J'y pense et puis j'oublie...

Turning over new leaves

2011-06-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

I looked online for some new career assessment quizzes to take but couldn't find any that didn't require an email address off the bat. All I need...more spam! But I really don't know what new revelations could be ascertained from another aptitude test. The answers are always the same...that I should be a writer, editor, therapist, teacher, and the last one always gets me ..... ARTIST.

I try to live a balanced life which entails 50% enjoying the creative arts out there and 50% creating my own. But lately that pie chart reveals 70% enjoying the arts, 20% wasting time and 10% creating works of my own. So it looks like I'm falling down on the job of ARTIST yet again.

I find myself lately (particularly during that 20% of wasting time) that all I really want to do is help people somehow. In what capacity that is remains to be seen.

Maybe when that 'calling' hits it will come sprinting to life for me. Not a leisurely stroll nor a tiptoe, but a full on 50 yard dash toward the finish line.

Why is it that some people know what they are going to do from early early ages, while so many others just loaf their way through life? What is it that marks these people differently from the start?

Join us for a very special finale....

2011-05-25T11:03:00.000-05:00

So I tuned in this morning to the final Oprah. I was never a regular devotee but I do admit her impact and influence on soooooo many is definitely remarkable.

There's that one thing that always bugs me though....that we all have a 'calling.'. Is that true? I mean how does that relate to all the millions of crappy jobs that simply must be done in this world? Working as a polite salesgirl does not feel like my 'calling' in life, but rather a necessity to make ends meet and hold health insurance. Though I try to make each day the best it can be, it certainly is not the life fulfillment that I seek. And I don't have the financial means to start myself on some sort of new career path. I am stuck in my full-time situation for the time being.

The world has needs for all kinds of people. So how many are really living a life they love? I know there's more than just 'jobs' to define a person, but let's face it....jobs make up a huuuuge part of how we are defined. We often spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our own family and loved ones.

I used to wonder if writing was my calling. I remember that feeling from as early as the tenth grade when my high school English teacher pulled me aside to ask if I would consider joining the school newspaper staff. "You really do have strong writing skills," is what Ms. Thandholt had said to me. I signed up for a year of Journalism class and spent my senior year writing silly feature articles for the Inklings newspaper. I didn't much care for the roving reporter aspect and writing strict news articles, however, so I didn't continue the journalistic adventure into college.

Writing is a hobby. A way to organize my thoughts, feelings and ideas. But I'm still not convinced that it's a calling.

Perhaps if a calling hits me I can use my hobby of writing to EXPLORE the said calling. But no, I don't have one just yet.

And I guess in Oprah's eyes, or whomever else's, that signals some kind of weakness or emptiness or something.

We must be careful who we listen to. C'est nous qui sommes les proprieteres de notre vie.

Oh spring, ou est tu?

2011-05-18T16:20:00.000-05:00

It's STILL a chilly spring. Used to be my most INSPIRING season, with all the newness, rebirth, rejuvenation, all the greenery and blooms. The sun has been appearing from time to time but the perpetual wintery breeze still lives on...

Chicago is facing a new day...new mayor...Oprah's departure. Not that those things REALLY affect me, but you know, it's the buzz on the streets...the werds on the bus. As I await the warmth, I dread the heat. As I commute to work each day, I give thanks for a JOB but suffer anxiety over its security. As physicalities diminish, the digital age grabs on with all its might. A changing world, morphing terrains, new horizons and territories...everything breathes some strange sort of new life.

And so, perhaps these times are still inspiring, just in a different way. Gotta get used to it all. I'm tryin', really I am, even if it means popping a few pills to get by.

All doctor-prescribed, bien sur.



Springtime....

2011-05-08T09:12:00.000-05:00

So much time has passed since my last update. I survived a grueling winter, complete with a blizzard and three feet of snow. And I've thus far survived a chilly spring. Hopefully that will soon change.

I am seeking new inspirations...my mind has fizzled in recent months. I wake up, go to work, commute back home, watch tv or a movie or read, then head off to bed by 9pm. It's a sleepy, monotonous life these days. I miss the vigor of my youth. Not even my youth, but my early twenties sound nice right about now.

Happy Spring to all....

Eat, Pray, Love

2010-11-02T23:53:00.000-05:00

I am past the halfway point of this book, sneaking short reads at work on an e-reader device. I actually love Elizabeth Gilbert's writing style. Perhaps because I hear a lot of my own thoughts in her writing voice. She is very skilled at taking a thought that is normally written in two sentences and spreading it out over two pages. This is something I am striving for, but blogging formats aren't the best place for such a practice.

Peut-etre when I write my spoof of Eat Pray Love (which shall be called Sleep, Pray, Take Some Pills) I can streeeetttttch out my split second thoughts into two dozen paragraphs.

Je cherche un editor.

And an actress to portray me in the film adaptation.

Seriously, when Liz heads to the ashram in India and achieves an essence of divinity, I was thinking, "Holy Guacamole, that's what schizophrenia is like too!"

I was always told Mary Stuart Masterson should portray me in a film. She plays, you know, quirky characters.

Autumn Days

2010-10-23T10:46:00.000-05:00

Leaf-crunching footsteps and slight chills in the air.
Sweaters and deciding which weight of coat to wear in the morning.
Tall boots and the click click click of the steam heater switching on for the first time.
Salted caramel hot chocolates and soups and chili.

I do believe autumn has quickly won as favorite season in my heart. Despite the mild illness that always takes over at the change of the season, I absolutely love the change. That's what it is about autumn...the visible, tangible feeling of change.

I haven't been keeping up on the writing, and I honestly don't even think anyone reads this blog. But for those who have found me, thanks for reading. I want to resurrect my writings and focus on the craft of blogging in the chilly months to come. So it is imperative that I find the time to do so.

I promise to come up with some fascinating topics, treating each one as a school writing assignment. I work well with structure.

Happy Autumn, everyone!

fin de l'été

2010-08-31T22:20:00.000-05:00

i have been a terrible blogger as of late. feeling generally uninspired. booo!

i spent a lovely Sunday just the other day at the Maxwell Street flea market downtown. i love perusing a buncha junk while sipping a bottle of pure cane sugar Coca-Cola imported from Mexico. the food vendors were yummy and it is a great way to soak up a different culture or three to break the monotony from a boring, civilized life. we also strolled through the shops in Wicker Park and sat for hours in a sidewalk cafe sipping mimosas and bloody marys and munching snacks.

after that sunny day, i am officially ready to kiss summer goodbye.

HELLO SEPTEMBER!!!!!

uplift

2010-08-11T11:35:00.000-05:00

the long days of commuting and dead-end work and financial strain and 'being stuck' can be unbearable for a number of reasons. for starters, one is not creating any new great memories to bank on during the hard days.

if one approaches each day with the idea that a New Memory Shall Be Created Each Day, then life is not thrown into the vast wastelands of what is called a RUT. this can be challenging with no extra money to spend nor access to those places and things that create new fond memories, but it can also be part of the game of spinning hope.

i recall back in my early twenties as adulthood fast approached being confronted with a plethora of ideas and options. i certainly can't go back and take a different road, nor can i confront those who used me and my energies to their advantageous prosperity. but i can take a deep breath and know not to make any further mistakes. there is some sick sort of strength to be found in that. maybe even a sense of pity that those stronger than me contributed to another's mental downfalls and illnesses. perhaps they feel shame. perhaps not.

'it is not my fault.' that's what I'm trying to say. i am not laying blame, but i am holding Those Who Were Stronger Than Me in my youth accountable for my terrible pitfalls.

the game-players, the never apprehended bosses, the tricksters of the 'art' world and even the doctors or practicioners who let me down rather than built my hope.

but i have a memory of climbing away to Paris and roaming those streets in solitude and thought. i conquered the bullies of my yesterdays and didn't let them defeat me and Paris had my back 100%. i picked myself up there and the universe brushed the debris from my back. they didn't win. i would never let them win.

Paris is no longer an option in my new life as hard-working wife and lower-middle class lifestyle in a beat-up apartment in Chicago. but the memory i made there, the LIFELONG memory i made there will always pull me out of a funk.

we'll always have Paris, as they say.

ain't no cure for the summertime blues

2010-08-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

Commute. Work. Commute. Veg out. Sleep. Do over each day.

This weekend in Chicago hosts a myriad of events: Lollapalooza, various street festivals and parades, concerts, etc. I shall be working and missing them. C'est la vie.

Had a great visit with French relatives visiting my city a few weeks ago. Always a pleasure being a tourist in one's own town.

Have put away the paints until the weather cools down a bit. Have a hard time regulating the tempurature in my makeshift studio aka the Living Room during these humid months. But I do plan to pick it back up come autumn.

Have been uninspired to write. Also blame the humidity.

I could make excuse after excuse but my creative outlets will always slap me on the wrists. Sometimes a little voice inside of me can really start beating me down to pick up the pen or paintbrush or guitar. I try to listen to it, really I do. But you know, those summertime blues. Working all the time yet no money to take spare time and turn it into adventure.

The hospital and doctor bills have been weighing me down as well. I have a pile of them sitting on the kitchen table and I pick them up every so often and pay a little on each one. Major headaches and stress.

This, too, shall pass. As they say.

Time for a song.

Maybe if I find some spectacular outfit, like, say, a cape, all the blues will go away.

Le Retour

2010-06-28T17:16:00.000-05:00

it wasn't as glamourous as i imagined it would be. my return to work, that is. i had hoped for a triumphunt trumpet sound as i entered the building and a deluge of happy and promising thoughts from coworkers.

i was absolutely brain-dead today. it was like walking in a haze, and not some majestic purple haze or anything of that nature. it was more like a dulling, zombified glossiness of everything i came in contact with. some coworkers offered support and praise, while others asked a million questions of 'Where Have You Been.' I am always so careful to answer this question, while at the same time I find I want to educate people.

It's about building that filter. There are those I can speak frankly too about goin' away to the crazy house and they can banter a few lines all their own back to me. Then there are those who are still left in the dark. The ones who ask question upon question and still not pick up on one's discomfort in reply. But I shall manage this, just as I have managed two other hospitalizations and a total of FOUR 'breaks' now.

A break occurs in a strange fashion, almost like a panic attack but more intense than one could imagine. it's as if life turns into Film Noir. at least in my own personal experiences. trust shifts, strangers are suspicious of me and I of them.

But this, too, shall pass.

And how could I possibly survive without these gems:

atmosphere & a return

2010-06-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

i am looking forward to returning to an ordinary life come Monday. being on medical leave for mind predicaments is not what one might imagine it to be. it's NOT a vacation. it's alarming to be faced with What To Do With Oneself With No Scheduled Routine.

but come Monday, I'll be back.

the thoughts in my head are atmospheric.

atmospheric.

fingers crossed this rotation of medication will be the cure for my schizophrenia.

fingers crossed.

a simple life

2010-06-01T22:58:00.000-05:00

i don't know who reads this or who monitors my internet activity, but may i just say another prayer for a simple life?

one in which my mind is not afflicted by haunting voices and i don't have to explain mind hospitalizations to groups of people who pass judgment on me for being DIFFERENT!?!?!?

i can't even cry anymore.

where's my song?

Today and Everyday

2010-05-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

I pray for a kinder and gentler public. I pray that we will all try and understand one another.

It's really that simple.
Peace.

Je suis mon propre guide.

2010-05-01T09:48:00.000-05:00

"I am my own guide."

I often think about the journeys of others, and while that may not always be a healthy activity, I do wonder about many-a-things.

Sometimes I wish I were Philip Glass so that I could compose all that must be said without actually having to say it. My paintings I am working on are small and ordinary and do not properly convey what is inside of me. But it's there, and I know it, and it has taken me a long time to realize that it does not matter if others cannot see it.

My relationship with God gives me great comfort. I find myself alongside atheists and fanatics and opposing religions and righteous Bible thumpers each day and subsequentally feel my own relationship with God even more calming.

In the arena of Mental Health, there is a tendency among some patients to think they ARE God. And conversely, there are actually some professionals within the field that may even behave similarly. I still feel stress when I think about the admitting nurse during my 2nd round at the hospital and how JUDGMENTAL she was of me during my 10 day stay. This was all based on the fact that I said something about 'not sure what to believe at the moment.' She stood up and metaphorically spit in my face when I answered one of her examining questions. My heart felt like it was going to stop beating at that moment. And that is when I learned that Doubt was a metaphysical force.

In any moments of Doubt that I encounter in the future, I shall close my eyes and meditate on some of the purest moments I have ever felt. I have encountered more than enough moments with God to make me a great believer that there is something beyond us....

Some people find this frightening and scary and too intense to contend with in their daily lives. Not for me. It is something that lives inside of me.

And I know that the 'delusion' of the Mexican janitor who came to talk to me in a waiting room of a hospital when I was all alone was merely there to comfort me in a time of need when he pointed to his name tag and it said "Jesus." I didn't ask him to come talk to me. He just simply appeared. When I told him my story and asked him what to do, he answered me by throwing his arms around as if to lift the air up all around him. He also was feeling a little down on himself for simply being a Mexican janitor and that nothing important or significant ever emerged out of Mexico. I even counseled him and told him about Frida Kahlo and her important contributions to the art world.

So even if my mexican janitor friend was merely a clinical delusion that must be stopped with MEDICATION MORE MORE MORE MORE MEDICATION, I will NEVER forget him walking down the hall as I went on to write foreign alphabets on the chalkboard with fellow patients, looking back at me with a big smile on his face and waving...

Delusion or not, dear doctor, my imagination did not work entirely on my own to create that experience.

God is with us. I no longer have any doubts about that.

I also think Jesus may have even had a comical side to him that people never knew about. He is also a fantastic wedding cake designer.

inner peace

2010-04-30T06:51:00.000-05:00

Sometimes life can feel overwhelming, particularly when an overabundance of people with VERY different ideas and opinions about you try to step in and anchor you in all sorts of different places.

Nobody knows me and what is best for me except for ME!!!

Wish I had that free yoga & meditation class to monitor again. That stuff was the best for mind, body and spirit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhLJY3DiDBU

Peace.

In Memory Of....

2010-04-25T19:06:00.000-05:00

Had a sad crying spell at an annual perinatal loss memorial service today. We were supposed to have a tree ceremony in the courtyard and place our flowers on a tree but alas, il pleuvait. (it has been raining all day...)

But it was followed by ice cream and some new music.

You really never, ever, ever, ever forget.

(That is a real scan of the little angel's little footsies. I also have a picture of her in her little March of Dimes crocheted hat but that will not be plastered on the internet. Some things must remain sacred.)

