and out they come, saying: we are the arcade fire! and they keep coming. all eight of them, including napoleon dynamite and occasionally a strange french horn player with a tevye beard, saying: there are a lot of us and we all play six different instruments! and when we're not playing them normally, they double as drums!
at first, i don't believe them. none of them are cool. they are trailer trash. they are rejects. they could never make it in the real world. but when i look around, i realize something. we are all trailer trash and rejects and the kids who were too smart and picked our noses in elementary school. so we banded together, learned how to play music and elected a few to be our version of cool. so that the rest of us have something to aspire to that requires less polish and coif - things we find foreign and unattainable.
but by the end, when they had fought with each other and held each other up and bashed the last bit of life out of that poor cymbal that looks like crumpled aluminum foil around the edges, i believed it. and not just because i'm a reject too, but because they earned it.
halle-fricking-lujah best nine days of music EVER
posted by renee 10:52 PM
more than anything today, i care about homeless children. i will donate money. i will look into ways of donating time. i will consider doing something in my further education that has to do with homelessness of ex-convicts, the working poor, or children.
5,000 in the twin cities schools.
can you imagine being in elementary school and not having a house? probably not.
i'm sick of feeling helpless, so i will do what i can to help. it makes me so angry.....
posted by renee 9:41 AM
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
when it rains, the direction of the wind becomes visible.
that is either an observation of the weather this morning or a metaphor for something else. not quite sure which.
posted by renee 8:58 AM
Sunday, September 25, 2005
wishing there were words to explain sigur ros it was like being alone with your thoughts and slowly caving in to them. letting fears about the end of the world or dying or being completely alone take over. it was like drowning and then having your heart restarted with a defibrillator: pulse. pulse. pulse. pulse. it made me feel closer to God and farther away from myself than i have for a long time. and then, outside, it was raining. just hard enough to feel good.
in other news: wondering if "feeling" is overrated and if there's a way to stop and if there was, if i'd want to.
posted by renee 1:07 PM
Saturday, September 24, 2005
it's saturday afternoon and i'm waiting for m & co to arrive or not arrive and i turned on college football and made corn cakes from scratch and sprinkled them with fresh chives then i cleaned the house from last night's party and sorted the recycling and did laundry all in sweatpants and a thin tee-shirt
and i realize that i'm trying to prove to myself something about my identity like i'm creating myself as the perfect girlfriend or what i think the perfect girlfriend would be like or the perfect wife and i don't have on any make up and i haven't brushed my hair but i smell good and my toenails are painted
most of it means nothing now i will go shopping for a) a new corkscrew (grrr) b) kahlua c) a mattress pad? d) a copy of "Knowing God" by Packer e) garbage bags & paper towels f) a velvet jacket g) brown shoes
and i'm not going to brush my hair first
posted by renee 3:49 PM
Friday, September 23, 2005
walk past a young man and his father eating lunch. they have the same eyes. find the son a bit too young and the father intriguing but off limits. imagine that their matching eyes liked the look of you as you passed their table. smile impishly. go back to work.
posted by renee 4:14 PM
Thursday, September 22, 2005
my blood pressure is 98/61. she said that it "couldn't be better."
and i ask myself: why is that green tiled bathroom so clean? and then i remember the month of june.
posted by renee 4:07 PM
wondering what i should be when i grow up. considering: investigative journalist, author, sociologist, lobbyist, professor, lawyer, stage actress, nutritionist, rock star, mechanic or president of the united states. just kidding about that last one. but i want to be in charge of people by the time i'm 30. and i want to publish something. i don't care if it's fiction or non-fiction, short or long. just something.
every morning, walking up fifth street, i see a building built in the 70s that has a massive, grotesque sculpture in the space above its front doors. it looks like a combination of giant metal spiders with blue bodies, an enormous pastry cutter and an abstracted jungle. i am glad that art like this is so obtrusive in so many downtowns across the country. it is a daily reminder that even if your idea is so good that someone will pay thousands of dollars to have it hanging from the outside of an office building, 30 years from now, everyone will think it's ugly. just puts a little perspective on our creativity.
posted by renee 9:35 AM
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
everyoneelse is profound today. i don't feel profound at all. i feel shallow. i always feel shallow when i straighten my hair, put on make up and jewelry and try on more than one shirt in the morning (note: happens about once every three or four weeks...) and it's all because there is a slight chance that i will have coffee later this afternoon with someone i knew quite awhile ago who happens to be a boy.
hooray! hilary got the job! now she will not be selling everything she owns and moving back to arizona. this makes us happy. (cross your fingers and she'll like it so much that she doesn't want to run away in june..)
also: i have a goal in the decoration of my newly painted room. one wall needs a very large painting. preferably done by me in oil on a 24" by 48" canvas. i've not seen much for canvases of these dimensions. would it be cheaper to stretch it myself? to gesso it myself or get a treated one? am i crazy to do something so big for my first oil? is this going to cost $300? should i just give it up and buy something instead? get a john bellushi "college" poster and put it up with multicolored push pins? no, i think i really want to paint something in oil. and use one of those little knife things to make it all texture-y.... anybody know anything about oil? anybody? (anybody in the t.c. who wants to take me shopping for stuff and lend me a staple gun?)
posted by renee 2:59 PM
my room is purple. well.. sort of purple. not like icky girl purple. not team spirit purple. sorta... earthy purple.
