it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

tonight i had a really good talk with two friends about how scary it can be to be adrift in this part of life. we talked about how and why people grow roots at various
points in their lives, and whether or not the concept of root-growing terrified us. it's interesting to have the travel bug all the time, because when you're never quite home, going away forces your little apartment and your little job to be home-- the focal point to which you will yearn to come back to.

the general idea of settling goes against a lot of who i think i am right now... when i had to run home today from work to update my resume,i realized how many things i wanted to add to that list. "taught disabled children how to ride horses," my life's history says, "babysitter, library wench, migrant worker in greenhouse, receptionist, barista, book seller, cello teacher, admissions officer, production intern, dub room intern, assistant editor, boom girl, producer's assistant, producer, head writer." i want my resume to see a lot more ink-- documentary script writer, muppet, best-selling author, foster care advocate for change, cowgirl, gallery assistant, photographer, comedian, screenwriter, bartender, sommelier, foster dog trainer.

the theme of my internal monologue these days, and the pressing question on my mind, is how to re-group. i was resisting roots, but apparently i've grown some... and when i least expected it, they were up-rooted. the ground is still open below me, and i could attempt to regenerate growth, but i could also catch the wind that picked up unexpectedly, and become planted somewhere else with different stakes and risks.

my friends and i couldn't tell if we are happier as trepidacious wanderers, or if we'd be happier as slightly resentful in our planted ways. i left their comfortable presence, got into my new car and played a song that always feels like home. jeff buckley and rufus wainwright both do good covers of "hallelujah," but i've lost rufus, so jeff and i sand loud and soulfully the whole way home. this is one of the top 3 best songs that i can harmonize to, right up there with radiohead's "i will" and ben folds' "fred jones"-- right in the sweet spot for an alto's voice and a guitar in a minor key. it fits what i'm struggling to understand-- the contradiction of a minor key with a major transition, embracing the cold and broken hallelujah. the song always moves me in a way that i can't quite put into words, which is possibly the reason i like it so much

now i've heard there was a secret chord
that david played, and it pleased the lord
but you don't really care for music, do you?
it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
the minor fall and the major lift
the baffled king composing hallelujah
hallelujah

your faith was strong but you needed proof
you saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to the kitchen chair
she broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah
hallelujah

baby i've been here before
i've seen this room and i've walked this floor
i used to live alone before i knew you
i've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and broken hallelujah
hallelujah

well there was a time when you let me know
what was really going on below
but now you never show that to me, do you?
but remember when i moved in you
and the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew was hallelujah
hallelujah

i did my best, it wasn't much
i couldn't feel, so i tried to touch
i've told the truth: i didn't come to fool you
and even though it all went wrong
i'll stand before the lord of my song
with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
and it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody that's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
hallelujah

hallelujah hallelujah
hallelujah hallelujah

i signed to accept 5 existing miles

this is matilda, the world's tinest car, and skinny, the world's tiniest tree. matilda has been my car for seven years, and despite the fact that i left her for new york for long periods of time, we love each other very much. she hugs the roads, drops her top and can do 0-60 in the time it takes me to shift from first to fifth. she has a drop-dead amazing second gear. she complains but usually goes if i try to start in third gear at a stop sign. she has a tiny cockpit, two pop-up headlights and the smallest trunk in the world.

it wasn't always easy for us-- last summer, people flicked cigarette butts on her roof on the fourth of july that burned through the canvas. the summer before that, a deer tried to kill us on hwy 36 and i had to *actually* use the heel-and-toe racing method that my dad taught me on a whim-- which caused 25' of extreme skid marks, 50 feet of terrifying fish-tailing and near deer-in-lap, car-in-canyon death. and then there are the hot bolts in roof that always seem to fall in my lap when i'm wearing shorts and it's over 100 degrees outside.

she is small, impractical, dangerous, and unfairly pegged as a gay man's play toy-- and i love her. my dad bought the car in 1991, the second year they made miatas, and kept her until i was in high school because he's a very kind man and knew how much i loved the car. he taught me how to drive the day before school started-- we went out to a parking lot where i practiced for an hour, drove home lurching and stalling at every stop sign, and learned the words "sports clutch" and "hurt this transmission, never come home." our house was on a slight hill which ended at a busy street and a stop sign at an incline. on the first day of school, my dad actually ran out into the yard to watch me start (and nearly stall,) and-- this is not an exaggeration-- ran up the street next to the car as i drove, yelling "clutch! gas! good! gas! good! SECOND! NOW! CLUTCH!". all of my neighbors came running to their doors to see the debacle, but i did not crash, stall or die, and my dad's cup of coffee, which he held for the entire run, did not spill one drop.

i have wonderful memories in this car. driving with the top down on a fall afternoon has been one of the most simple, happy pleasures of my adult life. i drove matilda to high school, to the mountains, to three funerals and a wedding, to dates, to friends' houses, and even to santa fe and back (with matt in the passenger side literally asleep the entire trip). she's made it through winters with 75 pounds of snow in the back (gaa) and summers with pack rats nested in her engine. she's a great, fantastic car, and i've always felt a little bit more jane and a lot more ridiculous in her company.

i'm writing an ode to matilda today because i thought about all of these things as i drove her into longmont to pick up my new car. i've been contemplating this day since my freshman year of college, and it's finally here-- i've given up my beloved, sexy, entertaining red sports car for something responsible, safe and big enough to carry a cello without putting the top down (yes, even in the winter).
i've traded in my tape deck and frozen clock (u.uu is the constant time these days) for a cd player and mp3 hookup, i've traded in crappy windshield wipers and a scrunched driver's seat for cup holders and air bags. by some saving grace, my dad got caught up in nostalgia for her too and we might spend some time fixing her up together (a few more drives!), but on a fundamental level, i have to let her go.

