so this is the aftermath

I was so tensed up the other night that I thought I would cry upon entering the sanctuary of my apartment, but instead I took a nap, and then remembered I was supposed to have a coffeeshop night with one of my favorite ladies, which turned into dinner instead, devouring vegetarian burritos and instead of talking about Calvino or Chechnya we're talking about the male species, and feeling a little intellectually slummy for it, and how we sometimes feel like the stronger ones, the more assertive ones in these dynamics, which is funny given that we've been pushovers for so long, and it's like we discovered this part of us that's strong and tough after all we've been through. Nothing like black bean and sweet potato goodness to restore the equilibrium, that and the wonderful and productive distraction of music lessons.

I feel like I'm reaching back ten years in memory to the last time I took all this theory, and it's strange and I find myself nervy and hitting the wrong strings even though I do practice, but he's a gentle teacher. I feel bad when the people greet me in Ukrainian and I don't speak it, but people overall seem friendly. I get some homework done at the coffeeshop and crash, feeling lame for wondering if I've made anyone upset and remembering that there's a whole lot of other life going on even if that does happen.

The next morning things are back to where they were, if not better, with more clarity and honesty, and I'm so used to others cutting and running in times of friction and that doesn't happen here. And that night there are other moments of dealing with the interpersonals of personalities and musicianship and trying to get beyond the theoreticals of culture and economics to what the core issues are.

I find that for all our talk about rich and poor and black and white and whatever, it really comes down to just how well individuals get along and get over themselves, how willing we are to meet in the middle, and some will do that across any boundary and others will refuse to for whatever reason. Humility and being able to listen and understand where someone's coming from goes a long way no matter who you are, and letting go of all your hangups about yourself and others to see the soul underneath. sometimes I feel like a lot of us went to school too long and are so full of jargon we forget to do the basics of just learning to exist with each other.

Last night I ended up through a series of unforeseen circumstances, meeting up with a friend of mine from high school that I haven't had a real conversation with in about ten years. We did punkass things together, wrote a zine together with her sister and a couple other folks when she was in high school and I was in college, I made her lots of punk rock mixtapes of bands she never did get into, except for the Dead Milkmen, who her dad maybe liked even more than her, and then she moved out of her folks' house and stopped talking to any of us who were still crazy enough to be into organized religion and we lost touch for a long time.

I show up at her apartment with a bag of food for a friend of hers who got her food stamps cut, she invites me in, we catch up, and find the conversation flows, she cooks me dinner, we are in such different places now, with her married and me living alone, and so many reconciliations along the way. She laughs when she finds out I've been arrested, we reminisce on our teenage absurdities, and ponder all the strangeness. Somehow those lost years cease to matter, and it's beautiful to be back again in a place better than where we were.

ivory towers and reflective powers

a friend of mine from way back when is in college now, and like me, reads a lot of blogs, and like me in my early twenties, quite the idealist with other earnest friends. I was kind of an older sister figure, introducing him to Fugazi and zines and other underground kind of things.

I take things more seriously than a lot of people, but even in my younger years, I didn't have much patience for those conversations about race/class/gender that were more theoretical than anything else, and often profoundly disconnected from the dynamics of the real world in any real sense. Not that things shouldn't be thought about or are unimportant, but sometimes I feel like these conversations, mostly between us people socioeconomically privileged to go to college and be connected to the internet, tend to get extremely circular and self-indulgent.

When you get off the Internet, most people aren't losing sleep over the things that young people care about on Tumblr, aren't arguing about tasteless Halloween costumes or something clueless that some guy posted on his Facebook page, but I guess it's always fun for people to feel smarter and more enlightened than others, hence Internet haterade. I still don't have patience for the competitions of the Suffering Olympics variety, if you trace back anyone's history you'll find out that their ancestors were screwed over by someone, and that everyone's felt disrespected or had judgments made about them because of how they look or whatever.

