the grey

2011-09-30T16:20:00.004-04:00

Another week is winding down, and the blur of time is finally starting to lead to a sense of clarity. I lost a great-uncle this week, someone who seemed larger than life, with stories handed down, and there's sundry other little dramas with no need to be spread about the Internet, but last night I took some much needed chill time to get annoyed with my history textbook's YAYCOMMUNISM slant (sure, Stalin killed people but the ones that didn't died were freed from their superstitions so yay Stalin and artistic propaganda posters were keeping it real).

The Randian kid on the other side of the room is absurd to the point of being way too amusing, the know-it-all wasn't there today, and all I can think of is Traktoristy. , the soundtrack to the Hoxha/Uncle Joe Bromance. Get a room comrades, in the name of Winged Eros.

My interest in history is decidedly more ephemeral. I like the weird tendrils that come off of the name and date generica. I'm also convinced that while our book talks about how it was so awesome for women in the Soviet Union as opposed to the Evil Capitalist West, it probably sucked all around everywhere especially for people like me with a big mouth.

But anyways, external drama and dadaesque classroom absurdity aside, I'm heading down to Killumbus to hopefully get a second dose of sweet and heavy tuneage. It's not every day I get to slay my eardrums in good company with the shoegazing metallurgy of Alcest and VikingVikeness like a good little berzerker. Pictures and epic tales hopefully shall follow.

not I'm bitter or anything.

2011-09-30T10:28:00.007-04:00

So there are these flyers everywhere for some kind of sermon series a local church is doing on Song of Solomon, the words of which I love, even though the entire erotica part kind of went over my head as a kid. Lush verse, beautiful words. Me and a friend of mine concluded one night over a dish of pomegranate seeds in an apartment that's served as a crash pad for Indian medical students for the past three years that this book would make a fantastic Bollywood movie, what with all the daughters of Jerusalem chorusing Athenian in the background, love and poetry, dream sequences through cities and gardens, "One blink of your eye, one jewel of your necklace..."

As I get older I find I've gotten more liberal about everything else, and less so about religion. Not in a fundamentalist kind of way, but in the sense that I get really irritated with something with an essence so beautiful and inscrutable and sacred is marketed like a club flyer or a brand of perfume, attempting to tap into the confusion about love and all that icky cootie stuff.

I tried to explain to my coworker and great Pagan of Distinction (whose snarky Naked Gun commentary is on the side) why this kind of thing irritates me. It's hard to explain. Part of it's the graphic designer in me that knows how much full color printing on cardstock costs and thinks the money could have been better spent helping people or something, and the whole marketing to my demographic of white angsty suburban questioning Christians by appealing to the need for love and the desire to be around people my age cuts a little too close in a way that hits a nerve.

The closest analogy I could come to was the packaging of classical music as a commodity to be background music for a dinner party, to make your baby smarter, or to relax to something innocuous. Maybe someone will fall in love with Beethoven after hearing it on a compilation. Bach for Babies, Mozart for Modern Romantics. Whatever. Maybe something like this will be the first step to trigger a spiritual reawakening for some fellow traveling soul like yours truly discovering underground tuneage through a K-Tel indie rock compilation that included the Minutemen and the Melvins. It's not necessarily that the end is so bad, it's just the means and manner in which it comes. And I hate the feeling of being marketed to.

The blatant marketing to the 18-30 demographic, those of us who are on the spiritual kick, and possibly looking for love. What better way, perhaps? Easier to meet someone at church than the bar, gives you a good story later on, maybe you have some mutual friends. Maybe you'll like the same generic indie bands with vaguely spiritual overtones and that new book by whoever's cool this week.

I snark, but there's a little bitter in here too. It's hard for everyone, but it's especially difficult for quirky religious like yours truly who relate to neither the America&Guns&ValuesWhenIt'sConvenient or the Trying-To-Hard-To-Be-Cool-And-Relevant binary. The similar spiritual perspective thing is the prerequisite for anything serious, and even that seems hard to come by. I know there's way more nuance and I'm being harsh, but this is more or less what I come across. If there isn't an astounding lack of intellectual depth, the opposite extreme is to be so philosophical and esoteric that there's no room for life.

I never felt better now

2011-09-28T20:21:00.004-04:00

too much thinking and nothing to say.

and so it begins again

2011-09-27T14:15:00.005-04:00

Like buzzards circling over Hinckley Lake, it's time again for the annual get-off-my-lawnism debate about the current batch of Rock Hall nominees, as if it isn't already more than predictable after how many years of this, post-freedom-rocking boomers. Inevitably, there is a disco act, and in the last five years, a hip-hop act, and some 60's bubblegum pop group that I've never heard of.

Because this city is still stuck somewhere in the vortex of 1975-1987, one would think that the most pressing issue affecting the average Clevelander is not corruption, a craptastic economy, and failing schools, but that their favorite somewhat dorky 70's prog bands aren't liked by people in New York who don't even care that we the relative yokels exist. Still, there seems to be this inherent need within the rustbelt to be validated by the arbiters of some strange standard of cool on either coast, which isn't all that cool anyway, considering that these are people are mostly industry hacks and hangers-on.

While these debates make for slightly less divisive conversation than politics over morning coffee, it's a source of amusement to read the comments on Cleveland.com and visualize all these grown men (I'm assuming they're mostly dudes older than me, sorry male species!) getting angry on the Internet due to the perceived snubbing of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

It's also amusing to me to read comments referring to Metallica as a "Poor Man's Led Zeppelin" and Rush as "a garage band that plays the same cord over and over again," and why is Parliament-Funkadelic in there because they don't rock because obviously they've been listening to Atomic Dog instead of Maggot Brain. Of course there's the terribly stereotypical and borderline comments about hip-hop, allegations of political correctness, the required appearance by the local legion of KISS fans, and people all but threatening to fight each other over the merits of Jethro Tull vs. Donna Summer.

