samedi, octobre 28, 2006

How to annoy me

Invite people over for pizza and beer and when we hand over money for the pizza delivery, ask for more money to cover the bottle of wine that was drunk. Especially since we brought beer. And you offered us the wine. Bitch.

mardi, octobre 24, 2006

vendredi, octobre 20, 2006

Flying

Tallis' motets for four voices are swirling through my ears and filling up my empty spaces. The music, rich and full, curls around itself. The voices take the lead and tonic in turns, as though they are flock of birds whirling and turning through the sky.

The memory of this evening's run is still coursing through my muscles and, though a totally different kind of salvation to Tallis, without it I could not sit here on an alien island and be able to relax into familiarity of music.

I've been running since I got here, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Most of the time it is a battle. To put one foot in front of the other and continue to do so for 45 minutes at speed. I come back sweaty and irritated and still stressed out.

Tonight Julien and I set out in the darkness that is a seven o'clock October evening. We hadn't run together before and at first settling into a rhythm was tricky. At some point around the 20 minute mark everything clicked into place and we began to fly. One of us would drive the pace for a while and then, without thinking, we'd switch-feet slapping the pavement and breathing raggedly. Closer to the house we sped up in increments. An unspeaking agreement to push ourselves as far as we could.

We ran along the back lane by the creek, strides lengthening with every step. We were shadows racing the wind, oblivious to the other save the sound of our footfalls.

At some point in the middle of burning hamstrings and lungs and blurred vision, I felt the fogginess lift. Sharp focus and clarity gouged my grown-soft self.

The feeling lasted until I stopped running, doubled over, gasping. Now, three hours later, with Tallis rather than a drubbing pulse in my inner ear, I can just grasp the fluttering edge of what I was running toward.

Angus dei, qui tolis pecata mundi. Misere nobis. Dona nobis pacem. Sanctus, sanctus. Benedictus.

dimanche, octobre 08, 2006

mercredi, octobre 04, 2006

the two best sentences

that are making me laugh and cry at the same time:

"I want you sitting next to me in class so that we can stare at the boy eye candy before one of us reminds the other that they're all probably six years younger than us, making us dirty old ladies, already, at 24. "


"Anyway if I sincerely believed in things like empathic warm thoughts fleeting over the mountains, prairies, lakes and atlantic ocean, I'd tell you I was sending some such thoughts to comfort you, or prayers I suppose is what those are, but you'll have to be satisfied just knowing that I am thinking about you for what that's worth and wishing I could act somehow as some sort of anodyne to please you or turn the corners of your mouth upward or make you feel good about who you are and how you've existed in my life."

Yet again, I am inarticulate trying to explain how a series of black letters on a white screen wring my heart. Thanks.

Fragile lately. The coping floats like the thin skin that forms on the surface when someone boils a kettle of hot chocolate and doesn't stir it. The world is too much with me, it buffets me along and, because I am too tired to resist, I am propelled forward.