ungh

I taught my neighbor the phrase "existential weariness" the other night.

Things are going, generally, exceedingly well. Now if only I could banish this lingering exhaustion...sleep doesn't seem to help. Maybe it's just that it's that point in my monthly cycle where I'm losing more iron than I'm taking in, and caffeine isn't a sufficient supplement.

Or maybe it's my dreams. They're perennially weird, filled with the threat of loss, and I feel like even when I'm awake they crouch in the shadows under my eyes.

Or maybe it's the persistence of the hot weather. I'm ready for fall, like I was ready for summer, like I was ready for spring, like I was ready for winter. The seasons have felt out of joint this past year, and the not-rightness weighs on me. I can deal with life being chaotic and nonsensical, because that's life; but the seasons, well, they should do what they're supposed to -- they want to. What's wrong when they don't? So then the whole world feels cosmically off kilter.

But there are such beautiful moments. I've always loved autumn best of all the seasons, although I reiterate for the thousandth time that I love each season in its turn, and I've discovered something here in the upper midwest that I'd never seen before that's made me love it, and autumn, even harder: the beanfields. I love the beanfields in fall. They turn all kinds of different yellows and greens and golds and coppers, while underneath the leaves the stalks turn bronzes and browns, and this pied beauty runs all the way across the fields to the woods. We don't have beanfields at home, and every September my soul goes all shivery-wild at a glimpse of them here.

And this morning was cold and misty and sunny, and the sunbeams shot the world with these brilliant rays of light exploding from behind every tree and bush and cloud, so that the drive to work was like getting close to the resting place of the Holy Grail, or the announcement of the Second Coming like it is in the Bible, not Yeats. And the highway was bare and my window was down and the air smelled of field and mist and stone, and I thought, Some days all I want is a cold sunny morning, and a clear highway ahead of me. Nothing more.

It lifts the weariness for awhile.

bones is back

Finally. My favorite show has returned. Its third season is airing. And I feel like my life has settled back in to some comfortable, life-giving niche, like the click of a key settling home in a lock.

I don't know what it is about Bones that does me so much good. I do get attached to shows, but not ordinarily as they air -- I watched Dark Angel for its first season, but didn't finish the second season until it came out on DVD. I never finished The Pretender. I love Buffy and Angel, but I never watched them once while they were on the air.

And it's not like I'm a crime show lover. NCIS? Bah. CSI? Shoot me. Law and Order? Forget it. The half-baked plots, the insipid characters, the vapid writing, all conspire to bore me to the state of glazed eyes, tongue half-hanging out of my mouth, little spots of drool at the corners.

But Bones. I'm in love with all the characters. The dialogue is great. The story arcs are wonderful. Nothing in it is particularly true to life, but I couldn't care less. The writers are incredible, and I've come to trust them. The show is steeped in a close-knit sense of family, a deep and unspoken love among all the principles, that reaches out and wraps me in it, too. When I watch that show, I feel like I'm home.

It's great too that I watch it on the phone with Leigh Ann. We've been friends for ten years, have gone through all shorts of rough and bright spots together, have similar temperaments, similar dreams, similar ways of relating to the world and to people and to God and to ourselves. So every week hitting the "Send" button on her speed-dial number, or picking up her call, to settle into my big-cushioned chair and tune into Bones and laugh and oo and ahh and screech and squeal over the turns of events in each episode is another anchoring ritual in my weekly life. Especially since the network always puts me about three seconds ahead of her (drat you, Fox!) and she can usually guess what's going to happen by listening to my reactions. And there's something magic about sharing a present, connected now with a close friend who lives a thousand miles away.

So after the episode finished last night, and we said our goodbyes, I went and sat on the porch for a few minutes to enjoy the long-awaited coolness of a rainy night, and laughed my head off with Luchenne as she related her temper tantrum at her boyfriend for overflowing the toilet, and then, for the first time in weeks, I went back upstairs and had the emotional energy to wash my stacked-up dishes before I turned in for the night.

For whatever reason, and as strange as it might be, Bones has a good effect on my psychological wellbeing.

I'm so glad it's back.

i hate doing dishes

Anyone with me on this? There are other household tasks I find enjoyable, soothing, relaxing; or, if not exactly fun, at least matter-of-fact, businesslike, things that just have to be done and that's that.

But dishes. I used to like doing them. Now they're just...hateful. Glowering at me from the sink. Threatening me with the inevitability of foul odors and mold if I ignore them. Refusing to go away or to be put off. Getting worse the longer they're let go. Giving me tight shoulder and back muscles when I finally get around to them -- not to mention dry skin.

In short, dishes are entropy at its most top heavy. Most undeniable. Most EVIL.

