Winter Time

Today I feel like an old woman trapped inside a young womans body; it's too cold outside to walk or ride bikes, I'm afraid to drive. I'm not tired, just resigned to my resignation. I am an old woman in a young womans body. Some people feel the opposite.
My eye sight has been getting poor. All this winter I've been reading, writing, watching movies, and walking with my head down, my scarf wrapped many times around my neck and mouth. Rarely do I look distances beyond two arm lengths. I've stopped looking out the window, rarely looking into the horizon or into the distance. I've stopped meeting people.
It's too grey outside.
The rare and lonely winter fly has found her way into my kitchen and hovers under the grow lamp, smelling my tomato seedlings. She must feel like she discovered a magical island of summertime. But this would be an untrue thing.
This is why I don't look out the window. There is no magical island of summertime. Just the absense of it.
Last winter I almost joined the protestors on Friday to raise awareness for the underground guerilla anti-winter movement I had started, if only to let the people know there was someone out there who was doing more than whining about it. Now, this winter I am learning to cross stitch and acquiring a taste for bitter rose tea. Anything to keep my eyes and thoughts away from the outside where there is no grass to lay on in the sun, no mint in the alleyway to chew, no flowers to make bouquets.

My old cat Snowball is curled, inanimate, on the back of the couch. She is trying to stay alive until the summer when she can die in a sunspot. I, to, wait for my sunspot to die in.
I am an old lady trapped inside a young womans body.

I hate you OLCC

Dear OLCC,

I hate you.

If you were a cat I would make hissy sounds at you. I would splash water in your direction. If you were a cat you would be like Lucifer in Cinderella: making messes and laying around like a rotten jerk being stroked by an evil step mother.

For several reasons you are not on my Christmas greetings list. First and foremost, you enforce a law that sucks!

I spent time in France: once when I was 17 and again when I was 20 and an incredible privilege opened up to me; I could drink alkeehawl! Yee dog! Every night I drank myself sick, hung out with people of ill repute and drove recklessly home!! Alright!

Not really. But that's what you would expect, huh?

In Paris, friends and I would climb on the rooftop of our hotel to share beers, we drank wine with our dinner, Champagne under the Eifferl Tower on Fête Nationale, in Nice we drank Heinekens and passed a bottle of Rhône on the beaches until we were silly; danced, and walked on the promenade, we smoked and drank Kingfisher in the Indian restaurants and smoked and drank Rosé in seafood restaurants. We toasted everything and swatted one anothers heads when we burped (a German ritual). And then I went home to the dry country that is the U S of A. Like every young adult in American with stunted maturity compared to our European friends I was given coloring crayons and Shirley Temples with my dinner.

Now I am over 21 and I can't go out with my little sister because she is twenty.

Another reason I whisper curses when someone speaks your name is because you trick people! You solicit a bunch of corrupted minors to go around the state ordering alcohol the way an undercover prostitute wears short denim skirts when trying to seduce people into letting her crawl into their car and slap handcuffs on them. And when a busy server or bartender misses one step; doesn't check ID, doesn't check it thoroughly, pours the drink and then checks ID BOOM they lose their license (and any chance of a job in the restaurant industry) are freakin' FIRED, fined and then you beat their dog and make them watch. Really? REALLY? People under 21 can't even be set a foot in a bar without there being a violation. God forbid!

Why can't you just relax?!?! Just let the kids buy some beer, and give the servers, bartenders, grocery store cashiers, bouncers, etc. etc. a break! You really give people a complex! I feel like I should surgically implant my ID onto my forehead until I am eighty years old so I don't have to hand it to every person in the room when I step into a bar. Here I am at Ray's the other day and some smiling, god-fearing employee offers me a wine sample. "Oh, lovely! Yes, please!" "Can I see your ID?" "...never mind."

And a word to the minors working sting operations for OLCC; TRADERS!!!! I hope you garbage eaters have lonely evenings with pee in your beer when you turn 21 and realize you have no friends!

Okay, we shouldn't serve drunk people. That's probably a good idea. I spent hours in your required OLCC class at the Shiloh Inn years ago just to learn that you shouldn't serve drunk people. Thank you, i would have never known.

Because of your iron hand, neo-prohibistionist existance I hang around 7-11 parking lot and sell marked up cases of Busch Lights, PBR's, and Santana Champagne to children. TAKE THAT OLCC!! You can never stop me! HISSS! HISSSSSSS!

Faint at Heart

There is this funny little disorder I have. My Mom gave it to me. We are the kind known as the "faint at heart;" the people doctors usher out of the room when bad news is about to be announced. The people story-tellers shoo when a gruesome story is about to be told.

