SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY

amy and i spent a lot of time last summer talking about the concept of remaining charmed: with the city that housed us, with our friends, with art, with life. perhaps i'd forgotten this discussion for a bit, or perhaps its resurgence is simply inherently linked to recognizing an impending expiration date (i.e. graduating and leaving provo, my home for five years! and eventually the country, my home for many years more!), but i've been suddenly seized with the ability to feel charmed with everything again. i feel that i have, with my poverty, bought a lifetime of days:

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I've never been seized by it since. For some reason I always "hid" the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD OR MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.

It is still the first week in January, and I've got great plans. I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But--and this is the point--who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.

from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by annie dillard.

i hope it stays that simple, and in a terribly powerful way, i feel that it will. in fact, i have proof of this, in my friendships with all of you, and in this beautiful global community we have that (even if i contribute to the transpacific aspect of it) will always make me feel like i can reach out and squeeze your hands.

cold winter heart melting like snow in the sun

remember when we had that series of post on adorable animals because sometimes the only thing to get you through the day is a puppy? this just blew my mind with amazingness (especially the reunion scene at 1:55. tears, so many tears of gladness.

The Moors

Amy's post left me reminiscing about my ramble on the moors a few years ago. They're such a beautifully liminal space in literature and in the landscape. These are a couple of pictures I took of the hills beside the Bronte parsonage back in 2006.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the function of photographs outside of art museums. I don't take as many pictures as I used to, and I'm trying to decide if I should be taking more pictures, fewer pictures, or if I should just not worry about it. I love the idea of getting a really nice camera and learning how to use it for real, but even then, what do you do with all these digital pictures? Most of mine are filed away neatly on my hard drive and brought up on my screen only when I am feeling incredibly sentimental and nostalgic. This, I have decided, is no good, but I am not a scrapbooker and don't want to become one. Maybe I should just save up some money, print off every picture I can, and keep them in albums? What do you dear friends do with all your photographs? And what purpose, if any, do they serve in your life?

I like Anne Carson A Whole Lot

And I've only really read like three of her poems. But this is a lovely excerpt from "The Glass Essay" that knocked my socks off. It's a rumination on a lot of things, including general fragility and lost love, but she repeatedly references Emily Bronte and the moors, which I love. Her images are gorgeous:

Emily continued to brush into the carpet the question,

Why cast the world away.
For someone hooked up to thou,
the world may have seemed a kind of half-finished sentence.

But in between the neighbor who recalls her
coming in from a walk on the moors
with her face "lit up by a divine light"

and the sister who tells us
Emily never made a friend in her life,
is a space where the little raw soul
slips through.
It goes skimming the deep keel like a storm petrel,
out of sight.

[and then this phenomenal passage:]

...and I go out to walk.
The bare blue trees and bleached wooden sky of April
carve into me with knives of light.

Something inside it reminds me of childhood--
it is the light of the stalled time after lunch
when clocks tick

and hearts shut
and fathers leave to go back to work
and mothers stand at the kitchen sink pondering

something they never tell.

...Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days,
it is as if I could dip my hand down

into time and scoop up
blue and green lozenges of April heat
a year ago in another country.

bishop allen & bird and the bee

this video is super great

but not quite as amazing as this one:

(we need to get a mini stage with christmas lights, a fog machine, and--clearly--a silky red shirt)

it's been making the rounds but just in case...

LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!!!!!!!

Arcade + Spike + Dave + Maurice = so many dreams coming true

little bit in love with this

so i just got off the phone with my sister who invited me to the beach for two weeks when i get out of school. it is raining and cold here and the beach is basically the only place i want to be right now. preferably listening to this gorgeous, gorgeous wyclef/norah song:

feel that? that was every stress and care just melting into the sea. felt real good, right?

What do YOU do at 2.30 in the morning?

I do the same thing almost every single day. It usually begins at 10 or 10.30 when I wake up and chastise myself for staying up too late. And then I promise to not to do it again.