She would have been 2 years and 3 months today.

Sigh.

wide awake

2010-04-24T02:24:00.000-05:00

i'm not sleeping.

these moments of lost sleep due to a particularly loud upstairs neighbor have a lot to do with my well-being. especially when i have to get up in three hours for an early work shift of my own.

yet i am stuck. s-t-u-c-k. due to financial restraint. torture. i wish all the stress would just go awaaaaayyyy.

in moments like these, i drown myself in stories.

i love this version of this old tale: (disclaimer: this is the ending)

and i just want to know. are there REALLY happy endings out there? people sometimes whisper of them, but it gets harder to believe them to be true.

especially in the dark hours of awakened slumbers like these.

thanks to a few of our nation's government employees like Big Bafoon upstairs.

awakenings

2010-04-22T19:39:00.000-05:00

in my overwhelmingly creative thought processes lately when i write in my journal or paint canvas after canvas turquoise and splashes of word-related things, i pray for a day when it will flow from me the way it is supposed to.

the way God intended it. the quintessential story that i want to write. i want to write a Jane Eyre, or a To Kill a Mockingbird, or perhaps a small poignant fable. i would even write a children's book if i felt so inspired.... i know i have it in me, but....

.....WHY WON'T IT COME TO ME!?!?!

perhaps it's the pressure of having to move and create at a rapid pace so it can go through the big machine gun hands of 'getting it out there' and perhaps it just completely overwhelms and stresses me out. i have tried many different approaches and discussed many things with people in my research i.e. living-my-life. when i explained to an old coworker friend (whom i no longer talk to) about my plans to take my time and gain enough life knowledge to WRITE THAT BOOK THAT I HAVE IN ME, she said something that doesn't leave my mind and plagues me. It was a big mumbo jumbo escapading conversation about living for the NOW and answering that call NOW. Life is too short to wait for a perfect moment.

And now I suffer from intense creative anxiety.

I am working on some short stories in the meantime to at least just practice the craft. But I am not pleased at all with them.

Awaking from a big long dream can be quite torturous.

And the face of Mr. Rochester to my Jane Eyre is so clouded over with all the other bullshit that clanks from behind his high-speed out-of-control rabid horse-drawn carriage. Seriously, my muse or destiny or love or WHATEVER THE HELL IT IS is just like Pigpen from Peanuts.

Maybe one day he'll clean up to be Charlie Brown.

My god, life is so strange.

sometimes it snows en avril

2010-04-07T22:33:00.001-05:00

while staring at my blank canvases wondering what to fill them with and watching the PBS Buddha special, the following thought came to mind in regards to my own life journey:

was i in the wrong place at the right time?
was i in the right place at the wrong time?
was i in the wrong place at the wrong time?

OR

was i in the right place at the right time?

lucky

2010-03-17T23:12:00.001-05:00

(originally begun as a short story of sorts for Al, yet turns into a letter to little brother. inspired by true events in my little brother's life)

they say there's this thing called luck. pots o' gold, end of rainbows, lucky charms cereal, winning the lotto, and the ever-so-ubiquitous Finding A Four Leaf Clover.

some people experience it daily in their lives, as if it's truly some kind of good ol' magical karma coming back to them in spades. some people have a few lucky moments throughout the course of their lives.

and then there's the flipside....

there are those who face setback after setback, work hard their whole lives but with no real reward, have bad things happen more than a handful of times, are put innocently in harm's way, can't get a break or move forward and seem to lack Luck.

without delving into fragmented philosophies or eastern thought or getting into an argument with Oprah, i am just going to take that thing called LUCK at face value.

because Luck is just Luck.

I grew up as the older sister of one of the luckiest boys I've ever known. Little Ryan O'Patrick Brother Leprechaun.

While running around the green summer grasses at the Indiana homestead, barefoot and carefree, imagination planted its roots firm in the ground. And when the clover patches worked their ways into our path, that kid had an eagle eye.

In a little 3-year-old Ryan voice: "I think I saw a Four-Leaf-Clover back there."

And a 10 year old big sis said, "Where?" and begins frantically looking everywhere for it as she has spent a good portion of her first decade trying to locate one of her very own.

And I'm sure while Ryan O'Patrick was singing a whimsical song or la-la-la-ing I would follow him and he would walk right up to it (dressed in my pink skirt) and pluck it from the earth with a dramatic 'Ta-Da!!!!" .

AAAAAAGH! Cursed AGAIN I was.

And he went on to find THREE MORE in his lifetime!

Maybe he had someone watching over him. Maybe it was that cat who kept climbing into his windowsill. We thought it was an imaginary cat he was envisioning as tumbling off to dreamland until we saw him with our own eyes. A little tabby cat just perched on a 2nd-story windowsill staring at Ryan with wonder as he slept....

And maybe that was the dawn of his Lucky Life as he knew it. Who else would Ann-Margret want greeting her at the stage door? Escorting her to her dressing room during a Chicago theatre run at the early dawning of Ryan O'Patrick's adulthood?

Former Winnetka-area New Trier high school classmate shouts from the commotion: 'Ann-Margret! Ann-Margret! Do you remember me???'

As Ryan O'Patrick leads Ann-Margret into the back halls as she blows kisses to the wind, 'I remember EVERYONE! Mwah! EVERYONE! Mwah!'

And he moves to New York City and everything continues to fall magically into place.

Ryan O'Patrick, four-leaf clover finder, the only boy to mystify the mystical cat, Ann-Margret tamer, roamer of lucky New York streets. All around Lucky Guy.

Ryan, I hope that incredible job lands on your doorstep soon. get back in touch with that LUCK. And if you ever find you have too much luck, remember how awesome your big sister is and share...

XOXO!

the games we play....

2010-03-03T09:51:00.000-06:00

i suppose we are born thinking games are a part of being human. we play pat-a-cake as babies to improve our eye-hand coordination, invent mechanisms of learning via games and competition throughout grammar school and beyond. we participate in sports. we invent contests at work to increase sales and productivity. games are designed to challenge us and make us strive for more.

but when do games turn sour and malicious?

i have held a career in retail my whole working life. starting at age 16 i began selling shoes. and by now i've sold just about everything except cars and insurance policies. i don't particularly enjoy it and it brings me uneasiness because i am living my 40-hour a week ritual among the games of humanity. i have worked for large corporations, father/son businesses, non-profit museum shops and mid-sized rapidly-growing (and a few rapidly-declining) companies. while there are the games among competitive coworkers in any field, it is an overwhelmingly difficult task to deal with the public at large.

shoplifting is the worst as they come. just a few weeks ago i was tied up with two demanding customers who required urgent attention. a man, about 40-50 years old, well-dressed, very 'normal' looking stood at the counter waiting for my assistance. let's call him 'Larry.' i told him i would be right with him as the first two customers continued rattling their 'needs' to me. i paged for assistance. a coworker arrived and asked the Larry if he needed help. she showed him the location he was looking for and we continued to juggle all of our customers, bouncing between them all and answering questions as they came up. i checked on Larry and he posed a challenging question which i went to the computer to research a bit. i walked back to ask some more follow-up questions because i wasn't finding the right answers and he began to get a little 'short' with me. i researched some more and he slowly stepped over to my computer and frustratingly said, 'forget it. i'll go somewhere where they know what they are doing.'

fast forward two days and one of my employees, during my day off, began to locate cut and torn security tags around the department. 9 of them total. my suspicions immediately went to Larry and after spending 2 hours viewing surveillance tapes from three different cameras, i see him sticking things in his pocket, keeping his hand there as he wriggles it around and gets the tag off, then shuffles them in between other items.

and there are a million more stories like this one, and others of outlandish customer expectations, arguments (some involving people screaming at me), people blaming me for corporate policies, trying to barter, etc. perhaps it would be different if i were running that dream shop of my own and there was the pride of ownership involved, but for the time being, i am merely a vessel for the many strange behaviors of the consumer world. until something more lucrative comes along, i have no choice but to put on my happy face and simply take it...

but what about the GAMES among all other aspects of society? the vampire feeding frenzies of the arts, the strange 'fake' relationships that people create with those holding some sort of information they want, the game of PSYCHOLOGY, and of course that ubiquitous game of LOVE.

games are a part of the natural order of all things human, but i feel the notion of good sportsmanship flew out the window once GREED constructed a new high-rise in the latest developing community.

roadtrip to cleveland

2010-02-23T22:48:00.000-06:00

i took a few consecutive days off from bookslave-land and hopped in the passenger's seat of my mother's car and drove 7 hours to cleveland, ohio. we saw the rock and roll hall of fame and the cleveland museum of art (which was amazing and FREE!) and the house from the Christmas Story movie.

we drove the toll roads through northern indiana, through toledo ohio and saw all the landscapes that are permanently etched into my mind. farms after farms after farms. cornfields, amber waves of grain and not much more than that.

(john rogers cox's gray and gold 1942)

these visuals growing up are what made me ponder and think and wonder and, essentially, chip away at boredom.

hours in the schoolbus, winding around old country roads for an hour to and from school, my mind jumpy and anxious for the next time i'd see something spectacular and amazing and new.

open lands. vastness. solitude.

until you arrive into the next big midwestern town with a museum or two and you peer at sargeant pepper outfits or zztop drums or mick jagger's jumpsuit or flavor flav's clock. and in another building you see thousands of damien hirst's dead butterflies and another roomful of shining armor and impressionists and realists and more rodin sculptures and another excerpt of picasso's blue period you missed in paris and just when you though monet made you yawn you discover something different....

and then you're back in the cornfields all over again. with plenty of time to think about what just flashed before your eyes.

and then, if you're not in a rush, you can take the scenic route back to chicago through amish country.

and when i get stuck in that cornfield again, i reflect on these trips and assure myself that life does not breed constant chaos. it's just a perpetual journey through cornfields to cultural deluge and back again.

i'm not sure where i fit into the grand scheme of things nor where i belong, but i always know that kind of cornfield thinking will see me through.

OHIOOOOO!

In Another Time...

2010-02-14T09:35:00.001-06:00

In another time
from Sade's new album Soldier of Love

(currently playing on rotation at work and this song fills my mind when the day is long....)

You'll be surprised girl,
Soon they will mean nothing to you
They will fall into their own brew
And take down some of the boys
With them too
There's nothing
nothing that you have to do
In another time girl
Tears wont leave a trace
In another time girl
In another place
You were down girl,
Their whispers are hailstones in your face
So tired of waiting
For something to change
They don't know what to do with
something so good
But you wouldn't hurt them,
you wouldn't hurt them if you could
One of these days they gonna fall into their brew
And they will know exactly what they did to you
Darling I just want you to know
Your tears wont leave a trace,
In another time girl,
In another time girl
in another place

Hmmmmm...

2010-02-10T23:10:00.000-06:00

This is interesting.

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/02/11/the-accommodating-point-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PauloCoelhosBlog+%28Paulo+Coelho%27s+Blog%29

I know exactly when my 'accommodating point' occurred.

mystery

2010-02-10T08:50:00.004-06:00

i am often amazed, and i don't know why, that mystery and intrigue is such a mandatory sensation (is that the word i'm looking for?) in many people's lives. whether it is through the films we watch or books we read or simply the LIVES we choose to live, it is always the element of the unknown that keeps people clinging for more.

i'd even go so far to say that i think there are people walking this world who simply cannot be satisfied without mystery in his or her life.

i bring this up for several reasons. the main reason due to an ongoing conflict i have going on mentally with one person in particular in this world. while i consider myself to be a very exploratory person and even perhaps seek inspiration in the UNKNOWN, i am just rattled to the point of CREATIVE BLOCK in my lack of clear vision in regards to this ONE PERSON.

and another reason i bring it up is that i often wonder how much mystery in the world is created with full intent. manufactured mystery.

and yet another reason i ponder all this is that why is there such great fear among some folks to let this mystery fade?

i suppose i grew up as a child and have lived a life thus far never feeling quite certain of really anything that probably seemed quite simple to others. was i loved? was i ill? would i ever succeed? would i ever have enough money to assert a comfortable life for myself? in turn, would i ever have a family of my own? and even more questions and uncertainties plague me each day...

so i suppose that is where the line must be drawn...between MYSTERY and UNCERTAINTY.

i won't even pretend to know science but often wish i did so i could apply some sense to the wackiness that my mind sometimes creates. this is an interesting concept:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

Greetings from the year 2010

2010-01-26T21:08:00.001-06:00

Hard to believe how much life has passed by. I certainly thought by the year 2010 we'd all be riding around in hovering space cars and wearing lots of metallic. Although if you stop for a moment while in the midst of a public place like a bus or subway car and actually look up only to find the world around you tapping on infinite numbers of electronic gadgets, it's really not a far cry from what I thought 2010 might have been like as a little girl....

I'm still a bit lost at the moment for any sort of creative focus. I thoroughly enjoy catching up on darling Amanda's photography adventures. Years ago we used to write silly stories on the internet and what a gorgeous friendship root planted itself back then. She has found her expression through photography and it suits her well. :)

I sometimes poke around the world of Mr. Coelho for a new thought. I refrain from participating in the discussions, mostly because they tend to cultivate a worship of sorts rather than the introspection in each of us as individuals as (i believe) they are intended to do. But then again, an introspection dpesn't really need to leave the self now does it?

While the husband works (happy 'cotton' anniversary Mr. T) I filter through the years of friendships and acquaintances via Facebook and take the silly quizzes and find out what punk rock star i am (patti smith) and look at pictures of everyone's travels, families, new homes and new toys and wonder what it is about Farmville that entrances the masses the way they do.

I screen the NPR Songs of the Day that I collect in my inbox daily and sift through YouTube's that make me smile like this one:

And just like everyone else in the world from time to time, I feel happy, sad, secure, uncertain, proud, shamed, lonely in public places, overwhelmed in solitude, angry, empathetic and forever wandering.

