In A Blue where the Below Doesn't Matter

In a flight, to a place that isn’t home, it is easy to become immersed in the journey, the cold colors of a dying day draining in the sky.

And the thousands below, unknowing and silent, will never know the whispered thoughts that scream through my mind at 500 miles per hour…thoughts that collide in a blue where the below doesn’t matter.

As pale as an evening star, as black as the first ink’d part of the sky in an abandoned East, a thought of you spills like hot wax behind my eyes, slowly, warmly, spreading like the orange in the sky.  Alighting on places in a blue where the below doesn’t matter.

Night crushes and bruises the waning pales into a dark, but the tiniest, filmiest orange line remains across the sky, a molten scar if only for a moment.  

 The smallest scars that remain from thoughts of you, nearly invisible, rarely seen, and never known in a blue where the below doesn’t matter.

The Lure of Empty Hammocks

I find myself at the whim of the sea, the sensation of emerging from a salted water and breathing in the cool air as the wind cools against my skin. The shimmer of a million dimes in a blue-green haze of an ocean.

I need to drown my Blackberry, need to unplug, need to remove myself as a slave to the blinking red dot of a message. I need to stop the reflexive lurch for the phone. I need to fall for the enduring lure of an empty hammock.

I need to stir the sugars that have rested at the bottom of my jar.

I need to taste the kiss of the water, the salt of the sea, the warming gel of the sun against my back. I need to feel the crush of the sand, the slope of the earth to the waves. I need to float aimless. I need to submerge, and see the kaleidoscope of the sun against a sandbar.

I need to drift, I need to untie the rope against the piling. I need the slightest tug of a wind against a sailcloth. I need to hear the drowning of waves. The crush of a curl against a jetty, the white foam, the taste of an ocean that is so reminiscent of a kiss, a salty, craven crush of mouths.

The ocean is a violent lover, and a placid partner. She calls, she cries. She waits.

She is eternal, green-eyed and jealous. Hateful of my wooden stance on firm ground. Balance, the ability to stand, lie, lay, lope. She hates solid footing. Despises.

She is tumultuous, she is uneven, bending to a Moon for tides to fall and rise. She stirs anger, storms, pretty petulant lightning in waves and wind.

I crave her comfort, the loss of horizons when immersed in her depths, surrounded by a airful of lungs, floating in her arms. She has such long and loving arms, wrapping across me as I drift and slow, rise and ebb, the Moon calling her higher and lower.

She could crush me. A mere sweep, a brush of her will. She holds me in such a delicate, poignant pose, knowing the sheer depth of her grip is more than enough to suffocate me.

I breathe in her scent from afar, the slight salt and exotic taste of her as she crosses sands and time for me. She bursts and rolls at my feet, angry and submissive. Daring me to come into her and drown. Just for a moment. And then release me back to my air, my ground.

She scars me with her salt, tattoos me with her tides. I fall into her, swimming upstream, diving beneath a carpet of golden green glazes to emerge breathless into a sky of winking stars.

And I could listen to her call to me, wave after calling wave. Lulled by her voice as I lay in the lure of an empty hammock.

10

Here are, in no particular order, the songs that I love...

R.E.M.: Country Feedback
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CYitiDJPTE


Glen Hansard & Marketa Inglova: Falling Slowly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0lIdr5TsaU


Talk Talk: I don't believe in You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqCBnLO_jqk


Sade: I Never Thought I'd See the Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDikGMM62Ok


Cock Robin: Just Around the Corner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJXvmFB0azA


Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Relax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WZ33w3B8Hw&feature=fvst


Roxy Music: More Than This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhmHaHTV-QM


Tears for Fears: The Working Hour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOY_aqkUTxY


Ice House: No Promises
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB4g-hWa4BE


And the most haunting, elegiac song I have ever heard:
Aqualung featuring Sara Bareilles: Remember Us
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Ecrt96ojo

Yeah, most of them are somewhat sad, some of them somewhat earnest, but most of the time that I listened to them I was on a train heading away...departing, leaving...and they just fit my moods, fit the moment.

Enjoy.

You Can Get Addicted to a Certain Kind of Sadness

A recent song has been somewhat tormenting my fairly eclectically motivated mind...an unusually catchy tune from Gotye, an Aussie or may Kiwi band with this gorgeous mosaic-laden video. The song, "Somebody I used to Know", isn't all that imaginative. Rather, it is the significantly abrupt dismantling from a very intimate position to a fairly benign one...going from a position of love to a position of unleashed fury. The video is of a rather unattractive singer, juxtaposed with beige tiles colored in a la Peter Gabriel...but Kimbra, his female singer is what draws me in the most. The first time I heard it was on the radio, so I thought it was a duet. However I soon learned it was a guest appearance from our lady friend. Never heard of Kimbra. Not sure if I liked her music. But after seeing the obscure video, the lyrics became haunting.

"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad it was over"

There is such terror in those words, such a trash-heap of moving from one stage to another. Such low expectations...resigning to the fact that things won't work out. And nobody ever remains friends. Nobody ever leaves alive. Nuclear bombs on balsa-wood bridges. To look at the video, and see Kimbra shouting at him, even harmonizing back ups with a wide open mouth, shouting at him. His fairly unattractive face and his fairly unique voice providing the reason for why she would even be attracted at all...it's her sideways profile yelling that is the most interesting part of the video.

I digress. Because it is the opening lyrics that really put this plane into a death spin.

"Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember"

Lonely in your company? I understand that this guy is from down under, but honestly it is the last line, the "that was love and it's an ache I still remember" that really becomes the heart of the matter. He will never forget.

