weary as water

every time i blink i have a tiny dream

Monthly Archives: December 2007

my favourite chords – the weakerthans

They’re tearing up streets again,
they’re building a new hotel.
The mayor is out killing kids,
to keep taxes down.

And me and my anger sit,
folding a paper bird,
letting the curtains turn
to beating wings.

Wish I had a socket set,
to dismantle this morning,
just one pair of clean socks,
and a photo of you.

When you get off work tonight,
meet me at the construction site,
and we’ll write some notes to tape
to the heavy machines.

Like “We hope they treat you well.”
“Hope you don’t work too hard.”
“We hope you get to be
happy sometimes.”

And bring you swiss army knife,
and a bottle of something,
and I’ll bring some spray paint,
and a new deck of cards

Hey, I found the safest place,
to keep all our tenderness,
keep all those bad ideas,
keep all our hope.
It’s here in the smallest bones,
the feet and the inner ear.
It’s such an enormous thing,
to walk and to listen.

And I’d like to fall asleep to the beat of you breathing,
in a room near a truck stop,
on a highway somewhere.

You are a radio,
you are an open door.
I am a faulty string,
of blue Christmas lights.

You swim through frequencies,
you let that stranger in,
as I’m blinking off and on
and off again.

And we’ve got a lot of time,
or maybe we don’t,
but I’d to think so,
so let me pretend,

Well, these are my favorite chords,
I know you like them too.
when I get a new guitar,
you could have this one.

And sing me a lullaby,
sing me the alphabet,
sing me a story I
haven’t heard yet.

last post of the year

and I’m sure the next one will be filled with resolutions and things worth keeping. But this one is full of music..my top 12 tracks of 2007.

  • Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car by Iron & Wine – iron & wine writes poetry and this song has that driving guitar beat that i love. traveling music, this is.
  • Fiery Crash by Andrew Bird – this album is more fluffed up than his previous. by fluffed up, i mean fluffier, like my bitchy cat pele when she is super happy and wants to be petted.
  • Seeds of Night by The Cave Singers – repetitive trance like melody; who needs words that make sense?
  • In the Middle of Nowhere by Little Miss Higgins. i can’t remember where i first heard little miss higgins; but i know as soon as i heard her, i bought her album. super bluesy, and a voice that belongs in a smoky bar fifty years ago.
  • Live Off Lamb by Said the Whale – every time i hear this track, i think “wow, i love the shins!” i do, of course, but i love this unsigned band from the great north country, too.
  • I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You by the Black Kids – this is where i unashamedly jump on the bandwagon. the catchiest tunes of the year, by a (then-unsigned) band from athens that blew away cmj.
  • Can’t Tell Me Nothing by Kanye West – this song was a bit of a theme for me when it first came out. then i saw the ‘alternate video‘ and laughed my ass off. clogging and hip hop – let’s hope for more in 2008.
  • Put a Penny In the Slot by Fionn Regan – an honest to goodness singer songwriter with great lyrics and a decent voice. i bought this one right after i heard it, too.
  • Jigsaw Falling Into Place by Radiohead – it’s too bad that i can’t put the entire in rainbows album on here, because i like listening to this song in its natural environment. when it first came out, i paid my british pounds and hooked up my laptop to the stereo and listened to it with the lights out, over and over and over again.
  • Cleanse Song by the Bright Eyes – yep, understood this song this year.
  • Hard Line by Jill Barber – another brilliant Canadian songwriter i hadn’t heard of before this year.
  • Say It To Me Now by Glen Hansard (from the Once soundtrack) – i’ve never really given the frames a good listen (although wikipedia calls them ‘influential’) but this film (and its soundtrack) are absolutely brilliant.

look ma, i’m on a horse!

It is so good to be back home in Birmingham. I spent over a week in Montana, and while it was a decent trip, it was also really stressful for reasons that should be obvious.

The Good:

  • Horseback riding with my Dad and his cowboy friend who wears chaps and a bandana and calls his horse ‘jackass’. We rode for half a day in BLM land north of Helena. It was awesome, except when Bob the Horse decided he was tired of going uphill. We saw the ‘sleeping giant’ (named ‘bear claw’ by lewis and clark when they saw the formation of the big belt mountains) and also a half-full propane tank that someone had been using for target practice.

  • Snowboarding with my brother. Through some miracle I have become a better snowboarder, without any practice or even snow.

  • Making curtains with my Mom. They are awesome chiffon curtains that will go over the bedroom closet, because I got sick of fighting with the stupid closet doors every morning.

  • I read a ton. Most notably, “Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression” which reminded me of my grandma and of my dad all at once. It is an excellent, nostalgic, cuddly read, and if you grew up listening to stories of country folk doing country things you’ll enjoy it too.