We cry at things. I cry at Hallmark commercials, the cheesiest of animal rescue stories, Chicken Soup for the Soul, country songs, and Obama speeches. I just cry. I don't even need a glass of wine in me. The cheesiest of cheese has me in raptures. At the Goodwill I was looking at this book made to soak in additional revenue from Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying" and I was reading the lyrics and started getting all teared up.

"and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."

It's this song about a guy who gets diagnosed with... something, it doesn't say, probably cancer, and with this renewed perspective on mortality he does all this awesome stuff like sky dive, ride on bulls, fish with his Dad and watch eagles fly around. Oh, man. I cry EVERY time.

This weekend, driving with Erica, my sister, she puts on "Waitin' on a Woman" and we're listening to it, feeling the music and by the time Brad Paisley is talking about a first date in the second verse I am yelling at her, "turn it off! I can't listen to this! I'll cry and crash the car!" Quickly the song is switched to the Lonely Island's "I'm on A Boat" which not even the most emotional emo could cry at. I told Erica to never ever play country music when I am driving as I become blind with tears of deep emotion, and veer of the road into an abyss (because abyss' are always on the side of roads).

Crying at everything makes me very very uncool. I realize this. How can you be cool if you are chillin' with your bros, about to watch Valkyrie or Wanted and a preview for The Secret Life of Bees comes on? "I gotta... get some more popcorn," you announce crumpling a tissue to your face like a runny nosed four-year-old.

One time I was running on a treadmill at the gym, totally zoned out with my headphones connected to the television watching America's Next Top Model and suddenly I hear "In the arms on the angels..." Oh. No. Sarah McLachlan, my nemesis. It's that Humane Society commercial with all those slow motion clips of animals in cages, kittens and puppies and old cats and old dogs and suddenly my lungs seize up and I can't gasping for air, stepping off the whirring treadmill as if having as asthma attack.

Another time at the end of AI (which I always call A1) tears were rolling down my face as the credits began to roll. My then boyfriend comments, "that movie sucked," then turns around and says, "are you crying?!" I buried my head, "Leave me alone!"

Yeah!? So!? Maybe the Spielberg ending was really really really weird but it was so sweet!

The movie Armageddon and Homeward Bound had me in raptures as a child and I sobbed in the bathroom from several minutes at the theater after watching Blood Diamond. My brother and I cried together at this historial documentary about dogs that went to Vietnam to help the soldiers. At the end of the story the dogs had to be left in Vietnam because the government thought they would be diseased or something. They had all these old vets choking up over losing their dogs. It was horrible. I am told everyone has, but I cried at Elf.

I am my mother. One day my kids will laugh at me when I am crying over some ridiculous Lifetime movie about a girl who has the whole world against her and manages to get back on her feet and find a loving man to boot. And hopefully one day they will cry with me when they break down and discover their inner uncool.

Cal-lee-for-nee-ay

I keep hearing these conversations, people wanting to move away.
"Where do you want to go?" I ask.
"Cal-lee-for-nee-way,"they say and I know why.
It's cold here and the job market isn't what is used to be. Jobs in real estate have tanked and those invested in the market are no doubt leaving their therapists, shopping at Grocery Outlet, and eating at Del Taco. I have seen them there in their faux fur and replica Louis Vuitton purses.
There's talk of leaving Oregon to find ye ole gold mines.
Has Bend already taken steps to go back to the pre-California days? Volo and Merenda closing... maybe? That stupid baller hat store on Minnesota going away is a sure sign.

What Sex In the City Taught Me About Friendship

Don't get me wrong. Furs, vanity, labels, high heals, dieting, cosmos; these are not things I align myself with. However: writing, city-life, and friendship, I like.

I took an online test; "What Sex in the City character are you?" I was Miranda. These tests never mean anything to me so I won't read into it. I like Carrie the most because she has the ability to take her experiences and put them into perspective. This is a skill I would like.

*Always answer when your girls call

(Miranda calls Carrie on New Years because she is recently divorced and all alone and even though Carrie is in a bed she throws on a furry coat and high heels (so practical) and takes a cab all the way to Chinatown to spend the rest of the night eating Chinese food with her friend.)

*Be supportive, always.

*Go to any length to see your friends when they need you

*Give honest advice from the heart

*Tell your girls everything
*When you have done something wrong apologize and keep apologizing. Forever.

(The night before Carrie's wedding to Big, Miranda, all jilted from her divorce tells Big"you're crazy for getting married," and the next day he gets cold feet on the wedding. Miranda tells Carrie, on their single ladies Valentine's Day dinner months later and Carrie freak out (in a scrum of pink balloons and string) and refuses to answer Miranda's phone calls. Miranda calls and calls and calls and eventually shows up on person waiting outside Carrie's place in a taxi.)

*You can be angry, forever, it's fine. But eventually forgive, even if it's 70 years later.
*Girlfriends should be likened to the Mafia rather than a knitting circle
*Friends are not more important than man-loves and family, but they are a top priority.

