Musical weirdness

I imagined a pyramid of blocks in my head when I was listening to "Kid A" a while back. I cannot find that CD anywhere now. So I listened to another one, and a song on "Amnesiac" kind of grabbed me. Ideas I might have had (or half-had?) while listening to it included: A Thomas a Becket-type fellow having a pious moment of Marian devotion in a cathedral, a young Thoreau-ish type preparing to go out for a long and exhilarating iceskate, an image of greyness and water, and remembering some Thoreau quotes and also learning about the river of Lethe, when I read Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery when I was much younger. Also have cultivated a desire to go to Iceland, including some hot steam baths I have seen/heard about from a distance. I just looked it up and found out that the name of it is Pyramid Song.

Nice evening...

Went to my friend's gardening project and tried a raw tomatillo (it looked like a big green berry and tasted like a combination of a tomato and a very green apple), and raw, cold, wet peanuts (rather sweet and quite delicious!) Also the cotton pods were displaying their fluffy white cotton. I took home some lemon balm, tomatillos, and carrots. My friend recently started volunteering for the Obama campaign, and somehow I found myself accompanying her and other supporters, and also carrying a sign endorsing him, in a local parade. An interesting experience! (Later, when I came home and showed the sign to my roommate, who was watching him give a campaign speech on television, she told me this is the first time in her whole life that she is not voting Republican.) After the parade, I helped her and her husband pack some stuff up from the place they are moving from (they had been a tremendous help to me when I moved months ago) and received two plants, a scarf, a small lamp, a book called The Way of the Peaceful Warrior and a folksong CD based on "Walden." Just ate some omega 3/flaxseed penne pasta with lemon balm and salt, which was kinda spare (I was meaning to buy olive oil on a wealthier day but haven't gotten around to it) but it also tasted good to me! Am feeling pretty alright with the world...

Positive, happy

1) A few days ago, I went to my friends' early Halloween costume birthday party the other day. Twins celebrating turning 30! A premonition of the festivities came when I was on the parkway several miles away from the house, and looked up and saw fireworks in the sky.

2) Last night I got a lot of cozy feelings, like angels were around or something. Waiting for a friend in the parking lot while reading a book in my car on a rainy night (even though it was accompanying the audio series about crazy medieval legends), the down comforter I just put on my bed, and the blanket I put over the window drapes to block out the cold and keep in the heat, made my life and the room feel more cozy.

Should we read this book?

I asked, after I forwarded the Ursula K. Le Guin review to some people. I remember reading The Tombs of Atuan when I was little. My mother's boyfriend had the trilogy. Or else it was at my grandmother's house. Anyway, reading that review made me feel more into reading the book(s).
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The other night, one of my friends, who likes science and sci-fi, was telling me about Akbar (was it before or after a history lesson by a waitress which included an account of coke bottles being pushed into people--she used me as an example, just for the full effect, I guess!) In spite of this stark interruption, I was still trying to describe a church cake walk, "it's kind of like musical chairs." The reason I got on the topic of cakewalks was because of remembering an argument about my grandmother not wanting to leave the picnic and then of course all the cakes that were won got brought home, and the frustrated relative feels hugely oppressed. "Take some back to your father! He'll love chocolate cake." I was thinking about family history, traits and personalities after listening to some old medieval tales. Those Northern peoples developed some strong-willed ways of behaving!
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Recently, as I was listening to a lecture series, I became somewhat captivated by one on Njal's Saga. The female character discussed in the lecture embodies some violent qualities. If her husband slaps her; she kills him. This happens again and again. Finally she marries a guy who is a great warrior but is not as tough as the others. However, as I understand it, she does arrange the usual punishment for him, but he kind of "takes the hit" or accepts it. He's sort of Jesus-y, maybe. And she's the "evil temptress." Well, it is not exactly feminist, but there was some kind of good message in the story about ending the cycle of violence by ceasing retaliation. This intrigued me; I might have to re-listen to the lecture. Or actually find a copy of it to read. (Arrrgh. So many books in the world!)