Happy 2010, everyone.

some 2009 nikki picks

2009-12-28T20:25:00.007-06:00

another year in music over and gone. i made my annual compilation for some friends and co-workers featuring some of my fave releases from the year. and a final Michael Jackson bow. the track list is as follows:

1. Rowe Jukebox Promo / The Buckinghams from 2131 South Michigan Avenue 60s Garage & Psychedelia from U.S.A. and Destination Records
2. Out At Sea / Heartless Bastards
3. Good Man / Heavy Trash
4. People Got A Lotta Nerve / Neko Case
5. Periodically Triple or Double / Yo La Tengo
6. Wilco (The Song) / Wilco
7. Lifs (Don't Mean Nothin') / Michael & The Messengers from 2131 South Michigan Avenue 60s Garage & Psychedelia from U.S.A. and Destination Records
8. Black Hearted Love / PJ Harvey & John Parish
9. Ten Thousand Words / Avett Brothers
10. I Feel A Change Comin' On / Bob Dylan
11. Inspiration Information /Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings from Dark Was The Night, a Red Hot compilation
12. She Wolf/ Shakira
13. Over It / Dinosaur Jr.
14. Malibu Gas Station / Sonic Youth
15. Hey Snow White / The New Pornographers from Dark Was The Night, a Red Hot compilation
16. For Beginners / M. Ward
17. Taller Children / Elizabeth & The Catapult
18. Soul Finger / Oscar Hamod & The Majestics from 2131 South Michigan Avenue 60s Garage & Psychedelia from U.S.A. and Destination Records
19. Gypsy [Live] / Shakira
20. That's What Your Love Gets / Heavy Trash
21. Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough / Michael Jackson

And after I put this together and learned the news of Vic Chesnutt's death, I will consider this my hidden bonus track. One of my favorite old tunes from the West of Rome album:

RIP Vic.

Happy December!

2009-12-01T19:33:00.003-06:00

I have not taken this writing venture on any particular and carefully-chosen path, now have I? I was hoping by musing for awhile, some fantastic light-bulb would have popped over my head by now.

(to the tune of Air Supply's All Out Of Love)
I'm all outta blog.
I'm so lost without words....

Community is essential to any creative endeavor. I haven't really had the time to 'socialize' in the blogosphere for this (tiny) writing venture to take off. I veered away from my local art community after mayhem befell me. Perhaps this has left me traumatized in some aspect. Whatever the case may be, it's December.

Which means a New Year is just straight ahead.

Concert Review

2009-11-17T23:10:00.003-06:00

Heavy Trash
Schuba's
Chicago, IL
Sunday, November 15th, 2009

My longtime dreamboat, Jon Spencer, took a lil punk and mixed it up with some rockabilly and a handsome suit and a great band to make room for a new kinda spunk.

But that's all I can say because I am smitten in his presence.

I am awaiting the youtube presentation from the guy who was standing in front of me. Words cannot convey the dreaminess that is Jon Spencer.

I am sorry, they just cannot.

hahahahahahhahahahahaa

oh it's november....

2009-11-10T21:47:00.002-06:00

halloween wedding avec grandmere, her tiara i made her wear and her purple cast....

the autumn has been an odd one; the sun wouldn't appear for ten days or more at a time. and then BAM...here comes the sun...a few lil 'buried treasure' kind of days. it actually kinda turned out quite lovely that way. i love a good surprise....

random thoughts:

i still have not broken ground with any written manuscript. very frustrated with this.
the Mr. is still working 2nd shift and it's a drag.
i am hoping his request off for his friday the 13th birthday will be approved so we can orchestrate a fun lil dinner party.
the little nyc frere is coming to visit next week for one month. we are going to decorate my home for christmas and bake cookies. this also means vegetarian meals for a month....
i long for a home big enough to host a holiday. cramming in a two bedroom apartment just doesn't cut it.
i am carefully planning my travels for the new year. i only have ten days to work with but i hope to squeeze in savannah, nyc, france and perhaps one surprise weekend somewhere. i always like to keep my travel options open. but seriously, america, TEN FRIGGIN VACATION DAYS A YEAR!?!?!?!?!?
i am loving the new Monsters Of Folk (primarily on account of M. Ward's work) and my new bargain bin find: Burl Ives - A Little Bitty Tear
i am so very tired when i come home from work each night that i have zero energy and hope that these days do not last forever and ever.

bring on december. i've got my mittens out and i'm ready.

Concert Review

2009-10-31T07:49:00.003-05:00

Bob Dylan. Aragon Ballroom. Chicago, IL. October 30, 2009.

wllitstrtdoffprttyclevenificouldn'tunderstandonesinglelyrichewassinging.
wentbymyslfcuzjustthoughttwassomethinineededtadointhislifetime.
kndaendedupbeinlikeabigfratpartywithbeercausewheneverhedplayanoldieallthefratboysnsororitygirlswentwild.
raisinbeerglasses'Howdoesitfeel'butibettheywerejus'waitinforEvrybodymustgitSTONED.
bandsoundidgoodbutagincantrillyundahstan'whathesingin.

twaslikewatchinaforeignfilmexcepttherewerenosubtitles.

So I can scratch it off my Things-I-Ought-To-Do-In-Life-Before-I-Die list.

RIP Chicago 2016 Olympic bid....

2009-10-02T21:31:00.003-05:00

The only reason I am upset is because my chariot, aka the CTA, will probably not become completely modernized after all.

I was thinking of getting together a little bed and breakfast, hoping business and opportunity would have flocked to the edges of my Lake, friends from afar would come and visit me and vast improvements would be made to this grungy, dirty city.

But come on, the Olympics is about SPORTS, and sports in this city are merely another reason to drink.

(Insert SNL DA BEARS SUPERFANS clip here.)

(Hitch a ride on the #152 Addison bus on a Cubs home game day.)

(Try having a worldly conversation with the owner of Hoagie Hut.)

This is such a strange place to live. It really truly is.

happy autumn/home with the flu

2009-09-25T13:48:00.004-05:00

Summer has ended and autumn has arrived in Chicago. Maybe not in reality, as the weather has been rather balmy and about 80 degrees for the last few weeks. But when it finally gets here, boy oh boy, I just love this season. Time for jackets and scarves and my favorite tall boots. (For the closer-to-winter temperature cause those babies are thoroughly insulated.)

Pickin' out a pumpkin with Mr. T. Crunching leaves on my walks to and from the bus stop. Running to the country to visit my parents as we get the first fire going in the fireplace for the year. Work schedules permitting, taking a drive down to my old college town to see the gorgeous surrounding canopies of color all around. And of course, Halloween (in which we are attending a wedding!) and Thanksgiving (complete with my lil bro-bro coming home for three weeks from NYC).

It's also the time of year I usually get a little weathered from the changing climate, the back-to-school germs, the inevitable change that does me in as I battle my customer crowds and germs and viruses incubate. Sigh.

And so I am home-bound for the weekend, stocked up with miscellaneous entertainment from the Chicago Public Library and my own:
Films:
Classe Tous Risques
Taste of Cherry
Disc 2 of We Shall Remain
Northfork
Fight Club, Sense & Sensibility, old stuff to watch before the VHS tapes are gone...
Books:
The Winner Stands Alone
The Death of Bunny Monro (which I'm almost finished with....)
and assorted magazines such as Mojo, Reader's Digest, Chicago, Budget Travel, Time Out Chicago, Midwest Living (for the autumn crafts of COURSE) and this new premier issue of Afar to check out.

Better get busy....

PS UPDATE. Upon reviewing some of the Bloomington/Nashville/Brown County websites for potential weekend getaways, I am sad to announce ....RIP Little Nashville Opry. My poor ma n pa were looking so very much foward to their Asleep At the Wheel concert in a month, and I was even lookin' to join them. RIP you lil hut in the hills of Southern Indiana. Guess this will mean more time at the Gnaw Bone Flea Market....

9/9/09

2009-09-09T08:47:00.002-05:00

On this momentous day, I contain no particular musings of any sort of significance.

1. It is my Grandmere's birthday.
2. I do not work today.
3. I plan to do laundry.
4. I spent my extra money for the month shopping on Labor Day.
5. I think I'll do a CrockPot roast today.
6. I have a bit of a sore throat.
7. I slept in until 8:10 today.
8. My calves are achy.
9. I think I'll have some Cinnamon Kashi cereal for breakfast.

9/09/09 shall be remembered as another existential day.

on tenterhooks

2009-08-20T22:49:00.003-05:00

Again, falling down on the comedy these past few days! I suppose you can't really go hunting down comedy in the seemingly big bad world. It must come naturally. I'm not there yet.

Sunday marks 33 years on Planet Earth for this female. Has it really been 33 years?

Random thoughts:

1. I am tired of shoplifters.

2. I am really ready for fall and my big black boots again.

3. I enjoyed Audrey Niffenegger's new book so much that I wrote her to thank her for a glorious work of art. She wrote back describing these weeks before its release as being 'on tenterhooks' and thanks for reassuring her.

4. I had to look up the phrase 'on tenterhooks.'

5. I had originally gone to France in 2005 to write for five months and come back with finished rough draft of manuscript in hand. I did not, however, account for the language division when my brain cuts itself in half to speak another language.

6. I have itchy feet to get the heck outta Chicago.

For right now, that's all I've got.

Comedic Revival 2

2009-08-13T20:57:00.004-05:00

Boy, I am really falling down on the job with this one. (See previous posting for the challenge to myself.) The public is wearing me out, man! I could re-inact the phone call I took from a man on his phone driving while accessing Google maps with his screaming 2-year-old in the back seat. "I'm sorry, sir, but we do not offer babysitting services at our bookstore location."

But I have a real hard time finding humor in parents-who-don't-really-wanna-be-parents.

Or I could detail the near-brawl that occured on my bus ride home tonight, when an elderly man got on and starting yelling at a guy speaking Spanish on his cell phone. But that wasn't really funny.

Except for the Latina sister.

"Sit your ass down! What are you doing arguing with an 80-year-old Archie Bunker? You ain't gonna get nothin done with this!"

Over shouting matches picking up steam, her voice echoed through, "You don't have to argue with a bigot. You don't have to argue with a bigot, He is Archie Bunker. He is Archie Bunker," over and over again, she kept repeating, as I positioned my bag onto my right side so as to cushion myself should a punch get thrown my way.

It was getting pretty heated for about five minutes there.

Even NOT funnier is that this is about the third time in a one year period on this bus route that I have witnessed these occurences.

So what can I say, humor is a gift. It's a very particular gift. Especially humor writing. I used to be really good at it. Then all this 'big bad life' stuff got in me way and hardened me into serious intensity when I expressively write. I suppose if I didn't do it here, talk the serious smack I mean, then my silly jokester persona with my co-workers would be sacrificed for, you know, something a lil too heavy for the workplace.

It's good to have a variety about oneself, but what happens when one flavor out-spices the rest? It's like that chicken dish I whipped up last month when the French girl was here....Poulet a trop d'epices.

After I finish this awesome ghostly book (an advance copy of Audrey Niffenegger's new otherwordly book due out in September), I am going to throw myself back into some David Sedaris. And I also picked up the literary essay "Everything I Needed to Know About Being A Girl I Learned From Judy Blume." My husband laughed at me last year for grabbing all my old Judy Blume books at my parents' place in Indiana and doing a Judy Blume reading-binge one summer....

Comedic Revival

2009-08-09T13:18:00.003-05:00

One who knows life is full of pain, heartache, dolrums, fatigue and dead-ends has every capability of climbing to the funny side of life again. This is necessity. I will eventually revisit the other themes I've brought up in my brainstorms here i.e. visit from the French Cousine, Beautiful Girls/Boys of the Lost Time in a Mental Health Facility, 2005 Escapade to France, various short stories, and other shenanigans of life as they happen to me.

But to have these in any kind of organized artistic platform would be anything but me. As mentioned in the disclaimer, I shall discuss the "contemporary musing on people, the universe and all observations in between."

I operate in brainstorm-format. I sometime plop my head on that pillow at the end of each day and my brain will simply not turn off. This is both a blessing and a curse. I know millions around the world could easily commiserate on that notion. The trick is to join these commiserations into a manmade centrifugal force. And what a powerful centrifugal force humor and laughter is to a group of human beings.

In light of John Hughes' passing, and that unrivaled, intelligent comedy his work left behind, I want to revisit my own comedic energy. Many of us who have lived a little life, experienced a few experiences, traveled to different lands, fallen in and out of love, danced a polka and fallen down flat, stared up at the stars in wonderment...well, there is no better medicine than laughter.

For this week, August 9-15, 2009 I am going to challenge myself to write one comedic anecdote to have taken place on each day. Today is Sunday, our first day of the week, and I am busy in the air-conditioning in our first 97 degree day of the summer pulling together items for a friend's garage sale. Not sure what I will come up with today. But it is only just before 2pm, and I've got the rest of the day ahead of me.

Laughter Centre, activate!

I had no idea John Hughes was missing.

2009-08-07T21:30:00.003-05:00

And all this time I thought being a recluse merely meant one was depressed. If I didn't work with 'people' in retail, I'd be considered a recluse. Or perhaps I, too, ran away from a spotlight once or twice in my life. Yeah, that's what I'll pretend.

Speaking of 'people,' what a sweet tale. Fantastic writer.

I hope the world will wake up. I mean FINALLY wake up.

Open Letter to Mr. John Hughes

2009-08-06T18:00:00.005-05:00

Mr. Hughes,

My brother just called me up during my commute from that wacky North Shore and told me the news. My heart sank! You just called me dear a few weeks back! Here are the things I ought to have said to you a few weeks back when I waited on you in another Saturday night in the ol' life of this underachieving shopgirl:

This pile of Criterion movies you're purchasing....yours ought to be included in the Criterion Collection catalog. They are genuine classics.

Pretty in Pink...what a part of my life.... the North Shore and the divisionism of richies and those who'd rather just crawl under a rock. I often have Molly Ringwald moments at the ol' shop and I wonder what some of those customers might say if they saw where I lived. My husband looks like Duckie, you know. That may have even been one of the reasons I fell in love with him. I'm sure it was a topic of many discussions of what the world may have been like had Andy gone to Duckie instead....

Sixteen Candles...my favorite part of that movie is when the jock bullies are getting the Geeks out of the trunk of their car and the last Geek scoots over a little bit to assist so the bully can pick him up easier. Subtle hilarity is one of the greatest joys of my life.

Breakfast Club....I drive around the old haunts with my husband as we're out and about running our lil errands and on our way to losing ourself in the movie theater for a few hours.

Mister Hughes, it was a pleasure assisting you and I just wanted to tell you what a smile you brought to my face not only tonight but throughout my life.

Sincerely,
Underachieving Shopgirl, who hopes to one day be a CLASSIC like you.

PS. about that James Stewart box set....if you didn't finish them all here in this earthly realm hope you're sitting up there in Heaven watching Weird Science with Jimmy as we speak...

This one's for you...