A late night thought

Laying on the couch in my brothers apartment in Springfield, Oregon and I am unable to sleep trying to think of how dipped candles are made. Two in the morning, people are running water, the harrowing rushing sound of moving water, pipes connected (if I empty the toilet perhaps we can talk like they do in prisons? Head in the bowl, tapping messages, whispering jail break secrets...) but really I am thinking about National Geographic writers and the how they do what they do. They are the white wick dipping again and again into the hot pool of liquid wax- immersing themselves in Bosnia, Ireland, Pandas, Beiruit, Mummies of Mayan sacrifices found on the sides of mountains or any one the articles I've read in the past week. The writers immerse themselves in layers of their subject matter. . .

It was one of those mornings...

It was one of those "World Have Your Say" episodes where Rabiya Limbada was hosting and everyone was getting out of control.

Desk Job

The other night I passed by that bank, the one that is on the corner of Bond and Greenwood (or is it Newport?) and I looked in the office windows of the bank with the drab metal filling cabinets and cream colored walls. I noticed a desk with two perfect piles of papers and a computer and one of those keyboard cleaners, the high pressure air thing. And I looked at all this and it made me go crazy for the person that has to work there who crucially maintains their levels of clean everyday, trying to keep the perfect stasis of dust free polished wood. I am sure if they looked in on my small life they would want to explode; bits of cat litter everywhere an assailant of smells: candles, incense, garlic, cat poop, dust, life.

A Snap shot

A snap shot of Bend

I am at the Downtowner where they consistantly make the greatest soup known to man (vegetarian as well) Spicy Tomato and I have this high seat which overlooks the courtyard where the gutter punks are loitering around listening to what sounds like Nickleback and I am sitting near (but not with) the guy with long hair that works at Ranch Records who is in that band Problem Stick the same guy I once gave a small bottle of sake after a sake tasting at Bo an Asian themed cocktail bar/restaurant on Franklin where I used to work with the kindest of all Thai women "Pick" who once gave me a silk notebook when I gave her a pair of feather earrings I had bought at Blue (but not the Ashley ones, sorry) and from stage left comes the Sluts-dreamboats with their iron pressed (or permed) perfectly coifed hair smoking cigarettes like nihilist gods and as they pass the boarded up (why is it boarded up?) window through the Breezeway and there is a table in the corner, two men, who are making jealous sounds saying something about how they are way cooler than those emos while someone unseen in the kitchen sings the words to that Counting Crows song "Around Here"and I am kind of singing because on my sixteenth birthday my friend Micheal burned this song for me, the same Michael who lives down the street from me and works with kids but wasn't affected by the Boys and Girls Club closing down but knows people who were; I am thinking of this car I saw, lost, trying to find downtown because they were driving slow and turned on their right signal when they saw the 1/2 mile exit sign for downtown and I don't remember being lost in a long while because I've been here so long now. And a part of me is fine with that because I have this soup and these odd connections and fearless familiarity. But, I'd like if you would tell me something I don't know.

PS I LOVE YOU

P.S. I Love You, the movie your boyfriend refuses to see and your girlies all watched together last Saturday night with goblets of Arbor Mist. Wine and a group of girls could have gotten me through this movie, however, I watched it alone, sober.
After my viewing of P.S. I Love You I became nauseous and confused all day, asking questions in a high pitched whine; "Are American girls really that awkward?" "Why does Hilary Swank smile so often?" "Why isn't Jennifer Garner in this movie?" "Why does Gerard Butler die?"
A brief synopsis with plot spoilers: Gerry (Butler) and Holly (Swank) are a "down and out" couple living in New York City. By down and out I mean they can only afford a fully furnished apartment twice the size of mine. In New York City.

Early on Gerry dies of a brain tumor (this isn't much of a spoiler; it happens right away). Before this we get a snippet of what their relationship is like; Holly wants to figure out her life and make money while Gerry is perfectly content with himself. From the beginning anyone watching knows Gerry is too good for Holly. After he dies, Holly is in mourning: hanging out in her "filthy" apartment, watching black and white movies, burning a seemingly endless supply of candles, wearing Gerry's old clothes and throwing herself around. She even has a zit on her forehead! It's tragic to see Holly so dispirited.
If there is anything worse than toothy Swank's "sexy" widow, it's the awkward say-anything bartender, Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.) she leashes along to listen to Gerry stories and to make borderline rude comments.
Holly: How did your husband die?
Daniel: Brain tumor.
Holly: Nice!

