Update

Last week I saw the Avett Brothers live and tonight I'm stoked about seeing Amos Lee. Next weekend I go to ACL to revel in live music!

If you are a friend or acquaintance of mine who lives/lived in DFW, enjoy music, and have not seen the Avetts live show, I'd like you to know that I'm mad at you.

In case you don't know, I'm moving to Austin exactly 3 weeks from today. Despite the pains of moving things around, I love beginnings and I'm especially excited about this one.

Last night I dreamed that a bunch of guys had a long distance peeing contest. Concentrated exertion showed on their scrunched up faces and their golden arches stretched 20 feet in the air, and 30 or so yards in front of them. I stood from a safe, splash-free distance with the other girls and watched in amazement. I think there was cheering.

I'm listening to Heather's collection of Snow Patrol and I'm smitten. Check out the newest Kings of Leon album Only By the Night. It's polished and beautiful.

i'd rather just be myself

the more i try to consider what other people think, the easier it is for me to hide the things i think they will disapprove of.

at this hour

A few artworks that have been shuffling around in my mind lately:

300...the movie, the commitment, the FIGHT.

I'm Yours...Jason Mraz "I guess what I'll be singing is there ain't no better reason to rid yourself of vanities and just go with the season."

The Hour and What is Dead...Li-Young Lee

Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking

through bare rooms over my head,

opening and closing doors.

What could he be looking for in an empty house?

What could he possibly need there in heaven?

Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches?

His love for me feels like spilled water

running back to its vessel.



At this hour, what is dead is restless

and what is living is burning.



Someone tell him he should sleep now.



My father keeps a light on by our bed

and readies for our journey.

He mends ten holes in the knees

of five pairs of boy's pants.

His love for me is like sewing:

various colors and too much thread,

the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces

clean through with each stroke of his hand.



At this hour, what is dead is worried

and what is living is fugitive.



Someone tell him he should sleep now.



God, that old furnace, keeps talking

with his mouth of teeth,

a beard stained at feasts, and his breath

of gasoline, airplane, human ash.

His love for me feels like fire,

feels like doves, feels like river-water.



At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind

and helpless. While the Lord lives.



Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone.

I've had enough of his love

that feels like burning and flight and running away.

Book List-- 25/100

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (most of it, anyway. Blah.)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read a lot...but dude wrote bazillions)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (most of them)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (love/hate relationship)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (most)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 1/4 and want to read about 18. Thanks for posting this list, Martha. I love that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is listed.

Day at the Lake

Yesterday my friend went to the lake with her extended family and some family friends. A group of them caught a ton of fish and cooked it up. They ate GOOD. There was music and singing, pictures and videos, and a couple kegs. And oh yeah, it was a memorial service.

My friend's uncle passed away and this is how they mourned, how they celebrated his life. He was an outdoors man and fishing was his favorite way to spend his time. I've heard people say that when they go, they don't want a funeral, they want a party. It seems that memorial service was the best of both--there was laughter and crying, togetherness, memories remembered and memories made. What could better represent LIFE? It touched me to hear about it.

Stuff

I love NYC. I do not love Dallas.

This doesn't mean I'm moving to NYC. Just that I'm not moving to Dallas. Yes, my head is a little screwy after walking the walkways (lead me to the building) of the big city. I love a big city! I love the accents and the ethnic foods here! I really need a place with space, though. I need to see the sky and the sunset and you can't see that for all the impressive empirechryslerscrapers around here.

I've eaten the best creme brulee, meatball, falafel, chocolate chip cookie of me life and I went to a restaurant that serves only chocolate. I could seriously augustus gloop-out in a place like that.We saw the show August: Osage County and it was touching and humorous and thought-provoking. It felt perfect.

We spent sunny Saturday climbing and walking in Central Park. Then we saw the Wood Brothers play with special guests John Medeski, a drummer and AMOS LEE! I peed a little.

I've enjoyed my time here, and tomorrow I leave. Texas is a pretty cool place, but I'm itching to see more more more of this beautiful country. I don't know the meaning of "enough" unless you are talking about food. Even then I understand it to be temporary.

Seriously

I haven't posted a blog in years (actual time 1 week) and it's way too long since I've posted anything more than a sentence or two. Travel time along my brain's roads clocks in at a billion tps (thoughts per second), but that is not helping this blog sitch.

The past month has been a whirlwind of experiences for me. Some, like the cool evening air are familiar to me, while others have taken me completely by surprise. I often feel like I can't breathe indoors. I have theories for the why of this, but nothing is confirmed.

The hugeness and smallness of this life, just like the people who live it remain as much a mystery to me as my own soul. I can't believe the surprises held in a single day, both good and bad. I forgot about death. I forgot how being in love feels and how you can't tell a person how beautiful they are and expect them to believe you. I never cared so little or so much about details. I can't stand politicians and all their smack talk. They remind me of everything I dislike about government and this country and one person trying to control another. Running soothes me and exhilarates me at the same time and I realize I am a glutton for anything that does that.

This morning I fly to NYC and I am ready to be ready for what's next.

24 Hours

Some days everything leans your way, and some days it's like the universe shit in your bathwater.

A Gesture

I made this mixed tape just for you.

No, there's no occasion. Just because.

-tahj

Marriage?

I am constantly hearing things that discourage me from wanting to get married. People who are married say it's worth it. Single people want it. Then married people go and pulverize each other. Some do it with huge, dramatic gestures, and others slowly chip away at their spouse like a deranged and selfish sculptor. I wonder if the married people who tell me that it is worth it aren't trying to convince themselves.

