Chasing the end of my rainbow

The Size of the Past: An Ode to Sharon Van Etten (And Me)

2012-02-15T22:45:00.000-06:00

I used to write these poems,
Sometimes.
They weren’t good,
Exactly.

Really, I know that they were
Nothing that made much
Sense at all.
I’d mix in some words
In between a couple videos
Or pictures

And to me,
It was beautiful.
I swear, it made perfect sense
To me,
At least.
Almost no one would
Remark about these—
In fact, one friend said,
(and I can’t be madat the honesty):

“I don’t really get it;
I just like your stories
So much more.”

That’s fine,
I guess.
The thing is,
This was a story
Just the same,
And sometimes it’s easier
This way

Like, to me,
It seems ridiculous
The way Layla won’t just
Hop on the bed:

Instead,
She sniffs,
And sniffs,
And shuffles up to it,
Until, satisfied,
She makes a giant leap
And even then, she sniffs me,
My book, my arm,
Like she’s never seen me before.
Then she kneads her paws,
Slowly, steadily
Until she’s satisfied,
and she'll curl up in my arms,
her paw on my hand.

It’s totally ridiculous,
But it’s just her way.

I wrote this essay
About my ex-best friend
And how I cut her out
Of my life
But I was angry with it,
Dissatisfied
I kept sniffing at it,
Not sure what to do.

Found all these pictures
To go with the words,
But they didn’t make sense
Like this won’t make sense.
Because it was about her
and about something else
entirely

("It wasn't about me, so I didn't care,"
he said, without a hint of irony.)

You get that, right?
Tell me you get it.

The thing is,
I don't expect anyone to get it, really,
other than me,
And I know this time
you won't care to stop me
and say anything;
in fact, you probably won't read it at all.
That's fair; I get it,
I swear, I do.

But I’d be lying if I said
I didn’t secretly hope
You’d look at me
And say:
“I get it; I always got it”

Because while I never meant to linger
I never meant those looks
Sometimes I can help it
And sometimes I can’t help but not.

It’s totally ridiculous,
But it’s just my way.

Tomorrow I’m going to seeSharon Van Etten sing
I already know the slightly
Mournful way I’ll feel
If and when she sings
“Give Out”
cause it’s just like
when you don’t look at me

and all I'm doing is looking(and you know it)or you do look at mebut I can’t bear to look up(and you know it)

“There was your breathon the back of my neck/The only one holding/The only one I had felt In years”

When I looked up from the table,
You were devastating.
I remember the way I watched you
That time,
I was late (I'm always late)

From across the street
I waited for the light to change
You were there,
Just waiting.

It scared the shit out of me.

Like how it scares me that you get me
So completely
Yet don’t,
Not at all.

You’re right, you know?

But still: You’re wrong, you’re so wrong.
As long as I think that, then maybe I can still be right.

The Queen of the Night: Rest in Peace, Whitney

2012-02-12T15:44:00.000-06:00

“Don’t make no difference if I’m wrong or I’m right,” Whitney Houston announced in “Queen of the Night,” and in a way, that’s how I feel mourning the loss of her, a woman who, of course, I did not actually know. Yes, it may seem a bit ridiculous to behave as if her death affects me personally—sort of like how when Heath Ledger died, I whined to my brother about how upset I was, and he retorted, “You realized you didn’t actually know him, right?”—but with his death, the more recent death of Amy Winehouse, and now, Whitney, I still think, stubborn and ridiculous as it may be, Didn’t I?

Although my first full-blown celebrity crush started at a wildly inappropriate age, when I was about five and falling madly in love with Orry Maine, aka Patrick Swayze, Heath Ledger’s face covered my bedroom walls as a teenager. I used to stare at that man’s face on a daily basis. I watched “A Knight’s Tale” an embarrassing amount of times, not because it was good, but because of Heath. I remember scoffing when I first heard he was dating Michelle Williams, because I thought, “What’s my boyfriend doing with Jen from Dawson’s Creek?” Yes, it’s ridiculous. But still, I felt something when he died. It’s a little embarrassing, but whatever. When Patrick Swayze died, I cried. A lot. I tried watching "Dirty Dancing" and couldn’t even get through it, for chrissakes. So maybe that’s even more embarrassing, but again, whatever. I feel a lot of feelings. We all know this already.

But: Whitney!

If you look through the record collection at my father’s house, it’s easily apparent when you’ve arrived at the milk crate that contains my mother’s old records, because it’s an obvious shift from all the rock ‘n’ roll records to R&B. In that milk crate, the record I always pull out, if only to stare at it, is a Whitney Houston album. I remember as a kid, looking at it and thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I’m talking about this one:

She seemed so elegant, so sure of herself, so otherworldly, in a way. I loved the tilt of her head, and that look in her eyes, like she was challenging the looker. So beautiful! I wanted to be beautiful like that. I wanted that kind of aura.

And my God, her voice! I don’t have any specific memories of my mom playing this particular Whitney Houston album. But I can say, with total conviction, that her music was certainly included in the rotation during our Saturday afternoon house cleaning, just like I know we listened to a lot of Gloria Estefan, Fleetwood Mac, Sade, and Annie Lennox.

I remember watching “The Bodyguard” with my mom, and at the end, when she says goodbye to Kevin Costner by the plane, we were both teary eyed.

I looked over and said to Mom: “I just don’t get it! They’re in love; why can’t they be together?”

She looked at me and, without hesitation, replied, “They’re facing reality. They’re from two different worlds. It would never be able to work.”

I said, “But why? Cause he’s white?”

She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “No, Alison. Because he is a bodyguard and she is a superstar.”

I don't remember how old I was at that time, but I'll never forget that conversation.

My mom was also a big fan of Terry McMillan novels, so of course I also watched "Waiting to Exhale" with her—and she got uncharacteristically embarrassed by one of the sex scenes. Afterward, I basically stole the soundtrack from her, listening to it nonstop in my room.

"Everyone falls in love sometimes":

A few years ago, I was at my dad’s for the weekend and “The Bodyguard” was on TV. I was a little surprised when he sat down and actually watched the entire thing with me. When it was over, I felt overwhelmingly sad. I went to the bathroom and cried.

It wasn’t about the movie, of course. So right now, as I write this and listen to Whitney, the sadness I feel isn’t just about Whitney. It is and it isn’t, at all. I remembered that Whitney had a daughter—she is 18. I just read that she was rushed to the hospital and treated for anxiety today. Of course I have no idea what their relationship was, and I have no idea just how she feels today, even though I was also 18 when my mother died. It doesn’t stop my heart from hurting any less at the thought.

Mom, I hope you have a record player up in heaven. I want to listen to some Whitney with you right now.

It's My Baby's Birthday! The Rainbow Chronicles Turn 3

2012-02-08T22:29:00.001-06:00

Holy crap, you guys. So, I've been sitting here, watching Young Frankenstein and painting my nails (don't even pretend you're not jealous of this wild Wednesday evening) and I remembered:

Today, the Rainbow Chronicles turn 3! If only I had some Funfetti! Quick, go get a cupcake to eat while you read this!

It seems that last year, I neglected to host a blogging birthday celebration—I was far too busy feeling a lot of feelings about my recent discovery of James Blake—but this year, I'm in more of a celebratory mood. I mean, Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle are dancing on the television right now, and if that doesn't put you in the partying mood, what will?

For the first birthday bash, in 2010, back when I was still a young girl of 25, I recapped my favorite moments of my first full year of blogging. There was a lot of talk about Swayze, Schwinn Breezes named Patricia, and waiting tables. And of course, some more serious posts about family and my seemingly never-ending job search.

Now, two years later, though Sunday Swayze Fest may not happen as often as we'd all like (and by "we" of course I mean "I"), I can still say with all honesty that my most recent viewing of Dirty Dancing was three days ago and I now own a t-shirt with Patrick Swayze on it (clutch Christmas gift from Jay and Jasmine). So never fear, faithful Rainbow groupies. Swayze Fest will always be here in my heart, if not every Sunday on this blog.

And while I still occasionally have elaborate daydreams about riding my Schwinn Breeze all over town, I think we all know in reality I'm far too clumsy and terrified of Chicago traffic for that to happen more than twice every three years.

Speaking of clumsy—today at the coffee shop, I may or may not have knocked a framed record off the wall. Glass shattered, people stared, and I turned beet red, slumped into my seat, and cursed my elbows.

Back to the birthday bash, and away from my awkwardness, if at all possible. One thing I love about looking back over the last three years of blogging is how, in many ways, it's a tidy chronicle of my life. Of course, it's not a complete chronicle, and it never should or will be one, but as I look back I remember a lot—good and bad. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I think, "What kind of a creep reads her own blog archive?" But basically, looking back over this blog on its "birthday" makes me happy, and it makes me a little sentimental. Kind of like an actual birthday.

Three years ago, I sat in my first Chicago apartment's kitchen, listened to some Fiona Apple, and braved my first blog post, "Small Town and Scared Shitless in the Big City." Looking back, I'm almost shocked by my fears of exploring new places, and I'm still a little embarrassed about sharing those fears with the Interwebs. I may no longer be the young woman who's "scared shitless in the big city," but I don't mind admitting that no matter how long I live in Chicago, I'll still be that same "small town" girl who listens to Fiona and enjoys hanging out with my cats in the comfort of my home.

I recently reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Like many of my books, it was originally my mother's, and I vaguely remembered reading it when I was younger. When I found an index card tucked in the pages with my name and a sequence of numbers on it, I realized with glee that it was my 7th grade locker combination. I loved every minute re-reading the story of Francie and her family. Pretty much all of my reading happens in one of two places: on the train to and from work, or in bed. Sometimes, I get a little self-conscious after being completely absorbed in a book on a crowded train—I can only imagine the faces I must have been making as, teary eyed, I read the scene where Francie's mother shoots the man attempting to attack Francie in the stairwell. When I realized I was at my stop, I shoved the book in my bag and noticed some middle-aged guy was giving me a similar look to the ones I give the people shouting nonsensically in public. (Yes, that happens. I blogged about it.) But hey, if my funny faces keep a fellow commuter entertained on their commute, so be it.

As it happens, I was on the train when I finished the book. It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful book. I didn't care that the train was crowded, and I was sitting in a seat directly facing strangers. I smiled to myself, closed the book slowly, and then reopened it to the first page, where my mother had written her name 18 years earlier. I ran my index finger across her name and sighed.

It was a happy feeling. It was a little sentimental. It was something to be remembered.

Thanks for reading my little blog these last three years. Any time I find out someone's read any of these essays, rants, or even just a long, winding sentence I wrote, it makes me feel just like that.

kisses,
Alison(composes)

Monday Mix Tapes: The Ambiguity of It All (Maybe, Perhaps?)

2012-01-30T22:25:00.000-06:00

Some songs I've been listening to, and loving. Maybe they have a common theme (in my mind)? Maybe?

In this first video, Sharon Van Etten talks about her song, "It's Not Like," saying it's about "being happy, and being sad; cliché human emotions that everybody feels about love; frustration and excitement, the ambiguity of it all" and I really love it. I listened to all of her albums at work today for the first time before I listened to her new album that's streaming on NPR. Her new album is called "Tramp," and I love that, too. The title and the content.

Without further ado, here she is talking about, and singing, "It's Not Like":

I also recently spent a day listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen after listening to his newest album, "Old Ideas," on (surprise!) NPR. It's fantastic, and I listened to it three times in a row.

But you might know this track a little better. I just love every damn lyric in this song, from "I used to think I was some kind of gypsy boy" to "You held on to me like I was a crucifix" to "I'm cold as a new razor blade/you left when I told you I was curious/I never said that I was brave" ... but that's kind of just Leonard Cohen for you, isn't it? Okay, I'll shut up now.

Just listen:

When I was home a couple weeks ago, I snagged a copy of my dad's 92.3 WTTS Collector's Edition, which happened to include a live recording of Ray LaMontagne singing "For the Summer" at The Lawn at White River State Park in Indianapolis—the same performance I saw with my family this summer. When I listen to it, I remember exactly how I felt that night at the show. And how I felt moving back home for the summer (well, a little longer than just the summer) as an adult two years ago.

Here's Ray singing "For the Summer":

"The ambiguity of it all," right? Maybe it's not always good, but it doesn't have to be bad, either, I don't think. After all, like Ray sings,

Through the years I have learned / Some things worth the tellin' / And you'd be right in guessin'/ that each and every lesson they were hard won

Now, so long. "It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again."

Monday Mix Tapes: Change the Sheets ('My Love Is a Stockpile of Broken Wills')

2012-01-23T19:57:00.000-06:00

It's been a great day, music-wise. All this great music I've been listening to today is probably the only reason my head didn't actually explode when I was reading about all the ridiculous things Rick Santorum has to say about taking control of every uterus in the country.

First up, Ana Tijoux. Oh em gee, you guys. Her album "La Bala" comes out January 31st, but until then you can stream it on NPR. Here's a track from her first album, "1977":

Next up, “A La Modeliste,” a jazz track produced by Mark Ronson for RE:GENERATION featuring Erykah Badu, Trombone Shorty, Mos Def, Zigaboo Modeliste, and members of the Dap Kings. I don't really need to say anything more, do I?

I'm also really excited about Kathleen Edwards' new album, "Voyageur." She co-produced it with boyfriend Justin Vernon, who you may or may not know from a little band called Bon Iver. Here's a track from the album I particularly like:

Now if only I had the first clue what Ana Tijoux was singing/rapping about, I think it would be a successful Monday.

Thoughts on the Anniversary of Roe V. Wade (& Why Rick Santorum Is the Worst)

2012-01-23T17:15:00.001-06:00

Thirty-nine years ago, on January 22nd, the Supreme Court ruled to protect a woman's right to access an abortion in Roe v. Wade. And since then, the government has minded its own business, respecting a woman's ability to make her own health decisions, and no one has ever argued about it.

Oh, wait… that's not what happened at all.

Despite a scary amount of attacks on a woman's right to choose in the last year (check out this handy infographic for details), President Obama recently announced a new health benefit that defends women's access to birth control, and to mark the date of the Roe v. Wade anniversary, he pledged to stay committed “to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right," stating:

As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right.

While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue -- no matter what our views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption. And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

Feministing points out a not-so-fun reality about abortion access that still needs to be addressed, if only we could all agree to keep Roe v. Wade intact in the first place:

When abortion was legalized in 1973, virtually all women had the ability to obtain an abortion. The Medicaid program, which covers health care for low-income people in the U.S., covered abortion just as it did other medical procedures.

But in 1977, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which banned Medicaid coverage of abortion. Abortion is the only medical procedure that has ever been banned from Medicaid. Most private insurance plans cover abortion. So it’s people who rely on Medicaid (and also: people who are federal employees or get their health care through a federal employee, people who get their health care through Indian Health Services and people serving in the military and those who get their health care through the military) are the ones who have health insurance that does not cover abortion.

This means that they must pay out-of-pocket for a procedure ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars. This means that they often are in the position of forgoing food, or paying bills or childcare in order to get their abortion procedure.

So if you are fortunate enough to have health insurance in the US, you are likely to be covered for the full range of medical care should you have an unplanned pregnancy (for now anyway). If you happen to be a low-income person, and/or you depend on the US government for your health care, you’re on your own.

Now, anti-choicers like to try to make us all think that over at Planned Parenthood, for example, it's just one big abortion party, where women run over and gleefully get abortions, but that's simply not the case. I challenge people who are so quick to judge PP, and the countless young and older women who rely on PP for its vital healthcare services, such as cervical cancer screenings, to talk to an employee or patient at one of its clinics. We all have stories, and not all of them are even about abortion. And if they are, I think it would do the women of this country a huge service to be in a society where they're not shamed into keeping their mouths shut about those stories for fear of judgement.

To make things even scarier and insane, GOP Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum thinks that even women who have been raped should simply "make the best out of a bad situation" and "accept this horribly created pregnancy" as a gift from God. This disgusts me on so many levels. Namely because, as Tanya Somanader writes at Think Progress:

The problem with Santorum’s sense of humanity is that it doesn’t seem to extend to the victim. The emotional and physical trauma endured during and after a sexual assault often leaves a woman feeling robbed of any control over her own body and welfare. Robbing a woman of the choice to decide what to do with such “horribly created” consequences only contributes to the victim’s trauma.

What’s more, Santorum’s argument forces a woman in these circumstances to share his religious beliefs and “accept what God has given to [her.]” A woman may very well share his belief and decide to carry the pregnancy to the term, but the fundamental point is that that should be her choice — not the government’s, and certainly not Santorum’s.

Maybe you agree with Santorum. Fine. Let's agree not to be friends. But mostly, can't we just agree that ultimately, and especially in cases of rape, that a woman should be able to choose what she decides to do with her body, and her life? And maybe we can't even agree about that. Fine. But here's the thing: Women will seek abortions whether everyone agrees about it or not. And when this choice is not protected, if we don't continue to fight for the rights we gained through Roe v. Wade, we'll go back to the horror stories of women dying from botched abortions and subsequent infections and hemorrhaging. Not only do I find Santorum's stance appalling and offensive, I believe he is an incredibly naive man to even consider that he has the power to control the women of this country's decisions about our bodies, and that, in the case of teen pregnancy, fathers should encourage their daughters to "make the right decision." The "right" decision is not always so simple, and it's not always going to be the same conclusion.

This afternoon I read a powerful article by Eleanor Cooney that was originally published in Mother Jones' September/October 2004 issue. I urge you to read it, particularly if you feel I'm exaggerating about the consequences of making abortions illegal or inaccessible. At the end of the piece, she writes:

Women of all kinds seek and have always sought abortion: married, single, in their twenties, thirties, and forties, teenagers. Some have no children, some have several already. Some never want children, some want children later. They are churchgoers, atheists, agnostics. They are morally upright pillars of the community, they are prostitutes. They're promiscuous, they're monogamous, they're recent virgins. They get pregnant under all kinds of circumstances: consensual sex, nonconsensual sex, sex that falls somewhere between consensual and nonconsensual. Some are drunk or using drugs, some never even touch an aspirin. Some use no birth control, some use birth control that fails.

Yes, I hope that we can find a way to reduce the number of abortions performed in this country. But I hope that happens because we are supporting safe sex education; encouraging our daughters and sons to not be scared to ask questions about sex and pregnancy; recognizing the value of organizations such as Planned Parenthood; and most importantly, by providing good health care to all women and men, no matter what their income.

Talkin' Loud & Sayin' Nothing (You Can't Tell Me How to Run My Mess)

2012-01-18T23:17:00.000-06:00

Wait a minute
Shape up your bag, don't worry about mine
My thing is together and doin' fine
Good luck to you over there
There's a lot of wrong
Just keep on singin', just keep on singin'
Just keep on singin', keep on singin'...

Revisiting Scout, Atticus, and Boo

2012-01-18T20:42:00.000-06:00

I finished reading Love by Toni Morrison last week (my least favorite of hers that I've read, which is to say, it was still quite good) and promptly started scanning my bookshelves for my next read. My collector's edition of To Kill a Mockingbird caught my eye, and I immediately decided now was the time to re-read it. By chance, both of these books were Christmas presents from my pops. Have I mentioned lately that my dad is the coolest? Cause he's the coolest.

Atticus & Scout

Sunday night, I started reading, and couldn't stop. I read all the way until the jury was out at Tom Robinson's trial when I remembered that I had to work the next day and should probably give it a rest. I didn't have time to pick it up again until last night, and then I gleefully read until I got to the last, beautiful sentence.

I can't expect that everyone else is such a fanatic that, like me, they own a To Kill a Mockingbird t-shirt, or have annoyed a table of friends at a late-night diner by quoting, YES, quoting this story with their brother. (That actually happened. Just ask my friend Beth, who gifted me with the aforementioned t-shirt the Christmas after this memorable event.)

But even so, it's safe to assume we all were required to read this in high school, right? RIGHT? And you've watched the movie, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch?

RIGHT?

Ok, I'll calm down. But even though I know the story by heart, when I got to the end last night, good God was I all choked up. The final scene, Atticus reads to Scout as Jem's sleeping. Boo Radley's just rescued the kids from Bob Ewell, whose character scared the complete shit out of me when I was a kid (you know, the scene where he's staggering toward them in the car). As Atticus puts the half-asleep Scout in bed, they have this exchange:

He guided me to the bed and sat me down. He lifted my legs and put me under the cover.

'An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things ... Atticus, he was real nice ...'

His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me.

'Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.'

He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

Atticus & Tom Robinson

It's so simple, but it's a masterpiece.

To Kill a Mockingbird is the only book Harper Lee has ever published in her lifetime. Though the universal greatness of it does make me wonder, why weren't there more? Are there more? At the same time, it's enough. That's how good, and important, I believe this book is.

