Misadventures

So Sad We Ain't Superhuman

2009-05-12T18:41:00.003-04:00

Every once in a while it happens. You come across an anthem.

I had been in Atlanta for four months, and despite having gained a reasonable amount of independence and sense of adventure, I was every bit as uncomfortably lost as I had been when I arrived in August. My Friend David and I were trying to work on some songs. The vision for our project was rough, and often-times we were side-tracked.

“Do you like the band Hey Mercedes?” he asks. I rush into memories from years ago. Suddenly I am sixteen again, with the windows down singing “Let’s Go Blue” at the top of my lungs with my best friends. Later we would shoot fireworks at each other in parking lots. It’s been ages since I’ve heard that band.

But that was a long time ago and now it’s December and chilly. David is showing me TELEPHONO, an ambitious musical project he developed. “Their lead singer helped out on this.” I tell him that Hey Mercedes was one of my favorite bands in high school. “How do you know their lead singer?” He doesn’t reply to my question, he just smiles while he puts the record on and turns up the volume.

And suddenly Robert Nanna’s voice is delivering me to what I’ve been aimlessly stumbling towards for six months. He lyrically articulates the ambiguousness that has haunted me since last year when everything shed off of me: there was a death in the family, a relationship was lost, a band disbanded, and my college career closed. But Robert Nanna knows how it feels to set out to conquer and return empty-handed. He too has realized that our lives cannot be set to plan:

“My heart poppin’, the apology ended, I should have ran off right before we began. I could have driven to the river and plunged right in! I’ve never been so unbelievably broken. I had a plan, how the hell did we fall? Suffice to say we’re not superhuman after all. Human, after all.”

There’s something hidden in the melody that you won’t get from reading lyrics. Between the erratic rhythms there is a feeling that has been lost to me, the need for aspiration and purpose. Despite the complete failure of my past ambition, it evokes that vital part of me. It’s time to try it all over again!

So maybe this song is not just my song of the day, but rather my theme song until otherwise stated. I’m still filled with ambiguousness, but my hopes are starting to take form, and this time I’m setting my sights higher.

The Telephono project that David started is inspiring. Please read more about it here. “So Sad We Ain’t Superhuman” is listed with the songs, but if you want the full effect you will need to get a hold of the vinyl sets that David has.

A Short Love Story in Stop Motion

2008-08-21T20:10:00.000-04:00

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

This is a short-film by Carlos Lascano that found via slashfilms.com. It's one of the most stunning short films I've ever seen. Through his masterful combination of stop motion and digital animation Mr. Lascano evokes the powerful nostalgia of a childhood love. There's something about stop motion that makes me think of childhood. Remember Gumby? Or Wallace and Gromit? Those weird shorts in Sesame Street with talking oranges? Who doesn't watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer at christmas? Carlos' technique is more reminiscent of Tim Burton. The way that the children and characters are formed border on the gothic-esque work that is seen in "A Nightmare Before Christmas." It's Carlos' use of lighting and illustration that keep you from the dark places that Burton takes you . The end result feels more like the classic illustrations of "When We Were Very Young," or "Winnie the Pooh" coming to life before your eyes.

Sigur Ros also helps his cause. Listen to those first three notes. Didn't you play something like that as a child, sitting at a piano bench for the first time, with your infant fingertips gracing the ivory keys one note a time, your feet dangling in the air? More instruments enter and you are carried away to that limitless place that you haven't been to since you were so small.
This film picks you up from your every-day, hour-by-hour life and carries you to a place that you forgot even existed.
Let's all give a hip-hip hooray for Carlos Lascano.

An Article for Whoa Bro Awesome

2008-06-27T10:45:00.000-04:00

This is an article I wrote for a magazine that my friend Josh Flynn is starting up. Feature Story on Dave Segedy's band Whoa Bro Awesome

The first time that I really had an interaction with Dave Segedy, we were both in This Story, and driving back from a show in Chicago. Dave was the comedic entertainment of the car. Some time around one in the morning he broke the exhausted silence from the back seat. “Hey Justin, do you have the ‘Doo doo doo’ song? You know, that one and it’s like…you know…’doo doo doo’?’ Justin, who played marimba and xylophone, was driving that night. He laughed and found a mix he had. We listened to Mariah Carey’s “You Will Always Be My Baby”, or what we now know as “the Doo Doo Doo Song” half a dozen times that night.
It’s hard to believe that was two and a half years ago. Recently Dave found himself driving back to Indiana again. This time he was in the driver’s seat. "I think the reason this tour went so well is because I had no expectations going into it." His voice is often light-hearted, but he was very matter of fact now, "I expected to lose a lot of money, and I didn't expect a lot of people to come to shows."
The skepticism is that of a seasoned performer who is best known as the drummer of Arrah and the Ferns. For the past few weeks Dave has been on tour with his solo effort, Whoa Bro Awesome, a minimalist experimental band whose focal point is Dave’s drumming. On this tour he brought a long a good friend and co-worker from SC to play the keys and guitar.
This tour was different for Dave. Rather than be limited behind his drums, he was behind it all. He booked all of the shows. He drove to most of them. He spent his own money and sold his own music.
Despite all of these accomplishments, some things never change. Dave still doesn't hold himself like a front man. His tall lanky frame and quiet disposition blend him into the woodwork at his shows. But when he grabs his sticks and gets behind his drums, he shines.
"At first I can tell people are like, 'whoa, is he really doing this?' and then as the songs continue and they catch on, they see that I'm really trying to write good songs and they're like, 'yeah, this is cool."
The music of Whoa Bro Awesome is different from what Dave has played before. He started off as a very aggressive drummer when he joined the original line-up of Muncie’s This Story. At the time the anti-folk band was an amalgamation of 10-12 high school musicians playing everything from a violin to a xylophone. All of the melodies in the air made it impossible to drum aggressively. Dave had to adapt.
By the time he broke the ranks of This Story along with Arrah Fisher and Carl Stovner to form Arrah and the Ferns, Dave had transformed. The once heavy-handed drummer was now a minimalist jazz percussionist. He began to navigate his way between his snare, cymbals, bass, and toms as precisely as a cartographer. He was becoming quite the fan of experimentation.
It came as a surprise to everyone when Dave decided to no longer play with the Ferns. The band had just finished recording their second full album, and had come off of the road with one of their most successful tours.
The decision to break rank with the Ferns is still an adjustment he feels was necessary. Friends that he had known from previous tours didn’t really bring the disbandment up in conversation. “Most of the people I stayed with either are good enough friends with us or have paid enough attention that they know what happened.” Dave is avid to vocalize his support of both Carl and Arrah’s solo efforts, Council Idaho and The Woodlands. “I was part of Woodlands when it first started, and I really liked what they were coming up with. I really enjoy what I’ve seen of their performances. And I really like Council’s stuff. Honestly, I wish the best for both of them. I really hope that they stick with it.”
The feeling of coming off of a successful tour entirely of his own making is a sensation that he wouldn’t trade for the world. When he set up the shows he couldn’t have cared less who he played with as long as he was playing. The result often had him sandwiched between hardcore acts and emo bands, hardly an environment encouraging of Whoa Bro Awesome’s music.
For the rest of the summer he will be interning at Secretly Canadian in Bloomington, an experience that is allowing him to see a different of the industry that makes up so much of his life. Dave plans on hitting the road again eventually, although he will make some adjustments in how he goes about booking everything.
“Honestly, I just want people to hear the songs,” he says, “and most of the time people are really encouraging. It seemed to go pretty well. I’ve met a lot of great people.” Dave’s performances have become more than an experiment in rhythm, they are celebrations of sound. The overall effect is as hypnotizing as being able to watch Gustav Klimt work magic on a canvas.

A Rehaul and a Soundtrack

2008-06-14T17:28:00.001-04:00

So I've decided to do an overhaul of this blog and turn it into something thematic.
From here on out this will truly be about my "Misadventures." To keep life light-hearted and jovial, I'm going to embark on strange adventures and then write about it.

The first of these is a personal vendetta of mine.
I'm of the opinion that Wes Anderson has exquisite taste in music. The soundtracks to his movies never cease to amaze.
Making the perfect mixes for people I admire is a habit and hobby of mine. Also, synching music with movies, tv shows, and advertisements is a goal.
So, I have spent the past few weeks compiling a mix that I think Wes Anderson would like. The title of this cd is "The Soundtrack to Your Next Movie." Copies will be sent to Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman, and Mark Mothersbaugh. Hopefully the addresses are findable.

I would like to start off by saying that all of these songs were obtained legally, and if you don't believe me I have I-tunes receipts.

So, first of all, how does one put together a mix tailored for Wes Anderson? Listen to his old soundtracks.
I have gathered that he is a fan of lo-fi, yet high quality tunes. He is a fan of the eccentric. And he always dabbles with some more classical pieces. Foreign language use is a bonus. Classic rock and roll (Bowie, the Kinks, The Stones, etc.)
This is what I've got:

"Le Temps De L'amour"- April March
I'm proud of this start. It gets your attention. It says 'hey, I might be at the beach, but I mean business,' and then comes in her lo-fi voice all french singing. You may be familiar with her song, "Chick Habit" featured in both "But I'm a Cheerleader" and "Deathproof."
I was looking for something a little more conflicted than that song. Plus, it's overused. "Le Temps de L'amour" sounds like a 60's beach tune, but it's also very confrontational, and her voice is haunting. By starting off with this song, there is an opportunity for conflict.

"Courez Courez" Hermas Zopoula
Asthmatic Kitty's newly signed french-speaking African musician is a gem. Wes Anderson would love him. He sings light-hearted tunes of faith and love, and is the perfect hybrid of Seu George and Mark Mothersbaugh's child-chorus.

"Tram #7 to Heaven" Jens Lekman
Jens Lekman is one of my favorite musicians. He sounds like what the sun cutting through the leaves of early summer looks like. The only director who captures that kind of light is Wes Anderson. I don't know why he hasn't used one of Jen's tunes before.
I chose this song because it's lo-fi as well as heartbreaking and thought-provoking. Some character could have a tough situation haunting him, and then this song can cue, and everyone in the audience can sympathize.

"Get off of my Cloud" The Rolling Stones

"Que sont devenue les Fleurs" Dalida
Behold! the french Nico! Her low alto is haunting and gorgeous and fleeting. And it brings back in that beachy french feel from "Les Temps de L'Amour". Voila! a theme. Not only am I giving him a mix, I'm giving him a setting for his film! What a lucky dude.

"Lakme, flower duet"
Every Wes Anderson flick has some classical piece. Opera isn't used enough, and this song is beautiful. That's all.

"Paris, Je t'aime"
The best fusion of accordian, jazz guitar, jazz drums, and glockenspiel to ever grace the ears. Carries the french theme, and is super goofy. This song is to the new movie as "Let me tell you about my boat" is to Life Aquatic.

"Christiansen" France Gall
Le Francais continue!

"Moonlight Mile" The Rolling Stones

"Love is Blue" Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra
I bet Paul Mauriat and Mark Mothersbaugh are friends. Or at least it sounds like it. A lot like it. Maybe when Mr. Mothersbaugh receives this mix, it will spark his interest, he will find Mr. Mauriat and then they can become pals.

"Aria" Balanesque Quartet
Our plot! I almost forgot. We need another classical piece that is more haunting and conflicted to cue at the climax of the film, whatever it may be! Well here it is. The balance of violins carrying different complimentary and contradictory melodies toys with your heart strings. Stunning.

"I'm Free" The Rolling Stones
This song says, "this plot is coming to a close, but isn't done yet."

"Daylight" The Kinks
and roll slow motion shot and cue the credits.

So that's the soundtrack. To be continued.
Next update: preparation to send the soundtrack, letters to the recipients, and the send-off.

2008-06-13T19:39:00.000-04:00

The smell of cardboard does not scare me. The sound of packing tape being peeled off the roll stirs nothing in me.
Unlike many young women at the age of 21 relocating is nothing new to me. I've moved well over a dozen times now. It's as natural as shaking a foot that has fallen asleep, and then walking it off. Sure, it stings at first, but soon enough it all feels well again, and you're no longer limping.

The adjustment into adulthood that I find daunting.

We all hear about the "real world" our entire lives. Warnings of a sort. "That's life kid" "Just wait til you get to the real world." "C'est la vie" But there are things that aren't mentioned.

They make us take classes in college for art history, the classics, english, math, the sciences...nobody tells you specifically what to wear to an interview with a more informal company. One that you have to balance looking hip and professional for. No one tells you how to manage the stress of graduating college, moving across the country, saying goodbye to your family and friends and creating a new life from scratch.

But can things like that really be taught? When do we have to start trusting ourselves? Starting from nothing? Wear what makes you comfortable, rather than worrying about what judgements will be cast upon you? At what point do I get to be judged off of more than just a piece of paper?

Spring Cleaning

2008-05-06T13:24:00.001-04:00

Today I am reclaiming my apartment. I've lived here for two years, and since then, I have never thoroughly cleaned through any of my stuff.
In my own defense, the life of a college junior and senior is quite hectic. My life was dominated by classwork, my jobs, being in the band, writing, homework, extra curricular activities, my boyfriend, normal everyday college things. All of that life and living experience has collected within the four walls of my room over the past two years, and it got to a point this semester where it was overwhelming. Overflowing with books, papers, drawings, post-its, and clothing. My floor became my storage space. I started avoiding my apartment and practically living with my boyfriend because I had dominated my own space so much that there was no room for me anymore.
But now college is over, and on my day off it's time for me to face the mess that was my life, and figure out what it is time to let go of.
I started with my box of letters, and my bedside table. I reorganized every letter that any friend has ever written me from my sophmore year of high school forward. It starts with a newspaper article about my performance at a talent show, the paper is worn and yellow with age. There are postcards from Oregon from a friend who I don't talk to anymore, the corners of the postcards are bent. The self-adhesive is wearing off of the stamps. Looking through that box is like studying my shadow.
Now I'm almost done. I have four bags of clothes to bring to Goodwill later. For the first time I will be asking for a receipt, because next year marks the first time I have to think about tax breaks. I have eight full spindles of mix cd's. There is a pile of dirty laundry that comes up to my knees. Behind my apartment complex, the trash bin contains five full trash bags with almost every paper and notebook from my college career in them. I have a stack of books to bring to a co-op down the street, and a box of cd's to donate to the local record store.
Somehow, after going through all of these things, and discarding most of it, I feel more like myself than I have in years.
It's funny what we learn about ourselves when we take ourselves out of context.

Hemmingway Mock story

2008-02-27T17:58:00.002-05:00

A short story I wrote for my Hemingway class.