One side of my personality

Now, this morning began with a very disturbing dream. It included witnessing a young woman get repeatedly run over by cars (everything but her head), an old woman telling me she pocketed her vagina (definitely weird, and I told her so, and she gave me a creepy little smile and agreed) but then the dream was kind of positive at the end, as another young woman told me that she was going back to school and admired something about me. The other night I went with my friend to a diner and the waitress, who was from British Guyana, told us a bunch of stories about violent things that had occurred in her country, some of which offended him, as they were somewhat laced with stereotypes. "Does she assume I'm going to agree with everything she says just because we're both Indian?" he said later. Last night that diner was closed. I feel like not totally always writing in complete sentences now. At Denny's, a fudge icecream drink concoction is being promoted by the singer who sings that song, you know, it's that fake-bisexuality-to-please-hetero-guys formula who is auctioning off a plaster cast of her breasts for breast cancer awareness, is that beautifulshallowtallentedsmartwelldevelopedattractive????? A somewhat disagreeable discussion about "bimbo" behavior. My friend saw it more as an exploiting/taking advantage of your looks type of thing, but I said that in my opinion it can also be used as a shield/survival technique. I tried a version of it out in the mirror this morning, as a kind of a joke. My eyes got very big. I was actually kind of impressed with the effect.

What I hope to see

in the future might be partially found in a short list which forming is just off the top of my head: light, light-heartedness, any effective techniques which can dissolve or cure illnesses & anxiety attacks, islands, clouds, sunlight.

Sometimes I like coffee but I can drink too much

Tonight my coffee hangover needs a diner atmosphere and a book to soothe it. Sometimes school beckons to me again. But in the past, that was something that was slapping me around way too much.
Der Holle Rache
Sleep Now In the Fire
Geez, guys. DRAMA.
Question: So, self, what do I think that can I do now?
Answer: Supplement your knowledge by seeking out other methods of learning, and compile an encyclopedia of cures! I'm sure that could sound unexciting to some. However, one person's boredom could be another person's relief from the pit of vipers.

Those "after-the-fact" thoughts

Today, some oil change guys lectured me (maybe rightly) about not changing my oil soon enough. Worked into the lecture were some comments about women not taking good care of their cars and do I have a boyfriend who ever checks mine? Afterwards I thought, I should have mentioned I have never gone out with anyone who had any interest in fixing cars. One of them couldn't even drive. Alternately, maybe I could have told them I have a genius lesbian lover who is also an auto mechanic.

Musing on ancestry prompts a bout of traveling

Last night I made a spur of the moment decision to make a road trip. I drank coffee, and fed my head with lectures-on-CD about Whitman and Vikings and Symphonies and it was good. But I felt kind of stuffed with art, as if I'd just been wrestled to the floor of some art gallery by my own consent and now a part of me was protesting that ManRayissoooosexist! (That was one weird thought I had. Another was that I had a small pyramid of building blocks neatly stacked in my head and all I needed to experience fulfillment in life was to maintain an awareness of them.) I had to intersperse listening to lectures with music. A program by Red Priest called "Pirates of Baroque." Some song on Ipower 92.1 with the lyrics "you choose you choose" which was, I think, #5 in a list at around 9:45 pm last night. No, that is not enough information. Rolled in around 2 am, the time of the building blocks thought, listening to songs from Radiohead's "Kid A" and feeling sort of mathematical and "detached." My sister , who maintains a unique sleeping schedule which corresponds roughly to European time, was up. This morning, after reading an e-mail from someone born and raised in California, she had a question on translation: "How do you say shut your pie hole?" "Well, I think cerrar is to close, but people say 'cayate' when they mean shut up...maybe you could say 'hueco de pastel?'" She said "I wonder how that would go over in Spanish Harlem. By the way, some of our ancestors were Huguenots who went to the Netherlands and lived in Harlem, way back when. And some owned land on Staten Island. Too bad we didn't hang on to that." I said, "Maybe some other greedy relative got it!"