it's insane, and heavily materialistic (some might argue) to associate one's self with one's car, but as humans, this is what we do. expensive, flashy, safe, comfortable, out of gas-- there's a little tidbit in all of those that we want to proclaim, deny, hide or defend. but today, for the first time in my life, i signed on the line and put my name on an entire goddamn vehicle. it was terrifying, it was exciting, and it was one of the more bizarre experiences i've ever had to just sign, shake, and drive the car off the lot. really? when do they say "just kidding" and take the keys from my hand?

she's a toyota rav 4. she came with a boatload of surprise features that i was anxious about, but she's a safe, fast, efficient, comfortable car. her name is ramona. i finally have a real car, and as much as my left foot feels betrayed and my shifting hand feels restless, i feel like this is an exciting next step.

the deathtrap days are gone... on with the suit, the map and the open road.

in other news
on the subject of major life changes, i'm going to new york city very soon and i can't wait. jessie, steve, chip & adina (my romanian!), yodapez friends, katey, reunion with dalyn, chandler the documentary guru, the met, cafes, central park, fall, every exterior and interior shot of "you've got mail". the best part-- evil dead is now a MUSICAL, and the first two rows are designated as "splatter zones". the scary part-- i'll have at least one, if not several, "informal" job interviews. i'm nervous for the career part and **completely** excited for the vacation part... things have been so nerve-wracking lately that a trip out east might just be the perfect antidote.

fantastic ending
apparently insomnia is just here to stay... so let's be honest. it's way past
my bedtime, i'm exhausted, and it's become imperative to add this photo.
meg nannies for a house with two cats. one of the cats is kind of normal.
one of the cats has asthma and must be hotboxed with asthma medicine.
can you guess which one has asthma?

to date, not much can crack my shit up as much as this photo. i'm sure that other things can, and will, but for now... this cracks my shit up the most.
poor kitty.
ah, bartleby. ah, humanity. ah, kitty hotbox.

tiny indentation of a girl in the snow

yesterday i invited sarah, reji & tom to hike up to lake isabelle with me. it was a gorgeous fall day, and even the drive up was wonderful-- the aspen are changing, so the green hillsides have thick splotches of gold yellow leaves everywhere, the light was rich and low, and the sky was a deep, clear blue. the weather was sunny, cool, and perfect for hiking in a fleece.

the high country has definitely seen some snow-- the entire trail was packed with snow and ice, and the snow was pretty deep once we got up to the top. after a few (dozen) snowball fights, we hiked single-file and stopped every half-mile to be bowled over by the view of the indian peaks with snow blowing off of them and wispy clouds swirling behind them. i took half of a peanut butter sandwich out of my bag near the top and held it straight out as our motivation to keep hiking, and reji surprised us all by yelling, "who am i?" before sprinting off and throwing herself face-down, arms and legs out in the snow. tom and i were laughing too hard to guess-- sarah won with a tentative "man from snowy river?"

it was a great hike and a beautiful day in the company of good friends. we talked about ski season, interesting scientific facts and the recurring theme of people getting angry when their friends are sad. to be scientific about it, we tried to make reji feel sad to measure our levels of anger, but homegirl's buzz is hard to jive, so we became exhausted and called it a failed experiment. we were muddy and sleepy by the end, and tom and i decided to risk looking like dirty hippies when we stopped downtown for some food in boulder.

the best thing about the hike (besides the peanut butter sandwiches we enjoyed at the top) was just the sense of climbing up and out of everything in my mind. it was a perfect place to relax, enjoy the company of friends, ride the endorphins, and meditate without feeling burdened by the things that have been pulling me down. i think i might spend some time up in the mountains soon-- pack a bag, take a huge stack of library books, and enjoy the long commute to work. it would be worth it for the peace, the fall smells and the open, inviting trails every morning. and let's not lie... spending a few autumn weeks in the rocky mountains never hurt anyone's writing career.

rabbit hit in head with carrot, rabbit redux

I like Engrish. (I can't remember if this photo is from Stewy or Bill)
I love fall.

Time to dust off sweaters and socks and old friends. Like Steve Kovach-- it had been 7 months since we talked, and I shamefully called him last weekend after many a whiskey sumpin', so I don't quite remember it. Non-shamefully, it's making me very happy that I have Kovach's voice saying "Janie Cakes! Steve-ohhhh misses you" on my voice mail.

What I *do* remember from last weekend are some very entertaining conversations with Tom that are still rattling around my brain. I asked him if he'd ever been home alone and wondered, just for a second, "if I choked on this cereal, how long would it take for someone to find my body?" Tom claims that I'm a freak, and that normal people don't wonder these things. But I don't think I'm a freak, or terribly morbid, it's just a question that came into my mind one day. If I went face-first into the couch, my neighbors have never spoken to me, my co-workers would just call and wonder where I was on Monday, my friends would just leave messages and feel a little miffed that I wasn't returning their calls. Hmmm.

