On leaving, arriving and assuming a life that suddenly becomes yours

I moved, down the country, to a new geographic block of states.

The vegetation is different down here, the squirrels are smaller, none of these people have heard my stories three thousand times yet.  Of course, my stories contain no relevance here, there are no architectural mnemonics here to trigger the subconscious into the mental fugue that can only be escaped by telling the story.

And this all happened almost three weeks ago, and still.  I don't feel it.  Instead I think about homes and houses, I think about selves and stories, I think about timelines interrupted, Derek Parfit might be on to something.

What was more meaningful was two days ago, when the remainder of Hypatia's Household packed up their shit into cars and trucks, turned in the keys and the internet box and rolled their separate directions off into some mythical sunset.

My own leaving was subsumed into the entrance into a life clearly already in progress.  This life has a fire escape and a pre-established harmony with a set of people I don't know yet.  This new life tangos and forgoes some of the ancient habits that built me up.

We have left Toledo.

I have arrived in Atlanta.

And my pre-ordered life unpacks itself around me.  Today, a day I have done nothing and spoken to almost no one, it occurs to me that I am already the person I will be.

But there is this tension - I am looking for it to be painful or meaningful or hard or something.  It isn't.  And that is terrifying.

Herculaneum at Sunrise

Part I.
 
the invited chemicals have been
      rearranging the furniture of my mind 

- Deck chairs,
                        you know 
the Titanic, you know -

They pull up comfy armchairs to the fireplace,
         and I
                  get to have tea

with my demons.

Part II.
 
This town and I have lived uncomfortably together.  Like a parent of a missing child, 12 years later.  There are landmarks to memories become meaningless, and yet. . . And yet.  I've not changed the locks, but I have lost the key.

My time in this town is coming to a close.  The tick-tock of calendars and hours winding down.  Two years, and this still doesn't feel like home.  I pack and find a cathedral of papers and pens, a full skeleton of a decade past, more than that.  I give away books like a future suicide.

Two years, and these two years are like a palindrome.  Inverted mobius strip, to begin and end in similar ways but on the one hand, dragons; on the other, St. George.  I don't know which I would prefer.

Could I breathe fire and sterilize the land, lay waste to the countryside, allow the charred remains to stand as witness to this heart.  They say the heat, the light, radiation of the bombs we dropped left shadows in their wake.  And I don't know if this is true, but I know what it is like to burn with such a heat, the past is burned in bas relief.  You tip your hat to shadows on the street, you pause to let the ghosts come through.  The lost remains of Pompeii, the living past, struck down and replaced by muted statues.

Or, could I live as St. George.  The gore and flesh still on my hands, the heart-taste still fresh on my tongue.  The dragon was never vanquished, you know.  The heart torn out, the fire turned to embers.  If George could eat that heart, could stand the heat, could climb back into the gaping maw of sinew and bone, the dragon would find her wings again.

This town and I won't part as friends.  The streets will not miss me.  The empty windows will not weep.  I am accustomed to endings that are final.  He accuses me of burning bridges.  And I do.  Two years and I have to struggle to remember.  The order of things.  The passage of time.

My dreams, still, though, my dreams are of a missing.  I fret that I am sleeping while awake.

Part III

I will

one day

go into that desert, head held high
     to lose my skin to brighter suns

I want to dance this on its edge

(and he held me in his coffee gaze, the words were other hands to soothe my brow, you know, you know how the muscles of my eyes become so tight, the world too clear, too sharply defined that i cut myself against the edges, there was a softness that i needed, that i had, that i soon must trade for wool)

but as for now, I won't

Dick Moves and a Sense of Proportion

I was planning on writing a nice nostalgic post about Sean Connery Day IX and the importance of rituals of friendship.  It was going to be all sensitive and bittersweet and ultimately uplifting.

However, three things happened between my intending to leave for Up North and my arriving Up North that kind of soured me on the whole bittersweet-and-ultimately-uplifting theme.  Nothing particularly bad per se, just those moments of mild annoyance that we encounter in our lives.  And I thought that I'd rather complain about 3 dick moves in 60 minutes than write anything, like, productive and shit.

The Listening Project - Almost Killed Me - The Hold Steady

Part 5 - Almost Killed Me - The Hold Steady (2004, French Kiss Records)

The problem with having gone to the Pitchfork Music Festival 3 years in a row and not knowing jack about music is that I have a lot of false memories about who I saw, when.  I am positive that I saw the Hold Steady, but it might have been Oxford Collapse, or I might have meant to see them but saw someone else instead.