A Strong Summer Wind

With patient hands he nailed the two pages of loose-leaf paper onto his wall. He stepped back and watched the loose ends of the pages flutter. The bottoms of them looked like struggling bird wings. He went to his desk in the right corner of the room and moved his chair to the middle of the room. When he sat, the back of the chair creaked underneath his weight. He looked up at the letters on his wall. For three years she had written him once a week. The letters were always two pages long. The two pages weighed about 1.5 ounces, just enough to be covered by a 60-cent international stamp. One hundred and fifty-six weeks later, his walls were filled. The first of the letters was hung in the top left corner of the wall adjacent to his door. He stood up, carrying the chair with him, and crossed the room. He placed the chair underneath the first letters. He walked back across the room to his desk, where he kept his glass and a bottle of whisky. He poured some into the glass and walked back to his chair. When he sat down the legs of the chair shifted. He made a mental note to tighten them later that evening. He studied her faded handwriting against the aged ivory page.

Peter,
It’s odd not speaking to you, but you’ve left me here without many options. Couldn’t you have chosen somewhere closer? Rinaldi and Nick claim that Wyomingt is just as much of a wilderness as your African plains.
My father always told me to make the most of what I have.
At least this is an opportunity to practice my penmanship.
Today I must go to the market and pick up some things. I’ll either go directly after sealing this or later in the evening. I dread the grocery when it’s busy on Sundays, so I’ll probably go later. Until then, I’ll settle for The Times’ crossword.
My apologies if this letter is atrociously boring.
I suppose I’ll get better with practice, as with everything.
Be patient with me Peter, you’ve left me with a rather large adjustment.
Yours,
Norma
He laughed and took a drink. He stood to pour another, pausing to read the letter above the desk. There was a small pink note that stood out from the rest. It was the only letter in two years that was shorter than two pages.
Peter,
New York is really very glorious in the summer. You’re a fool for leaving it behind. Yours, Norma
His calloused hand reached into his linen shirt pocket. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it with his Zippo. She had sent it to him for Christmas the year prior. The engraving on the side said “Don’t keep me waiting forever Peter.”
He put down his drink on the desk and went outside. The fall wind pulsed on his face and he walked into it gladly. It was hotter inside his shack than it was under the sun. Peter liked the yellow grass of the Serengeti. In two weeks he would be back in New York with her. He continued to walk. He had come here to study the wild-life, the Patas Monkeys, Common Genets, and the big five. To hunt, gather, and study the way man should live. Peter noticed that where he was walking the ground was trampled. The foliage around him was eaten down to the branches. Impalas had been nearby, a good-sized herd of them. He kept walking, following their tracks.
A bush moved in the distance and a male impala exited from the shrubbery. He was lean and wise. His flank muscles tensed under his auburn coat, ready to bolt in an instant. Peter loved to watch impalas run. Once he had startled a herd of females, and they had pranced like hundreds of rubber-balls bouncing on the pavement. He wished Norma could have seen that. Maybe then she would understand why he had chosen to come here.
Peter held eye contact with the male Impala. It stood as still as it would have stuffed in a museum. The male was herding the women to keep them in his territory. It was almost May. Mating season was coming soon. This impala would have beautiful offspring.
Peter stared into its marble-black eyes and leaned his right-foot forward. A twig cracked under his hunting boot. The sound was the trigger the impala was waiting for. It bounded off into the Serengeti Plain and left Peter standing. The wind picked up, there would be a storm. It was time to go back.
He thought about Norma. He thought about the way her auburn hair shined in the New York summer sun. He thought about her lipstick on her martini glass. He thought about the way her lips braced her cigarettes. The wind was picking up. Peter could see the on-coming storm in the distance. He picked up his pace. He could never go fast enough.
By the time he reached his house it had already begun raining. He opened his door. The letters were strewn across the floor. He took off his shoes that were now dark brown from the rain, and crossed the room to pick up his desk chair. His curtain waved like a handkerchief in a gloved hand out of a train window. He picked up a letter from the floor and sat down in the chair. His head was very heavy in his hands.

Some old flash fictions I feel I should share

2008-02-19T10:11:00.000-05:00

A Deep Breath

Death smelled wet and panicked. It made slapping sounds on the linoleum floor of my kitchen—the echoes of millions of knuckles cracking in simultaneous tension and release. The glass remnants of a fish bowl created a mosaic around McGee, my Chinese fighting goldfish. I dove and cupped him in my hands. His small vertebrae twisted in panic. I sprinted into the kitchen, crying, whispering Hail Mary’s.
My hands felt dry against McGee’s amber scales. I could see his pulse threading, losing momentum. The air I breathed was choking him. His mouth gaped, but there were no words. We looked at each other. The golden rims around his pupils burned urgent in the morning light. His eyes shifted focus.
I fumbled with the kitchen cabinet to get to a bowl. He slapped his fins against my palm. I maneuvered the cabinet door open with my elbow. His gills opened and closed like a waning heart valve.
His eyes were fixing on the ceiling. The cabinet opened, a flood of Tupperware drowned my feet. With my pinky and ring fingers contorted like scissors I grabbed a Pyrex measuring cup. McGee remained cupped in my hands like a prayer. He gasped less and less. At the sink, the morning light reflected on his scales in an orange the shade of warning. The water from my faucet wouldn’t run fast enough. McGee tumbled into the water, weaving through it like a feather falling. Spinning with the current he rose slowly, his body arched and he surfaced, limp at the top of the bowl.

- .- .-.. -.- .. -. --. / .. -. / -.-. --- -.. .
(Talking in Code)

Two summers ago my boyfriend taught me how to play cribbage. We sat adjacent to one another in cracked plastic lawn chairs, his grandmother’s old wooden board between us. We would have been out at the bars like any other normal twenty-something’s, but we were both unemployed and broke that summer, we lived like grannies. He taught me how to play using rhyme schemes: Fifteen-two the rest won’t do, fifteen-four, there ain’t no more, fifteen-two I guess I’m screwed, fifteensix the rest is nixed, and so on. He told me that it was mathematically impossible to get a hand that had nineteen points. One time my hand didn’t have any points so I told him it had nineteen. Nineteen became code for zero. We spoke in code a lot of the time. He told me he loved me when he bought me my own toothbrush for his house. That night I told him I loved him by tapping it in Morse code between his shoulder blades when he was sleeping. .. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..-. My Uncle is the fastest living Morse Code typist in the world. He can type seventy words in a minute. The fastest anyone has ever typed in Morse Code is 75.2 words per minute, and that record was set in 1939. I guess people’s fingers just can’t move that fast anymore. Later that summer I drove south to Charlotte to visit my family. Mom was pleased that I had learned to play cribbage. Your grandmother taught me how to count by playing cribbage, she told me. We went to Hobby Lobby and walked through the aisles of silk peonies, scrap-book stickers, and grandma-scented potpourri towards the game section of the store. We found a board of our own and purchased it for less than five dollars. Playing with Mom wasn’t as fun because she didn’t know the rhymes and was much better than me. She had strategy. By the time that I got back to his apartment in Greensboro a week later I was much improved. I also had tons of new rhymes. Mom’s first language was French, and it’s a lot easier to rhyme in French than English because of the way verbs are conjugated. Anyway, he freaked out a little the next time we played and I said things like fifteen-two-et le repos est pour vous, or fifteen-two-ne peut pas croire vos yeux, or fifteen four-blesse mon couer. He wouldn’t say that he was mad, but I knew he was because of the way his mouth dissipated to a squiggly line and the way he cracked his knuckles every few minutes. The next day he came home from his summer class with a French-to-English dictionary from the library. By the end of the summer he was almost as good at French as me, and we would practice speaking it during our evening walks. Sometimes walking down the empty sidewalks and speaking French was more intimate than being naked together in his bedroom. We would cross Aberdeen Terrace hand-in-hand, without looking both ways. Sometimes we would dance in the middle of the street and sing Edith Piaf songs to each other with great vibrato just because we could.

430 in the morning

2008-02-17T04:39:00.001-05:00

I'm about to go to work.
Thank you to everyone who came to our last show, it was really appreciated and we hope that we made it worth your while.

And so went the coolest thing I've ever done in my life.

six word life

2008-02-11T23:22:00.000-05:00

My friend Sarah sent me this article the other day, and then read some stuff out loud to the Writer's Community.
So these are my attempts at a six word life:

Wandering around, eventually I'll find my way

Talking and Walking around in circles it seems

Dad humor: my love of puns

Still looking for my chinese family

I take my fortune cookies seriously

My horoscope said today was a seven

It's not you, its the mustache

Razzle Dazzle Rose

2008-02-08T21:20:00.000-05:00

Sitting in Newg's apartment, with some strawberry bruscetta and bitch beers (smirnoff?) in my stomach, and I am glad.
First of all, sitting next to me is my newly purchased first edition of "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Engraved on top of the brown canvas cover is Ernest Hemingway's signature. Published by Scribner's in 1940...it cost me seven dollars and fifty cents.
seven dollars
fifty cents.
That's a lot to be excited for.
I also bot "La Peste" by Camus, which cost me less than a dollar and is completely in french. I figure I'll use it to brush up on my foreign language skills and then send it to Tony.
Reading about the plague is always inspiring, right? That will really motivate me to go to Europe.
...
Speaking of! I'm getting my ticket for Paris. I leave on May 27th, and then return on June 30th.
another thing to be glad for.
that and life is good.

I hope that this post gives you all plenty of cavities, as it is so nauseatingly sweet.

Some Thoughts On Stamps

2007-10-24T22:57:00.000-04:00

Two Haikus, A Limerick, and some thoughts from the perspective of an addict of stamps.

Haiku:

Is it that a stamp
Can bring me to Nirvana?
Yes, That is the case

2.
I buy you in sheets
Sometimes in excessive rolls
But you complete me

Limerick

There once was an addict of stamps
Whose friends never gave him the chance
To beat his addiction
Which was an affliction
So he retired as a seller of lamps

and finally...

Stamp glue, so divine
Leaving a trace of mint
or lime
Where would I be
Without your adhesive?
It seems that life
Would not be cohesive
In the morning,
Around eight or nine
Paying the bills,
My life isn't
Until my taste buds
Finally grace you
Life is so much better
When I can taste you
Then I find that I am fine
Oh stamp glue, so divine.

Robert Frost makes my Fall

2007-10-02T21:47:00.000-04:00

Into My Own

One of my wishes is those dark trees,
so old and firm they scarcely known the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not but beheld that someday
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back
Or those that should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if I still held them dear.

They would not know me changed from the him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

-Robert Frost

Holy Hell! An Update!

2007-09-27T23:44:00.000-04:00

For anyone who has enough spare time to dabble around this thing, I apologize. I acknowledge my lack of diligence in updating. It's slightly pathetic.

So what has happened?
Goodness gracious, what hasn't happened?

The rest of the tour this summer was the most exhausting/exhilirating/exhuberant/exhsomething experience of my life. I hated it at times, I loved it most times, and I want to be on the road again. Sadly, college has once again gotten the better of me.

So in the past few months I have gone from being completely broke and completely happy and carefree to being well payed and overworked/exhausted but driven. I figure, I've got one more semester of this and then I am o-u-t and off into the world. I'm okay with that.

Tony is in Africa, so that's something. I would like to voice my general enthusiasm for that kid. I have never felt/watched myself develop while I was in a relationship like I did with him. Prior to him I felt like every romantic endeavor I had was just part of the process of breaking myself down. For the first time I found myself in something that was building myself back up, and I'm a better person because of it. Hats off to him for going to Africa for two and half years. It'll be interesting to see what man he has grown into when he gets back.

A few weeks ago my cousin Jennifer passed away. It was completely unexpected and traumatic. Also, my first brush with death, and it left me quite shaken. I've come to the conclusion that death is a deep heavy breath for those left behind, a breath of exhaustion. It's also terribly personal and not a subject I care to disclose too much information about on the www.
Let's just say my foundations were stirred, and I'm in the process of repair.

My creative writing minor was probably the greatest idea I've ever had. I'm in four english classes right now, a french class, and media ethics. I've decided writing is an venture I will be in pursuit of for the rest of my life. If I hope to never reach the day where I feel my writing is sufficient and completely refined, because that will be the day I've lost my passion for the written word, if that makes sense.
One accomplishment I am incredibly proud of is the alliance I forged myself over the summer with alot of really great authors.
Books I read this summer (and recommend to the masses)

The Fountainhead
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close
Dandelion Wine
Self-help
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Dharma Bums
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Great Gatsby (again)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
What is the What
Best American Essays
A Good Man is Hard to Find (and other short stories)
Love
Down and Out in Paris and London
The Prince of Tides

...I think I might be missing a few, but that's the most of them.
It was incredible. I miss having that much free time.

More later, I promise. It's just that I have a big day tomorrow and should probably hit the hay now.

Des Moines, Iowa

2007-06-20T23:34:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I had the power to update this and let everyone know what is going on.
So, I'm on tour with my band right now. We have made our way from the safety of our midwestern harbor in Muncie, and three days along we find ourselves in Des Moines, Iowa. I don't believe I had ever been in Iowa before this day. There is nothing like this experience, and I'm not going to give a blow by blow, but I am incredibly proud of where I am at right now. I'm with five of my best friends seeing America in a way that I never thought possible. We all know that this is going to change us, we're going to grow together, in such an authentic way that I doubt it will ever be possible to articulate.
Our first show was in Lombard, Illinois, which is in DuPage County, north of Chicago. Ironically enough, I used to live in DuPage, and it took me about half of the night to realize where we were. It was kind of surreal to be so close to such old stomping ground. I've always been understandably tenative of the Chicago area after living there, but Lombard welcomed us with open arms. We played in the basement of two of the members of Anchors, Balloons, and incredible and amazingly friendly band that would fit in seamlessly in Muncie. The crowd was incredibly enthusiastic and interactive, clapping in places people had never clapped before, and cheering and singing along; as a collective, they became an honorary member of the band. The result was euphoria.
After bonding with them the next day (we crashed on basement couches) we made our way up to Milwaukee. I had only ever been to the Milwaukee zoo before, when I was 12, and a misplaced Polar bear made an incredible impression on me. Needless to say, I didn't really know what to expect out of Milwaukee.
After a misadventure of trying to find the house of Emily, one of our hosts of the evening, we settled in, and we witnessed her Husky, Pablo, howl.
I had no idea that animals were capable of producing sounds like that. Howling sounds nothing like it does in the movies. White Fang had nothing on Pablo.
After an INCREDIBLE vegan dinner (thank you thank you!) we went to the bar that we were playing. Drinks were free, numbers were dialed, and performing went incredibly.
It's an honor to have been so well received so far.
Right now I'm in an incredibly dark bar in Iowa.The second band is playing, we're next.
Tomorrow is my last day of twenty-dom.

