dr. maya angelou

Caged Bird

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

-Maya Angelou

In and Out of Time

The Sun has come out

The Mists have gone

We see in the distance

Our long way home

I was yours to love

You were always mine

We have belonged together

In and out of time

When the first stone looked

Up at the blazing sun

And the first tree struggled

From the forest floor

I loved you more

You were the rhythm on the head

Of the conga drum

And the brush of palm

On my nut brown skin

And I loved you then

We worked the cane

And cotton fields

We trod together

The city streets

Wearied by labor

Bruised by cruelty

Strutting and sassy

To our inner beat

And all the while

Lord, how I loved your smile

You’ve freed your braids

Gave you hair to the breeze

It hummed like a hive

Of busy bees

I reached into the mass

For the honeycomb there

God, how I loved your hair

You saw me bludgeoned

By circumstance

Injured by hate

And lost to chance

Legs that could be broken

But knees that would not bend

Oh, you loved me then

I raked the Heaven’s belly

With torrid screams

I fought to turn

Nightmares into dreams

My protests were loud

And brash and bold

My, how you loved my soul

The sun has come out

The mists have gone

We see in the distance

Our long way home

I was yours to love

And you were always mine

We have belonged together

In and out of time

the best lately.

The other day I was walking my happy Sunday self to church and this happyself was pleasantly surprised to see two usual Remedy suspects in Market Square. As I was talking to them usual suspect number 1 (Josh Birkebak) said about usual suspect number 2 (Drew Norris): “Drew loves words.” I swear, it was like showing up to a party where someone was wearing your dress. Take. it. off. I had it on first. I said, “I DO! Me too! I LOVE WORDS.”Happyself hadn’t thought to make that declaration at that point at the conversation and suddenly I became weirdlydefensiveself. Usual suspect number 2 remains calm. To metaphorically strut my stuff in my dress, I say it again: “I really love love words. okay?“. Usual suspect 2. "Okay."Most of my 24 years of life I've been wearing that dress like skin. All myselves, happyself, lonelyself, sadself, youngself, nowself, futureself love the collection of words on the page.

“And I begin to string words together words together like beads to tell a story” Anne Lamott.

This love of words in general and how they are strung together for sentences, paragraphs, poems, novels, memoirs, etc.etc.etc., I have developed a habit slash obsession with looking up quotes. Hours, people. HOURS. This is a throw back as early as middle school, back in AOL days when I would write down quotes about love (“love”) and dot all my i’s with hearts. Because I heart words. From then until now until forever and ever amen. It’s “self-care”, it’s interesting, and clarifying and snapshot of bigger moment. Here’s what I do: I put two names in quotes with the word quote right after it. “Ernest Hemingway” “Mary Oliver” quotes. And then I sit in Blackbird on Saturday morning and instead of writing my CTE I read excerpts from “A Farewell to Arms”. Which I will copy and paste on to my quote page where Hemingway will end up right beside lines from Pulp Fiction that I looked up last week and which are right above Mary Oliver and Willa Cather. These people would make strange bed fellows all together because I’m pretty sure Jules and Vincent would probably try and act like gentlemen but would more than likely scare the hell out of Mary Oliver. Understandably so. She’d probably write an amazing poem about it that I would love to read. So this is what I do. Some of you might not think this is a rocking great time. I don’t know what to tell you other that I'm sad for you. And this is a selection of the best. Lately.

"If you really want a challenge, just deal with yourself."— Tori Amos

"Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed."— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You)

"If Jesus was right, these are all my brothers and sisters. And they are so letting themselves go." Anne Lamott

"i carry your heart with me
(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,
my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,
my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,
my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)"— E.E. Cummings

#70"For some it is harder towrite a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic."— James N. Frey (How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling)

who pays any attentionto the syntax of thingswill never wholly kiss you"— E.E. Cummings

"I would like to perfect the art of being studiously aloof"— Ani DiFranco (Ani DiFranco - Little Plastic Castle)

"While the sad, galloping wind murders butterfliesI love you, and my happiness bites into the plum of your mouth . . .I want to do with youwhat spring does to the cherry trees." -Neruda

"She would have been a good woman," The Misfit said,"if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."-- Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

"everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing,though sometimes it is necessaryto reteach a thing its loveliness" -- G. Kinnell

Relax. Only 1/6.5 billionth of this is about you. Bumper Sticker.

You’ve got to love this in a God—consistently assembling the motleyest people to bring, into the lonely and frightening world, a commitment to caring and community.
— Anne Lamott
"No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work -- no man does -- but I like what's in the work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not others -- what no other man can know. They can only see the mere show, and can never tell what it means." Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

"Speak to us about the deepest yearning of our hearts, about our many wishes, about hope; not about the many strategies for (mere) survival, but about trust; not about new methods of satisfying our emotional needs, but about love. Speak to us about a vision larger than our changing perspectives and about a voice deeper than the clamorings of our mass media. Yes, speak to us about something or someone greater than ourselves. Speak to us about God."--Henri J.M. Nouwen

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

Christians whose loyalty to the Prince of Peace puts them out of step with today’s nationalistic world, because they are willing to love their nation’s friends but not to hate their nation’s enemies, are not unrealistic dreamers who think that by their objections they will end all wars. On the contrary, it is the soldiers who think they can put an end to wars by preparing for just one more.
— John Howard Yoder

Mia: I do believe Marsellus Wallace, my husband, your boss, told you to take ME out and do WHATEVER I WANTED. Now I wanna dance, I wanna win. I want that trophy, so dance good. Pulp Fiction.

Jules: Whether or not what we experienced was an According to Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved. Pulp Fiction.

"Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. "— Zora Neale Hurston

"Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories."— Chuck Palahniuk

"We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better."— Chuck Palahniuk (Asfixia)

Each must enter the nest made by the other imperfect birds" Rumi

There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Annie Dillard

Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper."— Anne Lamott

The Christian writer does not decide what would be good for the world and proceed to deliver it. Like a very doubtful Jacob, he confronts what stands in his path and wonders if he will come out of the struggle at all.– Flannery O’Connor

Nationalism is an infantile disease; it is the measles of mankind. Einstein

If there is any meaning in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, it is this: that there is a God who created us, and who loves us so much that He would stop at nothing to bring us to Him. And I really suspect that of all the things we think we want to know, the only thing we really want to know is that we are loved. And if Jesus means anything, He means that you are loved. I hope you know that. And I hope you stop worrying about all the stuff you don't know, because I don't think it amounts to a hill of beans. Rich Mullins. Arrows pointing toward heaven

I think that all these doctrinal statements that all the congregations come up with over the years are basically just not very worthwhile. I don't mean to sound mean toward the people who came up with them. I understand in the past there have been many heretical movements, and we still need to maintain sound doctrine... But I think our real doctrine is that doctrine that is born out in our character. I think you can profess the Apostles' Creed until Jesus returns, but if you don't love somebody, you never were a Christian.
Rich Mullins

"There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for."— Albert Camus

"If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism." So we don't either."— Rob Bell

"You do not know how long you are in a river when the current moves swiftly. It seems a long time and it may be very short. The water was cold and in flood and many things passed that had been floated off the banks when the river rose. I was lucky to have a heavy timber to hold on to, and I lay in the icy water with my chin on the wood, holding on as easily as I could with both hands."- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Chapter 31

Left to its own devices, her mind is a fat hummingbird flitting through leafy trees of anxiety, apology, sorrow, excuses, and dreams of grandeur, dreams of humiliation. Sometimes she watches it run off, and it makes her laugh and shake her head. It's like a video game. Bright fast blips of worry and anger come at her, and, after fending them off, she's attacked by the huge lumbering Czechoslovakian blobs of tiredness and broken-spiritedness which break into small, faster missiles of regret when she fires at them. What a half-baked species we are, she thinks, and does what she can to make her insides more habitable. Anne Lamott, Joe Jones

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.(Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), U.S. author. First published in Paris Review (Flushing, NY, spring 1958). Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series, ed. George Plimpton (1963).)

"...there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone."— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

Ever since there have been men, man has given himself over to too little joy. That alone, my brothers, is our origianl sin. I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance. Henri Matisse.

"Every artist has a basic premise pervading his whole life, and that premise can provide the impulse to everything he creates. For me the dominating premise has been the need for understanding and tenderness and fortitude among individuals trapped by circumstance." Tennessee Williams

"And now the old story has begun to write itself over there," said Carl softly. "Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years."— Willa Cather (O Pioneers!)

"I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me." Montagne

"it is now hard to leave the country but it is in no way impossible."- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Chapter 33

still learning.

Wild Geese. Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Let's climb trees.

twitching.

This is basically just a bunch of junk rattling around in my head that I don’t have time to be thinking about much less blogging about, much less blogging about in an unapologetically disorganized, non-sequential (GRE word, that was free), too many (parenthesis), messy mucky run-on sentencey way. Whateva, whateva, this is my blog. I do what I want. You don’t have to read it (please do, I like you. Sparkles to you).


So this blogging business lately has been out of control. All this time I spend staring at this screen I could be working a school stuff, not the least of which is an assignment called a CTE which social work speak stands for Critical Thinking Exercise. It is no coincidence that CTE rhymes with ‘harder than this has to be’. That is the little sing-song that plays in my head while I’m sitting at Golden Roast. “CTE, harder than this hasss toooo beeeee.“ It also rhymes with, ‘damn I hate this’.. (oh wait no it doesn’t, my bad.) Sometimes when I think about writing my CTE, my eye twitches. I’m not kidding. It twitches. Seeing as how I already have a habit singing to myself and laughing out loud to myself, and talking to myself (sometimes with hand gestures), all of this alone in public, I feel like a twitching eye makes me look just on that wrong side of crazy. So when I’m trying to procrastinate and quell the twitch, instead of watching TV or sports or fantasy football (that’s you people), I resort to Internet. Where the blogs flows like milk and honey. To stop your eye from twitching too, here is the regular beat of blogs I patrol. Just what the I doctor ordered (pun intended always):



Kelle Hampton: Click on that and try not to pee on yourself before you even scroll down. The background on my computer are pictures of this woman’s children. Read Nella’s Birth story. Generally I don’t ready every entry, I just scroll down and look at her blissfully beautiful photography of the “almond-eyed one and wispy one” and vicariously live through these children’s sidewalk chalk and beach trips every single beautiful shot as they stare back at the the camera that’s always in their face with the doting mama behind it. I hope they are 1 and 5 forever. I will never dress as well as these children or Kelle herself, who’s skinnier than me even after having 2 kids (twitch, twitch). When Nella got glasses, I didn’t know if I could hold it all in:





MODG. Martinis or Diaper Genies. I have no words, Modg. Laughing outloud at the computer myself hot blogtastic mess this is. This is where I get the phrase sparkle hearts, NBD, BD, among other phrases. I straight-up steal from her because I envy her skillz and wit and honesty and hot husband. She’s pregnant and hasn’t named the baby so she refers to it as plankton, or planky for short. She tries to get readers to buy tranny shoe memberships from Kim Kardashian. Bathroom humor, confession fridays, among a million other hilarious and random things. I could go on. MODG, You are the Lebron James of blogging, the matriarch of all bloggessness. Anywhere. Everywhere. Amen.

ALSO, I have a few people in real life who blog’s are pretty wicked too. Like this girl. Morgan Harris Trinker. This is her wedding, which I talked about so adnausem to my roommates while they were wedding planning that they asked me to stop. I didn’t. Now I just say, Have I ever to you about my friend Morgan? The bees knees. All that trendy speak that just means awesome. I want to fake my own wedding or pregnancy just to get her to take my picture. Or better yet, actually get married. I’ll keep y’all posted on both of those. And at Morgan’s wedding (have I mentioned Morgan’s wedding?) one of her bridesmaid was Amy Pratt. Thereisgaymaninmycloset. If I were to have a girl-crush on a blog other than MODG, it would be this one. (Settle down Tara, I’m just crushing on the blog)