And then I find things like this:

Now what I am going to do about something like that?! Defenseless! 

also, i heart google reader

because it keeps me in the KNOW! kevin kelly, former wired editor, has this great blog that posts wonderful things like these kutiman gorgeous youtube mashups:

loving john cage this morning

mostly for this quote (which i found on the delicious blog, pinkshirtsandcarwrecks)

print by groundwork

this was especially good for me to hear after getting home at 4:30 this morning because i spent 8 hours in the letterpress kitchen last night, most of it spent trying to move one single line up or down 1/2 cm. it nearly drove me insane. so now my print has a bit of a chaos to it, which i like in the vein of john cage.

infinity = infinitely fascinating

I keep having all these amazing discussions about infinity, especially about George Cantor who figured out how to count (and not count) infinity. Thinking about it drove him insane. At the time everyone thought he was insane, too. But now his concept of countable/uncountable infinitys is basically essential learning in advanced math classes. Anyway, my friend Jess shared this poem with me and I loved it so I wanted to share it with you!

ALEPH NAUGHT

Later generations will regard
[Cantor's] Mengenlehre as a disease
from which one has recovered.
-Henry Poincare, 1908

A bag with the world in it plus
anything is still the same bag.
Half a bag with the world in it
is equal to the whole bag.

George, it was too early
in the century for this.
Nobody'd had coffee.

I wondered, too, Are we addressing
a collection of only the so-called infinite?
Shoulder to shoulder the cardinal numbers
stood like baby bottles
vanishing forever into one-ooint perspective,
but, Cantor claimed, a bag's a bag:
Forget the bottom.

I'm not counting, he shouted. Stop counting!

Later they packed him off to the funny farm,
a safe house for mathematics,
terrific opportunity for R&D
with free room and board.
Nonetheless he was glum.
The material's all around, he murmured
to the other inmates.
Stack it right, and everything comes out even.

The principle was simple, just matching
your toes with eternity's.

We thought we could live without it.

-Karen Donovan

the most perfect film i've seen in theatres in a long long time

the trailer can't be embedded, but please oh please watch it here.

the first scene of tokyo sonata shows the interior of a clean, middle-class japanese home with the screen door open and a torrential rainstorm wetting the wood floor. a housewife in a plain dress and apron rushes over, shuts the door and begins mopping up the water on hand and knee. she then pauses, re-opens the door and hesitantly leans out into the rain.

voila.

this sets the absolute perfect tone for the rest of the film, which could almost be summed up in that simple and quiet 60-second introduction. the film is such a stunning portrayal of real individuals living real life - i don't want to say too much more except to go see it whenever you can. all the trite phrases used to describe the film (e.g. "a family unravelling") conjure up images of every other american indie flick about disfunctionality in the home. this is not that at all, it is much more true-to-life than such cliche... ah, so beautiful and moving!

why i read henry james

"it was impossible that he shouldn't now and again meet charlotte's eyes, as it was also visible that she now and again met her husband's. for her as well, in all his pulses, he felt the conveyed impression. it put them, it kept them together, through the vain show of their separation; made the two other faces, made the whole lapse of the evening, the people, the lights, the flowers, the pretended talk, the exquisite music, a mystic golden bridge between them, strongly swaying and sometimes almost vertiginous, for that intimacy of which the sovereign law would be the vigilance of 'care,' would be never rashly to forget and never consciously to wound."

"and so for a minute they stood together as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. they were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met."

Bovey Lee

This blows my mind. Like a lot (click on the paper cutouts tab).

nostalgia thursdays

Tonight I was thinking about things that have meant a lot to me and it made me happy-sad. But the good happy-sad, the nostalgia kind, where your heart beats faster and things get all sepia-toned in your head. I thought about my cousins, who I love with my whole heart, about sappy guitar songs that I sang with the windows rolled down in my high school best friend's red Landcruiser, about the beach with the waves and the dolphins and pelicans banking this way and that. I thought about Cordoba and Positano and Aix-en-Provence and Certaldo--all those beautifully old fashioned towns with all that sun and love and fresh food. I thought about all of you. And I loved that each of your names brought a distinct and gorgeous memory that made me love you even more. So thanks for being wonderful.

