piaf, candy cane, boosh, ocean

This was a good weekend.

Though Lost Weekend tricked us into desperately yearning for the Mighty Boosh and then cruelly claimed they had no such video. The over-sized candy cane that we found on the walk home afterwards provided some consolation.

Dancing was, as always, a good idea and Leia got a finger-puppet mustache (though I really want that word to be spelled moustache). My new boots are green- huzzah.

The best part of those short few days was, by far, our excursion to the beach. On a day that was half rainy half beautiful and clear, we decided the ocean was calling to us and we had to obey. Dr. X, DanDan, and I got into that tiny car (without even a frisbee!) and hurled ourselves water-ward. When we got there the air was full. The waves crashed in huge, bass-bellowing explosions and the little sand-pipers skedaddled around here and there playing tag with the full foam that pushed itself onto the shore. We drew in the sand, took photos, beheld the sea and, eventually, I took off my new green platypus bills and ran in to touch the water with my toes, only to be drenched (knees down) in the salty brine. I don't remember the last time I felt that good.

I've recently been asked if I am in love. The answer is: yes yes yes. Life is too full and too beautiful for me to not be head-over-heels with it, with the bridge, with the people that ebb and flow around me, with the cracks in the streets, with my cold fingertips, with stuffed peppers, with the knowledge that everything is within grasp as soon as we realize that our arms are made out of expandable rubber, not flesh and bone. All we have to do is learn how to reach.

anticipation

It is a good life that I have. In between the cracks courses blood that looks so much like gold and often we never want to stop. It were like magic how words found spaces to fill and how we tumbled in after them so willingly until we were swimming in something that must be divine- the ultimate creation. And the air in my head is all static cling- endless activity of something possible. Something utterly inevitable. Men walk down the street singing (la la la lalala ladidilala) to no one in particular which I think is great. Reflections of everything that is. Happening. The Books sing to me and make me feel balloons of energy climbing through my windpipes and through my nose. I hope to sing to you like this for always.

2:02:03

Instead of working right now I would very much like to be painting. But it's cold outside. And rainy. And I don't think there's anywhere else where I can have turpentine.

home and such

So today Gilly and I began looking at lots of photos from wherever we call home and I tried desperately to convince her that Cleveland and Ann Arbor were infinitely better than anywhere in Scotland (which is hard enough to lie to myself about let alone convincing another person) and I tried looking up photos of these glorious spots in the midwest and ended up with a lot of photos of fires. Which, when I think of it, makes sense. I feel like there were a lot of fires in Cleveland. And I never really thought about it before. I don't know that I would say it's like a defining trait or anything...but I guess things do burn down with some level of consistency.

Anyway-looking at these photos made me think about these places. And the way the air feels that first warm day when spring is about to come and there's still patches of snow on the ground but you still bike around in your t-shirt and you're pretty cold but feeling pretty great at the same time and there's a chill in your lungs that is simply delicious.

Cleveland: finding those strange moments of the city where it looks utterly beautiful in its sad post-steel days. The moss over the bridges. The ever-elusive "art bridge" where it was written that "gray is an ugly color" after everything got painted over. The top of the parking lot where kate and i read rude 14th century poetry. The west side where I feel like I'm not in the same city anymore and where you can find that random art gallery and see Birth for the first time. Lake View Cemetery and every minute I used to spend with my mother when she would take me from school because it was "too beautiful to sit in class" and we'd have lunch sitting next to beautiful monuments to those who have passed.

Ann Arbor: Walking down Liberty and that one block that makes you think that you might actually be in a city. The old West Side and the houses that look nothing if not comfortable. house shows and local musicians. Being the "normie" in a group of an ex-boyfriend's friends...awkward but priceless nonetheless. Brick streets. discounts and free coffee. October streets with Matt. Springtime with Fattie. Snow. Being Hermia in the Arboretum and Luke's twin sister in the Mendelssohn. The Bang and randomly running into Lucas and dancing all night and being utterly disgusting. Nathan and other randoms from the WCBN library. The Alleyway of Delight and (though I never thought I'd say this) 115 E. Kingsley St. Walking around town with Shawn drinking gin and tonic.

