A soft comfort

This week I'm sick and tired. As per status quo relationships are hard and confusing, work is stressful and unending, the days are too long, the nights are too short, and comfort is hard to come by. But there has been a constant comfort in my life that I would like to tell you about tonight.

Most everyone has something from their childhood that they've always loved. A blanket, a stuffed thing, tattered and in ribbons by the time they've struggled into their high school years. Often families encourage discarding or storing such familiar sources of comfort as a sign of growing up. My family however did not. They encouraged me to hold on to my bear Duncan. In a scary and unfamiliar world built on unending chaos my family understood that there must be a source of constant comfort. Tonight I want to tell you about the little bear who warms my heart.

I'm sure that Duncan used to look different. In fact my grandma and mother will sometimes point at the kind of fluffy teddy that Duncan used to resemble. However, he is actually one six full months older than me, an early Christmas present given to my mother the Christmas before my birth. He spent six months with me prior to birth and nearly every night since. For a 26 year old teddy bear, he's holding up just fine.

He's average sized. In hight hes maybe a foot, foot and a half. He used to be plump, however I like to sleep on top of him, literally, all my weight crushing down on the poor little guy, now he's more of a flat than fat. When I was young they used to make bears without any thing sewn on. His eyes are marked by a darker fur around the nose, which is indicated by a slightly less flat part pushing out of his face, also marked at the end in black. Although his black nose has been colored over and worn down from years of kisses. His ears are also mostly black as well as the palm and soles of his feet. Everything else is tan. It's more of a light brown when he's clean but lets be honest, teddy bears are not washed weekly.

I love the way he smells. Like laundry soap, like bar soap, like clean sheets, like me, like my house, like all the places I've ever called home. He smells like safety when I'm away, like the salt of my tears, like years of secrets, like a fellow solider. He is my prince charming, my king, my make believe hero and my real life companion.

Maybe I should have out grown the silly old bear. These days I don't stay up all night, keeping everyone else up, searching for the lost toy. I no longer cry or demand that the half hour trip from mom's house to dad's be made again so that I can sleep with my bedfellow. I don't fuss when he isn't near me when I wake up and I don't panic like I used to. But tonight, because I'm sick, and tired, and the world is still a big chaotic mess, I'm going to crawl into my big queen size grown up bed, in my one bedroom apartment, and before I set the alarm for my 14 hour day tomorrow to pay the bills, I'm going to snuggle with a great bear, and read him fairy tales. Read me fairy tales. Because life is easier when someone you love is always there.

Meet Duncan. He's pretty much the best guy I've ever known.

The Battery Died

Because the battery died in my camera I am going to "verbalize" the photo I most wanted to take at the carnival last weekend. Kaper says everything is art, this is me making a mess of several kinds of mediums, I'm also making his point in saying "Everything is art, just not good art."

From nearly a story off the ground the view comes into focus. Lights flashing, spinning, winding, screaming, and shinning on all the peripherals. The left side of the page begins with lines forming the trashy wooden bench. Draw the lines back at a 37 degree angle. 37? Who knows. Back. Towards the center. Away from the game with the basketballs and the giant stuffed monkeys. Closer to the thing that looks like shed, blocking the bumper cars. The line goes there. Paint it green. It's not important now, later on an arm will be slung across the back of it. I'm getting ahead of myself. No, too detailed. Let's try again.

Sitting on stage right and center there's a couple. Backs to the audience. The bench is turned as to face the back right wings. We barely see their faces. Only the Hispanic man as he rubs his wifes shoulder while they eat and watch the people passing. They're only the background. This is just the set up. Meet my props, mom and dad.

Behind them I want to sculpt the little girl. She's our dream, goal, light. A little four year old stands there, unattended to, about five feet behind her parents. The shot from above shows her in a soft light. Soft! In a carnival where nothing is soft and gentle. But here's this little wisp of a girl all dect out in her yellow sun dress and white sandals. She's playing, standing, watching. A picture of innocences is there before us. Just to the left of the riot and noise, just under the screams and ballyhooing of the carnies; here is a soft innocence in a land of cons and wildness. Family and love painted right there in front of me. I mentioned the dress is yellow right? At her feet, at our angles feet, she is standing on six or seven empty water bottles, a small disarray of garbage that has managed to spill forth as collateral for the even mayhem.

I wanted to photograph it. There is something that has always appealed to me about innocence and damage. Destruction and beauty standing side by side fascinates me. I want to show you, this is how I feel about the world. My world isn't made up of everyday mediocre "good/bad" when I think of how things are I see flowers and trees growing in the wake of volcanic eruptions, I see lovers holding hands in war, I see children being born next to people dying at the hospital. The world needs to see both, both at the same time, in one fell swoop, because each image must be held in our head at the same time. Let us not forget either the great beauty, wonder, and glory that allows us to fly, or the devastation, destruction, damage, that occurs when we fall. This is what it means to be human. To look both square in the eye and live.

That's my shot. The one I couldn't take because the battery died. I wish I could show you.

Under the Influence

This is a John Jurries influenced post. That means that he is both the primary motivating factor (something about goggle being angry and knowing where I live and needing updates) and the major directing force on the topic which I shall be discussing this evening. So, Kudos John, you have altered someones original course of action today. Check that off the list. Also, tell goggle to chill a little.