It's all very complicated.

At any rate, the Hold Steady is a good example of the paradox of my musical tastes.  For those of you listening along at home, you may have noticed that I really like unusual male voices. And Craig Finn has an unusual voice, a kind of strained talking-at-you-in-a-rhythm sound that, apparently, I really like.  And yet, cannot stand Tom Waits or Bob Dylan.  Weird, I know.  Almost Killed Me is not a very challenging listen.  It's a nice straight-forward album that doesn't try to be something it's not.  How nice.  It's the sort of album that makes for good listening when writing or doing other things.

Favorite Track - "Killer Parties"
Least Favorite - "Positive Jam" - dudes, I'm so over the "We Didn't Start the Fire" intros.

next up - American Football - American Football (1998).  Oooh, emo.

The Listening Project - Aladdin Sane - David Bowie

Part 2 - Aladdin Sane - David Bowie (1973, RCA)

I refuse to believe that there is a single person out there in the universe who doesn't want to make out with David Bowie, particularly in the early 70s, covered-in-glitter, deliciously crazy, David Bowie of Aladdin Sane.

I mean really, it's amazing.

The boys have been less than excited about this listening project ("But Hypatia'sGirl - why would you want to listen to music that sucks?") and were somewhat resistant to participating when I told them that I wanted to listen to the next in my series on the drive up to Ann Arbor. Until they realized it was Bowie. I'm really just in love with this whole album, it's fun, it's playful. It's everything that I love about glam rock and great guitars. And David Bowie's voice.

I have no real great story about this album, aside from my slavering love of David Bowie . . . and how great a glam rock theme party can be!

Favorite Track - "Panic in Detroit."
Least Favorite - I absolutely refuse to try and tease out which I like least.

Next up - Aldhils Arboretum - Of Montreal (2002)

The Listening Project - Adam and Eve - Catherine Wheel

My goal is to actually listen through my iTunes collection. I've decided to go through by album, just to keep the spice of variety in there.
Now, I'm not some crazy person with 40 days worth of music, just 9.9 days.
The first on the list - Adam and Eve from Catherine Wheel. (1998, EMI/Chrysalis)

What will always make me giggle about Catherine Wheel, is that I have this perfect memory of checking them out when I was in high school and finding them to be ZOMG so hard. Of course my musical listening in high school consisted of music for ballet, musical theater (whatever musical I was performing in at the time) and the lesbian musicians my dad listens to.

There is something incredibly satisfying to my ears about that mid-90s rock sound, and surely no fuller example can be the quasi-ballad rock of Catherine Wheel. Adam and Eve is a surprisingly good album to write to, the constancy of their sound doesn't require a helluva lot of attention, the songs fade pretty seamlessly into one another, so if it's wide variety of sound you're looking for, I would suggest you look somewhere else, but for a kind of satisfying reminder of the pop rock music of my late high school career, it's hard to go wrong with this.

Interestingly, to me, there is something about the voice of the lead singer, Rob Dickenson, reminds me of my current favorite band, The National.

Favorite track - "Satellite" - just a kind of solid song.
Least Favorite - "Phantom of the American Mother" - a little too ballady for my tastes.

Next up - Aladdin Sane - David Bowie, 1973 (oh goody!)

A Shot Across the Bow: or, a friendly introduction

Beginnings are difficult.


It's this first post that's kept me from blogging until now. How to set the tone properly, to establish purpose and direction, to justify doing this and not writing my thesis as we speak . . .

In short - how do I introduce myself when I know that most of those who will read this will already know me?
Look how meta I am!

At any rate, I am a political philosopher, with a deep and abiding love for Hannah Arendt, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Giorgio Agamben. I'm finishing my thesis so that I can have my Master's, so that I can go on to a Ph.D. program so that I can get a job to pay off the student loans I need to get my Master's. Also my B.A.

This blog will focus on those aspect of pop culture, current events, the mere facts of living in a world with other people that leave me cross-eyed and ranting. Only now I won't have to just rant at the boy and the roommate, and I won't be limited to the few words Facebook allows you to add to links. Hooray!

Also, my kitties are adorable.

This is Appie - she's an adorable idiot.

This is Alex, he's too smart for his own good. Or, more likely our own good.