Unfortunately, I can't find all my favorite moments as video clips from the movie, but at the very least, here's Atticus in the courtroom, making his closing statements in defense of Tom Robinson:

Now, who wants to hang out and quote To Kill a Mockingbird?

Anyone?

Monday Mix Tapes: Lana Del Rey No Longer Fire of Interwebs' Loins; I Remember Other Music Still Exists

2012-01-16T22:20:00.000-06:00

So, I was planning on talking about Lana Del Rey's SNL performance for this week's mix tapes, but then I remembered THE ENTIRE INTERNET ALREADY IS.

So nervous! So..out of breath? But pretty!

Jezebel hilariously called my GF a "Valley of the Dolls cosplayer" and rather harshly described how "she mumble-moaned her way through both performances with the dead eyes and quaalude-slacked limbs of an American Apparel model." ("That was way harsh, Tai.")

Pretty Much Amazing summed it up with: "It was… pretty painful to watch. We aren’t sure why she tries to hit odd notes that leave her too breathless to keep up with her lyrics. It just doesn’t work."

Valley of the Dolls? LANA? IS THAT YOU?

Vulture backed off my darling a bit, with a rather spot-on commentary. This is my favorite (emphasis is mine):

It didn't go too well. Granted, the sound at SNL is famously bad, and Del Rey was visibly nervous, but still — the timid falsetto, shaky jumps between registers, that lip snarl. It was not her best work. And the fact that a Lana Del Rey performance can really only consist of Lana Del Rey standing dead center, preening, does not help her cause. How many moody pirouettes can one woman do, over the course of four minutes? (Like two and a half, by our count, during "Video Games.")

Things had been quiet in LDR land — the "Born to Die" tigers and general yelling fatigue had seemed to briefly calm the waters. But with the rocky SNL performance, we've now arrived at "backlash to the backlash to the backlash" on LDR's Undulating Curve of Shifting Expectations (or does it just switch back to Overhyped? Are we in the Backlash phase of the Backlash curve?). Meanwhile, Born to Die is not due until January 30. How many more times can we cycle through this thing in two weeks? Will everyone start feeling guilty for making fun of an obviously terrified 25-year-old on her first live TV performance? Or will the non-Internet-faithful, who just met Lana on Saturday, shame the rest of us for ever caring in the first place? Will Lana Del Rey run for president? Really, anything could happen at this point.

And who would have thought that BRIAN WILLIAMS would be such a hater? HA! (Also, why haven't I ever brought my love of Brian Williams to the attention of the Interwebs? Cause he's awesome.)

I guess now should be the time where I follow up with videos of the SNL performances, but I can't and I won't, dammit. Go watch it EVERYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET. And then watch this performance instead:

So her stage presence isn't the greatest here either. What is the greatest is that dress. And when she sings "let me fuck you hard in the pouring rain (you like your girls insane)" — now, can we all take a time out from LDR now? I'm worn out.

Therefore, in other music news:

When I wasn't annoyed that the Interwebs was exploding over my sweetie pie's SNL performance, I was getting increasingly excited that I'll be seeing The Lemonheads this Friday night. That's right! The Lemonheads! No one I've told seems to share my excitement. Whatever.

Today also happened to be one of those days where I was smiling to myself like a lunatic during my commute to and from work, because what I was listening to seemed to match perfectly with the day, and probably more accurately, my mood. (In case you're confused, no, I did not get MLK day off from work. Major boo. I didn't realize Ron Paul was running the joint! Gross. I just mentioned RP on my blog.)

On the way in this morning, it was Charlotte Gainsbourg. The sun was shining brightly enough to start melting the snow, and the water was coming down from the El tracks, on to the street, as I walked on Lake Street toward the office. Listening to this:

After work, the streets still seemed more deserted than usual, and the air felt oddly warm and slightly eerie as I stepped out the door. While I waited to cross the street, I put on Four Tet. "Love Cry" carried me nearly the entire walk to the train, and the repetitive beat turned hypnotic as I walked along, noticing how the street lamps bounced off the water glistening on the near-empty sidewalks. To be a total geek, I'll just say my mundane daily walk felt kinda magical due to the combination of all of it. That's right: kinda magical.

Well, that's it, guys. I promise not to talk about LDR for at least a week now. Off to the races...

Sick Day

2012-01-15T17:05:00.000-06:00

When I was little, staying home from school sick typically meant spending the day at Grandma Hamm’s. Mom would drop me off on her way to school, and then it’d be a day at Grandma’s until she’d be back around 4 to bring me home.

I both loved and hated this. Loved, because a sick day at Grandma’s meant I could lay in her bed and read old Nancy Drew novels cover to cover, interrupted only by Grandma checking on me every so often. I hated it for silly reasons that seemed incredibly not silly to my seven-, eight-, or nine-year-old self: Grandma always had Robitussin cough drops in awful flavors, unlike the Luden’s cherry cough drops I preferred, that basically just tasted like candy and did absolutely nothing. I was convinced she’d had the same bag of cough drops for decades, because of the way the paper would stick to the cough drop as if the two things were actually merging together. I’d force myself not to make a face as I unwrapped the cough drop and slowly place it in my mouth, because Grandma would be watching, and as soon as I’d make a face, she’d scoff, “Oh, it’s not that bad” and I’d immediately feel ridiculous and sulk into my book for the next half hour. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was worse than a rebuke from Grandma Hamm. Which was probably why I typically did everything possible to avoid a rebuke at all costs, even when sick. So I’d choke on the cough drop and mind my own business until Mom came to get me after school.

It was understood that if either my brother or me were out of school sick, it was the other one’s responsibility to collect the homework, which was particularly annoying if it required lugging one or more of my brother’s books, in addition to mine, home from school. Most days, we rode the bus, but if one of us had a sick day at Grandma’s, it was more likely that Mom would pick the other one up from school. When the tables were turned, and Jay had been sick at Grandma’s all day, I’d run into Grandma’s, feeling smug that I was the healthy one, knowing Grandma would be excited to see me, unlike Mom, who would often be cranky and “so stressed out” that she didn’t seem to be as delighted by me as I felt was necessary.

But although there was something special, and somewhat sacred, about those sick days at Grandma’s, there was one sick day from my childhood that I’ve always remembered quite vividly, at least in part.

It was my second day in a row having to stay home from school, and I had a fever. For whatever reason, my mom decided to stay home with me that day. I felt miserable, and my whole body, particularly my legs, ached and ached. I was probably whining about it. I mean, who am I kidding—I was most certainly whining about it.

But that day, I wasn't told to quit complaining, or to toughen up. Instead, Mom sat on the couch with me, my legs propped on her lap, and we watched The Sound of Music together.

That’s it: The part of the day I remember vividly. It’s not much, but it’s enough.

As an adult, it’s different. You can’t whine to your mom when your body aches from a fever. Your parents don’t ultimately make the decision about whether or not you go to school (work) when you’re sick, or when it’s the right time to go back. In college, when I first started having to deal with the reality of becoming an adult and taking care of myself, being sick also brought this strange sort of homesickness along with it. It wasn't just that I wanted to go home—I wanted to go back in time, when Mom or Grandma (or both) were still there to take care of me.

I think about mom, and Grandma Hamm, often when I’m sick. At 27, I’m a little too old to be whining and wishing I had a parent or grandparent to take care of me when I’m not feeling well. That’s for sure.

But I guess it’ll never change that every time I’m sick, there’s a little part of me that will always think of, if only for a moment, Nancy Drew and The Sound of Music.

To Memorize A Pack Of Cards, I Create A Story In My Head ...

2012-01-08T13:51:00.000-06:00

Um, you guys:

Is this the best video ever, or is it the best video ever?

A Settled or Regular Tendency or Practice, Esp. One That Is Hard to Give Up

2012-01-04T20:50:00.001-06:00

habit |ˈhabit|
noun
1 a settled or regular tendency or practice, esp. one that is hard to give up: this can develop into a bad habit | we stayed together out of habit.

Although I hate to be cliché, sometimes there’s validity to certain clichés (Read: New Year’s Resolutions) if you’re really serious about something. I’ve been thinking a lot in the last week about my goals for this year, and the active steps I want and need to take to reach those goals. Doing so, in actuality, is something that’s been building up for several months, as I’ve been trying—and yes, it requires actively trying—to work on being a better me, if I may continue to sound like a total cliché.

Mostly, what I mean by that is actively working hard to achieve what I want out of my life. Taking work seriously. Thinking about where I want my career to lead. Writing. My health.

And so on. And so on. Insert the other standard clichés about how people hope to better themselves. Is it still a cliché when it is your reality?

There’s something about all this thinking and pondering and planning out this person you want to become. It’s inspiring, yes, and helps me stay motivated. But somewhere along the line, I tend to forget about the person I already am, and like. Or maybe more accurately, certain things in life I really enjoy. Little things, you know, little habits and behaviors. Like the way when I order an orange San Pellegrino at my favorite coffee shop, Café Mustache, I never take a glass of ice so I can pour it from the can, but instead, I grab a straw. Once I’m seated at my table, I peel the top foil off slowly, click on the top of the can with my nails, then pop it open and put the straw in, afterward taking only slow sips. At no other time in my life or in any situation does it occur to me to drink out of a can in this way, or to really enjoy a drink like this at all. I like how it looks, sitting next to my laptop as I write for work, and how it tastes perfectly clear and delicious as it comes up the straw and then down my throat, smooth and refreshing.

It’s silly, in a way—I don’t even order that every time I go to the coffee shop. Most of the time, I’m just drinking glass after glass of ice water and nursing the same large El Jalisco (seriously, go try it sometime) for the entire afternoon I sit there, writing. But for many months, dragging my laptop the few blocks to Café Mustache on Wednesdays was my habit, my thing, because I work from home on Wednesdays. Many weeks my girlfriends and I would all meet over there so we could work together, or just sit and talk. Or like the day after the big blizzard last year, Rachel and I trudged over there, knee deep in snow and basically walking down the middle of California Avenue because there was no other way to get through the heaps of snow. There have been plenty of solitude afternoons spent at the coffee shop, but there have also been the heart to hearts with Lauren, swapping music with Natalie, the Tarot readings at the big table, or just a group of us laughing and talking, maybe a little too loudly. It was a comfortable habit, one I looked forward to each week, and more so if I knew one or more of the girls were meeting me when I was finishing up with work for the day.

So today — in the midst of all this thinking about creating new habits and breaking old, bad ones —I decided instead to revisit this special one of mine. It had been months since I’d worked at the coffee shop on Wednesday, and months since all of us had met up there together, and both are for plenty of reasons, like changes in schedules, one or all of us being too busy, or for me, just needing a change of pace. I had somehow gotten sick of my routine, and as with other places in the neighborhood, I had started to avoid the coffee shop like it was haunted. But when I walked in today, right when there were plenty of open tables and Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” record was playing, I felt the same sort of happiness I feel every time I pull my car into my dad’s driveway. Like I was coming home.

I had my San Pellegrino, with the straw, of course, and a bowl of the veggie chili. It was everything I’d wanted it to be. That morning, I’d been struggling to write and focus, but once I was seated at the familiar big table, I just kept writing. After awhile, I took a little break and texted Lauren, and right then they started playing Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” which for a lot of reasons makes me think of Lauren. (The year we had our joint birthday party, we’d sat at the bar together, feeling anxious before everyone showed up, and the only thing that seemed to calm us was the song “Videotape” for whatever reason.) It was an odd, but wonderful, moment of timing.

By 5:15, I was finishing up with my work and still feeling good, but a little uneasy. About what, I’m not sure exactly. I packed up to leave, and as I walked out the door and down the sidewalk, my left hand caught in my tangled ear buds in my pocket and my right hand hoisting up my bag, I almost turned my ankle by sort of tripping over my own boot, right after I passed someone I thought I knew, but maybe I didn't. Because I wasn't sure, and mostly because I'd almost tripped over nothing, I didn't turn around to double check.

Some things never change. Although I’d like to hope that one day I’ll stop tripping over my own feet, that’s probably something to add to that list. But just like new habits can make you feel accomplished, sometimes there really is nothing better than indulging in the comfort of an old, safe one.

My iPod was on shuffle as I headed home, feeling like I'd just seen a ghost. This wasn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just a feeling. And this is the song that came on:

If it had been "Thinking About You," I probably would have died, or at the very least, completely tripped. But even so:

I got something, I got something I don’t know…

In Which I Ring In The Blog's First Post of 2012, The Only Way I Know How.

2012-01-03T22:44:00.000-06:00

Hey Rainbow Groupies!

Layla wanted to tell you all something.

No, seriously, she does. I'm not forcing her to sit on my lap or anything. Go on, tell them Layla.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!


Confession: Neither of these cats are Layla. They are frauds I found on the Google.

Anyway, happy 2012!

I'm planning on a more blog-tastic year than last, so I thought I'd ring in the first blog post of the year with cats. Because they are the mascot of the Interwebs.

You might have thought it didn't get any geekier than the cat pictures. But it does. Oh, it does.

In accordance with my goals for the year (Note: I use the term goal, not resolution, because I don't like to be a joiner), I just finished writing and submitting a piece for an undisclosed publication that of course I'll shout about wildly, aka typing words on my Macbook to be posted on this blog, if the piece gets published.

Another confession: Those pictures of Layla and me are from ages ago, back in 2011, when Layla still sat on my lap long enough for me to force her to take pictures with me and my forehead still made an appearance. Bangs, guys. Bangs.

Happy New Year. Love,
Alison(composes), Layla, and my Retro Camera iPhone app

NYE Contemplations: In 2012, Time to Treat Writing Like a Job.

2011-12-31T15:06:00.001-06:00

So: Amanda Hocking. I'm about six months late on this one—seriously, have you heard of this woman?—but I was reading about 20 young up-and-coming professionals during my (admittedly cliché) NYE afternoon of writing down my goals for the coming year, and I am astounded.

Amanda Hocking has already grossed approximately $2 million from self-publishing her 10 novels on Amazon. And now, she has a multimillion dollar, multiple book deal with St. Martin's Press. She is 26.

What stands out the most to me about her story was one line in the NYT profile about her, remarking on the turning point in her writing career and success (emphasis is mine):

It was January 2009, and Hocking started treating writing as a job. Before, it was “something I always did . . . like playing video games.” After, she wrote even when she didn’t feel like it. Over the next year, she wrote “at least five or six new novels.”

I have definitely been guilty of treating my writing as merely something I do. So in 2012, my main goal is to start treating writing like a job. (And in case I'm being confusing, yes, I do still have a full-time job as a copywriter. I'm talking about my writing.)

Maybe I should give Ms. Hocking a call. Maybe I should seriously think about writing YA fiction. Or maybe, I should just shut up and write.

What are your goals for 2012?

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Make some merry, and please, don't drink and drive!

End of Year Mix Tapes Special Edition: My Top 20 Tracks of 2011

2011-12-22T12:37:00.000-06:00

Are you guys as excited about this as I am? I mean, suure, you can go check out Pitchfork's staff picks of the top 100 tracks of 2011, but that doesn't answer the pressing question:

What was Alison(composes) listening to all year?

So finally, rightnow, I have your answer! These are the tunes that got me through a year of riding the blue line to and from work, the tracks that inspired white girl dances in the kitchen, made me pound the steering wheel of my Ford Focus in glee as I scurried around Logan Square, and even the ones that made my sad bastard heart overflow with a bittersweet happiness as I hit replay again and again.

I was gonna wait until NYE to post this, but chances are I'm not going to fall in love with 20 new tracks in the next nine days. So, without further ado...

20. The Roots (featuring Phonte & Dice Raw) — "One Time"
Partly because I'm always late for the bus, partly because I love Phonte, and largely because: "Stick to the script, fuck your improv."

19. tUnE-yArDs — "Bizness"
Because I really needed a song in my life that gave me a valid excuse to paint my face and run around wailing, "WHAT'S THE BIZNESS, YEAH?" I made it to Pitchfork just in time to see Merrill Garbus delight a crowd of teeny-boppers covered in bright paint and dirt, and I loved every minute of it.

18. Kanye West & Jay-Z — "Otis"
"Sounds so soulful, don't you agree?" At first listen, I sorta hated what they were doing to one of my all-time favorite songs—that would be "Try a little tenderness" kids—but then I just couldn't help it. It was so gotdam catchy! "Guess I got my swagger back!" Etc! Etc! Otis!

17. Dum Dum Girls — "Coming Down"
It's the type of song I wish I'd had when I was an angsty teen. But whatever, I had Fiona, Poe, and Mazzy Star back then. (Dare I mention the obvious Mazzy Star comparisons?) I just love hearing Dee Dee moan, "I think I'm coming down..." repeatedly. Yeah.

16. Fleet Foxes — "Helplessness Blues"
"I was raised up believing I was somehow unique..." and from then on, you actually feel the helplessness blues, but at the same time, you're so damn happy that it doesn't really matter. At least, that's how this song makes me feel. You tell me:

15. Frank Ocean — "Novacane"
The man says it himself: "This is some visionary shit."

14. Beyoncé — "Countdown"
Look, I tried to fight it. When I first heard "4" I thought it was good, but a little bleh. I was bored with the arguments about whether Bey Bey singing about girls running the world was an empowerment anthem or actually the opposite, and I didn't really like that song much anyway. Whatever. But I just can't lie: I fucking love this song. And the way she curls up her lip right as she sings, "if you leave me you're outta your mind." Believe that!

13. The Rapture — "How Deep Is Your Love?"
Just try not to immediately start bouncing around to this. And then scream: "HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE?" It's deep, guys, it's deep.

12. St. Vincent — "Champagne Year"
I just love when Annie sings, "I make a living telling people what they want to hear/it's not a killing, but it's enough to keep the cobwebs clear." I may or may not have written a poem about this album. "It's not a perfect plan, but it's the one we got."

11. Adele — "Don't You Remember"
As you'll see, Miss Adele makes it on this list twice. I know, I know, but it's accurate. I would be scared to know how many times I listened to this song this year. I'd be even more scared to know if the upstairs neighbors heard me belting out off-key in the shower, "I know I have a fickle heart, and a bitterness, and a wandering eye and a heaviness in my head" — but I really don't care. What I do wanna know is, why don't you remember?

10. Feist — "How Come You Never Go There"
I love Leslie, and I knew she wouldn't disappoint with her new album this year. Particularly when her first single had her sweetly singing about how "you carry on as though I don't love you" — I would never, Leslie! (Whoa, whoa, whoa)

9. Little Dragon — "Ritual Union"
What an opening track to an album. I loved it immediately. (Which of course you already know all about, since I blogged about my obsession back in August.) This song doesn't just make you wanna dance, it makes you wanna full out wiggle your body like a madwoman. Or is that only me?

8. Alabama Shakes — "Hold On"
So what if two weeks ago I had never heard of the Alabama Shakes? So. What. I know them now, and holy shit:

7. The Black Keys — "Lonely Boy"
I almost hate to knock this all the way back to the #7 slot, BECAUSE OF ITS AWESOMENESS, but alas, El Camino came out quite late in the year, and I had many months of listening to other 2011 tracks repeatedly. However, late in the year or no, this might be my favorite music video since, um, EVER. The happiness! It's almost too much to bear:

6. The National — "Think You Can Wait"
Obviously. There were a few weeks where I listened to this song at least twice a day. It was getting sick, me sitting at my cubicle with Matt Berninger pleading with me, "I'm out of my mind...think you can wait?" Fuuuuck. And surprise! I blogged about this one too, back in May, right at the peak of my obsession and realizing that I likely was, in fact, out of my mind right along with Matt.

"I'll try, but I couldn't be better..." It kills me. It just kills me.

5. James Blake — "Limit to Your Love"
Out of my devout loyalty to Leslie Feist's original, I tried my damnedest not to fall in love with this version. That lasted about 10 minutes. At Pitchfork, as the bass shook the entire park, I leaned against a tree as this played, and had it not been for the wasted, chubby hipster in tight jean shorts slow dancing in front of me, or the fact that I was at an outdoor music festival, I might have wept.

4. Lykke Li — "Get Some"
Duh. My Lykke love is more than well-documented. But this! "I'm your prostitute. You gon get some." Well, shit, Lykke.

3. Lana Del Rey — "Video Games"
Do I have to preface this one with anything? I mean, I wrote a poem inspired by this track, for chrissakes. "Born to Die" might have beat out this one for my favorite track of hers, cause "I like my girls insane," but I have to stay true to why I first fell in love. Oh, and in case you hadn't heard, Lana Del Rey is pretty.

