Five Great Songs

There are no particular themes to these Five Great Songs. I just like them. But perhaps the next time that I scan the abyss that is YouTube I'll come up with a theme. Anyone else like folk music and Swedish techno yodeling? No?

Well, then, in the meantime you will have to be subjected to Jon Thor Birgisson (otherwise known as Lives Up to His Divinity-Inspired Name), Raison d'etre, Monsters of Folk, Simon & Garfunkel, and Guns N' Roses (one of these things is not like the others...be doo be doo...).

And YES, I understand that adding a link to a video on YouTube is not nearly post-tastic as putting the video straight on the post, but I don't know how to do that. Technology: you elude me.

Anyhow, onto the good stuff.

This is why I still worship my Jonsi (even if I wasn't invited to his birthday party). If you listen to this and do not see cherubs floating about your room sobbing, then just give up on life. Right now. "When Fat Little Cherubs Everywhere Sat Still and Sobbed, Quiet."

Raison d'etre (God, I hate how Peter Andersson doesn't finish capitalizing the name- damn Swedes) is a single (Swedish) man with a mission (that would be Andersson, Our Damn Swede with a 'Thing' Against Capitals) to create ambient and somewhat creepy music to listen to at night. But his chief inspiration is, evidently, Jung, so it's not as though he's being spooky for spooky's sake. I mean, come on- he's Swedish. "This Would Be 'Emo' If It Weren't So Mature and Swedish-Like."

Monsters of Folk is kind of the go-to groupie band for folk nerds. They're not Swedish. But M. Ward is a member so they're alright in my book. Oh, that and they're geniuses. "The Soundtrack Fairy Squees at Finding the Most Epic Soundtrack-Sounding Song EVER."

Simon & Garfunkel- perhaps you've heard of them while bopping about your daily life. This struggling, baby bird of a band that limps along, I'm afraid. "Those Crying Cherubs Find a Song That They Know the Lyrics To."

Has anyone seen Axl Rose lately? He still squeezes into those leather pants...twenty years and forty pounds on. I have so many cocaine jokes, but somehow, I think that I'll leave it to your fertile imaginations (being all writerly and such) to make your own and also there's that nagging fear that they won't be quite original enough to do rock music everywhere justice. Guns N' Roses is one of those bands you listen to everytime you want to punch some pop starlet in her plastic nose for daring to compare herself to David Bowie (that's right...you know who I'm talking about- BACK OFF). "The Fat Cherubs in Unison: Air Guitar!"

I keep referring to a "you," but I'm not sure who this "you" is. Who is "you?" I don't know who reads what I write, but I talk to myself all of the time, generally a trait reserved for the Swedes. But now I talk to the internet all of the time. And, really, I slapped this post together because I thought the little bar at the side made me feel pitifull at only having six posts thus far this year and it's already May.

Hello, Collective You. Or do you prefer being referred to as "Fat Cherubs?" Everyone loves Fat Cherubs, even if that is a little redundant since there's no such thing as a Skinny Cherub. Those would be called groupies n' emos. I doubt you're Swedish, but-

"Oh well, whatever...never mind."

-Kurt Cobain.

Patterned Animals & Constellations: Musings on Skin

Some animals have neat patterns: cats, domestic and wild, zebras, ladybugs, horses, hyenas, birds (too many to list...), piggies, spiders, giraffes, baby deer, fish, freckled humans.

I'm thinking of freckles in this manner after seeing a ladybug last night. We freckles are people with spots. And neat-o patterns. This way of looking at things is known as "a nice try."

But unfortunately, wolves don't have spots- oh the powers that be...

But I think that perhaps I was made to resemble the night sky: I could always draw constellations on my arms and connect the freckles into the Big Dipper, Orion, or Gemini. I have big planet eyes. I have sharp teeth like the Pillars of Creation (I counted my canine teeth the other day: besides being unusually sharp I have twelve prominent canine teeth but only three wisdom teeth- for the win!). I have a scar in the shape of a moon. It was meant to be, I suppose. And I could always draw a wolf constellation, Canis Major, on my arm connecting the freckles ("spots").

Though "freckles" is a dumb word. "Patterned" is better. And I would be okay without the freckles. Very okay.

