Acceptance

In the last year, I've had to accept many things I didn't want to accept.  The dissolve of my marriage, the end of old friendships, the inevitable march of age across my face and body, the sad fact that I cannot help students who will not help themselves.  So many things.


I fought accepting some of these things for a very long time.  For years, in one case, because I didn't want to be someone who had given up, given in, failed.  But now, at the end of another year, I am coming to realize that accepting the things that we cannot change--cliche as it may be--might be the only thing that separates us from the wild kingdom that, on instinct, fights change to the death.


Gretel Ehrlich wrote, "to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce."  This concept has been foreign to me until this year.  I used to think showing any vulnerability or fragility was akin to weakness and, in order to be taken seriously, I needed the world to see me as confident, capable, and without need of help.  My mom once said that I try so hard to make the world see me as strong when in reality I'm a pretty fragile girl.  She's right.  


I've been thinking a lot about what others think of me.  I try not to let the rest of the population define or influence who I am or how I feel about myself, but the end of the year is a time for reflection and, well, I guess that's where I am.  It occurred to me the other day that a large number of the people I've known throughout my life know two versions of me: snarky, loud, and opinionated or dramatically loud and opinionated.  It's an easy role to play when you don't want anyone to know how hurt or scared you really are.  But, I don't want to live in that costume anymore.  And this year, I've made a real concentrated effort to be my most authentic self as much as I can.


I'm telling the truth more, mostly to myself, and I'm admitting when I need help.  I'm accepting that the most honest fact of my life is that I am scared--often--of not having control, of things slipping out of my grasp, of being less than perfect, of not living up to  my own expectations, of disappointing myself.  I'm scared all the time, but the one emotion that always trumps that fear--these days--is joy.  I am happy in my career (about which I am passionate to a fault), I am blessed with a loving family and the most supportive and brilliant friends, my students inspire me everyday, and I believe love will find me again someday.  I am happy to be this self, this woman, this ongoing process and project.  I accept that I'm not complete, that I may never know what that means, and after years of fighting that, I'm at peace in a way I haven't been before.


If this blog post had a soundtrack, it'd probably be this song: 

Sing...Sing a Song...

In another life, I was a singer.  A number of people from my childhood know this about me, but most people I meet now have no idea.  I haven't been that girl in a very long time.  But, Sunday night, I channeled Henry Miller, and I sang in front of an audience by myself for the first time in over ten years for the 5th annual Love, Chloe Foundation Benefit at the Paramount Bar in Salina, KS.  

It was scary, it was nerve wracking, and it was immeasurably good for me.  In 2011, I'm going to keep scaring myself...it seems to be working for me.

Merry & Bright

There is no more perfect reminder of what Christmas is all about than a child.  This is my reminder.

Welcome to the Jungle

The title of this post comes from my favorite song to skate to at the skating rink--yes, you heard right.  A few months back, I got to skate to it for the first time since I was fourteen--that's 20 years, y'all--and it was a party. 

Here's Jason and I before the wheels hit the floor (thanks to Jamie for the picture :)

Simpler Days

I have always loved the holidays.  People seem to be nicer, somehow, this time of year.  I like the magic of soft lighting brought on by small white bulbs on the Christmas tree.  I like hot tea on cold days.  I like curling up with a blanket in the corner of the couch or in an oversized chair with a bad holiday movie or a really good book.  I like the crackle of my fireplace--even if it is a fake one on the wall.  And I like holding hands in the car while driving around to look at Christmas lights.  


I can manage most of those things on my own, but that last one, well...I don't know exactly how hard this Christmas will be for me.  I can tell you that the good man I married is now my friend, something we really weren't before we were a couple, but, even the right decisions have painful ripples, and this time of year I am feeling those waves pretty intently.


So, in an effort to combat those rolling tides, I'm trying to remind myself of simpler days, happier moments, the pure joy of Christmas I knew as a little girl.

My grandmother made my dress and my brother's shirt, pants, and vest.  How cute are we?  I think this is 1980, and the one below is, I think, 1982.  Note my mom's amazing feathered bangs.   