Evidently to total strangers this makes me an awful person full of white privilege, which if you know me, is kind of ridiculous because I geek out on history and anthropology and the ins and outs of others' worlds, willing to be the uncomfortable and awkward minority, to the point where I have empathy but only to a point, that everyone's got their issues, and to focus on just one place's is kind of myopic. If you go anywhere, people are racist and classist and judge by the gradient of your skin tone or what religion you practice or who your parents are. Not to invalidate anyone's experience, but it's a human problem not an American middle class cracker problem exclusively. Jerkitude is universal.  Besides, such conversations are always better had over caffeine or booze as it is.


And so I wonder if this is why, in tandem with my companions with whom I snark about all things brainy (Pynchon, Shakespearean English, obscure medieval history), I find maybe I prefer these things with those in my world who are older, because we've got less to prove and we've seen more of life and there are other stressors like how are we going to pay the heating bill this winter and what are we doing with our lives since we're perpetually underemployed and there are fewer and fewer open doors.

And I love eating dinner with someone else again, cooking the proceeds of our gardens, talking about how our days went, these life things that are so simple, the things that I miss about roommates and friends who worked on my side of town who used to drop in at the old apartment. It's so good to geek out over history and play music and listen to records again and laugh, I don't think I realized how much I missed this kind of companionship until it started happening again, it's hard to believe that it's 2 in the morning and I have to go to work the next morning, he's laughing as I back out of the driveway and almost run over his datura plant, but all that coffee would have kept me up as it was, and despite the tired eyes and the continued drinking of tea, I feel so alive.

the price of noise is three hours of sleep

I broke my no-shows-before-my-show rule last night, having hooked up a friend and her friend with tickets to see ...And You Will Know Us By The Length of Our Name Trail of the Dead last night. They were one of those bands I dug in college and forgot about with the exception of a few notable songs, and they tend to have pretty swank artwork along with the tunes, and it's one of her favorite bands so it was nice to see her enjoy rocking out muchly. We're Team Early 90's, she jokes, as we meet up and I'm wearing a Soundgarden t-shirt with the Badmotorfinger artwork on it and she's got an old Nine Inch Nails shirt from way back when. Judging from the band t-shirts around us, the smaller crowd seemed to be about our age or so as well. Ume, the opener we did catch, was enjoyable to watch, with a girl guitarist who could have been the kid of Kim Gordon with her stage presence, and Thurston Moore's squalling guitars.

The last time I saw them, they were following up their major-label debut with a record that people didn't buy, and I remember the slamdancing at that show being incredibly fun, though my indie rock compadre at the time hated it and stood in the back with his arms folded as I let myself go in the waves of bodies in front of the stage. The pit was full of other amiable kids straddling the lines between punk and pre-Garden-State alt-rock, and I left feeling awesome and he left being cranky that night, complaining that it was "too heavy" and "too punk." We ended up leaving early because he drove, so I got to hear "How Near How Far" for the first time live this time. I forgot how much noisier and energetic this songs were live, stripped of the production, calling to mind the more incendiary early shows that got them signed.

Sources, Tags, and Codes was the album we were all most familiar with, and the choice cuts from that one that came out, damn, ten years ago, got the greatest response. 

By the last song, we'd discovered how to recalibrate our bodies to move like they once did, as the band came out onto the floor with us and we left sweaty and satisfied by a band that almost tasted the bigtime and now is touring and thirsty again.

wintering

No jaunts across the pond, heck, no major trips through Ohiostan, the generous snow that I haven't seen in two years made me unmotivated to drive too far, except to go to the Metroparks and hang out in the woods multiple times and skiing along the old canal with my friend's dog hooked to a belt loop, letting me glide along the trail. When I force myself outside, I feel invigorated in a way that summer doesn't do and the quiet of this world of water, trees, and sky recalibrates my soul to praise and meditate. When did I fall in love with evergreens so much?

 

So many pots of tea were consumed this week, with the exception of half a glass of wine on Christmas, no booze at all. So many good books read, good conversations had, and listening to tuneage and returning to the art room to make a first attempt at mosaic (which came out awesome, even if part of it fell off when I pulled it out of the mold).

