what we keep

i wonder about my neighbors sometimes.

their immaculate lawn,

well-rounded shrubs and plushy red geraniums.

their fantastically spotless vehicles; nothing extravagant but maintained to the utmost level of

pristine.

because they, they do not burn their dinners for the rest of the neighborhood to smell.

they do not renovate their bedrooms to leave construction tracks as eyesores as what is inside is coming out what is outside coming in for something different,

sparkly,

new.

they do not have the darkness of silent, cloaking nights ebbing

out their windowsills, encroaching to the street. they do not spill oil on the driveway. they do not yell to the stars when the world falls down into the pit of their stomach.

but theypulltheirweeds

kneeling to the earth,

take out the trash methodical and silent but for the rolling plastic on gravel.

their leaves tinge in the sunsets, glowing, haloed and angelic.

the cement ditch between us cries an ocean.

Here, here

"Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected cheque in the post, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square...I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city." — Bill Bryson (Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe)

home is whenever i'm with you.

I ran away. Sometimes you have to.

change

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things"

-T. Waits

who could hang a name on you

I remember blistering hot summer days, 8 years old, feeling as though boredom really could cause death, and wandering into the computer room in hopes of finding the torn brown office chair vacant. Whenever it was I’d scramble my tan body in, close the door, and rifle through the cd-roms until I found Encarta ‘95 and pop it in the drive. Remember Encarta? Pre-internet, pre-wikipedia, post encyclopedia, this huge database that contained smatterings of everything. I loved it. I don’t know if it was me trying to find different answers to all the questions I’d ask my parents which they answered in ways I didn’t want to be true (ie: can stuffed animals talk? is there magic? what happened to unicorns…etc).

I remember one particular afternoon I had put in Encarta and decided today I was going to learn about music. Not the piano music I had to practice—the Classical, the Beethovens and Bachs—but the radio music. All the kind my parents didn’t keep in their house. So what did I do? Typed in “Rock and Roll” of course. I think there was a timeline that popped up and there were so many names I’d never heard before (Buddy Holly? is that really someone’s name?). I first clicked on Elvis Presley because my mom had such a strong aversion to him that I didn’t understand but deeply intrigued me. The page on Elvis would load and there was this large picture of him with a little play button beneath. I clicked it and heard about 15-20 seconds of “Heartbreak Hotel,” another one played “Jailhouse Rock,” and another “You Ain’t Nothin But a Hound Dog.” I was riveted and kept the speakers low so my mother couldn’t hear. I don’t know that I necessarily loved the music but I loved the thrill of listening to something so ‘forbidden.’

Needless to say I got a little bored and had to find someone else. I clicked on David Bowie. I don’t remember if I’d heard of him before or if he just intrigued me but he had only one song on his page, “Changes.” Just a 15-20 second blip but I kept playing it over and over and over. It was new. It wasn’t the Beatles or James Taylor or Paul McCartney and I really, really liked it. Then I found Zeppelin. a 15 second sample was nowhere near enough to thrive on. Why wasn't this in my parent's musical library? Isn't this their generation? Unfortunately Encarta ’95 didn’t get too in-depth and I didn’t get too far being at the mercy of parents and their engrained biases toward music. But, it was a start.

I remember getting so deeply invested in bands. Buying their albums and listening to them all the way through, curious the first time through, in love by the second or third time. I remember my obsession with the Doors. I even led myself to believe that Jim Morrison was still alive somewhere after extensively researching the subject (containing one too many fan-sites); this belief lasted approximately one week—as most things do at age fifteen. I remember Radiohead’s Bends album coaxing me in, Kid A driving me home at night from work, OK Computer blowing my mind. Working on my high school art projects listening to Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights on repeat. Death Cab on the morning drives to school. New Noise in summer. Music was such a definition for identity. and it resounded deeper than blood. and I think this happens to everyone.

and I hate that I can’t find that anymore.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve grown a thicker skin to life. But sunsets still leave me in awe, I still get enraptured by blossoms in spring, by the colors in fall. Is it because so much has become so ridiculously accessible that I’m left to this blasé feeling? Think about it, you can sample music so easily and just click, download and listen to it on your ipod in a matter of minutes, seconds. And everyone has access to the internet, everyone has a band, everyone. I miss the tangible.
Yes there are good things about the accessibility. So many high school garage bands who would otherwise go unheard of can have a shot but at the same time: so many high school garage bands can have a shot. I feel so overly bombarded with sounds; sounds that should be new but all are sounding the same, so prosaic. I tried listening to this intern list on npr of all these obscure bands and was pumped to give them a shot but then—45 minutes later—I was left feeling very sad, very confused.

