happy halloween

"Dream tonight of peacock tails,
Diamond fields and spouter whales.
Ills are many, blessings few,
But dreams tonight will shelter you.

Let the vampire's creaking wing
Hide the stars while banshees sing;
Let the ghouls gorge all night long;
Dreams will keep you safe and strong.

Skeletons with poison teeth,
Risen from the world beneath,
Ogre, troll, and loup-garou,
Bloody wraith who looks like you,

Shadow on the window shade,
Harpies in a midnight raid,
Goblins seeking tender prey,
Dreams will chase them all away.

Dreams are like a magic cloak
Woven by the fairy folk,
Covering from top to toe,
Keeping you from winds and woe.

And should the Angel come this night
To fetch your soul away from light,
Cross yourself, and face the wall:
Dreams will help you not at all."

— Thomas Pynchon

is it always going to feel this way?

the wind is running its fingers fiercely through the trees
outside my window and i wonder,
why is it always easier to be honest to a blank page?

Listen to Olsen Olsen by Sigur Ros

Another song to draw your tears

I Remember by Devendra Banhart

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

"The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable."

Joyce Carol Oates

Thank you for saying it for me...

A review by Carrie Brownstein that says all the things I know and fear:

On Friday, I saw Viv Albertine of The Slits, Softpower (featuring Mary Timony) and The Raincoats play at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. How do I feel? Lucky.
As I wrote last week on this blog, The Raincoats influenced nearly every musician that sprang forth from Olympia and countless other similar towns and scenes across the U.S. Needless to say -- or perhaps I do need to say it -- so did The Slits.
So, at the Knitting Factory on Friday, watching not The Raincoats (who were fantastic, by the way) but Viv Albertine, I realized I hadn't really witnessed fearlessness in a long time, at least not at a rock show. As one of my friends put it, more succinctly: "This was one of the punkest things I have ever seen."

If there is a voice in music that's seldom heard, it's that of a middle-aged woman singing about the trappings of motherhood, traditions and marriage. A woman who isn't trying to please or nurture anyone, but who instead illuminates a lifestyle that's so ubiquitous as to be rendered nearly invisible. She places in front of you -- serves you up -- an image of the repressive side of domesticity, the stifling nature of the mundane, and turns every comfort and assumption you hold on its head. It raises questions that no one wants to ask a wife or a mother, particularly one's own. Are you happy? Was I enough? What are you sacrificing, and are those sacrifices worth it? And when someone is brave enough -- honest enough -- to confront the difficulty of it all, the strange, often irreconcilable dichotomy of being a mother and an artist, a woman and an artist (and why should it be a dichotomy?), frankly, it's scary as hell. It makes people uncomfortable. And this sentiment of unease, especially coming from a woman in her 50s, sounds somewhat silly, even juvenile. Why? Because after a certain point, we're supposed to feel settled, or at the very least resigned.

As an audience, we can handle teenage girls and young women singing (sexily, coyly, prettily) about heartache and boys and loss, about unfairness, about redemption and about payback. But when an older woman sings of those same subjects, well, it wrecks everything. And, by that, I mean that we have certain expectations of older artists: They can turn into caricatures of their former selves, be campy or kitschy, sing stories of survival and resilience, and deliver pearls of wisdom. But that's about it. So it's shocking when an older woman gets on stage and basically says: This way of living and of being did not work, and the comfort that we all strive for was barely a comfort for me at all.

Viv Albertine did that. She did it with humor and with guts. And you can bet there were people who didn't get it.

I haven't even mentioned that Albertine's guitar playing is beautiful and unsettling in its strangeness. It's not simple, but rather a distortion of the facile. Sort of like the subjects of her songs.

I'll say it again: I felt lucky to be there.

Seen anything punk in a while?

