All Better

Thanks Charles, you be the best.

The song about twenty-nine years sounds much better now. You might need to clear your cache (or refresh once you click on the link) to get the new version.

Tech Difficulties

Last song I posted was wacky. I'm looking into some issues.

Next, Please

I'm done with that story I was writing before the year was over (for Nate). The story sort of sucks. No really, it does. So when I say I'm "done" with it, I mean I'm done looking at it, not that it's in some sort of completed form. BUT it served a purpose in that it got me back into the habit of writing and the next thing I started working on I have loved, yes loved. It's been a joy to write and will hopefully continue to be that way. I'm so excited for it. I can hardly wait to finish it. Too bad there is this thing called work that keeps getting in the way. So it goes.

That doesn't really do much for this blog, in fact the story has horded much of my creative energies and feelings. So here's a song I've been listening to a lot lately. Around 2:45 it becomes glorious. I wonder how much of my enjoyment of the song is due to the fact that I'm twenty-nine, like when a song mentions your name you some how feel more connected to it (even though the writer/singer doesn't know a thing about you).

You know I've dreamed about you, for twenty-nine years
before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I've missed you for twenty-nine years

The Trees Were All Dressed in White

My brother and our old friend Jerry were here this weekend. We went snowboarding, which I've done once or twice before but we decided to all board since Jerry had never skied and that would allow us all to kind of suck and feel challenged on the easy slopes. We weren't absolutely sure we were going to be able to make it up to Tahoe because the area was experiencing blizzard like conditions. I awoke at 4am Saturday morning to check the weather and roads and attempt to find a ski resort that was opened. Parts of highway 80 were closed but 50 was open (if you had 4wd or chains) so I decided on the first resort off of 50 that was open (Sierra-at-Tahoe). I woke Frank and Jerry and we headed out around5:30. It is a mere 3.5 hour drive to Tahoe that was mostly uneventful. The snow on the roads weren't too bad.

The snow at the resort was fresh (which translates to soft to fall on, which we did a lot of) but around 1pm it started snowing and blowing like crazy. Somehow this change in weather coincided perfectly with our first ride up to the very top of the mountain. It took use 1.5 hours to get down because we couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of us. So it was a bit like learning to snowboard with your eyes closed. At one point I fell down and then got up but couldn't look directly downhill without going blind so I looked down at the ground but could really tell where the ground was and I tried to get my board moving again and thought I had; I readjusted my balance for moving but it turned out I actually wasn't moving (the snow flying past my created the illusion of motion) and so I fell over again, which was even weirder because it was so white I couldn't predict when I was going to hit the ground. It was a very bizarre , and maybe humbling experiencing. I have new respect for the power of winter weather. I can see how easy it would be to get lost and confused in a powerful winter storm. The resort ended up closing early. The drive back home was slightly more challenging, mostly due to limited visibility but the roads were also slicker.

That's all a bit of a side track from my normal postings, but I had mentioned Jerry earlier and there is something profoundish about feeling lost in a sea of white. It was good to see Frank and Jerry together, obviously still good friends. That made me happy.

Love and War and all the Things in between

Listen here.

Read here:

I'm nearing the end of Everything is Illuminated. There is a chapter dedicated to Jonathan's grandfather (Safran) and the Gypsy girl he loves but doesn't love. He is Jewish and has a dead right arm, she is a snake charmer, their love is forbidden, especially for him.

They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge, and I will show you things you have never, ever seen. [This is what she told him the first time they met, sitting next to each other in a dark theater.] The "M" was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the "eet" from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; the "me" from the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; the "und" from too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; the "er" from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE ... an so on, on so on, each note a collage of love that could never be, and war that could.

The Gypsy girl carved love letters into trees, filling the forest with notes for him. Do not forsake me, she removed from the bark of a tree in whose shade they had once fallen asleep. Honor me, she carved into the trunk of a petrified oak. She was composing a new list of commandments, commandments they could share, that would govern a life together, and not apart. Do not have any other loves before me in your heart. Do not take my name in vain. Do not kill me. Observe me, and keep be holy.

I'd like to be wherever you are in ten years, he wrote her, gluing clips of newspaper headlines to a piece of yellow paper. Isn't that a nice idea?

A very nice idea, he found on a tree at the fringe of the forest. And why is it only an idea?

Because -- the print stained his hands; he read himself on himself -- ten years is a long time from now.

We would have to run away, carved in a circle around a maple's trunk. We would have to leave behind everything but each other.

Which is possible, he composed the fragments of the news of imminent war. It's a nice idea, anyway.