It gives me a sort of identity crisis. How can I not know if I like a band or not? When did this happen? I remember hearing—really hearing—Ruby Tuesday for the first time and feeling like my blood was made of honey, life stopped, it was real and this song, this sound existed, made sense. Zeppelin’s Going to California…I don’t even know where to begin. Where has that gone? I want to be lambasted by a song again, by an album, by a band. Is that possible anymore?

And this goes deeper than music. All the books to choose from, all the art, all the blogs, all the clothes, all the homes. Everything feels so prescribed. Have you seen a neighborhood lately? I mean, I know this isn’t a new idea—suburbs have been suffocating individuality for ages. I’ve always been one who knows what I want and what I like and been very stubborn about it so this music boredom has hit me in the gut and I don’t know what to do except to feel cheated in some way. I want to go back to those bored summer days, discovering Bowie and Zeppelin but maybe turning the volume up a little more this time.

you've got a mouthful of diamonds

(note: started looking through some of my old work and decided I need to just write. no excuses. I think I've rewritten the following piece at least ten times in the past 3 years. and I probably will again. still doesn't have a title.)

I sold bras and panties for a living. I displayed them on tables and neatly folded them in drawers below; the cotton and silk billowing out of the over-stocked bins. Pale pinks, yellows and blues stuffed and stacked to perfection, packaged and presented like frilly bite-sized candies fit for Marie Antoinette. I folded and refolded, stacked and restacked, ran my fingers across the tops of them, trying to fill my time in this vacuous store. It was Valentine's Day in Massachusetts and there was a blizzard in the making outside.

Women floated in, fingered the pink and red satin push-ups, plucked out matching panties, mulled over nighties then sought me out to ask, "May I try this on?" or, "Can I purchase these here?" The occasional man would awkwardly step in, gawk for a while, and either ask my opinion or hastily make a purchase and wait while I wrapped his plans for the evening in pink tissue paper. I provide the costuming, they provide the stage; all of these stages.

I smelled the perfume before I saw her face. She had coated herself in it, a flower force-field that permeated the fifteen-foot radius around her. Her click-clacking heels deliberately walked up to one of my freshly folded tables, at which point she bent her body to the very back of one pile and wrenched out three pairs. All the blue, yellow, and pink posy prints toppling over themselves--bowing to this woman. Briefly she smoothed her hand over the disheveled pile then marched up to my annoyed face.

"Just these please," her voice, milky and demanding, escaped through carefully lined, berry-red lips with wrinkles creasing her eyes and neck, her bright-brown, dyed hair pulled into a loose bun. The sleek, business-like green rayon suit etched out a curvy middle-aged body and I feigned a smile as I rang up the three pairs of plain, white, cotton panties.

"Oh, I love these. They fit so well," I lied.

"I know. I had to stop in and get some before going home."

"Be careful," I said, "I hear it's snowing like crazy out there."

"Oh I know! That's what all my customers have been saying."

"Do you work in the mall?"

"Tiffany's," she said so authoritatively. Tiffany's. The pink tissue paper tore in my suddenly sweaty fingers.

"Oh...that's...nice," my words stammered across the counter to this brown-eyed, aged woman. I couldn't take my eyes off that messy table and I remembered the day I found out that Tiffany's was not a glorious cafe filled with the most decadent breakfast foods known to man--contrary to the stage set by pop stars in the nineties. They didn't cater breakfast to the likes of Audrey Hepburn either. They sold rocks. Sparkly rocks. This brown-eyed woman sold sparkly rocks on the lower level of the mall; costume jewelry.

My eyes wandered over to the messed up panty table. Prior to this disturbance my store was immaculate: the push-ups, the nighties, the frills--all in their right place. My fingers itched to properly size and smooth the disheveld panties. Everything had to be perfect in this store, in this stage. Did white cotton panties need a stage?

The high-heeled woman swiped and signed while I held out a bright pink bag filled with her practical garments. Our brown eyes caught each other for a brief moment.

"Drive safe on those roads," I cautioned.

"Oh, I will; I can manage. I hear it's only gonna get worse though." The words knifed through me.

"Happy Valentine's," I said as her click-clacking heels took her flower force-field out the glass doors and back into the mall.

