thoughts

as i haven't posted in some time, my blog mind is confused and unfocused. this post will be varied and buckshot as a result. here are some thoughts:

*fear: i had the novel experience several weeks ago of being able to positively identify the moment i became scared of something. i was swimming in a "pond" in south berwick, ME with some friends when about two minutes into the swim i became horrified at the thought that my feet couldn't touch any kind of "bottom". i panicked, began to breathe hard and then without being able to express what was happening to my nearby swimming friends, I immediately swam to the bank off to the right and walked the rest of the swim in the woods alongside my swimming partners. prior to beginning the swim, I had the utmost confidence that i could make it from the bank to the large rock destination in the middle of the water (it's about a 20-30 minute swim). it didn't even cross my mind that i'd have a hard time. one of my friends was smoking prior to the swim. in my mind, i thought "if she can do it and she smokes then I can definitely do it..." Anyway, i didn't do it and i mark the experience as one of the more frightening moments in my recent life. my new fear: water deep enough where i cannot touch the bottom.

*randy newman: i came across The Randy Newman Songbook: Volume 1 at some point during High School. at the time, i fell in love with the songs, found them appropriately dark and depressing for my varied dark and depressing moods and began to cultivate an interest in Newman's non-Toy Story catalogue. the other Newman albums i picked up at the time (the actual releases, not the anthology) have fallen out of my mind but just recently i went for a re-listen of the Songbook and came away quite pleased. after having not given the compilation a listen in probably over 4 or 5 years, i was surprised at how much i still enjoyed the songs. i highly recommend the anthology to anyone looking to get into some solo Newman piano / voice arrangements (without the sometime distracting production that can be added to the songs in other releases). the anthology is a mix of painfully personal numbers, character pieces, social critiques, and sweeping historical analyses.

*elvis: i have an instinctual pull to learn things about elvis. my grandmother enjoyed his music and movies. my father took my mother to graceland shortly after their marriage. and i somehow feel like i have something in common with the man. the iconography accompanying elvis is often distracting and dumb. in an effort to get away from banal commodified fandom, i felt the need to learn about the actual life of elvis. i came across a two part biography in the UNH library. it is by Peter Guralnick and the volumes are titled Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. I am just now starting Careless Love and I can say that Last Train was very enjoyable. The biography has the consent of the estate of Elvis Presley and it's not a bull shit attempt to propogate myth. in Last Train, Guralnick painstakingly (but never to the point of boring the reader) chronicles Elvis' career and life as a musician, son, respectful player of the field, and gentleman. The story of Elvis' rise to stardom is fascinating in that as the story develops you can truly sense that he has worked hard for something but is also getting very lucky along the way and is undeniably going to be in over his head in a short amount of time. after reading Last Train (which takes the reader to 1960 = elvis is 23, just about to be shipped off to the army and has a gold record, many sold out and riotous live shows under his belt and also several successful acting roles in films to his credit) i was left with the basic opinion: "i like evis. elvis is a good guy. i respect elvis" interesting note - elvis hated the idea of being in a "musical". he thought having the actors sing in the middle of a movie was absurd and dumb. he wanted to pursue acting alongside his music career and spent much time studying lines in preparation for his various film roles. he won the respect of a young marlon brando for his troubles. *that's a child Elvis with his parents in the pic*

