Overloading on Bliss

There are so many things I've been meaning to blog about lately... wardrobe refurbishing, my odd (to me) love of cosmetics, my new kick-ass blue boots, my wood-working project, etc. Not to mention that I never really gave a full detailed report on the skydiving, which I did, like, 2 months ago, or the Bike The Barns (1 month ago) or my first journey into The Rust Belt of America (2 weeks ago) or my first experience at a country club, and how I actually danced so much at that one party that I have bruises on my feet (last week).

Hold on to all of those thoughts, because right now, in this very moment, I need to focus on the bliss overload that is live music.

Last night I went to a show. Vienna Teng opened for Over The Rhine. I am still riding the high of the electricity they created together.

I grew up on folk music and campfire sing-alongs, with some oldies and classical thrown in for good measure. I went to my first "real" rock'n'roll concert at the tender young age of 13. It was a Christian rock concert, sponsored by my youth group, and I had a terrible time. It was too loud, the venue was huge, the sound so bouncy that it got messy, and my seat was up in the balcony, so not only could I not see the band, but the lyrics and melody were indiscernable from my vantage point. I suppose it didn't help any that I had never heard any music by that particular group before- I just wanted to go because opportunities to go to concerts were very far and few between in my small town. I think it says a lot about my experience that I cannot remember the name of the band even enough to righteously complain about how horrible they were.

Flash forward to high school. I was occasionally in the know about shows that local bands were putting one. When the stars were correctly aligned, and the show was part of an alcohol-and-substance-free festival, I was allowed to attend. I know that one is supposed to be greatful to one's parents for being strict, because it supposedly creates an environment where one can achieve great things. I knew I was not cool enough to be A Music Fan or A Show-goer. I had all the wrong clothes, flat, stringy, mousy hair that fell to my ass, and not enough black eyeliner. In retrospect, all the black eyeliner in the world would not have made me cool enough to fit in in the post-Cobain, wrong-side-of-the-state, small-town garage band scene. Sure, I had fun jumping around, sweating, screaming, and tripping over my too-baggy jeans and untied hiking boot laces in pathetic attempts to "mosh," but that music wasn't made for a girl who secretly daydreamed about playing acoustic guitar and tramping through wheatfields and along abandoned railroad tracks in a sepia-tinted world of wistful nostalgia and flowy, lacy, broomstick skirts and suede and velvet blazers. My head was full of naive romance and dark smoky candle-lit coffee houses. The music of that time and place was angry, pent-up young energy exploding into the lack of community and echoing off of the sagebrush, getting no answer from the bleak november skies as it repeatedly expressed confusion, disillusionment, desperation and disgust. I don't know if that music was making any actual demands or not; I don't remember any of the lyrics or any of the melodies. I just remember that we were all stuck in this place and we all wanted out, because if we didn't get out, the most exciting thing in our lives was going to be sneaking into the smoking section at Dennys, eating greasy fries after midnight.

In college I flirted with the idea of World Music, danced barefoot at marimba band performances in the park, took a West African dance class, stopped spending money on broadway soundtracks, and discovered The Indigo Girls, Billy Joel, and made a half-hearted attempt to collect downloaded mp3s. I also still adored Judy Collins and remeber informing my roommate rather bitchily one morning that it was too early for Modest Mouse or Blondie. Which is to say that I liked what I liked, was very, very Not Cool When It Came To Having Musical Taste. To be fair, I was at least cooler than my then-boyfriend, who loved The Braveheart Soundtrack and Loreena McKennit. I at least listened to music with words! And owned cds by The Cranberries! And Tori Amos!

I still had flat, stringy long hair down to my ass, all the wrong clothes, and daydreamed of acoustic guitar concerts played in intimate coffe-shop settings. Obviously, I attended very few live music events, and only moderately enjoyed the ones I did attend.

In grad school, I cut my hair and discovered iTunes. I had friends who played music I enjoyed while riding in the car with them make me mixes. I made a concerted effort to expand my listening range. I eventually forbade myself from buying any more Putomayo World Music albums. Now that I actually hung out in those coffeeshops I only used to daydream about, I got over my fear of the awesomely hip, tatooed women behind the counter and asked them what was playing when I liked it. I wrote it down and got myself copies. It is, after all, a well-known fact that baristas at independent coffee shops have The Best Taste In Music In The World.

In short, I discovered what it is to be passionate about music, and to have music create passion within me.

I went to live shows and learned what it is like to be reduced to a rapt presence of bliss and joy and adoration. I learned what it is like to have every fiber of my being caught up in the energy of a great performance while the waves of sound caress my ears and reverberate in my aorta. I want to make out with rock stars and be such good friends with musicians that I am thanked with inside jokes in the liner notes.

All in a bowl of blueberries

I am back from a glorious visit home, but not done processing all the things I learned and experienced while there. I feel reconnected to my extended families again, after years of feeling like the inconvenient and unwanted wierdo relative. I am mourning the fact that I still live so far away from them and that this flush of emotion and bonding will likely pass all too quickly. My desires to move back to the NW have been intensified, at the expense of my desire to do other things... I'm hoping to energize myself with a local adventure sometime in the very near future.

J is coming back from St. Louis this afternoon. I'm trying to tidy the house a bit before he gets here in the hopes that if I tame my clutter a bit, my crazy alarm won't go off when his clutter gets plopped down on the floor. It's amazing how my chaos expanded to fill the void.