I hope Nebraska is ready for us.

"Every problem has a gift for you in its hands"

2007-05-30T00:29:00.000-04:00

"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but in the ability to start over."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is one of those posts that's more for me to reflect on later than for anyone else.

Glasses

2007-05-22T21:11:00.000-04:00

So here's something you might not know: occasionally I need glasses.
My prescription is nothing near severe. I can drive legally without them, but it really helps at night and whatnot.
"But Laura," you could say, "I've never seen you with glasses!"
What an astute observation! That's because I lose mine alot. I've lost three pairs of glasses over three years.
I am very talented.
My sophmore year I lost everything all of the time (my keys, my wallet, my glasses, coats, all sorts of necessities), so no surprise there.
So, I've gone the past...five months or so without them. I think I left my last pair in McKinney's class one day. It's a shame.
My mom and I made our way to EyeMart today, because we knew they were having some sort of sale. The sale this week was "Three for the price of one."
So for 79-something-dollars I got three pairs of glasses. (That's a lot of glasses.)

Let's see if I still have them all in three years.

My sister never ceases to amaze me.

2007-05-17T15:10:00.000-04:00

This is my sister, the Harvard Grad School Student. The woman who regularly watches Xena: Warrior Princess. The woman who used to make my stuffed animals rap for me.

This is an address she gave on behalf of a Student Volunteer Organization who did benefit work in New Orleans over spring break.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Reflections on The Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans
Current mood: tired

I spent my spring break (the end of March) volunteering with fellow students down in the Gulf Coast. We were helping one specific woman clean up her home, which had not been touched since the storm hit.

Today my fellow students and I gave a presentation to our community here at school about what we witnessed, and our reflections on our work. I was asked to reflect, and felt convicted to speak about my experience standing right where the levee broke in the lower ninth ward.

I decided to post my speech. So you all can get to know me a little better. It's one of the most vulnerably honest things I've ever written and then delivered in a public format. The Dean of the Divinity School was there and everything.

Well, Here it is:

Today I do not want to talk about the work that we did. I want to talk about all the work left to do.

On the last day of our trip we traveled into New Orleans. We had arranged to meet with Gene, a facilitator for fellow Harvard volunteers from the Philips Brooks House.

Gene took us on a tour of the devastation that remains in New Orleans. As we wound our way through the unfamiliar city, I suddenly knew where we were. This was the ninth ward. Looking back I see that I probably recognized the area from all the video footage I had seen throughout my fall semester in Professor Green's class. At the time my recognition felt more like intuition, as though the air had suddenly changed. It possessed a heaviness thicker than that of Ocean Springs.

The houses looked as though the hurricane had hit the previous week. FEMA spray pain, bright as ever, was ont he face of each house as we drove through those streets. I knew that the code in the spray paint revealed what FEMA had found there: the number of dead, the number of living, and when the houses had been checked. I also knew that many of these houses were marked but had never actually been investigated.

As we drove through the streets I realized people still lived here. These remnants of houses served as homes for so many people. And that is all that remained - pieces of houses that once stood whole and solid.

The segregated nature of the lower ninth ward was absolutely undeniable. As Irene, one of our fellow student volunteers who is originally from Ghana exclaimed upon our arrival in New Orleans, "There are so many black people here!" As we drove through the ninth ward, echoes of James Cone reverberated in my head:

The meaning of the message for our contemporary situation is clear: the God of the oppressed takes sides with the black community. God is not color-blind in the black-white struggle, but has made an unqualified identification with blacks. This means that the movement for black liberation is the very work of God, effecting God's will among men (and women).

We followed Gene to an area on the edge of town where we pulled our cars over and stepped out onto the abandoned streets. We stood surrounded by empty lots where homes once stood. Now they were covered with overgrown grass and foilage. I was so focused on the area that I did not even turn to see what was behind me until Gene said, "This is where the levee broke."

I turned around to face the levee - the levee I had seen on video footage countless times. Scenes from Spike Lee's documentary on Hurricane Katrina flashed through my brain, but nothing had prepared me for the reality of standing on that ground. Although Gene spoke at length, all I remember hearing him say is "Many of these homes were passed down generation to generation. When the levee broke these people lost everything they had."

Everything they had?! This was not only everything the people currently living there had. This was their inheritance. These were the houses their grandparents scrapped and saved for while doing everything they could to survive Jim Crow America. These houses were the only property owned by the descendents of people who were once considered property. These houses weren't just houses. They were a source of pride and dignity in a country whose history leaves too little to feel honest pride for.

Standing there, where the levee broke, I broke. In front of all my peers and a man I had only just met, I sobbed like a child. The times I have cried like that I can count on one hand.

I cried for the depth of loss in the lower ninth ward - the overwhelming loss of life that could easily have been prevented if we truly worked to love our neighbors as ourselves. I cried for how these people had been failed - not just by nameless government agencies, but failed by all of us.

James Cone spoke again in my head:

We must made decisions about where God is at work so we can join in the fight against evil. But there is no perfect guide for discerning God's movement in the world. Contrary to what many conservatives would say, the Bible is not a blueprint on this matter. It is a valuable symbol for pointing to God's revelation in Jesus, but it is not self-interpreting. We are thus placed in an existential situation of freedom in which the burden is on us to make decisions without a guaranteed ethical guide. This is the risk of faith.

The risk of faith requires us to face our responsibility to the people of New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast area. We bear responsibility as participants in a social and political structure that not only allows for but perpetuates conditions of such stark inequality. We bear responsibility to our community members here at the Divinity School with families and loved ones affected by Hurricane Katrina. We bear the responsibility as people of faith and scholars of conscience to fight injustice whenever and wherever it exists.

Injustice exists in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. Now I, like my fellow students on the trip, bear the special responsibility of witness. As a witness I cannot turn my back on this abandoned community. I cannot let my community here in Cambridge forget what so many of us have seen. We cannot fail to

Open our mouths for the mute,
For the rights of all the unfortunate.
Open our mouths, judge righteously
And defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.*

Amen.

* Proverbs 31:8-9

I'm so stinking proud of her.

Odd Times

2007-05-17T12:52:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks have been strange with their highs and lows. I think my life might be trying to mimic indiana's weather patterns.
There's the chance that I might not be working at the MTCup much longer, which is a strange fact for me to wrap my head around. Those espresso stained walls have been my sanctuary and my hell for the past two years. I didn't have any scars until I started working there. Now I have at least eight on my right arm.
I'm over my mountains of molehills stage. It's not as if I wanted to work there for the rest of my life. It's the sense of community that I've gained over the past two years there that is at stake. I grew up in transitions. I've attended well over a dozen different schools and lived in nine different states. Stability and permanence had been nothing more than notions to me.
Working there changed that. I began to interact with members of the community from all walks of life on a daily basis. My co-workers became my family. I began to feel at home.
When I was sick and hospitalized at Ball Memorial, one of the regulars rushed me up through the ER waiting list, and sat by my bedside while my IV's dripped, to make sure that I would be okay. When a spanish professor noticed I was having a hard time last year, he repeatedly quoted "This too shall pass." Advice that has stuck with me, and I pass on. If it weren't for my friend Kennon, who gets a grande coffee almost every day before he goes to work or kung-fu, I wouldn't be going to LA to record my album in the fall.
Those are just three people. They've all made significant impacts on me.
That job has taught me how to put love and hard labor into your work and watch the pay-off. Being a barista isn't easy. One gallon of milk weighs 8.25 lbs. We carry five at a time. My hands have callouses on them from the tampers and the groupheads. I know more about frothing milk than I ever could have imagined. But the callouses, scars, and heavy lifting are part of a reward. I know how a good latte can make someone's day. I wouldn't work minimum wage for two years just anywhere. What has kept me there for so long are the people, and the satisfaction of knowing that I've made a difference in their days when I go home exhausted.
If it's time for me to move on in life, then I will make my peace with that. I'm not going to be petty or sacrifice any of my dignity, because I believe that the MTCup and I have given and taken equally from one another. I have nothing to be bitter about. If I do leave, I will do so with grace and respect for the community that has given me so much. Hopefully I can do something with everything that I have learned there.
"This too shall pass."

Developments

2007-03-21T07:12:00.000-04:00

I love it when you write something and then stumble across it like an acquaintance you forgot you met.
This week is going to be incredibly rewarding I think. the In Print festival is this week at Ball State, and three newly published authors are coming to discuss their work and talk about being published. All of their work is incredible, as well as inspiring, and I look forward to having the oppurtunity of hearing them read.
(Dave Griffith: A Good War is Hard to Find-go read it.)
Mini road trip during the day with my good friend Amanda to Indy on Friday. We're going to go hang out with her mom and then look at H&M's new spring line. We're both making mixes for the ride there and back because we're nerds like that. (Nerds=synonymous with amazing.) I'm playing a house show that night, and then on Saturday I get to see Cari and Rache for the first time in God knows how long for Cari's wedding shower.
It would be one kind of excitement to see them both individually. Cari moved to New Orleans last year, and then Rache is in Tallahassee (and soon LA-- because she got into GRAD SCHOOL AT USC! That's my best friend), so I don't get to see them very often. In fact, I haven't seen Cari since Rache's goodbye party in August, and that was only for twenty minutes. Needless to say, I am jubilative.
Saturday night Rodeo Ruby Love (www.myspace.com/rodeorubylove) is playing at the Village Green. They're amazing people, and amazing musicians. I'm very excited to spend time with them.
So yes, la vive est bella.

Here are the peices I rediscovered.

DEVELOPMENTS (written 2/15/07 I believe)

You should paint all night
I could call you Van Gogh
You could paint me the stars
People wouldn't understand it at first
The beauty in the way you see things.

I should write this all down
You could call me Neruda
As I cast my nets into your skies
People wouldn't understand it at first
The meaning in my metaphors

You could call me yours
We could change the world with the way we see things
And calling eachother names.

SWING

I feel like swinging
To have the stars beneath my feet
To feel the air rush at me, burning

worthy of note

2007-03-07T16:22:00.000-05:00

I just realized I not only get to see my parents in a few days. ...
I get to see my cat.

This Waltz Will Wear Us Down

2007-03-07T07:44:00.000-05:00

So, spring break is in a few days. Hurrah!
I have this wonderfully imposing reading list that I intend to conquer over the course of the next week. My spring break will consist of working, sleeping, voracious reading, hanging out with Mom, and watching bad kung-fu movies with my Dad.
I can't contain my excitement to see them, it's been too long. I hate that I only see them every few months.

Other good news is I heard back from Secretly Canadian yesterday about my internship. It's good to know that I'm going to get to follow through with my goals. I've wanted to intern for them for a long time now, and I've worked really hard to make sure that happens.

I'm recording my solo stuff this weekend with my friend Dan. He's a music engineering major, and hopefully very good at what he does. Anyway, the song is one of my newest, and I like it.
Here, I'll share lyrics. :

This Waltz Will Wear Us Down

I never was the child for building castles,
To watch them wash away seemed so demeaning
Running back and forth from sea to mother
Saving all the shells, their remnants priceless
There are things to be salvaged here.

Gave up for years
Something hiding,
Harbored in me
Salvage, Scattered
Building again
Building Slowly
Victim of my own making
I know the feeling
of the beating tide
There are things to be salvaged here.

Porous bones cause for brittle beginnings
It seems my patience is wearing thin
You ask me of my expectations
Simple allegiance is all I'm asking for here
There are things to be salvaged, here.

Did sands of time erode at your bones?
Wearing at you,
Wearing slowly?
He wore me down,
Swallowed me whole
I know the feeling
Of the beating tide
There are things to be salvaged here.

And post a pretty picture.

P.S: Give me a year, I'm going back to Hawaii.

Frustration.

2007-03-04T22:19:00.000-05:00

I'm writing-ish a paper right now, it's not that bad it's just boring.

My week should have felt alot worse than it did, because alot of not-so-fun things happened. However! all of these circumstances made me reevaluate what I want and what is really important to me.
Change is underway.
Some major changes, some minor.
And I've ammended to be a lot less passive when it comes to life, and the things that I love.
I've also decided to stop rewarding people who haven't done anything for me. I can't think of a way to word this delicately enough, without getting into gory specifics. Specifics don't matter, this resolution is the result of many different specific circumstances. In a positive light, this week has made me realize how many amazing people I have in my life.
Also, developing friendships make me really happy. I hung out with Rebecca and Julie this weekend, and they are both so refreshing.

I had a nightmare with some old haunts last night though, which caused me to wake up feeling slightly unrested.

Rebecca and I have ammended to bring back sashes being tied around the head, audrey hepburn style. When we watched Breakfast at Tiffany's this weekend I really comprehended it at the level I had always wanted to, and known I could, but never had before. Its a really amazing movie. Tomorrow I plan to teach myself Moon River so I can cover it.

Fantastical!

Mt. Hood

2007-02-28T11:05:00.000-05:00

Earlier this winter/late fall, a group of climbers got lost in an avalanche in Mt. Hood, Oregon. For some reason this deeply bothered me and continues too. It's very seldom that I follow a news story closely.
I found a peice of prose that I wrote about it in January. Edited it, and now am sharing it.

[Mt. Hood, Where Have You Taken Her Lover?]

I was climbing because there was some part of me hiding up there.
It was a beautiful pennance; I owed it to myself to go.
It's true, the air thins.
It attacks you from the inside, knives in your lungs,
Darting.

I was climbing because I love the distant world beneath me,
Because I believe in something higher

From up high I could see part of you was up there
I needed to claim it for you
Make my way back down

The fog weighed something, darling,
Something heavy and treacherous,
The feeling of bones aching to the marrow.
But the distant world above me,
everything I was searching for
Fell upon me, unexpected
I lost myself then, in my search.

It was cold in its sparseness,
Crippling from the outside,
Sharp darting knives.

I lost something then
But I will keep the remnants in this place, a pennance
With this world distant, beneath me.

my life and the divine.

2007-02-16T09:07:00.000-05:00

So i was thinking about fate, and faith this morning, and how I hadn't thought about them at all lately. How much that bothers me.
And I'm wandering around my apartment to discover a taoism book that stevi got me for christmas, and I opened it up to a page that says there is no fate. This really upset me, caused me to want to yell at the book.
I've lost sight of my goals and what I demand out of life lately, and have failed to appreciatte what is in front of me, and what it is that I love. I've just been going with the motions.
That nonchalance is not an accurate expression of who I am.
So...I'm giving myself the next few weeks to get my shit together and start making things happen for me.
I'll make my own fate.

