me and my friends are like double whiskey coke no ice

listening to: "constructive summer" - the hold steady

So, the new Hold Steady (Stay Positive) is really good. Excellent summer bar-rock. It's the perfect mixture of grit and lyric, beautifully imbalanced, and it makes me want to drink and spin in circles, though perhaps not simultaneously.

I've opened the store for the past two days. 5 a.m. is early, but I love opening because it means I'm done with work at 1:30 in the afternoon and I can either nap and stay up all night or I can go to bed early. Like, unreasonably early. Like for example: last night I went to bed at 7:30. Seriously. I closed my curtains and turned on both fans and took an ativan I borrowed from a friend and slept all night, all freaking night, only distantly registering my ringing, vibrating phone (hi friends!) and the fire alarm T.J. set off trying to bake a pizza. (?) When my alarm went off at 4:10, I didn't even cuss at it. It was a good morning.

So now it's 2:01 in the afternoon, I'm done until Friday evening, and it's time to put my nose ring back in and take off the coffee-stained khakis and not work. I'm babysitting tonight, which is money, but other than that, I'm just going to try to chill a little. I need to make some phone calls (Darcy! Zelle! Lizbeth!) and do some hard-core bedroom/laundry cleaning. I also need to purge my closet of old/unworn clothes. But, ah, I might not do that. I might just chill. Oh! Mike and I are going to see Rush tomorrow night! So that's going to be fun. Emily comes home in six days, which is also exciting.

Um. I don't know if there's anything else going on. It's a beautiful day here-- we had a storm the other night and it kind of cooled the air and dehumidified us a little. The windows are open in our house, anyways, and there are babies, little fat ones, so cute, across the street in one of those tiny inflatable pools, splashing, and I'm done with work and I'm not wearing any pants yet and damn it, I'm in a good mood. The end.



shalomshalom.

they didn't seem that different up until this one little incident.

listening to: "one for the cutters" - the hold steady

today i am like my dog who, spiteful after
a bath, rubs her wet body on each
wall, across every hard surface, against
thick trees, the rougher,
the better.

said yes and amen.

listening to: "i will rise up/ain't no more cane" - lyle lovett and his large band

in the oregon days, every monday and wednesday, karis and i would drive down the mountain in the big fat cadillac, boat-floating around sharp turns and trying to avoid careening into deer and transients. we had these ecstatic conversations, these orgies of speech, and if we hadn't been driving to aa meetings, i'd think we were on something. sometimes we had awkward nights of silence, but more often than not, we'd just launch into these fantastic monologues. there were whole quarter hours in which one of us would talk without saying anything, but at times, the things we'd say would bring the other into a new state of consciousness, each of us building on the other's ramblings, until we'd arrived at this crazy state of bliss. today i was cleaning out my computer and i found this, unlabeled, in my oregon 08 folder. this may as well have been a direct transcript from one of those cadillac nights.

i think, bizarre as it sounds to put this in words, that we dance with ourselves--our spiritselves--that we move awkwardly together--awkwardly because we were never supposed to be separate from one another, because in truth, we are not other, we are the same, we are meant to be one. i think that we dance--rarely in sync with ourselves, the physical self and the spiritself--jerkily, sometimes, and often without grace. i think that it's a dance of confusion, of trying to find a way back into blessing, to oneness, to connection. and i think that when we experience moments in our lives of clarity or perfection or love or exquisite beauty, we have stepped, just for a moment, into the rhythms of our spirits--that we are, for a brief time, dancing in the same beat as our spiritselves, and that the joy we feel in those moments is our souls freaking out on the ecstasy of connection.

wow, right?

always gets me into trouble

listening to: "brandy alexander" - ron sexsmith

It's Sunday? I said this before, but seriously, I have no concept of the movement of days. I was loitering on the interweb this evening and was all like, why hasn't anyone blogged today? But lo, it is Sunday and everyone else has a working concept of which days are which. Damn it.

I have the day off tomorrow, sort of. We've got a store meeting at 6 and then I'm supposed to help set up Summer Phase 2 afterward, so probably I'll end up at the store until midnight, and then I open Tuesday. I almost drove up north somewhere to see Mike? I got home from work and was struggling with the idea of spending the evening at home doing nothing (except laundry) with my parents, watching Next Food Network Star and HGTV's Design Star all night, and he was all like, come up here! and I was all like, huh? seriously? and then i was like, fuck it, why not? so I almost did it. But I think once I got in the car I would have had a hard time not driving all the way into downtown Chicago or all the way up to Holland or all the way to Normal or hell, I might have kept freakin' going, all the way to Oregon. That was the mood I was in today. I need a major change.

I need to move out.
I need a job that is a different job.
I need to write a poem.
I need a car.

That's all.


I bought a subscription to The Believer.
This is to along with my subscriptions to Paste, the best music mag in the world, and The New Yorker, the most pretentious lit mag in the world. We also get Smithsonian and Fast Company. Along with some sporty shit and some Jesusy mags. Magazines make me feel pretentious in a good way, like in the same way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes me feel pretentious in a good way, like in the nerdy way. You know what I mean? Anyway. The Believer's great, you should check it out. It's put out by McSweeney's, okay, by Dave Eggers, do you hear me, and thus, by proxy, by pirates.

Also, I used one of my few remaining amazon.com gift cards to purchase three new CDS:

Ron Sexsmith's new one, Exit Strategy of the Soul

She & Him's (Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's lovechild) debut, Volume One

The Hold Steady's brand new one, doesn't even come out until Tuesday, Stay Positive


Anyhow, I'm excited for new music. And suddenly, for a night at the bar, seriously drinking. It's been awhile. Pray god there's good music playing. I need a drink, I think. Or something. A trip. I don't know. Something. Yeah.