For Emily

Today, without warning, I was taught a lesson.  In a crowded art room, surrounded by supportive parents, friends, and faculty members, a student I have never actually had in a class presented her end of the semester review and, in that room, I was moved to tears by the things she had written, the art she had made, borne from a need, she said, to immerse herself in the process, to see the thing created.

Part of her work was tribute to a recently lost relative, part was catharsis over a recently ended relationship, and part--the most moving part--was a bare and honest capturing of the moments that she sees as defining for who she is, has been, and is on her way to becoming.

All of this at 18.

Emily is not the kind of girl you imagine cheering in the stands at a sporting event.  She wears black glasses, fabulous old jackets, a great collection of boots, and she has a soul wise not only beyond her chronological years but possibly wise beyond mine.  In her work and explanations, I heard the bravery of a self I have tried so hard to cultivate, I saw the same questions being asked and tentatively answered--who am I?--what does this all mean?--how do I matter?--where do I go from here? 

These are not question relegated to adolescence, but it occurs to me that, as adults, we often hide behind this mask of total capability, complete control, the illusion that we have all the answers, and that once you reach some arbitrary age, you can have them all, too.  It is so very sad, this lie that we perform under the guise of being a grown up, that somehow we are less afraid, less questioning than the people born after us.

I recently answered the Pivot questionnaire that James Lipton uses as the end of Inside the Actor's Studio. One question asks, "What is your least favorite word?" I knew my answer immediately.  Wait.  I hate all that that word implies.  I hate waiting on people from my years of food service, I hate the notion that women must to wait on men, but most of all I cannot stand the way adults tell children to "wait until you're older."  What a crock.  We often say "wait" because the question asked or situation presented is simply too difficult for us to navigate at the time, so we build an illusory world in which the answer or outcome will be more desirable if we simply...wait.  But believing things will change simply by waiting, or that answers will come or that understanding and acceptance or action will suddenly spring up from a void is silly and irresponsible.  [I'm not selling patience short, mind you.  There's something to be said for it, but not when patience is meant to yield an answer that action or conversation could achieve far more readily]

So, today, with a great deal of gratitude to Emily for her artwork and her fearlessness, I'd like to be brave enough to say that we, adults, have been lying to you, younger generation.  We know no more than you do, we've just had more experiences, and in a lot of ways, that greater depth of knowledge has scared us more and caused us to ask more questions.  But, and this is important so pay attention, not having all the answers is not only okay--for the really intelligent among us--it's a more exciting and invigorating way to live. 

What could I learn if I knew everything?  What would I ever find inspiring or beautiful or new? What amazing thing ever happened because someone was feeling particularly contented?

The biggest lie is that being afraid is a bad thing, that fear should be repressed or hidden.  It's not only okay to be scared, it's necessary if you have any hope of living an examined life.

So, I'm going to try to be more like Emily, to be brave enough to tell the truth, to show the world that while I may not yet know who I am, I'm okay with the process of finding out.

Home is Wherever I'm Alone With You

His tank top makes me cold, but everything else about this makes me warms and fuzzy.

Just Another Day in Dublin...

Outside some stores last Christmas Eve in Dublin, Glen Hansard, Bono, and Damie Rice decided to do a little busking--brilliant:

From Now On...

From now on, I should only be photographed beneath a drum light on a brick wall in old buildings.  The photographer must be my good friend and must have a knowledge of iphone camera filters.  Here's the proof:

I'm So Heavy (Heavy in Your Arms)

This song tears me up.  So so so so good.

It Is Time It Were Time

I have been feeling pretty low the last few days, trying to focus on what is good but still, inevitably, beaten back by the sadness of being alone this time of year.  Fitzgerald wasn't wrong when he wrote, "[S]o we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  It is so easy to live there, in the past, when things weren't--most likely--better than they are now, but from this vantage point, they seemed to be.

Just as Jay and Daisy have glorified, idealized, and fetishized the love they once shared, during the holidays it is easy to slip into patterns that celebrate the good in the past without acknowledging what led to the present.

I don't want to dwell on how I got here.  It is not a new story or a particularly interesting one, but today, I am trying to live not in Fitzgerald's world, but in Paul Celan's.  He wrote:

It is time the stone made an effort to flower.