2007-01-24T11:04:00.000-05:00

Three shows this weekend. One tomorrow night at IU, Friday at Muncie Alliance, Saturday at Village Green.

This is intense.

Something's off

2007-01-23T10:22:00.000-05:00

Two days in a row of that specific breed where you don't feel like being alone, don't find yourself isolated, but even when you're around people...it's solo.
I did not enjoy waking up alone this morning.
I do enjoy reading, I read three chapters in my audio technology book last night, and I think my brain expanded a little.
I'm tired, so I drank coffee, after going to bed early the night before. It just doesn't make much sense.
And if anyone knows me, and reads this, you know I don't rant like this.
I feel like I'm off my axis.
If I moved to Uranus, would that mean I would feel at home? (Uranus is off of it's axis. And it has rings around it too, rings that no one acknowledges because they're more subtle than Saturn's gaudiness).
Someone, give me a conversation of substance and some direction and I'll be happy.
Or maybe that's just something I have to give myself.

Exploits

2007-01-20T20:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in Terre Haute right now, waiting for a show, we're playing last out of four bands and so far only one has played, so I'll be here for a while. This also means that I probably won't be getting home until three o'clock in the morning.
Lovely.
In other news
All of my band mates are in really strange moods right now, and all i want to do is sit in a corner and read/write/draw ishnessesque.
Yesterday was divine, I got out of classes around one and hung out with Stevi for quite some time. Then finally after a long awaited...waiting? Dan called me, Everthus The Deadbeats were playing a show in Muncie before they made their way up to Chicago town. I met up with him at Doc's and we had an incredible time. It was really nice to run into friends that I don't see very often because I don't go out like that much. Everthus did incredibly well, they even got an encore.
I would be more impressed with the encore if Lisa hadn't confided with me that they cheated to get it. The Deadbeats have this tactic where they save one of their most popular songs for the very last, and then stop at the song before it. And in their home audience like Muncie they anticipated the encore. I envy them because they played so incredibly tight, I think that this has alot to do with the fact that they are all living together right now, and practice almost all of the time. I can't wait until I have the oppurtunity to do that with my boys. Honestly that would mean the world to me.
I just can't wait to hit the road, I love what I do.

In other news. Whole wheat chocolate chip pancakes are probably the most scrumptuous, delicious, mind blowing things in the world. Dan and I made some this morning for breakfast. The night before we shared this exchange regarding our anticipation of them in the morning.
"I bet it will be liberating."
"Yeah, it will be like the liberty bell."
"Or the Bill of Rights."
"Yes James Madison will be there."
"James Madison will come to my apartment and make us breakfast, and then hand us the Bill of Rights."
"YES."

This is a typical conversation between Dan and I . And I love it.
It was a divine evening and morning, I'll just leave it there.

Break During class

2007-01-17T19:29:00.000-05:00

So night classes can be a little overwhelming I've decided. This whole having class until nine thing is really throwing me off. Might be the source of my insomnia? Since I was the grandma for so long, in the house by nine usually, and now I'm JUST getting in at nine. So yes, this schedule is throwing me off.

I am, however, the recipient of a free Jimmy John's sandwich, which wouldn't have happened (necessarilly, okay it very well could have happened, it's been known to happen) anyway, I wasn't anticipating getting a free one tonight while I was in class.

I've been on a letter writing binge lately, I just wrote my friend Blake in Utah, and I've written three other people in the past week. It feels really good. Letter writing, I'm afraid, is becoming a bit of a lost art, and that's really sad. It's giving part of yourself away to the other person to hold on to. You gain a part of someone else whenever you get a letter, as cliche-ish as that may seem, it's true. It's that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you open your mailbox and there's something in it other than a bill.

Go read Major Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife from the battle of bull run and tell me I'm wrong

slipping into insomnia again.

2007-01-17T02:19:00.000-05:00

I haven't slept easily in weeks. When I do sleep, it is well.
But I liked being the old lady friend of everyone who hit the hay by eleven.
Yet here I am at 2:19 in the a.m., looking longingly at my pillow, and brainstorming a better method to lull myself to sleep than counting sheep.
I would read, but that would certainly keep me up for the rest of the night...unlike alot of people I know, reading wakes me up.

Hm...

Letter From Birmingham Jail

2007-01-15T11:24:00.000-05:00

April 16, 1963

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place In Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants --- for example, to remove the stores humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic with with-drawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-oat we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to ace the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to 6e solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides-and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle---have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who 'has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of Rio shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leader era; an too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Walleye gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Par from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it vi lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, ham and all over the nation, because the goal of America k freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if .you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in pubic. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he k alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Oh what a strange course of events.

2007-01-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

I realize that it has been an incredibly long time since I last blogged, and I apologize.
Some weird things happened, and some unweird things happened... that's all the information I'm going to provide, so that I can pretend that I'm mysterious.
Let's face some facts though, mysterious people don't usually blog; if/when mysterious people do blog there's usually a lot of artsy fartsy photography involved, and a few profound quotes, and the entries don't really tell you anything about the person behind it, other than their mysteriousness.
To be mysterious is to be boring.
In other news, my band played a show in Indianapolis this weekend, and it went really well under the circumstances. For any and all who inhabit the indy area, keep an eye out for us in the Broadripple Gazette and the IUPUI magazine. As for the performance...
I get really nervous when loved ones are near, and my sister and her fiance was there, so I was alot more nervous than usual. Plus, the venue was incredibly warm. There were some technical difficulties, like at one point my microphone stand needed to pop a viagra, because the mic kept falling down, much to my embarrasment, and at one point (luckily in a song I don't sing along to) fell off of the input.
But despite all of this, I feel inclined to say that we played incredibly well.
After the show I went puddle stomping with Dan in the back alley, which really was more of me puddle stomping on my own, because Dan was a chicken and had hemp shoes on. I accidentally jumped into one that was more or less a foot deep and had to ride the entire way home with soaked pant legs, shoes, and socks.
When we got home my soaked legs, shoes and socks made their way to Ball Memorial's Emergency Room, to aid in care for the love of my life/roommate Stevi, who had been admitted with severe vertigo, nausea, and dizziness. She had been sick earlier in the day, but apparently it had only gotten worse. The keen doctors at Ball Memorial took their sweet time with her, Eric and I sat there for more than an hour and a half without a single attendent coming in and checking up on her.
All in all, it was lame.

I think I need to exercise my blogging muscles more, because this one is kind of lame.
Good news:
I bought my ticket for Boston for the first week of April to hang out with my sister and her fiancee and their friends.
I'm really looking forward to South by Southwest
All of my classes are amazing.

This is really important.

2006-12-11T00:42:00.000-05:00

A platypus' spurs are poisonous.
I found this out today, and I have decided that they are by far the most bizarre creature on the planet. Also the coolest. Whoever created the earth was completely under the influence of something whenever he/she created the platypus.

We're down to hours on the Puckett return.
And we're down to a few days on my sister's return.
The stress of finals and such however, makes everything seem further away.

Surprise Visitors

2006-12-06T18:21:00.001-05:00

I'm not going to lie, this morning started out as really lame. But I could feel goodness coming on, you know?
It wasn't really lame actually, it was just disjointed and awkward. I felt rushed despite the fact that I was taking my time. I've been sleeping in more lately (by sleeping in I mean, sleeping in until 8 vs. my usual 6:30-7 rising) and that loss of an hour and a half is really throwing me off. Plus I have two papers to write, but they're not exciting at all they're "this is what I learned" papers, and I'm having trouble writing them because they are so boxed.
But then, as I was sitting at home slightly lonely, trying to write them stevi called me.
"Hey I'm bringing a friend home, is that okay?"
"Yeah, thats fine why?"
"I just wanted to make sure it was okay."

I figured she was bringing home her friend Ryan who she had lunch with today.
But she brought home (drumroll please)...

Dan Fahrner! (the one pointing to the left). It was so good to see him. My jaw hit the floor.
It was really good seeing him. Really good indeed.
Infact, I've gone through bouts of missing him alot, because I don't think I've had quite as much fun with anyone as I did him. Rest assured, we've had our fair share of rough spots along the way, but they were mostly circumstantial. And we're both done with those circumstances.
Plus, I'll be seeing a lot of him in the next few weeks, so we'll see how that goes. If anything I'll just be really glad to have him back in the picture.

Its good when people you've secretly missed integrate themselves back in.

COUNTDOWNS:

3 days until the return of Rachel Puckett!!!
10 days until I see my sister (i love her i love her i love her) and I go home!

HIBERNATION

2006-11-30T13:30:00.000-05:00

So, two more weeks and I'm going to hibernate.
With my sister, on our couches. with sleepy time tea.

some bad movies.

and big cozy pjs and blankets.

until then. i have a protools project to finish. a portfolio to finish. five finals. a two minute news program to make. two online quizzes to take. three papers to write. ...and not much sleep to get.

My Porsche

2006-11-25T08:24:00.000-05:00

So, if you haven't gotten wind yet, Debbie (Downer) my car, got a slight face lift this weekend. I decided when I was pulling out of the Meijer gas station, on my way home, that the dent on the driver's side back door would be really well accented on the other side by a blue racing stripe donated by the Blue Honda Civic of the man in front of me.
I'm kidding, there's no way in hell I would do that on purpose.
My mom said she's figured out my scheme, I just don't want doors on my car. I told her it would make for better ventilation.
Debbie is a downer because she got sideswiped the first week I brought her up to Muncie, and something's been weird with her ever since. She's a Chevy Cavalier I got the day before I came up to school last year.
So now, since she has a dent on both sides, I figured, I would treat her nicely and make her feel beautiful, since I roughed her up so much. I got her tires rotated, and gave her an oil change, and then yesterday I detailed her interior and got her a new Mistletoe scented air freshner.
See something you need to know is that Debbie smells like a hippie. I don't know who owned her before, because she was a repo from my Dad's bank, but whoever it was liked to smoke weed. My car smells like insence no matter what I do. Everyone comments on this, everyone. I've tried everything, cleaning her, different scented air freshners, leaving the windows slightly down. She still smells like hippie.
I'd never tried a more manly scent, other than Citrus and Sage last year, and that only made it worse. (I don't know why I thought it would help.) But Mistletoe, that could help.
So when I sat down in my car yesterday after the air freshner had been in there for a while, I was relieved to smell it at first. I thought I had finally conquered the hippie in her. And then I breathed in again, and realized that I had accomplished making Debbie smell like Santa had driven her home from Woodstock.
humph.

However, I was reminded of a funny moment from when I was sixteen yesterday.
I had let Sarah, my sister, borrow the Civic for a while when she was up at college, so that she would have a way to get home other than her motorcycle during the winter. I didn't know when she was coming home for Christmas break.
So my Mom and I were driving home one day, while Sarah had the Civic. We pulled onto my road and I saw a Porsche convertible parked nicely in front of my house.
"What's that?" Thinking immediately about when we would have gotten this new car.
My mom however, looked up in the driveway and noticed my Civic was back, she did not notice the Porsche.
"That's your car."
My jaw dropped. Finally, my parents had aknowledged how charitable I had been with the Civic, and rewarded me by getting me this Porsche. I could see it now, driving on the highway with a fruity scarf around my head. With a Porsche of course, I could go anywhere I wanted to, whenever I wanted to. People would see me arrive unexpectedly and just say,
"Oh look, she has a Porsche. Honey, put some lamb in the oven, we have company. And get out our best bottle of wine."
"Really?!" Just double checking. Mom had no idea why I was so excited.
"Yeah, I guess Sarah came home a day early." That's when I looked up and saw the Civic. This is where my dream ended.
"Oh. So...the Porsche isn't ours."
I've never seen my Mom laugh that hard at my expense. I've never been so heart broken over a material object. I knew my fantasy was stupid, but for a moment in time, that Porsche was mine. And it was a beautiful moment.
"You really think if we bought a Porsche, I would give it to YOU?"
Funny Mom funny. She went in the house. I lingered outside for a moment and said goodbye to the random Porsche sitting in front of our house. I found out later it was our neighbor's, but they were having their driveway re-paved and needed somewhere to park it.

Giant Squid

2006-11-22T18:36:00.000-05:00

I am deathly afraid of giant squid.
My mom told me to write about this today when we had a good long talk about them.

I think it was Freud that says most irrational fears (although I will argue to the death that this is completely rational of me) stem from something that happened to you at a very young age.
If we're going along this route it all started when my parents took me to Disney World and I rode 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I was the sorry kid who got stuck on the window right next to the big squid eye as the fake submarine restlessly shook the living daylights out of you, while lights flickered, and people screamed, and alarms sounded. This doesn't paint a very pretty picture, especially for a five year old.
A mere seven years later I found myself on family vacation again, except this time we were in the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., in a deep sea science exhibit. Don't misunderstand me, I have a deep passion for all things oceanic, sans giant squid. I didn't even realize I was afraid of giant squid at the time I was twelve, until my father called to me from across the exhibit,
"Laura, come over here. I want to show you something."
Now, my biological father might not have been the coolest guy on earth, but he had a knack for finding pretty awesome museum exhibits. This moment, however, was not one of his strongest. Because what I found when I went to where he was standing was a pickled giant squid eye recovered off of some small Asian Coast. The eye was bigger than me. (Back come all of the associated feelings from the ride seven years prior, in my head alarms were going off, lights were flickering, small children were screaming, including myself.) In this moment of panic I immediately tried to find something to avert my eyes to, only to find a life sized replica of a giant squid next to a life sized replica of a Sperm Whale...and there wasn't much of a size difference.
We weren't in that exhibit much longer after that.

I'm really cruel to myelf, I like to torture myself. For instance, last summer when I was home for a bit, I found myself drawn to a discovery channel special on giant squid and I watched the entirety of it. I was both terrified and intruiged. I learned things, like the fact that giant squid have BEAKS in their tentacles, and that they torture their prey. Their prey include really large things like small whales, sharks, and such. Tons of stories have amassed over the years of how cruel they can be. The only thing that eats them are Sperm Whales.
Rest assured, the Discovery Channel told me no one had actually ever seen a live one. Only dead ones that wash ashore. Dead ones that at their longest have tentacles twenty-five feet long. (That's close to five of me.)

False sense of security Discovery Channel, thanks. Not three months later there was the first ever recorded sighting and proof that giant squid excist somewhere off of the Japanese coast. I saw the pictures. It's scary.

I know you're all thinking that this is completely irrational of me, and probably the lamest phobia a gal could have. But really, its quite rational, and functional. 1. I have every reason to be afraid of giant squid. If I did for some reason encounter one, it would no doubt eat me with its creepy tentacles and beak, and it would hurt, and probably also involve me drowning, etc. 2. It's functional because the odds of this actually occuring are so slim. I can go about my daily life (especially in the midwest) without ever having to worry about running into one. If I was a deepsea fisherman in Japan, this would be quite different.

