presently.

de-cluttering (my life in boxes).

[the science of Tetris, and sleep-memory].

flashes:
1. faces.
2. routes.
3. sounds.
4. inventions (deconstructions/fusions/syntheses).

discoveries:
1. everyone but my father thinks I look like my mother.
2. laughter disappears when we are solitary (and without 'supplemental' social mediums)

tensions:
1. what constitutes a 'social medium,' anyway? (the line is blurry).
2. I am special; I am special; I swear I'm special; I'm just like everyone else.

presently by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Inspired by Radiolab; on Laughter, among other things.

leaping.

Sometimes I feel like a horse with boat shoes, where the land wobbles and the water sinks.
And then I kick 'em off and remember: horses are excellent swimmers.
Oh, silly ebb and flow; you've frayed and faded my puzzle pieces.
Oh, silly ebb and flow; I don't mind.

leaping by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Holiday

"For my sister who sometimes needs to take time to grieve with the world. Don't forget what a beautiful place it is. With love from Frances, Christmas 2010."

[photo: cousins Maize (head-bopping), Zoe (leap-frogging), and Oliver (mohawk-rocking);
they are part of my beautiful place]

Wait- Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: the enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asked to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

--

Maybe faith is just an active--it cannot be passive--acceptance of others' love, and the hope that, despite all the darkness, we share enough goodness between each other to keep on//fight for.

Merry Christmas.

[[a little red box]]

(click to enlarge photos)

"One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficult to make--to part with one's faith, one's love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion."
-- Anais Nin

"he was a good guy, but he had the laugh of a bad guy"

Cheese Manicotti, Stuffed Roasted Artichokes, and Fried Breaded Eggplant will be the most decadent, most artery-clogging Christmas Eve Feast. Ever. (Albanese style).

These past 3 days, I've enjoyed the likes of Ms. Molly Shea, Ms. Ericka Mobley, Mr. Gary Alan Bearden (+ Marina!!!), Mr. Alex Williams-Witzky, Mr. Shaun Thomas, and my newly engaged Canine Best Friends who are coming over tomorrow, too, for some Torres-inspired Pizza. Word on the street is: it's the kind of pizza that gets you free cab rides for life. Oh yes, and family. One could say I've been enjoying my family.

Here are some truisms:
1. my gas tank is low
2. my wallet is thin
3. my future is vague
4. but I'm surrounded by folks with captivating laughs.
5. and in a non-fatalist sort of way: I feel (more than a little) fortunate

Sometimes, I swear, it all comes down to mirrors and lenses.

crowded.

Thanks, Tim Xie, for sharing these photographs.

Drew is totally a creeper in this one:
This break is surely killing me. But only a little.

sound to touch like music to feel.

I'm just going to go ahead and project that Arcade Fire made last.fm's #1 most played for 2010. Either way, they're my #1.

Hearing Arcade Fire for the first time was like learning what music could be for the first time. It was my Freshman year in high school (so sometime '04-'05?). Dale was home (either already on OU's big holiday break, or for a weekend or something), and he, Frances, and I were driving his beat-up white Geo down Rt. 736, playing Neighborhood #2 (Laika). I think I owe my fascination with Régine Chassagne to Adam Torres (Adam, I don't know I ever told you that?), who likely introduced Dale to Arcade Fire in the first place. Hell, Adam, I think you introduced Dale to Southeast Engine, Joanna Newsom, and Neutral Milk Hotel, too-- who were all passed down to me through him around the same time. In a weird way, those 4 artists + oddly enough, Roman Catholicism, were what kept me strong for some of the hardest things I've faced to-date (all of which sort of compounded in those early years).

Funny--I've watched my musical tastes refine subtly each year--in high school I was jamming out to a lot more Brit-pop and a lot less banjo--but those 4 artists (plus a few others--Ryan Adams, Modest Mouse, & the old-folkys I inherited from my folks) have remained constants for a really long time...

Drew and I had a conversation about music the other day, and about "staying on top of the scene" so-to-speak, and I've gotta say: as much as I love discovering new music (it's a hell of a feeling), part of me doesn't mind humbly playing and re-playing the same familiar artists I've been in love with forever. Music isn't an image. It shouldn't be exploited to project some status of "hip-ness." Music is a feeling. It's always been a feeling.

Actually I listened to an old Radiolab the other day on Musical Language (which--side note--did a fascinating re-visit of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring), and in the episode this psychologist, Anne Fernald, describes sound as touch. Science confirms it: hearing is the act of sound vibrations touching our ears in different places, at different frequencies. I guess, internally, I took it a step further (the podcast doesn't go here, but it could, I think):
If touch is the action that gives the result of feeling (like looking is the action that results in sight, for example)-- and if sound is touch...
wouldn't music be the feeling that results from the action of touching (sound)?