Time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

In an effort to honor his words, to look forward rather than back, to be hopeful rather than hurt, here's what I did today.  I can't seem to get the sideways ones turned around...maybe in the morning.

Thankful

Sometimes, I forget the myriad things for which I should be thankful.  Then the world slows, I breathe in and out more slowly, I look up, and there they are, smiling brightly, letting me notice them anew with the same joy and beauty that was always there, even when I couldn't see it for awhile.

I Believe

I awoke with a cold on my day off. The universe, I think, is suggesting that maybe this year, I need to be alone for the holidays. Unless this nastiness goes away, I'll be giving thanks in my bed strewn with Emily Dickinson poems and biographies. Because, when you're sick, there's nothing more appropriate than the life story of a reclusive woman who may never have known real love.

Even if she didn't experience it, Emily seems to have believed in it which I greatly appreciate. I believe in it, too, especially given the incredible way my dissolve turned out. I dislike the word divorce, it is cold and clinical and angry and that's not what happened to me. The man I was married to is kind, funny, smart, and a wonderful friend, but our hopes and dreams turned out to be incompatible. That doesn't mean there isn't love there any longer, we are trying to be and stay friends. There may be more love here than most people would realize: we loved each other enough to say, "go be happy," knowing that that happiness would, eventually, be with someone else.

Some of my adorable students have started suggesting they could 'hook [me] up' with their single fathers, uncles, older brothers, etc. One offer even came with the incentive that the young lady's father had 'just got his new teeth.' Be still my beating heart. Seriously, though, I believe real love exists. I believe in it as I believe in the sun coming up each day, the pull of the moon on the sea, the perfect joy in a child's surprised laughter. I've seen it when my brother looks at his beautiful wife and when my father, after 25 years of marriage, tells my mother how much he loves her.

This Thanksgiving, I'm praying we all get to find that same peace, joy, and happiness someday, and I'm praying we all have the patience to wait for it.

To that end, this is the song that woke me on my shuffling ipod alarm clock this morning. Enjoy.

Til Kingdom Come

Frontier Ruckus

Last spring, this band rolled through Lawrence and, on the recommendation of some pretty fantastic people, I went to see them.  Their music has been in pretty steady rotation ever since. 

Tomorrow night they're playing at the Bottleneck, and you can bet your sweet bippy I'll be there.  Here's the biography the band provided for the Bottleneck event page.


FRONTIER RUCKUS
We’ve memorized so thoroughly the worlds from which we come. With a lifelong obsession, we’ve catalogued and internalized the apparently permanent fixtures of a cherished locality until our bodies have in fact become either physical extensions or microcosmic containers of these landscapes: arms kinking in unbroken strip-mall chains, gaping mouths mimicking the enormous vacancy of an evacuated sports dome. The chief business of Frontier Ruckus is the collection and organization of these solid, unmoving markers. We spool the vast confusion and depth of existence around fast-food restaurants in anchoring tethers; we use the vacuous space of the abandoned 90s mall, now dead and tomb-like, as leaky reservoirs of overflowing memory. We turn to these devices to render memory and its innumerable landmarks somehow less crippling in their abundance—to seek some agency, some proprietorship over a world as heavy and unwieldy with contents of the past as a backyard filling with nightfall.

In the 1990s my mother worked at Summit Place Mall, on the borderline between Pontiac and Waterford, Michigan. So much met at that nexus. Day met dusk and a drive home. Now it is where memory meets the present tense and struggles to recognize it. My grandfather taught me how to stand a quarter on its side in the food court there. I studied the quarter intently. I noticed the thin black line, the feeble definition separating one thing from all other objects in the world. From that perception on, I broke free from those borders and blended my body into the entire landscape of my experience. A large part of me has lived in a world of its own rearrangements and lovely eternities ever since. What I’ve found in this expansive nighttime of blurred place, age, and pure memory is hopefully some of what Deadmalls and Nightfalls reflects.

It Gets Better

In the wake of a rash of teen suicides brought on by bullying, columnist Dan Savage began the It Gets Better campaign.  The project's pledge is to: Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are. I pledge to spread this message to my friends, family and neighbors. I'll speak up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work. I'll provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens by letting them know that "It Gets Better."  