Orphan

2009-08-05T17:46:00.005-05:00

Saw the movie Orphan today. I hesitated.... one side of me just simply loves a scary creepy movie yet the other side of me has to be careful with themes. Art, film, books....to experience something then find it roaming around there in the universe like that. Sometimes I experience artistic sensory overload. I prefer it this way. Makes one not feel so alone in the universe, nest-ce pas?

I read Time Travelers Wife while on medical leave on what they call 'pelvic rest' after a specific sort of trauma had occured. A nurse from the insurance company called to check on my pregnancy after she noticed something was happening from recent medical claims and I had just gotten to the part where the character in the book was in the the same hospital I was in after several days of lots of blood and no more little heartbeat or movement inside the womb. I had just gone through it....this same very experience....had that book sitting on the shelf for months...and just picked it up on a whim...same exact hospital as mentioned in the book and well....I just kinda lost it on the phone with that nurse. They say to stay away from certain themes and surround yourself with sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, but sometimes connecting to a fictional tale at that particular moment of pain is kinda God's way of sayin, "I wish this world was perfect and one never had to endure pain, but darlin' (at this point God brushed the hair out of my teary eyes with a tad of an Elvis-like swagger) women's pain is one of the most defining moments of divinity you may find yourself floating in. I am Here."

Mr. T and I caught the first showing of the film Orphan this morning. Even the opening scene was difficult for me to watch. Flashbacks. Surrounded by doctors and nurses in a hazy fog hearing, "I'm so sorry for your loss." Over and over and over again. Sitting on a bench outside the hospital while Mr. T went to pull up the car two years ago, my white box filled with items from the March of Dimes as a woman was rolled up next to me with her newborn baby in her arms and balloons and flowers and family all around. Yes, the opening scene of today's movie and whispers of it throughout the film were very difficult reminders.

But if I had to express myself and my experience, an angry horror film isn't too far off.

Sooooooo soooo many themes in this movie and I don't want to give away any of the twists. Controversial? What ISN'T controversial these days?

Anyway....

my heart feels a lil heavy during this time of the year.
i'd change the lyric in Lucinda Williams' 'Heaven Blues' from 'mother' to 'child.'

Theme Song

2009-08-03T20:05:00.001-05:00

fitting in

2009-07-28T22:21:00.005-05:00

i have racing thoughts in these post-euphoria moments of a twelve (!!) day headache. not to mention VALIUM. the CT came back clear, just more imbalances with my damn thyroid and upped synthroid dosages and blah blah blah.

this is that type of information that strangers cringe when they read on the internet. WHO THE HELL CARES?

that wasn't the first time i got my head checked. it was checked previously by a jumbo jet. WOOOHOOOO. when you feel heavy metal............

i don't like to talk about that much.

mostly because i don't quite understand.

not even any artwork i've ever attempted to produce has been able to explain.

so i've just shoved it all under the rug and bring it out every so often to ponder a bit.

before my computer crashes again, though, i will say this. i am almost 33 years old and i did not think that at this age i still would not quite know where i fit into the universe.

this brings me great sadness.

does anyone else out there feel this way?

i am going to go to youtube and watch weird al yankovic videos now. i'll have you know i performed FAT today at work for a few select coworkers.

"your butt is wiiiide"

I totally want to write to Gregory House, M.D.

2009-07-23T16:11:00.006-05:00

This would be a great episode of House. Girl with mysterious week-long headache, virtually normal CT scans, then starts predicting the future. Turns out one of her dental fillings is made of Kryptonite and she is secretly related to Superman. Then it turns out to just be a delusion he is experiencing while on hiatus in the Mental Hospital.

But these really are shots of my brain. They gave me a cd at my appointment today so I've been spending the afternoon researching the internet on how to read CT scans of the brain.

I really don't know what they all mean so I just gotta wait for my young stoner Indian doctor to call me back.

And this photo here is the last time you will ever catch me on a roller coaster again.

Writing to you from high-dosage Aleve and Valium land,
Nikki

fatiguée...

2009-07-21T22:53:00.005-05:00

My two weeks of being the elder responsible cousin/auntie/translator was rather grueling. I swear the roller coasters thrashed my brain around in its skullcage a bit too much and I have had a headache for almost a week now.

But Yosemite Sam and Foghorn were there to catch me so I'll be alright.

La petite française est bien partie aujourd'hui. Moi je ne peux pas imaginer être parent d'un teenager de cette époque de tous les devices éléctroniques. Les texts, SMS, les sites web, les portables, les appareils-photos, les Nintendo DS...c'est trop pour un jeune esprit!

More stories to come....

Bonne nuit.

NYC sous la pluie....

2009-06-27T11:11:00.006-05:00

It rained every day for one week straight.

I reckon the theme of this trip was 'No Plans Allowed.' I had plans to spread out a picnic blanket in Central Park and work on my novel. I had plans to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island. I had plans to take the bus to Atlantic City to win one million dollars.

The morning of Atlantic City, Ryan bro-bro and I woke up early and headed to the cornershop to board our bus with the old gamblers. We even had matching outfits that day and were looking forward to finding gaudy sparkling Atlantic City visors for a thousand more photo opportunites of sequined pizazz. But the owner found us outside and told us there was a 'problem' and that we needed to hightail it down to 179th and Broadway to catch the bus. We hopped on the subway, never a thought of discouraging words passing though our minds, and found our fellow travelers waiting outside the Dominican cornershop.

When the bus driver arrived, there was a long pause as we saw him walking back and forth through the tinted windows of the bus and rearranging passengers. He opened the doors with a look of discern on his face and announced, "I have some really bad news. I can only take four of you. There are only four seats left."

There were about eight pushy old ladies who shoved up close to him and he was forced to select the Biggest Looking Spenders.

A big old New York City Waaaaaaaaaah, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah seemed to rattle the George Washington Bridge and Ryan and I hung our heads low and shuffled into the cornershop for our $34 refund.

Regardless of losing out on my millions, I managed to have a grand old time anyway. I'm a fly-be-the-pant-of-my-seats kinda traveler anyway and it's all part of the big adventure of life, n'est-ce pas?

Some highlights included:

* August Osage County, a play originally from Chicago's Steppenwolf, starring Phylicia Rashad. Wonderful performances, though it's closing in two weeks.

*Vieux Farka Toure at the Highline Ballroom. A spirited Malian guitarist, son of Ali Farke Toure. If you have an opportunity to see an African performance, I guarantee you spirits will be lifted. They may sing of sad topics but rarely will you find a minor key.

*Screening of a Youssou N'Dour documentary "I Bring What I Love." A very important film for all Westerners to see...follows his journey of pushing boundaries in Senegal for singing about his Sufi-Muslim beliefs and proceeding to win a Grammy.

*Walking across the George Washington Bridge at night in the wind and rain singing Bon Jovi as we entered New Jersey.

*Attending the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island.

*Endless wandering.

Then I come home to Michael Jackson mania. Regardless of your opinions of how his life became a farce of the media, what a spirit. I hope they bring him back home to Gary. Build a new Graceland there.

Back to work....

Packin' my bags...

2009-06-17T22:41:00.004-05:00

New York City will be New Yuck City as my Gruesomes family*
raincloud follows me out east. But I shall prevail. If I could just
figure out how to pack my funky rainboots without having to check a damn bag...

Got the newly refurbished Mac laptop to transport with me
this time around so here's to some happy writings...soft breezes of nutty observation... and happy travels...

à bientót

* Refers to the Addams Family/Munsters-esque version of the creepy neighbors in the Flinstones.

Angling for an Angle

2009-06-07T13:34:00.003-05:00

as I take a break this Sunday from freeze-drying my winter clothes , I find myself in a pensive mood....contemplating everything from an aching hip to work to deciding if i really want to hear Iggy Pop chante en francais.

Comme d'habitude, I'm all over the place.

It would be incredible to make a living from my creative energies, or at least I would think that to be true. But then again I look at the implications of adding 'business' to any kind of pleasure or hobby and the outcome, I would suspect, might be anything but joyful.

Do you ever watch that Simon Schama's Power of Art show on PBS? I look at our contemporary, lightning-speed society and I wonder where future masterpieces may be found. It's hard to say. What is fleeing from us now? The high cost of mega-wattage, picture-perfect celebrity or the slow-cooked souls standing in dim corners with empty pockets and displaced talent?

Too much to contemplate on a dreary June afternoon in the big gray city. I leave you with a youtube clip. The ballad of an unfortunate Extra, bemusing David Bowie into song. Bwahahaha....

as summer rolllllllls in....

2009-05-29T21:55:00.004-05:00

tired. getting old. can't keep up.

but i love it. arthritic knee and all.

-little brother arrived tuesday and we surprised the whole hoosier clan. i have a newfound love for SURPRISES. i want to work them in more often into the rigmarole of life.

-saw Arabian Nights at Lookingglass Theatre. as usual, Mary Zimmerman makes theatre a painting-come-to-life. but I have to wonder, WhAt WaS wItH the FaRt JoKes?

-waited on John Hughes at work. I was like, 'Whatza happenin' hot stuff?' and he gestured his hands into L-shapes as if they were camera shots angling my face and pitched an idea to me about Pretty In Pink 2. don't tell Mr. T the husband but he does kinda resemble Duckie in that certain light....

-headed back to NYC in a few weeks. I plan to ride roller coasters, go to Coney Island Freak Shows, the circus, roller skating, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, win a million dollars or two in Atlantic City and kick off my summer righteously in the three new pairs of shoes I bought last week.

-my little 14 year old cousin is coming to stay with me in July. from where? FRANCE! she doesn't speak english so je crois que nous serions attachees aux hanches. just too bad i don't have any vacation time left or much of a staff to cover.........

crrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak <-----that's the sound of my old lady knee. another wild Friday night dans la vie fabuleuse de Nikki....

R.I.P. Marley 1993-2009

2009-05-14T23:47:00.004-05:00

He was the silliest lil boy kitty. "Ask my older brother about his cat."

This little fuzzy outgoing black cat followed one of my brothers back to a party after leaving a bar and slept on his chest all night. The next morning when I awoke, still finishing up high school at the time, my brother comes in my room....Nikki, want a kitty?

The street kitty used to hang around McDonalds in our hometown where he was fed cheeseburger scraps and therefore went crazy anytime he thought he smelled Macdo. He was terrified of brooms and thunderstorms. He had a thick thick thick coat and when he would groom himself sometimes the gray hairs got stuck in his mouth so it looked like he had a little old man kitty beard.

Was he named for Ziggy or Bob? We don't really know. We just knew he was happy like a reggae song.

Marley never got along with the kitty I already adopted, Minga (1992-2005) so he stayed at my parents' house until just this last Tuesday where he died in the company of his human Granny and BooBoo, another black cat who traveled in the carnival before landing on the Indiana homestead.

RIP little Marley. The funny lil cubby/kitty all stuffed with fluff. Sweet sweet lil boy he was....

pulling a Madonna

2009-05-12T22:17:00.003-05:00

Well, not THAT Madonna. Ca serait sacrilege!

But what I mean is that I am reinventing myself.

In a small way.

Kinda.

Well, it's more of the journey, I suppose, so it's not a Reinvention.

I am GOING BACK TO SCHOOL! Over the next few weeks I will map out the Big Plan. Going slowly, semester by semester, but I am moving into a new field of work.

It's such a lengthy, cumbersome, problematic, HAYWIRE kind of territory, but all the more reason for me to pitch in a helping hand.

The rehabilitation of those in crisis mode.

I refuse to say 'mental health,' because I firmly believe that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING has an ounce of mental crises at some point in his or her life. If one cannot confess to this statement, then one is a liar.

I have been spending days with Grandmere. She is still frail. Was not healing from a back surgery and now going back in for another hip surgery. Her spirits are down. She does not want to talk about everything. But I love her. And I understand her....

My grandmere told me she started to look forward to going to the shelter during class when Air Raids alarmed because one of her older classmates used to play Blue Danube on the piano...

Bob Ross Days

2009-05-01T20:52:00.008-05:00

The husband finished training in his new job and therefore is settled into his 3-12am shift.

I don't see much of him. For awhile. It's a lot to get used to.

Cooking for one, hanging out alone, sitting on the bus alone. Again.

But in the big grand scheme of things, more people are roaming out there alone than we probably estimate. I notice patterns in the behavior of several of my regular customers, and even among the folks who seemingly have incredibly active social lives. They tell me all of these wonderful grand plans and plentitude of activities to keep themselves busy, and I listen and listen and listen. "Really?" I think to myself....

I suppose for those with children this concept of being 'alone' is alien. To know you have an extension of your self, your creation, breathing life and looking always in your direction...perhaps solitude becomes a thing of the past. I do not know. Does it?

I look at my cat and she seems to say, 'Oh. Hey Mom,' as she slithers back under the bed.

But I know that I have overcome enormous struggles and have learned to cope with doubt, isolation, and all the nastiness that life's difficulties bring forth and I am stronger and wiser for it.

"I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries."
-Simon & Garfunkel

In these times of 'isolation,' for lack of better word, I do turn to certain figures for inspiration. Particularly when you've gone through your phone list and left about ten messages for others who are busy out there doing other things.

See, when Bob Ross found himself alone with a canvas and a low budget television camera, he might talk aloud to himself and say something like this:

"Little more black, little more blue. And we'll just put that in using little crisscross strokes or--or little X's, whatever you want to call them. Whatever."

And in the course of 20 minutes, he'd have a new landscape to reflect upon.

What a beautiful man he was....

I want to get out my supplies now and invent.

"There."

il était une fois...

2009-04-05T09:17:00.003-05:00

Je vais faire mes exercises ici. Je n'ai pas beaucoup d'occasion pour utiliser mon français, sauf les petits messages aux familles francaises par couriel. J'ai essayé un travail pour un bureau qui specialise en voyage european par train mais c'était quelque chose qui me fait vomir dans l'esprit...repondrant aux appels en anglais, en francais, en québecois. Peut-être si j'essayerai un peu plus fort le travail aurait un peu plus facile avec chaque semaine. Mais le téléphone? C'est trop difficile à m'expliquer sans l'usage des mains, le regard sur le visage, la langue de corps si tu veux. Et sans le mot ècrit, les accents ouvrent la porte d'une salle des gros problemes.

C'est dommage que mon pere et mes tantes n'apprendent jamais la langue de leur mère. Mais je comprende la situation trop bien d'être une jeune femme toute seule dans une nouvelle terraine. Je ne peux pas imaginer tout ça avec un mari, une grande famille avec les soeurs qui ont le même age de ma mère et les petits enfants. C'est le shocke culturelle...bien sûr. C'est normale. Et je pense que c'est quelque chose qui doit être manditoire. Les lois d'éxperience nous enseignent l'empathie.