2. Adele - "Rolling in the Deep"
My GOD, Adele. "21" has proven to be one of my favorite albums, like, ever. You know, me and the rest of the world. This is why:

1. TV on the Radio — "Will Do"
Is it because I love Tunde Adebimpe so dearly? Is it because deep down, I'm secretly a romantic? I don't know. All I know is, Tunde crooning about unrequited love makes my heart fucking hurt, and considering I listened to this track, and this album, even more than Adele this year (if you can believe it) it has more than earned the coveted spot at the top of my 2011 list. There's more I could say, but I won't, other than: "Oh my reddest rose! Caldera! Set it off!"

Monday Mix Tapes: Makin' Merry

2011-12-19T18:45:00.001-06:00

Just in case you guys didn't get the memo: It's the most wonderful time of year again!

I want my Ninja Turtles, I want my bike, I want my Sega Genesis, I want my Nintendo...

Shameless Self-Promotion: I'm in Bitch Magazine!

2011-12-08T21:41:00.000-06:00

Ok, guys, I can't hold out any longer. Obviously, you've already picked up your copies of this issue of Bitch, or better yet, had yours mailed to you, right?

If so, then you know why I was even happier than usual to open my mailbox and see it nestled inside.

BECAUSE I'M IN IT. That's right! I'M IN IT.

Flip open to page 22 and there you'll see it: my dream come true. My byline in my favorite magazine!

It's just a wee little article that's in The Bitch List section. But it's something! To add to my excitement over writing a piece—albeit teeny tiny—for Bitch, it was promoting what happens to be my friend and co-worker Krista's blog, Effing Dykes.

Not that she really needed promotion, cause her blog's awesomeness speaks for itself—it won Best LGBT Weblog in this year's Bloggies—but I was so excited to write about it. When I first discovered Effing Dykes, after Krista nonchalantly mentioned during a coffee break that she had a blog ("Oh, me too!" I squealed, completely clueless that I was talking to a famous blogger), I spent an entire Saturday afternoon gleefully reading the entirety of the blog's archive.

It's hilarious. And basically, Krista's awesomeness shines through in every post. If you're a lady who likes other ladies, and apparently you've been under a rock because you're reading this and not Effing Dykes, let me just say this to you:

YOU'RE WELCOME.

In one of my favorite posts, which I referenced in my Bitch article, ahem, may I just say that when she's talking about all the "Brandi Carlile concert t-shirts" at the office, that would be regarding yours truly. Who knew I was so mysterious? Hee hee. Oh, wait. I'm not.

Last weekend, I stood in Barnes & Noble and grinned at the copies of Bitch. I may or may not have also been slightly caressing the copy at the top of the stack. Not creepy at all.

Why are you still here? Go pick up your copy of Bitch! Then go read Effing Dykes! NOW!

Romantic Despair

2011-12-08T10:33:00.000-06:00

Good lord, Thurston. (Can I call you Thurston?)

I was not at all prepared for this shot to the heart on my morning commute.

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: The Best of All My Days (O You)

2011-12-06T21:03:00.000-06:00

ANIMALS
by Frank O'Hara

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

Dive Right In

2011-12-01T08:00:00.001-06:00

[via bon-aventures]

My mother would enter a pool in one of two ways:

By creeping slowly, one step at a time, into the shallow end, splashing water on herself, rubbing her arms, and making these embarrassing “Shoo! Whoo!” noises until finally, after what seemed like hours, plunging her whole body underwater.

Or, she’d walk to the deep end, stand at the edge, and dive right in. She’d then swim the length of the pool.

She looked so powerful. Like she could rule the world. I loved when she’d dive right in when we were in a crowded hotel pool—as always, she was completely oblivious and unconcerned with her surroundings, or if anyone was watching. Not that she was an expert diver or swimmer. It was the freedom in it: she plunged in and swam.

I never understood why she didn’t just dive in every time. What I also didn’t understand, but now do, is that there was a freedom in both ways of entering the pool. And the beauty of both was: the utter lack of self-consciousness in the acts. Sometimes she wanted to gradually move into the pool. Sometimes she wanted to dive. Who cares if anyone’s watching?

I didn’t go to a pool once this past summer. I went to the beach with my friends Lauren and Rachel on the 4th of July, though. We all shared a blanket, ate fruit, and drank sangria out of the plastic flag cups that my mom had bought years ago. Although we had spent what seemed like hours searching for parking, then getting snacks, then walking to the beach, by the time we were on the blanket it didn’t matter. I wondered why I didn’t go to the beach every weekend and sprawl out on a blanket.

After awhile, of course, it reached the point of uncomfortably hot. Did I walk to the water with Rachel, or with Lauren? I don’t remember, but what I do remember is this:

When I walked to the edge of the water, it was freezing, but I kept walking, step by step. I started splashing the water on my thighs, on my stomach, and rubbing my arms. As I did, I went, “Whoo! Ohfuckitscold! Shoo!” Or something like that.

I didn’t get it until just now.

When My Brother & I Discuss Hip Hop

2011-11-30T20:45:00.000-06:00

This is pretty typical:

You should probably also know that there was a reference to "hip hopsters" in that conversation. Also, it most certainly won't amp up either of our cred. Marco just spent Thanksgiving with the Hamm family. He knows what he's dealing with now. In fact, I almost didn't post this at all, over embarrassment—embarrassment that I misspelled Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Yeah.

Oh, and we're talking about Childish Gambino, in case you missed it on NPR, geeks.

The Comfort of Cats

2011-11-30T19:30:00.000-06:00

I think one of the reasons I gladly accept being a cat lady is because of the ridiculous joy my cats bring to my life. I know, I know, you're thinking: What a weirdo! You're blogging about your cats?

Damn right I am. Here's why, and why I wanna talk about Miss Layla (pictured above) in particular. She's one of my two cats. (Only two. I swear.)

Back in the day, six years ago, when I'd graduated from college and was about to start real adulthood, I decided the thing to do, obviously, was to get a cat.

I would no longer have roommates. I would be a grown up. I had visions of blissful Sunday afternoons spent curled up in my old hand-me-down chair I'd had since high school, reading a book, drinking tea, with a beautiful long-haired feline perched on my lap, purring.

Not long after I expressed this desire to my Aunt Linda, who had so many barn cats running around the yard that they were impossible to count, she and my cousin Claire told me they'd found my cat. I was in Italy at an internet cafe when I got the picture from Claire of my new kitty. Her name was Mufasa. I beamed. She was beautiful! Perfect!

When I returned home a month later, I eagerly went to the farmhouse to collect Mufasa. But, surprise! Linda had also brought in another kitten, a particularly sick, teeny one, and nursed her back to health. Knowing me, she was rightly convinced that I would gladly take two cats instead of one, especially because this one and Mufasa had bonded. When I first saw the cats, they were curled up, playing on the floor together.

It never crossed my mind to say no. I promptly named her Layla, and took her and Mufasa home. Well, actually, Linda brought them to my Bloomington apartment a short time later, but...details, details. Whatever. The point is, I now had two cats.

I realize that I'm talking about cats, here, so I'll try not to get too weird. Now, I don't play favorites with my children. I love them both. But Layla is this crazy, unique little being. She high fives. She wags her tail like a dog. She has scar tissue on both of her eyes, and she sneezes constantly.

Over the years, Layla's had her share of health problems, the worst being the first year I had her, when I had to give her a course of five different antibiotics. This meant that, twice a day, I had to take my finger and push a pill down her throat. Five times. I became adept at this, and thought with pride that maybe I did have some of my Grandma Hamm's chops. For instance, when I'd go to the barn to collect eggs with Grandma Hamm, she'd just shove her hand under a nesting hen without flinching, and place the eggs in her bucket. Grandma would scoff at my mother's obvious terror of the geese and chickens, and if I showed the least bit of fear while we were collecting eggs, she'd make me follow suit, to my terror. I know that's really not a big deal to all you farm folks, but ask my oldest brother sometime about how this same woman also picked up a possum by the tail. She was a hard ass.

"What are you scared of?" Grandma Hamm would say, as I watched her with big eyes, or flinched as all the animals came running as we threw out the corn.

I mention this, because it's something I say lately to Layla, who has become a bit of a scaredy cat. Yes: 1) I talk to Layla; 2) I just called her a scaredy cat.

One minute, she'll be sitting on my lap, purring. The next, her nails will clamp onto my thigh, and then she'll bolt. I don't know what's scaring her. I try to comfort her as best I can. Because, after all, that's what she does for me.

I'd only had the cats for a few weeks when, one day, I came back to my apartment after a bad day at work, flopped on my stomach on the bed, and started to cry. No more than a minute later, I felt Layla pressing her little paws against my back, one at a time. (I knew it was Layla because Mufasa was perched near my head, staring at me in her cat way.) Layla laid down and started rubbing her little cat face against the back of my neck, purring loudly. I felt better instantly.

I know it's scoffed at, this idea of cat ladies and their blogs, but I'll succumb to the stereotype for today. Because even when Layla claws the shit out of me when she gets scared by something invisible to me, I know that she'll also high five me later, wag her tail, and tilt her head up at me as she sits on my lap, purring and content.

Not long ago, I was really anxious about Layla's odd behavior. But then, right when I needed her the most, she was there. I wrote about it in my journal the next day:

Last night she slept with me, curled up in the crook of my arm like old times.

I held on to her, tight. And laid my face against her fur, feeling the consistent purr, and the comfort of each little cat breath she took.

Look, it's really not even just about the cats. It's about comfort. Recently, I wondered what my friends without pets do for tiny comforts such as these. I wonder how lonely certain nights in my apartment in Bloomington, or Chicago, might have been, had I not had these two furry things to care for and love.

What gives you comfort?

Pearls & Spikes

2011-11-27T12:47:00.000-06:00

It was time to go, almost
I circled the jewelry stand slowly
Clutching a black lace shirt
And a creamy, soft Obey tee
M was sitting by the books
Waiting and silent

I stared at the jewelry.
Gently fingering the long earrings,
The delicate pieces
Waiting for something to jump out
To speak to me

Any of it might have been fine
But I felt the need for something
Specific,
Something to be mine
Then there it was:

A chunky mix of delicate and sharp
Pearls & spikes
Circle & dagger

I ran my fingers across the white balls
The black spikes
Maybe I was in a bit of a daze
The cashier with the long, messy locks
Came over to ask if he could help
He had one perfect curl
Resting against his neck tattoo.
The rest was a tangled and beautiful wreck.
I looked up at him but was quiet,
With a ‘thank you, I’m fine’

I pictured the necklace, resting heavy,
But not too heavy,
On my collarbone

Glanced over my shoulder
And M was still there,
Sitting, silent
The white ear buds dangled
From his ears
A sharp contrast from the black
Of his hat, of his jacket

I ran my fingers across the soft white pearls,
Again, the sharp black spike
Pulled the necklace off the stand
Quickly, I walked back to the shirts
Placed the Obey tee back on the pile

The necklace was it.
It was specific, if only to me.
Mine.
I only found the pearls fine
Mixed in with the spikes.
Together, it was beautiful.
Without them, it would have been just another necklace.

In Which I Embark On a Series of Essays

2011-11-21T22:13:00.000-06:00

In another take on a writing/blogging experiment, I've decided, right now, at this very moment, to start an essay series on this blog. Just kidding. I actually put quite a bit of thought into this.

So, since you're all DYING to know, here's the deal:

Rather than randomly posting my essays here and there as I have previously, I'd like to start using this blog more productively in the hope that I can ultimately piece these writings together as a collection.

It's tentatively called: A Walking Contradiction. And here is the first essay.

A Walking Contradiction

I. Kickball Days

When I was a kid, my closet was a crazy mishmash of hand-me-downs from my brother and new, “girly” clothes, typically from Kids-R-Us. I loved everything about Kids-R-Us—the shopping carts with colorful balls that slid back and forth across the handle, the “Girls” section, everything.

8th birthday, 1992

Maybe what I loved most about going to that store was that whatever outfit I found, it was all mine—the flowers, prints, purples, or otherwise girly aspects of it marked it as something special and new, that was mine, and only mine.

But this is contradictory, because I loved my hand-me-downs just as much, and wore them like a uniform as I played kickball with my classmates at recess. I played “like a boy” because unlike many of the girls who would sometimes join in, I did not wince as the ball came rolling toward me, nor whiff it and giggle; rather, I would kick it soundly, run as hard and madly as I could, and when on defense, throw it fiercely at a running player. I would do this, with my boy tennis shoes strapped to my feet, as I always favored the blacks and reds of the boy’s shoes over the annoying pinks and glitters marking all the girl’s shoes.

Even then, during those playground days, I was overcome by intense pride and shifting loyalties. When another girl would inadvertently prove the boys supposedly right, that “we,” the girls, weren’t good at sports, thanks to a high-pitched squeal as she missed the ball with a poorly placed kick from a pink-shoelaced foot, I would shudder with embarrassment and annoyance, but also yell at any boy that poked fun. I’d think how I’d dispel their notions with my next kick or great catch. Worse, though—or more confusing, perhaps—was my occasional anger when another girl, more like me, stepped up to the plate. I felt an unmistakable but disconcerting fury, rather than allegiance, to my fellow tomboys.

Damn right, World Cup 94 shirt

These confusing feelings, though nonsensical in many ways, aligned perfectly with the clothes in my closet. I wanted to be both things at once—the girl wearing purple prints with boy’s tennis shoes—and could not understand why no one else seemed to be like me. Instead, there seemed to be definite, concrete lines. Either I was supposed to be a girly girl who whiffed her kicks, or I had to be just like the boys. I felt myself pulled in both directions. By 5th grade, I felt unbearably left out that I was not only unable, but I was completely uninterested in, doing flips on the bars with the other girls, but at the same time, I felt a secret, but immense pride at being the only girl on the basketball court at recess. I missed out on the female bonding, but it was worth it, once I was standing in the line from recess back to class, sweating, beaming, and high-fiving my equally sweaty teammates, the boys.

But then came junior high. I didn’t want to admit that it was no longer simply “okay” to be the tomboy, the only girl on the court with a bunch of boys. Suddenly, everything had changed, and I didn’t like it one bit. The boy who had always been my indoor recess buddy and nemesis in checkers was now calling me the President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. And the boy I’d once traded Kirby Puckett cards with and fought viciously against in tetherball tournaments would no longer look me in the eye.

What happened? I thought. When did it all change?

1997

Everyone was “going with” someone but me, and I felt like a freak. I was awkward, with thick hair that earned me the unfortunate nickname of “Bush,” paired with equally thick eyebrows. Suddenly, the boys no longer thought I was cool for having the newest Adidas or a new Umbro t-shirt. In fact, they barely talked to me at all, and usually it was to talk to my pretty, blonde friend instead.

I continued to be the prude of the group who had never made out with a boy or had a boyfriend. I hated how everyone referred to it as "Frenching" and "going with"—how do you French? where was everyone going?— and above all, I dreaded going to slumber parties where the other girls would share all their boy stories. Just as I could never do a roundoff or a backflip, I had no boy stories that didn’t involve tagging along with my older brother and his friends, and therefore nothing to contribute.

I was deemed safe, still just the tomboy kid sister whose boobs hadn’t come in yet, and maybe never would.

But then they came in. And everything was different, yet again. I lost my role as President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. (Yeah. Shut it, junior high boys!) The older girls who had once looked at me indifferently now eyed me as if I'd done something wrong. The boys who had once not looked at me at all now looked at me all the time.

I don’t know how I looked back at everyone, but I imagine it was a mishmash of wide-eyed stares and squinty, defensive glares. The only time it didn’t matter was when I was safely in a classroom seat, because though I might suddenly have boobs and yet still be awkward, I was also a smart kid, a straight-A student. But in the hallway, cafeteria, or bathroom, it was a different story, and I was terrified. I think I dreaded passing by the pretty older girls even more than the football players who’d whistle or yell as I walked through the gym. I couldn’t figure it out: Was I supposed to be a pretty girl, a smart girl, or a tomboy? Was I allowed to be all of these things?

All the pretty girls flirted easily with the boys, giggling and joking with them. I was alternately terrified of, and in utter disdain for, the boys though. When they’d whistle, I’d feel my body tense and my face flush, like in the old days on the playground when a girl would miss a kick and the boys would laugh it off as typical girl behavior. It didn’t feel like a compliment. It felt like an insult. So I looked straight ahead, head held high, and ignored them.

Again, the confusion. So I was pretty, then? But I couldn’t be, because the pretty girls felt like a breed I didn’t belong to. I hated and was fascinated by my new breasts and I hated and envied the cheerleaders and I just flat out hated the boys.

Suddenly, like loathing being unable to easily fit in with the other girls yet loving being the lone female on the court, like rocking both my Sambas and a pink flowered bag, my breasts had become both a source of power and my own worst enemy.

Kickball days were over.

***********************************************

Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll probably talk more about boobs! Actually, I'm probably going to talk a little about boobs, and a lot about high school, and friends, and gossip.

Monday Mix Tapes: No Restitution! La Da Da!

2011-11-21T21:11:00.000-06:00

If I just read the lyrics:

And I think I'm going crazy, Yes I think I'm going crazy
Because I've known, all along
there's no restitution for what we've done
No resolution and I
I just can't take it anymore

I'd think, fuck, that must be an incredibly depressing song—and of course I'd be delighted to hear the melancholy doom and gloom of it all—but I think it's safe to say Mayer Hawthorne puts a pretty whimsical spin on the notion of going crazy over the lack of restitution, the absence of a resolution.

Check out my favorite geek:

And so I think I'll do the same. You know, be whimsical about the arbitrariness of ... it all. Cause really, there often is no restitution, and "I just can't fake it anymore."

California might be sinking.

If it is, why do you stick around?

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: Digressions

2011-11-15T23:36:00.000-06:00

I was going to transcribe a Frank O'Hara poem for today's poetry slam,
but really, it's tonight, and tonight is almost tomorrow,
& I just wrote my last Groupon for the day
in bed with a heating pad
listening to Tori Amos, and only Tori,
for the first time in months & months.
I'm wearing my Sly shirt & forgot to take off
the wristband from Lauren's show
& I was going to type out O'Hara's DIGRESSION ON NUMBER I, 1948,
mostly because it starts with the line,
"I am ill today but I am not too ill/I am not ill at all"
which sums up everything & nothing
of my own day,
because I am ill today but not too ill,
& I might not be ill at all, really,
plus I'm not sure if I even get his second stanza
& as I started typing it I felt like a fraud
because I didn't know what a "complicated Metzinger"
was in the slightest
& right as I thought that, the book fell shut
& I reopened it to the wrong page,
instead to his poem
YOU ARE GORGEOUS AND I'M COMING
and I couldn't help but smile,
because I get that, if only that:

"yes it may be that dark and purifying wave, the death of boredom
nearing the heights themselves may destroy in the pure air
to be further complicated, confused, empty but refilling, exposed to light"

This isn't about you, so you probably won't care.

Saturn Returns!

2011-11-09T08:21:00.000-06:00

Am I the only one who didn’t know about Saturn returns?

Hmm, interesting… for the next three years, I will answer any question as to how I’m doing with some remark about my “Saturn return.”

“How are you?”

me: “Oh, you know, with this return of Saturn happening, I’m just a little overcome with crossing into the new threshold of maturity.”

IT’S GONNA BE AWESOME.

But seriously, I stumbled across a mention of this in an article this morning and was intrigued. Here’s what I’ve discovered, via my “extensive” five minutes of research.

Apparently this hasn’t really hit me full force yet, since I’m 27, but oh, it’s coming.

Via astrology.com (hey, it’s better than Wikipedia, right!?):

Each twenty-nine years naturally presents us with the challenge to rise to new levels of awareness, or face the consequences of having failed to gain the wisdom required so to do. When Saturn in the heavens returns to the zodiacal degree where he was placed in your birth chart, you are said to be experiencing what astrologers call your Saturn Return – one of the most important times of your life. It only happens once every 29 years, so at around age 28-30, 57-59 and (if you live long enough) 86-88 you have a Saturn Return. This signifies a time of transformation, an emotional transition from one life-phase to the next.

The first Saturn return (around age 28-30) marks the transition from the Phase of Youth to the Phase of Maturity; the second from the Phase of Maturity to the Phase of Wisdom. The last one, if reached, seems usually to mark the transition either to the next world or else back to a second childhood!

As the Saturn return approaches, often our lives seem to speed up, as if hurrying to clear out old baggage from the past, to lighten the load for the next stage. Important things that either finalize old issues, or prepare the ground for new developments tend to occur with increasing frequency. For those who are unprepared, this is often a time of severe suffering, as we struggle to understand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that seem to be aimed squarely at our hearts. Indeed, relationships and major life-decisions are all too often the focal points for this clearing out of karmic baggage.

It certainly makes sense, and might also explain the strange sort of hysteria that often surrounds a 30th birthday. They’re not worried about getting “old”! They’re simply transitioning from the Phase of Youth to the Phase of Maturity!