Many celebrities have contributed videos and written accounts in support for and struggles with bullying to show solidarity and lead by example.  Some celebrities have addressed the issue from another angle, challenging the kids who egg the bullies--in the hope of not being bullied themselves--to stand up for the kids being bullied.  


I've been discussing this issue a great deal lately, with high school students, colleagues, and friends.  Inevitably, the question comes up: "Were you ever bullied?"  Most say no, they weren't.  Some were too quiet to be noticed, some say they were the bullies, trying to hide their own insecurity by picking on people around them.  But me, well, yes.  I was bullied a lot, and not in a 'maybe she's just a little too sensitive sort of a way.'  Nope.  Honest to goodness, mean spirited, kids bent on making me feel bad kind of bullied.


I remember being chased on the playground and called fat by the boys in my second grade class, and the group of boys that jumped as though I'd made the earth move during a particularly bouncy cheerleading routine (a stint that was short-lived for so many reasons), or the time I ran for student council president.  When I walked to the podium to introduce myself, I was booed by an auditorium packed with every one of the two hundred and fifty students in my seventh grade class.  They all booed.  The couple of girls I called friends did nothing, no clapping, no booing, just...nothing. 


I've asked myself for years what made me a target.  I wasn't the heaviest, I wasn't the meanest, the quietest, the most anything...except for confident.  My parents instilled in me the belief that I was no better than anyone else, and that no one was better than me.  I never, for one second, felt inferior.  Never doubted my right to speak, to listen, to learn, to be heard.  Even when those things happened to me, they were painful in the moment, but I kept getting up in the morning, kept going to school, kept reading, kept breathing, kept wanting to learn.  I asked questions, I raised my hand, I talked to adults, I believed they were listening to me, I believed I was worth listening to.  My greatest crime was really liking myself.  And, well, I was mouthy, a trait that worked out well for me as an acerbic adult but made me no friends in the average American junior high school.  When kids were mean to me, I snapped back at them with a larger vocabulary larger and quicker wit than many of them ever cultivated in adulthood let alone at age nine.


I got lucky.  When I entered ninth grade, it was in a new town at a new high school.  All those terrible experiences from my past ceased to exist as soon as I left my sleepy hometown.  I'd love to say I never had another bad moment, but life doesn't work that way and there were a few rough spots, but I learned how to adapt, how to stand up for myself, and how to make it clear that I wasn't someone to be pushed around.


So, why write all of this now, here?  Well, I've been thinking a lot about why those things happened to me, and the best reason I can come up with is so that I can be this person, now, telling kids that in fact, it does get better.  The people who tear you down for being strong are the ones most likely to never know real strength.  Every cowardly insult about your clothes, your weight, your voice, your sexual orientation, your haircut, whatever thing they pick on, it's all in an attempt to mask their fear of you.  Of your strength, of your power, of your brilliance and beauty.  


You are valuable.  You are important.  You are beautiful, and you are the ones that make the world better, smarter, more compassionate, and worth living in.  


I promise.

Find the River

10/10/10

This morning, after years of not belonging to one, I officially joined a church.  


I spent a very long time wondering what God wanted of me, how S/He could exist when there was so very much pain in the world, how I, an educated woman who has read more in my 34 years than some people ever do in a lifetime, how could I believe in something I couldn't see, something I couldn't touch, something I couldn't photograph.


And then, I just knew.  Faith held the door open for me one Sunday morning in April, and I have been saying thank you for that gesture ever since.


I do not pretend to know what anyone else needs in this life, but today, I took steps towards ensuring I get what I need: a spiritual home, a loving community, and a truly accepting group of people who share my world view, a world view so eloquently stated in the church covenant:


In the love of truth and in the spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship of God and the service of all. We seek to know the will of God and to walk in God’s ways, made known or to be made known to us; to love one another, to proclaim the Gospel to all the world; to work and pray for the progress of knowledge, the promotion of justice, the reign of peace, and the realization of our shared humanity. And we look with faith for the triumph of righteousness and the gift of life eternal.