I briefly had one of those moments today -- it's a beautiful cool fall morning, I took a long jog and listened to David Bowie the whole way, came home, turned on some music and hopped in the shower. I was in full-out Happy Showering Jane mode when some kind of brain-stopping, full-body pain hit me out of nowhere, and when I doubled over seeing stars, it really scared me. "Is someone going to find me in here?" I thought with a face full of water, feeling for the side of the tub. Ruining a good shower is bad enough-- feeling that fleeting, real moment of "uh oh" is even worse. I seem to remember the same thing happening last spring, just after the same series of medical midieval torture chamber tests, so I think it should be all good. But good lord-- I may have to invest in one of those old lady panic buttons to pin to my sweater. I think today will be spent taking it easy with a book and a vat of monkey king tea.

most current music pleasures
*David Bowie is very, very good jogging music. He'll pump you up just as fast as he can drag you down into his weird, twisted little mind.
*Song that has nothing to do with me but moves me very much: "Georgia"- Ray Charles
*Song that I have played more than 13 times today: "Positively 4th Street"-Bob Dylan
*Song that most pertains to my life this weekend: "Positively 4th Street"-Bob Dylan
*Best coffee music on Saturday mornings: Colin Hay, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Beethoven, Massive Attack, RJD2, Brahms, Slim Cessna, Calexico, Joni Mitchell
*Best wine music on a Saturday night: Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, David Bowie, The Postal Service, Bob Dylan, Sigur Ros, DJ Shadow, Radiohead, Spoon, Sufjan Stevens, Tom Waits

best engrish sentences that i know
"Child be a public servant. The best balance of music and technology within a vaguely"- written on a t-shirt for sale in a Hong Kong market

"Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty"- sign in a Budapest zoo

"Dirty Water Punishment Place!"- Sign for sewage treatment plant on a Tokyo map

"The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable"- Sign in a Bucharest hotel lobby

"Keep vent on top open. Do not bring spillables near these, like chicken soup and dust"- computer instructions translated from Mandarin

and my all-time favorite, as many know,
"Please not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension"-Austrien hotel sign for skiers

525,600 minutes indeed

i've been at my job just over a year, and in that time i've produced a video that took me exactly nine months from pre-production through its print-to-tape date. and because i work at an educational company that deals with birth & parenting, it obviously was the worst irony in the world to have my video spend exactly nine months in gestation before delivery. but for the first time in my life, i'm being asked to learn things slowly instead of in warp-speed increments, and it's an interesting--albeit mind-numbingly frustrating-- process.

in high school, mrs. niccore showed "the miracle of life" to my awkward sophomore class, because that's what biology teachers do. out of the 30 students packed into that 22-seat class, two of us almost fainted and had to be removed from the video: justin carter, who claimed he had low blood sugar that day, and myself. ten years later, i'm paying my rent from contraction how-tos and diaper comparisons. ahh, irony. it's taken me a long, long time to not have a literally physical reaction to our subject material. birth, estrogen, pregnancy, babies, umbilical cords, lamaze breathing -- still very terrifying and, for the most part, really unpleasant. but once i was able to look at pregnancy as a biological triumph and families as social groups of mammals-- voila. very, very, very interesting.

everyone knows we're mammals, part of the animal kingdom graced with a little hindrance called "intelligence". but it took a year of watching it on G5s, field monitors, camera LCDs and CD-ROMs for it to really sink in-- we *are* animals. every waking moment of our lives is driven by animal instincts, whether it's cerebral or not. a mother watching her infant can apathetically carry on a cell phone conversation, but if you watch her body, she hovers... her fingers twitch at the slightest movements of her son... she shields his shiny bald head from the harsh sun. i love watching people as mammals, which is why i'm loving every page of my library book-- territory, exile,reproduction, alpha behavior... we do it. each and every one of us. and we truly aren't so different from a humpback whale, barn swallow or silverback gorilla.

fetal development is something that i don't think most of us think much about until we're 30lbs heavier, paying a mortgage and reading "what to expect when you're expecting." but it is one of the most beautiful, heart-stopping things a person can learn about. 23 chromosomes from two parents meet in the darkness, shake hands, make a little home for themselves, and 9 months later you have a 7lb person floating in complete darkness. a few microscopic cells have created an organism with a brain, a chamber-supported heart, veins, eyes, pores, taste buds and fingerprints. quiet, introspective adults frequently start out as quiet, slow-moving babies -- many insecure rock stars began as agitated, kicking fetuses. our personalities, our biological rhythms, our need for attention and ability to calm ourselves down, our preference for the human voice and even the sound of music begin in complete darkness, before we have ever even met ourselves. i used to joke that babies are alien pods, but a fetus has an uncanny strength. across all ages, races, socioeconomic status and countries, pregnant women come in dead last in the statistic of suicide rates. an upper west side socialite might abuse herself through her pregnancy; eat daintily, over-exercise and skimp on her calories, but her body is paying a toll far higher than that of her baby, who's getting almost a majority of her nutrients. and minutes-- seconds-- after giving birth, a woman's body is flooded with hormones that dull the clear memory of the intensity of her pain.
the purpose of the fetus, by all accounts, is to survive. and the human being is designed to reproduce.

today i contemplated all of this during a staff meeting, which was attended by people who have lunch-nazi'd, boulder-liberal-ed, rank-pulled through my year, but at the end of the day are devout professionals to a field i'm interested in. i thought about how a fetus develops in 9 months, and to be cheesy, i considered how i've developed over the past year. i came to boulder without the intention to unpack my bags-- i applied to an incredible documentary company on the universal studios set in los angeles and a production fast-lane job in kentucky. i looked at job / grad school possibilities in new york, chicago, maine and seattle.

i didn't expect that i'd end up in boulder, but life doesn't always go the way you expect, and i found myself working as an unpaid intern at a production company, serving coffee 50 hours a week at borders and driving to denver late at night to edit a documentary about two young men traveling across the country on a segway. i started working a 4th job as a freelance assistant for an educational company, and after a month they asked me to join them as an on-staff producer's assistant. within three months i had my own desk, a business card that said "producer" and my own video, and a year later, i'm printing a 3-volume set of health videos, finishing all of the marketing writing for three departments, and publishing a 50 page booklet that will be sold to hospitals.
i have learned so much from this job-- everything from editing to light kits to interviewing skills to how to be a producer to how to move from "gofer" to "head of writing" overnight. i've learned about diplomacy, business etiquette, professional consultants and letting things drop when your boss wants it his way.

