Bees

The bushes outside Spruce were literally humming with bees today. There is something facinating and beautiful and simple about bees speeding from flower to flower; pollenating and progressing. There were too many to count, and I liked seeing life working in it's way that had nothing to do with me.

Viva la (Dance Dance) Revolution!

Above: Copper plays some DDR. He was thoroughly confused as to what the heck we were doing stomping on the floor to techno grooves. We (and by we I mean "I") tried to make him wear our sweet Nike sweat wristbands but he kept kicking them off. Had to lock all three dogs in the kitchen to keep them off the dance floor.
Below: Katherine and I get our DDR on . I am trying to dance; Katherine is kicking my butt by actually knowing what she was doing. She is obviously a higher rank in the Revolution of the Dancing, Dancing. Notice K wearing our sweet Nike wrist band. We only had two of them so both of us are wearing one. And yes, I am wearing the Swayze; I thought he'd give me some good dance juju. Below: Katherine and Andy square off in an epic DDR battle. Ladies and Gentlemen: my Saturday night. Wild n' crazy night in the Ash-Vegas, to be sure. It was awesome.

(click on any of the photos to expand them, if you really want to subject yourself to that)

Z-Time

Yup, it's that time again. Time for the crazy Chaco tan to develop, the big Z's burning onto my feet, a sign of outside adventures, heat and some new scars. That's all I wanted to point out. Come August I'll take another just to see how drastic it is after the summer.
Next weekend I'll but up in Luray, VA for a two-day canoe program with Adventure Links. It'll be my 5th year running this program. (references to past trips are here and here...and apparently last year I didn't write one.) It will be my first year doing it without my dear Elena with me, who's always been my touchstone during programs of this sort. It'll be very different being there without her. Stupid Arizona. This is with Elena on the rainy program of 2005:
Anyway, we didn't get enough wranglers for the weekend, so on this day off I'm going to be running the giant swing for a few hours. I can always use the money.
Tonight is Necessary Silliness Night with Katherine. I'll take pictures...

The Transporter

Not much to say. Here's what I've been listening to lately. Disappointing post I know. Bah.
Mushaboom--Feist
Portadown Station--Sandra McCracken (K...whole "Gravity Love" album)
Not California--Hem
Good Hearted Man--Tift Merritt
Ten Year Night--Lucy Kaplansky
Long Time Traveller--Wailin' Jennys
Denton, TX--Damien Jurado
Kathleen--Josh Ritter
Take it Down (John Hiatt Cover)--Patty Griffin
The First Day of My Life--Bright Eyes
And, for some reason, the 1995 live "1200 Curfews" by the Indigo Girls. I woke up with their version of "Tangled Up in Blue" in my head last week and forgot what a great album those two discs make. I got it shortly after in came out in '95. Can't believe that was 12 years ago, sitting on the hardwood floor at my father's farmhouse, with his huge earphones on, listening to the discs and obsessing over liner notes. I was eating a sticky bun on Christmas morning; there's still a spot of it on the old cardboard CD case.

That's something. Those songs that transport me to certain people, certain trips, times, smells, fears, lives. Like Ani DiFranco's "Swan Dive" will always sound like walking down Stratford toward campus on a cold, grey February day. "Yellow Submarine" will always sound like a heavily-bearded Scott and Elena. John Prine sounds like Josh should be next to me. "Karma Chameleon" sounds like caving trips. "Solsbury Hill" makes me giggle, remembering Dave and I doing an interpretive dance to it one very late night in their basement. I love the memories that come drifting back to me on sound waves, like the crackle of AM radio in the wee hours. It's like catching voices through the static of the present.

Invisible

I'm having one of those days when I'm feeling invisible, as if the world doesn't notice if I'm there or not, which I know it normally doesn't notice but for some reason today I'm keenly aware of it.
Like I'm floating through my day as a wallflower. It's atypical for me and I can't tell if I like it or not. Sometimes it's nice to live inside my head. It's when I'm most creative.

