There ain't nothing but gravity holding me here
I'll up and away at dawn
All the days of my life
So empty and light
Do nothing to weigh me back down
Some people have strings webbing them to each other
But I've snipped all those away
I've been petty and rough
With the people I love
Till not a one of them would care if I stay
I've got dreams in my head and a song in my heart
And things I'll have left undone
But half-spun stories
And hollow glories
Will fade quickly once I'm gone
There ain't nothing but gravity holding me here
Don't try to convince otherwise
And if ever gravity
Were to lose its grip on me
You know I'd be lost to the skies
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Blue Moon
'Twas a blue moon tonight. So naturally to celebrate I put on Van Morrison's "Moondance" and danced around like an idiot under the night sky out in our driveway. I'm a terrible dancer, but the moonlight seemed to make up for any of my failings. It really is a fantastic dance partner if you're ever looking for someone to take you for a spin.
I have a history with blue moons. Well, kind of. Nothing spectacular, just sweet. Once a few years back my grandmother ("Oma") was visiting when a blue moon happened to occur. We all knew there wasn't anything particularly significant about a blue moon - I mean, it wasn't actually blue or any bigger than usual or anything - but we all still wanted to go out and see it, at least me and Oma and my mom. But Oma's back wasn't doing so well so a walk to the end of the driveway for a clear view didn't seem possible. So what did we do instead? We piled into the car, rolled down the windows, and drove to the end of the driveway. Well, if you've ever been to my house you'll know we're at the end of a gravel drive tucked back in the woods, so by pulling up to the entrance you had trees hanging down on each side almost like theatre curtains, then this small window of sky framing this huge, perfect full moon. It was glorious. We just sat there with the cool evening air drifting in the open window looking up at the sky and marveling.
Blue moons are magic. They just are. And that expression, "once in a blue moon," I don't take it to mean "once in a while" like just something every now and then. I think it means something important, something special, because for me that's what blue moons have always brought. Maybe it's a reminder too that little things can be enormous if we remember to just actually look at them. My driveway at night. A big shining rock in the sky. The people in my life. All of it... amazing.
I wish you blue moons and wonder and incredible, unexpected happenings.
I have a history with blue moons. Well, kind of. Nothing spectacular, just sweet. Once a few years back my grandmother ("Oma") was visiting when a blue moon happened to occur. We all knew there wasn't anything particularly significant about a blue moon - I mean, it wasn't actually blue or any bigger than usual or anything - but we all still wanted to go out and see it, at least me and Oma and my mom. But Oma's back wasn't doing so well so a walk to the end of the driveway for a clear view didn't seem possible. So what did we do instead? We piled into the car, rolled down the windows, and drove to the end of the driveway. Well, if you've ever been to my house you'll know we're at the end of a gravel drive tucked back in the woods, so by pulling up to the entrance you had trees hanging down on each side almost like theatre curtains, then this small window of sky framing this huge, perfect full moon. It was glorious. We just sat there with the cool evening air drifting in the open window looking up at the sky and marveling.
Blue moons are magic. They just are. And that expression, "once in a blue moon," I don't take it to mean "once in a while" like just something every now and then. I think it means something important, something special, because for me that's what blue moons have always brought. Maybe it's a reminder too that little things can be enormous if we remember to just actually look at them. My driveway at night. A big shining rock in the sky. The people in my life. All of it... amazing.
I wish you blue moons and wonder and incredible, unexpected happenings.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
How to Restore Your Faith In Humanity
This morning on facebook Andrew Slack posted a link to this article featuring 21 pictures "that will restore your faith in humanity." Well, job done. I was bawling by the very first one.
Here's a video version as well.
Sometimes I forget how incredible the world can be. I get bogged down and negative. But kindness, bravery, and sacrifice are so very beautiful. People are amazing. Life is such a gift.
Here's a video version as well.
Sometimes I forget how incredible the world can be. I get bogged down and negative. But kindness, bravery, and sacrifice are so very beautiful. People are amazing. Life is such a gift.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Movie Trailer Life
I wanted my life to be a movie trailer life, all the best bits edited flawlessly together, a thing of vast potential and glorious promise. But my life, instead, is the movie, one moment after another after another. It's not playing out the way I thought it would. I could try to blame the writing, find some flaw in the design, or maybe it's the acting - am I just sleepwalking through my role? But ultimately I think it's meant to be this way. I think it's good that our lives aren't movie trailer lives, because so often that's all just hype. And it always feels a bit unnatural anyway, trying to cram a story that takes hours to tell into a measly three minutes. So let my life unspool before me, all its plot twists and plot holes and meandering dialogue. Minute after minute after minute. Even without the benefit of editing or a flashy title sequence, I'm sure I'll find my story and I'll find my way.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Ray Bradbury
People roll their eyes a little when you're very emotionally upset by the death of a fictional character, but they mostly understand, because chances are they've been there themselves on more than one occasion.
