Cat Power…then I’m soft

Cat Power. Something about that music, something about Chan Marshall – her voice, her words, her mannerisms – just gets me. I know but a fraction of all that is Cat Power, but it catches me and it catches in my throat, being something that I can’t wholly swallow. Seeping into me, it makes my chest ache with a thrill or nostalgia or loneliness or love for things nonspecific. Maybe I ache with all those at once. I listen to her voice singing, delicately rough, and it’s as if it’s trying to exfoliate me from the inside out. It isn’t an obvious scraping or scratching, but it is rubbing away the dead cells or some unfeeling I may have. After I listen to (and/or watch) a song by Cat Power, I can’t help but to feel something. Maybe I’m over dramatizing the effect this music has on me and maybe another day I will be sick of it, but today this is where it is for me. True enough.

A view of the world through a child’s unclouded eyes. Crying fetal-ly. Looking too closely in the mirror. That’s the sense I get. That probably tells more about me than it does about Cat Power. So, while I’m on that track, let me stray further…

When I was younger, I thought I might grow up to be magical. I hoped I would. I wanted to smell like flowers without help from perfume, lotion, or shampoo. I imagined that maybe someday my eyes would actually sparkle. That my skin might shimmer at sunrise and glow in the night. That my hair would radiate light. I could be the girl of the love poems and the love songs that aren’t real, except that I would be, you know, real.

To be honest, I never really hoped for those things to be true of me. I knew it wasn’t possible, but I did like to think of it back then. What’m I saying…I still do.

Maybe I should think of having traits more honorable, more useful, but no. Even if neither this nor that has or has not to do with what I started out with, not now. I’ll save that more worthy stuff for another time.

So you see, this is what listening to Cat Power does to me. Or maybe that’s just my excuse.

The Greatest

Textures and such

I’m big on touching things, feeling things. I’m a sucker for nice textures. I’m the girl you see in the stores that, more often than not, reaches out to rub any shirt or pillow or stuffed animal that looks particularly soft and fuzzy. I also like the non-sticky, squishy gel feeling. For example, the shoe inserts that sometimes have blue gel parts to them – I have to feel those if I’m near them. Well, I don’t have to, but I really like to. You know those window clingers that look like thin jello? I love those, as in I love to play with them. I practically fantasize about eating those things (in a non-sexual way). Go ahead and put them up on your window, but expect my fingerprints to show up.

This brings me to my issues with gel candles. Those things are awesome and evil! Torn between preserving their beauty and wanting to squish them until I’ve ruined them… I could say more but I won’t, if only just to preserve the appearance of sanity. Plus, I just edited someone’s proposal for a medical experiment, so I’m a little low on writing steam at the moment.

Spilled coffee

Yesterday, I was on my way from one place to another, as people often are when they are traveling from point A to point B. Or B to C, or Z. Whatever. I had one of those fancy shmancy coffees from a local coffee shop with me. Me being who I am, I managed to break the cup and spill the coffee down the side of my car, splashing a bit onto my jeans and my probably not washable mittens. It happens, and should not surprise any that know me somewhat well.

There were a few guys getting into a nearby car. They looked vaguely familiar, likely because they probably graduated a year or two ahead of me from my high school. Anyway, they each said to me in turn, “Oh, that sucks,” or “Man, that sucks,” or “That really sucks,” or some variant thereof involving “that” and “sucks.” This is acceptable. Then, one of them says, “If that happened to me, I would kill someone.”

K bye.

I don’t cry over spilled milk. I also don’t cry over spilled coffee. Best yet, I don’t kill over spilled beverages of any sort.

Mary and Bob

Mary: Give it here. What are you using that for?

Bob: I’m using it on the Teflon pans.

Mary: You are not! You can’t use that on the Teflon!

Bob: Teflon is not god!

Mary: On the website, it said that it is.

Bob: God is dead!

Mary: No! Liar! How dare you talk that way about Teflon? Teflon is god! The website said so!

Bob: The website is lying to you. Teflon is not god, because god is dead…then again, perhaps I am wrong. Teflon is not alive, therefore it might be god. My apologies.

Mary: Oh…okay.

End scene.

(Four and a half lines of that dialogue actually happened (with different names) and caused my nervous laughter. The rest, I took liberties with and to no purpose.)

Do I carpe diem?