The Swayze

I got a Patrick Swayze t-shirt custom printed today in Asheville at the great little vintage store, Hip Replacements (great pun, no?).
Umm...best t-shirt ever.
I kinda want to add, "Nobody puts baby in a corner" to the back. Or maybe, "She's like the wind."
But it's so awesome I dare not defile the Swayze.
Its ok to be jealous.

Can't Get It

It's hard to get the incident in Hokieland out of my head. Today was pouring over the list of names, double checking that they aren't any of "my" kids, aren't faces recognized. I think I need to talk through it in a way. I can't believe how hard it has hit me.

Some thoughts:
* My Aunt Tikki (nickname) was a student walking across the quad at UT-Austin in 1966 when the shooter was picking off people from the clocktower. She was thrown into a bush by a fellow student and told to stay down. My mom's words, "She didn't get trauma training. Grief counseling. They were told to go on with their lives. And they did." I don't know what to make of that. Usually my mom is very pro-therapy.
* Many of the students at Tech are from NoVa. These are the same students who, in 2002, had their Homecomings and football seasons cancelled by the DC sniper. This is the second time in their lives that a madman with a gun has anonymously mowed down those around them. How do we explain to them that this isn't how we "do" it in America? What evidence do we provide?
* How long will we keep denying that there is something seriously wrong with this gun culture of ours? I mean, I know how to shoot. I got my first rifle when I was 13. I will probably own a gun when I live alone. But my dad taught me to shoot for the same reason he taught me how to punch and how to drive a stick: "I hope you won't, but just in case you are ever in a situation where you will need to know this." But there is a big difference between knowing how to shoot and owning weapons simply designed to kill as many as quickly as possible.
* Gun Culture: when we have phrases like "shoot first and ask questions later", "go out with guns blazin'", "dead or alive", "shoot up the place", "business end of a gun", "lock n' load" in our lexicon then we are propagating the use of guns as an emotional release. We accept, however unintentionally, that cowboy mentality and the masculinity of it.
* Anger. What causes this anger? What makes all these other emotions stew and boil until they burst forth in the "manly" emotion of anger? (that's not anti-men, that's asking "what vunerable emotions do we allow guys to feel without getting on them for being 'weak' or 'small' or 'feminine'?)
* How do we, as a culture, stop desensitizing ourselves from each other? I wrote about this phenomenon back in September (here) and it breaks my heart even as I do it. How do we switch from self-importance to community?
* Why is it that I can say names like McVeigh, Klebold, Harris and now Cho and we all know what I'm talking about, but I can't remember the name of a single victim? Do we sort of grant them their Warhol minutes, even if it's post-mortem?

Give Me the Old Dominion

I'm a Virginian by birth. I love that fact. And in VA, we love our colleges. Not for their sports per se, we just love 'em. UVA, JMU, William and Mary, Mary Washington, Washington and Lee, George Mason, heck, even Radford. But I was raised to love Virginia Tech, even when they beat Syracuse 64-0 in that football game in fall of '99. Why love Tech?
My mother went to Tech.
My father went to Tech.
My stepfather went to Tech.
Two cousins went to Tech.
And ex boyfriend? Yup. Tech.
Brother-in-law? Tech.
Best guy friend? Tech.
About 60% of my high school graduating class: Tech.
Like it or not, I'm a Hokie by proxy. What happened today...just...wow.
Trying to get updates on where all my old high school kids are, praying the LoCo Hokies are accounted for and a-ok. A strange day of gathering voices like manna.
I talked to my friend Carey, who is on part-time Young Life staff in Radford, just north of Blacksburg. All of her co-leaders are Tech students and her area director has been frantically trying to account for all her leaders. Some are still missing. One was shot in the leg. Carey asked me, "I have club tonight. I have to go out and distract these high school kids; go on like always. How?" I didn't have an answer.
I don't think anyone does.


Sic Semper Tyrannis
(Thus always to tyrants. The Commonwealth's motto.)

Patty, part II

Umm yeah...that's Patty Griffin with her arm around Kelly Clarkson.
The joy that radiated from the cockles of my heart at the mere sight of this photo could have warmed a small country. I mean, really.