I was almost asleep by the time the year changed over, but my landlady called me back on jetlag time and communication regarding the giant pile of debris in front of the garage being tantamount, somehow I mumbled incoherently through a conversation. She didn't recognize me when she came home, demanded to know what I was doing in her yard, which was awkward, because I have a key to her part of the house too, and I've lived there for a year now. I've been a good tenant though, and despite the occasional minor vexation it's been a good place.
 
It's been a year since I bailed from the almost-hood for the new digs, and it still feels liberating to walk somewhat freely after dark, to shed the fortress mentality that living within walking distance of several psych wards engenders. I survived election season with all friendships intact, and I like everyone a little better now that the whole business is over. Played some good games of softball, met new folks, feel like I live somewhere where I know and like my neighbors, and saw a lot of great live music. Getting old could be so much worse.

unshelled

Friday night spent napping, cleaning, cooking up the tomatoes and such piled in bowls in the kitchen straight from the garden, cleaning out the fridge, cutting out the bad spots, enough food to last a week and freeze some, and then an invited guest and an unexpected one, the first night I've spent in good conversation on the back porch in total darkness. Tales of service industry and old neighborhoods and wannabe suburban gangstas and old mutual friends, 2am comes quickly and we're devouring stir-fry in the kitchen as I get more incoherent with fatigue and thankful that I can sleep in.

A wedding the next day, two friends finally tying the knot, a church and then a hall full of people I know, and with two cups of coffee in my veins, I'm bouncing from table to table catching up with people I don't see nearly enough, meeting new souls, hearing tales of Bulgaria behind the iron curtain and becoming embroiled in a debate about organ transplants over dessert because this is how me and my sister's friends roll and our friends converged at this celebration.

One girl remembers me from the days when I had friends in the next county over because she was the little kid who lived next door watching us older teenage girls with our baggy jeans and ball chains and thrift store t-shirts as we'd make up stupid punk rock songs that we recorded on an old boombox with a bongo drum and a cheap electric guitar that we occasionally serenaded the neighborhood with and had inside jokes that made no sense, usually involving Kid Rock because this was when nu-metal ruled the universe. We would walk around the boonies to hang out at the playground with juice bought at the Sparkle Market, do snow angels in random people's yards, draw anarchy symbols on the paper placemats at the diner. I'm sure we were totally obnoxious in the way that only punkass teenage girls can be. I made so many mixtapes for the one sister who discovered punk rock at the same time as me but she preferred Good Charlotte to Fugazi despite all such propagandizing on my part.

I have no memory of this girl whatsoever, which is strange because I remember everything, and I wonder what parts of this she remembers. I'm past being embarrassed because this was from such another lifetime ago.

I once hated going to weddings, but when they're packed with those I love and those I've yet to meet, when people are friendly and it's not because they're drunk, when no one's shoving me towards the dance floor full of sucky music or tossing a damn bouquet and reminding me of my perpetual spinsterhood, these are nice things, and I socialize for awhile, until the introversion returns and I walk back to the in-laws to get the car and return home to tea and books, and a quiet Sunday of good conversations beneath shady trees and solo darkthroning through the neighborhood.

Today's already crazy, I wonder how this bodes for a semester of old-school geekery of the Roman empire kind and what new issues we Social Workers for the Damned shall face. 

savoring

A summer night in Clevelandia, everyone outside on their balconies listening to music and being friendly, three of us in the hot kitchen, barely enough room, all the pots and pans and knives in use, the CD player rotating between sundry heavy tuneage, flour on our hands and dusting our clothes (black attire compensates for a multitude of stains and spills but not baking ingredients).

He's making noodles, she's slicing carrots and keeping the cat diverted, I'm plucking fresh mint from the yard and basil from the porch, trying to remember what temperature to cook sweet potato falafel at and finding where everything is. Everything works out except the mussels, but since one of us was vegetarian anyway, it's moot, and we feast, laugh, talk about cats and metal and art and bands we used to like, and reminisce and ponder, skating close to politics and pulling back to other territory.

The last time I remember the three of us being together was a night at the end of the semester when we converged on campus, about six or seven of us ended up converging at a picnic table for dinner,went to watch the Black Keys play (they were starting to get big then, but nowhere near what they are now), and then hung out at the playground on the swings as night fell. 

