the question of home

so much emphasis in my life these days on this

where is it what makes it who must be in it how do i envision it am i ready for it do i need it to be happy...

and on the issue of settling down

of settling. period.

something i wrote recently in an email at 2:30 in the morning in an exhaustion and emotion induced delirium:

"i think the best love is a kind of home in and of itself. it is something you can come back to"

i woke up the next morning and questioned if anything id said made sense.

maybe not. but that part did.

i think.

i am so tired but i can never fall asleep

i am so confused but i keep acting like im figuring things out

and i may not be ready for this thing called adulthood but its happening with or without me

Domestic
BY CARL PHILLIPS

If, when studying road atlases
while taking, as you call it, your
morning dump, you shout down to
me names like Miami City, Franconia,
Cancún, as places for you to take
me to from here, can I help it if

all I can think is things that are
stupid, like he loves me he loves me
not? I don’t think so. No more
than, some mornings, waking to your
hands around me, and remembering
these are the fingers, the hands I’ve

over and over given myself to, I can
stop myself from wondering does that
mean they’re the same I’ll grow
old with. Yesterday, in the cafe I
keep meaning to show you, I thought
this is how I’ll die maybe, alone,

somewhere too far away from wherever
you are then, my heart racing from
espresso and too many cigarettes,
my head down on the table’s cool
marble, and the ceiling fan turning
slowly above me, like fortune, the

part of fortune that’s half-wished-
for only—it did not seem the worst
way. I thought this is another of
those things I’m always forgetting
to tell you, or don’t choose to
tell you, or I tell you but only

in the same way, each morning, I
keep myself from saying too loud I
love you until the moment you flush
the toilet, then I say it, when the
rumble of water running down through
the house could mean anything: flood,

your feet descending the stairs any
moment; any moment the whole world,
all I want of the world, coming down.

rachael yamagata deserves more than one song on my blog

it is a personal priority to hear her live. soon.

and if you like what you hear below, you have to check out her new album, especially "Duet", a song thats been making my stomach drop out every time i hear it...and in a close second, id recommend "Elephants" and "Sunday Afternoon"

ani's voice reminds me of when i believed in anthems

so who better to sing about obama?

i listen to this song and the cycnic in me wants to pragmatically counter her idolatry of him
but the girl who ran in the rain around a boarding school campus listening to 'not a pretty face' on her cd player...
(yeah. before ipods)
...she really wants to sing along.

is it wrong that the first thing i think is, why didn't i think of that?

really though.
sometimes i go to galleries or contemporary art shows and i see how hard everyones working to out think eachother and i wonder if there are any simple solutions left to the problem of art.
the art that really gets to me is just taking me by the shoulders, lifting me quarter of an inch to the left, and dropping me down again.
but when that actually happens, im going to be honest, my first instinct is not: what a genius.
its: what the hell is wrong with me that i couldn't figure out to do that.
when i see that kind of work, it feels like the artist has snatched up the last real estate offering a slightly altered perspective.
until i see another one
and then im just like AM I GOING AROUND WITH MY HEAD UP MY ASS?
anyway, heres the interview with Aakash Nihalani from The Moment, a very cool NYT blog

Shoooot

the Nov Paris Vogue did this incredibly interesting shoot of one model, Eniko Mihalik, photographed as if she were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60. 

wed all be so lucky to look half as good at 40 as shes made to look at 60 but anyway, the concept is visual candy.

WHY didn't i know about THESE guys?

http://www.metrosexualmovers.com/

make sure your speakers are on.

brilliant.

and based out of the boston area.
my next move is going to be FABULOUS.

heres an excerpt form an interview i found in the boston globe with the man who started MM, joe laRoche:

Q. Define a "Metrosexual Mover."

A. Well, let's define a "metrosexual." We know what a mover is. Frankly, metrosexuals have gotten a bad rap. There's nothing that mandates they have to be frivolous and lack substance. The only definitive thing one can say about a metrosexual is that he is a heterosexual male, not intimidated by subjects culturally associated with and embraced by women. So it's an additive thing: increased sensitivity, more skills, in a broader range of areas.