I'm not going to knock on doors or ask you to talk to me about your salvation--if we're friends, I probably already know your views and love you enough to know we'll talk if we need to, or we won't.  Today wasn't about you or what you need to do, world.  It was about me, and I think that's just fine.  You see, all day I have felt something miraculous should happen given the significance of today's calendar date: 10/10/10.  It occurs to me now, as the night comes on in and the cool evening air of fall perfumes my house, that joining my church this morning was my miracle, and I couldn't be more grateful.

Happiness...

...is a choice.


No matter what anyone tries to tell you to the contrary, they're wrong.  You can dwell on the things that are painful and difficult in your life, or you can choose to see the good that is coming, to believe that your dreams will come true, and to know--without a single hesitation--that you will someday be happy because you deserve to be, just like everyone else.


Just like everyone else. 


We all deserve to be happy, and we all have the power to choose to be.


I'm choosing to be; I hope you are, too.

How I Spent September

My Favorite Book

For the past seventeen years or so, when someone asked "What is your favorite book?" my response has been the same: Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs & All.  I discovered the book at 17 (coincidentally, exactly half my life ago) on a recommendation from a mentor writer dude who worked with the theatre workshop I did in the summers as an older teen.  Yeah, that was long winded.


Well, I still love that book, and re-read it last year and fell in love again with the central characters, Randolph 'Boomer' Petway III and Ellencherry Charles.  I jumped right back into the Middle East vs. Midwest debate, the conversation surrounding what is and isn't art and how we know, the divine as feminine/masculine or ungendered save from the gaze that rests upon it.  So many things to love, and yet...


I find myself turning from this old text in favor of another book, one that has sold infinitely more copies, one that will never go out of print, one that is most likely in more houses than any other book in pint, one that has more editions than I will ever be able to count let alone peruse in my short life.


I am, of course, talking about the dictionary.


Go ahead.  Laugh.  I'll give you time.


Still giggling?


Composed yourself?


Good, let's go.


Oh dictionary, how I love you.  No matter what mood I'm in, you always have something new to show me, some new word I've never heard of to make my head spin, some etymology that shakes me right down to my flip-flops.  I have multiple copies at school, including one on my desk that is part of the game my students know I love to play--Go to the Dictionary.  When they ask the definition of a word, rather than give them my own (usually mostly accurate) definition, I say, "Let's Go to the Dictionary!" I want them to learn the proper definition, not just my own that has inevitably been filtered through my own experiences with the word, and I want them to see that there can be real joy in discovering something new each day, even if it's as simple as a definition.


My bedside table has a drawer full of reading material I'm working: magazines, poetry collections, a novel, a book of essays, and yes, a dictionary.  Sometimes, for fun, I sit down with it and circle the words I don't know, amazing myself that there are still parts of this language I haven't encountered.  And my journal--that little leather limb I carry everywhere--is filled with definitions I've come across, words I've looked up, or terms I want to use as titles.


Tonight, watching the sunlight fade over the fence, the sky a study in pastels, I have my favorite dictionary by my side--a big red mother I got off of a remainder table at Barnes & Noble a few years ago.  It is open to the As, pages 8 and 9, beauties like 'acetic' and acidulate,' 'achromatic' and 'acrostic.'


It may be that, after seventeen years, my brain and heart have just about had it with old Tommy boy and skinny legged Salome, or it may just be that, as I get older, my fondness for language and the richness that resides in words has grown, deepening like a wine stain on a linen tablecloth, to a place where I can no longer deem a text 'favorite' unless it is the one that is continually evolving as new words are added and old ones removed.


You see, like me, the dictionary is improving with age, ever watchful, ever watched, ready--when you least expect it--to teach you something new.

I Have Never Been Cool

I have never been cool—at least, not outwardly so. From the outside, I’ve been performative, loud, opinionated, but never cool. I always had something to say and, as a kid, I had no tact so being the girl with the world in her mouth tended to make me, if not exactly an outcast, definitely not someone who flew in the cool blue circles of awesomeness.


On the inside, however, I have always felt like there was a cool little secret no one knew about: I have excellent taste in music. I know, I know, some people say this about themselves and it is totally false. They tout the transformative powers of Milli Vanilli and the subtle strains of Celine Dion all while celebrating Michael Bolton’s entire catalog. I’m not going to say I haven’t rocked out to “Girl You Know It’s True” or sung along—way too loudly—to “I’m Your Lady” when they’ve come on the radio, and like every red-blooded American girl my age, I did in fact at one time own a Michael Bolton tape, but none of those artists speaks to my taste level.