So there are some others but these are the favs. But ya know, sometimes even the blogs don’t ease the pain, the grad school blues, the single girl swag (or lack there of). and it’s then time to bring out the big guns. I think you know where I’m going with this. Those days that you feel like your mood and your ‘tude need a time out. You might have sat and mighta cried through yet another beautiful wedding. Came directly home and stood at the kitchen counter and before your diet knows what your face is doing to tell you WOMAN NO you are dipping chocolate chip pancakes into peanut butter icing. WHAT? These are my confessions, Usher-style. For all those times I feel like I have gotten punked by my own estrogen. Just like all those dumb girls I judge, I am one. I am them. They are me. I am straight-up she-fool. who am I gonna call? Not ghostbusters, kids, but Bridget Jones. YES. Ahhhh it’s just so rich and great and sickeningly comforting to me the extent to which this slightly chubby and very awkward version of Renée Zellweger pre-Kenny Chesney annulment reminds me of myself. The sequel is not as good. You don’t repeat something wonderful. (Ask all those UT fans still sporting 1996 championship t-shirts about that). Did you learn nothing from Home Alone and Karate Kid, Bridget?? Where were you in the 90s? Oh thats rights, you were busy being awkward and female and trying to get Hugh Grant to love you. All the women in the world baptized in estrogen and licking peanut butter icing off their fingers salute you. To blogs and to Bridget.

3 of 77

Three poems in Garrison Keillor's 77 Love sonnets

1.
March

It's March in St. Paul. Eight a.m. A pale
Frozen mist in the air. The snow is gritty gray
Around the stone statue of Nathan Hale.
Scott Fitzgerald walks here almost every day
Hand in hand in Bessie Smith, or Maria Callas,
And Franz Kafka and Judy Garland stroll in the snow
And Princess Diana escapes from Kensington Palace
To meet Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe.
They all look calm and very elegant indeed,
Despite all the grief they've been through.
To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need,
So said Emily Dickinson. (She's here, too)
Life is tragic. Oh God, the miseries we bear
But it's always good to get out in the fresh air.

2.
Supper
You made crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of brie
And minced garlic drizzled with olive oil
And baked them until the brie was bubbly
And we ate them lovingly, our legs coiled
Together under the table.
And salmon with dill
And lemon and whole-wheat cous cous
Baked with garlic and fresh ginger, and a hill.
Of green beans and carrots roasted with honey and tofu.
It was beautiful, the candles, the linen and silver,
The sun shining down on our northern street,
Me with my hand on your leg.
You, my lover,
In your jeans and green
T-shirt and beautiful bare feet.
How simple life is. We buy a fish. We are fed.
We sit close to each other, we talk and then we go to bed.

3.
So Much
She is ten. "I love you. So much," she tells me
On the phone in the evening. She loves the phrase
And "I miss you. So much." I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee,
En route to Phoenix, on the road for six days.
Four to go. Airports, freeways, Holiday Inns,
Dennys, USA Today, highway America.
Every night, audiences expecting the genuine,
And me, lonely, on the road through Jericho.
It's an okay life. Dangerous but okay.
I don't drink. I don't stay out late. I eat right.
But the lonesome road blues follows me around all day
And there are rocks and nails in my bed at night
I think about her. I miss her. I get dressed
And go tell stories about families in the Midwest.

4. (1 to grow on)
Prayer
“Here I am Lord, and here is my prayer:
Please be there.
I don’t want to ask too much-miracles and such-
Just whisper in the air: please be there.
When I die like other folks,
I don't to find out You're a hoax.
So I'm not on my knees asking for world peace
Or that polar icecaps freeze
And save the polar bear
Or even that the poor be fed
Or angels hover o'er my bed
but I sure would be pissed
if I should have been an atheist;
oh Lord, please exist.

Wonder Years.

Ladies and Gentleman, The Wonder Years:


Narrator: Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house like a lot of other houses, a yard like a lot of other yards, on a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back, with wonder.


Narrator: If there’s one thing every kid learns growing up, it’s that life is a series of risks. It’s a cause and effect relationship. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Still, with the proper guidance we learn to deal with the risks. Pretty soon we set out into the world, sure in our options, confident in our choices.

Narrator: At some point in your teenage years, if you're lucky, you make a discovery. You find out you're actually good at something. It's that critical juncture, where talent becomes...expertise - kinda. It's your chance to start or, end up flat on your face.


(HOW DO YOU WRITE SOMETHING THAT GOOD, WONDER YEARS NARRATOR?)

i love the wonder years. hearts hearts hearts Kevin & Winnie hearts hearts hearts. I love how it paints the picture of growing perfectly and it brings me back to my wonder years. When I was still cute and not awkward yet, and running around blonde with a koolaid mustache and a sundress. So full of energy that I can’t get words out fast enough (AND I stuttered so that's just cruel) full of ideas and imagination. Back in those wonder years there was plenty of ‘you can grow up and be whatever you want to be’. With the exception of public speaking on account of the afore mentioned stutter. I also eventually discovered I was terrible anything having to do with math, I’m pretty afraid of heights/high speeds/uncontrollable forces of nature. So eliminated candidacy for president, tornado chaser, professional skydiver, and high school algebra teach from my list of possible careers. But there was still big world out there and Kevin Arnold and I were going to explore it. Maybe I could grow up and be a high school English teacher and teach Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver and Salinger.Or I could open up a bookstore downtown Knoxville and be bid-ness woman. Or join the peace-corp. Or I could move back into the hostel I lived in in England and drink cider at the Free Press pub. I could be a book critic or figure out some other way to get someone to pay me to read. Or maybe I want to buy Manhattans. And really, I really wouldn’t hate being in college for a long time and learning a little bit about everything. Psychology, Women’s studies, every single language, Music, Underwater basket weaving, Anything but Math. sick. It's like a good ole fashion after church buffet. And i intend to eat it. All.




That’s me.

