Jenny Lewis is such a dreamboat.

for real.

Most of us are in love with illusion, anyway; at least she's honest.

bone thin bone.

"we sing as the sky falls down
we sing as the sky collapses
and make what we can of it
it's ok
we're all going to end up dead and gone."
--Tunng, "Hands"
.
temporary-ness.
everything.
hopelessly, not my own.
flashings else's.
fleetings dyings-off.
and I'm left
only one?
the only--
only?
bone thin bone.


I'm not afraid of disappearing.
Just afraid of everything else
Leaving before I'm gone.

Caitlin

dedicated me some love.

viva wildpack.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

the real thing.

Riding for the Feeling.

[thank you, Adam, for giving me something to muse me through my constant separation anxiety with space and relationship. Love ya, Ricky].



It's never easy to say goodbye
To the faces
So rarely do we see another one
So close and so long

I asked the room if I'd said enough
No one really answered
They just said, "Don't go, don't go"
Well all this leaving is neverending

I kept hoping for one more question
Or for someone to say,
"Who do you think you are?"
So I could tell them

With intensity, the drop evaporates by law
In conclusion, leaving is easy
When you've got some place you need to be
I'm giving up this gig for another seaon

With the TV on mute
I'm listening back to the tapes
On the hotel bed
My my my apocalypse

I realized I had said very little about ways or wheels
Or riding for the feeling
Riding for the feeling
Is the fastest way to reach the shore

On water or land
Riding for the feeling

What if I had stood there at the end
And said again and again and again and again and again
An answer to every question
Riding for the feeling

Would that have been a suitable goodbye?

30-loves list. (for Dale). (and also for myself).

1. Love of family.
2. Love of friendship, that becomes a kind-of family.
3. Love of the way we can be many different things to each other.
4. Love of farm stillness.
5. And farm movement.
6. And love of knowing that I might plant the garlic, but I do not make the garlic grow.
7. Love of service.
8. Love of the humility that allows oneself to be served by another.
   
9. Love of the capacity for reinventions.
   
10. Love of second chances, with things right in front of you.
11. Love of saying sorry.
    
12. Love of music, and the way it shares things between people (the way it shares things between the multiple people in one person).
    
13. Love of moments when I recognize I'm human.
14. Love of my cat Comet.
15. And my old cat Chewy (rest in peace).
16. Love of the people who have passed--physically, or emotionally--from my life, for they are and always will be a present part of who I am.
17. That is, Love of the way Love lingers, even when bodies and hearts do not.
    
18. Love of functioning in a Communion of Saints.
    
19. And of the Joy and value in little pleasures and safeties.
20. Love of my body (on a good day).
21. And my spirit (on a good day).
    
22. Love in strength and flexibility (but not malleability).
23. Love of the way I am big and small in a world that is big and small.
24. Love of warm things.
25. Love of the intimacy allowing one to speak a coded language, that only one more understands.
26. Love of spending a lifetime, almost knowing one another.
    
27. And the way that people return to each other after miscommunications to try to communicate again; their persistence shows a caring language cannot capture.
    
28. Love of deep peace.
29. Love of not taking oneself too seriously.
    
30. Serious Love.

Melanie Cheraso on running.

L: --I'm afraid I'm running from something.
M: --Why do you have to be running from something? Maybe you're not running from anything at all. Maybe it has nothing to do with where you were and where you're going. Maybe you just really need to run.

flashes of a wildcat pack.

Ossifer! I swear my mustache is real and no, I'm not wearing my cat sweater ironically.
It's just that I hear Sisyphus has a millisecond of triumph before his boulder comes tumbling--
I hear that magic-dust makes hair grow quickly; mine'll be long again soon. And Ossifer! I swear to drunk that time is a sing-song, that my manic ramblings are sing-songs. And mid-winter, warm-air, misting is a sing-song, like the kale I sautéd on my stove-top. Bandit! Throw on your spectacles 'cause it's a damn good day. Let your hair grow long with mine. We can memorize each other's favorites (first we can pretend we actually have favorites), and flash--
we can pretend we know each other, and flash--
we can wear mustache guises, and, Oh!
Our Manifesto of subversion.
We're just a wildcat pack. Too wild for our own goods. Too 'fraid to truly be lone.
(or maybe too wise) and flash--
togetherness is kinda beautiful, huh?

suspended (in the visceral).