Kvenland

After it being brow-beaten into me from childhood on one side of the family that I am GermanGermanGerman (rumors of French ancestry offended certain relatives, even though it involved interesting stories about people fleeing religious persecution) I am now being informed via e-mail by my sister that on the other side of the family, through our grandfather she traced folks from Rappahanock, Virginia in the 1600s, whose ancestors were from Wales (including one "Sir William the Extravagant"), possibly a saint(?) who was friends with William the Conquerer(?) and a woman named Isabel De Clare who was a descendant of Charlemange. And even further back, in the "dark ages," there is royalty from Kvenland! I looked at that site and the first thing I said to myself was "Holy ****, runes." Pagan, pagan, pagan. Maybe I won't get rid of those old Led Zeppelin CDs afterall...

3 things I want

Right off the top of my head!
1) Go horseback riding (and like it)
2) Visit those Greek islands that are always on calendars
3) Visit the little town in California where Sagewoman is published.

Unfolding

"La nueva chamba" has not technically appeared. Yet. And after the prospect of a good one disappeared recently, I thought, "Wow, every time this happens it's like I have a little less motivation to appear 'respectable,' whatever that means." I tried to feel like maybe it was a "freeing" thought. Am a bit rattled when I hear people say words like "hiring freeze" and also distressed by the fact that my foot is still playing painful tricks with me and now I have to pay for my parking. Last night, though, I talked about writing with a friend at a cheap diner (with atmosphere!) and it felt artsy and fun to go out to eat and drink coffee and talk about ideas in books, etc. But maybe using all of today to read up on the topic was overkill, because I ended up feeling fairly low. Going to meditation class in the evening seemed to make me feel a lot more centered. In this life, some people can seemingly quite easily play the role of one of those classic successful artistic people with lots of behavioral quirks and issues which are apparently endearing or marketable to others somehow, but alas, my "direction in life" (which I hope is ever unfolding) seems to not really "go" that way, and probably for good reason, too. I think I should just become one of those people who is much more focused on things like healthy eating and yoga and meditation... (Q: Why do you keep forgetting this? Remember!)

Where a pretty cover was found....

I'm really liking A Country Year and if I ever own it, I hope it will be the one with this cover...I think that is kind of an interesting site in its own right...

"Take as directed"

So, now the bottoms of my feet are all taped up and padded and they are supposed to remain that way for several days. I went to work, left to go to the doctor, received this taping treatment, filled the prescription, and then went back to work again. Hmmm. Think of dancers' feet. A reward is to walk slowly by the furniture store emanating vibes of solitude at the end of the night, feeling strangely moved by the traces of some soft rock tune floating down the deserted hallway. The friendly medical student who did the taping told me he had recently patronized my work place. I was actually complimented on my choice of Naturalizer shoes. Nonetheless, it still feels like I'm someone who is wobbling home on little posts of wrappings when I walk through the door. And oh, for some reason the roommate still has just not been able to move the bags of stuff out of the hallway that have been there for, like, FOUR DAYS. Day after tomorrow is definitely going to be a great foot-resting day. Maybe at some point I will be motivated to go back out to the car tonight to retrieve the sheet of physical therapy exercises for the morning. Forgot to ask if ibuprofen works okay with methylprednisolone. Well, WASP work ethic ancestors, now my feet feel a kinship with you.

That was amusing; this is serious

In the course of the work week (with a weekend squashed into it), I managed to read and feel amused by Hef, Unabridged by Carolyn See. I think that when I read it, it was also the day that a guy was telling me about how he and his girlfriend were on the outs and what a man really wants a woman to make him feel like. He also did a lot of silent standing around. After he left, the part of me that perceived him as a lonely human being felt kind of bad that I couldn't act more fascinated by the information that he was providing. However, the part of me that was amused by numerous lines in the review such as "He gave countless interviews to anyone who would ask; he opined and opined and opined," "in the '50s the magazine ran an earnest article about the moral virtue of the missionary position; it reminded women, the piece said, that men should always be on top," "Hefner is in his 80s now...(...and with the aid of Viagra) still refers to himself as a 'babe magnet'" and "It would be better for everyone to stick to the magazine" was not quashed!
ON A SERIOUS NOTE: my feet, especially the right one, need some kind of an energy healing, or else I will be limping my way through a long day tomorrow. Okay, think positive. Positive happy feet, positive happy foot. Tomorrow is a positive, happy day. Yay, happy feet!!!!

Have just been listening to...

A book with an absolutely terrifying job description!
A Country Year by Sue Hubbell.
Indigo Bunting Ghetto.