Never have I longed more for that bastion of cleanliness, that fortress of sparkling surfaces -- the dishwasher. This is one desperate housesinglewoman.

And the desperation keeps building. Not of singleness, no. Of dishwashing.

Dishes. A housekeeper's homework. The Chore That Doesn't End.

Oh dishes! Oh dishes! I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could blast you all out of my sink.
If only a rock would explode every glass.
Oh dishes! Oh dishes! You're a pain in my ass.

I'd rather do taxes late into the night
or replace a blown fuse with a broken flashlight,
scrub toilets barehanded, dust shelves with my face
than wash the plates lying all over the place.

Oh dishes! Oh dishes! You grow like a weed.
My hands are so chapped that they're starting to bleed.
If you'd just wash yourselves, I could love you, I think.
Oh dishes! Oh dishes! I hate you! You stink!

nothing to do but frown

Bad Head Days followed by Bad Headache Days just bring a girl down. Like rainy days and Mondays, man.

ironies

They upped my credit limit again.

The notice I got in the mail, which wasn't a statement and which I therefore ripped open in a panic, read, "Your outstanding credit management has earned you a credit line increase..."

Ha. Yes. What they mean by that is, "Your ceaseless monthly payments at just over the minimum in a desperate and futile attempt to outstrip our ridiculous interest rate while juggling the rest of your bills on your limited resources because you maxed out your former credit limit on medical emergencies for your cat have gained us enough additional income that we want to entice you to use some more."

How kind.

What kind of outstanding credit management would they be praising me for if I actually used outstanding credit management and could pay off the whole damn thing in one go?

Still, I guess this means my credit isn't horrible. Always a bonus.

Although I'm half-tempted to take the business reply envelope they enclosed with the thing, in case I want to pay for more services, and write, "Dear Sir or Madam: Mightn't you consider the use of 'superb' or 'excellent' in the opening line of your credit line increase notices, rather than 'outstanding,' so as to avoid association in the minds of your customers with the negative use of the adjective when paired with such nouns as 'bill' or 'account' or 'balance'? Or is the ambiguity deliberate, in which case I must congratulate you on your cleverness?"

Once an English major in Narnia...

the scourge of the midwest

A fluke of genes had rendered her left-eyed. As if to offer compensation, Nature had also made her ambidextrous, but her parents during her childhood had trained her to use her right hand, so when it came to learning to wield a gun she found herself up a slimy creek with the butt of a shotgun for a paddle.

But not for long. She'd always treasured her little quirks, savored them slowly like horehound candy, and so, while other students were passing notes in class, she, a self-proclaimed loner since the age of ten, had practiced writing with her left hand. It was never too pretty, but hell, if doctors could get away with it, so could she.

The first time she held a pistol in her hand she felt like she could see clearly for the first time in her life. The haziness she shrouded herself in like a cloud of flies buzzed off in all directions, and the only things in existence were her body, the target, and the sight down the barrel of the gun. Being left-eyed and right-handed with a handgun, she found, didn't matter.

Shotguns and rifles were a whole different story, the difference between Cinderella floating her foot into the shoe and Jack pelting hell-for-leather toward the beanstalk to get out from under the feet of the roaring giant. Her dad had told her about a guy he knew who was left-eyed and right-handed like her and had learned to cope and was a brilliant shot, but no matter how she worked it, she couldn't get comfortable bending her neck over the stock like the snapped stem of a daffodil.

Till she switched shoulders and started shooting lefthanded. Then everything fell into place like Paul Bunyan stumbling over Babe the Blue Ox in the rain. All those years of taking needless notes in class left-handed paid off with those first blasted holes of buckshot straight through the heart of an old newspaper. Her eye was straight and her hands were happy, and so, she found, was her heart. Happy and warm. Even her shoulder, sore from the kickback, was happy.

When at last she learned how to wear a holster for her favorite revolver, on the right hip for her right hand, instead of at a cross-draw so that she could comfortably carry a rifle with her left, and strode out easily onto the range, her hips swinging companionably in time with her newfound friends, she fixed her eyes on the distant targets and grinned. Even though the weight anchored her to the ground so that her shoes sank into the last of the summer grass, her feet felt catlike, springy and light, and she thought she could see for miles.

embarrassment

There are many things I love about adulthood. One of them is the regression of the acute embarrassment about everything that plagued adolescence.

Just a minor example. The other night I headed to Wal-Mart, and while I was shopping, my cell rang from its place in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out -- with a tampon. Tampons seem to be dotted about my person in various random and strangely prominent places where I don't remember putting them: jacket pockets, purse pockets, jeans pockets, piled on top of my work bag. I never know when one is going to materialize, but at least one is always handy.

