Sometimes I Feel Like I Can't Even Sing

This cover blows me away.  I've listened to it 5 times already.  If you enjoy it even half as much as I do, you will be obsessed.




You Are the Everything (R.E.M.) as covered by Redbird.


Special thanks to Paste Magazine for this find via Heartache With Hard Work.


You Are the Everything


(Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe)

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing (say, say, the light)
I'm very scared for this world
I'm very scared for me (say, say, the light)
Eviscerate your memory
Here's a scene
You're in the back seat laying down (say, say, the light)
The windows wrap around
To sound of the travel and the engine (say, say, the light)
All you hear is time stand still in travel
And feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone you are the everything

I think about this world a lot and I cry (say, say, the light)
And I've seen the films and the eyes
But I'm in this kitchen (say, say, the light)
Everything is beautiful
And she is so beautiful (say, say, the light)
She is so young and old
I look at her and I see the beauty (say, say, the light)
Of the light of music
The voices talking somewhere in the house
Late spring and you're drifting off to sleep
With your teeth in your mouth
You are here with me
You are here with me
You have been here and you are everything

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing (say, say, the light)
I'm very scared for this world
I'm very scared for me (say, say, the light)
Eviscerate your memory
Here's a scene
You're in the back seat laying down (say, say, the light)
The windows wrap around
To sound of the travel and the engine (say, say, the light)
All you hear is time stand still in travel
And feel such peace and absolute
The stillness still that doesn't end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The greatest thing you've ever seen
And they're there for you
For you alone you are the everything
For you alone you are the everything 

Paying Attention

Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, argues that the quality of human life is not dictated by the things that happen to us, by our reactions to those things, by our heredity or environment, by our gender or race, but rather the quality of human life is dictated by what each of us chooses to pay attention to.

If I choose to focus on the negative things I encounter each day, then my life will be fraught with fretting, full of fear, and completely chaotic.  However, if I focus on the small things that I find beautiful, if I allow myself to slip past the negativity and instead drift into the trancelike state of rapt attention, I may find myself not only calmer, more energetic, and less stressed, but fundamentally happier, too.

An old friend wrote a blog entry today about special needs kids and her dear sister, Sara, with whom I attended high school.  As I read Katie's blog, it occurred to me that by nature of her differentness, Sara focuses on the positive in her world far more often than the negative.  In fact, I've seen her irritated, but in the 20+ years I have known their family, I can't say that I've ever seen Sara unhappy.  Is that because sad things have never happened to her?  No.  But it may be because her diagnosis allows her to see the negative things in her life as less valuable than the positive things.  And that's not a detriment, that's a gift.

I work with students all the time who have trouble taking social cues, who don't know how to navigate a sarcasm laden conversation, who couldn't be insincere if they were payed to be, and rather than feeling sorry for them or wishing their situation would somehow 'improve,' I often find myself wishing the rest of my students had the same issues.  The same blinders that seem to negate the trend toward teen angst and cynicism.  Wouldn't it be lovely if all students--all people for that matter--woke up tomorrow and decided to pay attention to positivity?

All of this stems from a young man in one of my classes today who said, "Everyone is fake and everyone lies."  I was heartbroken to hear this from a bright, capable young man whom I so enjoy having in class because this kind of negative view tends to belie an inherent distrust of the world at large and, in my experience, that distrust most often leads to unhappy relationships and sadness.  I tried to tell him I do not lie, I don't believe in it, but he said if I have ever lied then I am, in fact, a liar.  This need to see the world in extremes, labels, one incident dictating a person's fate forever is--to be sure--an adolescent notion, but it strikes me that the country is becoming more and more narrow, more and more black and white, as opposed to becoming more accepting, more open.

Today an anti-abortion bill was passed in South Dakota and anti-labor legislation passed the senate in Ohio, and the Supreme Court sided with the right to hate speech of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Think about that: three momentous decisions all on the side of negativity.  We are focused on the terrible things happening overseas, the monstrosities being perpetrated here at home, the tragic downfall of an educational system hell bent on reaching kids who just don't care.  Is it any wonder depression diagnoses are up and public happiness is down?