And yet none of this explains at all my love for No Doubt’s album, “Return of Saturn” at the age of 15. Other than No Doubt was the coolest.

I mean, am I the only one that remembers this?

The Tiny World, The Typewriter

2011-11-08T09:14:00.000-06:00

My current literary fascination: Joan Didion.

I recently ordered her collection, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, and I plan to finish that before embarking on either her newest memoir, Blue Nights, or The Year of Magical Thinking. So, basically, my fascination is brand new, and at this point I've only read a few of her pieces. But it only takes a sentence for Joan Didion to capture me completely. The opening of this New York Magazine article is dead-on:

Reading Joan Didion on any subject is like tiptoeing across a just-frozen pond filled with beautiful sharks. You look down and pray the ice will hold.

Here's an interview with Joan Didion from the 70s. She talks about how at the typewriter, she is in total control:

I don't have a typewriter, but I do have a shiny new Macbook Pro.

'You Fit Me Better Than My Favorite Sweater,' Also, Lana Del Rey is, Like, a Total Babe

2011-11-07T16:50:00.000-06:00

Sorry, guys, I just couldn't help it. Surprise! It's Lana Del Rey.

Also, I don't know if you've heard, but, she's like, really pretty. And, umm, apparently this is controversial? Cause, umm, it might ruin her indie cred?

Google image "indie darling" ... let me guess, the results are horribly hideous people? Oh, it's just a lot of pictures of Zooey Deschanel? Weird. Yeah, indie kids HATE pretty girls. Everyone does.

Anyway, whatever! I'm crushing on her. Cause ~~she's hot.~~ her music makes my heart soar.

Monday Mix Tapes: Frank & His 'Otherworldly Falsetto'

2011-11-07T12:18:00.000-06:00

Listen to it, here.

It's pretty much amazing, and via Pretty Much Amazing.

Why Is a Quarrel Like a Bargain?

2011-11-04T15:07:00.000-05:00

"You interest me, strangely. I accept your invitation."

HA! I think this dancing solves once and for all the question of who was the best Batman.

I kid, I kid. (Or do I?)

Testing, Testing...

2011-11-04T09:33:00.001-05:00

AHHH! What happened here?

Did that thought just cross your mind? Or was it more along the lines of, Oooh, this finally looks like a blog in the year 2011, not 2001?

Blogger just launched its new dynamic views, which, ahem, is what's happening here, right now. One great thing I personally enjoy about this—something I've been loving about Tumblr—is the "infinite scrolling" aspect. No more "Older Posts" links. No more clunky navigation. Just...scroll. What worries me, though, is that users won't link through to read full posts with this setup. (Read more about the Dynamic Views here.)

But, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...I am not giving my faithful readers enough credit. What do you think?

Do you like? Do you hate?

Tell me stuff. Tweet at me! Send me comments! (Unless you're the troll who put the nasty comment on my "That's Enough, John Mayer" post, that is. Comments that involve calling me names don't stay up here. Duh. Play nice!)

So, like I said, this is just a test.

CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?

Ne Me Quitte Pas!

2011-11-03T15:05:00.000-05:00

Hey Rainbow Groupies!

It's not annoying at all when I title a post in French for absolutely no reason, right? That's what I thought!

In case you've been wondering, I have not left you. I'll never quit you!

But, alas, the source of my power, AKA my beautiful Macbook, has passed. It is no longer among us. It is, comment dit-on en francais, DEAD. (Mort!) And by dead I do mean I spilled an entire glass of water on it a couple of weeks ago. And, because I am not getting paid to blog, I get paid to write about other stuff, it has been difficult to keep up when I don't have my faithful companion waiting for me at home.

But never fear! My shiny new Macbook Pro will be a part of my life by tomorrow at the end of the business day.

In the meantime, I've been remembering how to write with a pen, scrawling the makings of an essay in my journal. If I can read my own handwriting and then finish it, of course it will make an appearance here. Get excited: It's about kickball. And puberty! Neat!

Until all this magic happens, here are two incredibly different songs called "Ne Me Quitte Pas," by two incredibly different but equally awesome chanteuses.

Ne me quitte pas, mon cheres!

hugs and bad excuses to poorly speak French,
Alison[composes]

Maybe Things Will Be Better in Chicago

2011-10-25T11:48:00.000-05:00

The opening track of Tom Waits' new album just blew my fucking mind. Listen to it:

You remember all the feelings I feel about Tom Waits, right?

A Nightly Ritual

2011-10-21T12:01:00.000-05:00

When I was young, I used to love watching my mother perform her nightly ritual. I say 'ritual' because to merely say 'getting ready for bed' or 'washing her face' would not do the act justice. In the bathroom—the big bathroom, as I thought of it, having my own, private, 'small' bathroom off my bedroom—she would meticulously perform the task each night. Often, I would chatter to her as she did this, her hair pushed off her face by a thin cloth headband she kept in the sink drawer. Often, as I talked to, and watched my mother transform from the made up—but never overly made up—teacher to the paler, shinier, more vulnerable nighttime version of herself, I would play with all of her mysterious, grownup, womanly tools. She was a Clinique fanatic, and never missed a night of their famous 3-step facial system. Using a washcloth, she would take the small, unscented yellow bar and lather her face, followed by the pink astringent, rubbed across her face with a cotton ball. As she would sweep the cotton ball across her face, often she'd raise her eyebrows in a funny, completely unpretentious manner, and I'd wonder at how her skin shined in the bathroom light. Next came the moisturizer. Just as with her morning foundation, she would apply the yellow liquid to her face by patting it on her face in small, strategically placed dots, then slowly, surely, blend it all in.

Over the years, and based on what Clinique samples she'd get with her regular purchases of reddish brown lipstick, mascara, and her skincare products, she would work in other aspects to the nightly routine: an eye cream; an exfoliating scrub. Like with the rest of her seemingly magical, quintessentially "grownup" tools placed in her plastic container that she'd pull from the bathroom closet and place on the lefthand side of the sink, closest to the toilet, my perch, I'd study them when she wasn't using them, wondering. I'd pick them up, gingerly, and twist off the caps just as carefully.

I don't know what I was expecting, or just what I was thinking as I toyed with all the skincare products. I wish I could remember every conversation we had in those moments. Later, when I was a teenager, and she and I were both using self-tanning lotions (it was the new thing to do at the time) she'd call me in to help her rub the self-tanner on her back. It was another addition to the nightly ritual. In those days, her nighttime self was made more vulnerable by the addition of the oxygen cannule. The thin, plastic tubes wrapped around the backs of her ears, a very different sort of "grownup" wonder.

I never thought to question my mother's preference for, and loyalty to, Clinique products. It seemed natural, an obvious reality: She planned her "necessary" purchases around the Clinique "Bonus" times, which I loved as I got older, because it meant I would get whatever she didn't need or use. My first experiences with makeup were Clinique eye shadows, eye pencils, and my favorite, their "Almost Lipstick" in Black Honey. Imitating my mother, I'd lean forward slightly at the mirror and apply: a sweep across the right half of my upper lip, then left; a careful sweep across the bottom lip; press lips together; then take my pinky and wipe away any excess.

Not surprisingly, I, too, was using the Clinique 3-step system from a young age, diligently washing my face with that yellow bar each night and placing it back in the pale green case. I'd run my fingers across the words, "Clinique" inscribed on the case, and even though the pink astringent burned my face, wanting to be like my mom, I'd dab it on the cotton ball and sweep it across my face, cringing. But my favorite part was the moisturizer. Wide-eyed at my own reflection, I would pat the yellow liquid on my face in small, strategically placed dots, then slowly, surely, blend it all in.

As a teenager, I quit using the yellow soap and switched to a creamy face wash, but the yellow moisturizer and pink astringent always stayed in the bathroom cabinet. When I left for college, my mom made sure I was stocked with numerous sample bottles of the moisturizer, eye makeup remover, and Clinique eye shadows and lipsticks. But after she died, I couldn't bear to dab those yellow dots across my face. I switched to Ponds moisturizer, which I still use to this day. My college roommate used the Clinique moisturizer, though, and I'd often catch myself staring at in a daze. I'd go home for the weekends and open the bathroom closet. For years, the plastic container filled with all those products was still there. Waiting. I hated it and was comforted by it all at once. Why couldn't Dad bear to get rid of it? Why couldn't I bear to use the Clinique moisturizer, but I still used the eye shadows, eye makeup remover, and lipsticks?

I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling.

Over the years I've still stayed stocked with Clinique products and makeup bags, all thanks to my Aunt Kerry. She doesn't really wear makeup, and I've never actually asked, but she must also use the skincare products and take advantage of the "Bonus" time. Nearly every time I visit my grandma's house, she'll say, "I have some Clinique stuff for you that Kerry sent home with us." I act nonchalant about it, but I absolutely love opening the brightly colored makeup bags and peeking inside to see what I'll find. I haven't had to buy eye makeup remover in a decade. It's always in the bag—eye makeup remover, a lipstick, and sometimes eye shadow or mascara.

Every time I get those Clinique samples, I find myself grinning, once again the little girl watching her mother wash her face. I open the lipsticks, slowly, waiting to see what shade "Perfect Grape" or "Spiced Apple" really is. When I pull the Perfect Grape lipstick out of my Clinique makeup bag, in the car, I pull down the mirror, lean forward slightly and apply: a sweep across the right half of my upper lip, then left; a careful sweep across the bottom lip; press lips together; then take my pinky and wipe away any excess.

My mother would probably be horrified if she knew how many times I've fallen asleep, mascara still on an unwashed face. Lately, I've been rather horrified about it, too, and have been thinking more and more about my skin care regime. A few weeks ago I went to Target and bought a special astringent and night face cream. It wasn't Clinique, but it was still adding to the nightly ritual. At night, after I wash my face, I slowly twist off the cap of the bottle of the astringent, place the cotton ball to the top, and turn it over. As I sweep the cotton ball across my face, which looks shinier, younger, and fresher than in the daytime, I raise my eyebrows slightly and smile. Often, my cat Mufasa perches on the toilet and stares at me as I do this.

This week, I bought Clinique products for the first time. I considered going to Macy's, so I could buy them from the Clinique counter, a place I had visited so many times as a girl with my mother. I couldn't quite bear that idea. Instead, I ordered the products online: an eye cream, and two lipsticks. One of the lipsticks is new, a product my mother never got to see. But the other is still the same—Almost Lipstick in Black Honey.

The packaging is exactly as I remembered it.

Monday Mix Tape Poetry Smash: Annie's Strange Mercy

2011-10-17T15:55:00.001-05:00

I wonder if he remembers that morning, after I changed my mind (for the hundredth time)
he sat on the kitchen floor & I sank in his chair
the new St. Vincent album kept playing & playing
and it was infuriating because it felt like a film
except I hated all of my lines & there was nothing beautiful about any of it
and he had just downloaded the album
It felt like a small, quiet act of hope, & maybe victory, & maybe a bit of pleading:
Stay, won't you?
Yet at the time I couldn't, no matter how much
it was a perfect soundtrack to our shitty movie
I was the dilettante & he was the surgeon
Or no, wait, I just messed it all up
Cause I was the one dissecting, and picking, at
Every little thing, opening us up for painful adjustments
Why, why was I so cruel? Why was it all so cruel?
No, I don't know what.
But you roughed me up. I roughed you up.
I didn't have any good news, I didn't know how to help you sleep
We had nothing close to the makings of a perfect plan

"Slow down, dilettante.
Hang on."

I finally listened to the album again. It was nothing like I had remembered.

It Was, And Is, Indian Summer.

2011-10-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

At this time last year, I had just moved back to Chicago. Everything was different then. Everything is the same. I am different now. I am the same.

It was beautiful Indian summer weather that week, just as it's been this week in Chicago. The Sunday afternoon after we had moved in, I sat on the back deck and wrote for hours. And since everything is the same, but completely different now, I thought I'd share a poem I wrote that day.

INDIAN SUMMER

It is maybe the 10th of October.

It is possibly my new sister-in-law's

birthday. If it is, in fact, the 10th of October

and my memory serves me right.

I am definitely sitting on my new porch,

drinking the last Stella, with my dirty feet

propped on Patricia. My bike,

that is. I am listening to this Regina Spektor

song and wondering what to write.

It is Indian summer.

I told everyone and no one

about my return to Chicago.

Because I am in love and terrified

of everything, it is hard to explain.

I am never quite sure what is right.

It is the most impossibly beautiful weather

you might possibly imagine in Chicago.

Nowadays I will see a friend every time

I step out my door.

But what is there to write!

It is Indian summer.

It is now this Dirty Projectors song

I'm listening to. She sings about

geranium kisses and failure.

I'm not sure if I understand,

but it feels right.

I know I am often a difficult and

infuriating friend. It is too

difficult pleasing everyone all

the time. This I write.

It is Indian summer.

I think that it is possibly

the 10th of October. It is definitely

a beautiful day in Logan Square,

and the planes cross the nearly

cloudless sky. This is right!

Monday Mix Tapes: MmmHmm

2011-10-10T11:46:00.000-05:00

After listening to this six times in a row (which I may or may not have just done), you should watch Flying Lotus and Thundercat talk about Kenny G, face tattoos, and Craigslist.

Delumptious Fizzy Frobscottle! 'The BFG' Is Gonna Be a Movie!

2011-10-02T14:09:00.000-05:00

"What is this please, Your Majester?"

That's right! The BFG, otherwise known as one of the most brilliant pieces of children's literature EVER CREATED by the mastermind Roald Dahl, is set to be adapted to a movie by E.T. screenwriter Melissa Mathison.

This could either be one of the best things that's ever happened, or a huge, bitter disappointment.

I mean, not like my expectations are high or anything.

Hat tip to my brother for delivering this epic news, via twittles, yesterday.

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: Inside This Prison of Words Unsaid

2011-09-27T11:11:00.001-05:00

You remember my wife, right?

Monday Mix Tapes: It's Now or Never

2011-09-26T11:47:00.000-05:00

"I feel different today. I don't know what else to say."

I listened to this song on the train this morning. And then I listened to it again. And then I listened to it one more time.

Once, someone taught me how to hear the poetry in hip hop. I was mad that I hadn't heard it for myself. But now I'm only mad that I was too scared just to listen.

It's Never Over, R.E.M. (And I Feel Fine!)

2011-09-21T15:44:00.001-05:00

Somewhere, my 12-year-old self is weeping. Michael Stipe and friends have announced that the party is over.

R.E.M. is breaking up.

From the band's site:

"To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening." R.E.M.

They've been making music for 31 years together. 31! I haven't even been alive that long. I'm not really sad. What's there to be sad about, anyway? I think it was probably time. And obviously, I know best.

But seriously, you might recall my love for R.E.M. Oh, what? You haven't read the entire archive of this blog? Shame on you! Yeah. I loved—love— R.E.M. Read about that right here.

So, seeing as how I've already said too much, and I haven't said enough, let's listen to some R.E.M.!

Perhaps, at their most beautiful?

And where would I be without the Automatic for the People album?

"I want you to remember..."

Okay, let's all put on some flannel, some Doc Martens, listen to "Strange Currencies", and talk about our feelings!

"I'd be foolish not to say":

Don't worry, R.E.M.; it's never gonna be over between us.

A Morning Walk

2011-09-15T10:50:00.000-05:00

I turned my heel walking to work this morning. I'm wearing these new boots, and they don't even have a high heel—just a slight one. But they're slightly loose around the ankle, and as I was walking too fast, my heel turned, and I lost my balance.

I didn't fall; I wasn't hurt; no one saw. Still, my face flushed with embarrassment and my heart sank a little bit. It's so ridiculous. It wasn't a big deal at all.

But to me, it just felt like another small example of how I fail at all these simple things so many other adults seem to intuitively grasp. You know, like walking. Why am I so hard on myself? I regained my balance, took a deep, slightly shaky breath, and grabbed the railing as I walked up the stairs.

The season is changing, and the air has that crisp, cool feel once again. It's my favorite time of year, but it also makes me feel homesick as well. Not even homesick, exactly, but more like longing for something lost, a place that no longer really exists.

This morning, before I turned my heel, and before I let my confidence shatter over something so small and so silly, I sat on the train next to this woman reading The New York Times. She held the paper, and even her head, exactly the way my mother did when she read the paper at the kitchen table. I had my New Yorker out to read, but I just let it sit on my lap, strangely contented by this complete stranger who looked nothing like my mother, but read the paper in the exact same way.

I felt a little sad as I got off at Clark and Lake and started walking to the office. There's a small part of me that keeps telling myself, "Someday, you won't miss her so much," but there's another part that holds on to the feeling, tight, because it's all I have of her now. I clutched my phone in my hands and wished away the desperate part of me that so badly wanted to call my mother, and that's when, lost in my thoughts, I turned my heel and almost fell down.

I know I won't stop missing her. It's constant, and expected, like the inevitable turn of the season. Today, I guess, it's just like that crisp, cool feel of the beginnings of fall—you feel a chill that you haven't in some time, but it's not entirely unpleasant. And just as I start to feel like I'm a little too cold, I turn the corner, the sun hits my face, and I'm warm again.

Farewell, Old Friend: My Tribute to Borders

2011-09-10T09:45:00.001-05:00

The last two Fridays, I’ve attempted to go to Borders. Both times, I’ve walked in, walked in one, big circle, and walked right out. Each time, as I’ve stepped out the door and back onto State Street, I’ve felt vaguely guilty, like I’ve shoplifted without getting caught. (I’ve also gone to the Jamba Juice next door both times, but that’s probably irrelevant.)

Borders is closing. Large signs are everywhere:

“EVERYTHING MUST GO!” “80% Off Mysteries!” “90% Off Science Fiction!” “ENTIRE STORE UP TO 90% OFF”

At the Chicago State Street Borders, the one I’ve attempted to visit the last two Fridays, the checkout line weaved all the way to the back of the store on the first floor. Where I once navigated the tables stacked with new fiction, bestsellers, and my personal favorite, the one piled with books marked, “buy one, get the second half off,” I now was mumbling “excuse me’” and navigating around bored-looking customers clutching handfuls of books.

It was too hot in there. All the beautiful books, once in orderly, organized sections, were now in chaos. There was Manga in the African American section! MANGA! Things weren’t alphabetized! SAT guide books were in the mystery section!

I couldn’t even bear to see what was happening in the poetry section.

90% off? I’m a sucker for a book on sale, but forgetaboutit.

The thing is, I’m devastated. Bookstores (and Borders in particular, and in particular this Borders) have always been my “happy” place. Let me put it this way: You know when you see those little kids trailing behind their mom at the mall, dragging their feet and looking like someone just killed their puppy, and then all of a sudden she exclaims, “We’re going to the TOY STORE next!” and BAM! They have now just won a golden fucking ticket! They are the chosen ones! They’re going to see Willy Wonka!

Yeah. I was not one of those kids. My “toy store” was … the bookstore. It didn’t matter how long mom had made us follow her around the borrrrrrring department stores all afternoon. Nothing mattered, because we had now stepped into the happy place. The bookstore. Mom would leave me alone while I perused the magical worlds of Roald Dahl, or sometimes Sweet Valley, or the Green Gables, wherever. Usually, she’d return with her own stack of books in her hand, and if there was ever a perfect time to con her into buying something, it’d be talking her into letting me get one more book than she had originally said.

I’d take the books out of the bag immediately once we got to the car. Nothing, and I mean nothing, felt more glorious than holding a new book in my hands.

This is probably the part where you call me out on being a huge geek. That’s fine. I am a huge geek.

Needless to say, not much has changed from the time I was 10 until now. Bookstores have always been my happy place, my safe haven, my own personal chocolate factory. In them, I’ve made some of my life’s best discoveries: Joyce Carol Oates. Charles Bukowski. Sweet Valley High. Anne Sexton. Frank O’Hara. She’s Come Undone. (And I, to date, have read She’s Come Undone probably eight times. It gets better every time.) Did I mention: Sweet. Valley. High.

My mom and I could always find an excuse to stop in a bookstore when were over in Indianapolis shopping. I remember the first time we went to the new, huge Barnes & Noble in Castleton. We just kept grinning. Just the smell of it! It was beautiful! It was everything it needed to be! It was a HUGE FUCKING STORE PACKED WITH BOOKS!

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a bookstore with my mom. I don’t remember the last time we went to a bookstore before she died—my memory tells me it might have been a visit to the Half Priced Books in Castleton, but then again I don’t really know. And it doesn’t matter. The bookstore is, and always will be, my safe haven. I don’t miss my mom when I’m there—I just feel comforted, at home, and excited like a 10-year-old who knows she’s about to get a toy.