Anyways, I talk tuneage with my fellow peons all the time, and it gets snarky, but it's nothing to come to fisticuffs over.

respite

2011-09-26T08:40:00.003-04:00

I haven't been good about posting pictures because I'm a PC person who owns a Mac, but these are from Dike 14 on Saturday, which is an awesome place.

I've been a mess these past few weeks, with everything going on, and the change of seasons, and the feeling of stasis. I went for a good two weeks of eating dinner alone unable to string two words together in conversation, but yesterday was beautiful even if it began feeling utterly overwhelmed and broken. Intangible divinity once again transcended at the moment of my leastness and deepest doubts in ways that are nearly impossible to explain, and it ended up being the first really good day I've had in months.

I meet up with Tangerine for the first time since this summer, and epic plans were altered to instead hang out at the cemetery because it was a beautiful day and it was close by. Lake View is massive and we went down the "nature walk" path and ended up somewhere completely different and somewhat deserted, with my nice camera getting lots of use.

I love this angel so much.

Shadows of leaves on the bronze doors of the tombs.

daddy long legs spiders guarding mildewing silk flowers. This crypt had this weird echo effect which meant we were saying all sorts of absurd things to hear the reverberation.

This one I'd never seen before and was in the middle of the woods.

Japanese maples turning colors, the way these branches bend is beautiful to me.

This was creepy enough from this angle, and then we realized from walking around to the other side that the little boys were naked, which is even creepier. I don't understand. By this time, we'd wandered around a lot and got hungry so we got pizza and gelato and sat at the little cafe tables on Murray Hill conversating until it started to rain and we both needed to get home anyway.

I got home later than I thought I would, and while buying earplugs at the drugstore for the show tonight, got a call from Muk, who was down at Edgewater and wanted to hang out. I didn't want to bother with opening acts for the show, so I joined him on the pier as we watched the waves break on the rocks and talked about everything until the park ranger started coming around and I had live music to go see.

Got to Peabody's about five minutes before Katatonia got onstage, got my much needed catharsis of moody rock and Swedish accents, the only sour note being the drunk blonde metalhead Snooki type who tried to start a pit and kept slamming into me ostensibly because I was about the same size and didn't have anyone with me. I'm too old for the mosh thing and didn't want to get into a chickfight when there's good music to get introspective to so I got out of her way after she grabbed my shirt by the bra straps and started pulling me, and found more chill people on the side (kids with their confused parents) to stand by.

Still, it was a good show, they played a long set and I was able to lose myself in sweet sounds and indulge my inner techie geek by checking out the chords, deciphering tunings and time signatures because I spent my teens reading guitar magazines instead of Seventeen. Most of the crowd except for the girls were chill. Seriously, ladies, you're doing us females who dig the heavy sounds a disfavor.

No pictures, as I had the little point and shoot and forgot to replace the memory card. Thankfully Randal's more organized than me and has the visuals.

slow suicide's no way to go

2011-09-24T21:23:00.006-04:00

A routine morning at the family leads to finding out that one relative has a week to live, that another one much closer is veering closer and closer to a total collapse and there's nothing any of us can do. I don't know what to say, and leave, not knowing what to do.

But it's so beautiful out, and how many more days like this will there be, so I go to the nature preserve that's open twice a year, take my camera and shoot pictures of leaves and trees, of reeds taller than me, of spiderwebs and deadwood, basking in the sun filtering through the green and the first red colors of fall, having awkward small talk with senior citizen birdwatchers, walking ahead so I can be alone with God and immerse myself in the sound of crickets and cicadas.

I want more green and flowers, but the botanical garden has some big event so I wander through the art museum looking at photos of the midwest and its broken dreams, ancient sculptures from Persia and Greece and Byzantium, the bright colors of oil paintings. I know that this is only temporary solace, but it is solace nonetheless.

I need sleep, need so many intangible things and wish for things that will never happen in this all too short life. I don't know what to say, what to do to make anything better. I don't know if any of us really does.

retain a sense of humor

2011-09-23T08:14:00.008-04:00

A possibly innocent man is dead, REM broke up but that really didn't matter much, I still don't care what some politician says about someone else, my brain seems unable to function creatively with the cocktail of seasonal cold virus and rust belt allergens manifesting late in life.

I don't know what to do with myself when I have a night off of work and no art center, and these hours of daylight are becoming rarer and more precious, so I walk through the neighborhood, go down to the shore which is beautiful and pastel and almost completely emptied, even the water is subdued.

A stack of CDs from the library, more books on my shelves than I ever seem to have time to read, a feeling of increasing disconnectedness when I half-think about calling up whoever but due to not wanting to bother anyone, not knowing what to say as it is. As it's gotten easier to interact, it gets harder to connect and there's less to connect with as the inevitable pairoffs become more frequent. There's a lot of things I don't mind doing by myself, but being too relational for my own good, I don't like to do it all the time and one can't hide behind the creative all the time without going a little crazy.

I can't see you but I see what's in my way

2011-09-20T08:58:00.003-04:00

Waiting for the bus, trying to navigate this whole insurance agent thing, driving through the rain to the east side sucking on cough drops, listening to Janelle Monae, zoned out, but still able to find my way, sitting in a room next to a dusty vending machine reading as the radio plays country music, coming home and turning on the radio to hear an Amber alert that breaks my heart as I drive down Harvard past boarded-up houses and steelyard bars and then coming down Denison to see the street blocked off and I find out that there was a shooting up there, and I just want to go home, so tired and wet.

But I haven't been to the art center in awhile, didn't get much done, but hung out with a fellow creative, puzzled over sheets and shapes of copper, jars of colored powders and chunks of glass and plotted future projects, deferring work on Paper From Hell Number 1 another day.