Nine years later, I'm not in touch with half those people anymore, or we don't see much of each other or have much to say when we do. I'm not who I was then in some ways, neither is anyone else, and I'm wary of any kind of attempt to capture the magic of the hazily remembered good old days, but it seems we've gotten older and wiser, and we've got new things happening, new interests besides graduating and finding bands to listen to, and I'm thankful that our worlds still overlap and that there's still something there besides nostalgia, that we can still share meals and thoughts and continue to age gracefully and see how far we've come.

Also, sweet potato falafel is the good stuff...

Baked Sweet Potato Falafel

Makes about 18 falafel, more or less
2 medium sweet potatoes (yams), around 700g or 1 1/2 pounds in total
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
3 small cloves of garlic, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 handful of fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Juice of half a lemon
1 cup (120g) chickpea flour
a few tablespoons sesame seeds, for sprinkling
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and place whole sweet potatoes directly on oven rack for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until just tender. Once removed from the oven, let them cool until manageable. Peel and discard skins–they should come off easily.

Mash together the cooled and peeled sweet potatoes, cumin, garlic, coriander, cilantro (if using), lemon juice and chickpea flour into a large bowl. Season for salt and pepper. Once well mashed with no large chunks remaining, stick in the fridge to firm up for an hour, or the freezer for 20-30 minutes. At this point, your mix should be sticky-smooth rather than wet. If necessary, add a tablespoon or more of chickpea flour (this varies depending on the water content of the sweet potatoes).

While chilling, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and oil a baking sheet (I used parchment paper but would go without it next time in order to develop a golden crust on the bottom). Using a couple of large spoons, scoop up a mound of the falafel mixture and shape it back and forth between the concave sides of the spoons to form a football-like shape. Press sesame seeds along the outside of the falafel and place on prepared baking sheet. Bake in the oven for around 17 minutes, until the bases are golden brown.

do the meg white

It's been awhile since I've just jammed with people in a noisy kind of way, back porch bluegrass runs notwithstanding, despite failed attempts at playing in bands where neither personalities nor sonics clicked, and so last night, there were a few of us together working through the music for Sunday morning, some new faces, and some newly back in the area, and with all of us able to sing, to layer harmonies and vocal lines on top of each other, mashing together old songs and new, and with a drummer and a keyboard and another guitar providing a foundation of rhythm so I can play more freely and emit squalls of reverb from the SG, it feels so natural and organic, this single entity that comes from disparate parts and tastes.

And afterwards, we feel kind of euphoric, because it's been awhile since any of us have done this kind of thing, so we start swapping instruments, he plays my guitar, and one of the other girls grabs a bass to noodle around with, and I'm goofing around on the drums but something clicks as we bash our way through Radiohead songs and sundry chord progressions, and my tendency to air-drum in the car has given me a sense of what does what, and I find I can keep a beat left-handed, the way he had it set up.

I'm no pro at this, my hands being infinitely more adept than my feet. Maybe it's the adrenaline, or that I'm comfortable enough and it's chill enough that I can goof around without being stupid and I'm no longer deferring due to shy-girl feelings  but I find myself switching time signatures and tempos and adding flourishes and fills that I never even knew I could do. I still couldn't say I knew how to really play, because I've watched others really be good at that kind of thing, I'm no Aesop or Stewart Copeland or Janet Weiss or Matt Cameron but I could hold it down for a garage band with no problem and a bit more practice to get the sense of dynamics and nuance and what works with what.

The bouts of dark nights of the soul will probably always exist, but there's something that feels so incredibly good about pounding the crap out of an inanimate object for some greater sonic purpose, letting out all the inarticulate emotion as he plays my guitar until the e string breaks and we're making up songs that make no sense and dissolving into helpless laughter. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of those drums, but it's not like I could play them with the landlady downstairs anyway. There's a part of me that feels like something clicked last night. I want to learn how to do this and do it well.

nightshade and daylight

An afternoon spent ripping out belladonna and disposing of slugs over the fence with a shovel, noting with satisfaction that the little peas are poking their way through the soil.+ I realize for the first time that my connection to the dirt is somewhat ancestral, being peasant stock on both sides not so far removed.