Songs to make you laugh and cry

Modern Girl by Sleater-Kinney

About Face by Grizzly Bear

Island, IS by Volcano Choir

Darkly Smiling by The Great Society

the great struggle

Help!
I should be working, writing, washing my clothes. Why
am I constantly having this heated argument with my best
self - consciously creating a situation where I slip slowly
into a state of unmotivated malaise?

The real problem is

resting

on the fact

that all I want is to be sitting on the beach
with a pint of ben and jerrys and a glass of bordeaux.

Writing Woes

Feeling things and actually writing them down are completely different realms. Sometimes I read other people's blogs, short stories, novels and think, that's not so hard. I could write that. I think those thoughts all day long. And yet, it is hard. Beyond hard. It is like swimming through sand. What is the right word? How will it come off after it is written down?

Creating is difficult, whatever the medium. It is the translation from what is on the inside to the outside world. And because everyone sees (hears, feels, reads) things differently, it is even more difficult to know whether or not what you have created is being perceived the way you meant for it to be - which, by the way, rarely happens. Not to mention, most of us have conflicting views within us.

So, if someone is trying to convey their opinion of how terrifying marriage is, the same reader could completely agree and, simultaneously, disagree. Therefore, the writer has to either be very convincing with the argument so the reader has no choice but to agree (or at least understand), or vague enough for the reader to interpret in what ever way he/she chooses.

So, all of these thoughts run through my mind before I even set pen to paper, making it nearly impossible to create one intelligible sentence. A teacher I had in the past told me in order to minimize this anxiety, just write. Write a bunch of junk until you hit your rhythm, then keep going. Later, come back and edit. Cut, re-word, and add. Check spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

It all sounds warm and fuzzy, but I can't do it. Can not. The only thing I can do is to keep trying. I guess I'll do it my way. My way is slow and leans very heavily on the "I can't do this" procrastination technique. Perhaps I'll publish when I'm in my 80s....

Madmen yourself

Since we all pretty much pretend we live inside the AMC show Madmen, chain-smoke cigarettes all day long, drink copious amounts of whiskey, and sleep with Don Draper, now with the help of the world wide web, you can put yourslef inside that world. Sort of. Madmen yourself. Go ahead. Try it here.





This was mine.

Hot Chili on a Chilly Day!

Throw a bunch of stuff in the crockpot and let it sit there for the entire day and what do you get? Spicy chili enough to feed two bike racers, one pregnant lady, a guy who has been working on his house for two days and me, a voracious eater. And that's it. No leftovers.

After dinner, C. said to me "I think we should just keep the crockpot out all winter, don't you?" And, he's right. It is the perfect cooking tool for winter meals. Lately, the days have brought cold winds, days of rain, and cold mornings. Even though Fall has just began, Oregonians are already preparing for Winter. It's really all the same to us. Once we have that last warm summer day and the rains come, it doesn't really matter if it's 60 degrees or 40. So, get out your crockpot and warm up!

The End of a Season

Today is October first. It's chilly when I leave the house and rain drops cover the ground and plants from overnight showers. I pull my jacket tighter around me and take in a deep breath of air.

In Portland, welcoming Fall is like coming home from vacation. Back to regular life. When you go away on holiday, there is excitement. Something different. A change in routine. But you are always excited to come home. You are tired. You need your regular sleep and your home cooked meals. Summer = vacation.

For nine months, Portlanders are used to more or less the same weather. Sweaters and long pants. Boots. Scarves and hats. A light rain jacket. We are used to cozy. We drink red wine in low lit bars. We snuggle up with a blanket and read books. We play board games and cook chili. We go to movies, plays, lectures.

There is excitement in the air almost. A return to the world that we know. Summer is over and we put our dresses and sandals in a bag under the bed. We can't tell one another we are excited, because we will think the other has gone mad. Why is he ready for rain? Didn't he appreciate the beautiful sunny days? The mojitos in the park? The barbecues in the back yard? And he did. And you did too. But this is the flight home. We are comfortable in our winter.

Pumpkin carving party anyone?