Autumn Came Around Like a Drifter to an On-ramp

Fall is upon me, the leaves are finally changing and the chill in the air is definite. I'm beginning to layer, and it makes me happy. the heat is finally fixed in my house, which is excellent considering that it has gotten down into the 30s and 40s at night for the last couple of weeks. My life has been different since moving, and sometimes thats a good thing, and sometimes it is not. I don't have to convince myself that I love my job anymore. I am not bored at work, and though it is sometimes stressful and frustrating, it feels very good to be working a field that is actually what I would like to do for many years. Well... not the personal assistant end of it, but the organization works in the field I am interested in being in. I liked my old job, but that was more about the people that I worked with and being involved with something that was doing good work in the world. The fact was that as much as I enjoyed it, it was time for me to go when I did. There was really no room for me to advance in Denver.
One of the things that has made me really happy since moving is all of the shows I've gotten to see. I have seen four shows, The Mountain Goats, KMFDM, TV on the Radio and Dresden Dolls.

The other day I was thinking about the shows I've been to this year, as a work in progress, the list looks like this:

Stars (february)
Minus the Bear (march)
Dresden Dolls (march)
Spoon (april)
Mogwai/ Saves the Day (april)
Pretty Girls Make Graves (april)
Eels (may)
Islands (may)
Pearl Jam (june)
Missing Dufranes (august, an old friend's band)
The Mountain Goats (september)
KMFDM (october)
TV on the Radio (october)
Dresden Dolls (october)

That's more concerts than there are months in the year, and the year isn't over yet. Tomorrow night is the Decemberists, and then we get into the holiday season and the lean months. But musically, it has been a good year. This was the year of Wilco, The Mountain Goats, Dresden Dolls, Neutral Milk Hotel and Spoon.

There are other thoughts about my life that I would share, but for now, you get a list, some thoughts, and I get the knowledge that maybe I'm not as broken as I sometimes let myself believe.

beginning to remember what "happy" feels like

So here I sit in Great Falls, Virginia, trying not to fall asleep and then wondering... why? why should i not fall asleep? aside from the desperate fear of my contact lenses adhereing themselves to my eyeballs, there is really no reason. perhaps i shall go to sleep... and sleep for a very long time. or perhaps i shall wander downstairs and eat some very very good food that i did not pay for.

There have been some tribulations since the move... cat issues, roomie issues, job stress and boy stress... but everything seems to be resolving itself in a generally reasonable manner. My job is awesome. It is not what I want to do with the rest of my life, but for now it is in the field in which I want to work, and it is at an organization I am thrilled to be working with. As much as I loved working at the counseling agency... I had a fairly limited job description and no real room for advancement. Here... here I could work for five years before I felt the need to consider going back to school. Not that I think that's the way things will come down... but I could do it. I could be happy working at Women for Women for a good many years. Though, as I said, perhaps not in the exact place where I am now. I am learning a lot, though it would be difficult to describe, lots of communication and outreach and such things.

the sleep bug is taking me... so i think i'll "put a dash in it" as one of my old professors had a tendency to say.

Motherfucking snakes on a mother fucking plane

Yes I saw it. Not only did I see it, but I saw it opening night.
It was a wonderful B movie.
Oh darling Samuel L. Jackson (they had the foresight to run the promo for his next movie, which looks equally absurd, before the show) I have been your adoring accolyte since first I watched The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Jackson was undoubtedly the star of the show, and EVERYONE knew it at all times.
If you are the least bit upset by gross stuff (people getting bit in the eye, and other places you probably don't want to think about) you should probably skip the first 45 minutes. Don't worry, you won't really miss anything.
Snakes on a Plane pulls no punches. You think it might not go there, but it does. I don't know if revealling painfully obvious plot is a **spoiler** but if it is, you've been warned... read no further.



















Yes indeed. Mid coital snakebites, the truly unlikeable characters getting bitten (well mostly( penile snakebites, snakes up a skirt, pythons, king cobras, young kids, Keenan from Keenan and Kel/ All That (or maybe it was Kel? I'm pretty sure it was Keenan). As soon as the snakes are released (within the first twenty minutes, under an AMAZINGLY absurd premise) I realized "Oh My God. Will I have to sit through an hour and a half of people screaming like this? Cause if so I will probably leave" When it turns out that the movie is not in fact an hour and a half of people screaming and running in a panic around a plane the movie gets much better, because you've had a glimpse of what it *could* have been.

And besides. Did I mention I've loved Samuel L. Jackson (who should probably be knighted, because his name would sound SO COOL as Sir Samuel L. Jackson) since I was thirteen? Yeah. I have.

curse my relatively clean lungs

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I got my first "real" job in the spring of my ninth grade year. I worked one day a week at a local independent children's bookstore. Around the same time one of my good friends also got a job. She worked at a kite store. Over the subsequent three years of high school I maintained my job at the bookstore. One summer I got an additional job at a toystore, but I didn't like it much and quit.