My wish today is that, as the sun begins to spend a little more time in the sky on this side of the world each day, and as we move into--finally--warmer weather, that perhaps we will all take a few minutes to pay attention to the things that fill us with joy.  Total wonder.  Our rapt faces brilliant in the bright light of what we used to call hope for a better tomorrow.

someday...

I'll have something valuable to say again, but until then: Josh Ritter & the Royal City Band @ Liberty Hall in Lawrence.  Hands down one of the best shows I've ever seen, which got me to thinking.  I've seen a lot of shows--starting with hair metal bands when I was thirteen through fifteenish.

These are ten that stand out.  I don't know if they are the top ten, there are a lot of great shows that aren't on here--including tonight's--but these are the ten that stand out right now.

10.  REM & Sonic Youth @ Sandstone, 1995

Sure, it was the Monster Tour which meant it wasn't their best stuff, and Sonic Youth's insistence that feedback and music are the same thing makes me want to puke, but it's REM.  Come on.

9. Duran Duran somewhere in Tampa, FL, 1997

I sold cd's to have the money to go to this show.  I was dying to see them, I was 21, my boyfriend at the time was 28, and I bought the tickets as a birthday gift.  He flipped out.  The show was in support of that weird record they released in 97 or 98.  They looked and sounded great, but the 30+ crowd sitting through View to a Kill while I stood and rocked out left a little to be desired.

8.  Regina Spektor @ The Uptown Theatre in KC, 2008

I hadn't heard a lot of her music when a friend took me to see her.  She blew me away.  I thought she might be some sort of kitschy pop tart, but her talent was evident the minute she stepped on stage--mesmerizing, quiet, funny, stunning.

7. The Avett Brothers & The Low Anthem @ The Missouri Theatre in Columbia, 2010

Both bands gave incredible performances.  I'd only heard 'Oh My God Charlie Darwin,' TLA's second (?) record, but it did not prepare me for the beauty of seeing them live.  And, if you've ever seen TAB, you know they can't be missed.

6. Juliana Hatfield @ The Bottleneck, 1995

I was 19, a sophomore in college only in the sense that I was enrolled at KU for the second year, and I love love loved her.  I went with some friends from high school--one of whom's older boyfriend snuck us Rolling Rocks all through the show--and at one point Juliana started to sing "Make It Home," a song that still haunts me.  Her male bandmates walked up to the other mic and one by one said, "I love my vagina."  She got so pissed she stormed off stage and had to be coaxed into returning thirty odd minutes later.

5.  Counting Crows, Live, Galactica, & Blonde Redhead @ Sandstone, 2000

This was a weird tour.  Galactica always opened--and they were awesome--Live and CC traded off who did the first hour or so and who did the second.  I am not really a Live fan, but they were pretty good.  The reason this song makes the list however--besides the Ed Kowalczyk/Adam Duritz cover of TLC's "No Scrubs"--is the nearly ten minute breakdown in the middle of "Round Here" during which Adam came down to the front of the stage and launched into part of "Private Archipelago."  Un. Real.

4.  Ani DiFranco @ the Lied Center, 1998

4th row tickets, it rained so much that night that my car almost flooded out in the parking lot.  I lived up the street from the Lied at the time, so we didn't really have far to go, but it took us forever, and we were soaked when we got inside.  The show was a benefit for the Free Leonard Peltier Foundation, and at one point Ani walked over and yelled at these four girls who were being totally obnoxious--talking through her set.  I loved her in that moment, not afraid to stop playing and call people out for being rude.  And when she played "Pulse" I was transfixed.  Which, incidentally, contains one of my favorite lyrics ever,

"i realized that night that the hall light 
which seemed so bright when you turned it on is nothing
compared to the dawn
which is nothing, compared to the light 
which seeps from me while you're sleeping")

3.  Tori Amos @ the Lied Center, 1994

This was the first concert I ever went to by myself, and it was totally worth it.  I remember what I was wearing, I remember walking across the bridge from Hashinger Hall to the Lied, ticket in hand, looking up at the September sky and thinking I was really doing something grown up--seeing a show alone, unafraid to do that.  It made me feel powerful.  And when she played "Me & a Gun" the whole room went silent.  I haven't been to a show since when the crowd has been so totally mesmerized.  It was like a spell had fallen over the room.