*bikes: several months ago, i switched from night shifts to morning shifts. along with that change, i junked my car and began riding bikes for commuting purposes. i first grabbed an old True Value road bike from an old man's front yard for $10. the bike had a generator hooked up to the back wheel which powered a front lamp and it also had a leather bound seat. it was incredibly heavy, the gears were frozen and the seat bar was rusted into the pipe. i soon realized the True Value Kingston was a better idea than reality. the straw that broke the camel's back came when i found myself stranded on the UNH campus one night, needing to ride the Kingston back to Dover. in the course of the 30 minute commute, i found the generator light a minor comfort alongside the awful and labored performance of the bike. the slow commute rendered me helpless to the consistent string of horrified thoughts flying through my head: "there's someone in the woods...there's someone in the fucking woods" was literally going through my mind while riding through a distinctly unlit wooded area near Dover. which makes me lament the incongrous impact horror movies can have over past lived experience (i.e. that man in the woods has never appeared prior in my actual life outside of movies). i soon ditched the Kingston for a Fuji Crosstown hybrid road / mountain bike. the Crosstown is perfect for my commutes from dover to durham and dover to portsmouth. i find the biking life alternately a pain in the ass and surprisingly tranquil and harmonius. highlights to the biking life include: 1 while biking through Pease airforce base complex, i have come across young deer not once, but twice. the second time it happened, i somehow managed to ride alongside one of the deer for several seconds as it made a dash attempting to flee (this was truly enjoyable). 2 i drove through a pack of geese crossing the street one day and as i approached i rang my meager bike bell. i was surprised to find that the geese could care less about my bell, remained where they were and one actually leaned over to hiss at me - impressive. 3 you get a lot of interesting hecklers while on a bike. my favorite was the time when i was riding down new york street in dover at about 4:50 a.m. just starting my commute to portsmouth when i passed a group of young men seated on their outside porch. i didn't get a good look at them, but i certainly heard one yell "faggot" at me. interesting associations going on indeed and also a telling anecdote for these characters' life situation - 4:50 a.m. hanging on the porch shouting crippling explitives at innocent passersby = a shining future ahead for them, i expect. 4 riding a bike in a rain storm is fun. doing anything in a rain storm is fun. what is especially fun about being on a bike during a rain storm is the speed mixed with the feeling of being soaked mixed with the super dramatic image you have of yourself as the only person in the world possibly man enough to ride a bike during a rain storm.

*dogs - i recently had the opportunity to dog sit for some friends in portsmouth, NH for a week. the dog's name was Jo and it was a mix of Australian shepard and perhaps Pit Bull and perhaps something else. it was a bit over a year old. it was a shelter dog and was both skittish and obedient. i found it entertaining to shout the dog's name and then walk fast around the house, working the dog into a frenzy of confused excitement. the dog would also seriously believe i was another dog if i simply barked or made any kind of dog sound with my mouth. after hearing me bark, it's face would immediately shift into an expression of urgency as if to say "why the hell didn't you tell me you were a dog you dumb ass???!!!" Jo enjoyed going for walks which made sense, however there were many things about her behaviour which surprised me. she seemed to not hear very obvious sounds but then become absolutely insistent on things not heard / seen / smelled. she could spend the lenghth of entire streets with her nose down to the ground as if a dead body was soon to be discovered. but when crossing the street would act as if we had just walked into a park and it was time to jump on my chest and prance about. she would also act remarkably surprised at obvious encounters. i recall an older woman passing us on the sidewalk and Jo almost doing a full barrel roll when the woman grazed her side as if, to Jo, the contact was the last possible thing that could have happened at the moment. perhaps her most endearing behaviour is the way in which she greets cars on the street, or better put, the way she greets the people inside cars on the street. as cars passed us during our walks, Jo would seem to pick out certain cars, jerk her head around to get a better look at whoever was inside and shift her expression into a smile of absurd recognition, acting as though she just saw a friend in the driver's seat. *questions about dogs that need to be answered: why do dogs hump humans? why do girl dogs hump boy dogs?

*virginia woolf - no matter your opinion on Virginia Woolf (which if you were forced to read her in high school is probably negative) the following anecdote is bad ass - just to clarify, i love v.w. and find her writing a treat. after picking up mrs. dalloway for a re-read i began doing some woolf research on wikipedia. i came across some info on the bloomsbury group (the intellectual group she belonged to while in London in the early to mid-war 20th century). then i saw a delightful tidbit on an epic prank the bloomsbury group managed to pull off without a hitch - check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnought_hoax

virgina woolf in black face? who'd have thought. *virginia's all the way to the left*