Deep in Thought

I'm contemplating my future activities- sitting on the couch and staring at the walls will do that for you- as the semester winds to an end. Because I usually spend my summers inside of a bag of pretzels (good stuff, people), watching Jet posing out in the backyard like Annie Leibovitz is going to hop out from behind a tree and snap a picture of him, I've decided to get productive this summer and work on some new projects:

1). T-shirts. Can never have too many of those. I'm making Darfur t-shirts and then fact t-shirts for fun. The Darfur t-shirts are about, uh, Darfur, with snippets of African poetry and a painting symbolizing a part of Darfurian culture (music, food, religion, and so on and so forth). I'll sell the t-shirts and give the money to Save Darfur. So, uh, anyone up for an order? Fact t-shirts are second-which will have, uh, facts, all over them: Audrey Hepburn Spoke Seven Languages Fluently. The Second Most Common Surname in the United States of America is Johnson. Iceland is Awesome (that is a fact, Mom). Neat. O. And this time my stab at fashion will be far more successful because t-shirts are much better than the decorative shirts that Carmen and I attempted five years ago- forgetting that once you sew, button, and add lace along the bottom of a shirt it won't stretch anymore and you'll get stuck trying to put it on. THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN.

2). Make soap, lotion, and shampoo. It's organic. It smells good. It's cheap.

3). Follow Nate Sheets and continue to be his groupie. Nate Sheets is my hero. Even if he hates the greatest musical ever made and by that I do mean Cats. There is no Dogs. Back off, haters.

4). Stalk Sigur Ros. Given. Didn't need a plan for that.

5). Continue hating on Andrew Jackson by my "Remove Andrew Jackson from the Twenty" campaign- it's just me right now but you're welcome to join in on the campaign to get Sitting Bull or Martin Luther King, Jr. to take his place.

6). Find out what's going on with Elliot and Olivia. If you don't know who they are, give up on life and don't try again until you've seen every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit known to man. Our species thrives on stuff like this.

7). Benefit concert. That's right. Since I was thirteen, I've been procrastinating on a Darfur benefit concert. I'll move to do something this summer (any local musicians please- let's discuss). I'll start with a venue. I think that an outdoor thing would be better- maybe the city of Durango would be willing to listen to my proposal once I put it together. If that doesn't work, I turn to local resta...restrau...food joints.

8). Study Eyak. There's only one speaker of Eyak left in the world, and the last native speaker died in 2008. Her name was Chief Marie Smith Jones and she spent her life in a fight to preserve the wonderful and breathtaking Eyak culture, the culture of her tribe. The Eyak tribe hails from Alaska, land of the wolves. The language is preserved somewhere- it's been recorded, videotaped, and a dictionary and grammar book have been made. I'm not sure how to get it, though. It is possible to learn and flourish in this Athabaskan language (it's closely related to Navajo), though it could take me some time to track down the materials.

It's sad when the sole speaker of any language is an anthropologist.

9). Train Jet- I still haven't done it yet. Our little wolf is a wild man.

The summer list is off to a satisfactory start, says I. God bless the internet for holding me accountable. Ugh.

Mission accomplished

My 211 students challenged me to write about red shoes for at least 500 words. Seems some of them think red shoes cannot generate that many words. Ha! I say. Here is my response:

I Need Red Shoes

Just this last week I was dismayed to realize that my favorite shoes, a pair of low-heeled red pumps, are no longer safe to wear. The heels are dangerously loose and the leather has stretched, making wearing them an act of faith. At any time I could be sitting on a desk, having friendly banter with a class, swing my legs, and send one red shoe flying at an unsuspecting student. The time is coming to let my beloved shoes go.

The time has also come to take the next step in my relationship with red shoes. When I first met my red shoes I was on an out-of-town school trip with a group of high school sophomores. As I held the shiny shoes up, a fellow teacher sternly told me, “English teachers don’t wear red shoes!” I put them back. Then, several days later, called my brother and asked him to find them for me. He did.

Now, it is time to find their replacement. While it is true that in my closet are several pairs of shoes, including black high heels with a peek-a-boo toe, gray snake skin heels, black and brown and tan pumps, a very funky pair of boots, and a numerous assortment of flats, there are no other red shoes. I want red shoes.

Red high heels are not a frivolous whim, not a passing whimsy, not impractical. They make a statement. Begin with the color: Red is the color of passion. We all look forward to red letter days, painting the town red, and walking the red carpet. Only the most passionate souls work up the temper to see red, and it is a devil-may-care person indeed who lives in the red.
Red is the color of power. Just ask the Germanic god Thor, who had red hair, as did the Celtic Queen Boudica, who took on the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. While I don’t intend to take on an army, red heels cause me to stand a little straighter, walk a little slower, and smile. A lot. To say nothing of how they brighten up the closet floor in the midst of so much neutrality.

Red is the color of life. The click of a good heel is just satisfying. The click of a good red heel puts everything in its place and all is right with the world. Red heels remind me that life needs playfulness. And, red heels will help me lose weight. It has been shown that the “mere perception of red…enhances the human metabolism by 13.4%”, something few diet pills can deliver.