Anyway, so this summer Rachel and I decided it would be really cool to go to the IMAX. The first one that we went to was called "Deep Sea 3-D." The poster of it had a big sea turtle and some coral-reef madness. It seemed safe enough. Narrated by Johnny Depp, I expected it to be a more interactive real-life Finding Nemo kind of thing. Right before it started I had a forshadowing moment.
"Rache, if there are giant squid in this thing, I'm going to freak out, you realize."
"No Laura, you're completely cool."
"Rache, I'm not sure you get what I'm saying." As I said this, the lights dimmed, children ooh-ed and and ahh-ed, jelly fish danced infront of my nose, and I kept my fear to myself.
About three-fourths through the movie I was suffering from a false sense of security. But then the music changed. Johnny's tone changed. And the background went black.
"BUT in the middle of the ocean you'll find your worst nightmare."
"Dammit." I muttered under my breath. I then tried to convince myself that this would be some kind of shark segment, despite my knowledge that sharks don't live in the middle of the ocean like that.
"They'll eat sharks." Well, there goes that idea. A squid darts across the screen.
"They'll eat humans." Dammit dammit dammit. Two more.
"THEY'LL EAT ANYTHING." The damn squid attacks the camera. In 3-D. So really, this is my worst nightmare. And surrounded by old people and cub-scouts, I was the only ass that screamed. Rache just kept whispering comforting things like, "Laura it's ok. I'm so sorry, It's almost over. shh."

Thank You

2006-11-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

Last night was one of those defining moments that sometimes pass too quickly.
Thank You to everyone who came to the CD release show last night, every person there meant the world to me, and everyone else in the band. It was a complete blast.
I'm home in Evansville right now for the first time in three months, and that's nice. It's really good to see my parents. You all have no idea how much I love them. My Mom and Dad are two of my closest friends. I don't make fun of anyone like I do them. Tonight at the dinner table we had a half hour debate on how baldness can be attractive, in an attempt to raise my Dad's self esteem. While he was grabbing seconds I picked up my Mom's copy of Peoplemagazine and found the page where it listed all of the attractive bald men (People=high quality reading.)...(I'm completely joking.) and started listing them, including Patrick Stewart, my childhood and lifetime hero. (Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek, the next generation. STNG for all of you trekkies. I took it there, don't question it.) When Dad came back to the table and was upset that I had cheated by referencing someone else's list.

Just so you know, my Dad looks like Mr. Clean. And he's a badass.
And Mom, well, she's just funny.

Sarah (my sister and soulmate) isn't coming home for Thanksgiving and this upsets me. Why did she have to be an overachiever and go to Harvard. Why Sarah? hmm? How selfish of you, to leave and be successful. (Kidding again, I'm really proud)... (But seriously come home.) Turkey day isn't the same without her to sit around and watch Xena with while the tytrophan wears out of our systems.

Wow, I've dropped a Star Trek and Xena reference in the same blog. Let's drop the biggest nerd-bomb, shall we?

Now here we have the McClouds from the greatest TV show ever, Highlander. Let's bask in the glory.

IN OTHER NEWS.

Again, thank you for everyone who came last night, and all of your support. 62 cds sold, that's impressive guys. If you listen really closely...you can hear the sound of the band slowly getting out of the big hole of debt we're in. And that's comforting.
Plus, we're having incredibly large amounts of fun while we're doing it.
I cannot begin to explain the elation that comes along with being a member of This Story. (www.myspace.com/thisstory) It's such an honor to know all of the guys in the band, and even more of one to call them my friends and comrades. I'm constantly surrounded by a large group of support and love, and that's probably why I find myself hugging them all of the time. The oppurtunities that have arisen from this are immense, and I've made some of the greatest friends of my life.
So honestly, to everyone who has helped, and taken notice of all of the hard work we've put into everything and will continue to do...Thank you.

xoxoxo hearts n' such. Laura

More to it.

2006-11-17T12:47:00.000-05:00

Editing still.

I'm inserting this scene somewhere. And the other one is going in my driving home essay. Because I need to talk about the drive home, more than the befores and afters.

How I felt when I saw him. (a challenge from Newg. He doesn't like the idea of falling stomachs or washing relief.)

Imagine a rather large calloused, rough, manual labor hand on your torso. This hand defies physics and reaches into you, hooking the bottom of your stomach with its pinky and the top of your heart with your thumb, this hand then draws itself together, forming a tight fist, stretching and compressing your organs all at once, neglegent of any and all nausea and pain that this might cause you. You are left to just deal with this feeling, experience it a bit, and carry on.
That is how it felt every time I saw him.

more later, I have to go to class.

More editing.

2006-11-16T08:54:00.000-05:00

DREW
I met Drew last year when I was sitting in front of the local coffee shop, having a sub-par day. He had a weird staring problem. He kept smiling. As he started to walk by with some friends he said,
“Hey, I like your head band,” and as I turned around to say thank you he stopped and said, “and your eyes.”
We began to email one another and stumbled into a two weeklong conversation about home. I wanted to know how he kept so stable while beings so nomadic.
I feel like this might have actually been a reaction spawned from Ben Danger (for those of you who haven’t read the essay, I have a friend who’s middle name is literally danger, this isn’t the Ben from Florida.). Drew and I met the same week I received news of Ben’s suicide; I was so dumbfounded. How could this character, Drew, grace my life and be flourishing in the same lifestyle that eventually kill Ben? Where was the difference? Where was the line between failure and success? Between life and death.
Eventually one day, ironically, Drew replied to one of my e-mails with,
“You should write me a letter.”
It’s strange the parallels that life presents us with, the breakdown and the buildup. There I was, on the tail end of an intense five-year letter correspondence that ended in eminent disaster, and out of nowhere, appears the second round of life to fill that deep void.
Letters have always been important to me, more so in recent years than anything else. I’ve found that many of the people who are most important to me are the most honest in writing. Ben Danger weaved himself into my life that way. You can look back on letters and see things that you didn’t see before. Writing a letter is giving a part of your self away to another person, sending it off for them to hold, keep, and revisit. Letters are two lives intertwining and resonating.
Drew appealing to that side of me is key. I needed that jolt of optimism, compassion, and love after such a dismal finale from Ben.

i know you're reading this

2006-11-13T11:34:00.000-05:00

It has come to my attention that people are actually reading this, occasionally when bored.
not even necessarily people I know very well. I'm talking to facebook stalkers. Which is cool, I mean, I'm the one who put a link to this up there.
But you're all being creepy by not saying anything, and just reading. That's really stalker-ish.
So if you're shadowing me, atleast let me know. Give me feed back, I'd appreciatte it.
If you're just reading this, and not saying anythng because you think I'll be weirded out that youre reading it at all, you're wrong.
You reading is equivalent to being the creepy kid who sat behind you in fourth grade and breathed to hard, making you ever aware of his presence.
I forget his name, but that's of no consequence, we all knew that kid. He was friends with the guy who ate paste waaaay longer than necessary.
Don't be that guy.

Things I Wrote Today

2006-11-13T11:18:00.000-05:00

So I started to expand and revise my paper on driving home for the first time after the tornado hit Newburgh. I've decided that this essay is going to be alot longer when I'm done revising it, because there are some things that I am ready to delve into, and it has been asked of me.
In the draft that was returned to me Todd had underlined certain passages and asked that I expand on them. So my goal today was just that.

SUMMARY: the essay is about fall semester of my sophmore year, when a tornado went through my home town amidst other personal chaos, and the different methods of coping with this. It goes through the initial shock, processing, anger, outlash, preperation for returning, and finally getting home.

LINE ONE:
"The churning bile in my stomach" (upon being told that a tornado went through)
The lining of your stomach is amazingly thin for all of the acids it contains in order to digest. The feeling of all of this eroding inside of me was what I used as a momentary distraction as I dialed. So I didn't have to think about how to react if my home was gone, if my parents were hurt, if my dog and cats were now stray and injured.

LINE TWO: "I let him know exactly what I thought of him and his opinions." (aka: that one time I bitched out a guy in my Symbolic Logic Class. Originally I just left the bitching out to the reader's imagination.)
My voice and my words cast a larger shadow over the classroom than I am physically capable of casting. I remember noticing my classmate's faces as I spoke, rather than thinking about what I was saying. They were either watching, jaws slightly ajar, or looking down with guilt. Guilt that wasn't theres to feel. Guilt I was enducing.
They didn't cause the tornado. There was no one to blame. But I was giving a verbal lashing so that for a moment, they could feel a lesser version of what I was going through, of what my friends were going through, of what all of those families were going through.
We were all helpless. There was nothing any of us could have done to prevent the tornado, or anticipated it more. There was nothing that my classmates could do to prevent me from verbally lashing out at this guy. His seemingly harmless sarcasm had snapped something in me. I went into a mode of communicaiton that is unhindered, I verbally unleashed a rare side of me, the blatant side, the side that is uncompromising and void of forgiveness.

LINE THREE: How this all shaped my character. Because I keep saying it did, but I don't say how.
"I started to really make decisions for myself in this time. I decided who I wanted to be, to operate in the image of the woman that I want to grow up to be. I thought alot about how she, that grown and mature adult version of myself, would act in these situations. I started to respect her opinions and values, I started to respect my own. I started to view myself as valuable and capable, as independent and consistant.

SOON TO COME: "Indiana-grey"
For those of you who live here, you know what I'm talking about. Indiana deserves its own grey crayon. If you don't believe me, look out at the overcast sky.

witnessing.

2006-11-06T12:06:00.000-05:00

I just witnessed a pivotal moment in a girl's life.
She was downstairs in the Atrium making small talk with a girl behind the counter in the Barnes and Noble cafe, asking about the school. This is where she's coming.
I remember my freshmen orientation and thinking that college felt alot like summer camp at that point, and hating it. My mom and I lied to come home early.
When I sat down in my first class I felt like I ruled the school, and moved because I was suspect that the upper classmen in front of me would undoubtedly copy off of me. I felt like a different breed.
I never thought I would actually be living the life that I had daydreamed of since highschool. That I would be making something of my music, skipping classes with professor's permission so that I could go to play shows in Bloomington.
That I would cut out some of the most devastating characters in my life, who lived under the guises of my closest and dearest friends. Through that learning the value of real friendship, and meeting the people who would reinforce my true character, the people who I wake up thinking of, and looking forward to. (Sarah, Stevi, Puckett, Justin, Newg, Sarah v. 2.0, Ali, Ashley, etc. etc. etc.)
Content isn't one of those words that was ever really synonymous with my life.
But sitting down and writing, or talking, or walking, or any verb that I can think of, I find that I am really proud of myself. I know that there's so much more beauty to come, but I like where I'm at right now.
So much to look forward to.

Ok, now someone go light a candle and sing some folk songs about rainbows and harmony.

conversation with newg

2006-11-05T15:19:00.000-05:00

ME: stupid question
CHRIS: (raise of eyebrow)
ME: when you’re typing oohed is it o-o-h-e-d or o-o-‘-d?
CHRIS: (Contemplative face)
There’s no ‘h’ in ‘ood” other wise it’s oohed.
ME:Really?
CHRIS: Really.
ME: You sure?
CHRIS: Yeah.
ME: huh…….but still is there an apostrophe in that?”

Dave Sedaris

2006-11-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

he's gotten alot better, as was said in class, this book is good because it's focused, not random.
(Dave Eggers always has my heart though.)
Hearing Sedaris in class did change the way i read the book though. His voice was alot less lethargic and nasel- based in my head. So that definitely put a damper on the reading occasion for me.

Discovering the deeper meaning of Hijara to me today was like a goldmine. I love unearthing deeper meanings behind things like that, it means alot to me. I really want to assume that Sedaris took it to the deepest level on that, that he was fully aware of the fact that Hijara was Mohammed's fleeing of his homeland after being enlightened in Mecca, leaving behind everything that he had known with just his first wife and some followers and family, just so that they wouldn't be persecuted.
That's one of the most sacred Islamic stories. It's the reason that they have to visit Mecca in their life time.

He had to have known in order to sight that, correct.

Plus, you know a story has deeper meaning when a Joni Mitchell song is involved.

I guess the thing that I enjoy most about Sedaris's writing is that he makes us connect the dots. you know?
more on this later.

the Major Deal

2006-11-02T14:14:00.000-05:00

So.
It's of my opinion that you should be able to invest passion into all of your work, or you shouldn't be doing it.
Therefore, the classes that you're majoring in should probably be your favorite classes right?
It's not that I don't like audio production, I love protools etc. etc... but we're not learning what I want to do with it. So far we've recorded outdoor noises, radio spots, and now more indoor noises. I can only record a flushing toilet so many times. I want to produce music, and that's not what the focus is in telecommunications it seems. Everyone around me wants to move to LA and make movies.

I don't want to do that at all.
I mean, not even close.
So I don't really identify with anyone in my classes because none of them want to do what I do. And isn't that the point of a major?

On another note, I've fallen in love with my english minor, but it's too late to major in it if I want to graduate anytime soon.
And I could do my other minor, comm studies... that's feasable.
Those are all of the classes I love, to be quite honest. And I'm better at them too.

what to do.
and what's with the shame of a general studies major?
I could do that and graduate with four minors in four years.
is that so bad?

The Singer Solution to World Poverty

2006-10-31T09:50:00.000-05:00

My freshman year I was hanging out with my transition friends (the kids that you find the first week of school who you know aren't really well suited to you, but you hang out with them just the same because they're all you have for the time being.)
And this hippie girl was with us, and she got sbarro all over her face. Being the polite young woman that I was, I offered her a napkin.
Being the impolite young woman that she was, she made a face that I can hardly begin to describe, but it was somewhere inbetween disgusted, annoyed, and revolted.
"I don't believe in napkins." The sentence exited her mouth, rushed and urgent. I was astonished.
I wanted to say "Well I don't believe that pizza sauce was intended to be on your face, and I am holding in my hand the solution to this problem. Secondly, how is it that you can believe in a corporate pizza chain and not napkins? Thirdly, how can you not believe in napkins? What does that mean? I believe it exists...I'm holding it in my hand, it's here I can feel it."

What does this have to do with "The Singer Solution to World Poverty"? Absolutely nothing, it's true. But for some reason, reading it brought the story to mind, so here we are.