So in the open view of the public, I opened the cell to pick up the call while moving the tampon nonchalantly, and still in clear view, to the other hand, began talking, and, without bothering to hide what I was doing or what I was holding, put the tampon back from whence it came (in the jacket pocket. Doubtless the event will happen again). From the corner of my eye I saw a man staring at me the entire time.

Was I bothered? Not a whit. Was I embarrassed? Not even a little.

Ten years ago I would have shriveled up into a scrunchy little raisin and died of horror. I invented all kinds of clever ways of disguising the fact that I was going to the girls' room with a tampon. I slipped them up my sleeves. I hid them in the waistband of my jeans. I tucked them down my collar. Anything -- anything -- to avoid carrying my bookbag to the bathroom with me. And ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING to avoid that little plastic-wrapped cylinder from sliding into visibility.

Today? Whatever. Yup, there it is. Tampon. Right next to the spare change, the paper clip, the Kleenex, and the cell. Oh, did you see it fall out of my pocket? Yeah, hey there.

unaccustomed quiet

The phones are down at work. Some idiot driving a car transport ignored the two large signs saying NO THRU TRUCKS and, having further neglected to lower the top rack on his truck, attempted to drive down our small street and ripped all the phone lines down. He managed, somehow, to avoid the power lines. I attribute this to sheer luck.

So for the past twenty-four hours we have had no phone service, and the office is strangely quiet. It feels like a holiday. I'm trying to get a tonne of work done around the office as far as cleaning things up and getting to my neglected piles of papers is concerned, because I know that once the phones are back on line, all hell will break loose. But in the meantime, the peace is nice.

Reminds me of a verse I read on Sunday as I was enjoying devotions on the porch, more rarely quiet than has become, sadly, usual (the shiftless no-good ne'er-do-well son of my neighbor likes to blast his horrible music out of his "room," which opens onto the porch, right behind my chair). The verse kind of took me by surprise, like a lot of things have lately. 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NIV) says, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."

These are the reasons why I love Paul. In our ladder-climbing world of politics and the American dream of rags-to-riches, we tend connect ambition with greatness -- it goes back, for me, to studying Julius Caesar in tenth grade, to memorizing Mark Antony's incredible speech (and later in college to watching the young Marlon Brando give it...mmm): "But...Brutus hath said Caesar was ambitious, and, sure, Brutus is an honorable man."

Ambition. Brutus worried over Caesar's ambition, called it the serpent in the egg that would eventually hatch and become something evil, and so he rationalized the murder of his friend so that he could crush the serpent in its shell.

And yet here, as with many things in Christianity, Paul takes the concept of ambition and turns it into a paradox. "Make it your ambition," he says, and I imagine the listeners of the letter, as it was being read aloud, were preparing themselves to hear some great declamation on great and holy living; the passage immediately preceding this verse is full of exhortations about sexual morality and encouragements to live in purity. "Make it your ambition," he says, and, instead of telling them to shine like stars, as he says in Philippians, instead of telling them to press on to the goal, instead of telling them to resist sin to the point of shedding their own blood (all of which matter and are necessary and good), he says, "...to lead a quiet life."

Make it your ambition to be quiet. Take this drive called ambition, this pulsion to excel, to be great and to stand above and beyond everyone else, inborn in nearly every person...and turn it inward. Use it to tone things down. Use it simply, to win the honest respect of those who don't belong to the church.

And mind your own business. Work with your hands. Your daily life matters.

Love it. Reading through the New Testament has given me an appreciation of just how often Paul writes to the churches, Remember how, when I lived with you, I didn't ask you for anything; I worked to earn my keep. I wasn't a burden. Do you the same.

I remember the late-nineties emphasis that my home church and youth group put on rejecting the "worldly" notion of "being a good person." "That's not enough!" my youth pastor would thunder. Well, of course it isn't, as far as salvation is concerned; but it matters hugely in the impact a person has on his or her small sphere of influence. That's the thing that makes people sit up and take notice. Not how many Scriptures you can rattle off with a wild Ancient Mariner glitter in your eye, or how involved you are in church, or how self-consciously holier your aura is than everyone else's. What people notice is whether or not you're a decent sort of person. And didn't Jesus Himself point that out when he said "you will recognize a tree by its fruit"? That's not a complicated concept. Good fruit = good tree = good person = belongs to God; bad fruit = bad tree = bad person = doesn't belong to God. Nobody's perfect, but which way do the scales tip? The way you live your life matters. The Apostle John took it a step further when he wrote (and here I quote the King James Version, because that's the one I know best from Psalty the Singing Songbook), "Beloved, let us love one another, for everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8, emphasis mine). And, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan points out, isn't love how you treat your neighbor? And isn't that by treating your neighbor just plain decently?