I eyed the clock, still a couple hours left until close. Slumping my body over the counter, head in hands, I stared at the pile of panties to be folded. The customers stopped coming but I didn't notice. Those pink and yellow posied panties hunched up and glared at me but my body couldn't move. My fingers still itched to fold them down, size them, prettily display them; yet, there they lay and my hands remained beneath my chin just feet away.

I don't remember how long I held that pose. I snapped out of it when my manager came in to tell me the mall was closing early because of the blizzard outside.

"So you can go home," like it was supposed to be a relief. I sighed and went into the backroom to grab my coat and bag. Walking back out into the store my sense of pride at the neatly organized bras and hangers vanished and I felt the posy panties watching me. I walked up to the one messy table and turned to face the pile. My brown eyes stared back at the frills then settled on the white cotton ones in the back. Swiftly I grabbed the white stack and placed them in front shoving the frills to the back. I bit my lower lip, stepped back to analyze this new plain display. Why the frills? Why the costumes? I jammed my hands into my coat pockets, and turned toward the front glass doors. I marched out, pressed the elevator to the lowest parking garage level and wondered what the roads were going to be like.

"for some, reality is not enough"

“In my inner soul art and life are inseparable” –Eva Hesse, 1970

because we are real.

Lately a strange numbness has entered into everything. Nothing will really sink in, everything hazy, feeling like there’s a blanket between me and the world: my fingertips never contacting anything. Nothing. Listening to the most intense music I can find, blasting, and still nothing. so dull. so gray. no changes. no thing.

Then.

during my shift I got to walk through our brand new exhibition: 50 x 50. I’ve been anticipating this collection since September probably a little more than normal/necessary. 50 x 50 is a tiny fraction of the infamous Herbert and Dorothy Vogel collection. I remember reading about these two in one of my art history classes and being so intrigued by the two.

Dorothy was a librarian and Herbert a postman (I say "was" because they’ve since retired—they’re still very much alive). The two met and fell in love in Manhattan in the mid 1960s. I love that Herbert says what attracted him to Dorothy was that she looked smart (not just attractive). They ended up falling in love with art just as much as they fell in love with each other. They took classes and tried painting in the popular expressionist method but soon realized that they preferred contemporary artists’ work more than theirs and decided to become collectors. They lived on Dorothy’s salary from the library and used all of Herbert’s for the sole purpose of collecting art.

Since abstract expressionist art was all the rage it was rather expensive and out of their price range so they opted to begin collecting art that really wasn’t catching the public’s eye yet: minimalist and conceptual. Their obsessive and distinct eye became rapidly well-known among the minimalist artist crowd. Since 1967 they’ve collected well over 5,000 works. They kept all of their art in their one bedroom Manhattan apartment until the mid 90s when the National Gallery approached them with an offer to keep their collection in D.C. The Vogels loved the idea knowing their art would have the chance to be seen by anyone and everyone visiting the free gallery. So, they donated all 5,000+ pieces (which took 5 LARGE moving trucks to transport) and then instead of finally buying a couch kept collecting.

Now they’ve donated fifty pieces to fifty museums—one museum for each state. Art for the masses. I love it. Well, I got to experience a slice of it today. Walking to gallery 2 in my numbed, glassy-eyed state, I rounded the corner and there to my left was this large Ronnie Landfield acrylic piece that quite literally took the breath right out of me. It was like a punch in the gut. I’d seen pictures but NOTHING could do this piece justice. I still don’t know what it was that finally forced emotion out of me with this piece. It felt real. Finally, something felt real. I stood there with eyes almost tearing up in front of this beautiful piece of art and I fell in love with the world again.

I remembered why I love art with my soul. Why it makes sense. Why I have to create. Why I need inspiration. We feel because we are real.

je ne sais rien

"Writing is an act of discovery" -Jack Harrell

"When you're writing, you're trying to find out something which you don't know" -James Baldwin

Truth? the more I write the more I know I don't know. and I think that's okay.

Buried Resolutions

In the bottom drawer of my nightstand I found the journal I'd been keeping for nearly a year that for some reason or another I'd neglected since returning to Boise. Maybe I should clarify "journal" I don't necessarily date every entry and remark on events of each day; it's more like a mass scribbling of thoughts, lists, questions, and lots of quotes. I remember things better that way and they make more sense (plus I think it's less boring).

