Need some refreshing

An idea I got from a comment I left on x77tigersxus’s journal: I would like to get some must-have recommendations of your current favorite CDs, please. They don’t have to be new, or of any particular genre or or anything, they just have to be awesome. Awesome to you. They just have to give you joy. I need some refreshment. Freshness. New blood.

I would give you my recommendations, but all of you are so darn hip that anything I would recommend, you’ve probably already grown tired of and given on permanent loan to your younger sibling so that someday, they can be almost as hip as you. Almost.

(Geez. That sounded snarky. I didn’t mean it! Curse you, cold, cold, medium of the internet!)

Well, okay, I guess I could name a few that are on high rotation for me right now…for examplllllle, ummmmmmmm, okay, “Black on Both Sides” by Mos Def (which is only, what, seven years old now) is completely rocking me currently. “Come On, Feel the Illinoise” by Sufjan Stevens (that man makes me weep with joy). “The Beautiful Struggle” by Talib Kweli. Joni Mitchell is always on the turntable. U2’s latest, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” (I’ve been playing “Miracle Drug” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own” over and over and over). Ooh, ooh, “Clap You Hands Say Yeah” make me so happy that I’m alive right now, that I was alive to hear them play music. I also just ordered two new salsa CDs: “Dicen Que Soy” by India, this fucking fierce salsa lady, and Marc Anthony’s “Valio la Pena.” That’s a good cross-section.

Okay, guys, lay it on me! Tell me the one, maybe two CDs that are obsessing you, haunting you, screaming away your commutes, beating on your steering wheels, staying in the car way longer than necessary in front of your apartment (engine off, CD player on), imagining that the rain collecting on the windows also loves this CD.

Late at night

“God put us on this earth to look at his light, R, not at our own shadows.”

“Did you just think of that? Just now?”

“Ye-ep. I just pulled that one right out of my ass.”

A little slice of retreat

On one of my retreats in Michigan last week with one of my book groups, there was a hot tub. Only one girl brought a bathing suit, and three–who happen to be rather overweight–didn’t bring any. I got in first, then started working on Y, who, although she is the heaviest, is also the brassiest. Her Mexican accent got noticably thicker and sassier, as she declared, “I don’t care. I’m getting in in my bra and underwear!” Next was the girl with the bathing suit, then one more followed, also in bra and underpants, and another (after lots of cajoling and, “Come ON, S! Just get IN! Wear your t-shirt! Who CARES!”). Lots of giggling about floating chiches, lots of affirmation about the beauty of our bodies.

I took a break, but at one point, I poked my head outside to check on them, and they called me out to rejoin them in the hot tub. I got back in, and Y had everyone join hands, flat, palm-to-palm. “Now everybody has to make a wish,” she said, and they all calmly made the most beautiful wishes for their lives, their families, their worlds. I held my breath with the beauty of it. When everyone was done, I said, “Now what do we do?” Y said, “Okay, now, clasp your hands!” So we intertwined our fingers and squeezed tight. “Now we all have to promise that our wishes will never leave this hot tub!” and we all swore to never tell. And I never will.

Me and Jesus

Me and Jesus were sitting on my back porch the other night
until real late.
Ben had already gone to bed.
I told him that I would be in soon, but I wasn’t.

“Sometimes,” I told him,
“I just want to be free of this world.”
“I do. I do know.”
I put my forehead down on his knee.
He put his hand on the back of my neck
and held it there, firmly.
I cried a little bit
but I’d already cried so much that night
that my eyes just burned.

“I just get so tired sometimes,”
“Oh, baby,” I looked up, and was surprised,
his eyes were full and fixed on mine. “Oh, honey. I know you do.”

“I’m not suicidal,” I said.
He laughed silently.
“Peace.
Be still.”

“Do you really have to leave tomorrow?”
“‘Love makes no sense of space and time,’ remember.”
“Fuck. I love that song so fucking much…what’s the rest of that line…’Space and time will disappear’…I can’t wait until that happens.”

“I would go with you, you know.
I would leave with you now if you asked me to,” I told him.
“I know you would. We made that bargain long ago, remember?”
“What song is that from?”
“Les fucking Miserables, dude. Jean Veljean says it
before he turns himself in.
My point is that it’s already being done,
it’s already done, in a sense.
Rachel, I wish you could see it,
the way your thread weaves in and out of this life.
It’s so fucking majestic.
I can’t wait to show you.”

I shrugged and slumped against the railing,
looking out at the moon.
My eyes hooded,
a muscle in one beat with fatigue, like a heart.

He suddenly took my face in his hands, soft, but said with fierceness,
“Silly. Don’t you know how I need you here?
Don’t you know just a little
how indispensable you are?”

I found a new well of tears and tumbled into it.

I began to speak in a small voice that didn’t seem to come from my body,
“They don’t know…no…I don’t know…I’m not sure…”

“I know. I know.” he said, almost angry.
He let go of my face.
“And besides, you’re wrong.”
He looked at me and shook his head.
He wiped my face with his scarf.
I shuddered a little, although I didn’t really feel cold
and he pulled in me close with one thick arm, my ear into his chest.
hearing his hot blood, warming me. He smelled
like fall leaves and wood smoke.
I felt a little drunk again.

“It’s not going to happen, you know.”
My eyes shot up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,
you’re not going to fuck this up.
He’s not ever going to leave you.”
I sobbed out loud.
“And you’re not going to leave him either. You’re not going to drive him away
or any bullshit like that, so you need to just put that out of your mind.”

“Jesus?
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“Sh. None of that.”
“But-”
“We’ve been over this.
Peace,” he said.
“Peace.
Be still.”

“Jesus?”
“Hm.”
“I kind of want everyone to be in love with me.
That’s kind of nuts, isn’t it.”
He started nodding his head before I finished. “No dude.
I totally know what you mean.”

Me, too

(Friends, I have a deadly deadly fear of forgetting things. So I’m doing this, because I love it when people tell me things that I forgot. If I haven’t posted on yours yet, it’s because I’ve been out of town for a tick and I just now got back in the swing of things. I’ll get on it real soon.)

If you read this, even if we do not speak often,
comment with one memory of me.
It can be anything you want, good or bad.
just as long as it happened.

Then post this on your livejournal to see what other people remember about you.

Do you need a laugh? I did. Watch this.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/shining.html