I think in particular, when the argument of "being a good person is/isn't enough" comes up, about my grandfather. He died seven years ago this past March. You never saw him rocketing Scripture at people, never saw him immersed in the newest Brennan Manning or Max Lucado book, never saw him lead a Bible study or take an apologetics class at church. But you've never met a better man. My grandfather lived by very simple, straightforward rules of decency. He was honest. He treated his neighbors well. He worked hard. He minded his own business. He loved his family. He went to church. He lived that quiet life, and all of it honored God in the best way possible. He didn't need to prove anything by his words; his life spoke his faith for itself.

So when I hear people mutter against "being a good person," I have to try hard not to laugh. What, we're not supposed to be good people? The contrapositive of James' "faith without works is dead" is that a living faith comes with works. And sure, yes, granted, Christ comes first, but isn't goodness one of the fruits of the Spirit of Christ? So when one comes into the body of Christ, goodness can be expected to follow.

And that's what Paul's saying here. Be thou decent.

I like this passage, because it underscores some of the things I've been working toward the past few years. It's not that I don't have my own ambitions along less humble lines -- those are most assuredly there, especially in the writing arena, and I'm resurrecting those ambitions from their own ash-bed once again -- but what I've fallen in love with lately has been the quietude and simplicity of the life I've stumbled into here, in my job, my apartment, my friends, my cat, my family, my pastimes, the landscape. I love it all, and I'm glad the great Apostle Paul has given me the go-ahead to enjoy it...as quietly, as simply, and as decently as possible.

under new york lock and key

I've heard it said before that my apartment door looks like it belongs in New York. With its latch lock, deadbolt, and chain, it presents a practical puzzle that generally befuddles first-time visitors attempting to leave (or second-, or third-, or fourth-time visitors too...). The door at the bottom of the stairs has its own separate lock as well, requiring a total of three individual keys to gain access to my apartment -- a fun juggling enterprise when I come home laden with grocery bags.

But all that's changed. Now it's even more complicated. Because now there's a deadbolt at the bottom of the stairs as well. So I have to have FOUR keys to get into my apartment, and wow, is it grand.

Actually it lightens my mind a bit. Shady characters tend to haunt the house, and the deadbolt secures the door a lot better than the flimsy lock that was already in place.

Let's just hope I never have to get inside in a hurry.

dreams

I've been having weird ones lately. For most of my life, I haven't been able to remember any of my dreams, but the past year has seen an increase in my ability to retain them.

The other night I dreamed I walked into a doctor's office down the street from the house in which I grew up, only to find it not a doctor's office but a house, and it was freshly abandoned, and there was a tiny baby in it, asleep and limp and dying of hunger. Throughout the remainder of the dream I was coping with all sorts of small and sudden calamities with the baby slumped across my shoulder, all the while trying to keep him from falling asleep, loving the heavy trusting warmth of him, and attempting to make him a bottle.

Last night I dreamed there were a lot of people at my apartment, and we were all trying to agree on a movie while I was apologizing for how much I loved watching previews, and midway through it a couple of my friends got hungry, so I took them to Jimmy John's for subs. I really, really wanted one particular sub, but when we got there we found that the entire joint had been rearranged and the menu changed entirely, and what I wanted was no longer available unless by special request, and I couldn't remember what it was called, and I was anxious and upset and angry, while my friends were really excited by the new salad bar. Then we got back to my apartment and everybody else was hungry, so I got ready to take them to Jimmy John's, too, and then suddenly I was in a dark forest hiding from them all, and from someone else who wanted to kill me, and the trees were charred and dead, and the leaves were curled and huge and dead and flapping against each other in the breeze and making loud dead noises -- "bones on leather," I thought, and knocked a bunch of them to the ground, trying to shut them up.

Weird. The Dream Moods website wasn't entirely helpful in interpreting -- the only point of interest was when it said that starving babies represent some vulnerable, dependent part of the dreaming subject that is in need of immediate attention. (I also think it represents how much I miss holding babies.) As for the rest -- well, dead leaves represent loss, forests are the unconscious, etc., and I'm taking the whole Jimmy John's thing to symbolize how much I hate change, and how much of it I've been going through in the last year, which would account for my existential exhaustion lately.

Sum-up: Me tired. But there's nothing to do but keep on, and keep trying to carve out the space I need to nurture those aspects of myself that haven't been getting enough breathing room -- most particularly my learning and my writing. I have plans for these. Exciting ones. Hopefully the fall will see a calming down, a rejuvenation, and a regenesis.

dona nobis pacem

As is usual with everyone, I've had a lot going on. The summer was filled with more busyness than reflection and relaxation than I had anticipated or wanted, but it stretched me and I found the distraction welcome; but now that things are beginning to settle down, and fall approaches with its mellowing and dying of the year, I'm beginning, with the settling, to settle, and with the drifting of the silt of my own private hubbub to the bottom of the riverbed, I'm facing with clarity of a number of the things that I didn't have to before, and coming to some choices.