Anyway, I found this passage taken from Nicholson's play Shadowlands which I studied in my senior seminar class. I remember being very reluctant to read the play because it dealt with C.S. Lewis' life teaching in Oxford and falling in love. The only thing appealing to me about it was the Oxford part. Maybe it's because I hear C.S. Lewis quoted so much it becomes cliche and well...who likes being cliche? Well, the play humbled me. This quote humbles me (C.S. Lewis' character says this):

"I think that God doesn't necessarily want us to be happy. He wants us to be lovable. Worthy of love. Able to be loved by Him. We don't start off being all that lovable, if we're honest. What makes people hard to love? Isn't it what is commonly called selfishness? Selfish people are hard to love because so little love comes out of them."

Every time I read that my pride gets stung because it rings true to me. If only I could always be reminded of this. Is there love coming out of me? Do the people I love know that I care? Sadly, I really don't know. The other night I was talking with a dear friend about the importance of actions. It's so easy for me to constantly think things over in my head, come to conclusions of how I feel, feel content without ever saying or doing anything.

To the outside observer, I'm easily perceived as a quiet, stuck-up girl who doesn't need anyone (I'm not saying this blindly, usually these are the first impressions people have told me they get from me). I need to concentrate more on actually showing others how I feel, expressing my thoughts and allowing myself to love and be loved. I think I allow my fear of getting hurt overcome any sort of action which is terrible. Just writing this makes me uncomfortable because I'm exposing quiet thoughts. But I have to start somewhere. Even if it is on my narcissistic blog.

threadbare

what are these threads that bind souls together? I want to explore the looms and tapestries of time. Dip my fingers in dyes, play the strings of this blanketed harp, strike chords through the human races: shatter to the soul. Weave in and out the metallics with the greys and intertwine the light with the dark. Cradle them and press them to my face. Imprint your love on my skin. Let me dress up in your fabrics of truth and I will run through fields with you as my banner. This banner of souls singing deep; singing true. We will make the climbs and open the doors. We will stretch almost too far and feel every last thread breathing, pulsing, beating to drums that know of suffering.

And our beauty will shine.

I keep Death on my mind like a basset hound

I know that earlier I alluded to having a rather bah humbug attitude toward the holidays this year but I never really said why. And I wasn't planning on it in such a semi-public way but right now I just need to write. My Grandpa was suddenly sent to the hospital the week of Thanksgiving. My Dad and I drove out to Idaho Falls as soon as we could and spent a couple of days with him basically to see him alive for the last time because the doctors said he wasn't going to make it. They diagnosed him with bone cancer, the family set him up at a Life Care Center for comfort care and shed some tears. Life suddenly took on a very real and different meaning.

I am a very sensitive person; sometimes too sensitive. Death is hard for me even with being LDS and understanding it all--it's just hard. The thought of his fast-approaching death would hit me frequently and always catch me off guard. Bless my manager's heart at the museum who understood and let me cry for a bit. All the hype of Christmas just didn't do it for me this year; everything seemed like a commercial, a gimmick, just fake. I went through the motions wondering when we'd get that phone call.

Grandpa held on through Christmas and I remember saying, "Well, maybe Grandpa will get to see 2010." He got close. He died at 11:48 am Wednesday, December 30th. My family and I were driving back from a vacation in McCall and had spotty service so we didn't get the news until we got home later that day. My Grandma ended up being the last to find out because she was in the temple when he passed. She said she felt very peaceful and wasn't surprised when my cousin Kristin got to her and told her the news. They spent the rest of the afternoon in my Grandma's place, crying and talking about Grandpa. Grandpa had lost so much weight his wedding ring wouldn't fit his finger anymore so now she wears it. She's such a tiny, precious woman. I so wish I could be like her one day.

At first the thought of bringing in the new year with a funeral sounded so dismal. The drive out to Idaho Falls was very somber and snowy. I couldn't really let myself think about what was happening and not until I saw him in the casket did it start to make a dent. Having all the family there was more than wonderful. It'd been so long since we'd all been together. Hearing my aunt give his life sketch and my father talk celebrating this honest man's life was beautiful. I loved having a specific time and place to actually cry, share emotions, feel love and realize the great effect this man's life had on so many people. Many tears were shed and still will be for a while. I'd never realized before how great a funeral can be when the plan of happiness is understood and how much your testimony can grow.

Right now I can't think of a better way to bring in the new year--as morbid as that might sound to someone who doesn't understand. My family has grown exponentially stronger together because of this instance, this death. Yes I will be tender for a while but it's a good tender. The sadness will subside and the happiness I feel for being able to call this man my Grandpa will remain constant.

There's so much more I need to write but for now I'm going to try to sleep. I'm thankful I have this void to write to. It's just comforting.