It doesn't really work when you analyze it, I guess. That's the funny part. Feelings shouldn't be deconstructed by literary devises or critical theory--

(oh, this is a head/heart thing, isn't it?)

sound to touch by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"sleeping with the enemy"

I couldn't sleep last night (a combination of the coffee-milkshake I drank with my Panera dinner--a bad idea that left me jived--, the looming "wherethehelldoIgofromhere" anxiety that I've been effectively--or maybe last night proved not-so-effectively--avoiding, and, at the risk of hyperbole, some "emotional turmoil" from supposedly caring too damn much). Is that even possible? To care too damn much, I mean? It's like being in some lonely camp all by myself: the caring corner. And it just feels like no one else gives a damn and they all just look at me and say, "give it up, Les," but how can I? Why are there not more people caring? And why are the apathetic always making me feel like an isolationist?

[I'm not usually this sinister, but being stuck in Central Ohio is making me go loony (no pun intended this time)]. And I don't want to live a mental separatism. So what do I do? I write about it. But inevitably my writing becomes all cryptic and abstract until it, too, becomes its own separatism--my own linguistic world that no one else can fully reside in, that no one can truly enter. A defense mechanism, maybe. And a subconscious one, at that. I'm not one for dishonesty. I couldn't live a double life if I tried (though I'd never try). And yet I feel torn between two wholly contrasting feelings separating my being. I love people. I do. I love them. And I love being with people. And I love serving people. And am shocked and shocked again by the number of people who have reciprocally blessed my life. It's humbling, really-- the number of people who care. (look how contradictory I'm being). But there's this side of me that feels totally alone, even when I'm in a room full of people who love me. Because my mind is somewhere else--some unreachable place--and because, despite my rationality, I'm ultimately moved by feeling over logic every time--and I cannot fully understand or articulate these feelings or the flashes in my mind (usually not even complete sentences) and consequently lose my ability to share (despite my hopeless earnestness) the fundamental-most part of me.

"I am the cat who walks by [her]self..."

My mind's been flashing with: gender binaries, and parasites, and lions, and "Eating from the Outside" vs "Eating from the Inside," and the social construction of "enemy camps", and how complicated they are, and Eichmann, and institutional compliance, which quickly becomes complacency, and the conjunctive relationship between interior and exterior threats-to-being, and rats, and bodies, and violence against said bodies--sometimes using rats, and bullying, and the way the new Sufjan song made me feel all angsty like the sleigh-bells were saying "consumerismconsumerismconsumerism," and my own inability to let go...

All-the-while flashing with: my parents' good natures, and The Christopher Spirit, and milk-crates, and this Pitchfork interview with Jeff Mangum, and the farm, and community, and collective identity, and the way it can be a positive thing with conscious participation, and Cornel West, and language, and what that really means, and whether or not art really can be the ultimate revolution, and knowing that love really does exist, and...

And this is all occurring while my white middle class privilege comfortably manifests: in my friend's apartment, eating chocolate chip cookies, drinking orange juice, and watching The Office (season 3). If this were satire, I could appreciate the irony like a good ugly sweater party. And maybe this is satire after all. Maybe I've got you (and myself) fooled, and I'm living "Behind Enemy Lines." Maybe I'm taking myself too seriously. And maybe I'm becoming an ego-maniac. Maybe I'm not.

"sleeping with the enemy" by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

my heart and Ohio

[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: Ohio is such an important place
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: it's everything
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: a lot of ppl who live here do not value it the way they should, I think
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: also- unrelated- but aesthetically i think it has the coolest outline
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: of all the states
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: yes! haha
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: i think we may be a little biased
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: but it is a nice shape.
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: haha
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: ok maybe a little
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: but we are not a box
[12/07/10] Leslie Albanese: so many states are shaped like boxes
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: indeed
[12/07/10] Eddie Barnes: that's true. This is my heart and Ohio.

I've been wearing an old (basement-retired/retrieved) hat of my mother's for the past week. It's wool and has loons on it. I like it because it's warm and makes me feel safe. And maybe also because it allows me to make bad puns about being loony.

But it's not just the silly hat. It's everything. Oh, Ohio! [My friends, my habits, my family, they mean so much to me/ but I'm (not) just a box just a box in a cage (no I'm not) just a box just a box in a cage].

It's not that I don't love you, all musty.

my heart and Ohio by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.