Several years ago, when I was living in Bloomington, working for IU, and feeling lonelier than I’ve ever felt, I lived just around the corner from the Borders there. At least once a week, I’d think of some excuse to go, even if it was just to pick up a copy of Bitch magazine (or search for Bitch, and get INCREDIBLY ANGRY when it wasn’t there). I’d inevitably end up wandering the aisles or sitting in the cafe area for way longer than necessary. But no matter how I felt when I walked in, I’d walk out feeling better. Everything was going to be okay. There would always be a new book to read, a new author to discover, a beautifully written article in a glossy magazine.

Fast forward to Chicago, several years later. The loneliness was gone, but it had now been replaced with a different, scarier emotion: fear. Fear that I would never get a good job again. Fear that I would have to move back home, tail between my legs. Fear that I would be waiting tables until I was 50. You get my drift. I was fucking scared. For a brief time, I waited tables downtown, only blocks away from the State Street Borders location. After, before, or between shifts, I’d walk over, even if it was just to stand in the poetry section and read for 20 minutes. I’d stay until I remembered: Everything was going to be okay.

In the last year, I’ve just loved the fact that, on my way to the train, I only have to take a quick, two block detour and be in this giant store packed with books I love and authors I’ve yet to discover. The last time I went—prior to these two brief, failed visits, that is—I was searching for a birthday present for my friend Beth, and randomly ended up chatting with this woman about the dire state of the African American lit section and how “kids today” just don’t appreciate good books like they used to (yeah, she made sure to tell me I was her daughter’s age). At one point during our conversation, this woman started reciting one of my favorite Langston Hughes poems. Sure, it sounds a little odd, but I thought it was great.

And I know I still have Barnes & Noble, or Myopic Books (but it’s hard to feel hopeful about the future of independent bookstores when Borders can’t keep its doors open!), and yes, I’ve heard of this crazy thing called the Internet, where I can go to this place called AMAZON and get books much cheaper.But to me, it’s just not the same, and I'm sad about it.

So, Borders, it was swell while it lasted. Farewell, old friend.

No One Can Get to You Here

2011-09-04T15:28:00.000-05:00

Hey Rainbow Groupies! It's a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Chi city, and seeing as how it's Labor Day weekend, and Obama's talking to us about jobs (or the lack thereof), I thought it was a good time to take another blast from the past.

I wrote this essay a little more than a year ago, right after moving back home to my dad's house. Nothing will kill a lady's self-esteem (and bank account) like not being able to find a job, and at the time when I wrote this, I was feeling pretty damn defeated. But at the same time, I was still clutching the last strings of hope. Barely, just barely. I also laid awake at night in my childhood bedroom, heart racing, worrying that I'd still be there when I was 40.

Maybe I'm still struggling to really be a "grownup," but I made it back to Chicago, and drove a new car here. I felt like total, complete shit when I got rejected from that job (and countless others). But the thing is, if I had gotten that job, I'd never have made it back to Chicago. Who knows what might have happened?

It's tough out there. But if I can do it, YOU can do it. uggh, that was cheesy, but whatever. I meant it from the bottom of my little heart.

So! Read this essay! (After the jump.)

No One Can Get to You Here

I am sunburned in stripes. One stripe down my left arm, one stripe down my right. The stripes on my legs start in different places: One stripe down my left leg, starting at the knee; one stripe down my right leg, starting at my upper thigh. It looks like someone haphazardly swiped a paintbrush down my limbs.

I’ve spent the last two afternoons sitting on the back porch reading my mother’s old Philip Roth novels. At least I read one yesterday. Today, I just stared at the words and turned the pages when I was supposed to, not absorbing one single word.

I found the books upstairs yesterday, my second day alone in the house where I grew up. Side-by-side on the top shelf upstairs, purple and yellow: Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint. I imagine they are books my mother read before I was born. I had never read a single word of Philip Roth until yesterday, although I have probably allowed someone to think I had read Philip Roth.

The yellow one, Portnoy’s Complaint, caught my attention first. Mostly because I had no idea what that meant: Portnoy’s Complaint. Both books are the sorts of editions that infuriate me—paperbacks from the 70s with no description of the actual book on the back cover. Only things like: “OVER 3,000,000 COPIES IN PRINT!” and quotes from The New York Times. I can’t stand to start reading books like that, even if I already have an inkling of what they’re about. It’s like driving down the country roads by our house with no destination in mind.

Nonetheless, I picked both books off the shelf and carried them downstairs, then out to the porch. I flipped through both as I squinted from the sun and propped my legs up on the railing of the porch. Although the yellow one had drawn me in first, I put it down, on top of my New Yorkers that I knew I had no intention of reading that afternoon.

I was 29 pages in to Goodbye, Columbus before I realized it was a novella. I had flipped back to the front for a second, and saw that the book contained a novella and several short stories. I thumbed forward to the Table of Contents. Sure enough, Goodbye, Columbus would only go on until page 99. I knew then I would read the novella in one sitting.

It was good. I loved it, in fact. I continued reading as I took a break from the sun and the back porch to go inside to eat lunch. I sat at the kitchen counter, eating chicken salad on white bread and drinking milk, and I read my mother’s yellowing Philip Roth book with the purple cover. I felt like a kid again. I never buy white bread or chicken salad from the deli. It was good. I half-expected my mother to pull into the drive at any moment, or to call in from the screened-in porch to ask me to bring her out a popsicle. But she didn’t, because my mother is dead and I’m not a kid anymore. So I went back outside.

Once I got to page 99 I knew there was nothing left to do but go back inside. My legs were starting to glisten in the sun and had that familiar tingle from the first time you expose bare skin in the almost summer sun.

I walked around the house for a couple of minutes feeling lost. It didn’t cross my mind to read the short stories in the purple book. I had to put it away. So I walked up the black spiral staircase and put it back on the shelf, exactly where I had found it. Had I been reading one of my books, in my apartment, I’d probably leave it sitting on the coffee table for a few weeks, or lay it on the shelf anywhere. But not with my mother’s books. It’s important they go back exactly where I found them. She always knew the exact location of each book in the house. That’s not something I’m willing to fuck with.

I moved back into the house I grew up in last week. Since then, I’ve either felt how I did as I was reading Goodbye, Columbus—at home, like I had never left—or, like I did when I finished Goodbye, Columbus. Lost, like I no longer belonged here. Everything is the same. Everything is different.

For the last two years I’ve lived in Chicago, where I also have pretty much felt one of two emotions: exhilarated, or lost. Sometimes I felt both at the same time. But it’s strange. Even my perfume and picture frames look more at home on my dresser here than they did in Chicago. It’s the same dresser. Yet here it looks nicer, cleaner than it ever did in Chicago. I keep staring at it, wondering what’s different.

I am more careful with things here than I was in my apartment in Chicago. I keep placing everything in neat stacks around my room—New Yorkers, journal and Netflix movie in one stack; sweatshirt and purse in another. In Chicago, I threw my clothes on the floor as I took them off, sometimes not picking the piles up for days. I’d stack dirty dishes in the sink, one on top of the other, until my mother’s old dishes were balancing precariously over the edge. Her dishes seemed wrong in my apartment. Even if I’d actually cook, and I’d set placemats on the table—the same table that had been in our house my entire life—the dishes looked wrong there, like they were playing a part. Mostly I felt like I was playing a part, but I couldn’t figure out what role.

But I loved—love—Chicago. Even as the city continuously sucked the money from me as soon as I’d get it, my wads of cash folded in my wait apron and then almost never making it into the bank. One electric bill, a vodka soda here, a pad thai there, and there it goes.

Waiting tables was beginning to break me, though. Each shift, when I got my first table, I’d feel my heart sink into my stomach. By my last couple months, once I knew I was about to admit defeat, I had to fight the urge to sprint out the doors of the bar instead of taking that first drink order. I couldn’t even muster up the courage to say the part, “Hi, my name’s Alison.” Actually, come to think of it, I almost never did that. I hate telling my name to customers. Because I know they don’t care. Why should they? I don’t care what their names are, and if they told me, I’d forget by the time I approached the next table. Maybe even before.

I can’t seem to find a well-paying job that makes me happy. I can’t seem to find a low-paying job that makes me happy. Last Friday, the first day back home since the move, I had an interview at a marketing firm in Bloomington, Indiana. It would be a good opportunity, and I knew I had to make the best possible impression, so I could get the job and turn my life around. Save some money. Get a new car. Find an apartment. Be a grownup.

Even though I lived in Bloomington for six years prior to living in Chicago—four as a student, two working for the university—I got lost on the way to the interview. I knew I was right around the corner from the office, but I couldn’t find the street. I stopped at the gas station. The attendant looked at me blankly. Then her co-worker pointed and told me to turn right at the stop sign. I still couldn’t find it. The air conditioner in my crappy car is broken, and I was starting to sweat. Not wanting to be late, I called the office and explained. I still made it on time to the interview, but from the tone in his voice on the other end of the phone, even though he was friendly, I knew it before I walked in. I’d already blown it.

He kept yawning throughout my interview. It made me both uneasy and exasperated. He was going through a list of questions on a sheet of paper. Next to that was a printout of the initial email I had sent expressing my interest in the position. I wished I couldn’t see either of those papers. I wished he would quit yawning. Part of me wanted to jump up and say, “I seem to be boring you, and it also seems that I’ve finally gotten my appetite back, because now that I’m here, my stomach perpetually seems about to growl.” Instead I folded my hands on my lap and smiled.

Then he asked me this: “How would you figure out how many jelly beans fit into a 747?”

I panicked. I had absolutely no idea how to answer this question. He was just sitting there, staring at me! All I could think was, When in this lifetime would I ever need to answer that question? When? Why jelly beans? So I laughed nervously and said something that I knew was wrong.

He looked back at me with an unreadable stare. Maybe it was sympathy for my nervousness. Maybe it was pity for my inability to answer the question well. Maybe it was boredom. But as he wrote something on his sheet of paper, I looked down at my folded hands and shook my head.

I wasn’t going to get this good job with benefits. I wasn’t going to get my new car. I wasn’t going to be a grownup. Because to have good jobs with benefits and buy new cars and be a grownup, you have to know how to get to an interview without having to call for directions first. You have to know how to answer ridiculous interview questions and pretend that those questions, and how you answer them, are an actual reflection of who you are as a person.

When I checked my email last night, I was surprised to see a response to my “thank you” email so soon. It was only Monday. My interview had been Friday afternoon. The email said: “I spoke with the team, and unfortunately, we will not be inviting you to the next round.” Then he proceeded to tell me I could reapply for a position at the company in four to six months, should I still be interested, with tips on how to improve my chances.

I read that line over and over: “I spoke with the team, and unfortunately, we will not be inviting you to the next round.” What did that mean? What did they say about me? “Well, she seemed nice enough, but her stomach kept growling.” And, “She seemed like she had potential until she got lost on the way to the office. Then she couldn’t even figure out the jelly bean question!”

I imagined they were standing around, holding their Monday morning coffees, guffawing at this poor girl who couldn’t even figure out the jelly bean question, whose face turned red as she answered questions about herself and whose stomach growled uncomfortably loud in the quiet office.

The thing was, as soon as I had walked in that office, I knew I couldn’t picture myself working there. As he told me more about the actual work I’d be doing, I tried to envision myself sitting in a cubicle, analyzing data in spreadsheets and talking to clients on the phone, and I couldn’t. All I could think was: When would I ever get to write?

But I didn’t want him, or his “team,” to not be able to picture me there! I wanted to come across as intelligent, confident, self-assured. I wanted him to meet me and immediately think of what an asset I’d be to the team. So after I read that email, and I walked out of the computer room of the house I grew up in, I felt like I’d failed. Again.

My dad walked out of his room right as I was walking by to get to my room. “I didn’t get the job,” I said, crumbling into tears like a 15-year-old. I barely heard what he said to me as I fled into my childhood room. My heart felt like it was sinking. I felt like I was sinking.

I just want to be feeling one emotion consistently. Since I’ve come home, or maybe since before I even left, back when I was 18, I’ve been a jumbled confusion of conflicting thoughts. I feel like I’ve projected this to my two cats, Mufasa and Layla. The one, Layla, was at home almost instantly here, despite the dog and cat already here. She runs around as if this was her childhood home and she’s been away for years. She almost seems happier here than she has at either apartment I’ve lived in during her short cat life. Mufasa, on the other hand, is alternately terrified, anxious, and comfortable. For the first two days she hid under a bed upstairs. Then she moved on to a closet. She’s doing better now, but still completely skittish. The only time she’s completely herself is at night, when I shut my bedroom door and it’s just the three of us in here.

She knows no one can get to her, here in my childhood bedroom with the door shut.

I look at her and Layla sleeping contentedly, at my dresser that looks nicer here than it did in Chicago, at my mother’s yellow Philip Roth novel whose words I can’t seem to absorb, and at the red stripes down my arms.

I am home.

Monday Mix Tapes: Little Dragon Love

2011-08-29T22:30:00.000-05:00

It's happening: I'm obsessed with Little Dragon's new album. It all started with the NPR First Listen. And you know how I love my NPR music.

The obsession crept in, slowly, but surely.

Could it be my innate love of Swedish bands? (For evidence, see here. And here. And here. Okay, so mostly I just love Lykke Li, whatever.)

In the last week, I've listened to the album on my commute to work, even when it turns to background music as I'm reading on the train (and I'm currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, le sigh); I listen to it while I write G-team deals; I listen while I walk back to the train at the end of the day.

So yeah, I'm obsessed. Because of this:

And this:

Listening to all this got me thinking about the first time I heard Little Dragon several years ago, when my friend Logan put the song "Scribbled Paper" on one of our mixtapes. It was love at first listen.

I'll leave you with another love of mine from that album:

The One I Searched to Find

2011-08-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

At my grandma’s house
was a jar of marbles

I remember this well;
I remember it like this:

We never really played with them, exactly

Instead, just dump them out of the jar

I’d pick out my favorite one
roll it around the palm of my hand
Unsure what to do with it,
only knowing it was beautiful,
just so,
blue and crystalline
with that one dull
imperfection
at its center.

Always, I’d find it,
from the pile of marbles
tumbled out of the jar
to the floor
And each time I felt it,
cool and comforting
in the palm of my hand

It was such relief:

Like I was shocked to find it again
even though each time
I knew, it was there,
waiting,
right where we’d placed it,
back in the jar.

There was something about finding it
from the jumble of all the others—
they all seemed so dull, so plain,
in comparison
that finding it was utter delight.
It wasn’t that it was so much
more beautiful, really,
it was just that it felt like a secret.

Like everyone else only saw
the beautiful blue,
the way the light shone through
when I held it at just the right angle,
the swirls and twists of color,

and then that bit of brown
right in the center
made it a little less perfect
than the pure blue one
in the jar

But to me, it was mine,
the one I always searched to find

and it wasn’t that the brown spot
was an imperfection
it just made the blue
all the more beautiful.

I'd hold it in my hand,
quietly,
until the time came
and all the marbles
were placed carefully
back in the jar.

Every time I forgot about it
as soon as it was back
in the mix
trapped amid the others

But as soon as we'd reopen the jar
and the marbles would tumble out
I'd remember
and search, and search,

Until, at last!
The delight
of feeling its cool, small comfort
in the palm of my hand

if only for a second

it was worth it,
just finding it,
just knowing it was there all along.

Bridesmaid Panic Attack

2011-08-23T22:21:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, or in reality, five years ago, I had a borderline panic attack at a David's Bridal. The next day, I wrote about it.

I've been looking back through a lot of my old writings lately, thinking more about my plans for my book (you know, that one I talk about all the time), and although I'd like to say I would write this essay better now, I decided to share it here exactly as I wrote it that day five years ago.

Mostly because I hope, if you're reading this, and you're in the middle of this place I was in five years ago, missing someone you've lost, feeling alternately terrified and pissed off, to know this: It does get better. I promise. I also hope you have someone like my aunt to come rescue you.

with the beautiful bride

And the other good news—I managed to find a dress that fit.

But I still fucking hate David's Bridal.

Read the essay after the jump.

Bridesmaid Panic Attack

“Everything okay in there, hon?”

“Fine! I’m fine!”

No, everything is not fine. I’m standing in a dressing room at David’s Bridal fighting panic. My face is bright red and I’ve started to sweat. I am stuck in a bridesmaid dress that is too tight and squeezing my boobs up and together in a sick, painful way. No, everything is not okay.

I can’t undo the zipper. I grit my teeth together and stare at my wide-eyed, sweaty reflection. My own breasts are starting to scare me. This dress is cutting off my circulation. Must. Unzip. Dress.

I make a final, dramatic tug at the zipper. Finally, it moves, and I frantically start to pull the dress down to release my breasts so I can breathe. Success! Wait. The dress is now stuck on my hips. I didn’t get the zipper down all the way. I turn, slightly, and tug hard on the zipper.

Fuuuuuck. I have now ripped the dress.

But at least I’m free. I step out of the dress and study the rip. Can I get away with not saying anything about the rip?

There’s a knock on the door. “Hon? I thought you might want to try a size bigger as well. Sometimes the measurements can be a little off.”

Sometimes the measurements can be a little off? You think? I make a face at my reflection as the saleswoman slides another bridesmaid dress under the door.

“Thanks!” I squeak. Meaning: Please go away and leave me to my misery.

This time, the dress slides on easily. My boobs can breathe, and so can I. It fits, right? I smile at my reflection, now that I’m a little less sweaty and look like me, only the bridesmaid version. Just as I breathe a sigh of relief, I overhear:

“Mom? How do I look?”

“Oh, baby, you look beautiful! You’re going to be the most beautiful bride!”

“Oh, come on, Mom, I’m being serious.”

“Well, I’m being serious! You look perfect.”

My heart starts pounding fast as I overhear this exchange. I have to get out of this dress. Now. I unzip quickly and leave the dress in a pile at my feet as I step out of it and grab my clothes. I dress quickly, swallowing the tears that I know are coming.

Because there’s no one outside my dressing room to tell me how beautiful I look. I came here alone. My mother is dead, and she’ll never tell me how beautiful I look again. She’ll certainly never proclaim that I’ll be the most beautiful bride. My mother is dead, and I’m here alone.

You can’t cry in David’s Bridal, I tell myself as I scoop up the two dresses and slowly open my dressing room door. Don’t let these women see you cry. I step out and try not to look at the mother and daughter whose conversation I overheard, but I can’t help it.

The daughter is standing on a stool in front of a three-way mirror, and her mother is behind her, beaming. They look just alike: the younger and older versions of each other. I hate them. I hate David’s Bridal. I hate weddings.

I walk as quickly as I can around the store, searching for the woman who was helping me so I can thrust the dresses at her and get the hell out of here. But I don’t see her. All I can see now is mothers helping their daughters pick out wedding dresses, and bridesmaid dresses, and shoes. There are no men here. Fathers don’t come to David’s Bridal.

Now I’m angry. I hate all this crap. If I were here with Mom, I’d be bitching about how bridesmaid dresses are always unflattering and that weddings make me angry with all the patriarchal “the wife must obey her husband” bullshit. And she’d tell me that my wedding wouldn’t have to be like that and I should be happy to help celebrate my friend Eileen’s marriage. Then we’d laugh together and she’d tell me I could look good in a burlap sack, so it wouldn’t matter what the dress looked like, anyway. When we saw that the bridesmaid dress wasn’t ugly at all, we’d both agree on Eileen’s great taste and that she’d never pick out ugly, unflattering bridesmaid dresses.

But she’s not here to have this conversation with me, so all I have to hold on to is my anger. Why do these women get to have their mother, and I can’t? Why don’t I get to have my mom help pick out my wedding dress? How can I ever get married without my mother to help me? Without her to meet my future husband?

And where in the fuck is that saleswoman?

Finally, I see her. I storm over to her at the counter. She’s all smiles, her measuring tape that clearly doesn’t measure right draped around her neck.

“So how did those work out for you, hon?”

“Well, the first one was so tight that I ripped it trying to get it off. The second one fit. Is that all you need from me for now? Do I need to pay for the dress that I ripped?”

“Oh, honey, don’t you worry about that! It happens all the time.” She’s leaning close and whispering in a conspiratorial tone. I can’t stand her. My mom hated when people called her ‘hon’ or ‘honey.’ Now I hate when people call me ‘hon’ or ‘honey,’ too. Especially when they work at David’s Fucking Bridal.

“Well, I’m really sorry about ripping it. It was just really tight. So that other one fit. The 8. Is that all we need for now?”

I have to get out of here before something bad happens, and The Indianapolis Star’s headline tomorrow reads, “Young Woman Flips Out at David’s Bridal, Kills Workers and Mother-Daughter Customers.”

“That’s great, hon! Now just let me write that down, and we’ll call you as soon as your dress comes in. Then you just have to come back in so we can see what alterations are needed.”