Q. Do you think your company name puts some people off?

A. The name functions exactly as it was designed to function. People who like it will like me and like our service. People who don't can throw darts at the phonebook.

Q. How has your stand-up comic experience come in handy in your latest venture?

A. People will usually cut you some slack when you drop their Faberge egg collection down a flight of stairs if you can make a witty, off-the-cuff comment like "Well, it looks like your grandkids are going to have to work for their college tuition!"

Q. What are your rates like?

A. You know what they say: "If you have to ask . . ."

Q. OK, fine. Then how's your hair?

A. It's real, and it's spectacular!

this makes it stupid simple

itd be great if everything in life was spelled out like this.

"T workers in crashes test positive for substance use"

um yah this is my morning line...these would be my trusty T workers... and this would be my welcome to boston from the public transportation system.
it makes me want to take my damn car to get around.
which is saying a lot because between the Masshole drivers and the fact that my car apparently has it out for me, i might as well skydive to work and be safer.
T workers in crashes test positive for substance use - The Boston Globe

pissing off joy

Believe Me Love It Was The Nightingale

grooveshark just let me create an imbedible playlist.
i can now finally create soundtracks to life as it happens around me.
brilliant.

last summer i made an ass out of myself in front of billy collins in a coffee shop

i was so busy gawking at him that i dumped two cups of scalding coffee down my chest.
he helped me clean it up. and remembered my name from a week-long workshop i did with him two years earlier.
it was worth the burn.
anyway, part of the reason i consider him a personal god is because i can open a book of his randomly and find relevance in whatever comes up. and not in that magazine horoscope vague kind of way.
like, spooky.
i opened to this one today while i was unpacking my books and it really struck a cord. ive been so frustrated with the writing process recently, how much more enjoyable thinking about writing is than actually writing, how noisy and empty my words are.
so theres that.
and then theres the silence of the cradled phone.
collins, my love, you forgot about that cursed quiet.


Silence
BY BILLY COLLINS

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.

Looking Around, Believing

a quietly uplifting poem by Gary Soto i read recently thats stayed with me.

How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind — white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We're keeping busy —
This way, that way, we're making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.

vids or bust.

for whatever reason boomp3 has pooped out on me.
im posting videos from now on, its simple and you can find the music from there in whatever legal or illegal ways that let you sleep at night.
my cat is on my lap, sitting in my new home in boston and its just dreary enough that i feel like listening to sad songs but not dreary enough that theyre taking me down with them.

Erin McCarley - "Love, Save The Empty"
Sad boy, you stare up at the sky
When no one's looking back at you.
You wear your every last disguise;
You're flying, then you fall through.

sweetsong

'over the rhine' is a married couple who quit their tour to work on their relationship.
'born' is the song that came out of that work:



I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I'm gonna learn to love without fear

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we'll find

Intuition, deja vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don't mind

Put your elbows on the table
I'll listen long as I am able
There's nowhere I'd rather be

Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke's on me

We've seen the landfill rainbow
We've seen the junkyard of love
Baby it's no place for you and me

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I'm gonna learn to love without fear

