I noticed two stangers in front of me.

Two seats in front of me, a man was on an expensive “smart phone” with an “if found…” note hand written on a piece of medical tape stuck to the back. He was agitatedly twisting the frizzy hairs on the back of his neck. When he finished his call, he started twisting his sideburns in the same manner.
I thought to myself, “he’s so anxious”

The man sitting behind him was gently nodding his head along with the music coming from his headphones that was just barely audible to me. He was wearing a clean but faded hat, had soft eyes & wasn’t fidgeting at alla.
I thought to myself, “he’s feeling good”

From those observations, I came to the decision to put on my headphones & get a little company from music.

Then I thought that I could have it all wrong.
The man “feeling good” could have bee grieving, or on his way to an uncomfortable meeting…
The “anxious” man could have been full if excitement while he was on his way to meet a date or to get his haircut.

The soothing balm of The Dining Rooms Other Ink filled my sound field as I came upon @vesper7′s Twitter post with this quote:

Don’t cling or hold on to anything. Harmonize with actuality, with things just as they are. -Buddha

And so, I decided to record this series of moments, so as to harmonize with actuality.

Their song “The Carnival is Over” is particularly mesmerizing for my spirit.

Here are the lyrics:

Outside
The storm clouds gathering
Move silently along the dusty boulevard

Where flowers turn and crane their fragile necks
So they can in turn
Reach up and kiss the sky

They’re driven by a strange desire
Unseen by the human eye

Someone’s calling

I remember when you held my hand
In the park we would play when the circus came to town
Over here

Outside
The circus gathering
Moved silently along the rainswept boulevard
The procession moves on, the shouting is over,
The fabulous freaks are leaving town

They are driven by a strange desire
Unseen by the human eye

Someone’s calling

The carnival is over

We sat and watched
As the moon rose
For the very first time

Anywho, because of the glass door, with sheer curtain, it was easy for me to hear what was going on in the living room after I went to bed. One night, after falling asleep, I awoke to hear the most beautiful music playing. It was delicate, intricate piano sounds and I had to investigate. I got up and looked out my door into the living room where the sound system lived.

There was my mom, sitting on her knees in front of the tape deck. I had a moment of trepidation that she’d scold me for being out of bed but the music was just so gorgeous that I had to go sit with her. And I did just that. I kneeled next to her and just listened. She didn’t send me back to bed, but I think the music lulled me back to sleep because I don’t remember anything after sitting & closing my eyes.

The music was George Winston‘s album December that my aunt had copied onto cassette, TYPED UP THE CASSETTE COVER (with a typewriter!) (I know – so awesome) & sent to my mom for the holidays.

Here’s a quote about the album that I found out there on the interwebs:

The mother of all solo instrumental albums, and with good reason. Mixing traditional carols with Pachelbel’s Canon and a few originals, Winston produces a solo piano album of unparalleled — and undeniable — beauty. How can music be simultaneously stirring and soothing, relaxed yet exalted?

That album and Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Original Sound Track Recording Of The CBS Television Special are all I need to stir up holiday season nostalgia – even if it is against my atheistic heart’s wishes!

I can’t remember why it came up tonight but we realized it’s a medley of two songs from the 80s that use “rock” in the chorus so off to YouTube I went to find them.

First, I found Solid – a fun song and a cute vid. Dude’s got some serious style but his stylist on the video shoot should have untucked his jacket…

Then I found the gold: The Whispers: Rock Steady.

If you don’t have five minutes to spend with your speakers on, come back when you do. I’ll wait.

Okay.

Ready?

I need to make a time stamp list of awesomeness (if you click on the video to go to the youtube page, there should be a comment by addycat777 [aka me] with the time stamps as links if you want to save yourself a little effort – however, not all of these are there and I got the numbers wrong and youtube wouldn’t let me edit or repost – argh!):

1. 0:37 – favorite dance move with the appendicular body

2. 0:59 – love the bearded back up singer/dancer (his beard looks glued on)
Watch for more of him cuz his moves are hot. (I’ll spare you additional time stamps about him)

3. 1:26 – hey! where did those dancers come from?

4. 1:36 – “doin’ the snake. mmm…maybe not…”

5. 1:44 – his “jazz square” pirouette reminds me of my jazz dance class when I was 9. We listened to this song during our warm up, which included jazz squares with our feet and hips.

6. 1:57 – enter freight elevator. that must be on what the crowd comes to populate this underground funk party.

7. 2:31-2:34 – I WILL learn this dance move and show you at the next party.

8. 2:48 – is that a tour jete I see in the background?? Justin did a couple of those for me on my birthday. He’s really good at it, very graceful and always has pointed toes (even in cycling shoes!).

9. 3:22 – after more freight elevator and a moment without the crowd, they’re in their party suits.