Like the designers on Project Runway, I have been influenced by many things, but my taste is most defined by what I loved as a kid—a young kid. In my house, there was always music. Dad plays the keyboard (not exactly right to say piano when the instrument in question is a behemoth Hammond B3), and my brother is a drummer so there was always music. I sang for years, and we were as likely to be listening to one of Dad’s many bands rehearsing (country acts Caught in the Act and Richwood, blues Rebel Miles, classic rock Lix—yeah, Lix) as we were to Mom’s records. I remember The Allman Brothers, The Beatles, and Van Morrison from a young age. I learned really early on that you can’t just have a good beat, you have to have something to say, and sometimes the best thing you can say is “Let It Be.”


Anyway, I set the Ipod to Shufflin’ last night and discovered that, if someone were to pick it up and scroll through the last hundred songs, I would finally look—outwardly—cool. Well, I think so anyway…aren’t we always at the mercy of our own definitions of things like that? (That’s probably another blog post) I can’t believe how many little mini-narratives there are running through this—my life is nothing if not metaphorical, even when it comes to my music.And yeah, I get that there’s a lot of Ani & Ryan Adams—I make no apologies for that.


For now, here’s the hundred (with a few links in case you're interested).



1. Love Is All I Am, Dawes
2. Dear Sara, Anders Parker
3. If I Needed You, Lyle Lovett (Townes VZ cover)
4. Coming Up, Ani DiFranco
5. Fade Into You, Mazzy Star
6. Pulse, Ani
7. Waiting for Superman, Iron & Wine
8. Closer, Joshua Radin
9. Flowers in December, Mazzy Star
10. Gordon’s Message, Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes)
11. Self-Evident, Ani
12. Honey, Stay Awhile, The Rosewood Thieves
13. Lisztomania, Phoenix
14. Amy, Ryan Adams
15. Because the Night, Patti Smith
16. Gossip In the Grain, Ray La Montagne
17. Banjolin Song (live on Balcony TV), Mumford & Sons
18. If You Let Me eb Your anchor, Dawes on Daytrotter
19. Right Place, The Mynabirds
20. Medicine Ball, Rogue Wave
21. Faithless Street, Whiskeytown
22. Never Forget You, Noisettes
23. Nobody Girl, Ryan Adams
24. Avenues, Whiskeytown
25. Bodyguard, Dawn Landes
26. Oh Quiet Night, Will Stratton
27. Diner, Ani
28. Ten Thousand Words, The Avett Brothers
29. Speed of Sound, Chris Bell
30. No One Can Hold a Candle to You, Morrissey
31. Incomplete & Insecure, The Avett Brothers
32. The Devil Had a Hold of Me, Gillian Welch
33. Worthy, Ani
34. Find the River, Pickin’ Series-Pickin’ on REM
35. War on Machines, Blitzen Trapper
36. Face Up & Sing, Ani
37. Gratitude, Ani
38. Friendly Beasts, Sufjan Stevens
39. Comes a Time, Neil Young
40. Starting Now, Ingrid Michaelson
41. Rome, Phoenix
42. I Would Be Sad, The Avett Brothers
43. Banjolin Song, Mumford & Sons
44. Ground Beneath My Feet, Sherwood
45. Stormy Weather, Echo & the Bunnymen
46. I Don’t Know Why, Colin Hay
47. Jacksonville, Sufjan Stevens
48. Suffragette City, David Bowie
49. Hazards of Love Pt. 1, The Decemberists
50. Restless, Langhorne Slim
51. Moon Song, Patty Griffin
52. Tired of This Life, Dawn Landes
53. What Light, Wilco
54. Letter to Elise, The Cure
55. 10:1, Rogue Wave
56. Ruination Day Pt. 2, Gillian Welch
57. I Made a Resolution, Sea Wolf on Daytrotter
58. Just Like Honey, Jesus and the Mary Chain
59. By the Time the Sun Goes Down, Langhorne Slim
60. The Last One, Cary Brothers
61. Little Lovin’, Lissie
62. Never Enough, The Cure
63. Spirit, The Caesars
64. When the President Talks to God, Bright Eyes
65. My Heart is Broken, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
66. Not Where You’re At (But Where You Will Be), The Rave-Ups
67. Little Lion Man, Mumford & Sons
68. Dance Me Around the Room, The Steel Wheels
69. Living in the Promiseland, Willie Nelson
70. Orion Town 2, Frontier Ruckus
71. Love Is All I Am, Dawes
72. Fields of Gold, Eva Cassidy
73. Napoleon (2007), Ani
74. Train Ride, Lyle Lovett
75. Father & Son, Cat Stevens
76. Filipino Box Spring Hog, Tom Waits
77. We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes In the Morning, Emmylou Harris & Gram Parsons
78. Hard Headed Woman, Wanda Jackson
79. 40 Day Dream, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes
80. Time Will Do the Talking, Patty Griffin
81. House Where Nobody Lives, Tom Waits
82. One Flight Down, Norah Jones
83. Vodka, Victoria Hart
84. Garden of Simple, Ani
85. Next Big Thing, Ani
86. Mutiny, I Promise You, The New Pornographers
87. Old, Old Song, Ani
88. The Wind, Cat Stevens
89. In My Own Eyes, Brandi Carlile
90. Knuckle Down, Ani
91. If I Were the Man You Wanted, Lyle Lovett
92. The High Road, Broken Bells
93. Blue Light, Mazzy Star
94. Big Time In the Jungle, Old Crow Medicine Show
95. I’m Coming Over, Ryan Adams
96. Don’t Be Sad, Whiskeytown
97. Baby Boomer, Monsters of Folk
98. Strawberry Wine, Ryan Adams
99. Bird On a Wire, Leonard Cohen
100. Sister, I’m a Poet, Morrissey