I love you both and miss you.

your fixie makes you looks fat

Fixed gears are damn sexy bikes. I feel guilty about this. I feel like the nerdy girl who agrees with all her friends that Mike Dexter is a total asshole and, god, who even CARES about football. But deep down, she has a huge crush on him and in her diary, she's written dozens of different combinations of their names with a liberal use of little cartoon hearts. I know that fixed gear bicycles are, "like totally it" right now and all that...but they're such attractive pieces of equipment. They're so thin, yet sturdy, sleek and minimal, shiny and effective. And here in the Mission people do amazing things with their fixed gears. They spend money to get little frame warmers- different color rims and handle bars. I find myself secretly coveting dozens of bikes on almost every walk I take and each one, I feel a little more for than just aesthetic satisfaction...I feel a little turned on. Usually having nothing to do with the skinny hipsters atop said bicycles. Though I do fantasize, from time to time, about having that fixed-gear-sweetie, who takes you to Tartine in the morning and Pops at night. Of course I am simultaneously disgusted with myself for such utterly cool aspirations...but sometimes, hipsterdom is a little like Starbucks coffee...you know it's goes against your morality, but damn don't those posters of machiatos look so tasty?

It's just a bad movie...

Recently I've been feeling catastrophe hanging around every corner I turn. I look up and expect to see wheelchaired sparrows hurling themselves to the hard concrete embrace below. Buddhist monks drawing red lines through the tender flesh of their beautiful throats. (I wonder- did they regret it at the end? Yearn to cry out "WAIT- I made a mistake!" What would have happened if that pool of life hadn't peeked from beneath the door- revealing the terrifying secret within- would that be one more friend to have disappeared or did he not cut through enough in the first place.) I expect bikers to be taken under grills, purses to be snatched, young men to be shot on the street, the golden gate bridge to let loose it's fine cables and snatch the entire city up in its claws and hold our heads under the water. I've been expecting disaster.

But today- a few days into the dry weather, I felt the beauty of people's smiles and the heat of the sun and the dry clay under my fingernails. Things didn't seem quite so menacing.

And- just so I publicly admit it: I can hardly stop listening to In Rainbows. I maintain that I still have reservations in terms of the larger scale of Radiohead albums. But, damn, it's hard to tear away from it.

And- to the world- I love you, please refrain from doing more stupid things. You've set me quite on edge.

football

The half-time shows at the super bowl always depress me. Granted, I'm usually never watching the super bowl. But there are those key moments, from year to year when I glimpse the height of American stupidity. I guess it's not even that i think football is stupid, or that people are stupid for wanting to watch sports...it's just such an amazing thing that SO MANY Americans, who can't get their act to do anything together. Who don't vote, who won't speak up against things they find deplorable- they WILL sit at home (or at a bar) and yell at rapidly moving images. Make commentary as if they, themselves, were the coaches. And then comes half-time. When Bono can open up his jacket to reveal the American Flag sewn inside while the names of 9/11 victims scroll behind him. Where Tom Petty can live off of the laurels of a hit he wrote however many years ago and dance about on a stage shaped like a guitar which he doesn't even play. It depresses me. That this is considered music. The people screaming in the audience don't care so much that it's Tom Petty just that they got to come down onto the field and maybe, if they're lucky, the camera will catch them singing along and, wouldn't that be magical. Maybe I'm being too critical, too elitist. After all, what's wrong with fame, Liza? What's wrong with "making it"? I guess nothing. But there's nothing particularly exciting about it either. Especially when it means catering to the exact companies and ideologies that seem so....disgusting to me. And putting on a half-hearted show and having it not matter because anything you do will be larger than life and people will cheer no matter what. It all feels like such a joke- such a strange compilation of facades that is supposed to convey a sense of "success" that really is just a bunch of bullshit.

Ooops- I think my coffee is done.