Ma grandmère connait un univers d'histoires de sa vie, et je passe chaque mercredi avec elle en ésperant qu'elle me raconter. C'est le focus de mon nouveau projet écrit. Peut-être le plus important de ma vie. Et la sienne.

Et maintenant, en anglais...

I am doing my lil exercises here. I don't have a lot of opportunity to use my french, except for those little email exchanges with my french family. I once tried a job in an office specializing in European train travel but it was something that made my head vomit, answering calls (with one-hour hold times) in English, French and Quebecois Canadian French. Maybe if I had stayed with it a little bit longer it all would have become a lot easier with practice each week. But the telephone? It's much too hard to express myself without the use of my hands, facial expressions, or any kind of body language. And without having the written word in place, those spoken accents open the door to a whole roomful of problems.

It's a pity my dad or my aunts didn't learn the language of their mother. But I understand all too well that situation of being a young woman in a new, foreign land all alone. I couldn't image having done that with a husband ...and a big family with sisters the same age of my mother...and children. It's cultural shock, a normal human condition. I think immersing onself like that into a cultural shellshock ought to be manditory in life. The laws of experience teach empathy.

My grandmère holds an entire universe in her life story, and I've been spending each Wednesday with her hoping she will tell me one more and one more and one more piece of it. It's the focus of my new writing project. Maybe the most important one of my life. And of hers.

quelque chose charmant

2009-03-26T17:49:00.003-05:00

Black Orpheus.

not only does this movie make me want to visit Brazil, but it also makes me want to learn Portugese AND join in a samba school...

musical interlude

2009-03-22T13:12:00.001-05:00

one of my favorite songs of my life.
clever youtube interpretation.

Philadelphia cont.

2009-03-15T07:56:00.011-05:00

It was a whirlwind day and we squeezed in as much as humanly possible in an 11 hour period before our bus took us back to 42nd St.

Philadelphia Museum of Art had some great pieces in its collection. A quick run whizzing past the Impressionists
galleries complemented all the stuff I've seen over and over back home at the Art Institute and glided through in Paris. Lots of wacky Marcel Duchamp pieces. And my favorite silly painting...that Joan Miro 'Dog Barking at the Moon.' I don't know why I love that one so much.

Of course it is common tourist tradition to run up the steps on the museum à la Rocky. Behold the bronze statue in the upper right photo. I bet that little girl posing never even saw the movie. Funny what statues make people do.

I would definitely go back to Philadelphia. It was a strange city to classify, as we had discussed with some student friends of my brothers over dinner that night. It has its history, but then it felt like Detroit in some parts. It had that fantastic food market (what was that called??), where you could order Amish-prepared apple dumplings or BBQ or, of course, cheesesteaks. But then it had as many homeless beggars as Chicago does, yet in a more concentrated area. I could only imagine Philadelphia's homeless population carries an overt disgust for its anthem of 'Brotherly Love' day in and day out. When traveling, there's always a lot to be told from the eyes of the city's homeless...

note to self: must watch that tv show people are always telling me to watch 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.'

Philadelphia

2009-03-04T08:13:00.005-06:00

I had never been to Philadelphia before this trip. It awoke an urge to go visit our nation's historical towns again, most definitely. I was 4 when I did Washington, DC, but I sadly remember a Burt Reynolds film being shot in my grandparents' condo complex more than I remember being inside the White House...

Here I am in the wind (again) in front of Independence Hall, where the Constitution of the United States was signed in case you don't remember.

It's also two days before my hair was chopped by a student at bumble & bumble hair school in Manhattan. He did a good job, but I can't get it to look as cool as he did that day so I guess you'll have to wait for a shot of the new 'do...

Anyway, back to our nation's history.

Over there is the Liberty Bell. They had a strange modern museum building built around it, not at all like in Back to the Future. You have to go through intense security to get inside. Ryan (my brother) and I stood around it for a few minutes and had the giggles because we were the only blatant Americans standing there in the item of purest essence of our nation's history. There were a group of Indian families posing for group portraits in front of the Bell, some Greeks (I believe that was their language) doing some posed gestures for the camera, and a Chinese bus tour group making their way in as we squeezed our way out. It was interesting to experience. Here stood my brother and I, each 1/4 French, 1/8 Osage Native American, 1/8 Irish and 50% American Mutt, next to all of these other global identities. That truly is America in a nutshell.

More Philadelphia to come...

New York City, NYC, pretty mean when it wants to be...

2009-03-01T07:45:00.004-06:00

it was a cold and blurry trip.

squeezed a lot in. but MAN was it windy. i felt like the animated Addams Family in an episode of the Flintstones, where the weather just seemed to follow them everywhere they went.

here I am posing near little brother's place on the upper upper west side, George Washington Bridge behind me.

some highlights? art museums, touring our nations history in Philadelphia, FOOOOD, the Strand bookstore, and the girl on the subway.

Ryan and I were headed home for the night on the A train, stuffed full of assorted cakes and ethnic meals and windblown beyond recognition. I glanced over to my brother sitting on my left and caught wind of a knitting project a few seats over, across the way. Knitting always catches my eye because I don't know how some knitters and crocheters can detail such intricacies on mass transit.

I looked up from the piece she was knitting and looked at the woman. I had to try and restrain myself with giggles. At least in the beginning. She was wearing a hat, that she obviously knit. It was complete with cat ears on the top. She was a tall and lanky figure, sitting with her legs twisted and intertwined with each other yet stretching into two seats. She had a pointy chin, thick glasses, and was holding her knitting needles about two inches from her eyes with a strange smirk on her face. Her handbag also had a cat's face crocheted on its front flap, resting on her sprawling pose.

I kept peeking back over to her to catch a better glimpse of her project, until my little brother caught me mid-turning-of-the-head and did a knowing gesture with his eyebrows and I just LOST IT!

It was at that moment I realised she was knitting a sweater for her CAT! I bursted out in laughter so hard and bellyaching and it wouldn't stop!

I quieted down after about a minute straight and breathed deeply.

Then I glanced back over and it started up again, this time lasting about 5 subway stops.

I just laughed and laughed and laughed until I was lightheaded and dizzy and I'd have to catch my breath.

Colombus Circle, expressing past the Central Park stops, 168th...the laughter just kept coming and coming and coming and I couldn't stop myself!

I thought the paramedics were gonna have to come and rescue me from asphyxiation!

I couldn't look at her.

So many character developments were racing through my mind.

She was like a character Kristen Wiig would have created on SNL.

She was the epitome of what happens when you live alone in a big city for much too long.

I was envisioning her having tea parties with her cats in a one-room Washington Heights studio apartment.

All I wish is that I would have been able to control my laughter long enough to snap a shot of her. I hadn't laughed like that in I-can't-even-remember-how-long-ago.

i love this song

2009-02-15T20:24:00.005-06:00

when i first heard it, i asked Mr. T (my new reference to the Husband, I've decided) if it was an old Patti Smith song. Then perhaps I thought of the Violent Femmes next time I heard it. No, someone new. Old sound. Love it.

That is all for today.

Somedays, all ya need is a song.

a few days until New York City...

2009-02-14T09:39:00.004-06:00

My younger brother has settled into NYC life over the past few years an has seemed to adapt well to it.

I, on the other hand, did not find any sort of peace and harmony to the land when I set off for its landscape over the years. At one point in my very early twenties I even walked around with a stack of resumes, applying for jobs in Manhattan, just to see if something would 'click' for me there.

I found minor frustrations around every other corner, and while they were minor, I ended each day feeling agitated. The turnstile not being calibrated properly so I lost a subway ride on my pass and had to either wait fifteen minutes or go buy another fare. My hotel reservation being overbooked and having to find a friend in Brooklyn for a last-minute place to sleep. Holding on for dear life with a stack of suitcases on a bus to LaGuardia. Ordering a lunch in a busy restaurant and not having any place to sit and eat it properly except out in the cold, walking aimlessly. A jerky shuttle driver dropping me off five blocks from where I needed to meet a friend and then giving me wrong directions as I lugged my suitcase.

But just as minor frustrations occur here and there in any sort of life in any kinda landscape, I still enjoy going back for a visit. I have experienced some equally amazing moments and observed some wonderful sights each visit.

1. Three African gentlemen were carrying their belongings in large cloth sacks and just walking around with wide eyes and dropped jaws inhaling the atmosphere as they stared up to the skyscrapers as they witnessed something never before seen in their new journey in a new land.

2. Being on a 'guest list' for Joey Ramone's 50th birthday party days after his passing and a Little Debbie food fight at the finale, cream-filling splattered all over my hair.

3. A cab driver getting lost in Brooklyn and turning off the meter to find the best route for his weary passenger. Also waiting for me to be let in the building to make sure I'd be alright.

4. Lengthy conversations with strangers in a bar about the drive from the East Coast to the smokestack filled industrial wastelands of Indiana before you see the Chicago skyline.

5. The kindness of the food service employee at the Statue of Liberty cafeteria.

6. Walking around Immigration Hall at Ellis Island.

7. Trying on a crazy dress with cowgirls imprinted all over I could never afford at a cute boutique run by two Japanese girls...

Anyhoo, I am headed to NYC again for an extended weekend later in the week and I look forward to future discoveries.

hibrrrrrrnating some more

2009-02-04T17:11:00.008-06:00

Oh the cold weather.

It gets the best of me. I never have two consecutive days off so I try to make the best time of my free days. But that dang Chicago cold!

Attempted to write some more. Fueled by coffee and warm fuzzy slippers and itchy brain cells, I 'vomited' on paper some more. Kind of like I'm doing now. Fruitless. Perhaps I need to re-read Stephen King's On Writing. Whatever happened to my copy?

There is a tale in me that I want to tell. Or as some say, perhaps everyone's got a book in 'em. What carries the stories that we hear in our lifetimes? The relatedness of our journeys? The fantasy? The hook? The character development? The dilemma? The unique voice?

I draw from a unique set of experiences. I have this itch to explain them and paint them and share them, but they will not hold any meaning to me unless they are understood. Well, not even understood, but I do ask that they have the ability to connect to the reader. I try out some of these stories/experiences in spoken stories with my husband and a few select friends, and the reaction I get is not one of connection. "Do you understand? Does this make sense?" And the answer is always various stages of 'No.' If I can't allow them to make sense for those close to me, how do I know what connection lies beyond?

I once tried my hand participating in an art show. I don't think it's fair to label myself an artist because I do not possess the God-given gift that others do. But as a creative person, I wanted to challenge myself in a new way. It was a staff show that took place at a gallery in Pilsen, joined together by my coworkers at the time of Museum of Contemporary Art. The pieces included installations, paintings, drawings, videos, you name it - coming from all levels of talent. It was a nerve-wracking experience for me. But I did it.

My piece was something I came up with as a means of connecting a conversation with other artistic mediums. Being a fan of music and such a lover of words, I often wonder what stories lie behind the reality of a song. I scoured thrift shops for the perfect worn-out stereo speaker surrounded with the perfect type of wood to which I could burn the words. I skipped an Easter Sunday with the family and sat in my old apartment by the lake listening to music on the radio as my woodburning wand spent 15 plus hours engraving a message across the broken-down sound system. The message was as ephemeral as a three-minute song and doesn't even bear repeating at this point, but it was clear to at least one person.

Someone sitting at the gallery relayed the message to me that a man came over to her to comment specifically on how much he enjoyed my piece. All of those works in that space and he chose to comment on mine and mine alone.

That's all that mattered to me, especially in remembrance of everything that had happened a few weeks later in my life.

Maybe one day I'll muster up the courage to try it all again.

hibernating

2009-01-25T11:04:00.004-06:00

slow news day. again. tried to sit down to work on Great American Novel and nothing but blah blah blah flowed from within today. bitter cold is back. leftovers for lunch today. coffee in hand. kitty sleeping under bed. hubby working all day, open to close.

could talk about billy corgan, my new customer. or slumping music sales. but blah blah blah.

when it's a slow news day, i whisk myself back to France.

Journal entry from Fall 2005, my last Parisian excursion. new commentary following.

aie aie aie
such a strange time to be here in paris. globalisation slammed right up in your face. fires burning. social unrest. capitalist hierarchies. wealthy nations not comprehending why third-world natives want to grow in lands of opportunity. i guess this is it. the future. no more hope, just a lot of war blowing up all over the planet. this can't be it. this can't be our reality. somewhere there's gotta be a light.

when i get back stateside i think we need to band together and spread some love, kids. where are all the hippies? where's all the action? did we get lazy and just decide to spew our opinions on the internet? there is a big friggin world out there and, babies, i'm right in the middle of it, and i don't really think it's time to laugh and fantasize and play in imagination-land anymore. America is no longer disneyland, Wile E. Coyote has finally caught Roadrunner, and Starbucks has invaded Paris. The world is morphing back to a Pangean state, but it's people are not. I like to laugh and roll around in the balls at Chuck E. Cheese and ride bumper cars at the fair just like everyone else, but it ain't funny anymore...

I've been sitting on the steps of the Parisian opera house each nite before I catch my train back to the fiery suburbs, just watching the world pass before my eyes, and after a million Americans stop by to ask me directions to the Eiffel Tower, I'm tired. Really friggin tired.

By the way, I need a job. Anybody hiring? I'll go anywhere.

I found your journal (from Amanda's) and was just catching up on your great adventures! You are having the wonderful time you knew you would and learning more about your soul - that is a good thing!

I am sure you will find just the right time to start writing. You can be the female (hah!) David Sedaris of Paris. Maybe you should find him to see if he needs an assistant? That would be a great job for you.

Good luck with the adventure and I will keep looking every day for more fun.

Take care - Love Teresa

Several years later, and with a new president in tow, I feel rejuvenated. Running off to France for five months is not an option at this time, but participating in Obamarama global overhaul is.

Inspiring.

connective tissues

2009-01-18T18:30:00.004-06:00

In the spirit of subconscious signs that I am to follow without speaking of (my secret new year's resolution which I just broke), I am finding lots of resonance in simply enjoying moments. Any film I watch, any new piece of music I discover, I am allowing it to resonate, sans critique, sans comparison. Just enjoying for the sake of enjoying. Certainly there will be things that don't jive, people who don't float my boat, anger that I will find repulsive, unneccessary angst, but I will quickly move on and seek the next moment in my path.

Am I on a path? Certainly I must be. We all must be.