I just want to take a half day off and listen to Neil Young and watch the rain, shake the sleepiness, the sore throat and ennui, the discontentedness so unnecessary, sift through the halfhearted wants and incoherent thoughts. There are so many.

vignetted

2011-09-17T21:56:00.002-04:00

Conversations of frustration over coffee, a glimpse of what feels like a third world country black market down the street, best-laid plans go so awry, ran into a friend of mine from high school and his wife, haven't seen them in ten years... they've got two kids and lots of tattoos and he's so deadly serious in ways that I saw glimpses of when he was a typical teenager with lots of extra cash for fast cars and a CD collection, helped paint a front porch around the corner, went to the bibliotheque to get books for the paper I'm writing and bring pickles for Randal and came out to find the little back window broken and all the contents of my glove compartment in the front seat.

Awesome.

So I call the campus police and just stand there with the art books scattered where I dropped them and the weather is beautiful, the cop really nice and wonders why I'm so chill but the reality hasn't completely kicked in and it's really not that bad (the car is still there, mostly intact, nothing's missing as the thief isn't interested in books of Byzantine folklore or Alice in Chains CDs).

So I head back from errand-running with all intentions of catching the Cloud Nothings at Ingenuity Fest under the fantastically beautiful bridge, but it's not safe to walk the almost-hood alone and there's no parking to be found anywhere, as the spaces close by are reserved for More Important People, and the one space I did find I relinquished to the gigantic pimptastic white Buick that I cut off, only to have an angry figure in a shiny dress and long nails come storming up to my car and I'm not going to get into a fight over a parking space on a dark street so I acquiesce.

After circling around the block a few more times, getting cut off by countless Lexuses and minivans that either don't care or never drive downtown, I'm fed up with everyone, tell my friends waiting for me this, and while one of my very good guy friends offers to come and pick me up when he gets off work I don't want to put him through the hassle and I'm just too tired to be around all the stimulation, everything's starting to hit.

Too many people, too much noise. So I'm at a coffeeshop down the street on the gold coast reading about Russian art movements, drinking tea, the barista's playing 90s hits and I forgot about all those one-hit wonders that weren't very good, but the general peace here is comforting even in the ennui.

antisocialite

2011-09-16T22:37:00.004-04:00

A cup of black tea scented mango and an almost-finished paper, the comfortable introverted companionship, the acquaintance made of Kandinsky in the name of attempting to making academic absurdity bearable. I can't help but try even with the work hard now/slack later ethos that's characterized my entire academic life. I barely have the ambition to be an artist or a writer, let alone pursue degrees and that kind of trajectory. Instead, I mess around, feed my brain, hang out with the souls I enjoy when I get the chance to.

The thought of sitting in a classroom of unbearableness after a long week led to a long-deferred and much-needed lunch hour excursion of food consumption, hanging out at the cemetery, and exploring the old Chinatown and due to my lack of photographic posting, I've decided to tag along with Randal's 30 day challenge thing. So here's the self-portrait, face obscured by signage and reflection to protect the guilty.

It's good for one's soul to be out in the fall air, walking and feeling momentarily free. We were made to walk and stand, not sit crouched at desks and sedentary. Hopefully I'll get to hang out under the bridge downtown but that doesn't look like it's in the plans tonight as I finish what I can before the place closes, thankful for weekends and the precious crystalline interludes of revelation like the first time I heard this album and it blew my mind.

chop chop

2011-09-15T14:41:00.005-04:00

"Come back in six weeks to get trimmed up, want some product?" Not so much. Another six months, maybe. He probably cares more about my hair than I do, but that's how he gets paid.

But I come in and some people don't recognize me, someone mistakes me for someone else, I'm told it looks nice, and the big cheese says it looks "professional" which is perhaps a compliment but makes me feel like a stiff. I say the art nouveau has been rubbing off on me before realizing that most people don't know what I'm talking about, hence the recent love of floor-length skirts and dangly earrings and my inner goth kid trying to reconcile with the daily grind of adulthood.

Attempts at creative and academic writing diminished by a sore throat and a sore brain, assuaged by cups of tea and vending machine tylenol and strange and arty things on the Internet.

original angsta

I want to go to the House on the Rock really bad.

Pretty stuff...

she bangs the drums

2011-09-14T20:58:00.000-04:00

A pile of papers on the desk finally close to being cleared, of spinning plates and juggling in this three ring circus of peonage, smiling and picking at my food, scavenging after the events for lukewarm coffee and leftover fruit, keeping the snark in check and realizing that letting out too much of my brains tends to have dire consequences among my superiors.

Having survived awkward social situations over lunch where I observed the angstings of fellow twentysomethings, awkward lunch dates, and marveled at the culinary generica of fine dining, endured an hour of the grind of history and being fed up with every -ism in existence, as we guess which one of us is going to say something in class first. I grew to expect absurdity when I was an undergrad, but now that I'm not just going along to get through, I get restless and my thoughts shoot off like fireworks in every direction, but instead of speaking up because my words and thoughts get so tangled, I doodle furiously in the margins and try not to roll my eyes as everyone talks about women who were totally down with the revolution.

No matter who's in charge, no matter what they say, the peonage get screwed in one way or another by the more powerful. It happens under czars and Dear Leaders and Mr. Presidents. The cast is different, the story the same.

I'm pondering all this as I miss the first bus and walk downtown to catch the next, in no real hurry, watching all the other working stiffs and the long lines of cars, the corner of the street where there are people sleeping when I ride in. 1 in 6 people in my country are living in poverty. Those of us who are really fortunate like yours truly hover just slightly above that line. Others will continue to bounce from one prestigious position to another, raking in the cash and perks. I wonder how they sleep at night.