My friend who got the kite store job was fired the same summer they hired her because her mom wouldn't let her walk alone to the nearest park to test out new kites alone (it was through a kinda sketchy neighborhood... this should also indicate just how young we still believed ourselves to be, though we wouldn't have admitted it at that stage). I think that between the end of that summer and the summer between the end of high school, she held no fewer than six jobs. If I recall correctly they included: day care attendent, bus girl, supermarket bagger, coffee slinger, Conoco gas station attendant, and Bagel seller (at Einsteins).

Here is what I learned vicariously from her experience:
1. It should never be necessary to work three jobs as one person and do *anything* else full time (the closest I came to this was last summer, when I worked one full time job and two part time jobs. to clarify, this was me doing three jobs. What she did was work three part time jobs *and* go to high school. I think she was able to do this for about three months).
2. Smokers get added benefits.

You see, my friend started smoking because the other bussers at the restaurant where she worked would get to take smoke breaks in addition to their meal breaks. I don't know how their "clock" system worked, as it is my understanding that there is a federally mandated amount of break hourly workers are supposed to have, but that was what she told me.
Her coworkers, who, for the record, were slowly killing themselves and producing furture drains on our health and welfare systems, got extra time off from work.

This has never bothered me before because I have always worked at places where a) if i said i needed to go for a quick walk and would be back in three minutes they said "cool" (as long as i wasn't in the *middle* of helping someone) or b)i got my federally mandated 30 and 15.

However, since I started working in a windowless office I have developed a finely tuned sense of the inequality. I walk across the courtyard through the clouds of smoke, and rather than think about the people who are blackening their lungs (I've had too many smoking friends), I think "Oh man, look how they get to stand outside in the sun for FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES".

I think that I am going to start scheduling "go outside" breaks for myself. For the next two weeks I get ten minutes in the rmoning and ten in the afternoon to remember about stuff like the sky, and clouds.

Stephen King once wrote a short story about a plague of body snatchers or something that only smokers were aware of. At the tender age of 13 it made me think that maybe there was an upside to killing myself with dried plants on fire in my mouth, on the off chance of alien invasion.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Listening to: NMH (ipod on shuffle for the first time in ages)

There are certain situations that make me feel as though no matter how much I learn I will always be a novice. Sometimes I think that any subject on which I have actually devoted any amount of time studying actually falls into this category. Today, and most days, it is the Israel / Arab/ Palestinian/ Middle East Conflict.

Folk at work asked me last week "how concerned" am I about the current situation with Lebanon. I don't always know what to say when asked questions like that. I'm always concerned when there is violence in Israel. I also remember that living in Israel is just like living anywhere else, they just happen to be in the International news a whole lot. People still get up every day, they go to work, they send their kids to school, or camp, or out to play with their friends. People live their lives because they have to.

But I'm no expert. I've lived in Israel about a total of six months. I can't speak authoritatively on anything really. My Israeli friends are concerned though. They are worried, and they are nervous, and they are trying to go about their business, just like everyone else in the world.

In reference to God and belief, one of Jonathan Safran Foer's characters says "I'm an atheist, but I believe that it's very complicated". I think that sentiment basically describes almost every thing I believe. I know what I think about something, but I know that if it is in any way important, that it is complicated beyond my comprehension. Part of the reason zealots scare me beyond reason.

There are so many things that I believe, but reigning over them all, is my firm belief that Israel has a right, a necessity to exist.

I also believe that the Palestinians need their own land.

I believe that the Arab countries have treated the Palestinian people atrociously and no one seems to be paying attention to it.

I believe that destroying someone's home is not going to accomplish anything but making that person more mad at you.

I believe that misinformation often creates a veil behind which more ominous ideas may hide.

I believe that any army which uproots fruit trees needs to reevaluate it's motives (especially if that army is the army for the homeland of a people who believe that if one is planting a tree when the Messiah arrives you must finish planting the tree and then go greet the Messiah).

I believe that people have the capacity to make the world an amazing place.

I believe that people have the capacity to destroy the world.

I believe that there is no person who wakes up in the morning with the thought "Today I will do evil".

I believe that violence necessary only rarely, and only after a breakdown in diplomacy.

I believe that the majority of problems in the world stem from communication issues, people who don't, can't or refuse to understand one another.

I believe that I am an incredibly naiive person.

I beileve that I am an incredibly jaded person.

