holding steady.™

I love poetry.

it’s simple and incredibly intricate.

rather, it’s more emotionally taxing and yet more emotionally accessible than prose.

I love the words, the rhythm, the banter between each syllable.

I like to read it out loud when I’m in the bathroom or lying in bed.

I let each locution roll out of my mouth, like a seven-year old rolling down the hill on his parents’ farm in Virginia somewhere.

Anytown, USA

I like America more than I let on.

that’s why I read poetry. 

it kicks me in my soul.

I like to read poetry because it makes me write poetry. I was reading the Paris Review this morning, as per my usual daily constitutional. I’ve gotten to the point where I read great lines, and mark them down in my journal. 

also, I very much enjoy time-lapse photography. that’s utterly random. 

i’m pretending to be so bad-ass right now. by not sleeping.

sometimes, my body will get out of whack and stay sleeping for to long. which really screws with my internal clock, and then i can’t go to sleep at all. hence the posting of a no-purpose post at 3:15am.

anyways, i have nothing to say, so here’s a couple of pictures instead.

i’m currently listening to the 5 stars playlist in iTunes. this really has no relevance to anything at all, but the best song to play in the past hour is quite likely feist’s “mushaboom (k-os remix).”i have been listening to an awful lot of feist lately. i have noticed that she is a favorite among many of my lesbian friends, at least those who are well-infused into the indie scene.

gomez - sweet virginia

i really don’t understand what has been going on lately. at some point, i think i told myself that this section of my site would be explicitly not for all the emo-rambling that i do on pssssst. but then, i probably thought about it, and realized that i do very little of that. so maybe this will be the catch-all. i’ll probably migrate some of the old entries over, and then maybe i’ll disable the account. it was becoming somewhat of a nuisance to me.

side thought: i am a really big fan of words. and quotes. i should do a post of some of my favorites. nah, i’ll probably just try to incorporate some into every single entry. for example, and this is one that i just read tonight: “I gave up the thing I loved more than anything, and I’m trying to get it back.” i can’t imagine that there are a lot of people who are so easily moved. reading this line, in conjunction to listening to the last minute and a half or so of “sweet virginia,” are really striking me. i suppose it has something to do with the actively morose strings, underlaced by a distinctly escalating piano chord, and the whispering of the reeds hitting the snare drum, and the notion of loss conveyed in those words, coupled with a desire to negate that loss. i told you, i make emo look cheery.

marvin gaye and tammi terrell - ain’t no mountain high enough

brian fennell - colors

i’m mildly distracted by updating photos to my gallery. it’s reasonably relaxing. crap it, i have to be up by seven tomorrow morning, if i plan to be a person at all and work out in the morning. and i HAVE to do it in the morning, or it will be a nightmare trying to work out around the football players schedule. guh.

sam cooke - a change is gonna come

so, recently i’ve picked up some tv shows. i should be appalled and my sensibilities are usually far more advanced than to be entertained by paltry and feeble acting. but i have to say it. i fucking love south of nowhere. the whole spashley drama….let’s start by saying that one of the main actresses affiliated with the show, one mandy musgrave, is absolutely adorable.

beck - e-pro

grand national - joker and clown

kilowatts - close the door

at this point, i’m kind of just embracing the notion of sleep before three am with a sublime ease that would usually come from being high. in my case, from listening to kilowatt. my relationship with music is multi-layered and organic, unquenchable and inexplicable, a dash of heat to an otherwise rather ordinary and lukewarm existence.

who am i kidding? in the past year, i have lived five lives. when you migrate into a new crowd of people, you usually have some sort of adjustment period. last summer, i had an adjustment kick in the ass. and then fell face forward into sandy depths.

dixie chicks - the long way around

i saw the dixie chicks documentary. and sort of a little bit fell in love with them. not enough, as a friend of mine pointed out, to make me go out and buy their album. but i did torrent it, and about seven of the songs are on this playlist. that’s my real indication of how much i like an artist. did i download your entire album? well then. speaking of which, i need to get the new transmission update. apparently, now i will be able to select files withing a torrent to download. i was used to this before i made the move to mac about four months ago (please don’t think me a neophyte, i have been obsessed for years. since probably the eighth grade), because i used utorrent, which is the best torrent client i used on a windows machine. i like transmission, but this was a glaring omission in terms of features, so i’m really glad they’ve gotten their act together.

