approaching five
Post-meeting: my legs are shaking, my jaw is clenched, and I have the most poignant headache. The stress has been removed and I….need to remember how to relax - I've been absorbing more than I ever thought possible. My jaw won't move from its locked habit; I desperately need to see a winter-wheat-green field - preferably somewhere in the delta region: show me waving grain, show me delicate plants beside bare feet, show me the wind through your hair in the back of a pickup, show me a worn walnut table in an old school on route nowhere in western Mississippi.
this is what you get....
Headed home on the Broadway bridge yesterday, "Karma Police" came on the radio. I've heard this song hundreds of times, but for some reason, it reminded me of a certain event yesterday.
When we were sixteen, emily o'brien and myself would make videos under the guise of "wicker deer productions". One episode, in particular, involved my parents' old washing machine. We named it after our friend david and painted other high schoolish slogans on it (e.g. " '99 rocks" etc.). Dad helped us load it on to the back of his pickup truck, and we got ready to roll. Emily filmed, my brother hid in the woods, and I put on a vietnamese straw hat (?). Our driveway was such that it was flat for about 1/8 of a mile, and then it turned into a slight incline. Dad drove slowly on the flat portion, but then hit the gas at the incline - which resulted in the washing machine falling off the back of the pickup. All hell broke loose - emily screamed, my brother emerged from the woods with a sickle, I ran towards the broken washing machine and lost my hat. My brother started to beat the washing machine with the sickle (where he obtained said sickle, I don't know), and I kicked it and threw miscellaneous pieces around. My brother (who was eleven) commanded the washing machine: "WHY DON'T YOU GET UP AND DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE, YOU ENGLISH PATIENT!". Then (in the final edited version), "Karma Police" fades in as dad drives away with the remnants of the white maytag:
"…this is what you get when you mess with us….".
sunday
number one: the first flower of the season has bloomed. it is small yellow and perfect - and it is in my front yard. i was so pleased to see it i took a photograph of it.
number two: it's roughly sixty degrees outside and i couldn't be happier about it. took the long route to the library this afternoon and thought about the soundtrack that each country provides. jewish waltzes quite literally played outside my jerusalem hotel room, ecuadorian dance music came through my in-law's windows in quito, eastern techno somehow found its way into romanian late night walks. i'm imagining ruthie and katie are surrounded by some sort of tango-jive in argentina. what music accompanies people who visit america? very rarely does outside music come through our windows in northeast portland - and if it does, it's some sort of version of the clash or guns n' roses from my eighteen year old neighbor next door. hardly romantic.
clear latin soap shoes
clarity: on friday afternoon, i was color coding installation drawings and put my ipod on shuffle. 12.23.95 from jimmy eat world's "clarity" came busting through to 2007, and it reminded me of how different I am now from who I was that autumn of 1998. that was nine years ago....a drive back from charlottesville over afton mountain on a sunday....we eagerly awaited the next release, (how could anything top clarity?)....then come 2001 and they came out with "bleed american" and i was sorely disappointed. "too overproduced", we said. whatever that meant. but it was the end of jimmy eat world, i was now relagated to that snobbish group that says, "oh yeah i like them - only their old stuff - like the records from 1996". as if i ever even owned a turn table. what drama.
argentina: i've been listening to my playlist entitled "so i hear she likes to travel" recently. however, this is probably just a kneejerk response to the fact that: trishawna is in milan. ruthie is in buenos aires. katie is in buenos aires. kimberly is in budapest. but....we've all had our time, and it's a matter of trying to see your current residence through exotic eyes. so i rode the train to goose hollow to meet nicole this morning - tried to conjure up the romance of traveling by rail through drizzly air. we talked of unfamiliar questions in an unfamiliar cafe - the window behind her faced an old stucco wall and i could have been in northern ireland. and so i chose to believe that.
rubber boots: peter & i spent the day at the coast with montana. i can never get over how you have no indication that the ocean is just behind that rise there ahead of you. as a child, we would be four hours away from north carolina's outer banks, and you could see evidence of the ocean approaching. sandy shoulders, stubby trees, sparse grass.... we arrived and it stopped raining and i watched peter and montana enjoy the sheer expanse of sand and water meets atmosphere. so much energy, run until we fall down in that salty water and it fills our boots and our skin is wrinkled so to prove that we were really there.
soapbox: apparently the npr news quiz "wait wait don't tell me" is coming to portland, and they're charging $200 a ticket. JUST WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? I pulled out my political soapbox and went off to an i'm-unfortunately-captive-in-the-car-with-this-woman peter for no less than half an hour today.
