Thursday, July 17, 2008

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.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

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.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

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.

Monday, May 19, 2008

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.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

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.

Friday, May 9, 2008

24 Hours

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

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

A Gesture

I made this mixed tape just for you.

No, there's no occasion. Just because.

-tahj