escapes

A much-needed vacation in the works, spinning many plates means that getting out of the slabbe gets tres complicated, provided it doesn't rain, as it did the last two days. I'm a creature of habit, comfortably numb locked into routine, five years running now, which has led to a dogged stability that belies the weird artistic impulses and occasional roiling emotions. Or, as the archival collection on immigrants to Clevelandia described my forbears, having "plodding and persevering determination" as befitting a true Slav. A day or two feels kosher, four days in a row with a fill-in for my show something excessive and I wonder how much I've bought into this system out of habit not addiction, like the caffeine that gets my heart beating every morning enough to function.

But there's something wonderful about the swirling green waters, sitting on the breakwall, not having obligations for a small window of time, of the ritual of watching the sun rise and set and the moon burn red over the islands, of making fires, watching stars, playing guitar and reading reading reading.

I need a cleansing and refreshing, a time to get alone and ponder for more than a few minutes at a time, a time to not have to worry about what to say and how to say, to be a speck in the created order and hopefully see some shooting stars this time around.

it don't rain under the water, it don't rain inside my heart...

Back in library paging days, I used to read Alternative Press, which was covering mostly nu-metal horrificness but still had the occasional Radiohead cover story and scads of reviews in the back and nostalgia trip features that got me into some good bands. An interview with Thom Yorke mentioned that he listened to a lot of Throwing Muses in high school and since the local library had copies of University and Limbo, I checked them out accordingly.

I'm surprised with the little wave of 90's nostalgia that they don't get more attention, but The Kids are probably more fascinated with the trainwreck that is Courtney Love and the swagger of the riot grrls. This wasn't about looks, being the cute bassist or the perky frontwoman. Too understated to call attention, too raw for the Lilith Fair set. I keep hoping that someone will stumble across this the way I did. Not as much stuff on the Youtubes as I'd like, since I can't setlist the way I do for other things. I played 2 hours of sundry Hershness this morning on the show. It made some people happy. Only three people in my world actually care. She's 46 today. Give her money and download some awesome jams.

It was a little too jangly for me then, but "Shimmer" stuck, and a few years later I revisited them one summer when I was working at the zoo and would come home and pass out in the hot attic with the boombox on after a long day of printing out tickets and dealing with angry suburban moms. This time, it was perfect and hit me in that place that all good music should. I had those albums on repeat, slipping into blissful rest with the chorus pedalled sweetness and reverb. I'm convinced that love for this band comes with age, that it's not a love at first sight all the time but it worms its way in profoundly, what the hell was she singing about? I wasn't sure, but it spoke to my awkward young person soul and inspired me.

 

 First year at Kent State as a transfer student with a swanky T1 internet connection that allowed me to download all sorts of punk obscurities onto my hard drive and trade leaked albums over Instant Messenger with my soon-to-be roommate. The self-titled record came out that year and the grungy chord progressions were perfect and comforting in their crunch. I loved that album, burned it onto a CD and bought it as soon as I could find it and began to delve into the back catalog as well.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but the earlier albums don't do it for me nearly as much as the post-Donnelly ones, maybe it's the production or the lack of distortion, though there's some great gems on The Real Ramona that hint at what's to come.

Hips and Makers and Strange Angels became my go-to acoustic albums and seeing her on tour for Learn to Sing Like a Star with the accompanying string section was fantastic. That duet with Michael Stipe still shows up on mix CDs with regularity. The way those two voices come together devastates me every time.

It seems that each effort's gotten more punchy, more cathartic, more intense, both in the more demure solo output and the squalling Cobain-with-ovaries power trio incarnation. Some people burn out, others fade away, and others burn on stronger.

the voice of many waters

Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths below —what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea.

  One of the strange silver linings of living in a dying town is even the peons have access to cheap rent within walking distance of the lake. It is true that most of our lakefront is cut off by highways and salt mines and the homes of the affluent, but to have the simple primal pleasure of being near rocks and water, it is there, and we make use of it. It keeps us alive, keeps us from killing ourselves, lets us clear our heads. Is it some kind of thing wired in us to love rivers, oceans, lakes, to live near them, to drink and baptize and immerse, because they are our lifeblood, we would die without what they give.

The rational side of my weird brain knows that these moments of extra intense melancholia have their reasons and that they'll pass, that feelings and reality are not always congruent, and so I let the waterworks dry up and went to the park where the rocks and water are, and walked down, navigating the concrete breakers and the scrubby trees growing between the boulders that keep the shoreline from washing away.

I try not to think of all the people who used to come down here with me, all the memory of this place,  I try not to think of the occasionally encroaching loneliness that hovers closer like a bird of prey each year.

The waves were too high to walk across to the beach of pebbles beneath the cliffs so I made my way to a flat rock not completely soaked by water, far enough to not infringe upon someone doing the same thing. And I sat there for a couple hours at least, in non-yogic quiet meditation, silently pouring out my soul to the creator of all this beauty, seeking some kind of oneness with indescribable longing, with the waves breaking and the water undulating through watering the deep green moss on the sides of the rock where I perched, taking a break only to grab a sweater out of the car as the sun sank lower and changed from orange to pink.

The water in this lake may be dirty, and I haven't swam in it since I was in my teens, but there was this cathartic cleansing in the moment, of the sense of smallness of one's self and one's inner drama in the face of elementals that made me realize I should seek out this place and others like it much more than I do.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

I walked up to the top of the hill to watch the swollen pink sun sink into the violet waters, with the sounds of the birds and the sweet smell from the honey locust trees, we were all enraptured by the newest installation of the endless cycle, the teenage girl scrawling in a notebook, the Muslim family on the park bench, the dead ringer for latter-day Kerry King, the couple with the big hair and the couple embracing on the breakwall, and the old man on his night walk. As the light vanished, we walked back to our cars, back to the neighborhood, experiencing some small moment of transcendence.

For the grace of the presence, be grateful.
Touch the cloth of the robe,
but do not pull it toward you,
or like an arrow it will leave the bow.

Images. Presence plays with form,
fleeing and hiding as the sky does in water,
now one place, now nowhere.

Imagination cannot contain the absolute.
These poems are elusive
because the presence is.

I love the rose that is not a rose,
but the second I try to speak it, any name
for God becomes so-and-so, and vanishes.

What you thought to draw lifts off the paper,
as what you love slips from your heart.

 - rumi

ghostlike

Stiff-necked and half asleep, coming down off the caffeine buzz, craving water and sky, feeling transparent and half-there, wandering through the day with no thoughts to speak of, living but barely conscious, everything just passes on through. In mere minutes, I will come alive again.