Shalom.

why don't you come and play here?

listening to: "why do you let me stay here?" - she & him

It's Thursday right now, not that it matters. All of my days kind of look the same these past few weeks. I don't even bother keeping track of the day-- I just make sure I'm at work 10 minutes early and that whatever dog I happen to be taking care of at the time is fed, watered, and peed. I subsist mainly on espresso-- my recipe? About a tablespoon of simple syrup at the bottom of a 24 oz. glass, then six shots of espresso poured over ice and about one shot of half and half. I drink two of these a day, or more. Today I didn't have time to drink anything but water until about noon, and baby, I could feel it. I suppose there are worse things to be addicted to. Real drugs, for example. Real drugs, liquor, the blood of the innocent... you know. The hard stuff. Caffeine is nothing. Plus it makes me twitch all crazylike.

Yesterday I stopped at Trader Joe's and spent a lot of money on things I mostly don't need. Recycled plastic toothbrush? Check. Organic lavender lotion? Check. White bean hummus & bagel chips? Got 'em. Two bottles of Two-Hearted Ale? Oops, drank those last night. Plants? Oh yeah. I can't go to Trader J's without buying plants. So yesterday I bought a new succulent and a new orchid. Let me introduce you to The Bad Seed and Enid...












I keep making room on my windowsill. The other plants are going to feel put out, I'm afraid. I mean, Sal Paradise is already dead and the sphyllium is on his way out, I fear. Oh well. Enid is so pretty I don't even care.

Well. I need to shower and sleep before I go out to play tonight. Enjoy the gorgeous day, friends.


shalom.

galileo's face in his beer glass

listening to: "starfishin'" - amy correia

Well, to be honest, I accidentally slept until an obscene hour this afternoon. I don't even want to tell you. I feel much shame. Oh okay. 3:30. I woke up at 3:30. And I tell you what, I was shocked. Just shocked. I mean, I got up to let the dog out at 8, but then I went back to bed. FOREVER. No seriously. 3:30 is just ridiculous. And guess what? I decided right then to just say, fuck it. The day is gone anyway. I'm just going to make it worse. So I drank a bottle of $3 Chuck Shiraz and cleaned house. And finished season 2 of Weeds. And then I met the fella to see Hancock. And then came home. And stuff. And now it's 1:30 in the morning and I have to open in 3 hours so I'm just going to stay up, I think. I mean, I tried to sleep. I tried for a good 45 minutes. But I couldn't; I just got twitchy. So I'm up, I think, for the duration. I've been playing with my camera a little, but I'm pretty sure my computer reacts to the camera the same way it'd react to porn. Very slowly, and very easily overheated. So it might just take this ol' thing 3 hours to edit these 26 photos. Blah. Preview? Yes.

the number to the house is on the door

listening to: "confetti" - lori mckenna

in the quiet moments of my day
i try to practice complete presence
knowing that these small minutes
are wasted by my inability
to consecrate all time and all thought
to full consciousness.
this knowledge frustrates all that
is inside me, struggling for peace,
and i want to scratch words into my arms
to remember:
be grateful.
be mindful.
be wakeful.
in these low twilights i need
sleeves of tattoos, reminding me
that i am me and i am you and i am here.
i need kestrels on my shoulders and
cormorants at my feet and
spirals on both palms telling me
to hold what is mortal
and to open my veins
to whatever comes.





shalomshalom.

can you show me the sparkle of your china

listening to: "bodhisattva" - steely dan

I've spent about the last ten days house-and-dog-sitting for Josh and Joe in their gorgeous museum-esque condo (it's for sale, y'all!) while they were in Disney World. Basically I was snuggling the handsome greyhound, Madero, and generally taking a brief vacation from reality. Break from reality? Has been nice. I didn't really internet during that time, but spent a lot of time by myself and I watched Dracula and the 8th and 9th seasons of Friends. I read T.S. Eliot and Bret Lott and I am Legend (so much better than the movie). I met a boy... I worked a lot. I got to drive a nice car. I don't know what else to say.

I finally heard from Emily, who's stuck in Senegal until the end of this month. Her host mother sounds like an abusive creeper. She won't let the girls drink more than a liter of water, even though they walk ten miles a day in hot hot heat. I want Emily to come home, but thankfully they're moving her to a different city where she will have the opportunity to actually do some service work in a girls' school, hopefully working with art.

Today is the fourth of July, though I won't be celebrating except by drinking extraordinary amounts of espresso at work all night. Perhaps I shall take sparklers and dance around our empty parking lot. We'll see. This is the second year in a row I haven't seen any damn fireworks. Makes me miss high school/post-high school fireworks at Clayton's grandparents' house, laying in the grass with Elizabeth and Sophie, getting bit all up by mosquitoes and drinking lemonade, probably singing Phish songs to each other and making fun of our respective boyfriends. God, we had fun.

So this fella that seeing I'm took me to hear Steve Miller Band and Joe Cocker last week, and we have plans to see Brooks & Dunn, Journey, Heart, Cheap Trick, Radiohead, Jimmy Buffet, and Rush. What a line-up, eh? Don't laugh. We have a good time. :)

My parents are in Orlando right now, and when I got home this morning, there were five boys strewn around our living room in various states of sleepy disarray, plus an alarming number of empty soda cans, chip bags, and frozen chicken nugget containers. Also empty cartons of milk and strawberries. And there was a whole bottle of ranch dressing in the fridge that wasn't even there before. I am glad I wasn't present for the hootenanny last night, whatever form it may have taken. Someday, I am getting my brother drunk. Don't fight it, Teej. Jesus will forgive us both and probably we will have fun.

Yeah, so. I'm going to go get ready for work.

Stay out of trouble.




shalomshalom.