A year and a half ago, I spent a few days in the hospital delivering an almost five-month old fetus. The extremes of emotion were relentlessly brutal. What was John Lennon saying...life is what happens when you're busy making other plans? I was preparing to take that journey toward parenthood, to step away from Self, to devote my world to this new creation and I was neck-deep making those plans.

Then death stops you in your tracks.

And you return to the Self to deal with it.

We never found a scientific explanation for the loss, so I turn to the Spirit to duke things out. When you turn to the Spirit, see, you no longer have to deal with the Self.

I was in the hospital two other times prior to the miscarriage. And the focus at that time was a psychiatric focus where I was forced to turn away from the Spirit and deal with the Self. Because I was told the Self was not well. I often wonder what those 'friends' who veered me down that road are up to.

These were all very strange times in my life. And they seem like a distant dream I once had. They don't even feel like they happened.

But the point of all this is that we are all searching. Or rather, those of us who are truly ALIVE are still searching. This is only further demonstrated to me when a big rock star comes in and buys Paulo Coelho and self-help spiritual guides from me.

I often wonder where my focus should lie in my Great American Novel I need to chisel away at. Maybe the topic of miscarriage is a journey I was guided to write about?

coming into focus

2009-01-14T13:43:00.003-06:00

I envy those friends of mine who knew early in life what their calling might be. Particularly those of the creative persuasion, and how productive their hobbies and passions actually turn out.

While dawdling in a little bit of everything, or as I like to say 'Jill of all trades, master of nothing,' I want to fine tune all of my interests into one sweeping finale. I am not a photographer, I am not a sports fanatic. I can knit the most minimum of all basics, paint when I feel inspired, play a few songs on the piano and strum some sounds on the guitar. I truly enjoy writing, but have been having major struggles finding things to write ABOUT.

On a day like today, where the snow and antibiotics have kept me indoors baking banana bread and zoning out on television, all I can do is sit and watch the thermometer fall and rise to zero.

So my grand focus is a rather broad one. I just want to tell stories.

Stories.

Bonjour 2009

2009-01-11T08:47:00.003-06:00

Another year dead and gone. 2008 was a quick year, it seemed. It started off with a Vegas wedding, continued through last winter with long work hours, awoke in spring with more work. Summer lent itself to a few outdoor music and food festivals, September allowed for a quick week in Florida and the year rounded out with Chicago politics on a global stage.

And snow.

This photo was shot just outside my home in the early evening of a wintry blast of a storm just before Christmas. The snowfall, in its moment of conception in this local realm surrounding me, is certainly heavenly in its own right. The calamity of life lessens, the air seems to whisper softly and everything looks gorgeous.

We won't talk about what happens over the course of the days following a heavy snowfall.... of the polluted black snow mounds, slush, and potholes. That would ruin the mystical quality of the winter songs Mother Nature sings.

(But it suffices to say it doesn't last long.)

2009 begins another year of hard work. For most everyone, it seems. The economy is what it is. I feel a serious tone almost everywhere I turn, which may not be such a bad thing after all. I have always lived a frugal lifestyle, as has my husband, so this isn't any new contender in the fight. But I do anticipate a sort of change among people. Will it be like the snowfall? Peaceful in its meager beginnings? But leaving behind a very difficult and ugly aftermath?

Only time will tell, I suppose.

Some Bests of 2008? Getting married, Slumdog Millionaire, Obamapalooza, Paul Weller's 22 Dreams album, a customer stepping up to pay as I was ordering my lunch, getting back in touch with old friends, Lucinda Williams' Little Honey, several Netflix finds and a new television set.

It's the little things, you know?

World Music

2008-11-16T11:31:00.003-06:00

As a person who enjoys the written word, story-telling and the art of proverbial jaunts, I have found a hobby over the years in becoming more familiar with music and words different from my own. Music for the sake of music.

I have spent my entire life listening to the words and the message and the story in Western song rather than recognizing the ephemera of it all and just enjoying the moment that music is able to give us listeners.

If I had a knack for creating music like so many of those whom I admire, I would pull together a band of intercontinental sounds and languages and throw them all in a casserole dish and let it bake for hours. Sadly, my guitar-playing is rough, my elementary school piano lessons have gathered dust in the attic of my brain, I have the rhythm of a rickety worn-out electric train and I can only play Oh Susannah on the steel drum. Therefore, I will leave the music makers to the sounds that curate the non-verbal exhibitions of our lives.

This is an extraordinary Ethiopian recording I stumbled upon. As I said before, I'm not a fan of 'reviews' but rather the evocativeness of this exchange. Google it, order yourself a copy of this and escape for 62 minutes. I just can't get enough of this record.

Barack Obama

2008-11-05T09:24:00.007-06:00

It was an overwhelming sight to see in downtown Chicago last night. I didn't step into the rally but was able to soak up the peace and love on the streets of a town where I've meandered a majority of my life. I had never seen a moment of joy in Chicago quite like last night. Vendors filled the areas surrounding Grant Park, selling everything from light-up buttons to dollar bills with Obama's face imprinted...American flags sold by Central American accents, smiling so full of life and wonderment, watching the tears flow....

Did you watch the Young@Heart documentary yet? The epic journey of their performance of the following song is a pretty spectacular sight to see. (I couldn't find a film clip on youtube so thanks to Lee Dorsey/Allen Toussaint and the person who posted it for this incredible song...)

And speaking of hearts, who would have thought POLITICS could have one?

I'll be back soon with some photos from last night. We are on the threshold of some very powerful times....

'Twas the night before election day...

2008-11-03T22:14:00.003-06:00

The air is tense.

I am thinking about wandering the crowds tomorrow night in Grant Park.

Thinking about it.

It may be too much too handle.

Tomorrow only knows.

Vote for Obama.

2008-10-25T09:04:00.002-05:00

I love this clip.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

iLike

2008-10-18T09:59:00.004-05:00

I woke up this Saturday morning with my cup of coffee, relaxing before I head into a much-dreaded closing retail shift this afternoon. And every Saturday night for that matter. Not much to comment regarding the news. I am an Obama supporter and that's all I have to conclude from the latest political farce. The economy sucks, sales are slumping, everyone is on edge (both co-workers and my customers) and there are a million problems to be fixed. No sense dwelling on the bad. Instead I shall focus on a few of my favorite things à la Julie Andrews.

In no particular order.

1. The new yarn I bought this week. It's knitting season! I haven't picked it up the last few years so I had to borrow a knitting dvd from the library to refresh my memory on a few steps.

2. Ricky Gervais. He has a particular twinkle in his eye that entertains me so. Have I already commented on this? I don't remember. After watching the film Ghost Town I have concluded that the Ricky Gervais eye-twinkle is similar to that of the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz.

3. The new Lucinda Williams release. This one, Little Honey, is like listening to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road for the first time. Not so much in its sound, but in the sensation of hearing something so incredibly new and rockin and refreshing. I have seen her in concert several times and was even invited to the Soundstage taping at WTTW long, long ago. She is just the coolest. Incredible record.

4. Blindness. This film was genuinely disturbing but I was captivated throughout the entire picture. I was unfamiliar with the book but plan to read it once I get through all the other thirty books in line before it. I don't know why I seem to be drawn to apocalyptic themes so often....hmmm.

5. Halloween music. In particular, the latest Little Steven's Underground Garage release Halloween-a-Go-Go, the Classics from the Crypt album and an old Rhino release Halloween Hits with all the whimsical favorites such as Monster Mash, the Blob and Ghostbusters. You cannot deny the magnificence of the Monster Mash. I wish someone like Nick Cave or David Byrne would do a cover...

6. The 7-11 voter cups. I had no idea when I wandered into a 7-11 on my way to the train yesterday morning that I could CHOOSE an Obama, McCain or Undecided cup. I know I said I wasn't going to mention politics in this blog entry but I got a lot of questions about that cup I was holding. I told them it was a new blend at Starbucks - the Obama blend: a smooth, rich flavor with hints of anti-anxiety medication for a rich, robust experience.

6. Pretenders' Break Up the Concrete. Fantastic energy in this one. This is one to purchase and not download because the packaging includes a paper sleeve you can plant in soil and see some sprouts. I've always mentioned what an incredible incentive it would be to buy physical discs if there was a Willy Wonka golden ticket factor played in the surprise of it all...

So speaking of avalanched cd sales, I must now prepare myself for work.

SIGH!

To Sir, With Love

2008-10-14T22:15:00.002-05:00

God, I love this movie. I just watched it again for the first time in years.

Discipline.

2008-10-13T21:37:00.006-05:00

I have been trying to devote a little time each day to a concrete writing submission project, but I fall down on the job each time. I'm not going to beat myself up over this. I work a ridiculous work schedule, never have two consecutive days off, and if I do have free time I like to spend it with my husband. It would be fantastic to find myself an agent and receive some spectacular publishing house funding to concentrate solely on W-R-I-T-I-N-G, but I am well aware of the reality of 'luck' and find refuge in the mere fun of it all.

As I sift through candid writings from days of yore, old travelogues and travelblogs that were originally written as a correspondence to all the family and friends I've met along the way, I cringe at times when I remember the thoughts I had at the moment of the original writing. Again, I pull from the months in France in 2005. This was written at the moment of the so-called Parisian suburb riots, incidentally only 3 towns away from the one I was in, and at a time when I had absolutely no idea where my life would be taking me even one week from that point.

You re-read your own thoughts and relive those particular experiences and laugh at how silly everything seemed. But you also slowly smile and thank God for allowing you to choose your own adventure....

Monday, November 7th, 2005

1:05 pm - Creators, Creation, Media and Everything Else Out-of-Proportion

It's been a bizarre few days. I just heard from the folks back home and everyone was scared that I would somehow get lost in the Paris riots. I've watched it slowly grow, from the first few burnings being covered on the french news, to the eventual coverage by the BBC satellite tv at my cousin's house, to the concerned American family members and their kooky coverage back home. Kinda ironic how a little news story a week or two ago spread like a wildfire around the globe and is now out of control. I have walked and climbed and scaled these city walls and I haven't even smelled one whiff of fire. You know what? There are a million other things going on in this city too. I went to the Louvre yesterday because it was free and they moved the Mona Lisa to a nicer room and got rid of that scratched acrylic panel and replaced it with a very tall piece of glass. Also, the Information Desk at the Louvre is on strike. Everyone here in France goes on strike! Immigrants flock to this country because the social benefits are incredulous. I watched a tiny little nation's people protest around the Bastille to bring attention to their atrocious government and the loss of their culture. They had music, a bunch of loud percusions and you could hear it almost all the way over to the Seine. Today I was roaming and sat down on a bench near the Arc de Triomphe and some Arab women asked me if I could give them some money. The first one cursed me when i shook my head no. I explained to the second one that I also did not have any income and she blessed me as a sister in her language and the others smiled around me and did a two-second prayer vigil around me or something. They flirted with French security standing nearby and everyone laughed and they went on their way with their daily beggings.

Globalism is here. Il faut melanger. C'est la vie.

I wandered around the Pompidou Centre and looked at an incredible modern art collection, not organised chronologically or by school, but by socialist themes. The last rooms were war, death, voyeurism and prostitution. I left feeling rather melancholic, as if that's ALL we have to come together and create right now but mass chaos everywhere, but there was one last room right by the Big Bang entrance, which was nearly pitch black, you had to walk around a dark room with strangers and search for the guiding lights, featuring five film installations of particular cosmic happenings in the astral skies above. Five Angels for the Universe. Great, a little optimism never hurt anyone, perhaps misdiagnosed as naivete often, but pray tell, where exactly ARE these five angels and when are people going to start listening to them?

honka for wonka

2008-10-01T17:47:00.005-05:00

There are many random occurrences in our daily routines that can make life a little more extraordinary.

While on my way to the train this past august, Willy Wonka was parked right outside my place. What do you think he announces over his rooftop intercom system? Or what song do you think plays as he drives? Most importantly, WHAT WAS HE DOING OUTSIDE MY HOME?

In the spirit of random joys, here are some other things that have made me smile recently.

1. Nick Cave @ the Riviera, September 28th. I have always wanted to catch one of his shows...his ballads and screechers and beat poems and other diversities have repeatedly piqued my curiosity. So he didn't perform Nobody's Baby Now, but I was pleased nonetheless. He even includes a Charlie Manson lookalike among his Bad Seeds. Mr. Cave swaggered like Mick Jagger and beguiled everyone with Polly Jean Harvey gestures. Had they not dated I would swear they were born from the same initial group of cells. The opening band, Black Diamond Heavies, showed us what the world would have been like had Animal the Muppet played piano instead of drums.

2. Two movies. The Fall, starring the most charismatic little Romanian actress who absolutely MADE the film. And Young@Heart. One of the most endearing film experiences I've encountered in quite some time.

3. My brothers. My brothers are my sisters. Does that make sense? One brother in NYC went to his first psychic to celebrate his birthday. I imagine the experience as that of Peewee Herman stepping into the psychic's office as he went for advice on where to find his bike. The basement of the Alamo. Don't forget your wallet, Peewee. And the other brother, who is a longtime rock-n-roll show attendee extraordinaire, has become a grown up and started wearing earplugs at loud shows. In his most recent rock-n-roll excursion, he forgot about his earplugs, they got stuck and he had to have them removed by doctors.

4. Cost Plus World Market's brand of Nutella-like spreads. They have a dark chocolate version. Slap some a dat slop on your bagel or croissant and behold. It tastes like thick brownie batter.

5. The autumn. This is, by far, my favorite time of the year in Chicago. I don't fare well in the heat, and I love tall boots and scarves and the scent of leaves and HALLOWEEN and warm jackets and crunching leaves in my path and cuddling on the couch under the blankets with Eric and watching scary movies.

6. Barack Obama. What can I say? He is above all the madness and stupidity in the world and knows the profundity of human interconnectedness. Chicago's early voting starts after Columbus Day and you can bet your big tall autumn boots I'll be at my neighborhood library to seal my vote first chance I get.

Rainboots.

2008-09-21T17:55:00.006-05:00

And so vacation is over. I didn't make it to Savannah after all. Maybe next time. With the exception of stumbling around St. Augustine for a day, I did nothing but lounge in a raft in a backyard pool taking silly cellphone photos of my big toe with the tropical lagoon as a backdrop. I don't quite think my toe is ready for its internet debut, so this photo will have to do.

I had to go through extra security and full bag search upon my departure from Florida. The culprit? The spoonrest I bought at a Mexican pottery shop in that bag I'm holding in the picture. They thought it was a weapon. It was not. It was a resting spot for the weary spoon that stirs my winter porridge. But I'm glad those kids are doing their job.