Last fall Trish and I were lonely and sad in our new homes away from DC and each other. So we decided to watch every Wonder Years episode we could find on Youtube. We turned on our iChat and watched each episode. It was a poor substitute for face to face, but it got the job done. I will forever love the night we watched the following scene. We were in tears it was so beautiful and sad. I never loved Bob Seger more than in this episode. This episode captures that exact happy-sad I was trying to talk about before:


What things/people get you all sepia-toned in your head?

I mean, besides Bob Seger in B&W:

something cataclysmic

by Kerry Flannagan

Age 15

(from 826michigan)

She caught the firefly so carefully that when the insect was enveloped in her soft hands, it barely noticed. Contentedly, it rested in her smooth, round palm, as it had done so many times, in so many other palms. Cupped securely, the firefly waited for the universe to come back and replace all the trees and pollen and spontaneous starts.

It knew the universe would come back. It knew because the first time, in the beginning, when it was embraced and suspended in strange limbo, it had exploded wth the unusual temerity that comes from knowing something cataclysmic is happening. It had beaten the sides of its prison, tiny weight insignificant against hands larger than any insect. But it was released, the world renewed itself, and the firefly had spun away to grow and think.

It was caught other times, and each time it waited for the universe again. It wanted to be frustrated, grapple with a miasma of living things. It wanted a night too large for it to light, but the shock of hands wore off and they lost their size. Warm palms made it too easy to sleep. So it wanted to be released, again and again, and each time it was caught, the hands eventually let it go.

The firefly slowed down over time, because around it, nothing changed, and the world was wiser than any insect. It had one summer that rolled slowly into a warm calm and the firefly grew to enjoy the quiet of nightcrawlers and grass and crickets. It spent nights quietly with all the small things that were beautiful and loved what it couldn't know about them. Caught by hands, it rested on soft skin and thought about how the lines looked like the lines in a fly's wing. When the world was reborn because the hands let the firefly go, it marveled at how everything stayed the same.

Slowly, the world was wearing itself out with being born again and again. The universe, so full of shine and light nights, couldn't sustain itself with all the energy it put into existing again, every time the firefly was released. The lines in hands no longer meant anything important, and it started to notice how the dim luster of their skin was so much like the moon.

And so this time, when the girl caught it, and the insect waited in her soft hands, as she released it and named it Love, as it flew from her in a straight, calm line, it saw that this universe was probably the last one. Details blurred together into cohesive objects, the night was dimmer than it had ever seemed, and it realized with some dissapointment that it could no longer fly any higher than the trees. It wouldn't reach anything bigger than them. But the firefly shone as it flew, glad that love had ended the world.

beautiful and sad sometimes go hand in hand

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

-Elizabeth Bishop

open-ended question

i went to a reading tonight at this FABULOUS bookstore in soho, mcnally jackson. they hold free literary talks/discussions/readings almost nightly. wonderful.

tonight it was daniyal mueenuddin and justin torres reading samples of their [remarkably wonderful] work. at the end in the question and answer session, daniyal talked about his process of writing and his theory then of why so many writers are alcoholics [haha]. "it's impossible to write all day, and so you've written for hours and suddenly it's 11 am and you have the whole day before you. the comfort of warm drink is so tempting."

is it not so brilliant and true? this exhausting process of creation and thought cannot feasibly be sustained for a full day - i mean what can be sustained for a full day? and so i'm wondering about the actual passing of time. i admit i often feel completely overwhelmed by time, by hours meant to be "filled" - even that idea is abhorrent, that time is just to be filled up in some way. and so for artists, how much more difficult? how do you gifted artists who contribute to this blog deal with such a question of comprehending with the very hours that lie before you?

you don't have to answer, i was just so intrigued by the way he put it. interesting, no?