I Don't Think I'm Ready Yet

Ok, so I finally got my grubby paws on TV on The Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain". I was planning to listen to it at work all day, but alas, my ipod remains firmly ensconsed in my alarm clock where I forgot it as I ran out the door this morning (note to self, you really *can't* stay up until 2:30 and still get up at 7, no matter how much you tell yourself that you can).

I haven't been able to concentrate on the album as much as I would like to, mostly because I haven't really been in the mood for TVoTR at the moment, also because I picked up "The Avalanche" a mere four hours prior to getting "Return to Cookie Mountain" and was completely blown away and obsesseed with "Springfield, or Bobby's got a Shafly Stuck in His Hair" (which, for those of you who are as obsessed with Colin Meloy as I am, sounds remarkably like "Save Yourself" on Tarkio's "Omnibus", at least musically).

So anyway, here I am, finally feeling ready to leave behind my four song Sufjan/Tarkio playlist, and I forgot TVoTR at home. So I've been Pandora'ing it, and that's been about as touch and go as it usually is. I think I'm too eclectic for the music genome project. I am trying to figure out why it is taking over 7 months to create a working TVoTR website. I mean, aren't they signed to a major record label these days? Dosn't Interscope have a couple of people on their payroll who can make things happen on the internet a little more quickly than glacier speed?

I guess I'm complaining because I'm still bitter about missing the NIN/TVoTR/Bauhaus show and I want to know when they will be touring again, and where.

Anyway. Music is one of the few good things in my life at the moment. Word.

From an e mail my mom forwarded me:

Subject: LEAD: Scientific claims about gravity still up in the air

Hello,

My client, Michael Jones is appalled that despite over three hundred
years of claims, scientists are unable to prove that gravity is due to
objects pulling on one another. In fact, this Tacoma author is offering
a $15,000 reward in a contest to prove his point.

Please let me know if you'd like more information or if you'd like to
set up an interview.

--

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tacoma man offers $15,000 to person who can prove Newton's Gravity
Theory
Gravitational Challenge strikes new debate in classrooms

TACOMA, Wash. - Are science books leading children astray? Tacoma author
and life-long student of the universe, Michael Jones says the textbooks
are wrong when it comes to claims about gravity. Jones once thought that
scientists knew everything there was to know about the universe, but the
more he researched, the more he realized the large amounts of incorrect
data that is taught in the classroom.

Jones is the author of Logical Universe: A Layman's Reality and says
K-12 science books make an ungrounded assumption behind the real cause
of gravity. Isaac Newton claimed gravity occurs as a result objects
pulling on one another over three hundred years ago and it has been
portrayed as fact ever since. This unsupported theory is in direct
opposition to Albert Einstein's assertion that gravity occurs as a
result of a change in the fabric of the universe around massive objects.

What does it matter whether gravity is due to a push or a pull?
Understanding the universe involves more than just mathematical models;
it involves understanding the reasons why things happen. Jones says a
complete understanding of gravity might allow us to develop artificial
gravitational fields that can be used to propel vehicles through space
at extreme velocities, allow us to build space tugs that can divert
comets or asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth, and it
could make travel to every planet in our Solar System an everyday
reality.

Jones is offering a $15,000 reward to the person who can prove that
gravity is a result of objects pulling on one another by citing an
experiment or observation that supports this claim in the "Logical
Universe Gravitational Challenge".

"If this evidence cannot be provided by American academia, then in the
interest of promoting scientific literacy and accuracy, all statements
that suggest that objects pull upon one another should be removed from
American curricula, " Jones says.

He says if we are to improve scientific literacy among the nation's
youth, we must make clear distinctions between what is known and what is
simply assumed and believed.

Michael Jones resides in Tacoma, Washington with his wife and two sons.
While continuing his study of the universe, Jones owns and manages a
painting company. He is interested in the development of controlled
field propulsion and enjoys sea kayaking. For more information or to
enter the "Logical Universe Gravitational Challenge", visit
www.logicaluniverse.com.

###

As a source, Michael Jones can discuss topics such as:
- Continuing education over the summer: Hands on things to do with your
kids to teach science
- Why the science textbooks are wrong & why educators need to
re-evaluate curricula, esp. in regards to gravity
- Practical ways to proactively pursue new developments in science
- Reasons why we do not yet understand our universe & what further
understanding could mean for the future

In Sight

In Sight
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Attitudes about standardized testing aside, I can actually see the purpose of the LSAT. It reasonably measures the things that a law student ought to have before emabrking on an intensive course of legal study.

Despite an OVERWHELMING urge, I am NOT allowing myself to study this morning. I just have to trust that in my studies, at various points, I have done very well on each of the sections, and I can do that during the timed event. (icanicanicanicanicanicanican).