I'm upset by a death of a writer I've never met, an author who was a real flesh-and-blood human being, who made a huge impact on literature as a whole and particularly on my life as a reader and a writer: Ray Bradbury. And yet my friends don't seem to understand why I would break down in tears at the news of his death. My friend Melissa happened to call me mere minutes after I'd found out and managed to be on the line with me right as the emotional dam burst. I didn't explain, just got off the phone as fast as I could. She then got in touch with my other friend Mandy, who promptly texted me: "Hey! What's going on????" When I replied with the truth - that it was purely a matter of bad timing, that I'd heard news of the death of one of my big heroes and inspirations minutes before the call and had broken down because I'd had no time to process it - she was instantly (a) relieved, and (b) obviously doing a bit of the eye-rolling. "Sorry about Ray Bradbury" she texted, once I'd explained. But the thought process I could tell was there in the back of her mind was, Really? Why is she getting this worked up over a 91-year-old man she's never met?
I'm not as eloquent as Neil Gaiman, who has actually met Ray Bradbury numerous times and whose remembrance in the Guardian is part of what brought me to tears to begin with. I haven't read all of Ray Bradbury's works, and there were some I read that I didn't appreciate as fully at the time (Fahrenheit 451 was required reading in high school; I remember really liking it, but feeling somewhat annoyed at being forced to read it just on principle), but here is the truth of it: he put words to things I've felt and known and only dreamt of that I've never been able to find the words for myself. I found a copy of From the Dust Returned in a dinky little bulk book retailer at Commerce on the drive down to my Nanny's house when I was probably 11 or 12. I didn't know it was Ray Bradbury. I didn't know that reading it would make me fall in love with autumn and October winds and dust and shadows and Halloween. But that is exactly what happened. When I was younger I was with Mandy once at a bookstore and saw a cover of a book called The Halloween Tree. Again, I didn't know at the time it was Ray Bradbury. In fact, I couldn't even remember the name of the book for years after that, didn't find it again until just a few months ago in fact. But the image of that cover left such an atmosphere of ethereal wonder in my mind that I went on to use that inspiration to write my "Halloween story," which was one of the seeds for the story I've now nicknamed "Joan," which I hope will be my first novel. Later when I worked at Borders I was reshelving a copy of his book October Country, but it never made it back to the shelf. I bought it before I went home that night, and gobbled it up over the next few days. That title, "October country," finally gave me a name for this place I'd always felt hints of blowing in on the wind. A place "for autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts..." Which is, of course, why I started writing my Halloween stories. Mine aren't anywhere near as good as any of his are, but at least it forces me to write. He gave me that much.
So Melissa and Mandy think I'm crazy, that the news of this man I've never met would send me into sobbing like that. Especially when I don't cry that often - at least not in front of other people. Well, guess what? Yes. Yes it did. It's making me a little teary-eyed even now. That's fine. It's natural, I think, that the people we love, that the people whose words and ideas moved us, should have this kind of foothold in our lives. And when they leave us, it's okay for us to feel that loss.
I've been listening to a book on tape by Ray Bradbury, a collection of short stories called Long After Midnight. I was just thinking while listening to them, a dawning realization, how more than anyone - more even than Neil Gaiman or C.S. Lewis or Tolkien or George MacDonald or Maurice Sendak, whom I'd always looked to before this - Ray Bradbury is really the closest to the sort of writer I'd like to be. His words like poetry, his ideas so interesting and immediate, his characters honest and important, the atmosphere of these places he shows you so intense and alive. The way he balances all that with this kind of wisdom and humility and love. You can tell he loves these stories he's telling, these people and places he's sharing with you, and you can't help but love them too. I was just thinking that yesterday, and then today I hear this news. Of course it would hit me hard. Of course I'd feel it sitting like a weight on my chest. Of course there would be mourning, tears.
So fine. No, there was no family emergency. No one's in the hospital. No one I know is dead. But I have a right to feel sad, to feel this loss. Don't make me feel foolish for these tears. He meant a lot to me, will continue to mean so much.
"Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything."
Yes, Ray. I think you're right. I'm glad your life was as long and full as it was, and that you shared so much of its beauty with us all.