Who can say what the railroads have brought us?

Earlier, there was the at-home-entertainment sound of stomping and loud music. Now some guy is ki-yi-yi-yipping across the parking lot.
So now, I say hello again, to some character of the mind.
To the one who must always revert to locking the doors.
(Top lock, middle lock, bottom lock.)
Ache of the jaw, I have no insurance, please do not bother me.
(What disease killed the brother of Thoreau?)
There was the dream a friend had, she called me at work years ago.
She said "an old boyfriend of yours had an accident with a bus."
That was a situation already set in a book, before she made the phone call.
This was discovered as a result of a similar situation being reworked into another tome. Mmmmm hmmmm.
Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.
Why must you tell such stories?

when I should be sleeping...

I'm practicing piecing together fragments of a language! A veces, cuando estoy en el lugar de la chamba, (o despues, o antes,) puedo perderme demasiado en pensamientos que son muy oscuros, como no puedo replicar ahora. Tengo que encontrar mas amistad y espiritualidad. Y tengo ganas de obtener nueva chamba! Pero a veces es un poquito facil de olvidar las metas, porque la cosa es que cada ratito, todo puede cambiar. Casi no puedo creer en eso, solomente puedo sentirlo. En ese momento, admiro mucho la gente quien viven vidas de reposo. Cada ratito, soy differente. Ahora tengo ocho anos. Ahora, siento como soy otra persona de otro sexo. Ahora tengo cuatro anos. Hierba es mi pariente. Lo que sea, se me olvido. Vivo en ese momento otra vez y muy pragmatica soy. Chao, luz, alo sueno, lo siento cuerpo, ayudame, y dame energia manana porfavor.

"Feminism is for everybody"

Isn't it nice to know? Feminism is for everybody. Even for kids! My food metaphors for today are: Faux lip-service feminism is kinda like the snack of stale graham crackers served (again) at an overly boy-centric poor excuse of a daycare. Whereas healthy, empowering feminism is like warm, deliciously-scented gingerbread that everyone gets the fun of participating in the making of--mixing, rolling the dough, and cutting the cookies into decorative shapes--at a happy babysitter's house. I feel that's a cheerful thought, to combat the thought I had recently, which is that the poster messengers I met the other day would, unfortunately, be very disappointed. Sigh.

What this gives

Meditations

la cena ayer

Our food was very good and I really enjoyed the company, because, as I told her, "it's nice to be around someone in a similar financial situation with similar ideals." Dinner was pasta with pesto sauce and rolls with marinara sauce (baked into them) which had been made by the culinary class at the high school with basil and tomato from her community garden project which I like to help out with. A week old! But, a very cold fridge or maybe an act of a higher power (or the chemicals in the flour or spaghetti) preserved it nicely, and so we heated it up and ate it with some organic greens from the garden. GREENS! (Also I visited the Stribling orchard. Nice and picturesque! Except for the machine spraying chemicals about an acre away. Oh well.) Later we dipped cotton string in wax and made candles. My day off was really nice. Pero tengo que encontrar nueva chamba pronto.

Seasonal eatings/pickings

Possibilities: Stribling Orchard, Crooked Run.

Questions (somefoodwhatrelated)

Questions for calm intelligent people to ask oneself and one another: What makes you truly HAPPY/what makes me truly HAPPY? It's disturbing when a long amount of time passes without asking questions like this! When that seems like only a LUXURY, as opposed to the normal reality. If you are a character in a modern-day fairy tale, how does it feel if you are walking down the street and you see a golden ball in the window of a shop? Are you happy just to be taking it in, enjoying your life and time with yourself or whomever? Or are you eyeing it hungrily and miserably, plotting for a way to someday have that toy...What if it's not just a shiny object in a shop? What if it's a health or lifestyle-related thing...what is intelligent eating, for the season, for your body, for the budget? I remember, with some fondness, things I ate in graduate school around this time of year. Soups. Hot wine with spices in it. I wish I could go on longer road trips and revisit those places. For protein I have been consuming sunflower seeds, beans, and boiled eggs (with Goya hot sauce.) I feel like I love eating cheaply sometimes, it seems the best way, although maybe the hot sauce has too much sodium and I should really eat more greens and raw food items. Yesterday I ate some Fuji apple slices, sprinkled with the organic cinnamon I bought a long time ago, and spread with budget-friendly (but sugarfree) crunchy peanut butter. I could not even believe how much I savored them. I think I need to go visit some apple orchards again soon!