So really, you can go to 2 colleges, declare 2 majors, take 5 years for undergrad and ton of classes that you don’t need but after all that, at some point, another critical, important, expensive point, one must decide on something. The little girl with the sundress and the imagination must meet the adult(ish) girl with reality: public enemy #1. REALITY. sick. Pick a plate at the buffet of life that is vocation selection. What would make more sense than going back to school (cue Adam Sandler, back to school, back to schoool ...). So. Grad school. MSSW, 2012. It would appear my on again/off again love/hate relationship with school is on again. A lot of staring out of windows of coffee shops with open books in front of me and conducting life at business end of a highlighter. In these first couple of months, here are some things that I have found that have quelled the boredom and dulled the pain, in no particular order:

Coffee shops: Less than 3 them (Read the previous blog, people. This stuff BUILDS on each other. Like LOST). So I heart coffee shops. If coffee shops were bars and iced coffee with sugar free vanilla was something alcoholic, I would have a sho ‘nuff problem. Golden Roast is like my cheers. I order that same drink every. single. time. To the point that one of the baristas saw me at counter, looked at me, and made the drink. I have arrived. So I like having places, having people at those places, and drinks I order and specific tables and even seats at those tables. These routine things comfort me and my brain agrees to work. (OCD people, pass it on. Making it work for me since 1986.)



wikipedia. Somewhere in undergrad basically well meaning (but basically incorrect) professors gave me the idea that wikipedia is somehow not substantiated by “facts” and therefor unreliable. This is false. Totally erroneous. Wikipedia is full of information that is very helpful to me. It actually belongs on JSTOR. Seriously, it practically saves me. On the daily. It is the Gayle to my Oprah. The trucker hat to my kid rock CD. The scarf to my hipster jeans. (I don’t have a Kid Rock CD or hipster jeans. But i do love Oprah. Hard. DON’T HATE.) Chalk one up for wikipedia and the GP (general public) with their effortful collaboration of knowledge.



Bed: She’s a beauty. A Maple sleigh bed with deep crimson sheets and a ton of blankets. When I moved back from MTSU to Knoxville, I discovered wonderful and crumby pleasure of ending the day eating cereal and reading in bed. Just cereal (delicious), no Milk (digestion. I am FOR IT. Milk is a bad, bad choice). I remember one summer reading East of Eden every night by flashlight and eating Special K with Strawberries. (The flashlight was not to create an ambiance with Steinbeck, it was, in fact, because I was too lazy to get out of bed to turn the light off). Crawling into bed with my little baggie is what my girl Sarah Jessica Parker via her girl Carrie Bradshaw calls a “Secret Single Behavior”. It successfully combines 3 of my favorite things: bed, books and carbohydrates. for the win. Now i have to spoon with my APA stylebook. For the fail. These days I crawl in at night and I start to whisper my sweet nothings: I love you bed. I am gonna sleep on you SO HARD tonight. (whisper:) so hard, so hard. Bed: not having it. “You smell like caffeine. Woof.” Hell knoweth no fury like thread count scorned.



Remedy Coffee. I guarantee that I like my job more than you like your job in a my dad can beat up your dad kind of way. Work is my joy. For the downtown-ness and big windows and good coffee and regulars and strangers and friends and musicians and music. Beautiful people come in and out of there all the time. I’m serious. And I get to sit on a stool behind a very, very slow register and meet them. “Small or large?”, “for here or to go?”, “ tell me your name?” “Blended coffee, it’s like a frappaccino”, “iced or hot?”, “Do you need cream?”, “Remind me of your name?”, “Bathroom key’s on the wall, bring it back.” (seriously, bring it back), “Sugar on the table. Do you need cream?” “Music at 8, close at ten”, “I’m sorry, tell me your name again”. “um, your bathrooms are locked. yeah, the key. it’s on the wall.”. “How long have you guys been here?”, “ohhhhh this is soooo niiice!I love this place!”....me too. I love it too. and I do. a lot. a lot. and I’m thankful thankful for it. 125 W Jackson, Avail yourself, people.



TV: This was recent rediscovery. Short lived. I don’t watch TV much, just a little Today show, just enough to thin the blood and to give a good morning to my main man Matt Lauer. Don’t watch the rest of the day because Matt and Al and Ann and Willard Scott (less than 3) aren’t going to be on be it. But recently while housesitting at my dear old dad’s I was taking a swim in his king size bed and flipped on the TV at night. And I mean. Come on people. Have you all been aware of nighttime television programming this the whole time? Honestly. Jerseylicious. Hoarders. Sister wives. (SISTER WIVES?!). Now given, on a very basic level, all of this rampant social dysfunction is good job security for social work but still makes me concerned that these are same members of the GP contributing to wikipedia and polluting my virtual well of intellectual and academic knowledge. UNCOOL.
And now to totally contradict what I just wrote about not watching television, Go Bravos. You got this.


What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, I will try not to sing out of key. Wonder Years Theme

Tabs Down the Side.

Tonight I was sitting at Golden Roast, where I take my brain to study (or where my brain takes me, I don’t really boss my brain around much), I was reading for a quiz on Wednesday. I was skimming the pages, highlighter in hand and was pretty thankful for whatever fellow procrastinator thought to invent that genius concept of the embolden word. Here's to you, Mr. Textbook company Editor man, after I shelled out a cool $100 + bones for this tantalizing read about Research Methods in Social work, you fine people had the courtesy to embolden some important words. Poor, bored, ink-logged, highlighter logged, paper cut grad students certain appreciate that gesture. Just your way of throwing a bone back, if you will. (Lets be real, for how much it costs, the book should read itself to me, make flashcards of itself, take quizzes about itself, make me snack, and give me a nice long back scratch). BUT seriously, bold word are so helpful. Nice long definitions behind them, examples, perhaps even a glossary and index with lots of other important words you need to know. They stand out on the page as if to say,”HEY.Right here. You’ll see this again. Pay Attention.” Big, black letters on a white page, left to right, top to bottom. This is clear, wonderfully objective and helpful and saves me time. (Usually this would be an appropriate time to say something like, “hey, now, time is money folks” but that is in fact totally inappropriate because I’m getting paid exactly $0.00 for school. Time does not = money. Thanks for reminding me. I will get paid something sad when I get out, I’m sure, and I’ll be buying Kroger brand cereal for the rest of my days. Whatever, it builds character. Like acne and slow metabolisms. Right now, time basically equals sleep, which is almost as precious as money and almost as hard to come by.) I digress. I appreciate bold words and indexes and glossaries because they are means of efficiency and organization, which is also, coincidentally, the same flame that sparked my love affair with office supplies. Honestly, if I was in the unfortunate habit of saying that I “heart” things, or that I less than3’d them, now would be a good time to express my virtual character love for office supplies:

(see, there's a heart in the middle for reason).

