Letter from an occupant

Dear Monday,

I hate you and your stupid rainy face. However, you give me an excuse to listen to sad bastard music from my adolescence, so maybe I just dislike you a lot. A lot.

Also, Dolores O'Riordan, I miss you and all your Cranberries. Perhaps y'all can reunite and call up Frente for a private concert on my porch. I promise to make cupcakes.


Xoxo,
Neola

I'm the pretender and not what I'm supposed to be

Dear Everyone,

I miss this girl like a lost limb. Please advise.

xoxo,
me

The soundtrack of evolution

I forgot how refreshing it can be to revisit the tones that tickled your ears at some point before. When life gave me lemons, I scoffed at that lemonade thing and instead dug out old mix tapes, the tunes from lifetimes ago. It's so funny to remember what each person was telling me via musical conversation; there were glad hearts, heartbreaks, frustrations, ecstatic exclamations of true love, sincere wishes for a happy future, recollection of things and moments past. It has been like reliving five years' worth of hopes and dreams from other people, but being able to connect to each thought in my own time and space. Remember when I was SO emo?

Now I've gotten a new mix from a mostly new friend and the sounds are that of something awesome and promising. There are unfamiliar beats, lyrical dances and a funky vibe that is going to saturate me through and through. I plan on making this year get better and better. I wholly subscribe to the belief that we each make the future what we want it to be and I'm living that day by day.

The near future holds something really awesome: the new job is going great and I feel good every day going to work knowing that I am positively affecting the lives of several thousand kiddos in the metropolitan area; a non-work project that has been in my imagination for a few years is finally getting off the ground and in the process, I am learning a lot about sound recording and music production; my writing path is being decided for me as I go along and truthfully, I really dig it. Maybe one day I really will become the female Chuck Klosterman that I believe I can be. Until then, the future is bright and music is going to continue to rule that future.


I feel like a broken record, but thank God/Moses/Universe/Stinky Cheese Man for mix tapes for making me get my ass in gear.

There are maybe ten or twelve things I could teach you. . .

B posted this on her blog and I'd like to share it as well.

Ian McEwan, in this week's New Yorker:
"McEwan said that he never rushes from notebook to novel. 'You've got to feel that it's not just some conceit,' he said. 'It's got to be inside you. I'm very cautious about starting anything without letting time go, and feeling it's got to come out. I'm quite good at not writing. Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater.'"

We're half awake in a fake empire

listening: The National, "Fake Empire"

This has truly been a long absence from the blogosphere for me, but I've been doing a lot of thinking and doing and frankly, too much baking. The pursuit of just one of my dream jobs has kept me busier and much more exhausted than I'd anticipated, but it has been an unforgettable experience nonetheless.

The only reason I came here today to deposit my thoughts is that I've been listening to mix tapes lately, old and new, desperately remembering what I was trying to say, what someone else said to me and have been reflecting on friendships, failed relationships, new relationships. I've been in the Ssip now for several months and originally only planned to be here for a short term life, eight to nine months at most, before moving on to the next destination. And then I became nauseated from all the moving and realized I need some stasis.

This is a vastly different feeling than what I had a few months ago. Back in December, I could have sold off nearly everything just to go back to Portland. Granted, there are days I want to go back and those are the days I get stuck listening to mixes MJ made for me. Those are the days that all I want to do is dance with her and cook with her and holler at people on bicycles with her. Today suddenly became one of those days because every time I hear "Fake Empire," I think of her. In a minute, I'll move on to another song, but I'll still miss her.

All of that being said, I also had a really great couple of weeks that remind me of what I adore about being in Jackson and ease the heartache. I've had walks and talks and group television watching and Vagina Monologues and gym buddies and now, new mixes. The new mixes are hopeful and full of excitement, something that the mixes from 2008 didn't have. Those mixes were simply content and slightly shallow. These are made of motion, but this motion, while forward, keeps me in orbit here and now, just where I want to be.

I was a dancer all along

My very great and best friend, Casey Parks, introduced me to this video of Lykke Li and Bon Iver The song is called "Dance Dance Dance." I believe it is a nearly perfect way to usher in a brand new year. Here's to you, 2009:

After the procession no one dared to make a sound

Listening: The Essex Green, "Rue De Lis"

It is imperative that you do something good for yourself. My suggestion for today is that you visit the new (old) blog of my very great friend and dear heart, Casey Parks. She is moving in ways that make me proud to know her and be called her friend. She is breaking down our walls, word by word:

http://caseyinpictures.blogspot.com/2008/10/sonic-sharing.html

This particular entry takes you to a file to which you will listen and perhaps be inspired or heartbroken or moved or still in just a moment. It is the recording of many different people reciting from a broken book. It is the collection of all of us as "I Was So Sad" by David Lerner. Casey introduced me to this book some five years ago when we were just beginning and were attempting to feel out how each other was about words.

The collection of poems was one of the biggest reasons I felt us to be kindred and now she has made leaps and bounds in her personal art and journey to make something even bigger out of a mountain of emotion.

Listen.