enya - carribbean blue

does anyone else think enya is absolutely flipping amazing? my father used to listen to her stuff a lot when i was younger, so i have all these pleasant childhood memories that flood my brain when i listen to her or seal. we have a rocky and sometimes unpleasant relationship, my father and i. but whenever i can take the time to listen to this, i can remember a time when that wasn’t the case. this song came on earlier tonight, and i sent my dad a text telling him that i remember the best moments of my childhood with enya. he told me that it had the same effect on him, that he remembered the best things about his daughter when he listened to them. that really did make me cry. and fuck me if i’m not crying again.

ok, that’s probably a sign to quit. but i’ll leave a couple of thoughts…

would anyone want it? - think about it as an abstract

it’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. well, what if i do? those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. - golda meir, one of my personal heroes

please explain to me the scientific nature of the whammy. - special agent dana scully, the x-files

the saddest part of a broken heart isn’t the ending so much as the start
the tragedy starts from the very first spark, losing your mind for the sake of your heart - feist, let it die

mae - summertime (”…driving away, leaving it all behind…”)

OK, so this isn’t quite a formal review, but I just really needed to rave about a few things.

First off, just bough the H-K Soundsticks II. At present, I am listening to “Mindwalking” by Astral Matrix, with the bass all the way up and the Bass Booster EQ setting. It is phenomenal. My walls are shaking just a little bit.

Secondly, I took a little trip today. Went over to South Beach and just kind of rode around on my board (in flip flops, which is an error I don’t plan to make again). My camera is my favorite thing on this earth. Canon Digital Rebel XTi, with an EF 28-135mm lens. Fantastic, and it’s becoming a new favorite pastime to shoot in monochrome, because switching takes like 1.3 seconds.

Thirdly, and this is just my being weird…I have this thing where I need to have something in my hands to get me focused. It used to be a balled-up wad of paper, but I went to Sports Authority a few months ago and got a pack of three Penn Ultra-Blue raquet-balls. I throw them against the wall when I’m stuck on an idea.

Fourthly, I am kind of a bag person. And a shoe/trainer person, but for the sake of this post’s longevity, I’ll just be a bag person. Latest additions include a Triple Five Soul carry-all bag, the sort with a drawstring at the top and a single strap, and a Spy Sentry Bag. The carry-all is a rough black canvas, but the amount of pockets (12 in all, inside AND out) are obscene. I predict that this will be absolutely vital when I go to Europe next year. I have this ridiculous vision of myself walking around with this glazed-yet-cultured look on my face. The Sentry is really a more day-to-day backpack. With a 17-inch MacBook Pro, it’s a bit tricky trying to find a way to carry it around. Classes are starting up again (my senior year) and trekking back and forth to campus with the one-hour commute is already no picnic. I tried this sucker out today, and I was oddly enough rather satisfied. This is another bag with a lot of pockets, including a rather large compartment on the top that is supposed to be for cold beverages (it works perfectly as a camera compartment for the aforementioned monstrosity), and four side pockets, one of which hold an Ethos water bottle PERFECTLY. The inner laptop sleeve is not nearly long enough for my computer, but my Incase Canvas sleeve fits rather well, with no complications. And there is still room for a variety of other items, which today included my notepad, LSAT prep book and sunglass case. It also has really cool military-style patches on it. And the logo is primo.

Fifthly, I just wanted to take a moment to wax about how awesome the Bose TriPort headphones are. I bought these something like a year ago, as a birthday present to myself last year. They are still going strong, and the bass in them is still top-notch. In the course of writing this post, I had to shift from Soundsticks to TriPorts for the benefit of the others in my house, but let me just say, this is NOT a downgrade.

Sixthly (and lastly), I just finished reading Ayn Rand’s Anthem. I have avoided Ayn Rand for most of my life. I have had Atlas Shrugged on my bookshelf forever (an old college book of my mom’s) and I can remember when I first noticed it. I wanted to read it, but my mom told me not to, because the woman who wrote it “was an atheist.” At age 7, already a rather prodigious reader, this was really disconcerting, and so I avoided it. A few years later, I picked up and began to plow through. But I don’t think I recognized how good Rand was until a couple of days ago, when I picked up Anthem.

My favorite line is the first: “It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we are speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker that to do or think alone. We have broken the laws.”

Until next time, when I have less energy…