But I still think I want it.

the way it goes

How is it possible that in a store with hundreds of styles of shoes, many of which are priced below $50, I can walk into the SALE area and the only shoes I want go for $299?

It was so ridiculous--the endless racks of shoes, the low prices on all the other shoe boxes, me actually considering buying them. The only thing those shoes did for me is kill my appetite. I turned on my (worn) heel and left with a sour puss.

It Happened

I got tagged.

10 years ago:
I had not shaved my legs for 5 months. I went 6 months and not a day shorter before I shaved, which happened to be the day after prom. As a senior at dear old Abilene High school, I felt ready to move on. I spent my free time at the park swinging, singing when no one was around, talking with kids, and writing. I was 17 and loving life. I was dating Brent and soon we would take a short road trip to hit up Six Flags in Arlington. English and Art were my favorite classes. I kept a quote book of sayings that struck me or made me laugh. I carried it, my bible and my journal with me everywhere in my Neiman Marcus canvas shopping bag, which I used as a purse. Oh and I wore only one pair of jeans to school the entire year. Class of '98.

Things on my to-do list today:
-clean up the disaster i call my desk
-eat
-trim my thumbnail that seems to grow 38% faster than the others
-troubleshoot my computer problems
-write a blog
-drink less coffee

What would I do if I suddenly became a billionaire?
1. This is an overwhelming "what if." I suppose I'd freak out in some way.
2. Pay off debt.
3. Buy a slave. I mean, a massage therapist.
4. Seek council.
5. Invest, put some away, blah, blah.
6. Help orphans.
7. TRAVEL.
8.Travel more. Greece, Spain, South America, Australia. Visit everyone I know living overseas.
9. Buy one of these.
10. Crap my pants. Not necessarily in this order.

Three of my bad habits:
1. Pulling out my eyelashes. It feels so good but looks so sad.
2. Piling shiznit on my desk. Why must I be so procrastinative?
3. Let's just say procrastination takes up more than one slot. It is a big mountain right now.

Five jobs I've had:
1. Writer
2. Bakery person
3. Barista
4. Corporate employee (soul-killee)
5. Youth intern and making up words.

Five things many people don't know about me:
1. I can lick my elbow. This talent won me a free dinner the other night.
2. I once ate an entire box of Little Debbie's Swiss Cake Rolls in a weekend. Six rolls in two hours is the sad truth. I am still not allowed to buy them.
3. The next Valentine's Day I received 3 boxes of Swiss Cake Rolls from 3 different frenemies.
4. On a dare I swallowed a live minnow.
5. Dreams can have deep meaning for me. When I am dreaming often, I feel more alive and more aware than at times when I am not dreaming.

I'm tagging Martha and Heather.

I Had a Bad Night

Animalia in Four Parts

I. Opossum
Possums are ugly and they are creepy. They can't help this any more than I can help feeling repulsed upon seeing one. From picture books I read as a child, I expected them to be cute. Since we decided to build cities all over their homelands, they can be quite a pest in our neighborhoods. I once heard as one was beat to death for it's nagging presence and for stealing cat food.

II. Felius Catus
A cat friend recently passed away. Kidney failure. Our relationship began in a tumultuous fashion, which included weeping (mine) and gnashing of teeth (hers). For several months she hated me and made it clear. If I tried to pet her, she attacked or if I walked too close, she growled in that horrible, guttural way only cats can. Then one night she let herself into my bedroom. She jumped onto my bed and made her way up to my head, where she draped her massive feline body over my neck. That's right, my neck. An entire queen bed at her disposal and she chose neck. Then she rested her head against my mouth. That's right, my mouth. I was afraid and I could not breathe. Risking a facial maiming, I gently moved her head to the side. I thought this strange behavior was a joke at first. But she began purring and probably slept more soundly than I did that night. I guess this was her making peace--kind of like Lt. Dan showing up to be Captain Gump's first mate on the shrimping boat. She's gone now. I feel the loss.

III. See Turtle not Sea Turtle
Fact: Turtles have wrinkly skin.
When my friend's parents forced him to eat the turtle they cooked, it was seeing the boiled knee wrinkles that scarred him most severely.

IV. Of the Family Ursidae
Speaking of maiming, in a recent dream a bear attacked me. Some doofus kept the bear as a pet, claiming it was domesticated. You, reader, already know that the bear was NOT. He ate his master inside their two story house. For some reason I was in the backyard. When the bear finished with Master Doofus, he came after me. Standing over me, Bear first tore off part of my shoulder. This hurt a little. Then he ripped out a chunk of my stomach. This hurt more. His enormous paw then covered the top of my head. I thought, "I'm about to feel my head rip away from my neck." In a swift mind control move, I willed the bear across the field. We locked eyes and I bloody ran. I kept running even after I woke up. In 11 minutes I would be late for work.

watch

They Play Pretty

Band of Horses performed in Dallas Saturday night. They were TREMENDOUS. The dude's voice is enormous and clear. It was a riveting and surprisingly beautiful rock show. They played a variety of songs from both albums, ending the encore with a mind-blowing cover of "Act Together". Here's the latest video of their song "Is There a Ghost."

For(ever) Now

Just this weekend I heard these words: "I don't want to do this for the rest of my life but for now, it pays the bills."

We've all heard this said. Many of us have said it ourselves. It's a brand new year and I feel older and younger than ever. I'd rather say, "This is awesome. I know it can't last for the rest of my life but for now, it rocks my soul."

The last time I felt this way about my life was my 2006 road trip. The next time I feel this way about my life will be 2008. That's the goal.