Something Old

I've been digging through some older pieces and came across this one from last spring.  It's based on the picture at the left, a print by Susan Meiselas from her book  "Carnival Strippers".  Who knew women did that in the seventies--stripped at carnivals?  I don't remember that little attraction at any carnival I ever attended, though--to be fair--my memories of carnivals start somewhere in the 80s.  


Anyway, the structure (sections) feel a little forced.  I don't know if there's another way to do it, but I thought I'd ask you fine people for suggestions.  Help appreciated.

Land Speed 


1
Carnivals in Guthrie are popular with the kids, their
fingers still sticky in the white of winter as they picture
pink puffs of cotton candy they gnashed between
uninsured teeth through June and July. Their parents--
Guthrie locals who never made it out--spend summers
wandering the grounds and squinting up at lights that,
when they were kids, glittered like promises. 


2
It’s been four years since the Munich Olympics, four
years since Jenny watched, breathless, as the American
from Oregon with the scraggly hair and bushy mustache 
pressed into the wind, his body moving like the gears in
her grandfather’s watch, arms and legs marking time
around the great track that would, eventually, beat him. 
Four years since she’d graduated, four years of remembering

the track stars in high school with quick feet and quicker
mouths, their ropey arms that pinned a girl against cracked
back seat vinyl til she was dreamily defenseless.  Those boys--
who knew about stamina, who held their breath and kept their eyes
open when they kissed so they could see the finish line instead
of groping around for it in the dark--those boys were long gone.
They’d run out almost before the graduation caps hit the ground.   


3
Billy Howard came to Guthrie a week ahead, scraggly hair, bushy
mustache, a smile with as much grease in it as there were teeth. 
The advance man, he’d come to pay off cops, secure licenses,
chat up local girls who had nothing but Guthrie beauty school or
disappointing marriages to look forward to, their best days behind
them.  He needed girls for the strong show and knew moony eyes
and broken hearts were best for that kind of work. 


4

Jenny’s been flying for a week or so. Summer is long and from up
here Billy could be the American runner who died last year. Drowsy 
from the drugs someone always has on hand, she squints at the lights, 
those false stars, tells herself it's not so bad. Every night she dreams
of running.  Shaking like a windblown leaf on her box, sleepily spinning
in opposite directions as she tries to break the land speed record, her legs--
wheels beneath her--spreading wider, circling faster as the crowd roars on.