June 2013
Let's go wait out in the fields with the ones we love.
Ben Franklin's rules for posting in the comments section
From The Autobiography:
My list of virtues contain’d at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show’d itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc’d me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list giving an extensive meaning to the word.
Funny thing is, I know a few Quakers who could use this (F)friendly reminder.
“…i have no regrets… but i recall many things, like discovering, some time after i’d broken the sex barrier as a land surveyor, that while i’d been hired at $2/hour, the guys started out at $4/hour. it turns out that life isn’t fair, but we’ve outlasted lots of things, and have moved society forward despite [its] focus on the genitalia people arrive with, and we’ll continue to do so.”
—My mother, in our exchange regarding Phyllis Richman’s (stop everything and read it now) Op-Ed, Answering Harvard’s question about my personal life, 52 years later.
Reasons besides money I haven't met with almost any of my friends (from any sphere of my life) the entire time I've been here thus far
- Unlike in 2010, this is not a “visit.” Rather, I am in the process (admittedly, an extraordinarily challenging one) of moving here so if you are also in the Pacific Northwest by the time I can afford to go out (and if, by then, you still wish to do so), oh yes, you will most certainly be seeing me.
- On any given day, at least five different major aspects of my situation are drastically changed from whenever I might last have reported, so I find it less confusing and stressful to simply wait for a bit of that obfuscating dust to settle before I am meeting with anyone and saying “oh yes, so I/we will be doing this” because right now, it could go so many different ways, and it’s all rather disorienting.
- I am enjoying the hell out of being alone for the first time in decades, which makes me sound like kind of an asshole but there it is.
“The voters are moving left, while the state governments are lurching right. The only safe prediction is that after 150 years of being largely ignored in national elections, the South is about to become the most fiercely contested, and unpredictable, political battleground in America.”
—
http://prospect.org/article/end-solid-south (via hillbillyplease)
JUST in time for me to change my voter registration to Oregon ***stares at toes***
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Talking Heads
One moment of unconditional love can invalidate an entire lifetime of uncertainty and doubt.
Rachel Naomi Remen in Kitchen Table Wisdom
Song: “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” by Talking Heads
‘Home/ is where I want to be/ but I guess I’m already there…’
I Got A Man
Positive K
LOL you guys did I ever tell you about my ex who would belt out this song only instead of I got a man she’d sing it as I shot a man HAHA good times LOLsob *ahem* I’ve said too much
Positive K - I Got A Man
ARE YOU A CHEF?? CUZ YOU KEEP FEEDING ME SOUP!!
Slipped
The National
And here, if you have not already heard it, is Slipped, from The National’s (brilliant) latest, with lyrics that seem, as always, custom-ordered to address my own murky consciousness:
I’m in the city you hated (…)
Is it weird to be back in the south?
And can they even tell
That the city girl was ever there
Or anywhere? (…)I keep coming back here where everything
slipped
ETA: I could not begin to estimate the hours I’ve already spent crying my guts out to this, only to immediately hit ‘replay.’ The struck nerves and notes are, here, largely interchangeable.
Baby Elephant Walk
Henry Mancini & Chris Mancini
This track is made of happiness.
(Also, whoops, this was supposed to go to All the Instruments, None of the Language, to which I will be reblogging this forthwith.)
