Saturday, September 19, 2009

A little slow on the uptake...

I love music. Admittedly, I don't know much about it, and don't know any new artists. At all. Since I don't own a car, I don't putter around town listening to the radio as I run errands. I know "modern" folks have these little boxes o' sound called MP3 players, and I have one that doesn't work too well from several years ago that I no longer use. If I wasn't going through a divorce and suddenly having to pay the mortgage all by myself, along with every other expense you don't realize you have until you examine them all, I'd probably by an iPod. But, alas.

I am proud to report though that I joined the modern people in some small sense yesterday. I bought something from iTunes for the first time! But don't get too excited... I bought an album from 2003 that I just discovered this week. Damien Rices "O." I LOVE it! Here is my favorite song. These lyrics kill me. KILL. ME.

"Cannonball"
There’s still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
There’s still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
It’s still a little hard to say what's going on

There’s still a little bit of your ghost your witness
There’s still a little bit of your face i haven't kissed
You step a little closer each day
That I can´t say what´s going on

Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to lie
Life, it taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball

There’s still a little bit of your song in my ear
There’s still a little bit of your words i long to hear
You step a little closer to me
So close that I can´t see what´s going on

Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
So its not hard to fall
When you float like a cannon.

Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to cry
So come on courage, teach me to be shy
'Cause its not hard to fall,
And I don't want to scare her
Its not hard to fall
And i don't want to lose
Its not hard to grow
When you know that you just don't know

Friday, September 11, 2009

"afraid"

In the spirit of my last post, I am going to do, or notice, something each day that I am afraid to do...and do it anyway. This could be fear, like being scared to be hurt, or fear of just failing.
Yesterday I went to the hardware store, picked out paint, carried it home, carried the ladder up from the basement, stood on a ladder and painted. I would usually rely on my S.O. for this. I couldn't. So I didn't. And I did just fine. I didn't fall off the ladder, die, only to be discovered 5 days later when a neighbor calls about a smell coming from upstairs. So that's good.
Today, I walked the dogs by myself at night.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Fear.

"As a girl, she dreamed about having a silent home, just to herself, the way other women dreamed of their weddings. Instead of collecting lace and linen for her trousseau, the young woman buys old things from the thrift stores on grimy Milwaukee Avenue for her future house-of-her-own---faded quilts, cracked vases, chipped saucers, lamps in need of love.

"...The daughter claimed that she had been taught that a writer needs quiet, privacy, and long stretches of solitude to think. The father decided too much college and too much gringo friends had ruined her. In a way he was right. In a way she was right. When she thinks to herself in her father's language, she knows sons and daughters don't leave their parents' house until they marry. When she thinks in English, she knows she should've been on her own since eighteen.

"...At the end of the evening she finds herself searching for a ride home. She came on the bus and [he] offers to give her a lift home. But she's not going home, she's got her heart set on a movie that's showing only tonight. She's afraid of going to the movies alone, and that's why she's decided to go. Because she's afraid.

"...What is the woman in the photograph afraid of? She's afraid of walking from her parked car to her apartment in the dark. She's afraid of the scuffling sounds in the walls. She's afraid she'll fall in love and get stuck living in Chicago. She's afraid of ghosts, deep water, rodents, night, things that move too fast---cars, airplanes, her life. She's afraid she'll have to move back home again if she isn't brave enough to live alone.

"...I meet Norma Alarcon. She is to become one of my earliest publishers and my lifetime friend. The first time she walks through the rooms of [my] apartment on North Paulina, she notices the quiet rooms, the collection of typewriters, the books and Japanese figurines, the windows with the view of freeway and sky. She walks as if on tiptoe, peering into every room, even the pantry and closet as if looking for something. 'You live here...' she asks, 'alone?'

'Yes.'

'So...' she pauses, 'How did yo do it?'

Norma, I did it by doing the things I was afraid of doing so that I would no longer be afraid. Moving away to go to graduate school. Traveling abroad alone. Earning my own money and living by myself. Posing as an author when I was afraid, just as I posed in that photo you used on the first cover of Third Woman. "

---Sandra Cisneros, from the introduction to the 25th Anniversary edition of her book, The House on Mango Street.