(oh, and lovely xarissa sent me this gorgeous article about david foster wallace, someone who i think thought and struggled a great deal with this question. he's incredible my gosh.)

!!!!

So I really love the band Love, like a lot. Especially since you can say things like, "I love Love." When I was in Paris I would sing "Alone Again Or" to myself walking through the cobbled streets of Montmartre, probably eating a crepe and wearing a beret or something. Anyway, I also really love the Shins. One of my favorite all time songs is their "Gone for Good." It is so simple musically--like three or four chords--but, good grief, it is a nearly perfect speciman of a song. Searing lyrics, catchy melody, beautiful vocals... So imagine my happiness when I discovered their Blogotheque where they 1) cover "Alone Again Or" in the opening credits and 2) sing "Gone for Good" WHILE WALKING THROUGH MONTMARTRE. So in love.

pre-summer jubilation

Today it felt like the beginning of summer, even though it was the beginning of spring. The air was still and just heavy enough to want chlorine, swim suits, hot patios steaming. So now I'm thinking about David Hockney and his pools, which perfectly encapsulate the concept of an "L.A. pool." Growing up in California I spent a lot of time in or around pools. For that and many other reasons, I love them. Which is also one of the reasons why I loved our summer of pooling and pupusas before Trish and I left the mountains for DC. So here are two stunning Hockney pools and an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about heartbreak, spelunking and, of course, pools.




"After years of desert summers, my friends and I knew the locks and unlocks of each apartment complex pool within a five-mile radius of Provo. We knew the parts of landscaped hills that would stay firm beneath our feet as we hopped fences, dodged neighborhood watches.We took advantage of it—two, sometimes three, pools in a single afternoon. We swam, sunned, and burst into impromptu water dances. “‘R.E.O?!” Ryan would yell, water pooling at his feet and trunks clinging to his lean legs. Ashley and Lia, two pairs of brown eyes brimming with sun, would splash their consent while the rest of us would whoop and holler as he slammed the tape into the deck and cannonballed back into the pool. Twelve pairs of arms linked to make pinwheels around the shallow end. Water whirled and glinted sun-smacked rainbows all over our skin. Right hand stars formed in the middle as we circled and crooned, “Can’t fight this feeling anymooooore!!!” with our voices cracking, our eyes crinkled and mouths jubilant inverted triangles.

That summer the sun was everywhere. It shone with a ferocity I could not define. My shoulders went brown, as did the part in my hair, even the spaces between my toes. I was new, golden, flying down the leafy streets on my three-speed cruiser. The sun bleached out all the grey of Utah Lake and winter. I danced on my side of town until the windows shook and fogged with the breaths of so many sweating bodies. I cuddled on couches and picked at heaps of grass in Sara’s front yard where we’d talk the moon straight out of the sky, reveling in our power, in the surprise of sprinklers misting over us. The dew on the grass. Everywhere glimmering with starlight and water."

And what would this post be without The Song Itself? Oh the magic...

Sweet Execution

JuiceBox, an online literary journal with its heart in the right place (and by that I mean it celebrates the beauty in mundanity, and I Love that), has just published an essay by Cassie Keller Cole, a talented writer and dear friend with the best name an authoress could ask for, don't you think? You can read it here, and I hope you do, because this essay is pithy.

Mae Sot Storybooth: Part 1

blind pilot

i sure like these guys. here's some reasons why:
1. they went on a bike tour last year, towed all their instruments up and down the west coast.
2. they're from portland
4. they use banjo, upright bass, vibraphone, violin, and occasionally horns
5. their songs make me glad

"We Are the Tide"

un cadeau [2].

un cadeau.

So I have been reading Nietzsche for 6 straight hours...

So when I found out that the theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey is really called Thus Spoke Zarathustra after N.'s cryptic, apocalyptic novel of the same name, I might have listened to it about 10 times in a row. After years and years of ignoring of a zillion measures of silence, the composer had the good sense to give the timpani a solo. Bless Strauss's kind-hearted soul.