I hung out with the women in my world yesterday morning, where we drank coffee and swapped the clothes we no longer wear and being small and having never borne children, I end up with a bag full of things I would have never picked out for myself but that somehow work, it's funny how much more comfortable in everything I am now that I'm finally comfortable in my own skin. One of them is moving out of state and her husband gives me a pile of his old records... Talking Heads, Violent Femmes, sundry pub rock and such, some of which I pull for my first time doing a real DJ kind of thing.

I get to the store with a crate full of records and CDs and a mix I compiled from my hard drive as a backup that comes in handy when the one turntable is acting wonky, and I feel like a goddess or a muse up the stairs looking out over the store as the records spin and I finagle with the mixing board, watching people nod their heads and tap their fingers, the kids dancing, I'm yelling down the names of the bands they ask me about as they're treasure hunting through the record bins and rows of 7-inches. The nervousness washes away and the hour goes by too quickly. I could get used to this.

gardens

There are seeds sprouting in boxes on my kitchen table, the conversations with the other women in my life thankfully aren't about what shoes are in this season, but about politics and pondering out concepts of life and humanity and how to make good compost and grow things. I've learned so much sitting there and taking in all this knowledge that seems to get more archaic when everything can be bought and is so convenient even if it includes gratuitous amounts of high fructose corn syrup.

There's a community garden up the street and I've been given a small strip to grow things on. The coordinator says she hopes I don't mind that everyone's a couple decades older, but I don't mind that at all. I find that people my own age who are into the hobbies of previous generations like to act as if they are the first people ever to do such thing and that gets old.

The winter was so mild that the kale and the collard greens never stopped growing, and the path is overgrown. I want to start putting seeds in the earth now because it feels like summer not two months before the last frost date, but my eternal pessimism curbs my impulses. She says they're an easygoing group of people, and I hope so. I'm looking forward to making this small patch blooming and fruitful.

My mom had a big garden at the first house they lived in, and I remember going out there to pull carrots and pluck peppers and pick the plums off the trees in the back yard. I didn't like the dirt and the getting thorns under my skin when I was younger, but then one summer, me and the girl up the street spent the summer months cutting paths through the overgrown lilacs and flower bushes in her parents' yard to make ourselves a place to play and chase the boys down the street through the bushes with supersoakers. 

When I moved to a first-floor apartment, I ended up with a plot of land in the back, the process started upon the news of a suicide and almost-murder in a sphere of my world and as the phone calls came in, I was so sad I couldn't cry and instead ended up ripping out weeds and undergrowth with my bare hands for lack of any way to otherwise mentally process.  I grew herbs, tomatoes, zinnias, beans, and hot peppers in soil that was full of glass and pulverized brick without having a clue as to what I was doing and things grew, were cooked at my dinner table, and shared with guests and neighbors. Last year I had more than I could have possibly used on an 8X8 foot plot, living on eggplant and tomato curries and basil leaves in pasta all summer, and tremendously satisfied to see labors come to fruition and shared.

The lushness of green and the innumerable variations of growing things continue to astound me. I wish I had more space sometimes or that I had more lush climes, because I love the brightness and the colors that I see in the greenhouse and in pictures of places that have to worry less about frost. Sometimes I wish I had more land for something more whimsical than vegetables and zinnias, but maybe that'll come in time, while I get inspired by other places.

 

Villa Demidoff, Florence

 Waldspirale, Germany (I would love to live in apartments like these).

 

Bridget found this picture, and being a sucker for both installations of the organic kind and abandoned houses of worship, it fills me with strange joy. More sweetness and straungeness of this kind findable at Atlas Obscura.

brown paper packages tied up in string

....Or rather straunge and vvonderful goods from The Continent. Randal's able to pen odes to sweet tuneage is better than mine, but I'm quite thrilled to have the new Alcest record and both Les Discrets albums (and a t-shirt) because when one makes good art (in this case both visual and sonic). The end of the day cannot come fast enough so that I can go home and sprawl out on the dining room rug in front of the speakers and soak it all in.