“I have to come back in? Why would there be alterations?” I’m freaking out.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…

She laughs. “Well, you want it to fit perfectly for that special day, don’t you?”

Today’s my special fucking day, I think. “Right. Okay. Well, just call me then. Thanks!”

“Have a great day!”

I’m already halfway out the door at that point. As soon as I step into the parking lot, the sun glaring off the cars, I lose it. I sob all the way to my car, barely noticing another mother-daughter duo looking at me with sympathetic, confused stares.

I cry all the way home. It’s a good 45 minutes from Indianapolis back to my dad’s house, but I cry the whole time. I cry harder after Eileen calls and I try to explain what happened without making her feel guilty. It’s not her fault, after all. She’s sympathetic, and it makes me feel worse. It’s not her fault her mom is alive to help plan her wedding. Then my dad calls and I cry even harder, because I don’t know how to explain what I feel:

I’m 22, I’m single, and I don’t know if I even want to get married. But all that doesn’t matter, because my mother is dead and she’ll never see me get married. She will never help me zip up a dress again. She’ll never wait outside a dressing room to tell me how beautiful I am. She’ll never roll her eyes at me while a saleswoman takes my measurements and calls me ‘hon.’ Never, never, never.

Later that day, I tell my Aunt Deborah what happened. She gets it. “You’re not going back there alone,” she says. “You just tell me when we need to go.”

A few weeks later, back at David’s Bridal with Deborah to protect me, I let her talk to the saleswoman and make sure the alterations are right. I don’t say much, but this time, I don’t really feel like crying. Deborah and I don’t look anything alike, but I pretend that the other people in the store think she’s my mother. It’s easier that way.

Maybe my mom isn’t there, but at least I have someone like Deborah to fill in. Nonetheless, that will be the last time I ever step foot in a David’s Bridal.

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: You Already Have Wings

2011-08-23T21:12:00.000-05:00

I just realized that I've never posted a Rumi poem for the poetry slams, and that had to be rectified immediately.

Hopefully, you'll quickly see why. Happy Tuesday.

SUBLIME GENEROSITY
by Rumi

I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.

He said, "You’re not mad enough.
You don’t belong in this house."

I went wild and had to be tied up.
He said, "Still not wild enough
to stay with us!"

I broke through another layer
into joyfulness.

He said, "Its not enough."
I died.

He said, "You're a clever little man,
full of fantasy and doubting."

I plucked out my feathers and became a fool.
He said, "Now you are the candle
for this assembly."

But I’m no candle. Look!
I’m scattered smoke

He said, "You are the Sheikh, the guide."
But I’m not a teacher. I have no power.

He said, "You already have wings.
I cannot give you wings."

But I wanted his wings.
I felt like some flightless chicken.

Then new events said to me,
"Don’t move. A sublime generosity is
coming towards you."

And old love said, "Stay with me."

I said, "I will."

You are the fountain of the sun’s light.
I am a willow shadow on the ground.
You make my raggedness silky.

The soul at dawn is like darkened water
that slowly begins to say Thank you, thank you.

Then at sunset, again, Venus gradually
Changes into the moon and then the whole nightsky.

This comes of smiling back
at your smile.

The chess master says nothing,
other than moving the silent chess piece.

That I am part of the ploys
of this game makes me
amazingly happy.

Only In Dreams: Facing Harsh Realities

2011-08-17T00:03:00.001-05:00

Dreams present to us parts of reality and of the psyche that we often overlook or don’t wish to see. They are concerned with the growth of the soul. The word for “dream” in Hebrew — chalom — is derived from the verb meaning “to be made healthy or strong.” Dreams tell us that we live up to a mere fraction of our potential and that there are great treasures to be found in the unknown portion of our being. If we heed our dreams, they can help us develop new attitudes toward ourselves and others. They can deepen our spiritual impulses, expand our emotional lives, and produce all manner of changes in our careers and relationships. —Marc Ian Barasch, from an interview with The Sun

I wonder about this, the notion that dreams present aspects “of the psyche that we often overlook or don’t wish to see” — because not only do I find that this is often true, I find that my dreams present these things, whether mundane or serious, through exactly the messenger I’ve been dying to see and communicate with for all of my adult life.

My mother.

She’s been talking to me, via my dreams, on a regular basis since she died almost nine years ago. As I’ve written about before, these dreams are not always pleasant. In fact, for many months right after her death, the dreams were flat out nightmares. Night after night, I’d step into a room to face my mother, who had turned into a demonic presence with oxygen cords wrapped around her. And in one way or the other, this demonic presence who was and was not my mother would gleefully tell me that my mother was dead.

If I were telling a story, this might be the part where I’d wake up in a cold sweat, with a loud gasp. But in truth, I’d just slowly, painfully open my eyes, and stare at the bright blue sheets on the bunk bed of my college dorm room — the same sheets my mother and I had picked out together not more than two months earlier — and I’d feel a sharp, painful stab in my chest. Instead of having that moment where you wake up and think with a sigh of relief, “It was only a dream,” I’d wake up and be forced to remind myself, “That was not just a dream.” She was really gone.

I’d slide off the bed and begin the reality of my day.

It wasn’t fun. It was grief. The first inklings of accepting my loss wanted to attack me through my subconscious, it seemed. But even those nightmares, while unpleasant, heartbreaking, and downright terrifying at times, reminded me of the harsh reality I had to face:

My mother was gone, and she wasn’t going to reappear when I woke up. She was dead.

Because my heartbroken, panic-stricken 18-year-old-self did not want to face my new reality, I tried to escape these dreams. During the week, I’d read my books for my African American lit course until my eyes burned and I knew I could fall asleep as soon as I turned off the reading lamp. And every weekend, though perhaps not consciously, I would turn off the dreams in a different way — by shutting off my emotions with a quiet, but clear “Fuck you” through booze, ensuring that by the time my head hit a pillow, if I had any dreams that night, I wouldn’t recall them.

The dreams were persistent, though. Some nights we’d argue: I’d yell at her to take off her oxygen mask, because she didn’t need it anymore. She’d refuse. Other nights, I’d recite French presentations to her and she’d smile at me, tapping her feet as if I were singing, with the stupid oxygen tank tucked neatly under her knees, just as she’d put it when we were in the car together.

My favorite nights, she’d comfort me. Both hands placed on my cheeks, she’d look at me and say:

I didn’t leave you. Don’t cry. I didn’t leave you.

When I’d wake up, the bright blue sheets tangled around my legs, I’d initially feel comforted by the soft, cool fabric. But then I would remember. I’d kick the sheets off that now felt like sandpaper and stare at the white concrete walls of my dorm room, feeling angrier and more alone than ever.

I can’t remember when the nightly dreams stopped. Instead, it slowly transitioned to semi-frequent dreams, or what I now like to think of as visits, from my mother. At first it felt like torture, like every night she came back to life and then died all over again in the morning.
Of course, that was just my mind playing tricks on me. These days, I thrive on the dreams in which my mother makes an appearance. It’s like she’s acting in a brief, but much anticipated cameo role in my life. I love the new discovery I made through reading this interview — that chalom, the word for dream in Hebrew, is derived from the verb meaning “to be made healthy or strong” — because seeing her in dreams reminds me of my inner strength. So even if it’s not really her, exactly, in my dreams, it doesn’t matter.

Sometimes, we still argue, but I think that’s important. Because who better than your mother to remind you that you need to live up to your full potential, to develop new attitudes, and to expand your emotional life?

That’s exactly what she did for me when she was alive. So why not now?

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: Not Yet, But I Intend to Start Today

2011-08-16T16:31:00.000-05:00

What the Doctor Said
By Raymond Carver

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

Monday Mix Tapes: How Come You Never Go There?

2011-08-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

I know my love for Feist is about as well-documented here as my love for The National, but:

YOU GUYS!

This song!

You carry on as though I don't love you...

Speaking of love, I'd also like to give a little Monday Mix Tapes shout out to my lovely friend Miss Lauren Lo, who has been busy creating some great music with Bob Nanna as part of their newest music project, Jack & Ace. They just released two new songs today, and even if they weren't my friends, and great people, I'd still be promoting this. Cause I like it.

Take a listen. Today's songs might break your heart a little bit, so then go back and listen to this summery jam afterward.

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: I Kept Hearing It

2011-08-09T23:41:00.002-05:00

The Games We Play, or,

An Ode to Lana Del Rey (& Me)

This is where we met, he said,
Not looking, but looking,
Smiling at the joke they haven't said
It's too ridiculous,
It's nothing,
It's everything.
He said she was killing him,
She shook her head and said something smart,
But completely stupid.
Cause if she could,
She would have said:
'This is killing me
And I feel like a joke
Until you look at me and make me feel
Like me again'
Something whole, and real, and good.
The question
That lingered in the air between them

I wanted to know why he looked at me
Like that
When all I've done was nothing
and yet he says these things, but, still,
looks at me like that
like I could be, and I am,
the most exceptional woman on earth,
or at least this place,
where I sit alone
but surrounded
and feel you stare
only to realize you're not, at all,
so I hate you and want you
and wish we would just disappear
maybe "go play a video game"
so I can only remind myself
maybe it is just a game
for two

and I listened to that damn song
I had told you to listen to
So many, many times
I kept hoping it would burn out
But it didn't
Instead I just kept hearing it.

It took my all not to weep
At the knowing.

You know it, too.
So let's keep it like this:
The joke we've never said
Cause it's on us.

It’s not even the same table these days,
but still I cling to the notion
that I have an idea what’s going on
when I don’t, I don’t,
I don't know anything at all.
like Lizzy Grant sang,

“I was born bad, but then I met you,
you made me nice for awhile,
but my dark side’s true”

We all do what we have to do.
'Whiskey on my tongue'
And I do think it's kinda fun,
but I'm flat outta luck, too.
She puts a sparkle in your eye
where I keep extinguishing the flame.

Sylvia wrote that
“we should meet in another life
we should meet in air, me and you”
I love that bit
(don’t you?)

Oh, baby, I want you, I want you.

It’s hysterical, really,
when you consider all the facts.
how am I supposed to get to that cloud?
it’s like writing in the tub
holding pen and paper mid-air.
my bubble bath cost $22
and I couldn’t even afford that Tecate

I ran the bathwater too hot
sweat was pulsing down my temples
(‘you’re no good for me/
but baby I want you, I want you, I want you’)
Still, I refuse to get out.
Not yet.
I paid for this shit.

Just let me soak in it,
won't you?

Lana, or can I call you Lizzy?
I hope you’ll be in love forever.
Maybe we'll be in love forever.

Monday Mix Tapes: The Only One Who's Bleeding

2011-08-08T19:11:00.000-05:00

Sunday Swayze Fest!

2011-08-07T22:41:00.000-05:00

Oh, Johnny.

Dating While Feminist

2011-08-07T14:11:00.000-05:00

Hey, Rainbow Groupies!

Miss me? I've been busy starting a new project, one I'm really excited about and have been yammering about to anyone who will listen for awhile now. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. It's a topic that leaves many crying, screaming, drunk, or single. Sometimes all of those things.

IT'S:
Dating While Feminist.

Please, check it out! I would also love to hear any suggestions or ideas you might have. It's brand new, and I have a lot of ideas, but mostly I just want to create some dialogue on the subject. And maybe, just maybe, create some new feminists along the way?

Monday Mix Tapes: For You, I Was a Flame

2011-07-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

Like many, I can't say I was shocked to hear the news of Amy Winehouse's passing. I feel so saddened by it—both the reality of her death, and my lack of shock.

Maybe it's partly due to the curse of 27.

Maybe it's because I first fell in love with her, and that voice, when I first heard "Stronger than Me" while I was living in London.

Maybe it's because her swipes of eyeliner just got more and more dramatic, to the point of absurd, as Amy herself seemed more and more vulnerable.

Maybe it's because I loved the album Back to Black so goddamn much, and I had a feeling as soon as the first rehab cracks were made that there probably wasn't going to be a follow-up.

Or it might have even been how deeply affected I was by the title track, "Back to Black"—it might not have been a situation where he loved blow and I loved puff, but damn if I didn't cry for him on the kitchen floor, if we didn't only "say goodbye with words" as he went back to her "and I go back to black."

There was something about listening to Amy that made me relive every heartache, every guilt, every vulnerability.

Then there was that Rolling Stone cover article.

God, I love her music. My heart goes out to her family. Recently, when she had briefly started a tour, I watched a video of her attempts at performing. I sat at my desk and felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. I felt scared for this. And then it happened.

"I don't know why I got so attached":

And now, the final frame:

Amy, I hope you're at peace now. Just know, "for you, I was a flame."

Give Me a Reason

2011-07-22T10:12:00.000-05:00

I am currently forcing myself not to buy pre-sale tickets for the Portishead show in October.

But...but! THIS:

I just wanna be a woman, too, Beth Gibbons! Buy me a ticket!

"I'm so tired of playing with this bow and arrow..."

Monday Mix Tapes: Pitchfork Roundup

2011-07-18T22:04:00.002-05:00

Finally, I did it. I'd been talking about it for years, complained each year I didn't do it, but then still didn't make anything happen. But this year, I made it happen.

Wow, Alison! You mean you finally wrote your book? Got an essay published?

No, silly! I went to Pitchfork! All 3 days!

Until last Friday afternoon, I had never stepped foot in Union Park. The farthest I had journeyed on the Green line was to the Clinton stop.

Of course, I was no music festival virgin. (I am way too good of a white person for that! Duh!) I've been to Lolla twice; in fact, I worked one year at Lolla, passing out beer to the sweaty festival goers and gleefully snapping off wristbands of the underage kids and then taking a big, smug sip out of my Budweiser.

But I had never ventured to Pitchfork, and boy, oh boy, was I excited.

Neko Case! Deerhunter! Fleet Foxes! Merrill! Tunde Adebimpe! TUNDE! ADEBIMPE!

Now that I am a seasoned veteran, let me tell you some things I've learned in the last few days, thanks to this experience. (Bear with me! At the end of this there is music! I swear.)

1. I must look incredibly innocent/harmless. Unfortunately, my pretzels did not.

After walking directly to the front of the line at the park entrance, and while the security person whom Natalie and I fondly referred to as "Dad" screamed at a guy trying to bring in the wrong kind of camera, I marched up to security and held open my tote bag. Having coming straight from work to the festival, I also had a purse within my tote. As I went to unzip the purse so he could look inside, he said, "Oh NO," grabbed my unopened bag of pretzels, and refused to look inside my purse.

He stared at me. "Is this food?"

"Umm, yes?" My real questions were: Aren't you supposed to look in my purse? What if I have a gun in there? WHY DON'T YOU KNOW THAT A BAG OF PRETZELS IS FOOD? Also, WHAT IF I HAVE A GUN?

He tossed the unopened pretzels in the garbage. I mourned the loss for five seconds, prayed that anyone who might actually be carrying a weapon into the park had her purse examined, entered Pitchfork, and blissfully ventured to the beer tent and to hear tUnE-yArDs.

By Day 2, I learned my lesson. A granola bar came in with me to the festival, nestled deep inside the bag that once again was not searched, along with my oh so hip Eddie Bauer flask balanced on my hip, under my shorts. I was smugger than I was when I was 16 and sneaked Hot Damn in to the football game and chomped on Big Red to explain my lethal cinnamon breath. Take THAT, authority! I brought in a granola bar and blueberry vodka! I am a REBEL!

2. White people. Lots of white people.

We all knew this was coming. There's nothing we white folks love more than a hot, outdoor summer music festival. We get to wear silly outfits! Dance exactly as ridiculously as only we truly know how! Wear silly outfits! Dance, badly! And if we're not dancing, we are standing perfectly still. Except for that one right leg or some intense head nodding. You know what I'm talking about.

I kid, I kid, it wasn't only white people in the audience. But there sure were a lot of them. I mean, us. There was also a lot of sweaty teenagers, tattoos, and feathers used as various pieces of jewelry. (And yes, I did wear my feather earrings one day, thank you for asking. I wore my tattoo all three days.)

See Stuff White People Like #41: Indie Music for more understanding about white people, and how music is the soundtrack to our lives.

3. Sunblock and the shade are your friends. Also, I'm old.

In years past, you might have seen me at a music festival, running around spilling beer all over myself, perfecting my helicopter dance and the art of going barefoot in public, but now I am old and wise. I remembered sunscreen. I willingly sat in the shade as much as possible. I still spilled beer on myself and actually dropped five dollars in my beer at one point, but that is only because I am clumsy. I will be doing that sort of shit when I am 70, I promise. Well, hopefully I won't be at Pitchfork when I'm 70, because that might be silly. But whatever. From our spot under a tree, Natalie and I watched all the kids walking around—yeah, I actually thought kids, cause I am apparently middle aged—and I felt old and young all at the same time. It was disconcerting and wonderful.

4. Enough of this! Here is some music!

Obviously, you'll go to Pitchfork for the real roundup and coverage, but here are some of my personal favorite songs I got to hear live over the weekend.

Desire Lines! "When you were young/and your excitement showed/But as time goes by..."

Neko is still glad she left the party at 3 a.m. (alone, thank God). And may I mention I of course was standing in the port-o-pot line as this song was playing.

You're my favorite daydream. (Couldn't find a clip from the show, but I can't leave this one out.)

This dress rocks my world. And so does Zola Jesus.

I made it through "Limit to your love" without crying. I was quite pleased with myself. But, holy shit:

And then I fell in love with Cut Copy.

Apparently people were too busy doing other things (cough, cough) during Curren$y's set, because I'm not finding many videos on the YouTube. But he put on a damn entertaining show, and cracked me up almost as much as the fat kid in front of me smoking everyone else's weed. Just livin' the jet life. You know. HA!

Finally, a little glimpse of TV on the Radio, the performance I was most excited about:

As I expected, my favorite moment was when Tunde Adebimpe sang "Will Do"— what can I say, I'm a sucker for a love song.

"Your heart makes a fool of you, you can't seem to understand"

There are plenty more moments I could bore or delight you with, but what can I say, I'm worn out. I just spent three days in the hot sun surrounded by a bunch of sweaty youngsters. But totally worth it.

What can I say. It's the feeling I get every time I hear Tunde Adebimpe belt out:

"Oh my reddest rose! Caldera! Set it off!"

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: The Catastrophe of My Personality

2011-07-12T21:34:00.000-05:00

A glass of red wine and Frank O'Hara. I highly recommend it. This poem, in particular. I'd say it makes me want to cry, but that's too obvious, huh. But God! The way he talks about his "wounded beauty" makes my heart aflutter, too.

I often wait for "for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting."

Perhaps I am myself again. Words!

MAYAKOVSKY

By Frank O'Hara

1
My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

But Erica Jong, We're Raunchy, Too! The Young Feminists Cry

2011-07-11T22:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was thrilled to see an op-ed in the NY Times by Erica Jong, one of my favorite authors, poets, and sex-pots.

My thrill lasted for about 15 seconds.

In "Is Sex Passé?" Ms. Jong begins:

What could be more eternal than sexuality? The fog of longing, the obsession with the loved one’s voice, smell, touch. Sex is discombobulating and distracting, it makes you immune to money, politics and family. And sometimes I think the younger generation wants to give it up.

People always ask me what happened to sex since “Fear of Flying.” While editing an anthology of women’s sexual writing called “Sugar in My Bowl” last year, I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers. The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy.

Umm, what? What younger women are you hanging out with, Erica? (Can I call you Erica?) Even trying to imagine having a "nostalgia for '50s-era attitudes toward sexuality" makes me feel a little nauseated. I think I can say, with complete certainty, that not one woman in my circle of friends would share that sentiment.

But, I told myself, this is Erica Jong, visionary behind the "zipless fuck"—read Fear of Flying if you don't know what I'm referring to, for chrissakes!—so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Undoubtedly plenty of younger writers (along with a large group of older writers, I'll wager) are "obsessed with motherhood and monogamy." Sure. Wait, though: since when are motherhood and monogamy mutually exclusive? Jong herself is an obvious example that they're not. Yet even if these young writers are "obsessed" with motherhood and monogamy, how does that equate a disinterest in sexual passion, or let's get real, even a raunchy attitude toward sex? Aren't monogamous mothers capable of "discombobulating and distracting" sex?

C'mon now! Where is this all going?

While I do have to agree that “Daughters always want to be different from their mothers,” holds an element of truth, when Jong goes on to say, “If their mothers discovered free sex, then they want to rediscover monogamy,” she’s overlooking a huge factor. Not all of our mothers “discovered free sex”! And honestly, even if they did, that might not be an aspect that any of us witnessed about our mothers. Sure, I know my mother had some single years, but during my lifetime, she was a happily married woman. She was also open to talking to me about sex. I guess my point is, it’s not always so black and white. Not always one extreme or the other. Just because Jong was part of the “free sex” movement, I don’t think we can claim that all young women have mothers who were. Plenty of the young women today who yearn for married with children bliss have happily married mothers as role models.