it's such a human addiction to get comfortable when you've finally found a place to sink into. much like my early fetal developments, i've made complete chaos into a sanctuary-- i found an apartment i loved, a family i'd been away from for four years, a job that held lots of potential and a small group of people who felt like home.

but when a place can no longer nurture your needs-- when you've gotten too big for your surroundings or when a stress in the environment threatens your well-being, it becomes necessary to leave. today, in that meeting, i realized that maybe it's time for me to leave. my body is telling me something -- and it's probably a simple message. i'm very stressed out. i'm battling a series of elements that i can't control and may have long-lasting effects on my life. i keep getting sick the way i used to get sick in the fall of my freshman year, when i started shedding pounds at an unnatural rate and felt achy and dizzy like i was getting the flu all the time. food feels like a constant chore, and i can't get enough music at night or pen-tapping during the busy work day.

tomorrow i'll settle in to what will probably be the last video i make with this company. it will go quickly, merge slightly with the holidays, and leave me one credit happier on my resume to go out and explore the world. i don't want to leave this apartment that i love, my family, my favorite late-night drives, the margaritas at mama citas or the comfort of my friends. but maybe it's time. it's time to go out and get inspired the way i need to be, creatively challenged the way i'm designed to be, and emotionally nurtured the way the human race needs to be. i'm nervous, and i'm not sure.
but my last thought in that meeting was-- maybe the human fetus isn't ready. maybe it's warm, safe and comfortable, and birth is the most painful, terrifying moment of your entire life.
and maybe that's what's supposed to bring you out of the darkness and into your conscious self.

j'ai mal pour les shadows aussi

one of the first phrases i learned in french was in the back of an old, useless phrase book: "j'ai mal par tout." i hurt everywhere.

i hurt all the way down to my fingernails. i know that tomorrow i'll have to get up and do this all over again, so i'm lying on my couch in near-darkness, book on my chest, no music, no tv, no loud neighbors, no traffic sounds. the thoughts in my head are jumbled and only partially exposed at once, like laundry tumbling over itself.

when i was 13 or 14 years old, i read a ray bradbury short story that i still haven't recovered from. it's called "there will come soft rains (august 2026)", and describes my perfect idea of hell. a community is wiped out by nuclear war, but the robots that helped run the houses are still puttering around apathetically. i read this alone in the middle of winter, and i still remember where i was sitting and what i was wearing when i began to read about the shadows that clung to houses and the sides of buildings after hiroshima. bradbury described the silhouettes of two children playing catch that had been affixed to the side of their house, and when i ran crying to my dad, he explained how the science worked behind the flash-moment of the bomb: the sunlight, the objects, the shadows, the split-second of absolute destruction. i cried over that short story for the rest of the night, and i remember my dad sitting on the foot of my bed at one point, just patting my feet through the covers.
(it's funny how that kind of thing stays with you-- whenever things truly fall apart, the last thing i think at night is how nice it would be if someone was sitting at the foot of my bed to protect me from the chaos and the evil out in the world).

bradbury's point was that radiation and violence was making the planet sterile and unable to reproduce... and because this story had a deep impact on my developing understanding of biology and war, i'm finding myself struggling as an adult to understand how radiation can save lives by slowly killing just part of one's living self.
ray bradbury, kurt vonnegut and harlan ellison are three of the most heart-breaking writers i've ever come across. there's something about sarcasm and minimalism that lends itself to truly terrifying war commentary.

two of my family members are suddenly dying of cancer-- my cousin's dad; a quietly funny, soft-spoken, thoughtful man, and my mom's cousin, one of the kindest women i've ever met. i feel so bad for my aunt and my cousin stewart-- i keep thinking about how long the days must feel to them right now, and all the thoughts that must be going through their heads.

this is a little bit creepy, but given the limits of my imagination (and the history of my lurid horror-story-hearing background), not altogether surprising.
over the summer, and continuing into the precipice of fall, i've had insomnia, sleeplessness, and- for the first time in my life- dreams that were so close to the surface that i haven't been able to decipher what i dreamed, and what really happened. i asked my co-worker about "her famous black comedian uncle," i chided my friend for not remembering to give back my high school yearbook, i consoled another friend over the loss of a job that he'd never heard of. but more disturbing than the loss of sleep has been the visitor who appears just as i'm beginning to drift off.

i won't go into the night that i honestly thought i had a ghost, but that's when it started. just as i start to doze off and enter the blissful land of slumber, i catch a shadow out of the corner of my eye. out of the corner of my imagination, at least,and possibly out of my ray bradbury memory banks. it's just a half-blurred image of a tall man leaning in the doorway to my bedroom from my bathroom, wearing shadow-colored pants and a nice-fitting shadow-colored sweater. sometimes i can even tell that he's got a watch band on. he has ken-style hair and no face.

i haven't completely lost my mind, nor lost a small chunk, but my mind has gotten very tired from a few nagging things in my life, and i have reached the point of not being able to disconnect nightmare from wakefulness. it is the weirdest thing in the world to wake up just enough to pull the covers over my shoulders and to think, "he's not really there, keep sleeping" or "maybe i'll get an imaginary girl to distract my imaginary man." this game my mind has made up is a small attempt to torture myself... but i managed to get up at 4am last night and ball up a bathrobe to put at the foot of my bed.
my dog used to sleep at or on my feet every night- i slept in a tiny curled-up ball for the first three years of college out of habit for her- and when i was little, my dad would sit at the same spot to read tom sawyer to me, or pat my feet to convince me that it was going to be ok, even though hiroshima and shadows existed.