Now these bold words today got me thinking, what if, in an alternate super-office supplied wonderland, we could micro-manage, file, highlight, bold, strike through and shred our actual lives. For example, in a sea of people in puke-orange in Neyland Stadium on a Saturday in the fall, you could look out and see specific people highlighted for specific reasons. In a crowd, at a show, in a store, your eyes would be skimming over your world and suddenly you would see ‘Aha, you’re bold or highlighted or underlined, there is a circle drawn around you, you’re scratched out or there’s a smiley face beside you. and you would know that they were important, it would save you time (which would also save you sleep or money, respectively). You paper clip people and things to you that you think you might want to keep for a while with no great commitment, or staple people you're pretty sure about, and super glue the ones you want to stay forever (but be sure, like REAL SURE, that you do, infact, want them there for forever. Super glue does not play). In office-supply fantasy land, There would be big huge binders and you could organize, categorize, and file people and places and memories. I’m talking a lonely planet guide with A-Z tabs down the side. Categories like: Beautiful things, that which is not so beautiful, Straight-up ugly, Hilarity, Stuff I like, Stuff I hate, Questions that have been answered (small tab), Questions that have not been answered (big one), Really great meals, Really great memories, Awkward phase (there’s another big one). And each tab would be complete with pictures you could would take with your mind, moments where you could just look at something and blink or close your eyes and whisper, click. and that moment would be captured, held and filed. I would have taken pictures of Borders, back in the glory days of the “Borders Mafia” where it was the best shittiest job we all had ever had. I would take all the bad moments to through the shredder and then shred the shreddings again, and then again, just for good measure, can’t ever be too careful, and recycle them like the good tree-hugger that I am. I would make these binders, oh there would be dividers, indexes, page tabs, systems, colors. YES! All of life’s “quizzes” that I continue to fail, I would figure out why that is because I could compare and cross-reference my tabs and notes. I would keep my binders in my bookshelf beside my desk next to the books because books are the closest thing I have found to road maps of life so far. All of this just in an effort to organize and understand myself and my world and last year and the years before that and yesterday and tomorrow. This effort would not only be wonderfully fun exercise with office supplies (never time wasted), it would also save me time and sleep (for sure) and money (somehow, probably). If you all ever figure out how to organize and explain your own world using anything provided by the fine people at Staples, holler at me. I’ll start stapling and paper-clipping away.

"I cannot explain myself, because I not myself, you see" Alice. Alice in Wonderland.

I want.

I want.

Lion Sands Tree House, Sabi Sand, South Africa

Easy Like Sunday morning

This morning at church this poem was read. Chris Woodhull was preaching and he said Thirst and Mary Oliver and I leaned waaaaaayyy forward ready to listen. And in listening, to walk into this poem and right into the woods and be among the trees and this poetic voice that I recognize and is so comforting and always clear and familiar to me.

Saint Mary Oliver, patron saint of poetry and simplicity.

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Thirst)

Mary Oliver and I just had church together in the woods. I got home and my roommate is baking cheesecake in the kitchen. And she has flour on her face and and she's on her tip-toes pressing the crust into the pan with her hands. "Sweetened Condensed Milk does the body good ... There's just not that many things I like more than graham cracker crust". She loves Mary Oliver about as much as she loves baking which is about as much as I love Mary Oliver. That is a hell of a lot of love for one kitchen. I find the poem in the book on the table in the living room beside the window, where all my poetry lives and stand there and leaned against the door frame of the kitchen and read it to her. And the music that is playing a slow bluegrass "Come thou Fount". I read the poem slowly, like trees growing slowly, it's raining outside, slowly, and we're standing in the kitchen reading poetry. It's so damn good. and so simple. And I couldn't tell the difference between being in the kitchen with the crust and the flour or being in a church or being among the trees. I got done and held the book over my face and screamed. Her poems are just that good to me. As good as graham cracker crust. "I would almost say that they save me. and daily."

Come Visit. I live in a house near the corner I have named Gratitude.

Mary Oliver said she wakes every morning to the dawn and give thanks for another day, eats breakfast, takes a walk with her dog Percy, and works for 3-4 hours, at which point she is tired.

This life seems about perfect to me.



Such Gifts

The Place I Want to Get Back To
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground , like that
,so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

(from Thirst)

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around youkept shouting
their bad advice--though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles."Mend my life!"each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones. But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--determined to save
the only life you could save.

"And it's all still going on"

Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm. Dorothy Day

Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily. Dorothy Day

I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor. Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was a Marxist and an anarchist and a wild bohemian. She lived with men in common law arrangements. She was jailed for controversial demonstrations on behalf of workers, women's suffrage, and the rights of the imprisoned. She preached a pacifism that knew no limit, and she wrote at least one book which in her later years she regretted so much that she declared she would do anything if she could have every copy of it destroyed. She loved Opera. She loved to knit. She is a candidate for Sainthood. She became a devoted Catholic and began the Catholic Worker Movement that included poorhouses and newspaper in Chicago. Someone wrote that "She was a fool for Christ's sake: her boss was the individual on the street who was forgotten by society, the one we see each day, the one on the park bench who smells of alcohol and urine. " Her books called On Pilgrimage and Loaves and Fishes, and The Long Loneliness. I have only read The Long Loneliness, and I loved it.

This the postscript The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day.

“We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in.
We were just sitting there talking when lines of people began to form, saying, “We need bread.” We could not say, “Go, be thou filled.” If there were six small loaves and a few fishes, we had to divide them. There was always bread.
We were just sitting there talking and people moved in on us. Let those who can take it, take it. Some moved out and that made room for more. And somehow the walls expanded.
We were just sitting there talking and someone said, “Let’s all go live on a farm.” It was as casual as all that, I often think. It just came about. It just happened.
I found myself, a barren woman, the joyful mother of children. It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight.
The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say.
The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone any more.
But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.”