I'm upset by a death of a writer I've never met, an author who was a real flesh-and-blood human being, who made a huge impact on literature as a whole and particularly on my life as a reader and a writer: Ray Bradbury. And yet my friends don't seem to understand why I would break down in tears at the news of his death. My friend Melissa happened to call me mere minutes after I'd found out and managed to be on the line with me right as the emotional dam burst. I didn't explain, just got off the phone as fast as I could. She then got in touch with my other friend Mandy, who promptly texted me: "Hey! What's going on????" When I replied with the truth - that it was purely a matter of bad timing, that I'd heard news of the death of one of my big heroes and inspirations minutes before the call and had broken down because I'd had no time to process it - she was instantly (a) relieved, and (b) obviously doing a bit of the eye-rolling. "Sorry about Ray Bradbury" she texted, once I'd explained. But the thought process I could tell was there in the back of her mind was, Really? Why is she getting this worked up over a 91-year-old man she's never met?
I'm not as eloquent as Neil Gaiman, who has actually met Ray Bradbury numerous times and whose remembrance in the Guardian is part of what brought me to tears to begin with. I haven't read all of Ray Bradbury's works, and there were some I read that I didn't appreciate as fully at the time (Fahrenheit 451 was required reading in high school; I remember really liking it, but feeling somewhat annoyed at being forced to read it just on principle), but here is the truth of it: he put words to things I've felt and known and only dreamt of that I've never been able to find the words for myself. I found a copy of From the Dust Returned in a dinky little bulk book retailer at Commerce on the drive down to my Nanny's house when I was probably 11 or 12. I didn't know it was Ray Bradbury. I didn't know that reading it would make me fall in love with autumn and October winds and dust and shadows and Halloween. But that is exactly what happened. When I was younger I was with Mandy once at a bookstore and saw a cover of a book called The Halloween Tree. Again, I didn't know at the time it was Ray Bradbury. In fact, I couldn't even remember the name of the book for years after that, didn't find it again until just a few months ago in fact. But the image of that cover left such an atmosphere of ethereal wonder in my mind that I went on to use that inspiration to write my "Halloween story," which was one of the seeds for the story I've now nicknamed "Joan," which I hope will be my first novel. Later when I worked at Borders I was reshelving a copy of his book October Country, but it never made it back to the shelf. I bought it before I went home that night, and gobbled it up over the next few days. That title, "October country," finally gave me a name for this place I'd always felt hints of blowing in on the wind. A place "for autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts..." Which is, of course, why I started writing my Halloween stories. Mine aren't anywhere near as good as any of his are, but at least it forces me to write. He gave me that much.
So Melissa and Mandy think I'm crazy, that the news of this man I've never met would send me into sobbing like that. Especially when I don't cry that often - at least not in front of other people. Well, guess what? Yes. Yes it did. It's making me a little teary-eyed even now. That's fine. It's natural, I think, that the people we love, that the people whose words and ideas moved us, should have this kind of foothold in our lives. And when they leave us, it's okay for us to feel that loss.
I've been listening to a book on tape by Ray Bradbury, a collection of short stories called Long After Midnight. I was just thinking while listening to them, a dawning realization, how more than anyone - more even than Neil Gaiman or C.S. Lewis or Tolkien or George MacDonald or Maurice Sendak, whom I'd always looked to before this - Ray Bradbury is really the closest to the sort of writer I'd like to be. His words like poetry, his ideas so interesting and immediate, his characters honest and important, the atmosphere of these places he shows you so intense and alive. The way he balances all that with this kind of wisdom and humility and love. You can tell he loves these stories he's telling, these people and places he's sharing with you, and you can't help but love them too. I was just thinking that yesterday, and then today I hear this news. Of course it would hit me hard. Of course I'd feel it sitting like a weight on my chest. Of course there would be mourning, tears.
So fine. No, there was no family emergency. No one's in the hospital. No one I know is dead. But I have a right to feel sad, to feel this loss. Don't make me feel foolish for these tears. He meant a lot to me, will continue to mean so much.
"Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything."
Yes, Ray. I think you're right. I'm glad your life was as long and full as it was, and that you shared so much of its beauty with us all.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Honest Question
Why am I so sad all the time? I apologize. It must make for very boring reading.
Here, have a song...