And then, because I am at school at 9:30 on a Friday night, I listened to a lot of Debussy. Cause there are few things to keep me sane now that I have devoursed my entire canister of salt and vinegar Pringles, my diet coke, and my vanilla wafers.

daily dolly

um, i know i post about dolly a lot. but i can't help it, i just really love her. here she is being amazing with emmylou harris and linda ronstadt:

and now being amazing, armed with a banjo:

Amber Albrecht

lives in a beehive in Montreal...

m. ward + saint-saens = sweet perfection

i can't believe i never noticed this before, but m. ward's "fuel for fire" has a little chat with saint-saens "the swan." what?! stupendous. unfortunately i couldn't find the album version anywhere online, but if you get a chance, you should listen to it. it will lift your heart in all the right places. this acoustic version isn't too shabby, though:

Say Me in Dashes

Here's one more poem I love from Lance Larsen's Backyard Alchemy:

Say Me in Dashes

The inlet you swim shelters a flotilla of ducks whose beaded
heads beg you to count them. The stippled field burned

across one corner brings back your wrongs, etc. Or mine.
Listen, I have used second person to camouflage my fear

of scrubbed light, of sky reaching down to collar me
like a riled border agent checking tourists for forged papers.

Just now, I'm doing backstroke, but if I let myself rise
from the grave of first person, I might also glide like a snapping

turtle deciding which toe of this sorry swimmer to bite.
Or a sentence in a Victorian novel fallen against the belly

of a pregnant dreamer on shore, turning now to devour
a delicious direct object. Why is it, whatever I look

at turns hungry? When Christ multiplied the loaves,
he committed as many catastrophes of meaning as there were

open mouths. What the multitude gave back filled
twelve baskets. What they refused filled seven horizons.

I'm no different, crawling atop what is vertiginous and wet
and holy and calling it water. Occupying a floating city

wrapped in skin but calling it body. Say me in dashes, lift
me till I rise out of waiting the way rain drizzles down.

sometimes i miss california a whole lot

(zuma beach, one of the most wondrous places i know. especially when it's quiet at sunset like it is here)

(it was even good for some kitsch and retro)

Something I Wish I Wrote

My brilliant friend Katherine gave me a book full of lovely things a few weeks ago and I'd like to share an except here. The book is called vacansopapurosophobia 2: the fear of the blank page (awesome title, right?) and it is a collection of creative writing by young students who are part of the 826michigan project. It is basically a book full of things that older kids like us probably wish we had written. Take, for example, this short story by nine-year-old Leilani Tuinukuafe:

***
big idea

I was walking home from school. Then this big idea came in my head. I stopped at my mailbox to check to see if there was any mail but my idea didn't work because the mail was already in the house.

I walked sadly to my front porch. I rang the doorbell with my shoulder because my hands were full of sadness. My mom answered the door.

I asked her, "Did I get any mail?" but she wasn't listening so I decided to get a snack instead of crying. When I sat down at the table there was a little white envelope. I climbed on the table to get a closer look.

The letter was small and it had my name and my little sister's name. I felt a happy chill in my body. It had a stamp on it that looked like a bride. I ran to my mom to show her the letter but there wasn't any room for me to sit by her. I was so excited that I sat on the edge of the couch. I slowly opened the envelope. The letter looked sparkly and white. When the envelope was fully opened my eyes started to get full of happy tears.

On the cover of the letter was a beautiful girl dressed in a sparkly dress. On the side of the girl it said, "Will you be my flower girl?" I was so excited that I fell on the ground. A big smile appeared on my face. Yes! I wll be your flower girl, I thought.

I started to get a little scared because what if I tripped or fell and everyone was staring at me. I didn't even know how to walk down an aisle. I haven't even been to a wedding. The good thing was I was going to be a flower girl with my little sister instead of by myself. I guess it's okay, I said to myself. Now, each time I look at the letter, I smile.

***

I rang the doorbell with my shoulder because my hands were full of sadness? Dear heavens!

What are some things you wish you had written or created?