One of the key phrases Leigh Ann and I adopted from Dark Angel was "Stay Strong in the Struggle," and one of the principle ideas we gleaned from Angel was that life is all about the fight, and sometimes we get melodramatic (purposefully, or at least in self-awareness) about it; but I experienced a couple of significant upheavals this year of a kind which I normally try to avoid, and I was still recovering from another significant upheaval from the year before, and I dislike situations without finality, I hate uncertainty and living in the question, and toward the end of this summer I got just plain tired of fighting my own emotions and sank like Eddie Izzard's "flan in a cupboard" into a little self-protective funk.

And it's time to let it all go. It's time to come to finality by embracing the question, it's time to close the door by forgetting it's open, it's time to move forward by letting what's gone be gone and holding on with gratitude and joy to what I have. It's time to relearn that, sometimes, love is letting be; that bitterness and resentment are best combatted by prayer and understanding; that the kindest memory is the shortest; that the best goodbyes are unspoken; that forgiveness trespasses and upholds the boundaries of the necessary. I'm not good at most of these, but life is long, and there's no time like now for getting started.

Besides, I have a lot of work to do. The job is busy (always), my friendships are rich and deepening, I'm reconnecting with some of my old companions, some of my old ambitions, I'm led by a God of healing toward peace when I least expect it, and, ever and again, it's almost fall.

Monday moldrums

That's the word I've invented for the day. "Doldrums" is way too strong, and there isn't a word quite suitable enough, so now I have one. "Moldrums." It sort of evokes a nicely flat, cruddy blahness, nothing nearly deep or dark enough to be despair, but just the sort of Monday feeling that makes you want to flick the alarm button off and roll back under the covers and pretend the day never started. Moldrums. Like a potato slowly going bad in the dark of the pantry, collapsing and getting wrinkled and losing its firmness and starting, just a little bit, to stink, to give off that weird "what's that smell" odor that makes you wonder what's lurking behind the door, when the day outside the kitchen window is bright and sunny. Moldrums. A word of contrast, when nothing can account for the present state of "meh" but you feel "meh" anyway, when you feel that you ought to feel chipper and feel just a little guilty that you feel "meh" instead.

Yup. Moldrums.

Fortunately I have the office mostly to myself, so I can molder in the moldrums to my heart's content...and maybe put a little of my new music on without disturbing anyone. :) Gotta take your perks where you can grab 'em.

Bah. Mondays. Why are there never enough hours to sleep on the weekends to make you ready for Mondays? Tuesdays are fine. Wednesdays are great. Thursdays are splendid. Fridays are celebratory. But Mondays?

Moldrums.

feathers

Yesterday Meggers and I girded our loins and sold a little bit of our souls to consumerism...that is, hit the mall for some much-needed apparel -- she for work clothes (maternity ones -- yes, folks, she's going to be a mom, and I'm going to be an auntie!!!), I for something to wear to my sister's wedding in the Caribbean in November.

We both hate shopping. I learned to be more okay with it during my stint as a retail associate three years ago (summer is a season of anniversaries for me -- three years ago on August 14 I first rolled into the Bend to call it home), but it's still not my first choice of Fun Things to Do, and we both grew considerably grouchier as the day wore on. But we powered through and we made it, rather productively, I thought, and something about doing something mutually hateful together bolstered our determination.

The best part of my experience was finding dresses for the Cayman Islands. Of course my first stop was at Ann Taylor -- I found my bridesmaid dress for my (woopee!!) maid of honor status on their website (it's beauuuutiful) and I wanted to see how their sizes are running these days, so I tried on a few and found one to add to the wardrobe, insanely, deliciously on sale, pretty as a pin, and I remembered my dictum for dress buying when I was an associate: Buy the dress that makes you dance.

I also found one at Old Navy for six bucks, and a fun pair of hempy sandals to go with both at DSW.

Now all I need are the appropriate undergarments, shoes for the bridesmaid dress (already picked out online, but again, I need to see how Ann Taylor's sizes are running, so it's another trip back to the store), and jewelry. And it isn't even close to the last minute yet. I'm somewhere between pleased and surprised with myself. But maybe it's the Scots find-that-sale-and-save-that-penny streak rearing up in me at last.

post-it note of poe-ian pallor

I am very tired. It's raining constantly here, and the rain calls me to rest, and all I want to do is curl up in my apartment and sleep for a week, with nothing to do and nowhere to go and no obligations.