A nap, a phone conversation, going up to church to wait for my fellow musicians to get there. Nobody's around so I pull out some old drumsticks and bang away at cymbals, toms and snare, surprised that the little bit of muscle memory is actually doing something even though I really don't know what I'm doing. One of my coworkers gave me a set she got from one of my other coworkers that I used to play when I lived at the old place and the roommate wasn't home, and I can at least do the Meg White if not the John Bonham. No one's here as it is so I can make all the noise I want and by the time they show up I've locked into some kind of rhythm. It's cathartic and I wonder why I don't do it more. It's something I'd love to do well.

summations

2011-09-13T21:44:00.003-04:00

I've staked out my corner at the coffeeshop where I sketch out this paper, thankful for the invention of Google Docs, answering the phone from my mom to find out my dad's in the hospital again (it's just precautionary like they always say, but there's the part of me that still worries), tapping my pen to a Bad Religion song that reminds me of senior year, pondering in a way that's not quite optimistic, but not really despairing either. My mom calls me to be sure I'm not dead, because I'm terrible at responding to text messages.

I've had a breakthrough in inspiration, a way around the problem, attempting to summarize the threads of globalization, my favorite mid 19th and early 20th century art movements and their expressions of geopolitical realities in 3-5 pages. I know I'm insane for trying this because it's more or less a dissertation, but it's better than parroting back what someone wants to hear or read. I know it doesn't matter because it's not for a degree or grade but it's a personal thing.

The couple at the table is talking about high school, about cheerleaders and jocks and freaks. The academics flash their credentials, the older women at the place of employment swap juicy details and complain about there not being enough rich men to have affairs with, the overlords obsess upon minutiae, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with people, because this all seems so stupid but then I'm sure the way I do things seems just as crazy if not moreso.

the facts we hate

2011-09-12T15:00:00.007-04:00

So much said by others so much better, I'm in the same place I was at this time last year more or less. If I think about it all too much I get depressed, for good reason one could say. I remember thinking that things were going to get messed up really soon but I don't think I realized to what extent and to what extent these kind of things had been going on for years. Ignorance is bliss, and that becomes the pursuit of happiness. Disorder and war machinery that keeps turning.

Arguments in class over the semantics of genocide. Who cares what some historian thinks? Who cares what conference this paper was presented at? Who cares? A million dead and the argument is over linguistics rather than truth? People want to hear themselves talk and sound intellectual. If your side screwed up you should own up to it. I can't whitewash the things done in my God's name, and neither should you about whatever ideology or credo you hold to whatever that is.

You're so negative, someone once told me, stressing positivity over reality. Sometimes this is what's real.

the facts we hate
we'll never meet walking down the road
everybody yelling "hurry up, hurry up!"
but I'm waiting for you, I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts

what is this world coming to?
both sides are right but both sides are murdered
I give up, why can't they?
I must not think bad thoughts

the civil wars and the uncivilized wars
conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace
the food cooks poorly and everyone goes hungry
from then on it's
dog eat dog, dog eat body, and body eat dog
I can't go down there, I can't understand it
I'm a no good coward
and an american too, a north american that is
not a south or a central or a native american
oh, I must not think bad thoughts

I'm guilty of murder of
innocent men, innocent women, innocent children
thousands of them
my planes, my guns, my money, my soul
my blood on my hands
it's all my fault
I must not think bad thoughts

lo-fi love song

2011-09-10T22:31:00.005-04:00

It's always a pleasure when my cousins come up, especially the one my sister's age who works in IT for an evil tween clothing company and has to work a 12-hour shift tomorrow for 9/11, which is also his birthday, though he's not the most social of people by any means. Just in case, you know, terrorists try to bring down the glittery pink site of Tweenage Western Decadent Strumpetry Bieberland, or something.

The conversation gets spirited as the wine flows freely though we don't delve into politics this time, which is probably good. My teenage cousins discuss their favorite bands earnestly in a way I remember doing, getting mad at the kids in school who like the one song they heard on the radio and saying that's the best band ever. I remember when it mattered so much, and now it doesn't. I don't say much because I'm losing touch with the pulse of the youth, and soon I'll be like their teachers that they make fun of for wanting to be in touch with POPULAR CULTURE.

My dad is tired from working all day and ends up sleeping on the couch in the other room, but I go back to get my laundry and we end up hanging out, playing guitar, listening to music. He's been going through his hundreds of cassette tapes recorded with friends on a double-tape deck with a microphone hanging from the ceiling and found one that had songs he wrote for my mom, twenty years into their marriage, played on three chords on the amp we got when I first decided I really liked making noise.

His voice is wavering, the words simple, the sentiments deep, the uncomplicated thoughts of first impressions and insecurities of questions of himself and God, the guitar swirling with the flange, fading out as he runs out of words. I ask him if he's ever played this for her and he says no and for some reason this moment moves me in a way I can't explain.

I drive home through the dark streets, considering trying to catch the last half of Studio-A-Rama but by then Scrawl will be done and the night is beautiful and for some reason 80's thrash on the radio sounds like the best thing ever, so I drive with the windows down, the greasy rain on my shoulders, my hair wild, missing late night drives of spilling words, knowing that there just isn't time or words to say what's there.

storm in my house

2011-09-10T07:34:00.005-04:00

Maybe it's some last vestiges of picket fence American dreams when I've wanted a place of my own, when I see for sale signs for little 1920s urban cottages in my neighborhood with stained glass windows or century old Victorian-era rowhouse townhomes with slate roofs and wild roses growing up the porch within walking distance of the water in Lakewood, knowing that with no credit history (no credit cards, no debt, no car payment), and little income, this would be almost impossible, and I'm not the world's greatest maintainer of things. Keeping an apartment clean and the garden weeded is hard enough, and I live alone. I really don't need all that space and hassle and wouldn't want to have my life and money tied up in something that seems to be more of an albatross than equity at this point in history.

So I went into the kitchen this morning, and realized that not only is it raining outside, it's dripping in my kitchen. A plastic bucket and some pots and pans on top of the fridge, going up to the attic to find the source, which looks like piles of insulation and boards of dubious stability. I'll leave this to the experts and my landlord, and head to the empty house I grew up in to do laundry and drink coffee. Plans of seeing Scrawl tonight look like they'll be derailed by both inclement weather and family functionals. It won't be so bad.

best of the blotter: gum, guns, drugs, and turtles

2011-09-08T22:58:00.000-04:00

DISORDERLY CONDUCT,

CHRISTOPHER DRIVE: During the evening of Aug. 29, a resident reported an older man pointing a rifle at the complainant, his wife, and his dog while they were walking by.