10. 3:32 – dude with the sunglasses and half-fro is really feelin’ it

11. 3:55 – can’t quite figure out why they went back to the other, “not party” suits…

12. 4:06 – looks like they can’t either!

13. 4:33 – I know they used the “not party” suit footage here because of this sick move. it’s spontaneous – not to be replicated – magic, caught on film.

This song makes me happy. Although, after trying to get all of those time stamps just right, I need to avoid it for a little while… but this video I could watch without sound, over and over while practicing all of those moves. Soon, I too will be able to dance like Barack Obama.

Regarding the leg – I had an amazing session with my massage school teacher Marty. He’s a rolfer, massage therapist and cranial sacral therapist. Oh, and, he also helps people with money. He’s a super mellow city guy who rides a fixie (with a front break) and totally understands my biking needs.
A week after my 90 minute session, my pain has been reduced to about 90% of what it was.

So, that’s the leg thing.

I’ve also been focusing a lot on our fundraiser that’s TOMORROW NIGHT! It’s taken a lot of planning, organizing and hitting the pavement putting up posters and giving out flyers. It’s been a great time. I’m so excited to put on my special cowgirl costume – complete with red cowgirl boots and a red, pigtail wig.

We need to raise $3012 to get everyone to their minimum needed to do the ride – I’m really hoping we can get to that number – think good thoughts for us, huh?

The event will have raffles and a silent auction. Those of you not coming to the event will have to dream wistfully of gigantic feather pillows with amazing fabric, cases of wine, a bed and breakfast stay, shopping, dining and spa-ing gift cards, home-made leather tote bags as big as paper shopping bags, jewelry, photos, and the list goes on.

Did I mention wine? We have three cases and a magnum to raise money with…

I’m hoping to get up early enough to ride to work tomorrow morning – as if I don’t have enough to do already! I’ll keep you posted!

I wrote these poems when I was in college and recorded myself reading them a couple of months ago.
Obvious always seems to be writing poems and he recorded his readings around the time I did, just so Joel could add music and put it up on his now-retired radio show on KRUU FM out of Fairfield, Iowa.
One never knows what Joel will be doing with his website and its content, so listen soon and then hit him up on his guest book so he can feel the love.

.:my mom keeps telling her friends that they can’t trust me anymore and then she giggles. fun little jokester former hippy mom. i don’t think she trusted me much when I was 15.
.:i still like birthday cake AND cookies on my birthday.
.:shiny red flats and a black and white dress were my birthday dinner garb – not much has changed since I made a vow at 15 to put in my will that my funeral would be “a party on Big Sandy Beach (or Singing Sands – depending on who you talk to) where everyone had to wear only black, white and/or red and they could only bring balloons and that they all had to dance rather than cry” – I still agree with that sentiment and still have no will, nor valuables to put into a will. my cds always go to someone at least 10 years younger than me. yes, I still buy cds.
.:This Night Has Opened My Eyes is still my most favorite Smiths song ever. I still listen to it over and over in one sitting – just not as often as when I was 15.
.:When i was 15 and told someone something that was personal, it never was very personal and I was always a bit hyper about his/her reaction. Now, I still get sad when I share something I feel to be emotionally exposing and I either get no response at all or get a response that seems to come from a place of not understanding what I was saying. The latter is easier for me to deal with than the former because at least I feel that it’s okay to keep talking about it. The former happened recently, twice, with the same person, and it’s really made me sad but I’m must more okay with it than I would have been at 15. The latter happened over and over with the same person and it left me feeling a need for space, and I asked for it. I wouldn’t have been able to do it like that when I was 15.
.:i don’t drink as much now as I did when I was 15. And when I drink wine now, it’s almost always out of a glass, and not the bottle, unlike 15 years ago when I spilled pink paul masson wine down both sides of my face, while laughing, and not choking, and trying to chug it so I could get drunk.
.:i’m much more balanced when i’m stoned. I still get a little too chatty and sometimes talk out my ass, but I have more of a rein on the runaway thought/babble patterns.
.:I’m softer now.
.:My smile is twice as big and twenty gazillion times more sincere.
.:My eyebrows look ridiculously better now that I’ve learned the art of eyebrow shaping.
.:Feelings are allowed to exist inside me now.
.:Swearing is not nearly as common these days as it was back then – I was so angry at 15.
.:My hair’s basically the same. I like my curls and they’re good at telling me how to make them look.
.:I feel much less of a need to talk about my beliefs now than I did then. PHEW!

I walked out with a flatter wallet and three new CDs

Madonna (of course) – Like a Virgin (now I finally own the CD…my mom has my vinyl somewhere, I think/hope)
Heart – Heart (same as above re: vinyl)
Tears for Fears – Songs from the Big Chair

Yay, now I can sing along to three more cds.