2. Lyle Lovett @ The Steifel Theatre, 2009

I went to this show with my mom and we had a ball.  She bought the tickets for my birthday, we got dressed up, had dinner before.  It's not something mom and I do often.  We talk all the time and laugh and shop and love each other like crazy, but we don't have mother daughter dates like this much.  Time and opportunity get in our way, but this night was amazing.  The show was fabulous--you simply cannot ever go wrong with Lyle Lovett.  Ever.  But it was so hot in the theatre that at one point mom and I looked at each other and started laughing about which articles of clothing we could legally remove.  Afterwards we went to Dairy Queen and got blizzards--a favorite family past time--and circled back to watch the band load in.  We saw Francine, a backup singer who has been with Lyle for years, standing out by the buses in her nice stage shirt, a button up denim shirt over it, shorts and flip flops.  And she was smoking.  As my mother would say, "we like to died!"

1.  Mumford & Sons, the Mynabirds, & Albatross @ the Record Bar, KC 2010

The two opening acts really surprised me, I knew nothing about them and found them both to be engaging and energetic.  The Mynabirds, a sort of throwback folk/soul act out of Omaha had this really strange dynamic happening with the lead singer--a thin knockout blonde--and the only other girl in the band, a dark haired, heavier backup singer.  It was stated several times that she'd written the songs, but her voice wasn't particularly compelling and she and the blonde kept shooting 'you know you're only here because you have to be' looks at each other all through their set.

And then there was Mumford.  Ah, Mumford.  I owe my love of them to the guys I work with.  True music hounds, that lot, and they introduced to a band that I have recommended often enough to be making residuals.  They were sweet and silly and surprised at how small the venue was, it was the last night of their first North American tour and it was the smallest place they played in, which means we got the most intimate and best show of the whole tour.  No one who was there will argue that it was anything less than spectacular.  The friend I went with--who actually attended 6 of these 10 concerts with me--has said several times that he could see that show every single night for the rest of his life and never be disappointed.  I couldn't agree more.

Rolling in the Deep

There aren't words for how incredible this is. Song, voice, video...wow.

Returns

Spun sugar wind whirls beyond my windows, the air out there peppered by a whiteness that begs describing.  Constant sheets of white blow in this blizzard they've said is upon us, above my fence the sky and the falling flakes are interchangeable, a mutable flurry of furious wind and weather.  But, here on this side of the cedar slats, spinning slow motion down onto my patio table, I can see them one by one, snowflakes that separate from the pack, a dancing dervish of downward motion.

I suffer the curse of the forest for the trees often, but my problem is the reverse: so caught up in the dense vegetation of all that confronts me, I miss the single sweet moments which comprise that density.  I wander in the forest seeing only green, only a canopied sky made invisible by overlapping branches, obscuring any view of the world beyond their reach.

Today, this whiteness wants to teach me something, and I am trying to be quiet enough to hear the lesson in the lighting.  I know what it is to be lost in the thick, to feel a forever pressure to be more, to be better, to be, simply, enough.  I know how to plaster on a smile and sing through the sadness, I know which face to carry so that everyone else sees the me they think they know.  But all that plaster and song, carrying and falsehood, only leads to an exhaustion that breeds a destructive disconnection from self.  So, on this hazy gray day that blurs the branches of the tree line, I am trying to step back.  Trying to let myself see what one reaching tree can be on its own, apart from the copse, singular and lovely as the one small flake I watch whisper its way to ground, seeking soft landing, knowing its cold journey lasts only until the sun--inevitably--returns.

Into the Woods

Auditions late October, rehearsals began in November, illness and snow days robbed us of much of our needed time in December and January, but we opened, ran, and closed this past weekend and had an incredible run.  Over 1000 tickets sold, 70+ thrilled kids, and a proud director.  Today, I'm resting and reflecting on an amazing journey.