The resident asked the man with the rifle if it was loaded, after observing the red laser coming from it.

The elderly man with the rifle told them he was just aligning his laser on his .308 rifle and need a long distance to do it.

He told the officer he detached the laser and waved it across the street, a story with which the complainant disagreed.

The man with the rifle was issued a citation for disorderly conduct.

NOISE COMPLAINT, NORTH STREET: Police responded shortly after 10 p.m. on Sept. 3 to a report of “very loud and scary music that sounds like it’s coming from Waterfall Trail or Twin Lakes Trail.” Police tracked the commotion to Waterfall Trail, where the revelers were advised to turn the sound down and disband the party at 11 p.m.

DISTURBANCE, EAST WASHINGTON STREET: A clerk at the BP Station reported Sept. 3 that a woman and her daughter had been in the station making a purchase and that she then accused him of throwing her change back at her. “The clerk countered that he had accidentally dropped a dime on the floor. The clerk said a witness backed his story up that “he did not throw coins at the delusional, out of control customer.”

DISTURBANCE, RIDGEBURY BOULEVARD: Police responded Sept. 1 to a report of a boy stepping out in front of passing motorists on the street and blowing his trumpet. Officers advised the boy to put his trumpet away and march on.

VANDALISM, NORTH INDUSTRIAL PARKWAY: Representatives from Digestive Disease reported a second-floor window of their building shattered some time between 5:20 p.m. Sept. 1 and 8:20 a.m. Sept. 2. Police had no suspects or damage estimates at the time of the report.

SNAPPING TURTLE, SPRINGBROOK: A large snapping turtle was loitering in the parking lot of a Springbrook Drive apartment complex around 7:30 p.m., Aug. 28. A concerned resident told police that the turtle could be injured or could injure somebody else. An officer responded and escorted the turtle into a nearby creek. The turtle readily entered the water.

BEREA

COMPLICITY, SPRAGUE ROAD: Police arrested a 31-year-old store clerk after he gave money to one of two youngsters to steal a sign.

A resident who put up a handmade sign urging people not to shop at a nearby store saw a boy on a bike Aug. 27 take the sign and leave. The report said the man has had an ongoing problem with his signs disappearing from his yard.

Police found two boys at the store, one of whom was described as the culprit. The 13-year-old said the clerk gave him $11 to steal the sign. The boy also told police he was offer $20 to egg the house and shout obscenities at the resident. The boy gave police a $1 and $10 bill from his pocket.

The clerk said he had “international” lawyers and the case would be dismissed if he did give the boy the money. He also said he had a “billion dollar” family and that “We run America,” according to the police report.

The Rocky River man was cited for complicity regarding the theft since he caused an irresponsible person to commit an offense.

SCARY MOVIE, WARREN ROAD: Someone called police just after midnight on Aug. 19 out of concern for their neighbor. The caller told police they heard arguing and a female screaming for help. Police responded, but found all the drama was for naught. Apparently, the neighbors were just watching a scary movie and the volume was a little high.

DISTURBANCE, WHTNEY ROAD: An anonymous caller reported that it sounded like someone was shooting a gun in the neighborhood around 10:30 p.m. Aug. 20.

Officers arrived at the scene and spoke with several people, though no one else heard or saw anything resembling the report.

The noise was later identified when officers discovered a resident on the fifth floor of an apartment complex dropping bags of clothing off his balcony. That resident explained that dropping the clothes to the ground was easier than taking them down in the elevator.

Not Much Fun on Party Bus

Police found an unoccupied party bus marked "Rock It Cleveland" pulled over on Sprague Road near Pearl Road about 5 a.m. Aug. 28.

There was no sign of the partiers. Officers called the number on the bus, but the person who answered said he did not know why the vehicle was there.

He promised to have it moved shortly.

Suspicious Bag

A caller didn't like the looks of a large red bag sitting on the side of the road at Royalton and Prospect Aug. 26.

Police found the bag had an address on it and was advertising a garage sale.

An alarm brought police to Twilight Boutique, 11025 Prospect Rd., just before midnight Sunday.

Officers found the glass broken and some products, including herbal incense, missing.
In addition, the cash register had been picked up, but was left behind.

The product sold at the store is marketed as incense, but is often rolled into cigarettes and smoked by teens and young adults for what they call a "legal high."

The leafy material in the packets is treated with chemicals that produce a marijuana-like high when smoked, authorities say.

DRUG NOTE, NORTHLAND: A Northland Drive woman returned home on Aug. 19 around 10:50 p.m., and found out that one of her neighbors had given her 12-year-old brother a note asking if the woman would sell the neighbor marijuana or pills. The woman filed a report with police, but no arrests have been made.

THEFT, GIRARD DRIVE: About $130 worth of chewing gun was stolen overnight Aug. 26 from a car in the 400 block. The owner of the car is a sales representative for the company that makes gum. The thief did not take a wallet or a backpack that the owner found outside his car.

nothing to offer but confusion

2011-09-08T09:57:00.005-04:00

Two extra hours of sleep mean the world, the moments of nerve-wracking, the strange feeling when one finds out someone of one's teenage acquaintance got arrested for murder, of peon ex machina from meetings of infinite awkwardness, of possibly being the 'missed connection in a Craigslist ad for the first time to my knowledge (I don't remember saying anything to him, and think I only looked back because I got that sixth sense of being looked at and wanted to see who was doing the looking), of strange characters that I need to be nice to as a civil servant though they give me the creeps and I can't tell if they're just socially awkward or if they're creepy, though it seems to be the latter more often than not when the age gap is bigger than half your age plus seven. I don't envy the awkward position of the male species, especially the non-Type-A's.