....

For all of his liaisons, for all of the women who would undress for him at the show of his dead arm, he had no other friends, and could imagine no loneliness worse than an existence without her. She was the only one who could rightly claim to know him, the only one he missed when she was not there, and missed even before she was absent. She was the only one who wanted more of him than his arm.

I don't love you, he told her one evening as they lay naked in the grass.

She kissed his brow and said, I know that. And I'm sure you know that I don't love you.

Of course, he said, although it came as a great surprise -- not that she didn't love him, but that she would say it. In the past seven years of love-making he had heard the words so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers, and adulterous wives. Women had said I love you without his ever speaking. The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that stranger didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

My parents have arranged a marriage, he said.

For you?

With a girl named Zosha. From my shtetl. I'm seventeen.

And do you love her? she asked without looking at him.

He broke his life into its smallest constituent parts, examined each, like a watchmaker, and then reassembled it.

I hardly know her. He also avoided eye contact, because like Pincher P. who lived in the streets as a charity case, having donated even his last coin to the poor, his eyes would have given away everything.

Are you going to go through with it? she asked, drawing circles in the earth with her caramel fingers.

I don't have a choice, he said.

Of course.

She would not look at him.

You will have such a happy life, she said. You will always be happy.

Why are you doing this?

Because you are so lucky. Real and lasting happiness is within your reach.

Stop, he said. You're not being fair.

I would like to meet her.

No you wouldn't

Yes I would. What's her name? Zosha? I would like very much to meet Zosha and tell her how happy she will be. What a lucky-girl. She must be very beautiful.

I don't know.

You've seen her, haven't you?

Yes.

Then you know if she's beautiful. Is she beautiful?

I guess.

More beautiful than I am?

Stop.

I would like to attend the wedding, to see for myself. Well, not the wedding, of course. A Gypsy girl couldn't enter the synagogue. The reception, though. You are going to invite me, aren't you?

You know that isn't possible, he said, turning away.

I know it isn't possible, she said, knowing that she had pushed it too far, been too cruel.

It isn't possible.

I told you: I know.

But you have to believe me.

I do.

They made love for the last time, unaware that the next seven months would pass without any words between them. He would see her many times, and she him -- they had come to haunt the same places, to walk the same paths, to fall asleep in the shade of the same trees -- but they would never acknowledge each other's existence. They both wanted badly to go back seven years to their first encounter, at the theater, and do it all again, but this time not to notice each other, not to talk, not to leave theater, she leading him by his dead right arm through a maze of muddy alleys, past the confectioners' stands by the old cemetery, down the Jewish/Human fault line, and so on and so on into the blackness. For seven months they would ignore each other at the bazaar, at the Dial, and at the fountain of the prostrate mermaid, and they were sure they could ignore each other anywhere and always, sure they could be complete strangers, but where proven wrong when he returned home one afternoon from work only to pass her on her way out of his house.

What are you doing here? he asked, more afraid that she had revealed their relationship -- to his father, who would surely beat him, or his mother, who would be so disappointed -- than curious as to why she was there.

Your books are arranged by the color of their spines, she said. How stupid.

The most important part

My eyes alight linger stay rest fall upon the hem of your dress
You lift the sides
revealing bare feet and spring-time mud
a heart discovers love
Soaked by the rain that covers
your dress, my hair, our world, all the rest
Spring will always turn to Summer
then Fall
stubborn-Winter
stubborn-eyes
stubborn-heart
But (and this is the most important part)
The spring-time mud always always returns

If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.

"And then the General came to my father." It was not too dark for me to see that Grandfather closed his eyes. "Spit, he said." "Did he?" "No," she said, and she said no as if it was any other word from any other story, not having the weight it had in this one. "Spit, the General with blond hair said." "And he did not spit?" She did not say no, but she rotated her head from this to that. "He put it in my mother's mouth, and he said spit or." "He put it in her mother's mouth." "No," the hero said without volume. "I will kill her here and now if you do not spit, the General said, but he would not spit." "And?" Grandfather asked. "And he killed her." I will tell you that what made this story most scary was how rapid it was moving. I do not mean what happened in the story, but how the story was told. I felt that it could not be stopped. "It is not true," Grandfather said, but only to himself. "Then the General put the gun in the mouth of my younger sister, who was four years old. She was crying very much. I remember that. Spit, he said, spit or." "Did he?" Grandfather asked. "No," she said. "He did not spit," I told the hero. "Why didn't he spit?" "And the General shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything." If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.
                  -- Another quote from Everything is Illuminated.