Music

I have been really busy, since I last posted. OK, maybe not REALLY busy, but busy enough to think about a new post, but not actual post it. Oh procrastination! How I loathe thee.

Anyway, over the period of time I was not really busy, I was attending a lot of musical events. While I was sitting in the middle of the third row at the Symphony Orchestra I thought, first of all (as a friend of mine would say) how elitist! I am going to the symphony darling, I'll see you in a bit, said with my nose in the air of course. The second thing I thought-- how life changing, spirit moving, world rocking music can be. I won't get into an argument about what genres of music fit this description, because for everyone it is different. The bottom line is music causes a shift within a person to want to do something, or think something, or be something. Sitting in my seat, other than for a few nasty sneezes, I was completely still. Captivated by the rhythms and melodies that reverberated of the walls and into my ears and whizzed through my brain and slid down to my heart and settled there.

Because I am a visual person, I often create a setting for music to reside. For example, when I listen to classical music I imagine a piece being the soundtrack to two lovers walking in a meadow, or to the tragic slaying of a wild beast, or to the discovery of an awful betrayal. Putting music into action and seeing the music inhabit the scenery of lovers or beasts, helps the music come alive in my mind. Just as musicians, and those who are musically inclined, can feel the music with their mind because they understand the impact of a certain compilation of notes, I must consume music with my heart.

My two favorite types of music are contemporary christian, gospel, jazz and indie folk. One of my favorite songs by Iron and Wine is called Lion's Mane

Lion's Mane

Run like a race for family
When you hear like you're alone
The rusted gears of morning
To faceless busy phones
We gladly run in circles
But the shape we meant to make is gone

Love is a tired symphony
You hum when you're awake
Love is a crying baby
Mama warned you not to shake
Love is the best sensation
Hiding in the lion's mane

So I'll clear the road, the gravel
And the thornbush in your path
That burns a scented oil
That I'll drip into your bath
The water's there to warm you
And the earth is warmer
When you laugh

Love is a scene I render
When you catch me wide awake
Love's a dream you enter
Though I shake and shake and shake you
Love is the best endeavor
Waiting in the lion's mane

How does music move you?

Have courage

I was listening to some scripture from the book of Acts where Paul is going to witness to the people of Rome. Within this passage, when chaos ensues among the Pharisees and the Sedduces, Paul hears the Lord say, Have courage, just as you spoke to the people of Jerusalem, you must also speak to the people of Rome.

After listening to this excerpt from the scriptures, I began to pray for courage. In life, as the highly esteemed poet Robert Frost once wrote, Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Everyone has choices and as far as the "two roads" metaphor goes they can either go down the path that everyone takes or they can go down the path everyone stares at for a long time, sees that no one has taken it, decides that must mean there is something scary down there, and thus chooses the more popular of the two roads. One path is easy because a lot of people take that one. The other path requires courage.

I pray for courage because I want to be the person that goes down the road less traveled. But for believers, they know they are not alone. God guides them down the path that requires courage. His footprints might be invisible, but it does not mean He is not there.

Life has a lot of tricks up it's sleeve and sometimes these tricks and dead ends leave people jaded. But life is also full of possibilities. So when I stand at a crossroad, I don't want to get freaked out about which path to take. I want to remember the courage I prayed for and take a deep breath and run down the road not taken. What will you do?

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;  Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.  I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Date Night

I went to see Date Night this evening with my mom, grandma, and aunt-- hot date huh? It was a funny movie and I expected nothing less from the Steve Carell/Tina Fey combo. I definitely had my fair share of chuckles--a well needed remedy to a very stressful couple of days.

The most serious portion of the movie was dedicated to discussing the marital problems of the comic duo. Their fear: becoming restless in a marriage that functioned more like a roommate agreement than a love nest. The reality: they were in love, they had just lost sight of what they appreciated about the other person.

Romance by Edgar Allen Poe

Romance, who loves to nod and sing
With drowsy head and folded wing
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky;
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things—
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

Poe says he has no time for idle cares such as romance, but lets consider how romance really brighten up life? After all the desire for romance turned one boring date night into one heck of a ride.

Its been awhile

Hello,

So no one really pays attention to this blog. Why should they, I don't even pay that much attention to my own blog. Well hopefully that will change. I haven't posted anything since October of last year. And since then I have learned a lot and experienced a lot.

This blog is all about commenting on what is fascinating about life. Not just my own life, but life itself. Play, pause, rewind, dream is what life is about, at least to me. One lives, rests, reflects, and goes forward.

A life by Sylvia Plath

Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.

What will great poets say about your life?

Think about it

I was reading Charles Darwin's ideas on expression. He happens to think that when humans sneer or laugh or express sorrow that we have inhereted our traits to signify emotions in facial expression from our primal ancestors. But how can one manage to push every persons facial expression of emotion into one neat box. Therefore when I sneer, or laugh, or am full of sorrow and you do the same we are projecting the same expression and thus all those around us will know what we are feeling.

But maybe a smile on the outside is a sneer on the inside and a droopy mouth and furrowed brow are the gifts from a genetic line.

Each face is kissed by God. It is because we live in a society that we learn to analyze body language and expression in order to effectively communicate. And over time we learn to associate one particular expression to its meaning because of habit, not fact. The mark that every person's kiss leaves behind is particular to the individual. Enjoy being the product of unconditional love. Don't think you are simply an advanced model of a primate with higher intellectual capabilities.

Fixing Me

He loves me with a scientific assurance.

For him love is as simple as a mathematical equation. Very simply 1+1=2.

He multiplied by me makes our love double in quantity.

And he minus me or the other way around, means that we are none.

And I, I make our love complicated.

I make love seem abstract and unattainable.

An entity that dwells in some sort of alternate universe.

What if he is right.

What if love is as concrete as the street

As logical as a math problem

And we who make love sound like a cheesy chick flick

Defeat the process of loving at all.

What if his questions of why

and why

and why

Are only to fix me.

The parts that have been

bro

ke

n

shattered

manipulated

by past loves and past lost and past hurts.

Maybe I am wrong.

Maybe we all get it wrong time and time again.

Maybe we complicate our lives with trying to make love something it is not.

He loves me with the simplest love,

In the most concrete way.

Telling you about my Love

I love you because your love for me requires that I become vunerable to you.

I love you because when you smile at me I can't help but smile back.

I love you because you make fun of me relentlessly and remind me not to take myself to seriously.

You make me feel like I am worth it.

You validate me even when I dont ask for it.

You send me love through looks and you observe me with careful attention.