I had blueberries, greek yoghurt honey and sliced almonds for breakfast. What is it about berries that makes them such a soulful and decadent meal? One of the things I did while on vacation was read a copy of the children's book Jamberry to my two-year-old cousin. I love that book. If you know any two or three year olds, please make sure that they own copies of this book.

Stuff Going On In My Life...

1) We went camping again last weekend up on the Door County Peninsula - the little strip of land that separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan. It was so amazing to look out across water so big that I could not see the other side, and to feel wind in my hair, and to hear the rhythmic crash and roll of the waves. At the same time, however, it reminded me of how much I miss the ocean, which I have not seen in 3 years. I am so excited to go home in August and smell the salt water and go tide-pool exploring.

1.5) There are pictures from camping, but as of yet, I have been too lazy to get them developed/post them on the Interweb. This should not surprise you.

2) I wish I had a dog. There is a beautiful collie waiting outside the coffee shop where I am typing and I really want to pet its soft fur and get some puppy kisses on my hands. Too bad I live in The World's Smallest 2-Bedroom Apartment and thus would need to get a miniaturized dog, were I to get a dog at all. There are never any "good" kinds of miniaturized dogs at the local animal shelter (I am not really a terrier kind of person). Wah wah wah wah, etc.

3) The CSA has blessed us with an over-abundance of jerusalem artichokes lately, and so we are having a fancy-restaruant-style Artichoke Festival at my house tonight. 3 courses, 3 different preparations of sunchokes. If I am feeling ambitious (or perhaps just stupid) I may even try to make an artichoke-based dessert. This sound gross, but my brain has been popping with possibilities- what about shredded artichoke in the coating of a Fried Ice Cream? What about timbales of sweetened artichoke puree, flavored with warm spices and served with plum sauce?It's gonna be a full-out night of Iron Chef at chez moi!

There and back again

County roads through the Wisconsin Driftless Area are windy and make me nauseous.

Our campsite was isolated and overlooked a lake. Raccoons visited nightly and each time I was terrifically torn between the emotional desire to snorggle their cuteness and the knowledge that Wild Animals Are Not For Petting And Probably Have Rabies. (Raccoons are less scary than Possums.)

I couldn't find the sunscreen the first day, despite knowing that I'd packed it. My burn will fade to a tan, and that pleases me. When I think of myself in my mind-mirror, I am tan, and I like it. It's good when the mirror me and the me-mirror match. My shoulders feel a bit leathery and every time I get a new freckle-mole, I think thoughts about skin cancer. Much aloe vera is in order. Next time I'll pack my straw hat.

If it were not so cliche and hyperbolic, I'd say I have a sore gut muscle from laughing so hard. Instead I'll say the truth, which is that I laughed a lot, but that my sore gut muscle is probably from eating so much delicious food cooked over a fire.


I know I'm the overly emotive, touchy-feely one of the bunch, so please don't laugh when I say that I wish we had ended the long weekend with a group hug. I will try to convince myself that our round of beers at the Grumpy Troll was an equivalent in the parlance of the collective.

My apartment still seems oddly eerie and foreign. What is this thing called a ceiling, and why do I hear exhaust fans and not birdsong? My bed, however, is divine.

My coffee this morning was acrid and strong. I tempered it with cream leftover from the adventure. I'll probably cry a little when that bottle is empty.

Let's go camping again, and soon!

Recuperating

So, over the weekend I saw 7 feature-length films at the festival, worked an exam, finished a dull novel that I'd been tying to read for years, read a fascinating novel, and graded some student papers.

It felt good to be inundated with narrative, to think intensely about art, passion, love and humanity, but I think I over did it. I'm exhausted. My brain keeps on going, like a hamster on a wheel (except for not that furry and cute!)... I'm questioning everything- the value of education, the different branches of critical thinking, my role as a teacher and a scholar, if it's even possible to teach foreign language in a classroom. Meanwhile, my wrists are shaky and I just want to turn off my brain and take a nap for a month.

Yesterday we went for a bird walk and identified 2 new-to-us species: Cedar Waxwings and the (female) Golden-Crowned Kinglets. It was the first time we'd remembered to take both our (new!) binoculars and our bird book with us. Birdwatching with binoculars is much more rewarding than without, and I am excited to add more species to our list as the weather gets warmer and we spend more time outdoors.

In his training runs, J has seen loons several times. This area is generally too far south for loons, so he must have just seen some stopping over on their way further north. I am jealous that he saw any at all. I miss the Bemidji loons.

It's rain-snowing outside, and to keep the melancholy at bay I've got a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Instead of melancholy, nostalgia comes rushing into my heart as the house fills with the smell of garlic, tomatoes, roasty olive oil and black pepper. I've been eating this same spaghetti since before I can remember - the picture from my first birthday party show me wearing it on my face. We ate spaghetti once a week growing up, if at all possible, then on a Thursday, we eat it for Christmas Eve, and now every time I go home to visit, my mom makes spaghetti to welcome me.

It's one of those organic family recipies - I couldn't tell you how to make it if I tried, because I don't measure anything - I just add this and that until "it looks right." Which is how my mom makes it. Which is how her mom made it. Which is probably also how her mother-in-law made it. It cooks on the stove all day, simmering, simmering and covering the countertops in about sixty gazillion little crimson splatters which will piss me off tomorrow, but today don't bother me a bit because they're a part of the game, and the spaghetti wouldn't taste right if I covered it with a screen while it cooked.

What do you cook when you miss home?