"In Speak, Memory, Mabokov makes the poetic, or the playful speculation that Russian children before the Revolution--and his exile--were blessed with a surfeit of sensual impressions to compensate them for what was to come. Of course, fate doesn't play such premonitory games, but memory can perform retrospective maneuvers to compensate for fate. Loss is a magical preservative" (emphasis mine).

FROM Lost In Translation: A life in a New Language (1989)

via: Hoffman, Eva. "The New Nomads." Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss. ed. André Aciman. New York: The New Press, 1999.

sunday--

1. My first time at the Episcopal Church in Athens, with Ms. Kelley McArthur and farm friends. I was incredibly impressed.
2. Philosophical ponderings/general orneriness with Mr. Kelly Latimore (who gifted me the beautiful book of Chilean poetry and prose, pictured above).
3. Chit-chats with Ms. Morky Magic.
   
4. Skype with my music-making-soul-brother, who is going somewhere big; just you see.
5. Thesis. Thesis. Thesis.
6. Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire.
7. ice cream sandwiches.

(a good day)
-----
EL VERDADERO PROBLEMA
de la Filosofía.
(Nicanor Parra)

es quién lava los platos
nada del otro mundo
Dios
la verdad
el transcurso del tiempo
claro que sí
pero primero quién lava los platos

el que quiera lavarlos que los lave
chao pescao
y tan enemigos como ante

(THE GREAT ENIGMA/ of philosophy/ is who's going to wash the dishes/ it isn't life after death/ God/ Truth/ the passage of time/ [these things] of course/ but first who's going to wash the dishes
he who wants to wash them, let him wash them/ later alligator/ and true enemies forever).

music for the morning// paste it together.

music by Shelly Short. video from youtube.

Lost and Found

I thought I lost my mother's loon hat.
She had had it since I was an infant.
It was also the warmest, most comfortable, most quirky hat I had ever seen.
Not to mention, the most clever: "I'm loony on the head!"
I was so sad.
So sad I was about to settle for something like this:


But heya, hat--we've been through a lot together. And I'm glad you're back. Though the gender subversion might have been fun.

xo

loon hat photo by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. other photos from here.

so many epiphanies.

not enough language for them.
yeah, and I get it.
yeah, and I'm happy
yeah, and it's beginning to show.

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

my brain and my body//my body and my brain

are in two different places.
(pause and let it load first).

woods || 5D mkii test from Hello Tomorrow on Vimeo.

relinquishing control.

(when I can't control)


And being brave enough to act when I have agency.
Even when it's uncomfortable.
(Especially when it's uncomfortable).

relinquishing control (text) by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Video "Don't Do It," featuring Sharon Van Etten. Powered by youtube.

"if I could go back-ways" get you no-ways fast.

Sometimes, funny things haunt me--like shoe strings; sometimes shoe strings haunt me. Like Cat Steven's Trouble haunts me. Like Gumby and putt-putt golfing haunt me.

Sometimes, I am afraid of losing faces. Other people's faces. I can always recognize them. I never forget. But I can't close my eyes and create the isolated image. And somehow I feel like this is losing. This is losing faces.

Sometimes I remember belonging to the Communion of Saints. Before my experience of agency complicated my understanding of fatalism. Before the two became incongruous. I remember when doubt was more consolable. When faith was easier. And sometimes I swear I still do belong. Sometimes, when I think or feel or love strongly enough, I swear I hear echos from all around that are not my own. And I know. I know it's the Community of Saints.

Sometimes poetry is laughable. And sometimes poetry is laughing at me. (For not believing in masks// For self sacrifice// For causes).

Sometimes I laugh at myself.

Sometimes oatmeal makes everything better.

But most of the time it takes more. More than oatmeal. More than peppermint and honey. More than immersion in a safe place with safe things-- until contentment and discontentment become simultaneously and increasingly necessary; the former at an immediate, personal level; the latter at a macro-political level.

"No amount of 'if-I-could-go-back-ways' gets you back-ways," they say.
And I say: Oh, God, where are my boxes?



no-ways fast. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

not sleeping.

I'm still waking at odd hours. Sleep's been intermittent at best, but I'm really not that tired, and my dreams have been strangely vivid. By midday I forget them--like flashes. Last I checked I was running through the streets of Athens (as a visitor to a place I'd never been before) with my sister and my father. The weather quickly became tempestuous, and our running quickly became manic. The streets became garden rows. We had to pick all the cucumbers before the wind blew them away. I gathered four before I woke.



not sleeping. by Leslie Albanese is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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.