Stars

Somewhere in my father's studio, in an old wooden cabinet filled with audio cassettes, there is a tape of my brother and I singing and making music.  I am maybe five and he is two and half.  We sing about rock and roll in our tiny, tinny childrens' voices, we laugh, we sound like we are having the time of our lives.

Brandon knew early on that being a drummer, a performer, a professional musician was the only thing that was going to make him happy and, to that end, he is living the life he dreamt of when we were kids.  He is not famous, his is not a household name, but the shows he plays with the various groups he's in are always packed, and they are always worth the price of admission.  His press clippings have called him "a show unto himself," and "the best drummer you've never heard of."  When he is on stage, no matter who he's playing with, Brandon is the one you watch.  His passion and energy are electric, and he's the guy you want to know in the room at any party, too.  He's quick with a joke or a great conversation about the influence of ancient African rhythms on the evolving state of contemporary hip hop, but being a drummer is just the beginning of who he is as a musician.

I remember one Christmas, he somehow got a hold of an old trombone and proceeded to play--or attempt to play--that thing all over our house.  He had to have been twenty and he was ridiculous, puffed out cheeks and breathless, but blowing all day trying to get the hang of it.  Eventually he did.  He's not going to join any brass quintets, mind you, but he could add a few notes to a record if he had to, and that was always his intention.  He's taught himself to get by on almost every instrument--bass, guitar, piano, winds, brass, strings--I've heard him play them all, and of course he can sing.

But, and this is the part that I think I am most proud and in awe of, Brandon also writes songs.  Not just hooky pop pablum that any of us could spew out in the car given the right beat and topic, but real thoughtful music that warms the soul and soothes the spirit.  When he sings, you hear his sincerity, his passion, and sheer love of creating something lasting.  This is his latest track, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do--but that might be hard seeing as how I'm a pretty biased big sister.

STARS

Show & Tell

Since late October, I have been directing a show at LHS.  We open on the 20th and, until today, I was really starting to worry whether or not we would get there.  Illness, snow days, winter break, and a thousand other setbacks have impeded our progress in ways I can only begin to describe, but today, when the backdrop was hung and the moon went up, as the costumes were tried on and mics tested, when the set pieces were finally painted and the orchestra began rehearsing, I saw and heard proof of what all this sweat and, yes, tears has been for.

And, as the snow begins to melt, I am starting to set my eyes on spring, on the thaw, on the great pageantry of life's renewal that happens every greening season.  Just like the earth which freezes and sets itself to sleeping through the long winter only bear fruit and blossom once the warm weather returns, this show is coming to life after months of cold and tedious toil.  I am excited.  I am thankful.

Snow Day

No matter how beautiful the snow, how magical the world, today was a day I needed to be at school.  The musical I'm directing needs to be rehearsed--we open a week from Thursday--and I'm teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I love, so I hate not getting to talk about it.

If you need something to do today, this is my pick for the most perfect short story ever written. I cry every time I read it: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried, Amy Hempel.

Since this is the hand dealt to me, this is the soundtrack for the day:

All My Life

Today is my mother's birthday and, while I know many people love their moms, I feel that my relationship with my mother is special.  The story of my childhood is that, when I was a little, my mother began talking to me right away, telling me about her day, the world, speaking to me as her friend, a person she wanted to know, a person with whom she wanted to share her life.  


I grew up knowing what I had to say had value, and that my life was meaningful.  I knew early on that no matter what happened to me, no matter how poor some of my choices or how catastrophic some of my defeats, my mother was behind me in every single thing I did.


Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all my life."  My mother has prayed her whole life, as a little Catholic girl on her knees at school, when she taught my brother and I to say our prayers at night, and even now she prays every day for a better life for my brother and I, for my niece, for the world.  


All my life, I have known she was a good, kind, honest, funny, smart, strong woman, and I am happy to say that I think, now, after 59 years, she may finally know all of those things about herself.  The greatest gift she has ever given me is the knowledge that I can accomplish and survive anything.  I have always known I was blessed to know her and today--in celebration of her life--I wanted you to know her, too.


Happy Birthday, Mama.  I love you.

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.