rob blackledge - one step closer
red hot chili peppers – I could have lied
natalie merchant – my skin

emmanuel, man ray
rayograph, 1922

xray, 1917

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cat power – naked if I want to

ben lee - float on

song of the day

“you don't mind the fall until your face hits the ground” isn’t quite as good as “it was her own damn fault when He turned that bitch to salt”, but it’s pretty damn close.

Robyn- Crash and Burn Girl

self help reading + music

from Clearing Clutter for Good Feng Shui:

It is perfectly acceptable to keep some possessions that remind you of happy times, provided that when you look at them, you are filled with love. But if you have too many, your energies will be linked too strongly to your past, preventing new things from entering your life. Giving away or throwing out items that you strongly identify with can prove very painful emotionally, because it is like parting with a bit of yourself. However, the truth is that once you have relinquished some possessions, you often don’t miss them at all. Also, if you give them to someone who will love them just as much as you did, you will feel good about it. (I'm hearing that Dangerfield 'take my wife . . please!' joke right there in my head, how about you?)

Laurie Anderson - It's Not the Bullet That Kills You It's the Hole
Ralph Towner - Solitary Woman
The Year Of - Alone
Ron Sexsmith - Gold in Them Hills

Peter Wolf- Safe Travels

FUCK. (This.)

On moving. On second thought. (armsverycrossy)

I’ll bulldoze the shit out the window myself if necessary. I’m sick to death of memory. I don’t want to walk backwards into the future. It only makes me scared of what I can see behind me and of what I can not see in front of me.

Iron & Wine and Calexico – Burn that Broken Bed (and great tune. hrrmph)

don't bug me when I'm watching Planet of the Apes playlist:

johnny and june – if I were a carpenter
bert janusch - blackwaterside
ben kweller – how it should be
bonnie prince billy – love comes to me (irony can be beautiful)
modest mouse – medication
red hot chili peppers - make you feel better

The first and the last shall do something or other in the Bible, I don't remember, but they kick ass in above list.

The other side of lonely, which I beeeeen like I might start being able to sing like a black woman or worse try it and just sound like shiiiiiit and be miserable anyway . . . the other side of that lonely thing is GET OFFA ME. It's amazing how fast I got hungry for 10 hours or so of listening to music and doing otherwise absolutely nothing. And I think you can kinda tell that that's a human necessity or something by the way the playlists get more nuanced. I mean, there is an art to everything, including doing nothing.

(too much family/all about me - euro pop playlist:)

the darkness – is it just me(?)
keane – bend and break
kaiser chiefs – o my god
looper – impossible things
the feeling – never be lonely

Home sweet home means your own bed, which if it smells like a dog it’s your dog.

Out before dawn to Chicago to the nursing home where they won’t eat the food and g-pa is starting to look like a swizzle stick so the McDonald’s-a-thon until they’re in a food coma, then onto Wisconsin to my mother’s, from where I call the friend I have there and then lunch with both of them then onto my Dad’s where he’s made steak and has wine more wine (which given the circumstances, means a lot of demonstrative feelings about his and my and everyone’s existence . . . ) then back to my friend who takes me to my first Ultimate Fighting Party, attended by a room full of peace loving lefty hippie types, which you’d think would be counterintuitive but not really, where I made a friend! (Domino, the border collie—love that breed—who herded me to the end of the couch where he kept me pinned, which was reassuring given my feelings about any gathering of persons) then a few hours sleep and onto my sister’s in Milwaukee where her house has been gutted and the only thing left is the couch, the tv, and my bro-in-law’s laptop and one-liners [thank god for both, as usual], then out from there by 4 a.m. to get back to Chicago in time to deal with the omg security nightmare at O’Hare . . . and home, to Jasper-butt pillows (ahhhhhh) all in about 60 hours

=

the experiential equivalent of electric shock treatment. Really, the only thing it is possible to feel is disconcerted.