this is as far as my laundry-tossed thoughts are taking me -- just a series of shadows, benign and malignant. tomorrow will not mal as par tout if i can get to sleep soon, eat breakfast, drink a cup of coffee, and go to my job, where people are captured on film using light and shadow and flexfills and apertures.

mating habits of primates and the single muskrat

it's weird to spend half the night flipping over to check the clock.
why spend all this effort waiting for time? time will never wait for me.

i'm pretty nervous about today. i was putting today off for a while... and then the magical powers of responsibility flipped on and i started swimming toward today with heavy arms. it hardly seems fair that in 24 hours i'll just be waking up feeling nervous about tomorrow too, but is life ever fair? har har har.
peter called early this morning, and said things that were reassuring and caring on his way to (what sounded like) the purchase of a banana. it was a really sweet and energizing way to start my day.
i'm reading a very interesting book called african genesis, which explores the social and communicative habits of animals-- never failing to include humans as part of the biologically-driven animal kingdom. it's fascinating, and i can't wait to find more books like this that aren't quite as old. in the 30s, a publication came out called "the sexual habits of primates," which created quite a stir because 'primates' is what the hierarchies of the established church of england were called. so the title was changed to "the sexual habits of monkeys and apes," which is just the kind of thing that cracks me up when i'm at work.

i fell asleep last night to the chapter about territorial behavior, which i've never really read about before, and is exploding my brain all over the place. it's incredible to learn about the factors behind how large an animal's territory is -- in the winter a moose guards a space the size of a back yard; in the summer he considers himself the master of up to ten square miles. i liked this a lot:

nature, by instilling in the individual a demand for exclusive living space, insures two consequences: first, that a minimum number of individuals in any population will be enabled to breed in relative security and pass on in fair certainty the conformation of their kind. and second, that the surplus will be cast to the wolves; to the owls, to the foxes, to the plagues and famines and lonely, unfamiliar places, there to make the most of perilous conditions or to die.

well, i'll be damned. i would like to make a short film someday about a transient muskrat who is exiled from the territory of his muskrat brethren, to see if he could make the most of his perilous, unfamiliar place. it actually strikes me as something that could be heartbreakingly beautiful. how would the muskrat react to his exile? how fast or nervously would he tread around his new surroundings? what instincts would kick in first, and how would he secure a safe sanctuary alone? what would the muskrat's behavior look like over time, and if he out-smarted the foxes and wolves, what would the rest of his muskrat life look like?

maybe this is the credo of the siblingless-child, but i honestly don't know how i'd get through days like this or weeks of my life without a really, really good book.

say when

it was one of those sunday nights where nothing-- not even the cosby show-- has healing powers as magical as meg's armchair. we were sharing a lemon bar and watching her netflix-ed grey's anatomy, and i was gently stitching my liver back together... when it happened. the line.

I have an aunt who, whenever she poured anything for you, she would say "Say when". My aunt would say "Say when" and of course, we never did. We don't say when because there's something about the possibility of more. More tequila, more love, more anything. More is better.

and then there was this:

There's something to be said about a glass half full. About knowing when to say when. I think it's a floating line-- a barometer of need and desire. It's entirely up to the individual, and depends on what's being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste...other times there's no such thing as enough, the glass is bottomless. And all we want is more.

damnit, meg. now i might have to start watching grey's anatomy... i can't have TWO shows. boulder will put a bounty on my head.
it was around 10 when i got home, and just as i went to turn off my phone and hibernate, peter called. "hello?" it began, and two hours later we were both out of battery and winded from an intensely fantastic conversation. probably one of the top five phone calls i've ever had. and, in the tradition of weird jane-isms, it ended with this painfully true line from the *amazing* book i'm reading:
"but over and over we shall encounter in this narrative the disastrous consequences of applying utter logic to a false premise."

utter logic-- when applied to something as small as a shot glass or as big as a community-- can be the most dangerous thing in the world if applied to a false premise. but once the curtain has been pulled back to expose the great and powerful oz as just a guy with a few levers, has the plug been pulled? or can the premise be salvaged fast enough to keep you afloat?

always a viking in the front row

hoo boy. lots of things to do today, but i went a little overboard last night and will be spending the morning in a tylenol bottle.

i do remember the following: an intense 3+ hour brian jamestown massacre concert
with my homeskillet tom, making the brilliant decision to move on to whiskey after a nalgene of beer, saying "this is rock and roll" a few thousand times, and having some kind of weird moment where i had to pat a crying viking's arm in the front row during a 20 minute riff at the end. (hence the blurry phone picture- when this band riffs, they do it spinal tap style). there's always a viking in the front row-- i find that very interesting. i don't know why he was crying, but he seemed to really appreciate the pat, so we'll just say bully good and move on.

brian jonestown massacre did not riot as i'd hoped, but they were phenomenal live.
tom and i both giggled every time people around us referenced "dig", the BJM / dandy warhols documentary, but all giggling aside, i highly recommend the flick. anton has this to say about his portrayal, which jives the film's buzz... i mean, come on anton, crazy is as crazy does. yes?

yikes. i think i'm going to die. it was really stupid of me to drink the way i did last night, and even stupider to let red flag reasons fuel the need. i know better. humanity knows better. i can only bring in proust when i'm in a state like this... he asserts that we are only truly living when we are feeling pain, confusion and angst, and everything else is a stagnant period of little growth or understanding. it's an obnoxious perspective, because despite how dismal and self-absorbed it sounds, the man really has a good point.