kakapo day

no, i do not have the cursing capacity of a toddler, im talking about the rarest, strangest parrot on the planet, the kakapo, which i learned about today in an old book i didnt buy at an antique store in amherst. apparently its virtually extinct which might have something to do with the fact that the damn bird refuses to fly and instead habitually hikes through the hilly forests of new zealand for miles each night.
well today was such a mix of excitingly rare and self-destructive events that i think it deserves to be called kakapo.
first of all, president barack obama. thats all i have to say because enough has been said about it already.
so i woke up this morning on my grandmothers couch and lay there remembering why it was such a special day and then, just as quickly, remembered there is a good REASON i avoid being under the same roof at the same time as my mother and grandmother.
what are three things that when combined, explode? because WE ARE THOSE THREE THINGS.
we are the trifecta of chaos.
were here because tomorrow im moving about 80 percent of my shit into my new place in boston (other ten percent comes next tuesday when i come back and stay for good) so we decided to come via grandmothers and make sure she survived the election, whatever the results. also, theres no sales tax in NH so its a good place to go to stock a new apartment because Nashua has every godamnn homeware store in this great consumer nation, including but not limited to: ikea, target, linens n' things, jennifer convertibles, jordans and pier 1. we visited them all today. anyway, it was a nice idea. unfortunately, for some reason having to do with the moon and the seasons changing and the fact that i'm setting out on my own, mom and i have been at eachothers throats for days and trust me i have TRIED to just turn off the circuit breaker that controls the buttons she insists on pushing but theres only so long i can bite my lip without biting it OFF when she spents 50 of the first 60 miles talking about how fat ive become and how it just takes a "little less chewing and swallowing" to fix it if i cared enough.
thanks mother. youre a genius.
i swear she brings out the worst in everyone. i woke up to the sounds of my sweet grandmother ( who i get along with perfectly when its just us,) raging around the house at war with my mother because she decided to criticize the towels grandmother hung up for her. bad move on moms part.
so then grandmother woke me up with an angry poke saying she was making breakfast and i better be ready to eat it, no doubt refering to the fact that id held a hunger strike through dinner the night before as a result of my two hour long car lecture on the size of my "rear end." anyone who comes to this house knows you really cant get away with turning down food, even when you think you do you realize that just means shes sending you home with that much more to go, so after id showered i braced myself for the breakfast of a life time. and thats exactly what it was. but of course, after a pointed remark about indigestion from dinner, mom decided she wasnt hungry and sat at the table on the phone with italy thus deepening my grandmother indignation and causing so much stomping, huffing and dish rattling youd have thought there was a dragon was in the kitchen. an hour later Gma was still force feeding me coffee cake, sitting across the table glaring at me until i pushed in another chunk, with my mother across the room smoking a cigarette on the phone saying in italian, "today were going shopping for a bed for daisys apartment. she was going for a queen size but i think by the looks of her these days were going to need a king."
by the time mom and i got out the door to go shopping everyone hated everyone else. how did that happen? were family, were lucky to have eachother, were all each other has, and yet walking out that door id been so provoked so many times i felt like kicking the shit out of something soft and vulnerable. i am not a fighter. i can write a nasty fight, for the stage and for my friends when they need their confrontations choreographed, but im not actually a fighter. i just appreciate the way a good fight gets you somewhere you needed to go. and yet these arguments go no where, they never arrive at the point.
after all what is the point? the point is, i love you. but it sounds a lot like i HATE you and it seems like no amount of peaceful reasoning or solo mental prep work gets me to the point where i can say what i actually mean for too long. i hate the person i become around my mother. its something ive worked on my whole life and youd think it would get better but for some reason it feels like ive never been so at her mercy, so controlled by her, so resentful of that control while simultaneously so desperate for her approval as i have been in these past months.
later i lost my mother in Target and after ten minutes of searching, started to get really upset. it was such a ridiculous moment, rushing through the undergarment section feeling like a little kid lost in a forest of bra-trees, wondering what my last words had been to my mother in case they really were my last... i found her eventually, cornering some kid in the household cleaning aisle who didnt even work there, he just happened to be wearing a red polo shirt, but couldnt get a word in edge wise because my mom was too busy demanding to know where she could find a Sniffer.
she meant a Swiffer. i corrected her. she snapped at me. the kid ran away.
we stood there glaring at eachother for about ten seconds.
and then laughed until we cried, until we couldnt breathe, until we had to sit down on the floor of target holding onto the shelves, holding onto eachother for support.