And the structure of heels is absolutely essential to my safety. Anyone who has watched Single White Female knows what a heel to the eye will do. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character used black stilettos. Certainly, they did the job, but if she had been wearing red stilettos in that iconic scene—the image is almost too powerful to behold. The point is if I find myself in a predicament needing a weapon, heels are custom made. No fumbling in my purse for the mace or dropping my cell phone in a panic. The sole of a good pair of heels will fit perfectly in my palm, the height just right for wrapping my fingers around the vamp, and the weight solid enough to get the job done.

When my red pumps take their final walk, I will embark on the hunt for three inches of closed-toe red heaven. Not too shiny, no fancy adornments; no pinstripes, no designer name emblazoned on the heel. Just let the heel stand for itself. And when I find these shoes, they will call to me like the Lady of the Lake and become my Excalibur and Rocinante all at once. My God, I don’t want red shoes—I need red shoes!

647 words. Yes!

Duck and Cover

As a young girl
living in Oklahoma
OOO—klahoma, where the wind
comes sweeping down the plain,
there were two things I learned well—
duck and cover.

When the alarm would sound
echoing down the halls
we would scurry
single-file, down the stairs
of the gray brick building
and under the symbol,
three equilateral triangles
inside a circle, over the words
FALLOUT SHELTER
into the safety of the gray basement,
lines of children against gray walls:
side by side
on our knees
arms crossed
over our elementary heads,
ducking and covering,
waiting for a hollow voice
to echo down the stairs
telling us we were safe
once more.

In our youth we didn’t understand
that, in the case of a tornado,
our practice could save our lives,
but that symbol over the door,
those three equilateral triangles,
symbols of perfection,
could never protect us
from the searching claws
the fiery, fearsome, vicious claws
of the atomic bomb.

This was the Cold War,
and this was our practice in
futility,
a need to be in
control,
when control existed in the finger
pushing the button,
miles and worlds away.

Many tornadoes touched down
in those years—
but never The Bomb.
I guess it was still good practice,
all the duck and cover.

Times in life the alarm has sounded
and I’ve searched frantically
for that triad symbol
ignoring the thought
the tickling, taunting, tearing thought
that the symbol is nothing
but wishful thinking.
That the best I can hope for this time—

This time
let it be a tornado;
I can duck and cover.
Let it pass over me
throwing its tantrums,
a poltergeist of dirt,
a tiger coiling in shadow,
but unable to reach me
in my deep place, fetal position, knees up, head covered.

So far, this far, it’s only been tornadoes
in my life
mighty, terrifying storms;
but I know how to duck and cover.

There are some days that sadness creeps in, no matter how diligent I am to stuff the cracks and close the doors and shutter the windows. The sadness I feel right now, however, is not mine. It is Uma's, who lost her father this week. It is Debbie's, who must put back on the armor. It is a sadness born of the helplessness I feel when people close to me hurt and there is nothing I can do but say, 'I'm here.'

Sadness is such an odd emotion. I tell my students the word is too ambiguous, too overused. It can mean anything from a general discomfort to a deep grief that threatens to swallow one whole. Pick a word that really means what you feel, I tell them. Yet I cannot find that word. I am troubled. Distressed. Sorrowful.

But not pitying. To feel pity would be to dismiss the incredible strength of these two women. My sorrow is tempered by awe, certainly; respect, always. And thankfulness. Because I have the privilege to be acquainted with them and to witness their incredible grace in the face of their pain, my love of the human spirit we posses is reaffirmed.

Takk

My white car is lost under the inches of snow falling outside. A real snow, not one of those dustings we've grown accustomed to here in the far northwestern corner of New Mexico. The weather forecasts promise this is only the beginning. I say, bring it on!

I am greatly appreciating the huge picture window in my front room today. It provides an excellent and gorgeous view of the happenings outside. And, it's clean, unlike the back patio doors that are decorated with muddy pawprints.

In the backyard everything is white, which brings out the brilliance of our visiting Woodpecker. He's a hefty fellow, with beautiful black stripes on his tawny wings. His chest has black spots on a light background, and he sports a flashly crimson cap. He is so perfectly dressed he could strut the red carpet anytime.

He has been hovering around all morning, working the huge cottonwood in the back yard, then turning his attention to my house, sending a resounding thump thump thump throughout until we shoo him away. It seems to be a game, now-- every time Savannah gets settled, he returns, thump thump thump.

I am not a bird watcher, so I had to research this little man to figure out what he was-- while he makes it clear he's a Woodpecker, he little resembles Woody, my only real image. Our visitor appears to be a Gila Woodpecker, which resides in the southernmost parts of Arizona and New Mexico. I have no idea why he would be so far north, unless he just couldn't stand the heat anymore.

Regardless, he has added a dose of color to an otherwise white day. He's welcome-- as long as he stays away from my back door.