Death by Furniture

IKEA and I are locked in the deathly throes of battle. Unfortunately IKEA currently has the upper hand (strong and firm and splintery, unlike my red, blistered hands). I'm losing this battle.

To be continued....

(Part 2 will be brought to you tomorrow by the HDBF Foundation - Humans Defeated By Furniture)

The Quotable Me

I'm published. On a poetry site. Oh yes.

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com

Under March 27.

Things That Make Me a Cranky Girl

1. Pretty spring day outside that I can't enjoy because I have to practice.
2. Battles with IKEA people and German walls.
3. The fact I might be impaled in the dead of night by my curtain rod. It has a decorative spike at the end.

Say It's Possible

I love finding new artists who, in one song, one chord change, one photograph, one poem, get it. Whatever is there, floating above our heads, between our bodies, through our hearts, only a few get it, capture it - part of it. Their part of it. So as a habitual gatherer of the human experience, I love finding these fragments, whole in themselves, putting them together, and making my world as it goes.

This singer/songwriter just won the YouTube best music video award, which doesn't say much, but her song certainly does. I listened to some of her other songs as well which, I have to admit, didn't do a lot for me. But this song is definitely worth a listen.

www.myspace.com/terranaomi
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4


Say It's Possible - Terra Naomi (on a personal note, what is up with these pop singers with two first names?)

I see the lights are turning and I look outside
The stars are burning through this changing time
It could have been anything we want
It's fine, salvation was just a passing thought
It was just a passing thought

Don't wait, act now
This amazing offer won't last long
It's only a chance to save the path we're on
I know there are more exciting things to talk about
And in time we'll sort it out

And though they say it's possible
To me, I don't see how it's probable
I see the course we're on spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go

And truth is such a funny thing
With all these people
Keep on telling me
They know what's best
And what to be frightened of
And all the rest are wrong
They know nothing about us

And though they say it's possible
To me, I don't see how it's probable
I see the course we're on spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go

I'm not alright

This could be something beautiful
Combine our love into something wonderful
But times are tough I know
And the pull of what we can't give up takes hold

Daylight what???

March 25. European Daylight Savings. Nobody told me. On the one night I decide to go out salsa dancing in West Berlin, we lose an hour! Oh good gracious. I wouldn't even have known were it not for my beautiful computer automatically doing it for me. I'd be off kilter all week. I still might be with my utter lack of sleep due to shaking it with the rest of Berlin - and now this. In fact, this post will probably be illegible when I read it tomorrow, fully-rested.

An Unnecessary Exercise (in Frustration)

Hallo IKEA,

Meine Möbel ist am Montag gekommen, aber es war kaputt. Die Männer
hat mir gesagt, dass sie wären die Möbel zu IKEA zurücknehmen und
wären am nächsten Tag mit neue Möbel kommen, aber die Männer sind
nicht gekommen. Heute ist Donnerstag - ich möchte meine Möbel, bitte!

Ich habe anrufen probieren, aber niemand beantwortet das Telefon.

Morgen (Freitag, März 23) ist am besten für mich, um 9 bis 14, für die
Möbel zu kommen.

Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut - ich hoffe, dass Sie können dieses
Email verstehen.

Danke,
A.
(Meine Muttersprache ist Englisch)

The innings before the shot heard round the world, 1951

(for my dad, a true Giants fan)

"Lockman squares around to bunt.
"There's a man in the upper deck leafing through a copy of the current issue of Life. There's a man on 12th Street in Brooklyn who has attached a tape machine to his radio so he can record the voice of Russ Hodges broadcasting the game. The man doesn't know why he's doing this. It is just an impulse, a fancy, it is like hearing the game twice, it is like being young and being old, and this will turn out to be the only known recording of Russ' famous account of the final moments of the game. The game and its extensions. The woman cooking cabbage. The man who wishes he could be done with drink. These are the game's remoter soul. Connected by the pulsing voice on the radio, joined to the word-of-mouth that passes the score along the street and to the fans who call the special number and the crowd at the ballpark that becomes the picture on television, people the size of minute rice, and the game as rumor and conjecture and inner history. There's a sixteen-year-old in the Bronx who takes his radio up to the roof of his building so he can listen alone, a Dodger fan slouched in the gloaming, and he hears the account of the misplayed bunt and the fly ball that scores the tying run and he looks out over the rooftops, the tar beaches with their clotheslines and pigeon coops and splatted condoms, and he gets the cold creeps. The game doesn't change the way you sleep or wash your face or chew your food. It changes nothing but your life."

-Don DeLillo, Underworld

Lines after Neruda

Play me a guitar
Mellow and tender
Strum me softly
Rippling waves on midnight sand

Sing me sweetly
Voice like summer wine
Under strong, gentle hands
I will blend your song

Cover me lightly
In orange blossomed breeze
No frenzied violin
Bleeding tears to the sea

So play me a guitar
Mellow and tender
Caress my evening stillness
And I will sing you moonlight

from Alex Ross's blog

Proust predicts Messiaen

"Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly."

— Swann's Way

Street Art

Detour

I have a pile of German homework lying on the table, giving me the evil eye. I have 2 books-in-progress and 3 plays to read, books I can't wait to dive into. I curse my German homework for infringing on my reading time, and I curse my German class for eating up my practicing hours. I'm feeling guilty these days for neglecting my piano. The beauties of Schumann lie open on the music rack, twinkling stars, cerulean depths, a tender caress, a sigh, a caught breath, the inky blackness of an infinite galaxy glittering with warm, shimmering light - these are some of the images that his posthumous variations of the Symphonic Etudes evoke in me.

I should blog about my trip to England last week to visit my fantastic cousin in Cambridge and some friends in London, about the evensong at King's College (the most beautiful artistic/religious moment I've ever witnessed), about Equus, about speaking my own language again, about how I love England, about future schemes.

Sometimes, while following natural thought processes, you stumble upon a door that you've ignored in the past, a door you continue to ignore whenever you pass by it. I have many doors locked away in my mind, and I take care not to enter them. But tonight, conflicted by a mix of curiosity and sadness, I reached for the key and unlocked some old memories, things, as Keren Ann sings, "I always try not to remember rather than forget." Well, ok, it'd be easier just to forget many things, but it turns out that the most we can do, aside from completely blocking experiences out, is to not remember. Because the wound under the band-aid, behind that door, remains raw, unhealed. Because it still hurts. Maybe airing it out a little helps, cleaning the infection, drying it, covering it with a new bandage. And forgetting again.

Harry Potter can act!

Yes kids, I was the lucky girl who took this photo just after seeing Daniel Radcliffe put in a TREMENDOUS performance as the tormented, violent main character Alan Strang in "Equus" on Friday night in London's West End.


(in the poster, his body turns into the head of a horse)

For anyone who is alarmed to hear that I saw nudity on a London stage, let me assure you that the artistic lighting, brilliant staging, and sheer intensity of this final scene rendered his nakedness as just that-- an integral, symbolic, physical metaphor for his vulnerability, sensitivity, fear, rage, and despair, and his ensuing horrific collision with nature.

This, my friends, was one of the finest performances I've ever seen. In anything. Ever.