When it Don't Come Easy

Saw Patty Griffin at the Orange Peel last night. Hadn't seen her in concert in ten years or so, and she is a truly great live show. The problem was the crowd. The last time I saw her, no one knew who she was; she was just another chick singer-songwriter with a guitar. I mean, when I first saw her in '96 she was opening for Shawn Colvin and didn't even have an album out, just a demo tape (which I still have). No one paid attention to her, but I was mesmerized. When I saw her in '98 (or was it '99?) she was playing second stage at Lilith Fair and it was a similar experience. I was transfixed while the world kept moving.
This was a sold out show at the Orange Peel, and the people who were around me were chatty and slightly obnoxious. If I could have shot lasers out of my eyes, I would have. If ever there was a show to not talk through, it'd be Patty Griffin. Or even in the spaces between the songs; if you are laughing loudly or giggling about a date between songs like "Mary" and, oh, "Florida" then you deserve to have something large shoved in your mouth. Hopefully permanently. You destroy the experience for everyone else. I expected more from the crowd because she was the main act; she was the reason people were standing there. Smoke may have been pouring out my ears.
Couple that with attempting to stand for 5 hours straight and the subsequent searing pain running the length of my body and I was a chipper morning daisy. I am once again reminded that being on my feet for that long is not something I am capable of doing. I could feel the muscles in my shoulders and back tightening so much I feared my right arm would pop out of socket (again). That was a frustrating and disheartening revelation.
But Patty was amazing. If ever you have the opportunity to see her live, take it. she's worth every penny.

Motion Sickness

kinetosis: agitation caused by the disparity between the feeling of movement and the visually perceived inertia. Your body says you are moving, your eyes say nothing has changed. Motion sickness.
I've never suffered from it before this trip, and as I reflect it seems a fair metaphor for this particular adventure.
I'm back from a blitzkrieg of a trip, beginning last Thursday when I left my apartment at 5am and stopped traveling around 8pm. It was such an occasion that was full of more laughter and memories than should be allowed in such a compact denomination of time; it was a trip for the ages. There are too many stories to retell.
At the same time, my reflective side can find bits of pensiveness in the most gleeful of places.
Friday I went back to my college campus for the first time in close to four years, and it was the very definition of kinetosis; a place I knew intimately, home to some of the most seminal moments in my brief life, and yet the characters were all strangers, things were out of place, it was the same place but fundamentally different. I walked by my old house and I didn't know the cars the driveway. I stopped outside by ex-boyfriend's house and there was nothing to suggest he was ever a resident. It's like four years were erased off the canvas to which they were painted.
Those four years play out every year, in thousands of lives, doing the same things I did, walking the same places I walked, butting up against the berms of convictions and expectations, discovering the same secrets and stories, the sheer newness of constant chaos. That house saw decades before and will see decades later. I forget that life goes on without me.
I can't tell if that comforts me or not.

(The Mopalopshop, ol' 913 Lancaster, the day I moved out for good.)

Soaking It In

So I did have to go get checked out to make sure I didn't break anything by falling hard a whopping 3 feet or so. News flash: I didn't break anything. But I did get to spend the morning at Sisters of Mercy getting x-rays and anti-inflammatories so alls well that ends well. They managed to check me out and tell me I was fine without ever actually touching me. Anyone else find that odd? Made me a little self conscious...like do I smell? Have a flesh-eating bacteria no one has told me about just yet? Unsightly body hair?
Yesterday was my first day off in 9 days, so it was not only necessary at that point, it was close to vital. I was broken and TIRED. Yesterday afternoon four of my friends and I went up to Hot Springs, NC for an hour soak in, well, the hot springs. It was worth the $10/person. We had enough time to change into dry clothes and skip on down to the Brew n' View to watch Ben Stiller's "Night at the Museum" which I had no inclination to see except it cost $2 and goes well for a dinner and movie situation. Funnier than expected. Back to West Asheville to drop off some of the troops before a discussion of what next. After debate, we headed to East Asheville to the Root Bar to play some much-hyped rootball. Rootball is like a mixture between horseshoes and bocce and is very addictive, even though it seems to be something formulated out of two dog chew toys and a horseshoe pit. Awesome.
All in all it was a wonderful last free Saturday til October. Ugh, that's nuts to say.