I’m not very excited to be going to work in the morning, but I am excited to be home (it only took 13 hours total travel time, with multiple delays, and my luggage took an extra 18 hours). All day today I’ve just been blown away by how much I missed home – and I’m not talking about Birmingham, I’m talking about Emily and my cats and my friends and all the other things that I love. While shiny eyed on the prairie, I discovered that now when I am homesick, I am homesick for these things.

cleanse – the bright eyes

Hear the chimes, did you know that the wind when it blows
It is older than Rome and all of this sorrow
See the new pyramids down in old Manhattan
From the roof of a friend’s I watched an empire ending
Heard it loud and long the river’s Om
Time marching on to a madman’s drum

Don’t forget what you’ve learned all you give is returned
And if life seems absurd what you need is some laughter
And a season to sleep and a place to get clean
Maybe Los Angeles, somewhere no one’s expecting
On a detox walk through a Glendale Park over sidewalk chalk
Someone wrote in red, “start over”
So I muffled my scream on an Oxnard beach
Full of fever dreams that scare you sober
Into saltless dinners

Take the fruit from the tree, break the skin with your teeth
Is it bitter or sweet? All depends on your timing
Like a meeting of chance with the train station glance
Many lifetimes had past in a instant reminded
Of a millstone house in a seaside town
When your heart gave out in a mission bed
So your wife gave birth to a funeral dirge
You woke up purged as a wailing infant
In Krug Thep, Thailand

Hear the chimes, did you know that the wind when it blows
It is older than Rome and our joy and our sorrow

some things last a long time

This weekend was filled with errands, cigarettes and postage stamps. I finished up a lot of little things around the house that needed to be taken care of. I did loads of laundry. I cleaned out the bedroom closet and took a basket of stuff to goodwill.

My pastor’s wife from when I lived in Miles City contacted me on Facebook. I thought about that era of my life a lot this weekend – I was such a confused kid (and I blame teh GAY). A part of me wishes I would have turned out to be the little Christian everyone thought I would be – I actually yearn for it sometimes – but then I look around at my awesome life and awesome wife and feel blessed anyway. As Mom said last night, that was a long time ago and a long way away (although I doubt she meant for it to be used in this context).

I know all too well the Wesleyan’s view on teh GAY, so I’m not planning on bringing it up with Beth. But it does make me extra thankful for my friend Robyn, who is in seminary right now and who fully supports love for loves sake.

I also upgraded my account on emusic.com, and downloaded a ton of music, mostly country/blues (Buddy Miller, Blind Willie Johnson, Hanalei, Okkervil River, Old 97′s, Ryan Adams, Stars, and Gil Mantera’s Party Dream). But today I’m in a Built To Spill kind of mood.

procrastination

There’s a lot I should be doing, but instead I’m sitting at the coffeeshop drinking too many soy lattes and addressing Christmas cards. If you want a Christmas card (Mr. Matheny, I’m looking at you!), comment with your address.

Update: Now I’m helping Whitney, who is writing thank you cards for folks who sent their sympathies to her mom’s funeral. I’m the “licking, stamping, and return addressing” station. Hannah is stalking folks on the internet to find out their mailing addresses. Whitney is writing the thank you notes. Together we’re an awesome team. Sadly, we’re not for hire.

improvements.

It has been much warmer in the house since I put bubble wrap over the windows. Our heater is about eighty five years old, and every time I light it I singe the hair off my arms. Poof! Bubble wrap.

The leaves have fallen; the tree is up. I have most of my Christmas shopping done, but haven’t sent a single Christmas card. It’s the season I love to dread; it isn’t cold enough to be pretty, but it’s cold enough for everything to hibernate for the winter. (Including me, I guess).

Emily’s going to be done with nursing school in 4 semesters. Maybe we should just move when she’s finished, instead of waiting until she has experience and I’m vested.

Highest on my list: Portland, Vancouver, Denver, and Minneapolis. Maybe Albuquerque.

looking forward, looking back

I’m beginning to understand where parents get these crazy expectations for their kids. Every now and then, I start to think about how my life would be different if I’d been able to go to a music school, or a science school, or if I’d been somewhere that had a high school soccer team, or [fill in the blank]. And Emily and I have been talking about having a kid, or maybe adopting, or maybe being foster parents sometime (after we buy a house and move somewhere a little more progressive). And we’ve been talking about how we would raise those kids, and I keep thinking about how I would want to provide them with experiences and clothing and education that I did not have. How we would want our kids to go to a montessori elementary school, how I would be able to provide them with things I didn’t have growing up, how I would want to be actively involved in their lives. Here I am, not in any position to have a kid, and I’m already put these expectations on myself as a future parent and on them as a future kid.