One highlight, randomly chosen: I’m in my Dad’s kitchen looking at a photo on his fridge of my daughter and her father, who was so young when she was born that he kept growing and his shirts kept getting too short in the sleeves. The one he’s wearing in the photo fits, I’d just given it to him for xmas, I’m remembering that and our kid is in a purple velvet get-up we found at the thrift store, and I’m smiling at the photo. My mother comes in and looks at me and says, “The bible says that in the end times the love in most will grow cold and small, except for a few who will have the ability to draw a warm safe circle for those they’ve loved . . . .” Note that I’m not drinking the wine cuz I’m going out later. So it bemuses plenty me to learn that apparently just by not hating my X’s, I’m personally saving them from the Apocalypse. (You’re welcome! lol)

the killers- mr. brightside (jaques lu cont mix)

(WI joke):

You know you're ugly when you make a man shit his own dick.

love - everybody's got to live

Wisconsin Here I Come

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'an awkward gathering', 9,2006
(don't they look nervously clustered around the cells they already know?)

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I hate themed restaurants.
I hate walking by the assholes in first class.
I hate 'crafts and scrapbooking' stores.
I hate not knowing what to say.
I hate lawn art.
I hate Republicans.
I hate 'What would Jesus do" bumper stickers.
I hate the cheerful.
I hate illness.
I hate hospitals.

tom waits- bottom of the world

A friend from work wrote to me.

It’s hard for people not to dance nervously around your shit at work, like if you’ve gotten run over by a car or half your face has been removed for skin cancer or whatever. There’s the loooong ‘pretend not to see it’ phase, followed by the ‘things will get better so buck up’ phase, and finally the ironic/grumpy ‘sorry your life sucks’ phase where the shut-ins and other “fuck this” types stake their positions. Thank god I seem be moving into that last stage, because if one more well meaning idiot said “you’re still good looking” (“still”, ugh) you were gonna hear a news story about my aim from a watchtower.

So this friend wrote to say: When I got divorced, because the man I loved had this big affair with someone who looked just like me (but not as ‘difficult’ in personality apparently), he left me the same week as I was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer.

This wasn’t a “it could be worse” story—the point was that she was sick, and that fact so trumped the other problem that she hardly even thought about the other. She turned inward and focused on being okay again. By the time that was over, she thought “huh, I’ve been divorced a year.” She thought that was a good metaphor for how external pain should be handled by an inward turn, where the pain is actually located. The trick, she went on to say, is to do that before you get sick and before “parts of you have to be lopped off or out.”

A lot of people have given me a lot of advice this year, and actually I’ve only heard bits and pieces of it as I’ve rolled by, thump-ouch-thump down the Big Hill. But this one stopped me. And I thought I’ll buy a feng shui book to keep me company this winter, and quietly arrange every corner and color for wellbeing, and sink into solitude as into warm water.

frou frou - let go

Stina Nordestam - I Dream of Jeanie (you'll like this)

'if

only'

9.2006

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jake holmes - dazed and confused

tom petty - breakdown (I just like this song)

Why am I not a lesbian? . . . . Holley Anderson

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ok the tune's a little misanthropic, but it goes soo well w/ the pic--no?

anti anti attachment dali lama backlash playlist:

Modest Mouse & Califone – South of Heaven
Nick Drake – Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright (great Dylan cover)
Cake- Friend is a Four Letter Word
Morrissey – You’re Going to Need Someone On Your Side
Janis – A Woman Left Lonely
Pearl Jam – A Better Man (acoustic) (grrrmmmmm)

Bonus track: Hare Krishna (remix) Believe it or not, this is pretty sexy, and long enough to fall asleep to (or not). So put it on and lay there and wish you had both your shit together and someone worth the hassle.

I went to hear the Dali Lama today. I wish I could report a bolt of enlightenment upside the head. Mostly I froze my balls off in the seats that were so close to heaven I might as well have just jumped for it.