The only way this world is gonna work for me Is if at any point I can choose to leave it The only way I'm gonna be okay with this life I lead Is if at any time I can up and go And I don't know if I can deal With all this settling in and putting down roots Being comfortable, dependable, reliable With a steady job and ordinary routine And what I mean is I don't know what I mean anymore It's like my heart is from some other place and it's long to get back there And every day I stay here with these jobs and bills and debts Is just another day I'm trying to forget it That I'm not me anymore, this isn't me And I can't afford to be anymore Existence isn't free. So if I'm not here tomorrow please don't ask me where I've gone to I don't think I could tell you even if I'd want to. I don't think I could tell you even if I knew. But the only way this world is gonna work for me Is if at any point I can choose to leave it The only way I'm gonna be okay with this life I lead Is if at any time I can up and go...
Here, have a song...
The only way this world is gonna work for me Is if at any point I can choose to leave it The only way I'm gonna be okay with this life I lead Is if at any time I can up and go And I don't know if I can deal With all this settling in and putting down roots Being comfortable, dependable, reliable With a steady job and ordinary routine And what I mean is I don't know what I mean anymore It's like my heart is from some other place and it's long to get back there And every day I stay here with these jobs and bills and debts Is just another day I'm trying to forget it That I'm not me anymore, this isn't me And I can't afford to be anymore Existence isn't free. So if I'm not here tomorrow please don't ask me where I've gone to I don't think I could tell you even if I'd want to. I don't think I could tell you even if I knew. But the only way this world is gonna work for me Is if at any point I can choose to leave it The only way I'm gonna be okay with this life I lead Is if at any time I can up and go...
Move
I'm packing up my things for the move. Technically we don't have to be out of the apartment until June 10, but Melissa's going on a trip next week and we need help moving furniture out to the storage unit, so all that will now be happening this weekend. Saturday. Among the things headed to the unit is my bed, so I guess that'll be my cue to leave too.
It's odd. I have a lot of things and yet I don't. I was realizing today that if I had no books or furniture, essentially I could pack everything I owned into a single car load. The feeling is liberating. I like the idea that I could live out of my car. I mean, it wouldn't be comfortable necessarily, but I just like the notion that at a moment's notice I could just hop in my car and drive away from everything.
But having books, and bookshelves, and a couch now, and things like dishes and pots and pans that will go unused in this in-between time makes the storage unit a necessity.
"In-between time." Isn't that lovely? But in between what two things? I know what has been but not what will be.
And that's a huge part of why I think I feel so bad right now. I'm packing everything up, but I'm literally going nowhere. Nothing is changing. If anything, I'm moving backwards. How do people live and change and grow? How do people want things and do things and have a life? How do people find other people and connect and function as human beings? I don't know how to do any of those things.
Part of me is bogged down in the mentality that says I need to keep all this stuff in the storage unit because I'll eventually need it again, that I need to bog myself down with debt or imprison myself in this stupid endless cycle of earning and spending in order to pay rent on an apartment that I don't even really like being in that much anyway. There's a lie we tell children that there's a roadmap people follow. Back in the day in my depressed fits (yes, I had them then as I have them now) I'd refer to this series of expected events as "box after box after box." I felt like I was living in a box but that there was an exit at the other end of it, so of course I'd put all my energies toward making it to the other side and getting out. But once you're through that exit you realize it's just led you into another box. This one may be larger or longer, may give you wiggle room, may be a better box than the last box was, but it's still a box. But wait - what luck! There's an exit at the other end. So you race toward it, all your focus on getting there, and you get through and - yep, you guessed it - yet another box.
So the boxes are things like "get good grades in high school so you can get into a good college." Then the college box says things like "make wise choices when it comes to your major and keep your GPA up and do this internship and present that paper and yada yada yada so that when you graduate you'll get a good job." And you get a job - maybe not a good one, not in this economy - and you work there, and then what? This box is perhaps the worst of them all, because it's big enough that you can sometimes feel the illusion of freedom. It's big enough that you sometimes forget you're actually in a box. But you get sucked into that cycle I mentioned before, where you "want" these things - to go out to eat with friends, to buy a movie ticket or a new shower curtain, to buy yet another knicknack to take up space and get dusty on your bedside table - and so in order to get them you sacrifice your time and energy at this job. I'm not saying jobs are bad. You can find a job you love, or your positive attitude can transform a sucky job into a tolerable one. Work can actually be really beneficial. But when you feel shackled to your job because of debt, then it becomes negative by association.