I've been working harder than ever at my job, and I love all the problem-solving I get to do, but the torrent of tasks is never-ending and I only want a break. Everything is damp and I need to hibernate.

A little soul-restoration would not go amiss. I am not unhappy, just weary and worn and a little put off by the influx of people in the office. Need to recharge the introvert batteries with a fresh bout of solitude and a good dose of Nature, which I haven't had in forever and which I'm starving for, especially with the ending of August and the coming of September and the beginnings of fall.

Love to all.

Summer 2007 Music Spree Addendum

Yeah, you're probably all sick of hearing about my musical endrownment, and believe me, there's plenty going on life-wise, but I don't feel like airing it on the blogosphere this time around...can't quite explain why, but there you have it, the princess writing about music from her Ivory Tower, and keeping everything else private. Email for more personal updates, if you want them! I imagine it won't be too long before I return to the voice you're familiar with.

Until then, here are the albums I ordered today (I love that extra paycheck):

1. Josh Ritter, Josh Ritter (1999) (oh, yessss, his self-titled...and unavailable on Amazon. I went to his official website to procure this one);
2. Rabbit Songs, Hem (2001);
3. Ohio, Over the Rhine (2003) (this one's a gamble, based purely on my own websurfing and Amazon's recommendations -- something I don't normally do; I ordinarily wait for the endorsements of friends -- I'm excited!);
4. Cold Roses, Ryan Adams (2005).

The truly lovely thing is that this spree has necessitated more CD holders in my living room, since I've finally run out of space for them. Delightful -- rearrangement, organization. Perfect way to spend a rainy weekend.

hello starling

Why didn't I get this album before?

While I enjoy a lot of artists, there aren't many whom I trust. I trust these: Nickel Creek, Sufjan Stevens, and Josh Ritter. Everything they do. Hands down. I know that, no matter what's in the album, I'm going to love it, and I don't have to ease myself into the listening; I can throw myself there, and it's all good.

It must have been those reviews on Amazon about Hello Starling saying it was too imitative of Bob Dylan that dissuaded me from making the purchase before, and the fact that Amazon withheld the listening samples, so I couldn't preformulate my own opinion. But that was back before I knew that I trusted Josh Ritter; and, with his newest coming out SOON (omigosh in like two days), I wanted to listen to EVERYTHING he's done -- much like I read my way backwards through all the HP books in preparation for the coming of Book 7. So I bought Starling and popped it in almost "breathless with anticipation" this afternoon.

And all I can say of Starling is that if this is Josh's worst, he can't do a bad album. It's not as masterful as The Animal Years (duh; it's not as mature), but it's still better than good -- really fabulous -- and there are a lot of strains of pure young joy running through it that catch you up, even though the songs themselves aren't always that happy. (I remember a time when a friend came over and asked me to put in some happy music, and I looked at her blankly. "Happy music? I, uh...don't really have any." Meanwhile Josh was spinning through my mind, but I didn't think he'd qualify to her as happy. She snorted at my attempts to produce this thing called "happy music.") I listen to Josh and I want to drive all night, I want to camp out under a cold open sky, I want to stare into a fire and sing along to someone's guitar, I want to smell the nearness of that one man and rasp my fingertips and my cheeks against a day's growth of beard, I want to laugh and cry and spin around with my arms outflung like no one's watching until I'm too dizzy to stand up.

It's hard to be sad with music that makes you feel like that. You feel safe instead. Free.

Highlight tracks of the album: "Kathleen," "Rainslicker," "Snow is Gone."

But really, I love it all. It's folksy, Wurlitzer/Hammondy, jubilant in many places, energetic, just plain old great stuff. And it's neat to see this piece of his journey as an artist.

And I can't wait for The Historical Conquests.

Jacksonville City Nights

These Amazon sellers are unbelievably on the ball.

So I received Jacksonville City Nights on Wednesday, started listening to it yesterday, and love it.

The car is my music-listening studio; I make too much of a stink about the volume level of my fellow tenants' various electronic devices to feel comfortable playing anything in my apartment that isn't quiet (and in fact rule the "Shhh" atmosphere of the house with an unconscious iron fist -- all of my neighbors tell me, proudly, that they only play their music when I'm gone, and are careful to turn it down when my car pulls into the driveway. Sometimes I puzzle over how things came to that pass -- I've never complained to the landlord about them; the only neighbor I've bothered about his music is Jim, but I call him directly when it's too loud; but somehow the girls know I like it quiet, and respect it. It's funny). And I like my car stereo because I can hear everything, every tone and vibration and harmony, it surrounds me, and I can turn it up and blast away without worrying about bothering anyone else.