pessimism and screaming head pain aside, this weekend has been one big illustration of something happy: i have really, really, really amazing friends. jessie, thad, peter and katie all got my spontaneous travel personality in high gear, and i can't wait to see everyone. two of my good friends got engaged on friday, and i'm really happy for them-- i would like to say a brief "i told you so!" since i mischievously set them up four years ago. (mwahahahaaa.) cory called me from *england* this morning, which i shamefully missed due to being mummified in a quilt taco in the next room, but hearing from her was awesome and unbelievably sweet. and tom gave me about 30 years worth of music last night, which i'm very excited about, and he proceeded to knock some sense into me in our old tradition of "you listen to ME, woman!" conversation techniques. tom just rocks. and to make this entry a little less hung over, i really need to include the most wonderful photo of thaddeus:



proust and the princess bride agree that life IS pain, princess... but if that doesn't leave room for a bucket of kindred spirits... well, then life and i are in a fight.

diffused concentration

thirty minutes ago, it turned into fall. i sometimes park at my old office,
people productions in downtown boulder-- it's a dark parking lot surrounded by transients who hover around liquor mart. it gets sketchy pretty fast in that weird neighborhood, and i need to stop parking there after 5pm (or at least walking back to my car alone late at night.) i was walking back from the bar at a fast clip, and started jogging from the bus station-- the wind was just strong enough to give my heavy denim jacket lapels a nice dramatic push away from my chest. a street full of dried leaves skittered toward me, and as i rounded the corner in full view of my old, odd brick building, i saw that the light was on upstairs in the office.

one of the employees kind of lived at the office when i worked there-- always had a sleeping bag and part of an bicycle peeking out behind his office door-- and he was in the conference room setting up a chimera, several white sheets, a c-stand and some production lights with the barn doors fully closed. i couldn't see what he was shooting, but it was oddly beautiful to see him in that quiet office with nothing but two key lights and a chimera glowing while dry, camel-colored leaves brushed up against the side of his sturdy brick building. his car, with the puffy MIT bumper sticker, was the only one besides mine in the parking lot, and i thought about leaving a note on his windshield... but i couldn't find the right thing to say. "hope your project is fun," i thought... "nice soft box, grraaar, from jane." i couldn't write what i felt compelled to say, which was simply, "i've been up late at night working on my personal projects, too -- the lighting looked beautiful from the street, i hope your night was productive and artistic. from, a fellow late-night key light setter."

...and one ring to proust them , frodo

let's just get this one out of the way.
for a girl who spends 99.9% of her life swimming and frequently drowning in various shades of grey, it's nice to feel some absolute moments of black & white. especially in the same day.

hate
...insurance companies. holy, holy hell, do i hate insurance companies.
i don't even like the way the ring sounds when i'm waiting for some plebian on the other end to answer and ruin my life.
it seems very weird to me that my company can, and will, change the course of my life by changing health insurance companies or plans. and it seems freakishly weirder yet that said insurance companies get to decide how, when and where women can seek care when they need it. men too, of course, but jasus mary and joseph, i swear they hate anything that moves and owns breasts. (uh oh...this is my first feminist rant ever. i wonder if i'll have to start using oprah words now, like "empower" and "brave" and "strong"). doctors, copays, waiting rooms, procedures, lab results, highlights magazine-- haven't they made it scary enough? it also leads into a labyrinth of catch-22s... the insurance company can dictate that you must see a certain doctor, (who you probably have to wait *forever* to see, thus racking up your stress points and potentially worse health), who then deems it necessary for you to suffer MORE of her wrath, which the insurance company denies because they have the power to say how many doctor's visits, procedures or "bonus emergencies" you are allowed to have in, say, an entire goddamn year of your life.
i am heartened by badguy big corporations like borders and starbucks for the fact that they offer good benefits, even to part-time employees, but it's almost like they're endorsing the problem itself. insurance is all about numbers, probability and "house wins" seedy vegas mentalities, but do they care that we're not numbers? that i, jane kathryn, am a small number, but am cuter than a fridge full of puppes? and that i happen to find my own numerically small life valuable? do they know how empowered we become when we can choose our own medical caregivers? do they know how brave we have to be when they put us on hold at 7:30am to garth brooks music while they determine our fate? do they know how strong we are when we... um... lift weights?

love
the oprah thing is exhausting-- let's just talk about material-based happiness instead.
i have a strange, intense relationship with my dad, who is... shall we say, strange and intense. well, interesting and intense. please see: an entire novel that will be written in 30 years, rivaling "valley of the dolls", but without the whole "pill thing". hmm- maybe more like "yentl"? i'll work on that.
anyway. my dad has that heartbreaking, updike short-story, completely wonderful way of waiting 10, 20 years in-between surprises, and when he pops them on you, your heart explodes all over your shirt.
today i came home to discover a box that UPS had awkwardly attempted to hide under my welcome mat. it was humorous, and i don't have a picture of it. however, i do have a picture of what was inside the box, so i'll be all shallow and "what?" and post that instead.
in case you've never met me, i'm a big fan of marcel proust. big. fan. my dad came across a ring that has- out of all seven (six with the montcrieff translation) volumes and 4,000 pages- one of my favorite quotes written in the tiniest font ever created.