and every muscle in my upper body is sore. plus, my brain feels funny due to an all-night-long inhalent binge. also, i didn't wake up to my alarm this morning because there were two fans right by my ear.
joa has free tickets to rosie thomas on wednesday! yay!
posted by renee 8:53 AM
Friday, September 16, 2005
a clenching of muscles on my insides automatic response to external stimuli out of my control anger uncertainty frustration despair and succumbing to weariness
surrender to the absolute defeat of confidence in absolutes
i own my guilt my hunger my pride and my brittle bones my thin skin my atrophied muscles reveal it at least metaphorically
there is most certainly something some truth some answer but it now escapes me like bobbing for apples where you can touch them but not quite grab hold
and i doubt you if you're sure in fact, the less sure you are the more i trust you because people become certain in desperation for stability (or because they're suckers)
all i know is we all get lied to and the sooner you make up your mind the more likely you aren't getting it right
posted by renee 9:52 AM
Thursday, September 15, 2005
i really am short on patience. it's a good thing i don't know kevinsawyer in real life. i might punch him.
posted by renee 1:08 PM
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
i am LOSING my PATIENCE with LOUD PERSONAL PHONE CALLS
three: a man somewhere just heard his phone ring and swivelled in his chair to reach for it. simultaneously, i heard my phone ring and swivelled in my chair to reach for mine. we both said hello. then, confused as to why we were talking, we shared a chuckle and wished each other well for the rest of our days. i wonder if maybe it was God playing a joke, just because we each needed a pick-me-up. fun.
two: i am eating a burrito for lunch, one of four that i made and froze last night (taking inspiration from bekah...) i am a little bit proud of myself for that.
one: last night, my roommate bought some of her favorite brew and on her way toward the cashier, a man approached her. he said "hello. my name is rodrigo. that is a very good beer and you look very pretty today." and that was all. this should happen more often. white men don't have a clue.
posted by renee 12:17 PM
Monday, September 12, 2005
i wrote a poem a long time ago. i read it again today and liked it. i hope it can be a song someday. on the bus from uptown on friday night, i was seized with an idea and a page of prose poured out of me onto the back of work i'd brought home for the weekend (oops...) i wonder how to foster the writer in me. reading helps. listening to music helps. but in some ways, i think it helps because i'm halfway stealing other people's ideas. friday's idea came straight from my own experience - of eavesdropping and getting caught or people-watching and being noticed. i made the story about the same thing happening to an old woman, to make it less embarassing.
here's the poem:
i rise above this city and i am beautiful and i am untouchable and even if you're touching me i keep you so so far away there is no escape for you i'll always be the queen
i look down on this city and i am more than it and i am bored with it and even if i love someone there's always an escape i will not have a king
i am the sun pulling planets close to me and spinning spinning spinning
posted by renee 10:01 AM
Friday, September 09, 2005
"Heart disease claims the lives of more than one in three women in the United States each year."
terrible news. really terrible. it appears that the end of humankind is a mere three years away. but maybe this is like the "if i step half the distance from me to you, and then half the distance that's left, and then half of that distance, i can never actually get to you." although, if i recall correctly, the end of that quote, from one face right next to another one, was "well, then how did this happen?"
was tim robbins in that movie? he WAS!
posted by renee 11:39 AM
Thursday, September 08, 2005
i had a friend once who spent her afternoons trying to completely clear her conscious thoughts. she wanted to see what it would be like to have a blank mind, free from internal monologue and response to stimuli. she stopped practicing this after it occurred to her one day that if she succeeded, if she completely stopped thinking, she might not be able to tell herself to start again.
i think it's the same way with feelings.
posted by renee 9:44 PM
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
this is not a song of desperation of love, heartbreak, war, or starvation i know nothing of these. it's just a made up need for significant emotion
and where i'm from, life is easy i can't claim to understand bombs or famine or demonic possession but sometimes i forget traffic laws and feel like a fish out of water helpless when it comes to survival this is a cry from a dangerless life
what i know is four way stops and when to wear white shoes and proper nutrition and life insurance and i remember the skin on the back of your neck it is my own kind of tragedy
----
today i talked to a man who's been through the fire, american style. and despite his continued plight, i respect him more than i might hope to be respected myself.
posted by renee 6:19 PM
Monday, September 05, 2005
it's labor day, so i am not going to make my bed.
posted by renee 12:51 PM
Friday, September 02, 2005
perhaps on the brink of some new level of self-discovery
that is sometimes a very uncomfortable place to be, especially for someone who has such a hard time accepting unconditional fault for things.
excuses don't cut it when you're just wrong. and my desperate search for one indicates an even deeper character flaw than a loose tongue.
humble and loved humble and loved not a hope to cure my imperfections but it doesn't matter because my imperfections are not the measure by which i am judged this is the essence of my faith
but that i'm not judged by my imperfections does not keep them from cutting just as deeply into my confidence.
posted by renee 10:52 AM
Thursday, September 01, 2005
i wonder if a quart is called a quart because there are four of them in a gallon, or because there are four cups in each of them. is that a stupid question?
posted by renee 12:15 PM
the thing about working in the east, see, is you're always chasin' the sun. you're runnin after it in the morning as if you're tryin' to get it to rise just that much sooner and you're tearin back after it in the evenin like you're scared for it to go down.
posted by renee 8:27 AM