It is a cutting blade. It is silver, it glistens and it reflects a brief strobe when it is flashed as it strikes downward and cuts through the major artery and the explosive nature of heart-pulsed blood is that it careens...normally it careens in the mind, agitating, writhing, a blood filled with oxygen, pulsating, red-hot to the touch and bringing us to sweat and to swear. And when she becomes somebody that he used to know it swiftly pours out of him. He will inevitably die, and she is the last memory to a mind and body cut down by her departure.

And for this to even be contemplated, for this to even be a consideration, he must be used to it. It is not the first time that the throat has been cut. Thus his addiction to a certain kind of sadness.

I'm probably reading into it too much, but I do love this song. It is simple, and it is complex, and I love that we will all interpret it the way we want to for ourselves.

Diamonds with Inclusions

Tiny flaws, hidden gems. I've become increasingly aware that there is a distinctive unique beauty in things that are a bit off-kilter. I've learned to love the alteration of skin with an artist's ink. I've come to appreciate a flaw. An awkwardness. A diamond that is offset with an inclusion. A tilt of the head to the right. I've grown to appreciate disruption. I've learned to appreciate the things that cause a concern, cause a worry. I find a beauty in finding that part of you that you find the least attractive suddenly becoming the fixation. I like it when I can see the transformation...I love the way that age becomes like an artist's blade, smearing slightly the colors from a finely drawn line into a smudged version of what once was...the way a sunset appears through a screen. It is endearing, it is even more devastatingly beautiful because it has transformed. It has transitioned. The scars, the ink, the comfort in the skin and the confidence in the sharing. The discovery. I love what is perceived as a flaw and moving it into a feature. I love the shyness of reluctance and I applaud the passion of sharing. I love examining the proximity, the closeness, and finding the things that you may find harmful...beautiful.

Snow Day

Maybe it's morning. Maybe it's night. In a blackened room the scuttling of sleet against the window is a rhythm like rain. Somewhere out there ice glazes over branches, over streets, and as the sun grays out the dark the sky stops spitting and collapses into a thousand flakes as the morning begins with snow.

Snow deadens sound. It muffles, it blankets. It quiets.

And it's cold. Even windless it is numbing, it is a blade across the skin.

And it's gray. Even at the height of the day the white circle of sun stays low, blotted out, caught up in the trees. It is a day with eyes half shut.

But here, I feel you stir, I feel your warmth. I hear the slight change in breathing and know you're emerging from your sleep. And I know if I move it will hasten you awake so I lay still, motionless, capturing this snow day in these quietest moments before the rest of the world notices.

I'll Take "What are 'No Hot Babes' for $1000"

There's really no debating that the long-storied run of the game-show Jeopardy truly stimulates our perceptions of intelligence, education and our own egotism in carrying arcane data around in our brains. It is a brisk-paced event, and trivia is like so many pieces of popcorn that we can infinitely stuff into our mouths and never get full. We learn something new, we're reminded of something we'd forgotten, and we have those agonizing moments when we see the shell of an answer and exhale "I knew that" after we see the answer. But there are some immutable rules, at least in my mind, that we must always remember when it comes to Jeopardy.

1) Yes, your ringer does work and yes you look idiotic when you convulsively shake it and plunge it like you're Wiley Coyote attempting to blow up a bridge in a Road-Runner cartoon. They clearly must have to reiterate that to contestants because nobody ever appeals to the judges a la Tonya Harding for a do-over. If I ever got to be a contestant I'd bang it on the podium...I'd lose, but I'd be remembered.

2) Alex is a tool. Just wait until a French or native American Indian name/phrase/river/building/event/sandwich is revealed as a clue. He loves to phonetically emphasize this skill. Because I would only guess correctly if I heard it pronounced a certain way. (Think Louvre vs. Loover)...when his condescension is at it's apex, like after you lose a Double Jeopardy clue (he likes to remind you with "hurry") before he clucks and pointedly reminds you of your new idiot status, I swear they must have bailiffs standing by so the contestant cannot go on the attack. He's also Canadian, which is like checking "Vanilla" on ethnicity. And really, who has that type of mustache anymore?

3) People's handwriting skills continue to suck. I like looking at how people scribe their name. Sometimes it's neat and tidy...sometimes there is a smiley face...sometimes a line underneath it for emphasis. The best examples obviously come in Final Jeopardy...when they have to write a full sentence, including a question mark. When people have no clue I like it when they have cross-outs. I also like when Alex struggles to read...it makes me think of him as semi-literate. If I was guessing I'd make it damn near illegible and have him keep guessing until he got so exasperated he'd have to ask me what I wrote. People also seem to have trouble with dollar signs. Wonder what's up with that?

4) There is a paucity of hot smart women as contestants. I'm not sure of the demographics of the show, but I would think throwing in a few pieces of eye-candy could tip the ratings a tad...who cares if she's -$5000 like a Will Farrell character...she's getting the sympathy vote. But every now and then there is an attractive contestant and I actually get emotionally attached to her performance. I get sad when she inevitably loses however. The show preceding Jeopardy in our cable programming is Wheel of Fortune. Not only do they have an attractive co-host, they almost always have a very good looking female who's very familiar with the alphabet. And even if they're not a contestant they usually are the attractive spouse shown in the crowd...Jeopardy? I think they pride themselves on not only getting fairly scary people, but they must tell them to wear clothes picked out exclusively by their mothers. One more thing...always hang around after the show ends for the credits portion...sometimes when those people come out from behind the podiums you actually see their entire body and that can be a buzz-kill of huge proportions.

5) I like to think that I am actually smarter after each episode of Jeopardy. I just forget that fact until I get around to watching the next show.

6) Kids Jeopardy makes me feel awfully stupid.