OK, I just reread it twice. (Which took alot of will power) and I really don't know what to say about this essay, besides the point that it could have ended alot earlier than it did.
It's like seeing the movie "Monster." phenomenal movie, really drove it's point home, I could barely make it through it, and I would rather never see it again. Although I encourage everyone to see it just once.
The thing is, we all get his point. It's one of those rude awakenings that everyone needs once in a while, but that doesn't make it enjoyable in the least.
I would like to see Peter Singers' home and see how comfortable it is. What kind of car he drives, how large his wardrobe is. Does he have a TV? How many channels does he get? Is his couch uncomfortable to sit on, if he even has one? Does he eat on tupperware or does he have fine china. Is his coffee chock o' nuts or Starbucks?

On Seeing England for the First Time

2006-10-31T09:31:00.000-05:00

So when I think of Carribean Islanders, I do not think of bitterness and resentment and the assimilation of a culture during the colonial period.
I think of sunny beaches, cheerful dispositions, and good music.
So this essay was a real eye opener. Because the voice of the colonists is a voice that is rarely heard over the voice of the people doing the colonizing... if that makes sense. Jamaica Kincaid had a completely unique perspective that I had never even thought about before. And her point is so valid.
It's proposterous to try and instill the culture of England (where it's predominately cold, rainy, and grey) on the Carribean Island of Antigua (tropical climate, where they probably never would have come up with tea and crumpets to their life).

"But this breakfast business was Made in England like almost everything else that surrounded us, the exceptions being the sea, the sky, and the air we breathed."

Sadly, this is precisely what happened, but this isn't a travesty we hear about. We hear about people dying every day, we hear about North Korea's nuclear threats, and wars in Bahgdad, but when a Western Civilization assimilates an entire culture of people, no one seems to notice.

"I did not know then that this statement was part of a process that would result in my erasure, not my physical erasure, but my erasure all the same."

And the effect that it can have is stunning.

"England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was meaningless, and much about our own lives and much about the very idea of us headed that last list."

Cultural Criticisms

2006-10-27T09:09:00.000-04:00

This Essay is my nemesis.
Seriously. I have been brainstorming on this for so long and I've got nothing.
Let's take a moment to quote Stan Sollars, a man who day by day is becoming more and more of a hero to me.
"Somedays you get the bear. Somedays the bear gets you, but if it's one of those days where he's gonna get you, damn if you're not gonna take a peice of the sonuvabitch down with you."

He's so poignant.
So this is me taking a peice of the sonuvabitch down with me.

The only somewhat half decent idea I've had about this essay is my beef with the pressure our culture puts on recent college graduates, because I've seen so many of my friends fall victim to it, and suffer because of it.
But whatever could I mean?
What I mean is this.
Sherman came home two weekends ago and we started to talk about all of our friends who are getting married for the wrong reasons. Yes, there are a few that are going about it correctly and they will more than likely do very well (Tiffany! Jason!). But it really bothers me that I don't have enough fingers to count the number of couples who have gotten hitched but I have more than enough fingers to count the number of months that they've known eachother. It seems like they are succumbing to the unstated pressure of graduating college and the necessity for choosing some 'direction' towards something solid.
I'm all about impulse, but really, this is a life long commitment, or atleast it should be. This is a right that people are fighting for, gay america wants to get married too, and all of us straight folk are just sitting around abusing the privelage. Not many people seem to be taking the institution of marraige seriously anymore. It's not 'til death do us part' any more, its 'til we get sick of eachother and then we take advantage of the prenup.'
Come on.
Why can't we be more like geese? (I'll expand on this later).
Besides getting married, it seems like college graduates have a very limited number of options presented to them after they take off the cap and gown.
THE THREE GOOD OPTIONS
1. get a good job (good luck)
2. go to grad school (oooh yay, more loans!)
3. get married.

These three options give us some esteem from our elders to that they have something to brag about in the yearly christmas letter update that they send to relatives who only show up at weddings and funerals.

THE NOT SO COOL OPTIONS
1. Move back home to get an 'alright' job to save money to move somewhere else later, when really we all know you'll stay there.
2. Stay in your college town with your college job until you're either
a) a townie
b) you move somewhere else

These are the options where your parents sugar coat your actions and make it sound like you're being alot more accomplished than you are.
I know these letters, we get them every year.

I'd say that there's a token 1% of achievers out there who actually just GO and DO what they really want to. They're the ones who everyone else goes to visit and live vicariously through.

I find it strange that so many people my age were so eager to go out and explore and conquer when we were 18 and 19, but by the time that we're 22 and getting diplomas we get scared and rarely follow through with the dreams that we just spent alot of time, energy, and money chasing. The way I look at it, if you've spent the past four or five years hitting the books and studying a feild of work that you really want to get involved in, why not go for the gold?
Why do we feel this pressure? Why must our lives be chosen in our early twenties. Will someone please remind my generation that the odds are not in the favor of doing what you do in your first job forever?
Chasing what you really want isn't necessarilly going to be easy, you will more than likely have to start at the bottom of the totem pole and work your way up again, but the pay off of all of that hardwork I guarantee is 100% more satisfying than other options.
I think we're all just chicken shits.

"You just can't do anything right, can you?"

2006-10-25T12:41:00.000-04:00

HOLY COW is a phrase that came to mind on this one. Debra Dickerson let it all out when she wrote "Who Shot Johnny". Throughout the peace there were some points that were so intense that I forgot to breathe.
I might be dramaticizing a bit, but she seriously gets her point across.
The shift segment is genius.

SEGMENT 1:
She just tells the story of her nephew being shot. The bitterness is alluded to, and she establishes her intellegence in the beginning, which is strategic. She is proud to be a Harvard Graduate, and she's not ashamed of being admitted through affirmative action.
The picture that she paints of Johnny is interesting also. She talks about him through contrast. She takes stereotypes and rebutes them. And plays on his strenghts, how he was never unconcious after being shot in the back, and how he never complains.
"Being black, male, and shot, he must apparently be involved with gangs or drugs. Probably both."
Law and Order doesn't help with this stereotype. Infact alot of TV shows that deal with crime don't. We draw conclusions based on our realm of knowledge, and alot of the kids that I know have never been shot. I've never even seen a gun outside of a bb gun, and even those scare me. But when I think of someone being shot at random, I automatically assume that there must be something bigger going on. I'm not going to lie, I would assume that something else had to have caused it, because who in their rational mind would shoot an innocent guy for jumping up and down and waving?
And she makes such a strong point, when she continues to rip apart the stereotype because of how much they disrepute her culture.
"We rarely wonder about or discuss the brother who shot him because we already know everything about him....he snatched my widowed mother's purse as she waited in predawn darkness for the bus to work and then broke into our house while she soldered on an assembly line....he kept us from sitting on our own front porch after dark and laid the foundation for our periodic bouts of self hating anger and raial embarrassment. He made our neighborhood a ghetto. He is the poster fool behind the maddening community knowledge that ther are still some black mothers who raise their daughters but merely love their sons."
WHOA.
That, my friends is a crescendo. Its effective because it is genuine, and it has been stifled for years, and her nephew getting shot was the final straw for Dickerson.
The shift to second person in the last few sentences is clutch. It leaves the reader feeling partially responsible for not voicing out against it as well, and it is directed at the shooter, and for everyone else who has made her feel this way over the course of her life and will continue to.

life

2006-10-09T09:28:00.000-04:00

So. First things first.
I have a new computer, after a tremendously large cup of coffee attacked my last one. I'm trying to think of a name for this one.
But since my old computer died a ridiculously unexpected death, after some troubles earlier this summer, my entire music library was pretty much wiped. I'm in recuperation. I mourned my music library.
you have to understand, music is my life. And will be for a great while. There's a song for every occasion.
Sad: how about some feist? or some debussy? maybe even a little devendra?
Happy: What's going on cardigans? kings of convenience? lemon jelly? sufjan stevens?
melancholy: feist, good to see you. What's up tom waits, hanging out with rainer maria today?

So if you have enough free time to be reading this, feel free to make a contribution to my music library. Believe me, it would be appreciatted.

I came to the realization last night that I've successfully immersed myself in my music, school, and work. And hanging out with my friends. But that's pretty much what my life consists of.
I have no room for complaint.
Week to week I pretty much have life conquered:
Monday: class all day, harp lessons, work
Tuesday: laundry in the morning, class, work, bandpractice, workout
Wednesday: class all day, sometimes work, workout,LOST
Thursday: class in the morning, work, other band practice, Grey's Anatomy, workout
Friday: class, work, show
Saturday: work, show
Sunday: work, day to myself, sometimes church in indy

life is good. stable.
The thing about this is, as monotonous as that might appear, no day is the same. I've worked at the cup for over a year now, and not a single shift I have ever worked has been the same. And we have a really good crew now, and really good customers, so there's always something new. It keeps you on your toes. It's the same with shows. The ones this weekend could have been better, but it happens. It was still fun. And we're in the midst of writing new stuff. So, that's never a bad thing. And I love all of my classes.
and lord knows Lost and Grey's Anatomy are incredibly high quality.

yes.
more later, now class.

I went to Indianapolis yesterday.

2006-10-02T07:59:00.000-04:00

Sarah and I went down to monument for circle and these were some of the results.

P.S: I played a show with my band last night in the Student Center ballroom, and it was amazing. Honestly, the best show we've ever played. It was fantastic. It felt great. No, it felt amazing.

Rewritten Paragraph

2006-10-02T07:48:00.000-04:00

The ORIGINAL:
It took me forty awhile before I got there, and the apartment was a wreck.
There were beer cans all over the place. It was like a trash can. There were
cigarette butts spilling out of the ashtray and ashes were spread all over the
floor. From the living room, I went into the kitchen. There were more beer
cans. I wondered where my father was. His checkbook was open, but there were
only deposit/withdrawal slips. What had happened? I turned off the TV. I
looked around, at my father’s life.

My Version:
When I finally got to the apartment, I came to the harsh realization that it wasn't an apartment at all, it was a trash heap. The living room was decorated with countless beer cans, either empty or half-full, and full of cigarette butts. The smell of the place was putrid, but I slowly made my way into the kitchen, only to find more. The TV hummed with the background, probably left on for the sake of not feeling so alone than for entertainment. It was in here that I found his checkbook, his check-less check book, bearing only deposit and withdrawl slips. I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to make him live this way? Was this really my father's life?

Lovely lower purposes.

2006-09-27T11:04:00.000-04:00

I found it easy to relate to this story, and the feeling Ian Frazier is trying to get at. I think everyone reminices about the carelessness of our childhoods. I actually have very vivid memories of stomping on the ice at the bus stop when I lived near Chicago, much like he discusses in the creeks.
His character himself is so distant though, from the narrative, that I felt like the memoir was almost forced rather than genuine. No one enjoys forced nostalgia. He uses such large vocabulary to describe such simple moments, I think that's my problem with it. "...the joke filled monotony of his synopsis went well with the soggy afternoon, the muddy water, the endless tangled brush...the woods were ideal for those trains of thought that involved tedium and brooding. Often when I went by myself I would climb a tree and just sit."

WORDS UNNECESSARY: "joke filled monotony", "synopsis", "the trains of thought that involved TEDIUM AND BROODING"

He didn't think like that when it was happening. He's so distant from his inner child, it doesn't capture the moment at all.
I would write it like this.

"His way of describing it went well with the sweaty afternoons, the muddy water, the brush that was more tangled than our hair. The woods were perfect for endless, pointless thinking. I would just climb a tree and sit."

Or something along those lines. Frazier was a little thesaurus happy.
Later on he uses phrases like "suprious nostalgia"
hmph.

two strengths of this though:
The description of the day he realized that he was too old to just sit in a tree and think, and goof off with not doing anything. I think everyone has had this epiphany. I remember one day my sister and I whipped out our massive lego collection and started building, and about half way through we kind of looked at eachother, lost. We felt out of place.
His Adam and Eve comparison? Clutch.
I also am a big fan of the part where he talks about taking his kids fishing. Because this part, I feel, is genuine. Not being a parent, it's a little harder for me to relate to, but you can tell this is the portion of the story that spawned the entire reflection itself. This is what got it started.

Bourbon St. is cool too.

2006-09-22T13:38:00.000-04:00

To be honest the first story of the kids tap dancing really kind of freaked me out. It was very haunting. I've never been to New Orleans, but it's hard to believe sometimes that children need to dance on the street to make a living. Although I admire tap dancers, I know how difficult it can be.
I love Uncle Pat though.
The amazing thing about this writing style is how much it makes you feel at home. Rick Bragg really makes you feel like you are getting the inside scoop on this incredibly unique culture. The fact that in the second installment he refines his focus to a specific person and his role in the community really showcases Bragg's talent at that kind of literary intimacy.
"Uncle Pat, who lives on Matherne Street and ran a propeller shop for 30 years, knows almost everyone. He has only been the chief for for years, but he has been an observer of his community all his life. When there is a small breakdown in its character he knows which tiny shack or mobile home to call on."
WOW.
In those two sentences, buy establishing such detail as Uncle Pat's street, he makes you feel like this story is being told while rocking back and forth on a front porch with a cork pipe and a banjo. It doesn't hide the fact that the characters in this story are in poverty, but it showcases their strength and comradery.
We'll count this as half of my blog on this, I'll expand on this after my french test.
wish me luck.

Freewrite

2006-09-19T21:00:00.000-04:00

I liked where I was going with this, so I decided to publish my freewrite from class the other day.

Somewhere out there, floating around the nation, is a manuscript about me. From what I've been told, it's almost 200 pages long. I come in on page eleven.
Ben Brownlow and I met twelve years ago, in the school library, I was in fourth grade, he was in fifth, and we were both taking advantage of the scholastic book sale.
We weren't really friends until after I moved. So six years later, when I was a freshman in highschool, now living in southern Indiana, I went to visit our long time mutual friend (and pen pal since I had moved) Amy back in Chicago. Ben came to her hourse and we hit it of. This is apparently where his book starts, and where this story will take off.
Ben was suspended/expelled from school for passing out innappropriate flyers of President Bush Jr., resulting in him having alot of free time. Amy had told him about her and my correspondence, inspired, he began to write me.
I don't recall the content, but I remember laughing alot. Ben was ridiculous, and very funny. Cynical. And he would take things too far everytime. Funnier. He told me about the flyers, and everything that went along with it.
Two years later he and I were still writing. Amy and I were not. Now Ben had immersed himself in the beats. Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy were his heroes. The details that he provided me with were vague, but he had made me aware of the fact that his home situation wasn't very functional. He was taking classes at a local community college and traveling constantly on the weekends. He wasn't happy, which was apparent. Phonecalls which were once few and far between and lighthearted, had turned into frequent depressed and overwhelming conversations. I worried about him alot, and always took a great amount of time to reassure him of the promise his future held for him if he kept his chin up.
But then I started getting post cards from all over the country. He had fled from home. I received short notes from Colorado, Oregon, all over. I'm not going to try and explain the essence of his and my friendship. I was one of his few sources of support, and the details of his life were vague, and few and far between. I knew his state of mind though, it was chaotic, confused, lost, depressed and misguided. I remember one conversation where he told me that he had been train hopping one night ...
this is too rough. Sorry.