25 Dorothy Day quotes

Saint Dorothy?

joy

Got this today from a friend today who is working on a farm as a Jesuit Volunteer in Georgia. beauty beauty beauty.

sweat rolls down into your eyes everyday
and everyday is the same
except when tilling up earth and pain with Eh Kaw
except when flinging red radish seeds all over your common toil
except when the skies are so blue you wanna cry and you go out with your handkerchief to find warm fat purple grapes and let them pop and slide out on your tongue.
except when your eyes open at dawn to walk across to the fig tree and suck down its sweetest flesh and when roosters announce day is coming and chickens wait for you to let them out of their sleepy roosts
except when you find God walking in the garden.
everyday's the same except when Po Reh learns to spell his name
learns to hold a pen and spell his very own name at 75 years old.
and when Dah Reh laughs when you, his teacher, try to move hay with your city hands
sometimes all your muscle fibers are on fire at the very same moment
and your eyes are still stingin with that sweat
and sometimes you wonder why Po Reh has to be here at 75 learnin to spell his name
and you wonder why the world is in the shape it is
but then..
almost always in the very middle of that space where tired bones and tired souls meet
you know everyday will never be the same after this
and no day is the same
and the resurrected Christ has come to visit you here,
has come in so close you tremble

-written by my sweet soulfriend

and give thanks. like this: thank you.

We can see Spirit made visible when people are kind to one another,
especially when it’s a really busy person,
like you,
taking care of a needy, annoying, neurotic person.
like you.
In fact, that’s often when we see Spirit most brightly.

It’s magic to see Spirit, largely because it’s so rare. Mostly you see the masks and the holograms that the culture present as real. You see how you’re doing in the world’s eyes, or your family’s or-worst of all- yours, or in the eyes of people who are doing better than you-much better than you-or worse.
But you are not your bank account or your ambition.
You’re not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die.
You’re not your collection of walking personally disorders.
You are Sprit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometime,
you are free.
You’re here to love, and be loved
freely.
If you find out next week that you are terminally ill- and we’re all terminally ill on this bus- what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them

So bless you. You’ve done an amazing thing. And you are loved. You are capable of lives of great joy and meaning.
It’s what you are made of
…And it’s what you’re here for
…Take care of yourselves. Take care of one another.
And give thanks like this.


Thank you.


(By Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith)

"everybody's changing. come change with me."

Until about 2 weeks ago, from August ‘09 to August ‘10, I have lived in an apartment over Cafe 4 in Market Square. 4 girls, 2 bedrooms, 1 Parking garage, 1 roof, 1 outrageously big TV that only was only worth anything at night and not worth much then. The year before that I worked as a barista at Cafe 4 just downstairs. I would stand at the window behind the coffee bar and would watch the wind blow the leaves trees in the Square outside and think of the line in Maya Angelou’s poem “Caged Bird” that says “trade winds soft in the sighing trees/fat worms waiting on the dawn bright lawn/and she claims the sky her own”. Maya Angelou knows what's up. so just like little Zaccheaus, the wee little man (a wee little man was he), I climbed up in those sighing trees and lived right above that same window with a birds eyeview of the square. 12 Months with 4 Market Square 4 stories up was our little birds’ nest. The Square is people watching paradise. Our window had a nice deep window seal that I would climb on and sit or stand and watch people and thought about how if I was one of Maya’s poetry birds that’s all I would do, just sit up in those trees and look down at all the groundlings living their very busy and important lives and watch them all swipe their keys on the side of the building and run up 4 flights of stairs with groceries and walk to Soccer Taco and Marble Slab (which was literally in what would be our front yard which was excellent/terrible, and I loved/hated it.) The little bird would watch us get bright orange parking ticket after bright orange parking ticket and having dance parties in the windows of the living room and in the bedroom and think about how much these people danced. Well a year of all that football season in the fall and the skating rink in the winter and sundown in the spring all came and went and now it’s August and it’s time to move. Just like that. I took all pictures off the wall and sat in Rick’s office and unceremoniously turn in my keys. The last night I sat on the roof with Nick and Jess and quite ceremoniously drank wine straight out of the bottle and went down all the flights of stairs through the restaurant for the last time and moved somewhere else. (just now, when I typed the word moved, I accidentally typed the word ‘love’. Coincidence? I don’t believe in ‘em. But i also accidentally typed ‘word’ as wordk but lets forget that and just stick with sweet poetic irony). That was my exit which is not nearly as memorable and wonderful as this one: Enter Holden Caufield, L(ove) of my L(ife)



”When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddamn corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddamn voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.” (Holden knows what’s up).



Rewind back to real life. This is the thing: I love to move. Really, if you asked me me to move somewhere with you any, really, anytime, I would definitely think about it. Moving reminds me that God is a God of motion. In Donald Miller’s beautiful and wonderful love letter of an author’s note to Through Painted Deserts (which I refer back to in real life and in Internet life a lot) he talks about moving from Texas to Portland and writes, “Did You really do all of this to dazzle us? Do You really keep it shifting, rolling round the pinions to stave off boredom? God forbid Your glory would be our distraction. And God forbid we would ignore Your glory.” Don Miller knows what’s up. Almost a century before Don Miller was writing, Ezra Pound’s was writing the jist of his message in poetry which all thundered “Make It New”. I think we all want newness. I’m all for making it new; new beginnings in any shape form or fashion. I’m wild about them. New Years, New Years Resolutions. Mondays, mornings, Monday mornings. New mercies every morning. Yes please. So moving feels like another new beginning, even if I’m just moving a mile away. Which I am, but that is neither here nor there because who really knows? That one mile could be a whole new world.



A great thing about new beginnings is going through the old beginnings bygone and stroll down memory lane and look through old books and shoe boxes and notes. I found a single monopoly dollar I used to use a bookmark and a small brown square piece of paper left over from some art project that had a small sticker taped to it that said, “a child is a curly headed dimpled lunatic”. Naturally, this reminded me of my sister circa 1991, so I taped a picture of her to it. Going through old stuff and even pulling out the furniture that I had in my college apartment nostalgia reared it’s sad little head and made me really miss my life two years ago in my sweet apartment with the people in my life then. Holden, ole buddy ole pal, welcome back: “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” Salinger know’s what was up. So I put Anne Lamott and Mary Oliver together in a old borders boxes and packed up all my junk. In 100 degree heat, my dad packed the bed of his truck like a freaking Beverly Hillbilly