The theme was Compassion. Since this is the year that I found out that I was Stupido and reached a relationshipdeadstop likesomethingflickedatawall, I tried to go with an open mind. I strained to hear, because as he pronounces words, you have to translate the rest of the way into English. Anger is bad. Happiness is the goal of a human life. Glad to hear it, though easier said than done. Compassion is the way to happiness. But wait, not as in for anyone you know. That kind of compassion is tainted with yourself. I can kind of see that, put that way. The goal is to love the stranger, and to love those you know as if they were strangers, as far as I could tell. Because, in that case, whatever they are they are and the impact on you will be irrelevant, thus . . .

I’m kind of growing uncomfortable with this, because if I asked, I’m not sure that the few people I love would like to be loved as if I didn’t know them. Or would they? Hmmm I don’t think I would, just speaking for myself. In fact, the opposite of that is what I’d prefer. So I’m sitting there wondering if I have it exactly backwards and what people should do is unwrap the wounds of their hopes, desires etc. to another. If people did that, i.e. treating others as the OPPOSITES OF STANGERS, then they’d know each other’s fondest wishes, and where within the two of them a wish could not be fulfilled [inevitable?], then they could try to deal with that, with compassion.

I’m mulling this over, at this point kind of drifting in and out, watching this guy with sideburns and a nice butt strut around between groups of friends looking very much like someone who is NOT about to give up attachments, when the Lama starts to reach the crescendo. What you get for success is a world full of friends. (really?) He laughs, “You see! Everyone is your best friend!” (o) And I kind of guffawed, and I soooo wanted to turn to the guy next to me and say, Hey since we’re best friends now you want to come over and watch tv and order pizza? But I didn’t. He was a stranger.

What did the bartender say to the horse?
What?
Why the long face?

I like little boy jokes because they don't care about causality at all. I mean, why is a horse talking to a bartender? Who knows? Who cares? Hey, horse or sloth or bear or turtle, if there's a bartender nearby . . . what the hell, say "buttcrack" if you can't think of anything else.

"Love Ain't Just a Four-Letter Word," Jenny Wilson

Today, I thought for approximately 15 minutes (total) in a way that wasn’t: sorrysorrysorryoshitoshitofuckthissuckswhatthefucksorryouchOUCH

That’s setting the bar kind of low for a “good day”, but hey, set it where you can set it.

Home.

It’s the kindness and the generosity in how you see the person you’ve decided to love, some kind of way, as best you can, that’s the thing. So that they can get what they need. Even it takes them from you. Again and again. And again.

Ladyfuzz – Staple Gun

for Virgo this week: There was one main reason why America's founding fathers gave Thomas Jefferson, not Benjamin Franklin, the job of composing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. They were afraid that Franklin, a compulsive teaser and trickster, would slip jokes into the document. In my opinion, we Americans would have been better served if Franklin had been chosen and allowed to mess around. After all, even the most profound commitments and weighty situations benefit from the leavening power of humor. Keep that in mind during the oh-so-serious games that are ahead for you, Virgo.

John Butler - The Hand of the Almighty (God Will Fuck You Up)
[if you never download anything else from this blog, pick this one]

jose gonzales - slow moves (my moves are slow)

Looks like I’m moving again. (Now don’t all you dykes grab your paintbrushes all at once.) Sigh.

I’m going back to the red house—I have to think of a name for it. Headquarters? I’m in a life that for the most part was built around a marriage that isn’t any longer. The only toehold feels like that place, and I’m in freefall so I need a toehold. I’m struck by the strange irony of it. X is being kind and generous, very, so I’m noting that. I will, I hope, take some comfort in a real home again, where the sink is actually a laundry tub because I insisted that the baby be able to take a bath in the kitchen, and my father swore up and down about the pain in the ass it was fitting the dishwasher beside it. I’ m struck by the strange irony, in other words, of being surrounded by the generosity of men who in the last month, for their different reasons, have had to conclude and concede that they didn’t love me. That they had wanted to, that they had tried . . . but they couldn’t change the things about me that they hated. There is a pain, a hole, in their hearts where they tried. (woops)

