Friday, May 28, 2010

headlong into the irresistible

Me and the roommate said goodbye yesterday to some friends of hers from English class who were over here studying from Palestine. They left early this morning and told us that whenever we wanted to, we can come to Gaza to visit them.

Life had gotten so crazy this past year that we didn't see them as much as we wanted to. I'd see Abed when I was at work, and my roommate and his wife would chat on Facebook and practice their Arabic and English. They had us over for dinner last year and let us borrow their car when ours got locked in, even though they hardly knew us, and we'd play with the kids while some terrible late night sitcoms chattered in the background and we cringed to think that their perception of us would have anything to do with this show.

We took pictures and the kids were dancing around, we got to see the new baby, and met Dawoud a sweet kidwho's having surgery after his home got shelled.

And I think about how messed up the world is, how those in power on both sides do terrible things and then there's so many people caught in the middle just trying to live life. Both sides seem to do a great job of making it worse and of vilifying the other.

And then, since it was a lovely night, I drove out to the Beachland thinking about all this and got there almost in time for the Jeremy Lyons/everyone but Sandman Morphine show, which was even more than I expected.

I was too young to see them back in their heyday, and the combination of smoky sax-driven alt-rock and spooky blues was perfect for a hot sticky night, and of course everyone was about a decade older than me and Frank. And I got those shivers you get when the music hits you perfectly... "Let's Take a Trip Together" never sounded so perfect.

"somewhere there's no distractive
breeze of information
leaking through the windows
dripping from the trees
somewhere there's no earthquakes
no other people's anxious questions
no nervous wrecks
going down
no nervous wrecks
going down..."

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