Jong continues to make claims throughout the piece that I find disappointing and even confusing, such as when she discusses how the Internet offers “simulated sex without intimacy, without identity and without fear of infection”—okay, so what? Does she think that in between our daydreams of wearing a “man-distancing sling” and breast-feeding “at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him” we are all getting off to Internet porn? It's not entirely clear, as she uses vague language about "Internet sex" that makes me nervous that she's never, in fact, used the Internet. “Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement. We want to keep the chaos of sex trapped in a device we think we can control,” she writes.

I would argue that the “lure of Internet sex” (if that's what we're calling it) is indeed about control, but not necessarily as a means to avoid the “chaos” of actual sex. Without getting into the dreaded Feminism and Pornography argument (pleasegoddon’tbringmeintothat), I think it’s worth noting that, perhaps young women (and men) are going to the Internet to find sexual pleasure when they don’t have a partner. I mean, DUH. Of course it’s about control! Controlling your orgasms. Does that mean our generation doesn’t care about sex?

No. It just means we have more options.

It’s not that we don’t care about sex. Maybe some young women are all about motherhood and monogamy, and maybe even about wearing a sling to hold their babies to ease with breast feeding. More power to them. That’s fine. Just as many young women are getting off via the Internet, without a care in the world about who’s judging them. Maybe those same women scoping out Internet porn were wearing one of those baby slings earlier in the day. And there are plenty of others who fall somewhere in between. More power to all of us.

Because I think what Erica Jong is forgetting, as she pisses off other feminists, like Courtney at Feministing, is that it’s our feminist foremothers, Jong especially, who have given us this freedom to not have to be so vocal about sex all the time. Jong was the sexual spokeswoman, and thank God for her.

So, I think instead of feeling pissed at Jong and pointing out the obvious, that no, we’re not all prudes any more than all our moms were free loving hippies, we should unite on the strong point in her piece:

The backlash against sex has lasted longer than the sexual revolution itself. Both birth control and abortion are under attack in many states. Women’s health care is considered expendable in budgetary negotiations. And the right wing only wants to champion unborn children. (Those already born are presumed able to fend for themselves.)

Lust for control fuels our current obsession with the deficit, our rejection of passion, our undoing of women’s rights. How far will we go in destroying women’s equality before a new generation of feminists wakes up? This time we hope those feminists will be of both genders and that men will understand how much equality benefits them.

Different though we are, men and women were designed to be allies, to fill out each other’s limitations, to raise children together and give them different models of adulthood. We have often botched attempts to do this, but there is valor in trying to get it right, to heal the world and the rift between the sexes, to pursue the healing of home and by extension the healing of the earth.

If we want to champion women’s rights and equality, I’m all for it. But I don’t think alienating and pissing off younger women is the way to go. (Not to mention that he heterosexist tone of this argument warrants an entirely different blog post.)

Like Courtney wrote at Feministing, “It’s not okay to make vast generalizations about entire generations based on your own daughter and four of your literary friends.” I want to see young and old(er) feminists uniting for women's rights and continuing the fight for equality, not just arguing with one another! Why waste our time talking about which generation of us is more into raunchy sex, when instead we could be pooling our collective brainpower to figure out how to protect women's access to birth control, and how to talk to teenagers about safe sex.

Alright. Time to get that baby off my breast and go prowl the Interwebs. Maybe I'll read some of Jong's poetry afterward, if I'm not too tired.

Monday Mix Tapes: Gladys, Alicia, and Some Merry Men, It Seems

2011-07-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

The other evening, Lauren and I were talking about boys and ponies and ribbons or whatever it is girls like to talk about, and we came to a startling realization:

She didn't know Alicia Keys' version of "If I Was Your Woman," a Gladys Knight and the Pips' cover. EVEN WORSE, I only knew Alicia's version. I think I even said, "Oh, THAT'S why she says it's a 'shout out to Miss Gladys Knight.'"

Sigh. HOW EMBARRASSING!

I had to put a stop to this.

Clueless young souls everywhere, meet Miss Gladys Knight and the Pips, who for some reason or another are dressed like Robin Hood's merry men (umm. the DANCING!). But whatever. Gladys is rocking that green eyeshadow.

And now we have Miss Alicia, who is beautiful as ever in the unplugged version. I may or may not have listened to her unplugged album repeatedly on drives from Bloomington to Knightstown in the Dodge Neon. I may or may not have been singing at the top of my lungs while doing so. (And may I point out that Alicia's eyeshadow is equally incredible in this video?)

Okay, I feel better now. But will someone get me a Gladys Knight and the Pips record, stat? Oh, and I don't have a record player, so I'll need that, too. Great, thanks!

Even Though It Haunts You, I Want You

2011-07-05T22:08:00.000-05:00

Kelsey Wallace over at Bitch said this was "summery as fuck"—

Yes.

("Tell me again it's only skin/I wanna swim")

Ever Feel Like This?

2011-06-30T20:29:00.001-05:00


backwards and forwards with my heart hanging out

where was I/where was I (now at last I know)

This is what happens when I listen to too much Let it Die and it's almost, but not quite storming, and I'm nostalgic for being 22 when I'm only 27. Sorry. (Not sorry.)

I feel it all (I feel it all)

Plotting an Escape

2011-06-29T22:13:00.000-05:00

Why am I so afraid sometimes? And why, when I'm most afraid, does my spirit seem to surge, rise up, and observe the whole planet from above? ...Tears of love? Do I really want to escape with her not just from this town and the heat but from what the future holds for us, from mediocrity and absurdity?...
I'm a nervous wreck. I feel like weeping and throwing punches...but my face remains unchanged. I scarcely move a muscle, though inside I'm falling apart.

—from The Third Reich: Part 1, by Roberto Bolaño, published in The Paris Review

Six Books, Stacked.

2011-06-29T21:42:00.000-05:00

Used to be, I’d come home
your oxygen cord leading the trail
to where I’d find you,
curled up with a book,
dog at your feet or on your lap.

You’d greet me,
a familiar, “Al?”
coming from the other room.
I’d follow the trail
and there you’d be,
smiling,
pulling the reading glasses off
& readjusting the cord in your nose.

Used to be, I was your daughter.
You knew me.

It was almost time.
But you’d never admit it,
stubborn woman.
Instead, you tried to read
every book at once.
I felt it, though you tried
to hide it:

a panic, a fear—
what if you couldn’t read them first?

Six books, stacked, all with bookmarks.

The last day I saw you,
really saw you,
talked to you in your hospital room
here in Chicago,

I gave you one last gift.
Two books, one a silly romance,
one I was reading for class.
And you smiled at me and said,
“I can’t wait to read them.”

But you never got to read those books.
Six books, stacked, all with bookmarks,
next to your empty chair.
My books, our books, were there.
So was Les Miserables
and others,
but I can’t remember the others,
and it kills me.

What if there weren’t actually six books even in the pile?

Some years later,
after your stack of books was gone,
by the time I no longer
looked for that oxygen cord
each time I walked in the door,
I picked up one of the books I gave you.
Opened it, and read
my inscription to my mother.

With a jolt, I saw
the handwriting of
my teenage self.
I barely even knew it.

It was the saddest feeling.
as sad as seeing your bookmark
still in place
as sad as every time I tried
to read Les Mis
and couldn’t,
as sad as accepting
I’d never see you again.

Today I wondered
if you would still know me:

I am no longer a teenager.
Nothing is the same.
Not even my handwriting.

But then,
curled up on the couch
with my New Yorker,
and a stack of books
(because I can never read
just one at a time),
a cat by my side,

I realized
You’ve been here all along.

Skip Town with Nico Muhly

2011-06-23T11:25:00.000-05:00

My cubicle mate just introduced me to his "favorite person on the Internet," composer Nico Muhly.

The introduction led me to this amazingness. It's so frantic. Frantic, and fantastic:

Skip Town from Banner Gwin on Vimeo.

Also, I absolutely love the design of Nico Muhly's site. I want to steal it. Or, I'll just use Blogger templates for the rest of my days. Either way.

Now I'm Going Crazy (I Didn't Mean It)

2011-06-22T21:37:00.000-05:00

This song makes me want to write a love letter.

And maybe cry.

Where in the hell is my Mayer Hawthorne album? Why isn't all my music in my iTunes library when I NEED IT?

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: Taped to the Wall of My Cell

2011-06-21T16:42:00.000-05:00

Today's (multimedia!) poetry slam comes courtesy of my brother Jay, who sent me this poem by the prison poet, Etheridge Knight. Not sure if "prison poet" is really the proper term here, but Knight wrote a book of poetry while serving an eight-year stint in the Indiana State Prison, so if not proper, it's at least accurate.

For all you poetry slam traditionalists, read the full poem here.

The Writing Experiment Concludes (With a Little More Joyce)

2011-06-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been 10(ish) days, and the experiment has come to its final moment. The final post!

I'm kind of sad, to be honest. Sure, maybe y'all are sick of reading the words "the experiment" and equally sick of all my pontificating on the CRAFT, and DEDICATION, and WORK ETHIC, and shiiiat. But it's been a good 10(ish) days.

It was harder than I expected. I don't feel like I completely succeeded, as there was a day or two here and there where I didn't post, or I'd be highly productive one day and then feel completely spent the next.

But I guess that's why it was an experiment. Now I want to try another one, and see how I do. I'm not sure what that would be, exactly, but I'm open to suggestions.

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to write about today. Marco and I spent all afternoon at the bookstore, me reading, him drawing, and of course I got all these "brilliant" (ha, ha), fleeting ideas at the strangest times. Like when I'm waiting in line for the bathroom, for instance. Those ideas are still floating around in my brain, somewhere, but for now, I wanted to keep the focus on writing, in general. So I thought I'd bring it full circle with some words of wisdom from Ms. Joyce Carol Oates, once again.

The following is excerpted from her 1976 interview with The Paris Review (all emphasis is mine):

INTERVIEWER

Do you find emotional stability is necessary in order to write? Or can you get to work whatever your state of mind? Is your mood reflected in what you write? How do you describe that perfect state in which you can write from early morning into the afternoon?

OATES

One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I've found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes . . . and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Or appears to do so. Joyce said of the underlying structure of Ulysses—the Odyssean parallel and parody—that he really didn't care whether it was plausible so long as it served as a bridge to get his “soldiers” across. Once they were across, what does it matter if the bridge collapses? One might say the same thing about the use of one's self as a means for the writing to get written. Once the soldiers are across the stream . . .

INTERVIEWER

Do you enjoy writing?

OATES

I do enjoy writing, yes. A great deal. And I feel somewhat at a loss, aimless and foolishly sentimental, and disconnected, when I've finished one work and haven't yet become absorbed in another. All of us who write, work out of a conviction that we are participating in some sort of communal activity. Whether my role is writing, or reading and responding, might not be very important. I take seriously Flaubert's statement that we must love one another in our art as the mystics love one another in God. By honoring one another's creation we honor something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond us.

Of course, writing is only one activity out of a vast number of activities that constitute our lives. It seems to be the one that some of us have concentrated on, as if we were fated for it. Since I have a great deal of faith in the processes and the wisdom of the unconscious, and have learned from experience to take lightly the judgments of the ego and its inevitable doubts, I never find myself constrained to answer such questions. Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when we as individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.

I particularly love what she says about how "the activity of writing changes everything"—because I agree with her. It does. Like the other night, when all I wanted to do was either go to sleep or watch another episode of Weeds, but instead I picked up my laptop and just wrote. I wrote as my eyes burned staring at the screen and the battery level on my Macbook flashed to red.

If nothing else, by trying out this little writing experiment, I was finally able to remember that feeling, that eyes burning from staring at the screen, adrenaline rush, that creative energy, that fucking feeling, that I can put words on a page and they can mean something, and that I can use "one's self as a means for the writing to get written."

Take 9: Mental Health Break

2011-06-17T16:29:00.000-05:00

This little experiment has proven to be quite interesting (err, for me, at least). I've been thinking a lot about the actual act of writing, about discipline, about believing in my own abilities, and not making excuses for not working hard at a craft.

But I'm going to have to be real for a minute. If I don't step out of my brain a little bit and just relax, I'm going to go insane. Okay, maybe not insane, but let's just say I'm so deep in thought lately about writing, and life, and being motivated, that my head is starting to hurt. My social interactions are getting more awkward than usual. (I know, I didn't think it was possible either!)

Last Friday, in a post not directly for the experiment, I wrote this essay that I'm actually really proud of, and I think was directly inspired by all this writing. But today, all I can think of right now is everything I need to accomplish in a span of about three hours. I'm not inspired. I am stressed.

But this actually brings up a relative point:

I think part of writing, or other creative endeavors, is also learning that sometimes (particularly when you've actually earned it), you have to give yourself a little mental health break.

It's Friday. I have a party to go to tonight, and I still need a dress. I'm taking that mental health break now. But before I go...

I'm wondering, all of you creative types that I'm hoping and pretending are reading my blog:

When do you allow yourself a mental health break? How do you self-assess how hard you've worked, or how much you've accomplished?

I hope that this doesn't end up being a rhetorical question! I really do want to know. I'm actually serious about this self-discipline bizness. Comment, why don't you. I double dare you.

The Writing Experiment, Take 8: An Obligation, A Habit, A Necessity

2011-06-17T00:08:00.001-05:00

I have a confession to make:

I didn’t want to write today.

In fact, the only reason I’m doing so now is because I can’t stop thinking, You said you were going to do this, Alison. Fucking follow through with something for once in your life.

But then I started ~~rationalizing~~ making excuses. I’m tired. It was a long day. I’m tired. I wanna watch another episode of Weeds. I’m tired.

And then I remembered my big, bold statement on, what was that? Day 3? About excuses?

Okay, okay, I told myself. I’ll turn on my computer and write something. Then you know what my lazy ass did? I thought, I’ll just find something I wrote before, and post it!

ha, ha! I am SO clever!

Or, not.

While I was looking through my old stuff, ~~trying to get some inspiration~~ looking for something to pass off as today’s writing, I noticed a pretty consistent theme. Take a wild fucking guess at this theme.

A whole lot of introductions, with no conclusions.

I seem to be full of ideas. These ideas last for about, oh, a paragraph or two, and then most of the time they trail off. I do this the most with short stories. Partly because I’m of two minds about my “talents” as a fiction writer. In fact, I was just thinking about this today: I’m not sure if I’m any good at writing fiction. And for once, I’m not trying to be self-deprecating. I’m actually just trying to be honest. Which leads me to the question(s):

Where do you draw the line between being honest with yourself, and giving up? How do you recognize when you’re doing one or the other?

In lieu of actually answering those questions, instead I’m going to play a little show and tell. Or something. Here are a couple of my beginnings with no end.

When I was going to write a short story based on the writing prompt to “take the first line of a song and write a story using it as the first line”:

—oh, it’s so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl. He smirked, looking her up and down.
—yeah, hilarious. drink?
he leaned back in his seat …

Yep, I made it through a whopping three lines. And yep, that song I stole a line from was none other than “Alison”—how ridiculous!

And then there was the story I started last summer:

My mother had been dead for 11 days and I hadn’t spoken to my boyfriend in a week the day I met him. But he didn’t need to know about either of those things. I was leaning over the counter at the campus coffee shop, waiting for my latte and reading my horoscope over the top of my sunglasses. I hadn’t run a comb through my hair in three days. The night before, I’d pulled my Clinique eye makeup remover out of the medicine cabinet, but then just put it down on the sink and stared at it. When I woke up that morning, I stared at the small black ovals on my pillowcase.

Today’s horoscope for Aries was bullshit. My horoscope had been bullshit for days. But I still kept hovering over the counter each day, reading it over the top of my sunglasses and hoping it would tell me something. Today it said, “Your positive attitude is contagious today. Your friends, classmates, and coworkers will come to you for answers. Don’t be afraid to share your energy!”

“Iced latte for Becca. Becc-aaa!” This fucking barista was way too energetic. You just knew she was the kind of person who was always ten minutes early to work. The kind of girl who sat in the front of the class and took perfect notes. I knew she was this kind of person, as a matter of fact. She just so happened to be in my Intro to Psych lecture. I noticed her earlier this week when I was slumped in my fourth row seat, half-taking notes and doodling. She had perfect posture. I hated her.

My lord. I have a protagonist with a dead mother, who owns Clinique eye makeup remover, reading her Aries horoscope while waiting for a fucking iced latte. And her name is Becca. Short for Rebekah, perhaps?

Hi, I’m Alison, I’m an Aries, my middle name is Rebekah, my mother is dead, and I use Clinique eye makeup remover. Great fiction! I actually wrote a little bit more than this, but it gets too embarrassing. Let’s just say I have my protagonist—who I SWEAR isn’t a mixed up version of my 19- and 25-year-old self!—reading Richard Wright in a coffee shop, being a smart ass, and pretending she’s okay when she’s clearly not.

Euuuuuuugh.

So where does this lead us, errr, me? Well, basically, I called myself lazy, embarrassed myself by actually posting these short story attempts, and came to no conclusions at all, really.

Except:

I didn’t want to write tonight, but I did it anyway. Once I started, though, it stopped feeling like an obligation, and instead felt like a habit. Like a necessity. Sometimes it's going to stink. Sometimes I'm going to write ridiculous attempts at fiction that aren't really much fiction at all.

Sometimes I'm just going to write.

Take 7: What I Meant to Say

2011-06-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

That last year I watched the sun set while you sang songs backed by a beautiful orchestra; that every time I hear "The Story" I get teary eyed; that I feel at home no matter where I am when I listen to your music; that once, I put "Someday Never Comes" on a mix for a friend and it said exactly what I wanted to, but couldn't; that seeing you in concert makes me think about my mother so much, it is both unbearable and wonderful all at once—

But that would have been crazy, so instead, when I met Brandi Carlile, my face turned beet red as she shook my hand and I heard myself say:

"I'm such a huge fan."

Then Ray LaMontagne took the stage, and aside from some mumbled "thank you's" in between songs, he spoke to the crowd only once, to tell us to "turn around and look at the moon" because it really was "quite lovely"—and it was. And as the big yellow moon rose up behind us, he sang this song:

In that moment, everything felt okay, and I no longer cared that I couldn't say all the things I wanted to say to Brandi, or that I can never seem to say everything I want to say when it counts the most, because the music said it all.

It's Day 7 in The Writing Experiment, and after driving back to Chicago in the rain, then sitting in rush hour traffic for two hours, all I really wanted to do was curl up in a ball and pass out. But because I'm experimenting with this little thing called discipline, instead, I went to the gym. And then I wrote this. Now I curl up in a ball and pass out.

In Short, No. 6: A Long, Winding Sentence (Again)

2011-06-15T00:36:00.000-05:00

I'm in bed back home in Indiana, in my old bedroom that's no longer my room but still sorta feels like my room, after seeing a great show tonight in Indianapolis (Brandi Carlile & Ray LaMontagne, but more on that tomorrow, I promise.)

I'm sleepy, and it's technically Wednesday already, but dammit! I refuse to miss another day in my writing experiment, and since I haven't gone to bed yet it still counts. I'm in the mood to write another long, winding sentence inspired by the "things that stand out clear as pictures in our head."

When I first tried my man E.B. White's little experiment, it was about a year ago, and I was here in this same room. Funny how everything can change so drastically in one year in so many ways, and in many other ways nothing changes at all.

So if, right now, I were to once again, write about the things that really interested me in the past week, those things that “stand out clear as pictures in our head,” I'd probably discuss: the way I get so caught up in my own brain as I walk to and from work, sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm talking to myself out loud, and not actually just in my head, and every other pedestrian on the street hears my innermost thoughts; Brandi Carlile's suspenders; how my daydreams vary from thoughts of vinyl to a book deal to finally figuring out myself and everyone around me to owning Wonder Woman lipstick; and how I am in a passionate, but possibly unilateral, love/hate relationship with the city of Chicago, and how I only allow myself to admit that when I spend a night back in Indiana.

What a horrible, wonderful sentence that was to write. And now I feel both horrible and wonderful. Good night, good luck, whatever.

Poetry Slam Tuesdays: Using All Our Words

2011-06-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

My friend Mike sent me this poem last week—a bit of inspiration as I embarked on my writing experiment—and I am in love with it. Enjoy.

The Quiet World
By Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

Do you write poems? Do you read poems? How about you send me one, and maybe it'll be on the next poetry slam! NEAT! Email me at alisonhamm@gmail.com or get in touch on the Tweeter.