So. Jacksonville City Nights. I can't give a complete review, only a sketch, as I have yet to listen to the entire album, and that thoroughly; as with all albums I begin to love, I get stuck on one song and play it for a week or more, and right now that song is Dear John, which Ryan Adams sings in duet with Norah Jones. It's beyond incredible -- gut-wrenching, mostly quiet, sweet, raw. The vocals -- hitting five- or more-part harmony in the choral lines -- rip right through you with a penetrating power that leaves you almost too sick for tears, in a gorgeous way.

The album overall is Ryan Adams' alt-country, full of old-school twang and grit and steel guitar, but without the contemporary vapidness and too many drums and shallow lyrics and pointless predictable rhymes that I hate about the country you pick up on the radio. This has sorrow with soul, and no corn-meal mush. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from the 'way-back-when country artists, with updated dashes of jazz and flairs of modern life fanned in.

Thumbs up. I can't wait to get lost in the rest of the album.

(And I'm so glad to have this half-hour commute to work and this half-hour commute back home every day...it's so much enriched my listening experience. And something about these bluegrass/country indie artists, unfolding their tunes in my car as I drive across the Michigan fields and through the Michigan woods, does something to me. I don't know. But the Midwest is becoming more and more a place that I love, not just a place where I happen to live.)

feasts for the musical palate

Periodically -- about twice a year -- I go on a music binge. This usually coincides with my three-pay-periods-in-a-month month, which also happens twice a year. Handy, eh?

So once every six months I troll Amazon for my favorite artists, or scope out Amazon's recommendations, or pick my way through recommendations from friends, and give myself eyestrain scanning album and track titles, and reading over editorial and listener reviews. I give my brain the equivalent of a stomachache from listening to the hors d'oeuvre offered by the sample playlist bytes. I take notes. I jot down promising-sounding albums and artists. I muse over the handwritten list, evaluate the expenses, cull a great many of them, settle on five or six, add them to my cart, and then spend weeks in breathless anticipation waiting for those beautiful media mail envelopes to bring me my treasures from the hands of the overly taciturn mailman, colored with anxieties never yet fulfilled that my neighbors will steal them before I get home (I should start sending these things to my work address, but I'll have to verify it with Boss-Man first to make sure it's okay).

The last six months have seen me dive even deeper into my bluegrassy-country-indie tastes, and I decided to risk a headache and forge through the long, long list of accomplishments by Emmylou Harris to select the albums I think I'd prefer. (I settled on one to start with.) I also decided to broaden my appreciation for Ryan Adams by an album or three.

But by far the most exciting find is that one of my ultimate favorites, Josh Ritter, is releasing a new album in ten days. I preordered that baby faster than you can say "whistle." I've been checking the web hopefully for the last YEAR looking to see if he's put out anything new. And the reviews are good. (I lurve him.)

So, if anyone is interested, and even if anyone isn't, here's my Summer 2007 Music Spree to date:

1. Easy Tiger, Ryan Adams (2007);
2. Jacksonville City Nights, Ryan Adams (2005);
3. Heartbreaker, Ryan Adams (2000) (v. bluegrassy);
4. Roses in the Snow, Emmylou Harris (1980, rereleased 2002) (one of her most bluegrassy);
5. Hello Starling, Josh Ritter (2003);
6. The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, Josh Ritter (2007).

All of this puts me in the mood for The Golden Age of Radio.

getting the message

So, the other week as I was standing outside of work, a truck pulls up. The guy driving it looks vaguely familiar. He starts chatting me up.

This happens a lot on my office street -- it's a small town, and I'm clearly "not from around there." One of the first questions men ask me is where I live, and unless they're really creepy, I usually interpret it to mean, "which town," because obviously I don't live in that one. Everybody knows everybody there. Hell, when I was thinking of changing apartments back in April, before I got to know Luchenne better, and mentioned it to the guy who runs my favorite junk shop, the next week when I went to get my lunch at Subway, the girl behind the counter asked me if I'd found a new apartment yet. It's that kind of town.

Anyway, I get a lot of attention there. Most of the time it's flattering, and this guy seemed nice...a lot older than I am, but nice. Until he asked me out, and I remembered that he'd come in to the office once to see about starting his divorce.

Um. Now, I have a policy of accepting date invitations from almost anyone, but a legally married man is crossing the line. Especially when he has a ten-year-old daughter, and his oldest kid from his first marriage (the one that's currently ending is his second) is only five years younger than I am.

I had given him my cell number before the nice rational paragraph above crossed my mind, however, so when he called me right after work I had to turn him down. I told him I couldn't see a man who was still in the process of getting a divorce. I also said I didn't want to hurt his case, since he wanted custody of his daughter, and I didn't want to complicate matters and have the situation wind up hurting his little girl. He was disappointed, but said he understood. I congratulated myself for cleverly getting out of that one.