The flooding at O'Hare was like nothing I had seen. We were delayed for several hours and then circled the city twice, over the waters to Michigan and back, up to Wisconsin and around again. I tuned into the cockpit audio and thought to myself, boy, what a horrible air traffic controller I'd be. The Lufthansa pilot coming in was the only one using cool words like 'Roger' and 'Over and Out.' This disappointed me. Upon arrival, the stench and dripping ceilings of the lowest level of the airport were SUCH a lovely welcome home and the Blue Line was completely flooded over and the husband couldn't get to the airport to pick me up due to thigh-high waterlogged roads in his path. The CTA built an ark of chewing gum and popsicle sticks, however, and a shuttle bus took us to the next available station. Nothing like seeing rowboats along the side of your urban streets. And all the flooded cemetaries....

Very strange weather indeed.

And then nothing but sunshine.

Tomorrow is autumn. Officially. This is my favorite time of year....

discovering the usa

2008-08-27T09:11:00.003-05:00

There are still many pockets of the USA i have yet to discover. I was lucky enough as a child to have an itinerant set of grandparents who seemed to move all over and spend a year or two in various locales before settling into southern TX. They lived everywhere from Washington DC to Saudi Arabia to the hills of Tennessee. Combine those extended relatives who were scattered like dandelion seeds across the plain states, the desert southwest, Florida, Mexican border towns and California and you had yourself one fine national roster of family-permeated hostels. My childhood memories are filled with those of family roadtrips, backseat license plate bingo, strange rocky coasts, watching my dad talking to locals as they proudly discussed their homesteads, curios shops off the higway, an Indian chief in Oklahoma, a perpetually-carsick little brother and fighting over the music selections.

I am in the midst of planning a trip in a few weeks to visit an aunt, uncle and cousins in the South and am most ecstatically looking forward to discovering a place I have not yet stumbled upon: Savannah, Georgia...

While I don't quite know who reads this blog, if anyone, please do let me know if you have any memories or must-sees to share about Savannah.

Ma musique

2008-08-15T23:54:00.001-05:00

the youngs

2008-08-05T19:02:00.005-05:00

so in my usual mix of customers over the past 15+ years i have worked retail i bump into a mentionable here or there.

the magic of keepin' shop is that at any given moment in this big, bad world anyone can just step right in and strike up a conversation, pose a question, demand something, complain, smile, fart and walk away, or try to steal something.

monotony is seldom seen when you deal with a public at large. i would certainly like to be doing something more brain-stimulating each day, or something that i felt made more of a difference in the world. but i am slowly learning to find peace in my career ennui.

celebrities usually make the day interesting, as if you could just lean a bit on the counter, prop your elbows for a second and wonder what life must be like when you've actually got somewhere interesting to go each day. and something interesting to do. and interesting people to meet along the way. i can only imagine it must be better than operating a cash register and merchandising.

the day julia roberts stopped by was like a tornado hit. people were maniacal for DAYS after she stopped in one morning. magazines calling me to see what she bought, buzz buzzzzzzz buzzzzzzz. weird al yankovic, assorted television and radio personalities, greg kinnear, journalists, the mellencamps, musicians. there have been some fun ones over the years.

today's visit, however, was an interesting one in its simplicity. i helped a nice woman find some Rippingtons recordings, brought them and a music theory book over to the counter and pulled up her membership account with a phone number. the name NEIL YOUNG comes up on my computer screen and i politely thanked her, rang the transaction through without prying any further because I am a lady after all, bagged up her purchases and wished her well. She wished me well and off she went. Neil Young, common name right?

I thought a bit about it and mentioned how curious it was to a co-worker, come home to Google God this evening and there it was, the picture of the woman I met today: Pegi Young, Neil Young's wife with a musical life all her own.

Cool, huh.

summertime blues

2008-07-26T10:57:00.003-05:00

while i have no means to travel, and i have major writers burnout due to long, excessive work hours and commutes into suburban terrains, and i don't have much money, i am trying to discover some new hobbies. or perhaps just rekindle old ones i should say.

1. exercise. i've always lived as a pedestrian and haven't thought too much about exercising with the exception of an occasional yoga class here and there. but i have developed an at-home and outdoors workout system for myself which i shall tell you more about after i lose 20 pounds or so. may the force be with me.

2. art projects. i recently took a quick inventory of store-bought materials and found objects i have collected over the past decade or so. it was like stepping on a land mine of my former creative self. one which was quickly buried in settling dust of......hmmm....life.

these two are substantial beginnings methinks.

dear little blog,
i will keep you 'posted.'
ba-dump-bump.

roots

2008-07-23T11:57:00.003-05:00

i tried to explain to the old ball and chain during our drive back from milwaukee the other week why it is that i love traveling so much.

and i was having troubles finding the right words. hmmm.

i love the flavors, aromas and general essence of a new town. not only the architecture or restaurants or shops but mostly, the people.

so much of our souls are rooted in our early dwellings. our surroundings. as an attempt to keep up-to-date for my current job, i listen to radio quite a bit. as i listen to this kid rock song (haha), singin about 1989 along the northern beaches of Lake Michigan as he is sampling Sweet Home Alabama i think how ironic...why isn't he sampling the Nuge instead? Where are all our roots, man?

And it got me wondering, how many people are sitting around everyday wondering about somewhere else?

I have no idea what the answer is to such a question, perhaps I should take a poll on that one...but I will leave you with another sampling of another 2005 French Breakaway travel entry.

Saturday, October 29th, 2005

11:13 am - ahhhh...paris paris paris

I've completed my first week of living like a Parisian. Holy Toledo. I wish I had camera eyes like in that creepy movie...

I finally found a net cafe...in the Latin Quarter. uuugh. I hate net cafes...not very inspirational places. There are people all around me, from all over the world, either researching things to do in Paris or checking their email and there are those two robotic men behind the counter controlling it all.

So I leave my suburban homestead each morning, walk a few metres and catch a bus, where a nice portugese man greets me every morning. I ride to the local SNCF station, sit on the train for 20 minutes, surrounded by a melange of strange African languages that I have never heard before, wake up to the Eiffel Tower on the left and arrive in the center of the city. I have no sense of direction in the circular flow of things in Europe...I am accustomed to the grid-like structures of modern-day American cities, thus I have purchased a compass and have honed my intuitive skills even further. I am Rudolphe the red nosed reindeer. Guess I look like I know what I'm doing because people ask me for directions all the time. If only they knew...

I have befriended a few fun pals from all over the place. A gal from Pasadena, a boy from Trinidad, and Spaniard, a Texan, an Algerian and a Parisian. Imagine that. My first day here I met a 65 year old Parisian man who offered to buy me an apartment in Paris so I could stay here. Hmmmmmm. WEIRD! Then there are the Japanese business men on the CHamps-Elysees who want to give me 1000 euros cash to go buy things at Louis Vuitton to help them smuggle back to their boutiques. Then there are the men in Montmartre who grab your face and want to paint you. I haven't come up with a good comeback yet but I'm working on it. They're really irritating. It's all just too weird. Everything. But oddly enough, why do I feel more at home wandering these streets then I do in the USA?

Speaking of the USA, it's quite a controversial thing to be an American in the world these days. It's like a one nation, Under a Picnic Shelter, chowing down on BBQ ribs, while the rest of the world is on the swingset, famished, getting wet in the rain. I don't think people realize what we've become. I just don't think people really realize.

Good thing people think I'm German. I guess.

It's been fun walking and exploring and wandering aimlessly here. Makes me believe in destiny again. I stumbled across Ernest Hemingway's apartment in Paris. I can't wait to get back and write my little heart out. Or maybe I won't come back. Or maybe I'll just get a job as an international flight attendant. Or maybe the US government will answer my prayers and give me money for school. Or maybe I'll marry a frenchman and exist in provincial french life the rest of my years here on earth. Or maybe I'll become a revolutionary and start a new political party. I don't know what the outcome will be, but Paris is the place that makes me feel good to be alive....

milwaukee, wisconsin, usa

2008-07-06T15:56:00.001-05:00

yesterday, eric and i took a drive north to milwaukee. the Fonz pulled into the parking spot next to us and said 'Aaaaaaaayyyyy. You wanna hop on back and visit Mr. C with me?'

'Sure, Fonz,' I replied. 'But what about my husband?'

'Follow the burnin' rubber, E. I got some friends I'd like you to meet.'

So I hopped on the back of the Fonz's bike, borrowing Pinky Tuscadero's neckerchief to tie up my wild rock-n-roll hair, and Eric revved up the engine of his Little Honda. Off we went...

We rolled past Summerfest, passing assorted roadies walking the streets of downtown Milwaukee, stopped and had a coffee at the Milwaukee Art Museum Ship, and waved to Laverne and Shirley as they were leaving the brewery.

A cop pulled Eric over with his Illinois plates and all and started hassling him about his speed. The Fonz got out his comb to smooth his hair and walked up to observe the scene firsthand.

'Aaaaaaaay, officer. Are you givin my amigo here some trouble?' scolded Fonz.

The officer replied in an all-too-familiar voice. It was Squiggy, and his teeth started chattering in the cold shadow of the Fonz. Squiggy apologized profusely to Big E, and we were back on the road before too long.

When we arrived at the Cunninghams' Joanie and Chachi were setting the dinner table, Mrs. C was in the kitchen, and Mr. C was hanging his Shriner hat in the closet. Our tummies were rumbling when....

Just kidding. The Fonz and the Cunninghams and Laverne and everyone else were nowhere to be found yesterday. It would have been nice, as Milwaukee had a bit of a sleepy feel to it. But that place has lots of potential.

As I commented to my husband on our Lake Michigan Circle Tour drive home (aka the scenic route back to Chicago), if I had shitloads of money like so many ridiculously rich folks in this world have, I would put it all into reviving cities. Milwaukee had a lot of charming building facades, some ghostly charms all about it and that lakefront of theirs is a beauty to behold.

Just imagine if the ridiculously rich spent more time reviving old parts of American cities instead of building homes too large to navigate without a map, what an amazing country we could have. It's like we'd be living in a perpetual art museum, with a whole world to curate.

Walking around pockets of assorted cities with boarded up windows and out-of-business signs everywhere is really starting to degenerate a certain aspect of my own spirit.

Oct. 22, 2005

2008-07-06T15:48:00.001-05:00

Here is another entry from my last big voyage:

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005

8:45 am - I love Paris in the faallllll...

So the gray skies have arrived and il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville. Up until this point, the weather has been gorgeous in upper Normandie...a few showers here and there but still delightful enough to sit at a sidewalk café once the sun yawned and stretched its arms. It's been like a grandes vacances, but on Monday morning my reality shall ebb and flow some more toward my new morning train/bus schedules with all the workers as they rush from the suburbs to that mystical magical place known as Paris.

It's been amazing, sharing dinners in different homes in the small villages of France. Some of the elders who have lived harmoniously in the petites villes without ever stepping foot into Paris haven't seen an American since La Libération. I arrived in a house last night for a dinner invitation and I thought if nothing else comes of this trip, last night's conversation made it all worthwhile.

When I walked into the home, my head hit the trim of the doorway. I stepped in the kitchen and the refridgerator was chest-high. The stove and sink hit me mid-thigh, and all of the people scattering around to greet me with kisses had to stretch on their tippy toes to reach me. I was a giant. I felt America-sized. I'm not that tall, really, but I had to rub my eyes and make sure I wasn't on candid camera or had fallen down yet another rabbit hole in life. It was fine once we sat down with our apéritifs but it only added to the constant surrealism of the days I spend in France. I swear I could open the screen-less window in my bedroom and a little robin redbreast would perch on my finger and sing just for me.

Anyyay, the woman was almost 80 years old, and she sat down next to me and told me she went to school with my grandma. She played with my hair and touched my face all over, dangled my earrings and studied me. I thought for a second: this must be what famous people feel like. It was like she just couldn't believe I was sitting in her living room. She had crocheted a beautiful piece for me almost a decade ago upon my first arrival in France, which sits on my dresser among all my pretty perfume bottles. There had been a divorce since I was last here and the blood lines had seperated and technically, these were no longer members of Ma Famille, but I accepted the invitation anyway because it just seemed like the most diplomatic thing to do.

Midway through the meal, it began. Now, these folks, my elders, were either just beginning their adult lives or trying to enjoy their youth under Nazi occupation. It's not something that is spoken of very often, French civilisation was rebuilt and restored to its origins, but the stories start to unfold when my rare appearance presents the opportunity to discuss.

So do you know how your grandmother met your grandfather in Petit Couronne?

It usually begins as a simple love story but each time it is told there are new developments, a repressed memory resurfaces, or the story changes itself altogether.

Yes, my grandfather stormed the shores of Normandy with US Army paratroopers and combatted the land to this little town where my French grandma was living. The town had been ransacked by bombs, there are tales woven of entire families gone the next day, either taken away to concentration camps or their houses bombed. There are tales of questioning on the streets by the Nazis, of escape routes to Vichy, of sheer pandemonium that is very painfully and scarcely unveiled by the elders.

But then the Americans arrived into town. They were staying in a grande maison, and the mother of the woman sitting next to me last night at the dinner table used to go down to gather cigarettes from the American soldiers for her son who had been imprisoned. In return, she did all their laundry, including my Grandpa's. That painted a picture for me...this woman next to me in her late teens, hanging American GI uniforms and undies and socks to dry in her childhood home's backyard.

The stories are all so rich, scattered and nearly lost, and I couldn't do them any justice right now in these unsung words, but the tears that were shed last night around the table and the statement made me feel hopeful with that one staple of French culture, that they really really appreciate the glory of life, how to live it, their own patriotisme, and that simple yet overlooked expression that the Religion of Love, not WAR, is really the only solution.

Nope, I couldn't do the stories any justice, but that I'm really glad I learned French and was able to experience them as closely as possible. Maybe if the whole world all did the same thing, just simply sit down every night for a two hour meal with family and friends and talk and share and laugh and cry, then we wouldn't be so lost in our current motivations.

