"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

Mindfulness

This week at work I overheard a customer telling a story of Joshua Bell, child prodigy turned internationally renown violinist. Bell, winner of the Avery award at 39, sold out Boton's Symphony Hall, where "merely pretty good seats" went for $100. It is estimated that while playing at Symphony or Orchestra shows solo, Bell makes as much as $1,000 a minute. Bell plays a Stradivari violin handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari himself. Stolen 2 times from the previous owner, Bell bought it for a cool $3.5 million, which served his career well as, " no violin plays like a Strad from the 1710s." Meanwhile, Gene Weingarten, a writer for the Washington Post was leaving the subway station on morning and passed a raggedy man playing a keyboard who Weingarten said was quite talented, but his music was lost on the masses in the rush of the morning Subway. The reporter walked away and wondered if even YoYo Ma himself standing in this subway could cut through the crowds. Weingarten even he went into his office that day and tried to contact YoYo Ma's agent but nothing came of it. The music critic for the Washington Post later suggested Joshua Bell for the idea who agreed to participate in the experiment. So on a Friday morning in January, Bell, the world class violinist, put on jeans and t-shirt and took his place beside the metro trashcan with his Stradivari and played classically composed pieces to Washington's morning metro station. Weingarten writes that Bell started with Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. "Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history." In the time that Joshua was playing, 7 people stopped, 27 gave money and he made $32. More important than the change people flipped into his open case, was the lack of attention to the music and the amount of people who not only did not part with their pennies, but did not even notice the music. Bell later said, "I'm surprised at the number of people who don't pay attention at all, as if I'm invisible. Because, you know what? I'm makin' a lot of noise!" This is a great experiment and great article written about it; The question that Weingarten's article clearly asks is, are we conditioned to stop and notice something beautiful if we aren't told to be looking for it? This what music, whether in the subway or in the symphony, and poetry and art of all kinds have to offer: Something beautiful, just because it's beautiful. This, in a nutshell, is what I have found to be beautiful in Mary Oliver;s poetry. All of her poems are just little nature journals that records perfectly ordinary old beautiful things on a regular day. She has deep reverence and a real ability to communicate what she finds in nature, which is a great capacity for God.
And also, for the record, a few weeks ago someone said something about this blog that made me feel silly for doing it. I felt like I was very small and this blog was very small and altogether silly. And maybe it is silly and smallish but the thing is, is that this silly small thing has made me read more poetry and I have loved it. Some of Mary Oliver's poems are making more sense to me right now than almost anything else I read or hear or know about; This small little poems have made me stop and want to listen to men busk in Market Square and notice other small, silly things. So whether this is small or silly or not, Jonathan Bell or any other subway musician, three cheers for mindfulness and Mary Oliver and art art art.


Mindful
By Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for--
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world--
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant--
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these--
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

from Why I Wake Early

Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.


All information about Jonathan Bell stuff found at :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html