But I was dragged out of a nap this afternoon by my phone ringing, didn't recognize the number, didn't pick up, and when I listened to the voicemail, it was him, asking me if I would consider hanging out with him "as friends," until his divorce was finalized.

I was very glad I didn't answer the phone. Part of me wanted to bang my head against the wall, part of me was ashamed for not just coming out and telling him, "look, I'm not interested," and part of me was annoyed. I mean, I guess you can't blame a guy for trying, but what's a forty-something doing wanting to try the "just friends" label? When has that ever worked? And whom has that ever fooled? What, was I born yesterday? And part of me was mad on behalf of his daughter. Is he just okay with dating and having women "friends"? When he called me that one time after work, his daughter was in the house -- just leaving to go to a friend's, but still in the house. What's he thinking of? Little kids need stability, not Daddy-who-dates-around. I don't want to be part of something that wrecks a child's sense of solidity.

I didn't call him back. I think silence will answer eloquently. I don't have "just friends," except for guys I've known from years back -- they get grandfathered in, my high school friends, my college friends, the guys I met when I first moved to South Bend, because we are friends, in a lot of senses we grew up together. But this weird garbage? I don't think so.

Sigh. As Sir Peter said, paraphrasing Sports Night, "Beware the Almost-Not-Quite-Divorced Man."

housekeeping

It's back to the mad nest lining.

Don't know what brings it on, but periodically the only thing that makes me happy is holding a drill. The other week I found the perfect (cheap) Monet Nympheas print to put behind an old window I bought back in April, and hung the whole thing up on my bedroom wall for an old-time gardeny effect -- which I hope to find psychologically warming when the freezing snows howl outside my real windows in January. And of course by "hung up" I mean "drilled into the wall with eight unnecessarily long drywall screws which blend beautifully with the old stain of the wood, because the frame was satisfactorily heavy to warrant such measures. Oh and took out once because I misgauged the placement the first time, so I had to try again."

I did mention once before that my method of putting up wall arrangements is, if you want to be charming about it, whimsical. If you're not trying to be as kind you might call it cockeyed. I hold up the object, guess where the nails/screws might go, bang them in, and see if I was right. If I was, yay! Job finished. If I wasn't, okay, cool, let's give it another go. If I misjudged it by a tenth of a millimeter and the plaster won't accommodate my mistake, I'll either spackle if I'm feeling patient (yeah right; so far that option is only theoretical), or, nine times out of ten, come up with something new or live with the mistake.

So a few of my walls are full of tiny holes, like the miniature soldiers' bullet holes in Secret of the Indian.

But the whole process makes me happy. If it stressed me out, I wouldn't do it that way. I'd rather guess and guess and guess again, and wait for that moment when my whole gut tells me, Yes. You got it, than fiddle around for far longer than I'd like with rulers and pencils and angles and whatnot and find out I'd guessed wrong anyway. Way too technical. And I'm impatient. I prefer to judge with my eye and with that something else that tells me it feels right, that everything is well suited and in its proper alignment and in harmony with itself and its neighbors. The only measuring tool I find worth troubling with is my trusty level.

So the other week was the window, Tuesday was finding a new home for the two small Van Goghs that the window displaced (that involved a hammer and not a drill, but a hammer is fun too -- and an adventure in my walls, which are all plaster, and which are studded as whimsically as my hanging methods, so you never know when you're going to run into one and run the risk of a bounceback blow to the forehead, even if you've tapped it out beforehand -- some of the walls are good-old-fashioned studs, some of the walls are latticed), and today was the new coathook contraption I bought antiquing.

Next it's going to have to be some more old crates in the hallway, as supplementary bookshelves, and a bow-out to the absence of available floor space. But that won't be until after I've hung the pot rack in the kitchen, with Meg and Phillip's help -- that kitchen wall is latticed, and won't hold a couple hundred pounds of pots and pans and pot rack, so I'm following their recommendations, and that's going to cost a dollar here and there. The result is going to be fantastic -- I can't wait.

So currently all flat surfaces in my apartment are free of unnecessary papers, everything is in its proper place, the bookshelves are beautifully arranged (there's something so attractive about full, organized, arranged bookshelves, like walls of comfortable, happy, inviting, protective friends), and, with the exception of just a couple more things I'd like to hang up (drill), one of which I have to find first, two or three of which I have to buy first (crates), two of which I have to do some work on (windows, pot rack), the feng shui is just about perfect.

But it's nice to have ongoing projects around the house -- always something to keep me busy. Always a little more finish to the nest lining. Always the prospect of more drilling.

And once my drilling opportunities are exhausted (weep), I may have to turn my attention back to sewing. I should make curtains for the kitchen.

I should also strip the paint off the valance windows and let light into the hall.

Happiness.