He's so annoying and NOT cute!! When they first show him staring at Holly's neck during Gerry's wake, I thought, "OH. NO. They are NOT going to have romantic foreshadowing this early in the movie!" If YOU were married to Gerard Butler and he died, wouldn't you just take your own life? I mean, there's really nothing left for you. But so early in the movie they try and do this "chemistry" thing. Dumb.
If there is one thing you are going to get out of this movie it is these essential truths:
Women Don't Know What They Want and Don't Take For Granted What You Have. That's it. Put that on a needlepoint and hang it in the kitchen.
I admit, I cried. Of course I cried. Gerard Butler, the central character in the entire movie is only in select scenes, I barely saw him at all! And he died! He died!
Sometimes when I read a book with an unfair ending, Animal Farm for example, I rewrite the ending to make it more satisfying and bearable. In Animal Farm I added an epilogue where the house burns down with all the nasty pigs inside, Snowball returns, and the animals start the windmill again and live happily every after.
Sadly, for P.S. I Love You, there was no way to save the story with a new ending. You can't take back the not funny scenes with Swank and her friends. You can't make Gerry alive again. So I took the liberty of rewriting the entire screenplay and sending it to director Richard LaGravenese and anyone else who would listen. I asked them to consider not making my version a sequel but rather apologizing for the first one and releasing the new one as quickly as possible as a replacement. I have even offered myself as an alternate to the Holly character.
A synopsis of the plot: Gerry is a guy married to a girl, Holly. She dies within twenty seconds of the opening, no relationship development or anything, she just falls out of a window while whining to Gerry her life isn't good enough, she has no money, she has to buy designer clothes on ebay, wah wah wah. Gerry is really sad for about two seconds. Then he picks up a guitar plays a Pogues song, and drinks himself all the way back to Ireland where the real movie takes place; Gerry and his friend William playing music all over stopping to save children from vicious gangs of bloated English Protestants with primitive urban weapons (like whiskey bottles). The story is totally wild; a mix of Frank Miller, a Bollywood film, Guy Ritchie and funny like the funniest joke you ever heard. The Rock even has a bit piece in this film as a Catholic priest! Trust me, there won't be any stupid women struggling in boats. The only romance happens at the very end when Gerry and William are at a pub and Andrea Corr (from The Corrs) and Dolores O'Riordan (The Cranberries) are there rocking it. Gerry and William do shots with them, declare peace in North Ireland, and have a bunch of incredibly hot children.

THE END.

P.S. I love you Gerard Butler...

Why do the people in the tech world make so many blinking things? Damn blinking things! The internet pickup modem thing just blinking away out of the corner of my eye! I am so glad to see you are on!
When I turn out the lights at night they are all still staring at me with their beady little green/blue/yellow eyes. ARG! I unplug them all! Rip them out of the cord and the laptop wines and blinks blue. "I'l unplugged! I'm unplugged!" I know you are! I take out your battery! There! Shut up!
I cannot go to bed until everything in my house but my cat, my boyfriend, and I is dead.

Review of Mysle

Mysle's, Chrysalis combines the drama of passing under midnight train tunnels and the elegance of moonlight blooming flowers using layers of clarinet, dreamlike guitar, piano, cello, and voice.

The first song, "Pronounced Misla," the longest on the album, feels influenced by late night high tides at the Pacific Coast and Ulver as it introduces clarinet with rich, heavy, almost clumsy piano notes (continuous throughout the album). The song goes through many phases; spoken word is heard in the background, as if behind thin stained glass but eventually takes the foreground. The middle of the song becomes relatively simple with spoken word then dissolving into what sounds like a clip from a Norwegian film.
The singing is beautiful, rarely center and usually in accompaniment with the instruments. In most cases the words aren't meant to be understood but a loose invitation at human communication. The lyrics, however, are lovely, in perfect compliment with the instruments. My favorite song lyrically, “Winter Sun,” illustrates this point: "in the horizon a snow white curse hangs heavy on my thoughts and i feel that if nothing changes the morning will come without us," reads Robert.
“Glass Ring Dance” is precisely what its title depicts- a round stereo hum of pressing your finger to a crystal glass. The timing feels circular, from softness to loudness- background to foreground- a complete and full circle.
“Born Apotek” is similar to the end bit of “Pronounced Misla” reminiscent of Art Ensemble of Chicago. Speakeasy jazz with piano and dark clarinet. A cool basement with cement floor, two tables of flickering tea lights where everyone is a Scandinavian immigrant, dresses in tweed, drinks Akvavit and dances with existential looks on their faces. The shift in the song after the opening bit makes us realize the song is very much present, not something archaic. “Born Apotek” became easily my favorite song for the timeless theme it presents.
Penna follows the similar theme, keeping the mood cool and melancholy.
You can hear the Icelandic Sigur Ros, Amiina, and of course the Norwegian Ulver. Mysle's Chrysalis challenge isn't talent or uniqueness but finding a receptive audience prepared to listen closely, although it can be appreciated by anyone.

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