The Experiment, No. 5: Gaining Some Perspective

2011-06-13T22:58:00.000-05:00

Every day on my walk from the train to my office building, it never fails to jar me as I pass a different homeless person on each corner—sometimes two at a corner—holding up a makeshift cardboard sign, jingling a plastic cup of change, or even worse, just sleeping on the street as people walk past.

I feel frustrated as people walk past them, not seeming to care in the slightest, but then I have to take a deep breath and realize that I'm not doing anything different most of the time. What am I supposed to do? I feel helpless, walking past, thinking that even if I gave each one of them $1, or even $5, that's not going to do much at all.

My buddy, the man on the milk crate, isn't as consistently in his same spot now that it's warmed up outside. Sometimes, he's gone for a solid week, and I worry and wonder where he is, and if he's okay. But he always comes back. He was looking pretty rough for awhile, and then disappeared for a week or so. I had started thinking he was gone for good, but then one evening after work, he was back, sitting on his milk crate. It took me a second to realize it was him—it was the first time I'd seen him without a hat, and he'd shaved his head and had some "new" shoes that looked about two sizes too small.

Where'd he get his head shaved? How'd he get those shoes? How does he survive?

I think that maybe, I don't want to know the answers to all those questions. Today he was nowhere to be found. There was a different man sitting on his milk crate, which happens sometimes. The first time I noticed this, I got a little riled up, wondering if someone had stolen my "friend's" seat. But he was back on it the next day. Maybe they take shifts. I have no idea.

There were some new people out today. A young couple sat holding a sign with a picture of a baby taped to it: "Please. We R Homeless n Hungry. Help us Feed Our Baby."

I almost walked into traffic as I turned back to look at that sign. And I hate to admit it, but it wasn't out of a pang of sympathy right then, it was a shot of skepticism. A series of different, much less kind questions popped to mind.

Where's this baby? If someone's watching the baby, wouldn't that same person help them eat? Do they even have a baby? Are they addicts?

I didn't give the couple money. I didn't give any one money today. I haven't, in fact, even helped out the man on the milk crate with some spare change lately.

***

Recently, I was adding money to my train pass when a man using the machine next to me started talking to me.

"Ma'am? Think you can spare 10 dollars? See, I need to get out to my mom's in the suburbs, and I..."

I looked over at the dollar amount on his machine as he was asking me that, and saw that he had $15.75 on his card. And I couldn't help it. I pulled my ear buds out, shook my head, and pointed at the machine.

"You're trying to take the train? Fare is $2.25."

As I said that, he dejectedly shook his head, looked like he was about to protest, then just shook his head again and hit "Vend" on the machine. We both knew he didn't need 10 bucks to get on the damn train.

I walked down to the blue line and couldn't shake an uneasy feeling. I couldn't decide if I was proud of myself for not being my usual, overly polite self to people asking for money, or if I felt like a total asshole. At the same time, I felt unreasonably mad. If you want to ask me for money, just ask me for money! Don't pretend that you need it for the train.

It was the same way I felt one other time in the city when I stepped out of a cab with my friend Raj and we immediately got hounded by a man asking us for money. I had leftovers in my hand from dinner, so I offered it to the man instead of money. He protested, and continued to ask us for money, and I offered the food, again. He jerked it out of my hand, and I felt like a schmuck. And I was pissed. I was just trying to be kind, after all.

It's easy to think and assume certain thoughts about either of those men, or that couple I saw today. Maybe they were drunks or addicts and needed money for a quick fix. After all, I'm only human, and it's easy to feel jaded, or skeptical, particularly when people are rude. I don't even know if the man who asked me for train fare was homeless, but it's a safe bet that those other men are. So, no, the man who took my leftover food and still demanded money wasn't polite. He was aggressive and rude. Maybe he was a drug addict. Maybe he suffers from mental illness. But you know what? Whether it's the former, the latter, or both, that's all the more reason to show some kindness.

While I realize there's a fine line between being kind and just handing out money to everyone on the street, I think the reason I had an uneasy feeling both of those times was because I was upset with myself. Instead of having some compassion, I judged those people. I can be rude to strangers sometimes for no better reason than they stepped on my foot on the train. And chances are, I had something good to eat that day. I can only imagine how rude, tense, or aggressive I might be if I were hungry, scared, and alone. On top of that, I also can rattle off a huge list of family members and friends who would be there to help me if I were to, say, be evicted from my apartment or struggle with an addiction. I think about last year, when I had to move back in with my dad because I was struggling to support myself. What would have happened to me if I weren't lucky enough to have that option? Or any other options?

On my commute home from work today, I opened up my New Yorker and immediately became absorbed with a story by Lauren Groff, called "Above and Below." Go figure, it was about a young woman who becomes homeless. Once a university graduate student, after losing funding and getting evicted from her apartment, she starts living in her station wagon by the beach, surviving off of scraps and discarded food, sneaking into a condo's gym to shower. She continues to find various ways of surviving, and eventually, she winds up living in a squat.

While I read my magazine, a woman across the aisle was sleeping, sprawled across the seats with bags surrounding her.

Housing is a human right. For info on how you can help the homeless in Chicago, click here.

Monday Mix Tapes: 90s Nostalgia, It Seems

2011-06-13T17:13:00.000-05:00

This is happening:

I've been on an all-afternoon binge of Smashing Pumpkins videos. How could I have forgotten the amazingness that was this:

We'll crucify the insincere tonight!

The Writing Experiment, No. 4: Embracing the Writer Within

2011-06-11T17:31:00.000-05:00

I was looking for some inspiration for my 4th post in my 10-part writing experiment, and bless you, New Yorker, you gave it to me. (Do you think when my New Yorker subscription runs out, I’ll have nothing to write?)

What great timing for my favorite issue of the year to be sitting patiently in my mailbox waiting for me! It’s the Summer Fiction issue! New Yorker geeks everywhere, rejoice!

And of course, it’s packed with big name writers: Jeffrey Eugenides, Junot Diaz, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jhumpa Lahiri, to name a few. Not surprisingly, it was Pulitzer Prize-winner Lahiri’s personal essay, “Trading Stories,” that inspired this post. Lahiri happens to be one of my favorite authors—her novel, The Namesake, and two short story collections, Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, are some of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve ever read.

In this essay, she writes about her love of reading and writing, but more specifically, about her journey to becoming a writer. For anyone not familiar with Lahiri, I think The Atlantic interviewer Isaac Chotiner describes her well, naming her “the acclaimed chronicler of the Bengali-immigrant experience”:

Both of her previous books—Interpreter of Maladies (a 2000 story collection that earned her the Pulitzer Prize), and The Namesake, a 2003 novel that later took shape as a popular film— explored the cultural dissonances experienced by immigrants caught between the culture of their Indian birthplace and the unfamiliar ways of their adopted home. In Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight short stories, Lahiri continues to explore this theme, this time with a focus on the lives of second-generation immigrants who must navigate both the traditional values of their immigrant parents and the mainstream American values of their peers.

It makes sense that the sort of “cultural dissonances” she writes of in her fiction also played a huge role in Lahiri’s journey to becoming a writer. In her essay, she writes about her parents, “For though they had created me, and reared me, and lived with me day after day, I knew I was a stranger to them, an American child. In spite of our closeness, I feared that I was alien.”

Many of Lahiri’s characters also have these types of fears toward, and relationships with, their parents. What I’ve found most beautiful and fascinating as I’ve read her works, though, is how this is coupled with powerful moments of her characters understanding and feeling close with their parents. While the cultural dissonance she often describes is specific to the Bengali-immigrant experience, I think the parent-child relationships are also completely universal. I think it’s fair to say that the very definition of “dissonance”— “a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements”—sums up the teenager-parent dynamic. (Not that all of her characters are teens, but you get what I’m saying.)

It’s both astounding and a relief to me that a writer of Lahiri’s caliber has also experienced the same kind of self-doubt I grapple with in life, and particularly, with my writing. She discusses her deep love of books as a child, writing:

In life, especially as a young girl, I was afraid to participate in social activities. I worried about what others might make of me, how they might judge. But when I read I was free of this worry.

While Lahiri says that as an adolescent, she used writing as a vehicle to make friends and connect with others, later, she somewhat rejected the writer in her— “Though the compulsion to invent stories remained, self-doubt began to undermine it”—and instead, she focused on practicing music, performing in plays, and then later, decided she wanted to be a journalist (while also studying literature in college). Sounds familiar! I also “channelled my energy” into studying journalism and English lit. Yet still, as a student, and even now, more often than I’d like to admit, I feel intimidated by the act of writing. Lahiri writes:

At twenty-one, the writer in me was like a fly in the room—alive but insignificant, aimless, something that unsettled me whenever I grew aware of it, and which, for the most part, left me alone. I was not at a stage where I needed to worry about rejection from others. My insecurity was systemic, and preemptive, insuring that, before anyone else had the opportunity, I had already rejected myself.

Luckily, she quit rejecting herself, and embraced the writing.

Insecurity will get you. It’s terrifying to put yourself out there, whether it’s in life, or on the page. I think that, in life, in writing, whatever, it’s the moments when you embrace that fear and just fucking go for it, that the most beautiful things can happen. Like Lahiri writes, “writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do...Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, ‘Listen to me.’”

Creating a Self

2011-06-10T17:35:00.002-05:00

It's been years since I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but after reading reviews of Manning Marable's recent biography on Malcolm, I'm itching to read both Marable's book and reread Alex Haley's classic.

When I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I was 19, fresh from my first year at college, which had included two semesters of African American lit. We had read excerpts from the autobiography, and after a school year immersed in fascinating, fantastic writing by some timeless authors—Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B DuBois, and Gwedolyn Brooks, to name a handful—I was hugely geeked out and excited to read more about Malcolm X.

Nothing like some "light" summer reading: Much of my reading of The Autobiography of Malcolm X took place on a hotel balcony at Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina. My dad and I, in what now seems like a mildly crazy moment of mourning and nostalgia, had decided to take the trip, just the two of us, that summer. It was the first summer after my mom had died, and I was living back at home with Dad during my break from school. Things were rough. Often, I felt like my dad and I were tiptoeing around each other at home, not quite sure how to communicate with each other, unsure of how to navigate our grief together, simply not quite sure about anything, really. At least, that's how I felt. I can't speak for him, but I do like to think we were in it together.

So off we went to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. It was where our family had spent every summer vacation of my childhood. I remember vividly one of the last years there, I was in my awkward prepubescent stage—I wore a bikini for the first time, and although my boobs had yet to make their grand appearance, it was the first year that, as my mom and I combed the beach looking for seashells on long walks, I noticed attention from the opposite sex. It was a startling and revelatory moment, and my mom loved pointing it out and teasing me any time it happened. Back in the safety of our beach chairs, I hid behind my books and worried endlessly about my bushy eyebrows and mustache as my mom curled her toes contentedly in the sand next to me.

Although our family trips to Wrightsville Beach held countless other memories than just those "Mom" specific ones, being back there with my dad, still feeling so fresh from losing her, those were the only ones I could think of. I tried to put on a brave face and not show him how painful it was to be there, at the same place, even the same hotel, where so many happy times had taken place. I thought of my mom sitting in her flowered robe and matching pajamas on the hotel balcony, of how she always managed to find the prettiest shells when we walked along the beach, and of how the one time, she got so furious with my dad on the way there when he wouldn't stop as soon she wanted so we could go pee.

Ultimately, it was a time in my life when I felt lost. I wasn't sure how to navigate a life where I no longer had a mother. Although I was at least aware enough to realize how lucky I was to have my dad, I'd never really felt close to him in the same way I had toward my mother. She and I had developed this special bond that felt like a secret, of sorts—no one else was allowed in. So I sat on the hotel balcony and read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the complete opposite of the notion of "beach" reading. (Of course, I also read Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume, for the millionth time that trip. It is quintessential beach reading. And life reading. Go read it.)

While I sat on the balcony and read, my dad was just inside, reading A Prayer for Owen Meany. I have no idea why I remember the book he was reading, but I do remember feeling, as we read, together but apart, a comforted, soothing feeling. Maybe it was the late afternoon sun and the sound of the waves, but I like to think it was because in a way, Mom was there with us, reading.

Malcolm X fascinated me. I was constantly surprised or shocked by his history, his actions, his words. I'd call in to my dad: "Dad! Did you know that Malcolm X…" My dad was a good sport. Even if he couldn't have cared less, I would never have known.

Whenever I think about Malcolm X now, I think about that vacation. I feel slightly silly that I can remember the act of reading the autobiography more than the actual book itself, but when I read this article in The New Yorker, I felt like I was reading it again. I'm most struck by Obama's take on him:

After Barack Obama was inaugurated, he returned to the British government a bust of Winston Churchill that was on display in the Oval Office and installed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is rightly regarded as the singular hero of the era that lasted from the Montgomery bus boycott, in 1955, to his death, in April, 1968. Malcolm was an electrifying spokesman for black dignity and selfhood, a radical prod to the mainstream movement, but his role in the civil-rights movement was marginal.

Yet, when Obama was young and trying to come to terms with his own identity, he read the autobiography and it affected him more deeply than even the works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin. In balmy Hawaii, at the most prestigious private school west of the Rockies, Obama found something in the narrative of a man who was also of mixed race, had lost his father, and needed to create a self. “His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me,” Obama wrote of Malcolm in “Dreams from My Father.” “The blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will.” Obama, who adored his white mother and grandparents, was disturbed by Malcolm’s desire to “expunge” the white blood in him. What he admired was the book’s depiction of Malcolm’s redemptive journey and his redemptive, universalist final year.

“I was never taken with some of his theorizing,” Obama told me last year. “I think that what Malcolm X did, though, was to tap into a long-running tradition within the African-American community, which is that, at certain moments, it’s important for African-Americans to assert their manhood, their worth. . . . That affirmation that I am a man, I am worth something, I think was important. And I think Malcolm X probably captured that better than anybody.”

I'm sure it doesn't need to be said that, as a white woman, I can't connect with Malcolm X in the same way our President did. However, like Obama, I also admired and was most struck by "Malcolm’s redemptive journey and his redemptive, universalist final year"—it made his death all the more tragic. What I love most, though, is how Obama connected with the need to create a self, writing in his memoir, "His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me."

Repeated acts of self-creation. It's such a brave notion, isn't it?

I'd like to think, though, that as I read my paperback book on that hotel balcony back in 2003, that I was doing exactly that: creating a new self. It was not one I'd imagined, hoped, or planned for, but that didn't make it all bad. Once I was a girl who shared a special, secret bond and friendship with her mother, and then, as I called to my dad excitedly with factoids about Malcolm X, I was forging a new self, one who was building a new, different, but equally special bond with her father.

We didn't talk about it, but as we read together, both of us were practicing bravery. Sure, it was a bit of a front for each other's benefit, but the idea was: Everything was going to be okay, because it had to be okay. And while I was creating a new self by bonding with my dad, he was doing the same. Only his act of self-creation was even greater—after 25 years, he had to create a self without his wife. He had to become both father and mother for his 19-year-old daughter.

Amid all the reading in those days in North Carolina, Dad and I also went fishing on the pier and took a long walk down the beach together. When we returned to our spot on the beach, he cracked open a can of Miller High Life. After a quiet moment, he pulled another one out of the cooler and handed it to me.

It was one of the best first sips of a beer I've ever had.

In Brief, No. 3: Excuses, Excuses

2011-06-10T10:51:00.000-05:00

Remember when I was going to write something every day for 10 days, got really excited, wrote two in one day, and then wrote nothing yesterday?

Shit. HOW EMBARRASSING.

The lame excuse I already used once this morning: "I mean, I wrote two in one day, so, it's like, still technically Day 3, so I'm not really behind."

Shut up, Alison.

When did I get so great at making excuses? I'm sure my dad would love to answer that question. I've probably been making excuses to get out of things since I learned how to speak. It's pretty silly.

Excuses that ran through my mind last night and this morning:
1. I'm not sure what I want to write about right now.
2. Hungry.
3. Sleepy.
4. But I can do it later!

Basically, I am an infant.

When I went on the Google just now and typed my favorite word, "excuses," I found this article, "How to Kill Your Excuses"—it's brief, and it's really all common sense, so why don't I stop being an infant and actually use some common sense? Once, someone told me, "You're such a smart girl, but sometimes you act like you have no common sense."

Ouch. But in retrospect, a valid point. Thank you, person who shall remain nameless. Like this article says, I'm ready to kill my excuses "like the miserable maggots they are."

It also linked to this video. Next time I make an excuse for something, I'm going to think about this:

The Experiment, Part Deux: ‘In My Sauvignon Fierce, Freaking Out’

2011-06-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

Let me preface this by saying: I was so excited and inspired by the feedback from my first post in the "experiment" that I couldn't wait until tomorrow to do the second one. But mostly because I got a completely unexpected text from my cousin Micaela—I never knew she'd read anything I'd ever written!—that made me want to write for a week straight. If you're reading: Thank you, cousin.

As I start this, my second post in “The Writing Experiment” files, I’m already thinking to myself, Christ, Al, you’re so predictable. Yep, I started by writing about a female writer who inspired me, and now I’m launching into a post fueled by The National lyrics.

Whatever. It’s happening.

So maybe you’ve stumbled upon this blog before. If so, then you’ve picked up on my obsession with a certain band, and a certain songwriter. Ahem. In fact, the song I’m about to talk about, I’ve already posted a video to, not so long ago. IN FACT, I’ve actually already written an essay inspired by this song. Lucky for you, I didn’t post it here. Instead, three of my unlucky friends received it in their email inboxes, because it was something I didn’t feel like sharing with the Interwebs.

This is the song. It’s called, “Baby, We’ll Be Fine.” Some lyrics:

"All night I lay on my pillow and pray
For my boss to stop me in the hallway
Lay my head on his shoulder and say
Son, I've been hearing good things

I wake up without warning and go flying around the house
In my sauvignon fierce, freaking out
Take a forty-five minute shower and kiss the mirror
And say, look at me
Baby, we'll be fine
All we gotta do is be brave and be kind

I put on an argyle sweater and put on a smile
I don't know how to do this
I'm so sorry for everything"

This past fall, I saw The National for the first time in Indianapolis. My anticipation to this show was akin to anticipation over my first sexual experience. Seriously. I have never been as excited about a concert as I was about this one. And if you know me, that is a big statement to make, because I get really fucking excited about concerts. I was so excited about this concert, as a matter of fact, that I listened to The National even more than usual (which basically means I exclusively listened to The National for a solid week), and the day of the concert, I was ready to go, pacing around the house three solid hours before the show started. (As it turned out, it was a good thing I had gotten ready early, because I left my ticket at my dad’s house and ended up driving an unnecessary hour and a half just to make it to the show on time.)

The good news is, the concert was a much better time than … Yeah.

Back to the song, and away from uncomfortable comparisons. One reason I love this particular song so much is how it affects me in so many different ways, on so many levels. Overall, I’m always a sucker for a song with some sad, desperate longing for something that’s just outside of your grasp, but you feel like it shouldn’t be: “All night I lay on my pillow and pray/For my boss to stop me in the hallway.” Then that feeling is coupled with the hope, that stubborn hope that, you know what? Baby, we’ll be fine!

I love the sense of longing, coupled with this frantic, anxious behavior. He’s “flying around the house,” but then taking a ridiculously long shower, followed by a pep talk in front of the mirror. This behavior is me, in a nut shell. I don’t mind admitting it.

I sensed this sort of anxiety and heightened excitement—but also a little bit of a “Fuck it, I’m just gonna do what I do” attitude— the two times I’ve seen The National. Matt Berninger alternates between screaming in the mic, just really fucking killing it, to pacing around in circles, looking down, and clutching his wine glass. The second time I saw them, this past Easter in Chicago, during one song (I forget which! Shit!) he fucked up a line and the mic stand fell.

Standing in the packed crowd, surrounded by people who pretty clearly were mostly there to see Arcade Fire, I actually felt scared at that moment. I wanted to run up to the stage and say, “Matt! It’s okay!” Not that he would have cared. He retaliated by taking several huge gulps out of his wine, picking up the mic, and screaming, just screaming, the rest of the song.

Allllllll riiiiight, Matt, I get it.

I have a tendency to apologize, a lot. I say “I’m sorry” almost as much as I cry about shit. And I cry, a lot. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m so damn intense about everything. Maybe I have a desperate longing for something that is a little out of my grasp. Maybe I just want my boss to stop me in the hallway and say, “We’ve been hearing good things!”

But the good news is, like Matt Berninger and the rest of The National (I’d like to think), I also have this hope, this stubborn hope, that baby, we’ll be fine.

All we’ve gotta do is be brave, and be kind.


Lola, my dad & Deb's cat, making her first appearance on the blog. She did not read the book.

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