Goodbye 2010

2010 or the year she fell from dizzying heights and lived to tell the tale.

Honestly, I have no desire to recap 2010, because it would sound like a bad country song. Lost my dad. Lost my dog... It was a suckfest of year, and I'm glad to see it go.

2011 will be much different. I'm looking forward to setting and achieving ambitious goals and getting reconnected with my own creativity. Maybe I'll even blog more often...

Tonight, I'm hanging out at home with my Christoph, Nietzsche, and newest family member, Aiko. Just the way I like it. :)

I hope everyone has a beautiful end of year and even better new year. Stay safe!

To cry or not to cry?

Dad's been in the hospital for a week, and my house and my heart are a mess. I've been going from morning until night with little time to just stop and breathe. This morning, I decided to sleep in and move more slowly before heading out to take care of business. I just need some time in my house with my dogs and my husband. Get up, make a cup of coffee, catch up on RSS feeds, and just relax.

Alas, the first thing I did after making my coffee was spill the whole thing across the kitchen floor. No! No! No! and Doesn't that just figure? were my first thoughts, but really, what good does it do to cry over spilled coffee? So, instead, I marveled at how interesting it looks pooling on the cheap linoleum...and then I mopped it up and started over.

It wants to be incorporated into a sepia stained collage.

This kind of mind shifting exercise is the only way that I can get through these dark situations without crumbling into little pieces. There's beauty in every moment, I just have to be open to it.

Breakfast Magic

Today, I'm fulfilled by small pleasures

like the galaxy in my morning coffee.

Evelyn Evelyn

I've been listening to the Evelyn Evelyn album since its release, and with each play, I love it more.

I'm aware of the controversy surrounding the album, and I just don't care. This project is heartfelt, and I'm getting something quite different from its meaning than the naysayers who feel that Amanda Palmer is promoting stereotypes about disabled people that keep them marginalized.

I disagree.

The key to Amanda Palmer's brilliance is less about her theatrics (even though they're lovely) and more about the way that she captures the many facets of human emotion within her songs. She's an artist who isn't mono-dimensional, and in one album, she's captured loneliness, anger, joy, compassion, love, abuse, irony... It's not always "feel good," but art doesn't have to be. It tells a story, outrageous or mundane. It paints a picture. It stirs something within. It makes you remember that you're alive and that you have emotions, both dark and light.

There are a large number of stories that show disabled people overcoming obstacles, and they're generally received positively. In my not so humble opinion, the negative reaction to this album has more to do with style than anything else. It doesn't have the subtle, room with a view in a house by a pond feeling. You can whisper, but you should never scream.

Symptom Recital by Dorothy Parker

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the simplest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick. I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore:
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men.
I'm due to fall in love again.

Ah Cama-Sotz - Decline Of The Roman Empire

Loving this song at the moment.