Decoration done, pretty much.

2006-09-18T20:14:00.000-04:00

And that's my apartment.

Mirrorings-Chuck Palahniuk's inspiration for Invisible Monsters?

2006-09-18T19:49:00.000-04:00

Am I right? That can't be just a coincedence, can it? Has Chuck been harboring a secret fandom for Miss Lucy Grealy? hmm? I'm suspect.
I read this early this morning, because I like waking up early to read and review, and I felt inspired by it. Although it had its agitating moments, which I will get to later, but for right now, let's highlight some things.
"I knew that to feel warm instead of cold was its own kind of joy, that to eat was a reenactment of the grace of some god whom I could only dimly define, and that to simply be alive was a rare ephemeral gift." (I took joy out of the fact that I read this over a cup of tea.)
But really, thats a good way to look at things. I was feeling sour on my way to class because I was suffering from that ever taxing wet-bottom of pant syndrome that the rain brings. But then I thought about Lucy Grealy, and then I started to think about what a strange little miracle that the water cycle works the way it does, and that some genius named Levi, over two hundred years ago figured out how to make denim so that he could pan for gold, and so that centuries from then, my jeans could get wet.
Genius.
I also liked the line "before I was literally, physically able to use my name and the word "woman" in the same sentence." That line has punch. zing boom Lucy, zing boom. I feel that way sometimes. I think every lady does.
Also, "Gradually, Ibecame unable to say "I'm depressed' but could say only, "I'm ugly," because the two, had become inextricably linked in my mind. "
That's clutch. I mean, really. Very introspective and insightful. Like a Joni Mitchell line if Joni decided to elaborate.
But then she gets artsy again with "it had suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have to make time pass, that it would do it of its own accord, that i simply had to relax and take no action."
and "As for Kafka, who had always been one of my favorite writers, he helped me in that I felt permission to feel alienated and tohave that alienation be ok, bearable, noble even." Wilde and R.M. Rilke did that for me, completely. Letters to a young poet? Czech it.
All in all this essay made me very glad of my purchase of "Autobiography of a Face" because I have every intention of reading it now. Although every once in a while Grealy reminded me of neo-goth-nighmare-before-christmas-garbed-black-shirts-with-whitty-white-writing-blue-monday loving kids. But there is an essential difference between her and them.
1. She didn't come agitate me when I was working at E.B. Games
2. She actually has a reasonable excuse to have that attitude, and normally, they don't.

Oranges and Fish from heaven...you can forget that.--The Telephone

2006-09-18T19:38:00.000-04:00

Let's have a celebration for this short story, shall we? On the McKinley scale of 5 stars, I give this essay a strong 4 if not 4.5, depending on my mood.
Mr. Anwaar Accawi is divinely inspired, it would seem. Or atleast that's the impression he makes with his frequent references to the heavens and the way he paints his cousin-marrying, simple, private home town in Lebanon. Don't be a doubter.
"fall from the sky..."
"Heavens were shut for months,"
"fish and oranges from heaven."
^all lines from the story.
In a little religious reflection, I have to say that the theme of "The Telephone" is very reminicent of many religious texts, of all beliefs. One of humanity's greatest flaws being its discontent, restlessness, and acceptance of simplicity. We always have to make things more complicated with our curiosities and idiosyncities.
Anwaar graces this. His entire community was content until they decided to try and improve themselves, after withstanding decades of global peer pressure they decided to "progress" and get a telephone. And then things changed, and people realized that there was "more" in the world, and suddenly they weren't satisfied.
It would be nice to be satisfied wouldn't it? I guess the general masses just aren't. There's just more to be had.
My favorite character was that of Im Kaleem. The loveable whore. Not really whore, because she loved all of he men whom she pleased. (That must have been emotionally taxing right? She gave Natalie Imbruglia a real run for her money on the whole "torn" thing.) And my little heart empathized with her when all of the men of the village ditched her for the telephone. I mean really, who were they expecting to call? Men and their toys.
See what I mean about dissatisfaction? Im Kaleem all of a sudden wasn't cutting it. As there wives weren't before her.
Hopefully someday the telephone won't be enough. But until then, "I'm still looking for that better life."

An Entrance to the Woods, an exit from every day life.

2006-09-14T22:15:00.000-04:00

I identified with this essay. I thought it had portions that were beautiful.
And can I just say that I know the exact strip of woods that he was talking about? We had to drive through Lexington to visit family friends in Nashville from Charlotte when I was little. So the second that he brought up I-64, I knew the highway. And when he brought up Daniel Boone National Forest...

That's the forest he was talking about. I'm pretty sure that I've been on feild-trips there. It's gorgeous.
I wonder if this is the part that he's talking about
"From the dry oak woods of the ridge I pass down into the rock. The foot trails of the Red River Gorge all seek these stony notches that little streams have cut back through the cliffs. I pass a ledge overhanding a sheer drop of the rock, where in a wetter time there would be a water fall..."
I like that part, it paints a picture.
Parts of this essay were very thoreau-ish. I guess there's just a universal theme for "I went into the woods..." stories. It's about finding yourself, it's about getting back to the basics of humanity and exisitance. Minimalism.
I think everyone has their escape routes. My roommate goes on runs, I go on drives or watch the airplanes take off at airports.

Smegma

2006-09-14T22:04:00.001-04:00

"Why is it that boys get all the cool sex words? Semen, cool word. Sperm, cool word. Wait, ovum? no. SMEGMA?! We get smegma?"
I think we're all in agreement. Stevi is amazing.

If the Lord is my Shepherd, I hope he doesn't punch me in the jaw.

2006-09-11T12:02:00.000-04:00

Don't You?

This is a reaction to "Out Like a Lamb" a short story.
I actually read this before in one of my core English classes, and I didn't like it for some reason. Some reason that is completely past me because I loved it this time.
To throw "some stars out" on a five star scale I'd give it a three and a half. I like it when I read it to myself, but we read it outloud in class today and the complete change in tone, the way it was read, made me interpret it completely differently.
The fact that the author was a Catholic also altered my view of it. That changes the whole thing. (This is an appreciative shout out to my Eng300 class last spring, stories are always more enjoyable if you have a relation or common ground with whoever is behind it).
So he's a Catholic who said, "...Christ called us his flock, his sheep; there were pictures of him holding a lamb in his arms. His face was tender and loving, and I grew up with a sense of those feelings, of being a source of them: we were sweet and loveable sheep. But after a few weeks in that New Hampshire house, I saw that Christ's analogy meant something entirely different. We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves."
This sets such a good tone. He analyzes waaay too much, to the point where the bias that this creates towards sheep influences his religious belief. Also the way he paints himself up as a cowboy, a failed cowboy at that.
A cowboy who is good at what he does would not accidentally kill a sheep by shooting it in the ass.
It's such a contrast to me. Cowboy writers. Tough guys who harbor an inner poet. Not to say that this story is incredibly poetic, but the act of writing well is an art.
I'm ranting.
I'll stop.

Suffering from insomnia, so I'll react to Lamott and be productive.

2006-09-09T03:15:00.000-04:00

So the last bit of Bird by Bird blew me away. Lamott went from being witty and funny to really introspective and enlightening. One thing that I liked about this book was the variation in her writing. She's a very strong writer no matter what mood she's trying to take on, and I respect that.
Some excerpts I underlined:

P192: "...maybe this is the only way we ever really have anyone- there is still something to be said for painting portraits of the people we have loved, for trying to express those moments that seem so inexpressibly beautiful, the ones that change us and deepen us."

p913: I liked her reaction to the editor who said she made 'the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting'. In reaction to the editor: he's made the mistake of thinking that his opinion means much. I think that pretty much everything that she has said is interesting. Minus her long excerpts on getting published, because that's not my main goal in life. Although I'm sure that those sections would be of interest to aspiring authors.

p914: (sorry, she was on a role in this part I guess) Where she talks about how since she was writing for people who she loves, she was really careful and soulful with her writing, making sure not to be overly self-indulgent, and because of her selflessness in her writing, it was her best. You have to respect that. Although it's different for everyone. It might not work like that. Some people just write to get what they were keeping in, out. Not just for other people. I think it would be more of a challenge to write about someone else's experience, because it's so seperate from you.
For instance, I think it's an incredible challenge to write a good biography, and I commemorate those who do. I remember reading John Adams by Dave McCullough for my AP History class in highschool, and although large portions of it were amazing, I have a very vivid recollection pulling a little engine that could it was so hard to get through.

On the next pg. (195) she talks about writing in her own voice. And how it's natural to take on the voices of the authors you admire before you find your own voice. And then after you get into your own you write in honor of them. I couldn't help but get self concious at that part....I hope I write in my own voice. I'm going to list my influences real quick and someone can react and call me out on it if I'm too much like any of these writers. I mean, obviously there will be influence, but I dont want to be overbearing.
1. Oscar Wilde
2. Dave Eggers
3. Milan Kundera
4. Jack Kerouac
5. Rainer Maria Rilke
6. Pablo Neruda

Ok now I look at that list and I chuckle at myself.
There's no way I could compare to ANY of their genius.

P196: her use of the word "fantastical" is...fantastical.
....
is that even a word??

Now, page 200 really got to me.
Because it directly hits on my theme for the rest of the semester. Home.
"God is your home," and I pass othis on mostly because all of the interesting characters I've ever worked with-including myself- have had at their center a feeling of otherness, of homesickness. And it's wonderful to watch someone finally open that forbidden door that has kept him or her away. What gets exposed is not people's baseness but their humanity. It turns out that the truth, or reality, is our home."
There. Right there. She nailed it for me. That's my goal for this semester.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning to make muffins for muncie and this is the result.

2006-09-07T07:19:00.000-04:00

lots and lots of it.

One Liners

2006-09-06T20:07:00.000-04:00

Newg saves money on pomade by only washing his hair every three to four days. It's true. He just told me.
One could also assume that this also saves him money on shampoo.
Every year I collect one liners that my teachers say in classes, and write them all down to laugh at later. I have a pretty good collection going. Honestly you would not believe what some professors say. Don't worry I'm not citing anyone. Taken out of context some of these could completely be mis-interpreted, and I like all of these professors.
So here are some:

"It's alot easier to believe in God when you have guns"
"If you don't want the gorilla to get through the wall, then don't put a gorilla sized door on the wall."
"stay away from dialect...unless you're Mark Twain."
Newg improved on this: Yes I agree, sometimes even when you're Mark Twain.
"If only the government knew how I used my grant money."
"Hey, Let go of my tennis shoes."
"I really don't understand why college students don't watch teletubbies when they are high."
"How do you spell E.T?"

In other news.
I try to do a random act of kindness every day. On lazy days I just hold open the door for people.
Today was a lazy day.
I was on my way into the RB building for lit class and proceeded to hold open the door for two young men who were approaching. And then two more young men came, and then three, and two more...and pretty much I found myself stuck there for a solid two or three minutes holding open the door for people. I felt like a lawn jockey. As illustrated. I was stranded there. Newg's friend Amanda came by and gave me a pity face followed by a "oh honey."
Luckily I counted, and I'm counting my good deed for the rest of the week because I literally held open the door for thirty people.

In other news, this week I get to cross off three more things off of my imposing list of things to do before I die, so now I only have 95 more life goals. Tomorrow I have a 1.professional photoshoot and a 2.magazine interview for the school's weekly installation of 72 hours. Today I had my first 3. harp lesson. And I really took a liking to it. I can't wait to practice tomorrow. Luckily for me I already have calluses from piano-ing and barista-ing, so my hands are pretty much made for it.
I've never been so excited to play scales before.

I'm procrastinating by writing this so I'm going to get back to work.

Oh, the Muncie Scene

2006-08-29T22:58:00.001-04:00

So Aaron is back in town, and I miss waking up to seeing him every morning this summer, doing dishes and making coffee. Although the new apartment is so amazing and chic that I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Today was grey and green which was good. Any excuse to sport my hoodies is permissable. When I went to work, Aaron ran out and greeted me with a hug and I loved it.
And then my band played a benefit show for muscular dystrophy at the village green, which was pretty cool. It's good playing shows like that, because to be honest, it's like playing for good friends in the living room. And I'm really excited about the direction that we are moving in.

I miss my mom and my sister and Rachel Puckett.

Speaking of Puckett... one of the regulars (quadruple shot espresso with six ice cubes-the man likes his caffeine) came through the drive-thru today and commented on a picture that she posted on her flickr account of her apartment in Florida and the painting in the background.

A painting which I painted.

Which I let him know. he proceeded to give me his card and commissioned me to paint for him. And then Keenan, (grande coffee with ice on hot days) (also in my top five customer list) asked me to paint him one too.
I'm gonna be a painting machine!

I also painted this picture in my room.
If anyone wants me to paint for them, let me know.

School Lunches- a shout out to Anne Lamott

2006-08-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

so, for 286 we are reading a book about writing, "Bird by Bird", (I recommend it. Also, I'm reading "the Joke" by Milan Kundera)
well wait..
That gets a new paragraph.
A classmate of mine today referenced Lamott's line today about how American authors need to be hopeful, and french writers don't need to worry about it, he followed with a Camus reference.
First of all, France does have some pretty depressing authors, and "The Stranger" will probably make you want to go cry in a corner and/or take a nap to pretend you never read it. But read "The Three Musketeers" by Dumas and tell me you don't laugh outloud at his description of the horse.
It's pretty brilliant.
But if you want to read something depressing, read some Czech writing. Like Milan Kundera. Now THAT is depressing. Or read "Night".
Or hell, read one of those Lurlene McDaniel books that my OCD friend Stephanie read in fifth grade about people with fatal diseases. (Most of those novellas go on to become lifetime movies, I'm pretty sure. It's along the same lines as "The Face on the Milk Carton.")
That's enough of that tangent.

In other news, Lamott suggests when you have writers' block, to write about school lunches.
So I'm gonna give it a whack.