Months back, I did a speech at a school function in front of a few hundred people. Afterward, I had people coming up to me and complimenting me on it, via saying how it made them cry, asking for a copy (to share with a class, in a professor’s case and to do who-knows-what with in others’ cases), or via a more traditional compliment. I was very proud that I’d made such an impression on all of those people, but looking back on it now, I can’t help but think that I should have listened closer to my own words. That speech was one of those (in my opinion) cheesy, carpe diem things. Others seemed to like it (and that stroked my ego well enough), but I wasn’t fully satisfied with it. Regardless, I don’t think that I’ve “seized the day.” Sure, I’ve seized some days, but all? No, certainly not.

Blood Diamond

I just watched the movie Blood Diamond with my parents. I am shaken and internally shaking. Blood ivory, blood oil, blood diamonds… “T.I.A.” they say in the movie, meaning “This Is Africa,” but it should not be. The character Solomon Vandy (played excellently by Djimon Honsou) says that when his son – then a forced child soldier – grows up, it will be a paradise. ‘Fraid not. Still 300,000 child soldiers in the world (according to my 2004 copy of this).

Last year, I watched the Invisible Children movie/documentary about child soldiers with my high school’s Amnesty group. Every night, families would send their children into the city so that they would not be stolen and recruited from the towns at night. I cannot fathom living such a life.

We are so many so fortunate who sit and read or watch about those less fortunate, but what do we do? What do we do? We sigh or cry. We denounce it and rant about its horror. Perhaps, we write a check or fund raise the money of others. We talk about it with others and tell them of what we’ve learned. What does all this do? Is it really going to have that much of an impact? Will it really make a change?

I know, I know. Every little bit helps, but I can’t help feeling that those little bits help such a small amount that it’s never enough. Too many are desensitized. We aren’t surprised to hear of car bombs anymore. There is so much going wrong in the world today, every day. Where does one even know where to start to care? If I start caring about child soldiers, then I’ll start caring about AIDS, then today’s slaves, then genocide, then genital mutilation, then child labor, then more and more and more and more and more! How to choose what to care for, what to work for and against?

I’ve raised a few thousand dollars for a worthy cause before, but there’s always so much more that is needed. I’ve taught myself and others about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and political prisoners, but there is always more to teach and learn. If I give my own time and labor, not just my money and that of others, it would be but a drop of the ocean needed.

I am not being cynical and saying that it is best to do nothing. Perhaps it is easiest to just not care and give up on it all, but no. That is not what I want. I still believe in each person and each action’s value. It’s just…where to start, where to start…

Flight of the Conchords

I first stumbled upon Flight of the Conchords two days ago and I’m finding them to be quite excellent. FOTC is a two-man comedic folk band from New Zealand with an HBO show of the same name. I haven’t been able to watch the full show, but I’ve seen as much as I can at this point. They sing/say crazy funny lyrics with a straight face and look great doing it! Flight of the Conchords is made up of the big-lipped, oft bespectacled Jemaine Clement (Hiphopopotamus) and higher-voiced, curly-haired Bret McKenzie (Rhymenocerous). If you have talked to me lately or are planning on doing so soon, chances are that I’m going to be raving about these guys to you or just looking like a dork quoting them to myself.

“Come on sucker, lick my battery.”

Yep. Just like that.

Here’s one of my favorites thus far:

Business Time

Things that I particularly like to note in that video: Jemaine doing his sultry voice, Jemaine’s sexy dance, and the true meaning of business socks

To be fair to Bret, here’s a good one showing more of him:

The Humans Are Dead

In this, I particularly fancy: Jemaine’s robot voice, the two seconds of laser sounds, Bret’s binary solo.

I trust you know how to work your way around YouTube. Now go forth and FOTC-erize yourselves!

No free ice cream

For all those who’ve been getting excited for free ice cream from Cold Stone shops on January 7th, it’s time for disappointment. There will be no free ice cream. This article from The Grand Rapids Press explains the confusion. It was a rumor hugely spread and desired to be true, but only a rumor. Tough luck for those who wanted the free ice cream (who wouldn’t?) and for Cold Stone employees who’ll doubtless have to explain the situation to countless people on January 7th.

A taste of my pondering

I used to say that I wanted my words to drip from my lips like liquid silver. Now I say that I want to scoop out my soul, spin it into thread, and weave it into a tapestry of words. Words words words. What is there without words? Much, but how to think of it? Thinking in images, feelings, sensations without placing a word in is rather difficult.