I do not hide my feelings well even when I say nothing. The perpetual smile inherited from my father is both a blessing and curse, though it's harder to hide my anger than my cynicism (because I hold almost nothing except God to be sacred and so everything is ripe for snark), and when I deal with the creeps and those who come on too strong, I have to force my cadence into monotone, avoid eye contact, detach out of risk of getting pulled in.

Every time I think of turning my string of non-degree kicks-and-giggles classes into something like a real piece of semi-worthless paper, I sit in a class where I am condescended to and my synapses are stimulated only the absurdity of immature undergrads and sycophantic adults, and the grad student tales of department politics that remind me exactly of why I used to call my mom up every other week and claim I was going to drop out of school, and why I didn't want to continue on to do an MFA or literary crit. I know I have the brains, but when the classes don't grab me, when it's theoretical or revisionist or regurgitating, I check out.

I like to read things that are written well, that make me want to learn more, filled with passion and brimming with brilliance, not the self-indulgence of academic deconstruction written for conferences and journals that no one reads, kind of like the ivory tower counterpart to Yngwie Malmsteen albums that are owned only by uber-musicians who subscribe to Guitar World to read John Petrucci's columns religiously. It's boring as hell for everyone else and there's nothing to capture one's inspiration.

And I've been so tensed up, as I always am when there is change and when I'm dealing with Powers That Be whom I distrust, but I caught the early bus home and made a joyful noise tonight practicing for Sunday's music with dear friends who are also fantastically fun musicians to play with, everything loud and loose, and I need to get back to my parents' house and find my distortion pedals to add to the reverb and tremolo waves from the amplifier, laughing and messing with harmonies and key changes, hanging out in the cool already-fall night talking about books and museums and weirdness.

A late night dinner that didn't turn out so well, another comfortingly cloudy day, a morning to drink coffee with the neighbor who's come by to fix the drain and with whom discourse of caffeination and good conversation was had. And now I'm here, and it's not so bad...

healing waters

2011-09-05T20:39:00.003-04:00

Some tension on the flesh-and-blood end had me wanting to bail before dinner, but a cooling-off walk around the block with the closer of my two siblings helped my troubled soul to chill out, and I made a much more graceful exit post-dessert, driving home through bleak streets and grey clouds, attempting to make sense of a sea of emotions and being unable to, venting to God because I don't want to bother anyone on a holiday weekend and He seems to be okay with my salty mouth and aching soul laid bare.

But with a full gas tank and looking so melancholy that even the attendants were trying to cheer me up, I began to drive towards the little bit of golden I could see in the sky, detouring from the route home to the lake when the clouds suddenly became so panoramic and vast and a deep blue-grey swirling over the hemisphere, and a band of golden on the horizon over the white-cap-flecked water, I could see the surf from the exit and knew I could find solace here.

Two of my former softball teammates were hanging out on the pier, people I didn't know very well but we were euphoric under the kaleidoscopic clouds deepening to dusky rose and blazing gold and rich blues over the swirling water crashing into the rocks and over the walkway like the ocean, the wind blowing my hair out as I huddled in a hoodie on the platform, wishing I had my camera, but knowing I'd miss this moment if I ran back to get it. The 1-pixel snapper on the phone and my memory would have to do.

We walked down to the beach, where the surfers were out and the sun set over pools in the sand, as seagulls flew silhouetted into the horizon and the water glided within inches of our feet as the darkness deepened. We walked back and I watched the water swirl some more before heading home, wondering why the turbulence calms me so intensely.

turning leaves

2011-09-05T11:30:00.004-04:00

The rain so soothing last night, the soft rush of breeze and comforting grey, for melancholy music and the first preludes of the autumnal. Last year at this time as my living situation unraveled, I had driven out to the End of Civilization to stargaze caffeinated with my east-siders, but a year later I find the unplanned more solitude ever more comforting, as I settle in, having been here almost a year now, seeing the garden begin to go to seed, even as the zinnias and sunflowers are vibrant for awhile longer, as I'm ripping out more mint and pulling out weeds grown way too tall, where did August go, do I really miss it all that much...

It'd be a good day for museums if they were open, but it's sufficient for introversion, for reading books and pondering, for fighting the inevitable entropy of apartment life, not having to be anywhere until much later, beginning to tune out the warplanes flying overhead for the airshow at the lake, cup after cup of tea. I need days like this more often.

codas

2011-09-03T21:50:00.009-04:00

The heat permeating, the inability to cool down, hair metal on the radio all weekend, no breeze to speak of and I end up spending the afternoon fleeing the heat and Getting Things Taken Care Of in strip malls and big box stores like a Real American because I need groceries and work clothes and art supplies. I've spent the night drinking tea and listening to 70's rock, swirling paint around to Skynyrd and Sabbath, relocating to the balcony because it finally feels good out here. I know it's the weekend of cookouts and revelry for the Peonage and their overlords, but I'm just not there right now.

We went to visit my great uncle this morning at the nursing home, and it's the first time I've seen him since he had a stroke a couple weeks ago. His words come slower, and he apologizes constantly for what he deems boring talk ("I just can't do the small talk anymore") but this is the best conversation I've ever had with him. Instead of sitting alone in his house listening to the radio where people keep talking about buying gold, he's found people there to talk to, a priest he likes (he's never liked organized religion because he thinks it's all about parting fools with their money, I understand this), a nice lady friend down the hall "Nothing romantic, we just talk about old times. I need an alliance now like I need a hole in my head..." He knows this will probably be where he spends his last days trying to learn how to walk again, how to speak the way he once did, but as strange as this is, it might be a good way to end, a place where there's people to talk to and take care of him so he won't die alone.

I hate nursing homes slightly less than funeral homes, but this place is beautiful and if I become unable to take care of myself I'd rather be there than a lot of places. Catholics do the nursing home thing well, that whole sanctity of life/having the funds to stay there I guess, and I'm relieved I no longer have to fear going to check on him at his house and hoping he's still alive because I don't know what I'd do otherwise.