After my little girl got sick and then better, I started waking each day and giving a few minutes to remember all that there is to be grateful for. I’ve stopped that. I should start again. Solid house, solid job, two little kids who couldn’t be better or sweeter or smarter or weirder. Old grape vines. Old quince trees from Greece. My mother would throw in “skinny and smart”, but all jokes aside it’s hard to be grateful for a mind and a body that both feel every inch across lonely lonely. I can feel very keenly tonight the appeal of Jesus. I wish I could cry out quietly, O ______ [something] . . . . All I ever believed in was the ability and will of people who wanted to and did hold on to each other specifically, despite the evidence I had when I married X that love might not be able to bridge geography or sexuality or trauma (or anything, ha). Still, I spose that many women have started over (again) and faced the world alone (again) with less (and less practice at it). But I am not quite five feet tall, too little for all this, and friendless in this city now, and so I am going to be best friends with self-pity for awhile so we can hold hands. It’ll probably make my playlists kind of dragass’n shitty for another spell.

The Used – All That I’ve Got (acoustic)

deadpan, 9.2006

cat power, knocking on heaven's door (dylan cover)

wee morning irony report

"Steady As She Goes (acoustic)," The Raconteurs

from The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James:

Men lapse from every level - we need no statistics to tell us that. Love is, for instance well known not to be irrevocable, yet, constant or inconstant, it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts. These revelations form its significance to men and women, whatever be its duration. So with the conversion experience: that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high-water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what constitutes its importance—an importance which backsliding cannot diminish, although persistence might increase it.

[persistence 'might' bc it's like sasquatch] [like jesus]

untitled, 9.2006




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‘solitude remembering touch [fri nite]’ playlist:

Jack Johnson – Sitting, Waiting, Wishing (a longtime fave)
Everlast – What It’s Like
Cake – Love You Madly
PET – Ride My Heart [what is this?]
Shivaree – Close My Eyes
Massive Attack – Dissolved Girl (best in show by far, turn it up - but the squealing tires at the end of the Cake makes that the runner up)

[soundtrack for a rib kick]

I am soothed by the order within an elementary school. Everything is so ‘in its proper bin’. Today, there appeared on the door to the classroom a “chores chooser”. It’s actually one of those kinds of organizers that women put in their closets to hang shoes in or whatever, but each pocket on this one is labeled with a chore: reptiles (feeding), snack, attendance . . . All the kids find, on the little table next to this, their names written on pieces of construction paper, and they are to put theirs into the pocket of the chore they want for next week. The Judge loves a rule, so he dutifully picks up his piece of paper and reads over the chore choices. Then he says “naaaaaaaaw” and puts the paper back on the table and goes inside.

eels - beautiful freak

ben harper - alone (acoustic)

[insomnia is this tune on repeat-try it 5 times] [in the dark]

Does anyone have any clue what a white blood count even is, let alone what it means when it doubles in a week? Cuz I sure don’t. How many different ways do I have to discover that I am futile and stupid this year? Who took a piss in my karma pool? I love this part though:

So, how does that . . . I mean, what does that mean?, I ask,—Like, in time (left)?
Well, says Mom, he asked that and they told him that the average time for this type of leukemia is 10 years.
(pause)
The average height of an American woman is about 5’6” I think—clearly that doesn’t apply to me.
Riiiiiiight.
Riiiiiiight.
(pause)
What are you doing about it, anything?
Saturday it’s supposed to be lovely, she says, so we’re hoping he feels well enough to go kayaking.
(pause) (lol) (lolweepy)
Word to the wise: When in Doubt, Kayak!
Well what are you going to do? Have fun, as much as you can, that’s all there is.
Fair enough.
You should try it, she says snippily.
O please don’t start in on the liberated woman hear me roar shit.
You need to SEE DIFFERENTLY, just DECIDE TO, you’re SMART and are a [BLEEP] and have a GREAT ASS—It’s a SMORGASBOARD for you to pick from if you just DECIDE.
(pause) (lol)
Mom, ya know how you can just DECIDE that Jesus is real?
(lol.shecan’thelpherself.lol) (lol)
Stop, He IS real.
Riiiiiiiight.

The Tragically Hip – She Didn’t Know