<-----------------THIS IS NO JOKE and moved everything out from Market Square and spread it back out in my little room in a little house a little ways back from the big Tennessee River right in the middle of Big Orange Country. It’s an old house with wood floors painted black and lots of windows all along the walls. From those different windows in the house we can see Ayres hall, Worlds Fair Park, Neyland Stadium and the BBT building downtown. A bird’s eye view. This new nest really is a little house. Little in a charming way but also little in a little way. 4 girls. 3 Bedrooms. Exactly 1 Bathroom. 0 washer,0 dryer. Here’s the kicker: On job application one time under long-term goals I once wrote ‘simplicity’. I want to have less, I want to want less, I want to need less.I think that’s why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions: because Jesus knows what’s up. less less less. So God must have read that job application (or maybe he reads my Facebook statuses, I can’t really keep up with Him) and I thought about me that when he gave me a new little house in a tiny new room with no closet. Here’s a little about how it went: God: So your nonsense facebookery about simplifying your life and the fact that you even have the word Simplify hanging on your wall and because I see that is your real desire and I think that’s swell, I will help. You just won yourself a one-way ticket to cute little downtown house and a cute little room. It won’t have a closet, but that will be fine. Because you’re simplifying. Facebook says so.
Jen: What. .... Where will I put all my STUFF? everything in here is so close! (soclose)! (aggravation. stress. bad mood for days).
God: Right ..... So about how you want to care less about material things.... This should be NBD (no big deal. in my world, God uses abbrevs.)
Jen: (Not really listening, figuring out a place to put my shoes) ...um okay because this feels like a BD.
This went on for a while. You get the pic(ture). And in the wonderful way that God reminds us of things apparently this time in the form of little baby birds. Before we had moved in, a little family of birds had apparently moved in and made a nest in the chimney and that nest had fallen through into the fireplace. The day we moved in there were tiny baby birds and broken shells all bottom of the hearth. I bent down to look at them and remembered where it says in Matthew about birds: (the passage in The Message translation appropriately entitled “Forget About Yourself" ) when jesus said that He knows when each one falls and Jesus really does know what's up. In a twist of wonderful irony, the next day at work I was telling a customer about the nest and the birdies and he said, "eh they were probably just sparrows. Who cares about sparrows?” I just smiled at God’s creative little reminders and my little room still crammed with stuff and my shoes were all over my floor, and I knew knew that God really did care about those sparrows and the lilies in the field. Mary Oliver and I have been thinking about those birds and living like those lilies. Speaking of lilies, out my window is a single window box for flowers that I will soon plant and water and look out on them and whisper, “Try and touch the sky”. I once heard that’s good for flowers.
So I know that all this is true, that changing and newness is good because it’s in books and in God and it’s why moving is good and hopeful. So when I ask you come over to my house one day, talk about how small is charming and how closets really are overrated and it is fine that my furniture doesn’t match and maybe say that my flowers are nice and one day they might touch the sky.

August and Everything After

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
-August. Mary Oliver.


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Wild Geese. Mary Oliver.


Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.
-Landscape. Mary Oliver

Muzak Cool People Listen To

So this weekend during a mini-whirlwind roadtrip with my dear old dad, right about the time I was sporting my aviators and riding through some Carolina mountain holler, my dad said something about a CD I had made for him several years ago and it occurred to me that I had not made a super sweet mixed CD in quite a while. So because I have some extra blank CD's and an Itunes gift card, and because I don't want those wicked CD making skills to get too rusty, tonight was the night to bring that back. The much awaited 'Music Cool People Listen To' Volume 39 (or some such number).

Here's the shakedown:

She is Love- Parachute. Was introduced to this song on John Mayer's Pandora station. If some of those little mountain towns we rode through were music, they would be acoustic and slow and short and simple too, just like this song.
Round Here. Counting Crows. As is par for this year's course, this song came to me compliments of Jessica's W. Boyd's Roommate Music Education non-profit she's got going. It's been a raging success. "round here we stay up very very very very late".
Pinewood Chest and Closer to Me by Tyler Lyle. Tyler played at Blue Plate in May and Adam just sent him over to play at Remedy that night. He was nice enough to give me his CD that night and I literally cannot get enough of these 2 songs. Man. Seriously. He's from Atlanta, singer/songwriter. Please check him out @ TylerLyle.com
Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Because oldies are still goodies and this one was probably on the some of the first "Music Cool People Listen To" so this song is basically a re-release of sorts. "Fast Car" will always have a special place in my heart. Good music, good lyrics, good memories.
"As I Lay Me Down To Sleep" Sophie B Hawkins. Almost didn't admit to this one because it's a little too B975 than I am comfortable with butttt it's also just a really beautiful song.

I wonder why I feel so high
Though I am not above the sorrow
Heavy heartedTill you call my name
And it sounds like church bells
Or the whistle of a train
On a summer evening
I'll run to meet you
Barefoot barely breathing

... and I'm sure Delilah thinks quite nice too. She'd be proud.
Will You Be There- Michael Jackson. Because this was the first MJ song I ever loved and is probably my favorite and, MJ if you're walking around out there reading blogs somewhere with Elvis, you had me since Free Willy.
In Repair. John Mayer. From the Village Sessions. Because in Jessica Boyd's music education program, sometime she leaves her cd's on the top of the dvd player and when that happens, I burn them onto my computer. Village Sessions= great.
When It Don't Come Easy and Rain by Patty Griffin. Because Patty, Patty, Patty how do you always know just what to say?
Who Will Save Your Soul? Jewel. I found this on my mom's computer and couldn't help myself. Reminds me of my sister and days of Ani and Tori and Fiona and Jewel and we were best friends. Lost touch with some of that music over time but never lost the love.
Grey Street and What Would You Say Dave Matthews Band. No explanation needed.
"look how she listens and says nothing of what she think. just goes stumbling through her memories"


So this frankly isn't my best work, but sometimes we need a rebuilding year. Just ask Derek Dooley about that.
CD drops tonight at Remedy because I recently figured out how to play a CD on the register computer and feed it through the speakers. Officially drops Tuesday because all music comes out Tuesday. People who work at Borders know these things. If you want one, I charge something like a high five or something. I don't really know. We'll hug it out.

Don't music judge me.