I have this idea that, at least for me, there are at least two streams of thought going through my mind at any given waking moment. One of them is louder and more easily controlled, with the other bubbling in the background. For me to fall asleep, I believe that I must only have one stream of thought going through my mind. Sometimes, I am able to let go of the other stream of thought rather easily, falling asleep quickly, but at other times, it gets going so fast that it takes much longer to slow it down and tuck it away.

I’ve always been curious as to what other people do to fall asleep. I regularly asked my family about this when I was younger and more of an insomniac. I didn’t understand then that many people didn’t do anything to fall asleep, but that sleep just came to them without effort. For some time, when I was having trouble falling asleep I would focus on a very specific image. It was that of a large, deep green disc spinning. The disc was so large that from the distance my mind’s eye looked at it, I could only see about half of it at one time. This worked for me for months or perhaps a few years until it started making me feel dizzy and slightly nauseous when I tried to focus on it. Then, one of the few things that would let me sleep would be to imagine myself swinging and rocking back and forth gently. There was a hammock at a little camp on Horn Pond in Acton, Maine. I liked to feel that I was swinging in that hammock when I wanted to fall asleep. I would do this until my body and mind relaxed more and I felt as if I were actually moving with the imagined hammock. Other times, I would think of being in a boat rocked by the waves, but I could not control the waves in that, so I tended to favor the hammock. More recently, I’ve been falling asleep more easily so that I usually do not feel the need to focus or unfocus on something, but if I do these days, I center on my breathing. Still, I am curious about those who do have trouble falling asleep if they have any specific things they do or don’t do when trying to get to sleep.

From words to thoughts to falling asleep. It’s a ramble.

Interesting:

Before babies speak actual words, they are already babbling with the accent of the language around them.

Mercury (warning: dorkiness ahead)

Last night as I was laying in bed, I was thinking about mercury (element) and Mercury (planet). I kept visualizing the words and looking at the letters together. Oddly, no matter how I put the letters, no spelling looked correct, but I moved on. I wrote a sort of essay about mercury and Mercury in my mind last night. I even did some pretend research and thought of things that I would find out in different searches. I formed a whole mini research paper, just like that.The only problems are:

  • the Works Cited only lists my brain as source
  • the word type is invisible
  • the actual paper is intangible

Rather than try to recreate that paper here, I will tell of mercury in another way…mercury.jpgAs a child, I was confused about mercury, the element. I had not connected it with quicksilver, but instead believed mercury to be the red stuff in the great majority of thermometers I saw. How I got that idea, I do not know. Regardless, I tended to be more careful with the red stuff because I’d heard that it’d lead to behavior like that of Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter character. Misinformed about the identity of mercury as I was, I never thought that the silvery stuff in two or three older thermometers in my house was anything to worry over. After checking my own temperature one day I believed myself sick, I was shaking the thermometer so that the silver stuff would return to the bottom. Accidentally, I hit the end of it on the edge of my bathroom sink, breaking the glass thermometer and spilling what I now know to be mercury. Not knowing any better at the time, I found the substance fascinating. I played with it, touching it and pushing little dots of it toward each other. Through those young eyes, the way the mercury looked, felt, rolled, and held itself together was fun. Eventually, I just washed, wiped, and threw away the thermometer and mercurial remnants. At some later point in time (but not too much later), I accidentally broke another thermometer with mercury in it! I can’t remember the details of the second instance, but I probably played with the stuff again. Later on, I realized that the silvery stuff was, in fact, mercury. It now seems that I’ve violated health codes and exposed myself to a toxic element! (Though cigarettes and other far less regulated things can easily do more given the right (/wrong?) circumstances.)  Those two short exposures probably weren’t much, but I could’ve absorbed mercury via inhalation or through my skin. Eh. I’m not worried about it. I don’t have any of the problems associated with it… Oh wait, yeah I do!

There are all sorts of other kinds of Mercury/mercury, including (but not limited to) a Roman god, a song by the Counting Crows, a car, a project to launch humans into space, a cruise ship, Navy ships, a place in Nevada, a novel, a dime, a surname, and a programming language.

Moral of the story? The world/universe/everything has a whole lot of stuff in it. True.

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