[heavy bit]
1b. I used to sing the TFF song “Shout” (I think you might know it) when I was like, uh, 8 or something, when that song was popular originally, to my dad and I’d yell the part “I’d really love to break your heart.”
Sigh.
Perhaps I knew he’d break mine later…
[/heavy bit]

2. was a grumplesaurus on Monday (I had to go to work – no, not to work, but to keep from having to use a vacation day to not work) and when the “going to a movie double feature where the second movie is free” plan didn’t pan out, I continued decoupaging tea tags to my tea tin while singing along as loud as I could to Fiona Apple’s Tidal and I slowly became perky – especially when I realized that I was finished my tea tin (the decoupaging part – now I have to find toy truck wheels to attach to the bottom).

3. when I was in college, it was non-traditional. I got graded on how long I could sit up and then hop with my legs in (half) lotus during an 1.5 hour meditation session, twice a day, in a large, gold, domed building with a cement floor covered in foam mattresses coverd in white sheets. I also got graded on how well/often I put a particular man’s philosophy into my school work (the more, the higher the grade, the more likely you were to get an award upon graduation – unlike me). When I got overwhelmed by all of it, I would either listen to Soundgarden Superunknown or Peter Gabriel’s Passion depending on the vibe of the overwhelm.
One of the wonderful benefits of my strange university experience was the regular doses of live Ghandarva Ved music concerts that would happen in one of those foamy, sheety domy buildings [read: lying down to float away to never never land because of the dreamyness of the music.] I think they happened once a month and were free.

4. SIGH.

She then had a video montage of kids in africa with a link ad for some organization I’ve never heard of – the clinton something dot org… she sang Live to Tell for that one. Again, the high side view obscured some of the text she posted and the video feed on the monitors only included the first statement.

There was also a spoken word bit that her dancers seemed to do – one by one they did very personal seeming dances while emotionally vulnerable monologues were played. I thought that was really sensitive and lovely, except that I didn’t understand a word of what the girl said – perhaps it was just too highly pitched for the audio system. Sigh.

She came out on a mirror tiled cross, standing on a platform with her hands propped in some hooks and the mic extended from the cross so that it was in front of her mouth – no headsets in this show. She actually encorporated the handing off of her microphone to her dancers when she needed both of her hands, into the coreography – just like the eternal bride she is.

Oh, that reminds me – she sang Like A Virgin with video of people falling off horses juxtaposed against images of x- rays – no clavical ones tho, just ribs, appendages and hips. I loved that – as if she was saying that her accident last year made her feel brand new “feels so good inside…”

She had some amazing dancer/acrobats during Jump. One stunning specimine was a beautiful brown man (they were all beautiful, different genders and colors [duh] and shirtless, with lots of dancer/acrobat muscles – woot) who jumped from the top of one jungle gym to another and then another and then off of it to a ping pong table (those are my shortcut descriptions). Her dancers were all edgy urban style – some post krumpers, some gettin’ their anger out thru insane full body movements, one did this really cool dance inside a cage (during the song Isaac – Isaac was there [duh] and sang very well with a stoic face) covered in some kind of hooded cape that she used beautifully.

She played some back up guitar as if she was lead guitar, haha, while her guitar teacher hung out on a bank of white speakers, in his white suit, playing his white acoustic guitar. It was sweet to see her play some rudimentary chords and effects and then leave it for him. I think he played on every song. Donna DeLory and a new Niki (Richards, instead of Haris) were there doing backup and a bit of dancin with her at the end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_Tour

1. “Future Lovers/I Feel Love”
2. “Get Together”
3. “Like A Virgin”
4. “Jump”
5. “Interlude (Dancer Confessions)”
6. “Live to Tell”
7. “Forbidden Love”
8. “Isaac”
9. “Sorry”
10. “Like It Or Not”
11. “Interlude (Sorry remix)”
12. “I Love New York”
13. “Ray of Light”
14. “Let It Will Be”
15. “Drowned World/Substitute For Love”
16. “Paradise (Not For Me)”
17. “Interlude”
18. “Music Inferno”
19. “La Isla Bonita”
20. “You Thrill Me/Erotica”
21. “Lucky Star”
22. “Hung Up”

air: merely cold
light: x-rays into my longingness

then the tears came with no control
the tears now are less
tho sourced similarly

then: survival mode
innards exposed without interpretation or understanding

now:the girl with her memories etched into her skin with permanence
hears the story and is inspired
puts her spin out there

[whispers]
your x-ray perception
straight to my heart
has shown me
that the essence I was forced to expose
is all that matters

i want to thank her
and avoid her calls
for sharing

___________________________
i’m in the midst of a trauma, leave a message, I’ll call you back…
some people should die, that’s just unconscious knowledge.
because, the deeper you go, the wider you spread. you’ve gotta depend on me now, your vision is dead

those lyrics have always resonated with me for some reason. now it all makes sense.