Scoreboard

So this past week my sister and I have been housesitting together for my mom in Farragut. So all week I have been switching from my little abode in Market Square to a perfectly manicured lawn in Farragut. This week has meant going to strength classes with my sister and watching her walk bowlegged for days. We have put cheese wiz on pills and fed them to the dog and nearly killed a tomato plant. Honestly. How do you people keep those things alive? Honestly. So one week and this is the last day. This day, Sunday, a long day's looooooong day and I drove from downtown out west for the 9th time in 5 days for the finale of Abby and Jen's house sitting adventure 2010. I was exhausted, done, over, spent, pooped and because coffee does not equal fewd, I was also so hungry that I seriously considered getting dinner at a gas station. "Dinner". because that, my 3 loyal readers, is what it has come to on days like these. But instead I went home and found Abby there, who had very nearly gone to Menchies to drown her own Sunday sorrows in froyo.Let us be real, who among us has not been there? So without our own respective pathetic dinners of menchies and gas station station delicacies we fended for ourselves: Abby was making a veggie burger and put in a tortilla and said outloud, Hello White Trash. I was out of saltines and was seriously jonesing for my new fav snack, I put oyster crackers and jelly on a spoon and ate them leaning against the counter while Abby read me blogs (by blogs I mean Texts From Last Night, blogs just sounds a little smarter). I made myself some eggs. At 24, making eggs is my newest skill. Abby found this hilarious earlier this week when I called her at work to ask her how to do it. If I ever find myself on internet/personal ad dating, if I ever give up gas station dinners on Sunday and give that a whirl instead, I will now be able to list making eggs as one of my marketable and desireable relationship skills. Single White Female. Can make eggs. I ate these man-magnet eggs at the kitchen table while the dog stared at me with a very concerned look at his face which I can only assume is trying to tell me, "Sour Cream and Onion chips from Pilot would probably have been a better decision." Could not have agreed more, dear doggy. Single White Female. Have chips, will travel. So Abby's Sunday was that kinda DAY too and we sat over the empty plate of eggs and compared our wounds and decided the next natural step to cheer ourselves up would be to go rent movies and buy diet mountian dews and packs of gum. Duh. So we drove to Weigels and listened to a combination of Sting Fields of Gold ( When he says something about the fields of Barley, Abby made some connection to Barleys and out loud wondered if Sting was singing about picking someone up at bar) and then a bad cover of Tupac's Changes, which is so appri-pro right now, as Tupac always is. And I had to smile, hearing Elton John's The Bitch is Back on the radio thanks to the fine folks over at B97.5. We had an unsuccessful attempt at Redbox and instead went home and went home to rewatch a fifties version of Leonardo Decaprio wear a Newsies hat in his reunion with Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road. This is a good movie for the time period of the fifties and the clothes and places and things, but a terrible movie about relationships. So, naturally this was a perfect movie for the almost-resorted-to-froyo-kind of night. So Abby and I bedded down on the couch with the dog and diet cokes and toasted our lives on this Sunday, the land of singledom, all the problems we don't have. As Abby said, "Here's to not dodging right hooks on the side of route 12." Amen to that.

So sports fans, Here's the scoreboard:

Cheese Wiz 0. Goldberg 1.
Whoever covered Tupac 0. Tupac throwbacks anytime 1.
Sour Cream and Onion Chips 1. My eggs 0.
Abby's White Trash Gyro 1. Menchies 0.
Sweltering East Tennessee Heat 1. Tomato Plant R.I.P.
Toilet Humor and cocktails with my sister 1. Crying into your diet mountain dew alone 0.

This blog has been brought to you by Kate Winslet's costume's designer, Free range eggs, and "that's just the way it is", the air conditioning newly fixed in my car, and new mercies for a better tomorrow morning.

Just standing in my kitchen

So today in lieu of poetry Monday, confession-food-sjp blog.

so one time when i was out of food, I put jelly on some saltines. Either because it was really good or that saltines come in huge packages or because I'm perpetually poor, I do this now all the time. Poorfolk food, brain food, after work food, awesome food, power food. Just standing in my kitchen by myself putting jelly on saltines. Seriously, favorite snack. Mmm boy. And then tonight, low and behold, my sister and her depth and breadth of Sex and the City knowledge said, Oh that's not weird, Carrie Bradshaw does that. In an episode called "Secret Single Behavior" SJP via Carrie B. said this: Carrie Bradshaw stacks saltines -- she puts grape jelly on them. And she eats them, standing up in the kitchen while reading the latest issue of Vogue." So I salute you SJP, all the rest of you with bare cabinets with only crackers and jars of jelly, mixing salty and sweet, and the fine folks who make saltines.

Here, Just listen.

Ever since I could remember, which is basically round the same time I learned to speak or read, I have always been someone who hated to read out loud. Public speaking, public reading ... articulate? I was a reader, still am. Through and through. I remember my junior year in high school my English teacher made us read poems out loud, going around the room. As as much as I hate reading out loud (and boy, did I hate it) that idea stuck with me: That the rhythm of the words and the beat of a poem needs to be heard, not just read. The day I fell in love with Mary Oliver's poetry I was at Remedy and Jackie Newman leaned across the counter and said, let me read it to you. And she leaned over and quietly read aloud from Thirst. If I were sitting beside you right now, I would do the same thing. Even though I have not learned to hate reading out loud any less (man, i still hate it), I would lean over and take the book out of your hand and say, "here, just listen. Just let me read this to you." And then I would quietly read it and you would think it was charming, just like I did when Jackie did it. It's just the speaking and the hearing of the thing; The poem would have voice and the rhythm would have a beat and it would better than just reading it quietly. But because I still hate me having to do the reading, and because I'm not, in fact, with you, and mostly because far better than me reading you anything is the poet reading their own poetry. If you close your eyes, the beat and the rhythm sound almost like live music. Most of these are videos with the audio recording included because that was the easiest way to find the readings. The audio is infinitely more important than the images in the video itself. So really, don't watch, just listen: Langston Hughes, TS Eliot, and Maya Angelou and Jude Simpson. Pretend that you bathed in the Euphrates when the dawns were young; That you were one of the women going to and fro, talking of Michaelangelo. That you hummed like a hive of honey bees and, God, how I loved your hair.
If you only listen to one, let it be Maya Angelou. Sweet voice. great, great poem.

Langston Hughes, Negro Speaks of Rivers

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722


T.S. Eliot, Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock



Maya Angelou, In and Out of Time


Jude Simpson, Not Cut Out for Religion