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I wonder what happened to a girl I once knew. She was from El Salvador and had graduated from her high school in LA with very high grades. Yet, she still had problems with writing essays in English. It made me kind of mad when a certain professor told her she just had to keep working harder and "if he could do it, she could do it." Maybe he meant to be inspiring but it also made her feel bad. I'd heard stories about his college days from my roommate (who admired him) and they didn't seem like my friend's stories. She shared a room with her sister and drove her to work very early every morning, and they lived with another sister and her husband, who was very controlling. There was all sorts of other trauma from her childhood and teenage years that she'd been through and witnessed. She had fun with me because I wanted to learn things. Sometimes we'd go salsa dancing, too. She'd help me pick out clothes and things to wear when I went to Peru, and she would give me all sorts of advice. When I was wretchedly depressed about people in my family being sick, she took me to the chapel and stood with me and watched me cry and was there with me. Me and her and another girl, originally from Poland, became a kind of threesome on campus. They both came with me to the island where I had grown up, and we met up with an older woman who had done things to take care of my sister and I, such as keep us at her house when our mother was on business trips. We did some kind of divination thing...I don't remember if it was "angel cards" or what...but her sister had come with us and when she translated the messages to her sister (in Spanish) they both started to cry. She had been engaged to someone back in El Salvador and then he had broken it off and she had not moved on from it and that was why they were crying. And we had a kind of drumming session in the basement, too, I think. It was good. I wonder if she ever met Jorge Ramos or graduated or did what she wanted to do. Actually, I wonder what happened to any of them!

"For all involved"

Today I was handed some informational flyers and a card which, I found out, are especially pertinent to the month of October. "Sorry I ran out of ones in Spanish, but the card has information in Spanish." The message bearers included a woman, and several little girls (hers?) who were carrying the materials, too. "We're not only working towards helping the victims, like in the past. We want to help all who are involved. Please post them in your break room" (sorry, we don't really have one) "at least for the month or even longer if you can." It will be interesting to see if that actually happens.
One of the things I read on it, on the way to carrying these things back, was: "Making up excuses for other peoples' behavior."

"Ice Harp"

"My friend tells me he has discovered a new note in nature, which he calls the Ice-Harp. Chancing to throw a handful of pebbles upon the pond where there was an air chamber under the ice, it discoursed a pleasant music to him.
Herein resides a tenth muse, and as he was the man to discover it probably the extra melody is in him." (The Journal of H.D. Thoreau, Dec. 5, 1837)

Musical interruptions

A purely instrumental version of O Mio Babbino Caro (like the one at the beginning of A Room With a View) interrupted my sleep one morning and made me cry. It kept playing over and over, the same part, and I was like, I can't believe it. At any other time of the day, would that have happened? Or maybe it was just at that time, on that particular day? In different times and in different places, we are different people. "Well, it's a very moving piece of music," a friend said when I told her. This version is not like that one at all. It reminds me of a time in Seattle when I saw a master class, which was GREAT (and I hope I get to do it again sometime). Also, I have liked listening to the Luray Caverns organ version of the Moonlight Sonata (I think?) in my car, sometimes. This version is nothing like it!

On screen

The book Towelhead has been made into a movie.
It is playing at two theaters around here.
I recently read The Brutal Language of Love.

Eat greens, not cigarette smoke

A pair of legs and torso presented a face that had a familiar, quasi-smirking smile, which created lines, perhaps indicating a kind of tiredness, to the fatigued worker at the end of a double shift. It was old puzzle piece face, apparently in the mood to be acting fairly average, sitting in a corner with a companion and swearing in order to feel sort-of good. Oh, imagine if it ever belonged to a happy person whose healthy energy resulted in behavior and settings which continually complemented revitalizing and uplifting words, thought the worker, and decided to make a more concerted effort to consume healthier things, such as greens.