"the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes". (if you want to read it in person, you'll probably have to be lying face-first on my hand. and if we have that kind of relationship, bully good for you!)

one of the most depressing conversations i ever had was in college, when a friend of mine tried to explain how having an engagement ring meant that you'd finally been tied to a future that would lead you to happiness. but today, in a weird way, i'm looking down at my hand thinking that this ring, which was found and sent so sweetly from my favorite person on this planet, will do what nostalgic possessions are supposed to do-- accompany me to new landscapes. it might lead me through chaos, sadness, and a few bouts of drunkenness (as marcel would expect), but in true proustian style, it will remind me of how having a portal to my past will propel me to my tomorrows.
and that, besides being empowered, brave and strong, is a good thing.

five years later

last spring, my dad and i got into a very heated argument about whether or not the movie united 93 was horse sh*t (my stance), or perhaps an important film for its time. i agreed to see it with him, sulked a little bit while the opening credits rolled, and sat for an hour and a half with my mouth hanging open. the film, i realized, was not only incredibly made, but incredibly important.
apparently i have a memory loss issue, because the first thing that went through my mind when the alarm went off this morning was how much media frenzy i'd see today. i watched a very tactful hour of CNN early this morning, and despite having a very hectic day at work, i was deeply involved with my own thoughts and memories about 9/11 five years ago.

when i graduated from college, my gift from my parents was a large album that includes almost every email i sent home from the first day of freshman year to the last day that we had internet access senior year. i won't embarrass myself by describing how *long* this SOB is, but i just opened the album to my september 11th email, and i think i'll post it here as one small drop in the wide sea of perspective that's been shared today. before the email was written, my roommate and i had turned on the today show minutes after the first plane hit, and i'd spent the entire morning waiting with her, our suite mates and our friends while they waded through the panic that ensued. i called my parents early for colorado time, woke them up and said through tears, "a plane hit the world trade center, and we were just watching it catch on fire-- and then a SECOND plane may have hit the same building... we don't know what's happening or how that could've happened, but Lizzie and I are really upset, and I think you should go turn on the news." i remember the days later-- finding out that steve had walked across the bridge, ended up in new jersey and not called anyone but was fine, (huge sigh of relief). i also remember my dad calling to tell me not to go on some flight i was supposed to take-- that if i had to take it, he swore he'd fly out to go with me. i argued, "how would it possibly make a difference that you were there?" but in retrospect, it would've made all the difference. i still remember how much his voice quavered, and how i realized right then just how far my dad would go to protect me.

9/11/2001, 3:22 Eastern Time
From: jsimmons@hamilton.edu
To: DSimShrike@aol.com
Hi guys,
I just got your message, but the phone lines are swamped and they are all down in NYC, so I thought I'd email you for the moment. When I called you it had just happened- a friend of Lizzie's called right as it happened, so we caught almost the entire thing on the news. As you can imagine, there was a degree of panic here as *many* people are from Manhattan, and obviously a lot of them have family members who work in the financial district. i was really concerned about my friends who are doing internships in both d.c. and the city through Hamilton-- Chip Martin and my friend Tom Keane are both doing government internships and had to hide in a basement with a senator (like a bunker), and Christine Capeles and Cece are safe... they're in the NYC program apartment, about three blocks from the trade center. I keep checking the Hamilton site-- all of my D.C friends called in safe, and almost all of my friends at the Hamilton apartment have called in safe except for Steve Kovach, who I'm hoping is just dealing with cell phone outages and will call soon.
I'm just overwhelmed by the idea of the snowball of news that will come after this awful disaster...the hysteria of the morning with everyone on cell phones and crowding into lounges to watch the news will no doubt give way to sad stories as the week goes on. My heart goes out to the people here who are waiting and waiting to hear from their families and friends.
Lizzie's brother lives very close to the trade center, but goes to school at columbia, and he should be on long island right now-- she's scared, but her family heard from him very briefly and knows that he said something about just being nervous about "ever going home", so he and his wife should be ok.
Sara Weinstein disappeared-- I know that the Miramax corporation has a lot of employees, and she seemed more scared about them than her dad and uncle... I guess maybe there are a few offices down there. I think the worst part of the morning was seeing Liz Padin downstairs on her phone pulling her hair back and sobbing, "when? when did dad leave for work? how do you KNOW he's not there?" and then breaking down and listening to the person on the other end. I saw her later-- she looked calm and she was with her friends next door, so that's a big relief.

It's a nice sunny day and everyone's windows are open... I think everyone in Milbank and Babbit must be on the same channel because there's a female reporter's voice booming all the way down Martin's way. Wow. I'm very curious what you two think will come of this... any fears you have and any guesses as to who did it or how future institutions might be radically changed here. Sarah wrote me an email from home, just expressing her shock, that she's glad I'm ok, and her firm belief that our generation is about to witness a real war.
I feel so overwhelmed and so sad about what has happened-- I'm going out for a bit with Meg to get some food and try to just calm each other down, but I will try calling you in a little bit when the phone lines aren't clogged and I won't worry about being part of the switchboard blackout.
I love you,
Jane.

gloomy sunday

Sunday is gloomy
The hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless

Gloomy is Sunday
is absolutely Gloomy Sunday
Gloomy Sunday
...Sunday

maybe i'm alone on this, but i actually get nervous every time i begin to fall in love with a song. it's the same routine every time-- import it onto my computer, pump up the volume and set it to repeat, plot out the harmony and let it wash over me for a while. then i save it on my ipod and resist the urge to play it for a while-- it's a little secret, hidden away so the butterflies will return the next time.

stashing my favorite songs is always a melancholy experience. i can't help but to think about the future i'll have with the song... when i'll play it, who i'll be when it's playing. it will be playing on friday nights when i'm getting ready to go out, using the mirror in my living room as i put on mascara next to my leg lamp with the 45 watt bulb. it will be playing on long car trips with the windows down, sunglasses on, cup of coffee in the cupholder and a long string of white lines on the asphalt in front of me. it will be playing on long, tedious days that prompt me to leave the bathroom door open, turn up the volume and sing along from the steamy absolution of a shower. and it will be playing when i come home to an empty apartment with an aching heart, curl up in my blue sun afghan and try to fit a hundred thousand racing thoughts in to a year's worth of badly needed clarity.