Well, most of my elementary school career was spent at All Saints Elementary, a private Catholic School in Charlotte N.C., and we never had the typical school lunch. (Although we did have those confusing milk packets that you had to spear with a straw in order to drink, which took a certain amount of talent and practice.)
What we did have as school lunches was fast food. Somehow, our school made deals with McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, who supplied our school with hamburgers, cheese pizza, tacos, every day of the school week. McDonalds got Mondays and Wednesdays, Pizza Hut got Tuesdays, Taco Bell got Thursdays, and Fridays you had to fend for yourself.
Now, at the time, I was incredibly bitter about the fact that my mom would not give me lunch money. She argued that it was more economical and healthier for my sister and I to pack our own lunches. That didn't really mean shit to me. All of the other kids were cooler than me, they had fast food.
David Eades and Michael Gatto would sit next to me, making conversation over their happy meals, while I poked around at my un-happy meal with the cheesy note on my napkin from my mom.
Later in life though, I laugh at Michael and David, who have been filling their arteries with all sorts of nonsense from such a young age! Chemically enhanced food! I commend my mother for not giving into my pleading. She really did have Sarah's and my best interest in mind.
If you don't know what I mean, go watch Supersize me, or read Fast Food Nation. Or go to a cow farm.
So I'm proud of the Turkey sandwiches I had, cut in triangles, and my fresh strawberry's and hi-c.
I'm going to call my Mom and thank her.
And then I'm going to pay my gap bill.
And then I'm going to go to class.

So I'm using this blog for my lit class

2006-08-24T00:31:00.000-04:00

True story.
No Joke.
I hope I never said anything offensive on here before this, because I really don't think I'm going to hide anything.
I think I'm going to make a system or something to show when I am writing for Eng286.
Which is a class I thoroughly enjoy by the way. So much that I didn't abbreviate.
But how could I not love a class that has Dave Eggers as one of our reading choices? Anywho,
The reading that we did for this class covered the complexity of what an essay is. And to be honest I had never really thought about it the way our text (Best American Essays) had, (from here on out it's gonna be BAE, because that book and I are buddies enough that we can use informal titles). Anyway.
I did enjoy the fact that it had all sorts of well known authors as contributors. Some of which had notable names, which gained silent smiles from me as I read. Which, while reading is the equivalent to a head nod.

"Hey Amy Tan, what's crackin? Oh you submitted a work to Best American Essays? That's fantastic, I can't wait 'til I get to that chapter."

Yes. I took it there.
So now I realize that essays are important. And that I am going to research this Montaigne character, because he intrigues me and I like to put my studies in historical context.
I'm now, for the first time, going to take advantage of this picture option I have. It's one of the MTCUP, where I work. Tomorrow I get to train the new kid with my manager and friend Ashley.
huzzah!

What does your coffee table literature say about you?

2006-08-14T14:39:00.000-04:00

Last night was laborious in Apt. 4.
Our mission: coffee table.
SIDENOTE: naturally the two baristas purchase a coffee table before buying anyother living room or kitchen furniture, right?

So we accomplished our mission, (we'll neglect the fact that it's still kind of wobbly, we are suffering from a power tool famine.)
Stevi and then immediately christened our new investment with a stack of coffee table books.

If I were someone, and I was waiting for us in the living room I would have one of two reactions to our coffee table books.

1. Wow these girls suffer from multiple personality disorder
and or
2. Wow these girls are completely badass.

We have
Where's Waldo- the newest one, meant for entertainment for hours on end.
Post Secret- a collection of secrets sent in on anonymous post cards
The Mane Thing- a book with everything you've ever needed to know about hair care
The St. Martin's Guide to Writing- Stevi didn't know where else to put it.
Design it Yourself- A book I picked up that teaches you how to make everything from clothing, to paper, to books, to websites

In other news
I picked up this book which is a collection of letters by Senor Jack Kerouac, which I was really looking forward to. Being a letter enthusiast, and a J.K. enthusiast, I figured it would be right up my alley.
Dissapointment was awaiting me however, because the editor of the book must have been ridiculously lazy. He included pretty much every letter ever.
ever.
including the letters Jack sent to almost complete strangers asking them if they would mail his manuscripts to his publisher.
why the hell would I want to read that?
I was expecting brain revolutions, letter upon meaningful letter.
I guess I just assumed that most fantastic writers made everything they wrote golden.
So if you want to read a book of letters, don't read that one. I encourage you to read "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke, which will indeed change your life for the better.

I apologize if this blog is boring.

'ok pre-teen...learn how to count'

2006-08-11T00:17:00.001-04:00

Some funny things.
Such as what Stevi said in the Wendy's drive thru this evening on our way back from Indy. To the acne-ridden hootie and the blowfish haired dork wonder who gave us our change.
Another funny thing
Two other funny things
1 Listening to Stevi verbally abuse Link as she uses him to take out any and all pent up evil she has hidden in her veins. Such remarks as
"oh that's right bitch, i've got a sheild"
"I will make you bleed"
"SHIT HE CAN SHOOT THROUGH THE STATUES!!!"
"*gasp*I have a heart and a half! this fucker's going down"
"you're going down bitch! it's lightning!....oh fuck i'm down to half a heart"
"nodontdrawmeintothedarkworld!nodontdrawmeintothedarkworld!"
2. her boyfriend, ro-bear, shared with her the somewhat embarrassing news that he never realized why the count on sesame street was ironically named...the count.
he just assumed all vampires were counts
never realizing the irony in the fact that the count's favorite past-time was...count-ing.
this reminds me of the time i realized that my mom's world famous (if our home kitchen qualifies as the world) corn-flake chicken, is breaded with actual corn flakes! like what you eat for breakfast!
a revelation which i had last year and immediately called to tell my sister.
I might as well have unearthed the fountain of youth.
or in stevi's current case, the ever-covetted mega-sword.

I'm sorry, i have just been corrected. MASTER-sword.
regardless, sarah didn't share my enthusiasm about my discovery. I now can identify with the way captain christopher columbus must have felt when he realized...he made a HUGE historical f-up when he said he landed in India. Causing all sorts of future confusion for PC people everywhere when it came to who's an "indian".

I went to Orlando! It was fun.
I live in an apartment now! Also fun.
My foot's asleep! not so fun.

EVERYONE read "the Know-it-all" by A.J Jacobs. especially if you like trivia.

and i have pictures up on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lcrelyea

also, i pledge to blog more often.

Debbie isn't so much a downer.

2006-03-24T08:41:00.000-05:00

Debbie is my car for those of you who don't know.
Her name is debbie because she got sideswiped three weeks after purchase.
Anyway, I went on a joyride with Ted last night which started at 11, went til 2 a.m (we both had to wake up at 6a.m. folks) and was by far the best joyride I have gone on in a long time.
I take alot of joyrides by myself usually. I seldom take people with me. Some people have places that they go to think, i just drive, or walk as it may be. If I had a bike i would probably ride it too. Does that qualify me as an escapist? I think it has alot to do with the fact that I moved around so much when I was younger. Because alot of my best childhood memories involve moving (i mean it's not like i didn't move often enough) or road trips.
Ted was phenomenal company.
I hope to see more of him.

ps: do-gooder isaac brought his girlfriend in a couple weeks ago, and shes a ray of sunshine as well.

pps: la viva est bella.

Commercials and Coffee

2006-03-05T10:42:00.000-05:00

I don't think I ever said anything about the do-gooder.

Did I?

Yes, I did.
Isaac Joseph.
He is indeed a ray of sunshine I have decided.
He graced my life again yesterday along with some friends of his from church, Chad and T--something. I forgot.
Anyway, he comes in with these two older guys and a camera, and asks me if it would be ok if they shot a commercial for the do-gooding the church is sponsoring.
I'll admit, I have a weakness for this kid, so I said sure. So we re-inacted the do-gooding EXCEPT it wasn't isaac doing the gooding, it was his friend T-something, dressed up as a superhero.
They were there for about 2 hours, I got to be in it! (fun!)
At the end Isaac came back to the drive thru and gave me a mix cd, which is incredibly emo, but it's so good.
Really, its the best mix I've gotten in an incredibly long time. I know that it wasn't originally intended for me, but I love it because I can tell he put alot of himself into it, for whomever it was intended for. Every song was carefully thought through, the transitions are strong, its high quality stuff. He was trying to tell someone something, whoever it was originally intended for.

Spring break should be great. I intend to get this ripple records thing off of the ground.
Today I intend to
-contact a few more musicians to see if they are interested
-compose the first draft of the waiver
-select some of the songs that we are going to use.

By the end of the week I want to have the website started, a myspace page, enough artists for the first cd, and a pretty good idea of how we are going to get them published. (Artwork).
Also, get a hold of Alex to see about getting a kick-off show.
It should be fantastic.

I painted last night with Puckett. I love the painting. I can't decide who I'm going to give it to.
Part of me thinks it's going to be Emily's.
Part of me wants to give it to my mom.
Part of me wants to keep it.
We'll see.
Its a painting of a spring-time forest with the sun filtering through the trees.
My all-time favorite simple pleasure, of which there are many.
TOP FIVE:
1. sun filtering through the leaves
2. the cool feeling of the air on your back after a good warm shower
3. the perfect morning coffee
4. the first breath of spring
5. the feeling of accomplishment you get when you finish something you worked incredibly hard on.

speaking of which, I'm going to get to work.

Don't Procrastinate

2006-02-25T14:46:00.000-05:00

I've learned my lesson.

So, for the first time this year. (Honestly) I have completely procrastinated on a large amount of large projects and studying for a great amount of tests which I have this approaching week.
It happens.
1. A website (30% of my Tcom grade)
2. A 4-6 page paper due on Monday
3. Another information roundup due on Friday
4. A test on Wednesday
5. A test on Thursday

LAAAAAME, and it's all my fault. Oh, did I mention that I have two presentations this week? Oh, it's the truth. Don't doubt it.
I'm telling you, never again.

So Bracken, my darling, I'm finding safe harbor between your shelves and PC's for the weekend again, just like days of old.

In other news.

The coolest thing happened the other day.
A man by the name of Isaac Joseph came into the MTcup during my super long shift and after some short conversation asked me if I would do him a favor. I replied with a raised eyebrow and a hesitant nod.
He slid me $5.
He asked me to cover the next person's drink with it, keep the change for a tip, and to then give them a card which read "Yes it really was free! Random Act of Kindness, have a great day."
I was amazed.
So I followe his instructions when Wally, a regular of ours, came in next and purchased his regular short cup o' joe, which was a mere $1.25. Well I would have felt horrible taking the$3.75 in change, because it wasn't me that did anything great, so I gave Wally the change. He gave me a $2.00 tip and then HID the last dollar in our store for someone to find to make their day. An hour later Lori, our cleaning lady discovered the dollar with great joy and exclamation.

I have greater faith in the human race.
I've told alot of people about it, and it seems as if people are spreading the love, which makes it even better.
Why can't there be more people like Isaac Joseph?

Ok back to work!

"If you only had ONE shot"

2006-02-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

So, there’s this girl I know who had the epitome of what we know as “the pixie cut”. I mean her hair was short. Less than an inch, no kidding.
Anyway, I’ve seen her lately and all of a sudden her hair has transcended the “pixie hair cut” line into the “short hair” spectrum.
Overnight almost. All of a sudden she went from being the lead singer of the Cranberries to early nineties one-hit wonder Natalie imbruglia. Her hair is growing like a weed in spring.
I myself, have been stuck in the “short haired” stage of life for a long time, and mentally I feel like I’m over it. I’m ready for the akward medium length. I would really enjoy having the capability to pull it back into a non-ridiculous looking ponytail.
So I asked her. “how is it that your hair is growing so quickly?”
“Vodka”
what?
No really, WHAT?
“You know that season of friends where all of a sudden Rachel and Monica’s hair was ridiculously long and everyone thought they were using extentions?”
I noted her reference, and realized, despite NOT being a rather large fan of friends, I did in fact know what she was talking about.
“Well a friend of mine bought this Beauty Secrets of the Stars book, and it said that the way they got their hair to be so long was by putting a shot of vodka into a 12 oz. shampoo bottle. They weren’t extentions it was their real hair. She told me about it, and I thought I’d try it.”
Apparently the alcohol cleanses the hair of all of the build-up and chemicals from the products we put in our hair. It then stimulates the hair follicles by opening them up to air, which promotes growth.
I was dumbfounded.
I told some friends, research was done and apparently its legit.
I’ve decided to give it a shot.
Pun intended, completely. (chuckle here)
So yesterday my 26 year-old friend Aaron mixed a shot in with my Pantene-Pro V. I used it this morning and it didn’t pull an overnight Rapunzel on me or anything. My head’s not a chia pet. BUT when I used it I did noticed an immediate difference in how shiny and soft it was.
So we’ll see.
As of right now my hair is hesitating above my shoulders and it is 8:39 am Wednesday, February 22, 2006.
Let’s say we check-in in a few weeks and we’ll see where we’re at.
**I am also taking vitamins, drinking a lot of water, and eating well. I’m cutting down on straightening and curling my hair, and if I can afford the time, I’ll refrain from blowing it dry. All of those great things they tell you to do.
Because I want my hair to be decently long before I go to Orlando.

Two seconds later...

2006-02-21T11:20:00.002-05:00

In the computer lab...I have a story for you all.

Last year downstairs in the Atrium Emily shared a cup of coffee with a guy who looked like Captain McGorgeous from the Notebook. (I can't remember what the actor's name is, but we all know who I'm talking about). This guy looked EXACTLY like him.
It was his first cup of Joe EVER and Em helped him prepare it. They shared short conversation, she was smitten as a kitten. It was lovely. From then on we saw him everywhere, and had to put alot of effort into making sure we were still standing when he walked by, because he was that nice of a guy, and he was that gorgeous. etc. etc. etc.
He's the kind of guy who you could see building himself a log cabin and hiking into the eternal sunset with the love of his life (who happens to be a gorgeous botanist or something and resembles someone like Reese Witherspoon or some other flawless looking person).
A few months later we saw him riding a bike on campus without a shirt on.
Anyway, he's the lab attendant in the compter lab I'm in right now.
And bold Emily just struck up conversation again.

Two seconds later...

2006-02-21T11:20:00.001-05:00

First, possibly the worst.

2006-02-21T10:04:00.000-05:00

Blog's huh? I feel like I'm kind of a later bloomer with this. Shoudln't I have started one of these when Starbuck's started appearing on every corner?
Oh well it happens. And now I guess people who are interested can read my random rants anytime they want.
I'm giving a wedding toast today for my best friend in a presentational communications class. It's kind of a strange thought, because I probably WILL be delivering a toast at her actual wedding someday. And this is a practice run. The goal for this one is to make people laugh so hard that they cry.
And to get class best speech.
Because the Michael-Moore-loving-dandelion-supplement-loving guy who sits behind me has a complete Monopoly on those speeches. And every time I'm short by one vote. Well he's WAY too cynical to deliver a good wedding toast. So I have strategy today.
I will prevail.
And if I don't, Emily will.

I'll let you know how it goes.