Sunday, February 24, 2008

Oscar de la Jesus

Watched the Oscars tonight and yes, I smiled to myself because I am STILL in the back of my mind practicing my Oscar speech....holding my Infant of Prague. I just want each and every person I have ever done a show with to know that you will be thanked when the actual big day happens. Now all I have to do is figure out what to wear.

You know I have this wedding gowny thing that could probably be reworked somehow...

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Feeling Eighteen....

It's snowing and soft and quiet and lovely. The sky is that beautiful rosy colour caused by city lights on snowy nights with the trees black and spiky against it. How I do love the view from my window.

Bob and I went to our little neighborhood pub and walking home it just put me in the moment of being college. I went to college in Bowling Green and we always went out on Thursdays and always walked because no one had a car. Today is Thursday and we went out...of course one of the major differences is then we never went out until at least 10:00 and tonight we were home at the latest by 10:00.

...ahhh, but the snow. It reminded me of walking with my friends and feeling free and adventurous...and hopeful. Hopeful about your dreams, your life. I don't think that I really ever felt closer to those people than when I was walking downtown with them in the snow. The snow created our own little world, somehow protective of our conversations. It was just being in the moment.

...so we flash forward some thirtysomething years and I realize that I am grateful to be where I am. I walked home holding my husband's hand and felt all those feelings I felt long ago on those wintry walks...adventure, freedom, hope...but also peace because I know I have a partner who faces the stuff with me I had no idea about back then...the hard stuff...but the conversations we had years ago on those wintry nights was about hard stuff...it was just simpler hard stuff.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Another Thing to Love about Computers...

Bob has become a big fan of iTunes. We recently had a party and he put money into the account and our wish was to have everyone pick songs. We were going to make CDs of what everyone picked...kind of a record of the evening to give. Everyone got so into to talking to each other that only one person picked a song. I guess that meant it was a successful party because people were actually more interested in talking to a person than piddling on a computer.

Tonight is the first time that I played on iTunes and I think that I could become addicted. I know that I would end up picking out nostalgia...ahhh, but nostalgia from OUR younger years. Popped into my head, found it and bought the song. If you were in college around 1973-1974, you will remember Spirit, "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" and "Nature's Way"...well it is now on our computer. It was a sappy song then...it is STILL...but it sure is nice to hear. It makes you sway and want to hold a lighter up in the air.

In the store at Christmas we get these GODawful CDs of "holiday" music that we have to play from preThanksgiving to forever. At the end of the season this year, I popped ours out the CD player and gleefully cut it to shreds. A year ago, snuck in between Mariah Carey, Bing Crosby, twenty versions of "Melaklimekee" some stupid Hawaiian song that I abhor was a golden gem. Whoever programs the CDs must have been a little P.O.ed with their job. We were busy last year and I would keep hearing snippets of the lyrics and I finally looked the song up on the web. It is Bare Naked Ladies "Elf's Lament". It is wonderful. I highly reccommend looking the lyrics up and pasting them in your cubicle. It just tickled me that this song would end up on our CD. A bit of holiday anarchy that applies to the whole year.

The other song that poppped in my mind and found was Leon Russell "A Song for You". I've loved that song from the first time I heard it. I remember being at dorm parties, sitting in some room drinking beer, hearing that song, and loving it and feeling confusedly melancholy. It touched some nerve in me. Leon Russell's voice is not great but it has such a rawness in this song. The emotions he sang about seemed so adult and complicated and so beyond anything I knew. It is one of the sexiest songs to me. I didn't get until much later in life that the song is about intimacy and that what makes it sexy. At 18, it was just a hint of something I didn't know but wanted. It just spoke to me.

One song that took me years to get over hearing is Cat Steven's "Moonshadow". It is connected to a very important person in my life. Hearing the song took me back to such memories and place and time, it was overwhelming. It always seemed that the song and memories, so deeply connected, caught me by surprise. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I heard it and could smile.

...music does that to you.