On a few of my "mix tapes" John has given me in the last year there's a band called Over the Rhine that sometimes pops up at just the right time. The two songs I recall hearing on the mixes were "I Don't Want to Waste Your Time" and "The World Can Wait". The songs certainly capture a particular mood that hits me at points in my life. Normally a song I love will immediately go on the repeat track and from time of acquisition to one week in I will have played the song 75+ times and it is suddenly at the top of my ipods "most played" list. These songs weren't like that, which is probably why it took me several months until the mood struck a deep enough cord to prompt me to purchase "Discount Fireworks" on my ipod account.

It's a collection of some of the most popular Over The Rhine songs, or so I gathered from the $1.29 price tag on all the songs. I got it after playing the samples from the first three tracks for about ten seconds each. It was just enough time to confirm this was the band, this was the mood, this was the sound I thought I wanted.

The first song is "Last Night On Earth Again." When I recommended the album later to a friend I used the song to explain why a band that seems such an unlikely fit for me is now among my collection. Generally I prefer much louder sounds, pop rock or classic rock, I'm a big fan of alternative, mostly I like to move, this band isn't much for jumping around or rockin' out. Also, I tend to have a male vocal dominated music collection. The lead singer of Over The Rhine is female. My friend was skeptical. I told her that there are occasionally things in life that a woman needs a woman to say for her. "Last Night On Earth" begins the process of telling those stories beautifully.

Both the sound and the lyrics remind me of a wayward southern girl who always fit in better with the good ol' boys. I can connect with the character painted when she says lines like, "I've been living this so called life since I can't remember when" or "someone said the best we can hope for is to make a beautiful mess, I put my soul up for sale and the whole world asked could you take any less?" Or on a spiritual level "I told Jesus he could have my heart he said what kind of shapes it in?" I can feel the pull of acknowledging who she is, what life is, and the beauty and flaws in both. There is a sense of mirth in the last night of earth. A bittersweetness that I find creeping through the album.

Songs like "Give Me Strength" also shock me with the emotional reaction. Lyrically I feel as though I would normally be repelled by something with a title or theme like this, as though it was weak and self help ish. But for some reason, in combination with the sound, which reminds me of something between a church hymn and something you sing or hum on a dark, rainy night where there is magic in a personal solitude, it validates all the lyrics. This tone and mood is what I enjoy most in the band, a sense of spiritualism and holiness in darkness and reality. As though the mood being set allows the girl in "Last Night" to meet a God without all the flippant attitudes she throws around in that first song. "The World Can Wait" and "Ohio" also give me the same sorts of impressions.

Two other tracks on the album have caught my attention this first week. "Latter Days" which is hauntingly beautiful. It opens with "What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be, Lord knows we've learned the hard way, all about healthy apathy" Which is a line that simply breaks my heart. There are so many important things represented and so many ideas and discussions I feel like are presented in this song, that opening line walks me right into that discussion and heartbreak."Nothing much here but our broken dreams" So much of the song feels the weight of a relationship, of all the relationships we have, "They've taken a toll these latter days" The piano playing softly in the background only emphasis' the feeling of loneliness as though we two were the only ones talking in the empty, smoke filled bar. The blue light bathing the singer, the darkness filling the room, the smallness adding to the heaviness of the words. We are all tired and lost in the simple, universal feelings presented. "I just don't have much left to say."

The final title that capture my heart is on out of pure selfishness. "All I Need Is Everything" aches of my own personal story. "Slow down, hold still, it's not as if it's a matter of will." The song presents the tension, both in the quicker (for this band) pacing and in the lyrics themselves between wanting so much more and having no way of gaining all the things needed. It's a waiting, learning, and acceptance of what we have and of what God will give us. "I tense up, my mind goes numb, there's nothing harder than learning to receive" is so true, while constantly begging for more and still having no sense of what we have or what it is we truly need we push for more, begging, and struggling in vain. Also, I find the attitude about being unwilling to accept merely anything just as important, "time to get up off my hands and knees 'cause if I beg for it it won't come, I find nothing but table crumbs" It is here, in these sorts of lines, the tension feels strongest to me. The song challenges the listener to view the powers to change things, what is worth actually receiving and what we must reject so that we can wait for better things. Its a gentle reminder that we have time to wait for the truly good, powerful, and wonderful gifts. The song feels like a representation of the kind of living relationship between God and his people. How we learn, what we can do, and the realization that we can't do everything. We really do need everything, but we have time, and life is about getting there, with God.

Again, maybe that's just me. The band certainly hits me in a mood. Somewhere in the darkness, where there are deep blues, darkest purples, and primarily blackness across the screen. All the things I imagine it would be like if the moon had a "sunset" kind of color. Pulling the deepest parts of night into the horizon before the dawn approached. That's what the songs on "Discount Fireworks" remind me of, our struggles, our nights, our connections with God and our private moments with each other. It'd a deeply personal album. If that mood has been striking you, if the hour is approaching midnight, if you want to stay in that place so you can think, pray, and grow, I suggest that the wayward southern girl, who's always been more comfortable with the southern boys, who is more than a little dirtied in a soul kind of way, I suggest that girl takes this album and uses it. Find something more in the night than what you had before.