Bon weekend à tous!

current mood: wooo baby this café is strong
current music: i love paris - screamin jay hawkins version

Former Life in France

2008-07-02T10:16:00.001-05:00

My grandmother grew up in Rouen, France. She moved here after the war with my American paratrooper grandfather soldier a year or so after D-Day. I spent some quality time there and did everything touristy I could possibly do in that town. I walked the town left to right, north to south, up and down for days on end and walked around trying to imagine my grandmother's life there as a young teen with Nazi soldiers all around. Then I wandered into this quirky little museum right off of the Place du Vieux Marche and wrote a bit about it here:

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

9:37 am - The Fifth Element of the Universe

So Joan of Arc. Jeanne D'Arc. La Pucelle. The Maid of Orléans. The first female renegade of the land. La terre, si tu veux. This town I've been living in is the site of her torturous death. They've got this fire pit and a cross in a plaza here, marking the precise location of her burning, the dungeon tower where she was held prisoner, a museum, a church built in her name. The fine arts museum features painting after painting of her battles, a high school, a major avenue, even a gift shop in l'éspace du Vieux Marché with Joan of Arc snowglobes. I have my Joan days, where I visit all of the monuments and learn about her life. I sometimes stop and sit to watch what kind of audience she still attracts. I've done the wax figure museum in three languages now. My favorite part is when they demand her to sign her name to the papers upon her trial and she will only sign with a cross. All the men become irate, fearful, impaired in judgment and it's a mere power struggle of the sexes. A story shrouded in mystery and skepticism, it's her conviction of belief in a God that truly made her the French heroine. It pains me that scholars try to defy these convictions, that modern psychology attempts to level out that mysterious unknown with mechanical human labels... I don't quite know what the balance is, maybe it is that of science fiction, only what art may reveal, but I do know that not much has changed since Joan of Arc days. We're still waging war on the consciousness of man.

What else is going on in the world these days? Can't they just show us new puppy pictures on the news? The monk doing sand paintings? The kids playing Kick the Can down the street? There's something to be said about our daily creations and what fills our collective mind everyday, and somehow, if we could, just bring it down a notch, another notch, another notch, then things might not be so, hmmmm, intensified.

On that note, I'm gonna go pick out a pastry at the boulangerie, sit in front of the Cathedrale, listen to the accordian some more and count the number of girls wearing cowboy boots. I seriously never thought I'd return to France to find fabulously frocked french fashionista cowgirls everywhere.

going backwards a bit

2008-07-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

i spent some time in France a few years back. about 5 1/2 months in late 2005. i had been working directly under a really mean lady-owner of a growing artsy company and didn't feel compelled to make a career of it, i was dating someone at the time who was not my cup of tea, and i had a pretty revolting set of experiences in my mid-twenties which prompted a need for a fresh beginning. i was between leases, had saved up a lot of money, paid off many debts and was ready to go.

my relatives overseas have always been extraordinary curators of my worldy whims and entertained the idea of spending more time with them to 'see what i could find.' i worked on some translation bits for my musician cousins' production company in the Alps and worked with 3-year olds on art projects at my cousin's Ecole Maternelle in Haute Normandie. and i wandered.

the next few postings are a resurrection of an old travel blog i had kept while i was overseas. i recently located the blog again and want to preserve it here.

Monday, October 17th, 2005

8:28 am - Il était une fois un ciel menaçant...

So I'm going to give this thing a whirl. Years have gone by in the bottomless pit of the internet (the warped dimension that it is) and little has changed. I'm nearing 30, I still have no solidified career to speak of, I had been diagnosed with multiple psychological disorders from which I opted to run, I took their pills (both the red and the blue), and now I'm house-sitting in Haute-Normandie with three French cats who play jazz music with their catnip toys. Life really isn't so bad, once you get the hang of the neurotic flow of traffic around the Arc de Triomphe and you realize a baguette is not just a baguette, but a staple of an entire culture. It will always be that way, a world of impatient drivers in a hub of chaos, the body of Christ sitting limp in the passenger seat...late for dinner again...so we might as well band together, this world and me, and figure out a way to at least make it F-U-N.

Yes, I quit my job in Chicago and ran to my relatives here. I love Chicago, don't get me wrong, but somehow life there was beginning to seem as contrived as the Broadway Musical of the same name. There was a staged act, a prison sentence, puppeteer lawyers and an assortment of glitzy musical acts. Sha-ZAM! Still to this day, when I tell any European which American rampart I hail from, the initial response is And while I once frequented the Green Mill which was once operated by Al Capone, I can assure you that the gangsters have left the building and have been replaced by expensive cover charges, gimmicky tours, Starbucks, Lettuce Entertain You restaurant chains and any other America-sized idea of a good time.

That's just it, you know, America is like the next size offering at Starbucks. Tall, Grande, Venti, and America sized. These are your options in America. For my friends outside the USA, at Starbucks coffee restaurant chain we stand in enormous lines and wait to order complicated espresso beverages. Orders go something like this:

In France, we find a seat in the café, a waiter comes around, we order un café, it's a small little pinky-sized drink and it takes us two hours and intense worldly conversation with others to consume it.

I suppose there is Passion in both cultures... America's bordering on obsessive compulsion, France's dwelling on individualities... but where are all the people in between supposed to go?

current mood: contemplative
current music: Nosfell's Mindala Jinka

This YouTube clip entertains me.

2008-06-29T12:15:00.002-05:00

music

2008-06-11T08:45:00.002-05:00

i'm tired of reviews. music should be a personal thing, nest-ce pas?

these are not necessarily new. just a list of what i am listening to.

1. the troggs.
2. aimee mann's #*&%@ smilers
3. neil diamond's home before dark (this is seriously good stuff, not at all for aging un-hipsters)
4. best of chicago - the early years
5. la belle epoque: emi's french girls 1966-1968
6. fear and loathing in las vegas soundtrack
7. nick cave's dig lazarus dig
8. philip glass' powaqqatsi
9. jim white's transnormal skiperoo
10. time-life music's animal rock
11. john hiatt's same old man
12. spoon's ga ga ga ga ga
13. goldfrapp's seventh tree
14. orchestra baobob's made in dakar (AWESOME!)
15. emmylou harris' all i intended to be

ps. am i the only one who doesn't own an i-pod?

hot fun in the summertime

2008-06-08T13:10:00.001-05:00

not really.

good song, though.

it's actually a lot of blood, sweat and tears gearing up for another summer in Chicago.

central air - MUST BE NICE! the hubby and i set up our window unit rigs this morning. it was hot and i mean DAMN HOT in this old beat-up apartment this morning. yesterday's storm left a sauna overnight for us and i woke up three hours later than my usual time with a mean case of sweat-head.

during window-unit air-conditioning season, or i suppose if you'd prefer to call it Summer you can, you have to pretend like you're camping. roughing it. don't you dare turn on the microwave while the unit in the living room is going or else the lamps and alarm clock will go out in the bedroom. and don't even think about toasting your bagel in the toaster oven or the office and solarium will go kaput. the key to the switch in the breaker room might be in its proper place or it just might have been swiped by the homeless man who was found living under the deck two years ago. you just might not know!

sometimes you have to wait 22 hours in the hot, sweaty dark for the Nicaraguan maintenance man or his nephew to show up to flip the switch.

and sometimes you have to escape and dream and stare out at the houses across the street and wonder what it's like to live with central air conditioning. however this escape is sometimes disrupted by that one lone hillbilly house (or hillybilly as my french relatives like to call them) and that beer-gutted sweaty bald man with his shirt off, just standing in the rain getting his annual bath.

i wonder if he was concerned with the raindrops falling into his beer can at 11am this morning.

Remarkable, isn't it?

Sunday Slothing

2008-06-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

There is nothing very Remarkable about a day of slothing.

Except the fact that I rely heavily on them every so often. And recently, more often than not.

It's retail, man. 15 years of retail now, never sitting down, running around for demanding hurried citizens of the human race. I'm beat. Worn out.

If every customer were lovely and polite, I wouldn't mind. But sadly, only a small handful are lovely and polite, so I do very much mind.

It can't be stated enough, but every member of the human race in every developed country in this world should have to serve a year in the retail sector. Or waitressing.

Everyone.

Especially you.

You know who you are.

All Things Remarkable V. 1.1

2008-05-30T21:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay. I'm off to a slow start with this Remarkable thing.

I was going to Remark on the sign I saw some overweight Chicago slob was toting WHILE DRIVING as a statement to some Cubs fans he saw.

Then I was going to Remark on something else. And I can't really remember what that was.

So let me pull something out of my ass for today's Remarkable Thing.

Ummmmm.

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Today there was a power outage at work. The lights dimmed, computers went berserk, escalators stopped, elevator alarm went off.

Except for my department. Every electrical component of my department purred like a kitten.

I felt like I was at the roller rink, and the lights went dim, and I was doing cool moves in the center ring to a Nu Shooz song.

B,b,baby...I-I-I can't wait.

All Things Remarkable

2008-05-28T06:52:00.000-05:00

While I was walking home from the neighborhood K-Mart last night with a large $5 Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza, cell phone in hand talking to my husband, I had an idea.

I am going to try and find one thing Remarkable each day.

If I can find one thing Remarkable each day then perhaps my world will be a more interesting place.

This may sound uninspired and boring to those of you dear readers who lead very exciting lives, but for me it is a dire attempt to maintain the most grounded sense of adventure possible.

I of course, cannot change the name of this already-titled blog. But come on, it's a Jacques Dutronc lyric. How can you go wrong with that?

So let me get started. Yesterday was the $5 pizza. Today, what will it be.

I don't know about you, but I can hardly stand the suspense.

Short Story

2008-05-14T07:27:00.001-05:00

Anna caught her breath at the curbside just as the bus sped off down the street, prompting her to cough in the cloud of exhaust. She would be late to work again, and this time, there was no guarantee any ounce of redemption could be salvaged.

She looked at her watch and then up at the sky. The clouds were rolling southeast and so she decided it was a good time to follow them.

As she walked through the neighborhood, calamity rose at the playground lot of the elementary school on Sunrise Avenue. Though it was not apparent to anyone but her, it seemed, she noticed a small boy sitting on the asphalt ground underneath a slide. The school bell was ringing and kids scurried to the entrances while the young boy remained.

"Aren't you going to get to your classroom? You don't wanna be late!" Anna shouted over to him through the fence.

"Aren't you going to be late for your job?" the young boy responded.

To be continued....

Music

2008-02-24T08:22:00.001-06:00

I must admit, over the years my feverish passion for locating new music for my library, as well as other hobbies, has somewhat begun to crumble downhill. Peut-etre this is something that happens as we grow older...no matter how 'hip' you once were, it seems age takes a toll on the gusto of youth. The urge to discover falls 2nd place to, well I don't quite know...comfort, perhaps?

Sad, yes. But pleasing when one can recognize this and make the appropriate changes to derail such a dilemma.

I am making a conscious effort to rekindle these desires for exploration, starting first with my music collection. I figure I cannot go wrong with any LuakaBop record. It's not a new recording by any means, but any new introduction deserves mention. The 3rd part of the World Psychedelic Classics series, 'Love's a Real Thing: The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa' ignites a part of you unaware of its own kindle. The album features 12 tracks recorded by various artists between the late 60s and throughout the 70s, scattering melodies among percussions, chants between blasting guitar riffs, and bells among distortion. Plus you just want to get up and dance.

When I used to travel as a youth, when technology consisted of tape recordings and the radio was your window to the locale, I used to hit the 'record' button on my jambox and take home cassette recordings of the local radio station djs, commercial interruptions and all. For me, these cassettes were better than any photograph I could have taken. I still pop them in from time to time and revisit the places I once ventured. This album, had I visited West Africa as a youth, would have been my audio souvenir, serving as an introduction to a land once invisible to me.

And for me, that's what good music should do: allow you to get acquainted with a land you've never seen before. Lands that seem oh-so-strange yet so vaguely familiar.

ma nouvelle vie comme femme

2008-02-03T08:39:00.001-06:00

C'est evident que la vie celibataire nous monte les choses du mystere. C'est vraiment le voyage qui nous donne un élément du surpris avec chaque nouvelle relation.

Mais le mariage n'est pas un arret forcé au milieu de notre chemin. C'est a dire que c'est un chemin caché a la reste du monde. Un chemin ou personne n'essai jamais a decouvrir toute seule.

Tout ca change le mystere et commence un fil du mystique dans sa place.

Et comme une nouvelle chanson, c'est un bruit qui nous partage avec le monde.

Moi, j'écoute a la musique de cette jeune anglaise ces jours-la:
Kate Nash's MySpace Page
C'est un peu comme Lilly Allen un peu plus agée.

Bonne journée a tous. J'éspere que le mystique se trouve dans votre poche du monde bientot aussi.

oh my. i'm married.

2008-01-31T21:08:00.002-06:00

i have been adjusting to referring to eric as (gulp) my HUSBAND over the past several days.

how does this happen so fast? did i want it to happen so fast? were we thinking straight?

nothing could have been more fun than our petite vegas wedding. we enjoyed the company of about 30 people in the chapel and at dinner afterwards. the most cheesetastic Tropicana karaoke bar in the after hours one could possibly locate on the LV strip.

of course then there was my cold. my brother gave me a most lovely wedding gift. a sinucleanse neti-pot, which if you are unfamiliar, is an aladdin-type genie vessel in which you run a saline mixture into one nostril as it flows out the other. blow nose and repeat in second nostril. thrilling.

and an even more thrilling experience approximately one hour before your very own wedding. i ran out of time for my hair, but man, did my nostrils feel gooooo-ooooood.

bonjour a tous

2008-01-23T07:18:00.001-06:00

je ne veux pas que j'oublie mon francais donc j'essayerai a ecrire quelque mots de temps en temps.

donc il faut m'excuser en avance pour tous mes betises.

c'est la nouvelle annee et je suis prete pour stimuler l'esprit. le francais, ca diviser mon esprit en deux et c'est bien pour exerciser le petit souris qui cours dedans.

j'ai achete un calendrier pour l'annee 2008. c'est une phrase francaise chaque jour et une chose interessante est qu'il commence exactement comme les choses dans ma vie. par example, je partirai jeudi pour mon mariage a Las Vegas. chaque jour pendant cette semaine enseigne et mentionnne les phrases qui est a propos d'arranger les petits voyages.

1. les voyage en train sont bon marches.
2. dis-moi si tu as besoin d'aide pour organiser ton voyage.

ca c'est le petit rod serling dans ma vie.

marriage

2008-01-23T06:46:00.001-06:00

i would really like to write again. it's been ages since my mind was high with feverish creativity and reflection, and i must say it was a purposeful step back so that i could concentrate on 'more important things.'

i stepped away from the blogosphere in an attempt to concentrate on more private writing sessions, but have i made this happen? um, no.

hopefully, with a marriage this weekend, and more newness of life, and walking down the aisle of a las vegas chapel, i will feel amused and inspired by life and all of its unpredictability.

good morning

2007-09-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

Yet another blog I've created.

Will I keep up with this one?