i haven't abandoned the favorite songs from my past; i still get goosebumps from their haunting, soulful, instrument-swelling performances. but they cross a border of vulnerability when i give them away on a mix cd, play them for a friend on the drive home or listen to them through headphones as i fall asleep on a bruised heart. they are no longer a neutral sanctuary-- they've become inextricably linked with the people in my life and the thoughts in my head, and i know that the memories they've been braided with will play as loudly as the music will... in every chord and every caesura. barber's adagio has become the spring of my junior year, rehearsing it in my quartet with charcoal-covered hands and postmodern paperbacks in my back pocket. bjork's joga is a mix cd from karsten that i played every night of my christmas vacation the year that the world became my oyster. ben folds' jane is lying in my tree bed, trying to fix the key i bent sideways in my frozen car door at matt's house.

it raises an unanswerable question-- is it better to live quietly to protect your heart from getting attached, or is it better to turn up the volume to the soundtrack to your life and risk losing the songs that helped define you?

morning news: headlines of you forever

TECH GEEK
yesterday's technological skills:
i helped someone deal with a 12-channel soundboard, fixed an audio glitch in two computers, hooked up a canon XL1 for low lighting and used my t.v. as a field monitor.

today's technological skills:
i can't get my computer anywhere near jane-friendly after the death of my hard drive last weekend, can't seem to find any photos that are saved in here somewhere, and can't for the *life* of me get this blog situation formatted the way i want it.

sighhh. my friend trevor just had to endure a personality test for one of the jobs he's applying for, and he got to keep the 2 page computer print out. "TREVOR," it would start almost every line, "you have excellent interpersonal skills..."
some days i wish a computer would print out the things that are wrong with my head. "JANE... you have NO idea how to format a web page, and 12 year old boys everywhere mock you."

MORNING RUSE
i think everyone should wake up to a tiny newspaper on their front porch that would just print the weirdest, most random or most dramatic things they'd say later that day (out of context, of course). over coffee and toast, you could flip through your tiny paper to discover that you'd soon be uttering the phrases "you have barbie breath!", "does your clutch chirp, too?" and "no, i will NOT marry you, but thank you for asking." just think how fun that would be! all day, confusion... then your co-worker drops to one knee to prove a weird point, and bingo, it all makes sense.

sighhh. i'm going back to my book-- a technology that i can handle.

emissions and deletions tests.

deletions...they're helpful when you don't want to be all of you for a while.

tomorrow i'm going in to heckle over the price of my new car... yikes. i've been having a series of strange events in cars this summer.
last saturday, my friends sarah and reji and i went to check out a wild animal sanctuary in nowheresville, colorado. it was a great morning for an adventure, but i ended up squished in the back seat with two other girls...and one of the them enjoyed delivering anecdotes at the decible level of a fighter jet. normally i can handle these situations, but the previous night had been drizzly, CU-marching-band-overloaded, miserable, and had resulted in a few sick, shivering hours on the couch. normandy-battle-stomach friday does not a saturday-morning-yelling condone, so i tried to diminish the damage.

i still don't think it was wrong of me to ask a few quiet & introspective questions (gently, like putting peanut butter on the roof of a dog's mouth when it barks too much), but this seemed to jive the girl's buzz beyond repair. she got quiet, put on an enormous pair of white sunglasses, and turned to look out the window. and then... it happened. "I AM A C!", she bellowed into the back of the passenger seat, "I AM A C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N!" it was a bible camp song, being rehearsed with all the might of a thousand stampeding bulls. The C continued to be wed to the H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N, and something about E-T-E-R-N-A-L L-I-F-E developed in the plot. over. and over. and just when you thought that G-O-D really did S-A-V-E, we'd come back to C. this is the one and only time in my life (that i'm aware of, anyway)when i've restored an entire human being to factory settings. i'm not proud of the situation in the back of that toyota, but i'm also not catholic, and have nowhere else to confess this information.

this is getting too long. the reason i really sat down to write was to exorcise the demon of today's very sad car weirdness. i was trucking along the diagonal at a nice clip on my lunch break, lost in the grips of deep thought. the radio station was playing some of my guilty favorites (gnarls barkley), and as i sang along (who do you? who do you? who do you think you are?)i became completely flooded with the sense that i was driving toward some deeper sense of happiness. i know that sounds cheesy, but sometimes those moments of mental clarity strike, and they're really important. so i drove along, humming, smiling, mentally organizing bills and files and creative projects and kindred spirits, when an enormous sheaf of paper came tumbling down the right lane.

most cars are not concerned about the sports section hitting their vehicle. but since the sports section is taller than my entire car, i went into race car driver mode to avoid being blinded. this is when i realized that it was not paper at all-- it was a very, very large hawk. a car must've just hit it, and although his bones were broken, his wings were stretched all the way out and he was cartwheeling across the highway at a very high speed. i downshifted and hit the gas pedal, and as he tumbled just beyond my front panel, the bird turned his head and looked me straight in the eye. it was an incredible moment-- i've never seen the intricate feathers on a large bird's face that close up before, and the eye contact he made was intense enough to give me chills. i frantically searched my rearview mirror, hoping to see him land in the brush on the side of the road, but a gust of hot air pushed his body straight up, and into the grill of an oncoming semi-truck.
i literally drove all the way back to work with my hand clamped over my mouth.
the same wind that had been blowing through my hair on my happy, optimistic drive had turned on me, experienced a change of heart, and killed my feathered friend.

i'm not sure what resounded harder on that strange trip back-- briefly having the ability to really look into myself, or briefly being looked into by a living thing that was about to die. either way... and all drama aside... i can't seem to shake the memory of either.