The prayers I struggle most with are those involving the changing of souls, because it's just such an impossible thing for me to understand that divine calculus of how it all works, but between this time and the last time I saw him he's a different person or rather not different but alive in a way that he wasn't before even as he grows closer to shedding the mortal coil now after 90 years of life and disappointments, a childhood in poverty, the hell of the Pacific theater (which he still doesn't talk about), an unhappy marriage with a woman who couldn't see past her own issues("She wasn't all there, but I didn't treat her right. I supported her financially but not emotionally..."), a daughter in worse shape than he is, a house full of tchotchkes worth nothing, if this is the closest thing to heaven how tragic is that?

He used to always talk about money and a good job and being a decent person being the ultimate most important thing and for the first time in 92 years, he's finally started talking to God after being so bitter and so stubborn for so long. I've never heard him apologize for anything before. I've never heard him say that what you have doesn't matter. I've never seen him so peaceful, so ready to face a pending mortality, ready to let go of all the other things he clung to so desperately. I'm glad he can't see me crying because I just couldn't stop.

driving music

2011-09-01T22:37:00.005-04:00

Things that sound absolutely amazing when one is driving home at night through empty streets past a glittering skyline, the perfect soundtrack to equal parts euphoria and resignation. I miss my late night Cleveland drives so much.

the last summer night

2011-09-01T20:14:00.004-04:00

Writers block in attempting anything creative, the tap has run dry and the Sea of Stories is so fast that I'd drown attempting to dive in and come up with some kind of treasure.

But there's studying to do, and a decent flow of people coming through, the student diverting the creeps away. A half hour longer and I'll be home to be back here again.

paper scraps and paper chase

2011-09-01T08:44:00.003-04:00

Being Peonage of the Towering Slab of Ivory, I hear a lot of people talk about their degrees, the degrees they want, the degrees that someone else has or doesn't, and there is some degree of cultural capital in certain circles where you're validated by how many letters are after your name or where you went to school, what you studied, and how far you went, where you got published, what conference you presented at, who you know.

And then there is the vicious cycle of a cramped job market, where everyone has the same credentials but possibly more experience or better connections, where you don't get called back because you don't have some piece of paper, or if you have too many pieces. I only got my gig of relative underemployment due to not graduating in time and learning the hard way after not getting called back for looking too overqualified or for having the right credentials but not the 20 years of experience that belonged to others. In Proverbs, it's said to be wise is to ask God for neither poverty nor riches and that's what I did, and that's what I got. While the interpersonals can get complicated, it's truly everywhere.

My peers defer adulthood and keep taking out more loans, to find out that they've screwed themselves over because that golden ticket never did materialize. Most of my fellow grad-schoolers pursued other dreams instead or held out for that Really Good Job because they considered themselves too good to do what I do. I've got free tuition and really good health insurance and a couple good coworker homies, which makes up for the lack of pay most of the time, but to think that one is entitled based on having such and such a degree or two, when there's little work ethic and even less decency towards others, starts seeming absurd.

Self-perpetuation of those already entrenched, ageism of the you're too old or you're so young, the stress of maintaining image and lifestyle, of making a good impression and paying the mortgage while the domestic life disintegrates. Maybe this is why people like Jonathan Franzen novels and Desperate Housewives. At least someone's suburban misery is worse.

Suburban desperation has long been a cultural trope and one I've found ridiculous and overwrought, but I've never existed in the world of the super-suburbs, just the working-class one where the people in my life who went to college ended up being truck drivers or stay-at-home moms who used their brains to help us use ours, so I've never truly understood this, and living in the city means that I see less of it, so when I do, it stands out intensely.

And as education becomes more to do with becoming good little cogs with culturally appropriate opinions, and higher education a lucrative enterprise that's bought into with the expectation of economic payoff, of higher wages and greater prestige, more people have bought in and it's gotten more cramped, and I watch more and more people reduced tears and bitterness because the system they paid so much into is not producing the returns that were expected.

And then the people who do have the qualifications who got where they were more or less by accident of birth, of getting in while the getting was good back when there were times of relative economic prosperity, when degrees and diplomas meant more, look down on everyone else who is not so lucky.

These are things that I don't deal with as much, only observe. I hover in social limbo between suburbanites and those that have little to nothing. I can't say that I've dropped out of this system, but I've left the rat racing to others, but I see it all around me and sometimes I wish I was doing a little bit better so maybe I could travel somewhere outside the United States just once, or maybe not live upstairs from someone, and realize that there's still residue of these American dreams that have fueled all sorts of bad things. We've all got our struggles, and those of us who preferred learning for the sake of learning and art for the sake of art are the ones living paycheck to paycheck, but I still feel like I made the better trade.

really should be leaving but I stay...

2011-08-28T22:07:00.004-04:00

Small interludes, veering from place to place and mood to mood, unable to truly connect, and finding momentary peace in pews with a coffee mug in hand and in front of canvas, coloring in shapes, wondering why I keep returning to the same shades when I want something different. Maybe it was the glass of wine that had me admit to a table of relatives that sometimes I feel like I'm stuck, not that I mind where I'm at, but it's that sense of never being able to transcend it that is starting to sink in, while wondering if it even matters.

It's where I'm at I guess, wondering why if the feeling of being in a rut is just a feeling or if it's truth. It's not that I liked it when everything was changing and in a state slightly more organized than total chaos, but the routine, the structures immovable, something about it is getting to me.

Some talk of moving, of starting over, but one can't undo what's been done, unhappiness is as natural occurrence here as anywhere, things left behind will inevitably recur because no matter where you go, you bring with it who you are, for better or worse. Maybe I'm jealous that I'm too rooted and afraid. I don't know.

the soul is tired and I want to go home

2011-08-26T10:53:00.006-04:00

Surrounded by piles of paper, of misdeeds done and handshakes by men who play dirty and remain in power though dirty tricks and apathy. Rather than the stained glass and soaring spires that visually sooth my aching soul, instead it's clippings and sterile city records, a mounting pile of evidence blatant. Men in suits with big smiles and a way with looking like they care about us.