The other part of me wants to find someone who will take good care of my books, sell or give away the remainder of my furniture and knick-knacks, and do the impractical. Live out of my car. Or better still, sell my car, fly to England with a one-way ticket, and stay as long as I can spending as little as I can. I want to do radical, impractical things. Your life is your story and you only get one, so why not personalize it? Not boxes after boxes after boxes. None of that. I love the fact that George Orwell decided to live "down and out" in Paris and London for a couple years, just soaking in what that was like and then writing about it. Why not? Or Amanda Palmer going off to Germany and living off street performance for a while. I like people who go big and bold and unapologetic, which is funny because I am a fumbling, whispered "so so sorry" of a human being.
The other twinge I'm getting from this move is the idea that I could disappear. The idea that I'm packing away my life into boxes and that it's like getting everything in my life ready for the end. Honestly, my family would miss me, and a handful of friends, and my coworkers seem to like me and would probably be sorry to hear I'd gone so abruptly, but that's a small group of people really. They're kind of all that's holding me here. If they were gone I could slip away unnoticed. Leave my life behind in tidy packed boxes. Carry nothing with me when I go.
It's odd. I have a lot of things and yet I don't. I was realizing today that if I had no books or furniture, essentially I could pack everything I owned into a single car load. The feeling is liberating. I like the idea that I could live out of my car. I mean, it wouldn't be comfortable necessarily, but I just like the notion that at a moment's notice I could just hop in my car and drive away from everything.
But having books, and bookshelves, and a couch now, and things like dishes and pots and pans that will go unused in this in-between time makes the storage unit a necessity.
"In-between time." Isn't that lovely? But in between what two things? I know what has been but not what will be.
And that's a huge part of why I think I feel so bad right now. I'm packing everything up, but I'm literally going nowhere. Nothing is changing. If anything, I'm moving backwards. How do people live and change and grow? How do people want things and do things and have a life? How do people find other people and connect and function as human beings? I don't know how to do any of those things.
Part of me is bogged down in the mentality that says I need to keep all this stuff in the storage unit because I'll eventually need it again, that I need to bog myself down with debt or imprison myself in this stupid endless cycle of earning and spending in order to pay rent on an apartment that I don't even really like being in that much anyway. There's a lie we tell children that there's a roadmap people follow. Back in the day in my depressed fits (yes, I had them then as I have them now) I'd refer to this series of expected events as "box after box after box." I felt like I was living in a box but that there was an exit at the other end of it, so of course I'd put all my energies toward making it to the other side and getting out. But once you're through that exit you realize it's just led you into another box. This one may be larger or longer, may give you wiggle room, may be a better box than the last box was, but it's still a box. But wait - what luck! There's an exit at the other end. So you race toward it, all your focus on getting there, and you get through and - yep, you guessed it - yet another box.
So the boxes are things like "get good grades in high school so you can get into a good college." Then the college box says things like "make wise choices when it comes to your major and keep your GPA up and do this internship and present that paper and yada yada yada so that when you graduate you'll get a good job." And you get a job - maybe not a good one, not in this economy - and you work there, and then what? This box is perhaps the worst of them all, because it's big enough that you can sometimes feel the illusion of freedom. It's big enough that you sometimes forget you're actually in a box. But you get sucked into that cycle I mentioned before, where you "want" these things - to go out to eat with friends, to buy a movie ticket or a new shower curtain, to buy yet another knicknack to take up space and get dusty on your bedside table - and so in order to get them you sacrifice your time and energy at this job. I'm not saying jobs are bad. You can find a job you love, or your positive attitude can transform a sucky job into a tolerable one. Work can actually be really beneficial. But when you feel shackled to your job because of debt, then it becomes negative by association.
The other part of me wants to find someone who will take good care of my books, sell or give away the remainder of my furniture and knick-knacks, and do the impractical. Live out of my car. Or better still, sell my car, fly to England with a one-way ticket, and stay as long as I can spending as little as I can. I want to do radical, impractical things. Your life is your story and you only get one, so why not personalize it? Not boxes after boxes after boxes. None of that. I love the fact that George Orwell decided to live "down and out" in Paris and London for a couple years, just soaking in what that was like and then writing about it. Why not? Or Amanda Palmer going off to Germany and living off street performance for a while. I like people who go big and bold and unapologetic, which is funny because I am a fumbling, whispered "so so sorry" of a human being.
The other twinge I'm getting from this move is the idea that I could disappear. The idea that I'm packing away my life into boxes and that it's like getting everything in my life ready for the end. Honestly, my family would miss me, and a handful of friends, and my coworkers seem to like me and would probably be sorry to hear I'd gone so abruptly, but that's a small group of people really. They're kind of all that's holding me here. If they were gone I could slip away unnoticed. Leave my life behind in tidy packed boxes. Carry nothing with me when I go.
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