Truth and Everything Else

Hello…you may remember me as someone who used to blog all the time. Remember those days? Those were good days.

I discovered that the times when I am happiest I don’t write much, because writing is the method I use to scratch the itchy places in my life. It puts my fears, frustrations, hopes and heartaches into words; map them into something I can process; organize them into the stacks of Truth and Everything Else. When I am happy, when I am not itchy in those deep places only I know, my words evaporate into a trickle. Thoughts don’t stay with me long; they alight before words can catch them.

This spring and summer I have been busy. Not hectic; busy. As in full. As in constant. As if I live life like the outline of the soft Blue Ridge and not the harsh extremes of the Rockies. And it has been good.

I’ve been canoeing on the French Broad with Emily, floating gently by the back side of the Biltmore House on a Sunday beatific in its summer uncomplicatedness.

I did a random road trip to south Georgia with Leslie and her gaggle of kids (and aging wiener dog) to sit on a back deck with her parents, drink gin & tonics, eat boiled peanuts and kayak through a cypress grove.

After a particularly rainy week I ended up in a whitewater raft with Doug, his father and Nathan on section IX of the French Broad, guiding those silly guys down Class III-IV rapids with 24oz cans of Modela shoved in our PFDs.

I had a birthday.

I’ve had some damn good kisses.

I took off my flip flops, rolled up my jeans and splashed in puddles in the street after finishing wine at Bouchon while the sky threw the sort of tantrum it only throws in the summer.

I’ve laughed with my whole body.

I discovered that I really, really don’t like sea urchin.

I've tried acupuncture.

When I was in Georgia, Leslie’s mom showed me a green plant climbing the trunk of a massive live oak tree. She said, “That is called a resurrection fern. When there is no rain it withers up and appears dead. It shrinks to nothing. But when the rains come again, it unfurls and greens. It resurrects over and over again.”

I haven’t stopped thinking about that resurrection fern.
Or whether it falls into Truth, into Everything Else, or both at the very same time.

Son of A

This one is for Leslie....

She's Hot to Go

Asheville has the worst collection of radio stations I could imagine compiling so I rarely listen to it. I listen to NPR or my iPod. However I forget to charge my iPod all the time. It has only run out of juice once or twice since I don’t use it that much anymore (commute is half the time and falls during prime NPR hours). Now I have the stock stereo in my car; I never felt the need to update it and so I still rock a cassette player in my dash. Why would I need anything else?
Last night was one of those times that my iPod died and it was an off-hour where my least favorite NPR program is broadcast. It is for these moments that I still have cassettes floating around my car. Most are mix tapes from college that have withstood the test of time and better tastes. I blindly grabbed one and stuck it in and was immediately flooded with memory and comfort. It wasn’t one I made; it was a mix that my dad recorded in probably 1990 or 1991 that is comprised of Lyle Lovett’s first three albums taped from records. The tape has the scratchy and mildly tinny quality that distinguishes it; as if the imperfections make it more personable. I stole it years ago and have kept it because I have memories of listening to the same tape on childhood trips to Maine and Canada; it is something that is so concretely familiar. I have the CD versions of those albums but they don’t have the character of that mix tape.
Thanks for that, Lyle.

Somebody Understands

I can't stop thinking about the shooting of the abortion doctor in Wichita.
I'm disgusted by it; haunted that someone could be so hated for doing what is, by law, legal. It doesn't really matter whether one deems it immoral; it is within the law and thus the choice belongs to the woman and the doctor, not to some perceived moral cause.

But we have those who claim to be protectors of "innocents" who find it their moral obligation to assassinate those with whom they disagree. Before this murder, Dr. Tiller had had his clinic bombed and he had been shot. Twice. His family received death threats; he was taken to court on multiple occasions under paper-thin allegations. And he kept practicing, because he believed so strongly in a woman's right to choose. And so a single bullet met him in the foyer of his church, as he served as an usher. How ironic that he'd be killed there. I wonder how many "houses of worship" put on the face of condemnation at this act while secretly singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead". I cannot fathom how those who espouse the worth of unborn “life” can in the same breath advocate the outright murder of a doctor working within the lines of legality. It makes my blood absolutely boil.

The right to choose is not the same as advocating abortion: it is simply asking that a choice be possible, that the decision rest in the hands of the woman and not in the hands of the church or the government.

“We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.” --Anne Lamott

In 1998 Ani DiFranco released the song, "Hello, Birmingham" about the shootings of abortion doctors. I post a video to it now; the words are powerful even as the video is shoddy.

"A bullet came to visit a doctor in his one safe place
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid & his wife
and knocked his glasses right off of his face
and the blood poured off the pulpit
and the blood poured down the picket line
and the hatred was immediate
and the vengeance was divine."

Turn Around Bright Eyes

Ok it's not as funny as the literal version of "Take On Me" but it's still pretty great. I wrote up a blog about the weekend I just had and I'll get it up soon enough, but hopefully this will keep you entertained until then...



This is also my favorite song to do in SingStar. Because I am a SingStar master. And that's how I roll.