And you wonder why I've been more surly recently. Both parties steal from the poor to feed the rich who are we kidding, but go on, put your hopes on some mere mortal or another, play your partisan cards, they'll work great at that new casino that'll save the city, those platitudes that will save the country, we're all losers in one way or another.

And you ask what I think not knowing the can of worms you've just opened. You really don't want to know. I don't believe that any of us can save the world, we're unable to save ourselves, we don't want to be saved, and we're fooling ourselves to think we can truly save others.

welcome to the occupation

2011-08-24T08:40:00.010-04:00

We the Peonage endeavored to traverse downtown to see Public Square, known officially but never called "Monumental Park," transformed into something quite Germanic. One of my friends jokes about us being a theme park for New Yorkers, and more or less we're the rust belt equivalent of Liechtenstein, though conceivably for budgetary purposes, it was cheaper to build a fake beer garden and append signage in front of Tower City Mall instead of jetting to a more scenic locale.

The transformation of the familiar into Destructed-Epcot-Lite was surreal to say the least, with the barricades keeping the masses from sullying the red carpet, and this must be how it feels to be invaded and colonized by another country. Life goes on, but it's different, and in this case, it's well dressed strangers and their hangers-on, who make business deals with our overlords while the masses have to rearrange, who doubtless mock the backwardness and provinciality of the natives.

Sadly, this doesn't look all that different from the everyday.

Articles agreed vppon by the lordes and other of the Quenes Maiesties pryuy counsayle, for a reformation of their seruauntes in certayne abuses of apparell thereby to gyue example to al other lordes, noble men and gentlemen.

Randal is more adept with the snarky commentary on the scenery, but as the female half of the Peonage, I was quite amused when a gaggle of Bright Young Things exited the hotel by Playhouse Square declared us "Fashion Disasters," because high school never really does end, it's just that the Brightest Young Things migrate to Happening Places leaving the lesser Bright Young Things to be big fish in small ponds joining the political machines or networking their way to some degree of power) and all of us lower in the pecking order who never expected much and are to some degree content.

I don't know what's acceptable for men these days, but I'm sure that my lack of brand name jewelry, clothing, handbag or shoes, didn't pass muster with people who have nothing else to do but their nails and hair. I might be a fashion disaster to those on either coast, but it's better than being a victim, maybe.

But being that I come from humble means in a humble city, having grown up in sartorially challenged Parmastan and eventually finding a style later in life than others, I find this amusing to the highest degree. All existential angst aside, my life is pretty awesome, I hang out and work with some pretty awesome people, and there's no pressure to be anything. We're the city of slackers and lovable losers, who love our tragic sports teams and grandparents' food. It's not a bad place to be.

some of us just rust...

2011-08-22T07:55:00.005-04:00

Back to the daily grind and a pile of workish emails to go through waiting for the caffeine to kick in after a weekend of anything but the monotony, of what felt like the last chance at a summer vacation, spending the last day riding my bike to the lake to sit on the rocks and walk on the beach, read books on the front porch, make food for the week with the harvest of the garden.

The coffee is bitter without the accompanying conversation, smiling a a reflex, knowing that my face betrays most emotion, trying to laugh at the irony, observing the absurdity and going through withdrawal with the art center being closed this week, wanting to get outside, get out of here.

isla de encanta

2011-08-20T07:56:00.002-04:00

Drove up after work just in time for the sunset, walked to the parking lot at the tip of the island by the ferry to watch the red sun dive into the blue water, as a fellow photographer showed us supposed UFOs in the sunset on his iPhone and we gazed in wonder at the swirl of pink and grey clouds uncommonly curvy like Rembrandt models or Georgia O'Keefe paintings.

There was some terrible music coming from the bar up the street and so we decided to investigate and seeing that the Indians/White Sox game was on, my dad and I split a beer, watching the game, and observed the antics of our fellow tourist weekenders. The sound was so loud that we could hear it all the way across the island clearly and the revelers were yelling over the music about the last casinos they visited and talking about WHAT A REALLY GOOD TIME WE'RE ALL HAVING. Some really spacy girl told us she was totally glad that we showed up at this totally awesome party and we both looked confused, because it's just a bar patio full of total strangers with suntans drinking but decided that there would be amusement to be had here.

The singer had karaoke arrangements of 70's and 80's hits and was in the middle of a drunkenly synthesized rendition of "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" complete with out of key keyboard lines over the prerecorded tinniness. It was like karaoke night with minimal musical accompaniment and enthusiasm that was no subsitute for the lack of real talent, though no one there seemed to mind and were dancing around to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." He was unsurprisingly decked out in a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and seashell necklace jumping up and down and really getting into it in between talking about how awesome MTV used to be and who his favorite VJs were and his day job which somehow involves the IRS.

My hopes of sitting out on the breakwall under the stars listening to the waves were dashed by continued covers of Black Eyed Peas songs filtering through the trees, but eventually they stopped, and we built a fire and sat out there awhile talking about stuff until we all got tired.

It felt good to sleep in, spend the day in total relaxation, no phone calls, no email, no drama, just sleeping under the trees lulled by the water and the symphonic drone of summer insects, eating peaches, reading Christine de Pizan and Walker Percy, watching great blue herons glide past and clearing my head from all the clatter and chaos of the last few months.

My sister and her family unit came later, and I got to babytalk to the nephew and hang out before heading back debating whether or not I wanted to be introverted or see Jucifer play down the street and opted for the former. It was good to be away, and it's good to have returned. I needed the solitude, needed to contemplate, to cry out to God and try to listen for the intangible yet so real response that keeps my soul alive and from not slipping into total despair at what I see or total distraction to pretend that what I see isn't there. Part of the getaway, the escape, is trying to figure out how to return to the daily grind.