Things that I am looking forward to doing tonight:

A)Drinking a couple of beers and getting silly in the head

and

B) (one or more of these) Finding friends to get silly in the head with/ watching a million hours of tv without feeling guilty /reading a couple of books without feeling guilty

Thursday: Ladies Night at the Grizzly Rose ("the rose" as leia calls it) this is free drinks for ladies. no strings attached. no needing to "look like a slut" (thanks elise), no needing to actually talk to guys (thanks lynn). Just pure, unadulterated, hopefully drinking *just short* of the "i think sleeping on the bathroom floor is actually a really good idea" point.


Things I am looking forward to doing over the next couple of days/ weeks:

A) Cleaning my apartment
B) Getting rid of a couple of boxes worth of shit
C) Spending some time with my Nikon
D) Some long- ass bike rides (with camera? Yessssss)
E) Hiking
F) Backpacking
G) Camping
H) Cathartic fire
I) Going out on dates? (Is anyone asking? If you do, I will be fun, a wonderful person with whom to spend some hours. And who knows... dates sometimes end with.... other stuff?)

Anyone interested in any of these activities... you know where to find me!

Eep. Dodger seems to be trying to eat Scout must away.

I <3 buereaucracy

With respect to Neil Gaiman from whom I took the following as a direct quotation:

"According to the Bureau of Homeland Security, New York Has No National Landmarks That Might Interest Terrorists. "That was a key factor used to determine that New York City should have its anti-terror funds slashed by 40 percent--from $207.5 million in 2005 to $124.4 million in 2006." The official list omits..."The Empire State Building, The United Nations, The Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation's most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History."

I keep finding myself wondering whether there's a little footnote in the report somewhere explaining that New York did once have a National Landmark, but some people flew a couple of planes into it."

Also, the Museum of Modern Art, home to "Starry Night" in addition to numerous other pieces considered part of the artistic canon.

Listening to: Morning Edition

but when we're together, we're too good for this world

i am feeling filled with absurd contradictions. i feel too old and too young, too jaded and too naive. how can i feel so strong, and be so easily hurt? how is it that i can expect the best of people and settle for the worst? what is this life that so utterly baffles me on a regular basis, that leaves me a quivering mess, that tires my soul and exhausts my heart?

i was on the airplane yesterday, in the very last row with a family of four, a mother, father, and two small girls. the father was a petulant turd, he was childish and obnoxious. he spent the entire flight complaining about the seats that wouldn't recline, about the flight attendant asking him to put on his seatbelt when we hit turbulence, about not being able to get up when the seatbelt light was on. at the end of the flight he made some quip about trying to do something "out of sight of the Nazis". it was the last straw. in my head, i unleashed on him.

"could you please, if not for me, than for your daughters who seem to be sweet and wonderful girls and who look to you as an example, could you please manage not to be a jackass for the three and a half hours we are all on this plane together? could you please be cautious of your language? could you please not minimize the murder of millions of people by comparing the perpetrators of war crimes with flight attendants who are trying to abide by federal safety regualtions? could you please just be conscious of the fact that no one is impressed by your quippiness and sarcasm, that your wife does not think that's cute, but who goes along with it because it's easier than picking a fight with you in public? please, stop being a bully and just grow up"

maybe it was because at the very moment he made the comment about the nazis that i was reading about Jan Karski, the righteous gentile who smuggled out reams of evidence about the Final Solution to a resounding lack of response by the Allied governments and the leaders of Jewish communities in both the United States and Great Britain. He wore a star on his clothes and went into the ghetto.

i have a sense of humor. i am not an ultra- sensitive bleeding heart. most of the time i can maintain a certain degree of distance between myself and the atrocities of the world. jesus, if i couldn't i would likely have killed myself long before today. but sometimes, some days it's just too much.

the fact that people kill each other is a reality. genocide is not a new idea. it's not a product of industrialized society, no matter what Hannah Arendt proposed. The United States government enacted a policy of genocide, sometimes willfull and sometimes through pure and utter apathy, towards the Native Americans for the entire span of its existence. And don't think for a moment that much has changed. We, the victors, have done a damn fine job of sterilizing our history.

How dare I claim to have some sort of right to work for international human rights? and what is that idea anyway? we have no rights. we live in anarchism, pure and simple. our so called civility caves when it is challenged, why even bother trying to hold anyone to some sort of "higher standard". higehr than what?

fuck this noise.

Rocking out at the Reflecting Pool

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Last night I saw My Morning Jacket and Pearl Jam at the Verizon Center in DC. It was awesome. Ok, well it wasn't NIN and TV on the Radio at Red Rocks (::sob::) but it was definitely a great show. I've never heard My Morning Jacket Before, so they weren't as exciting as they could have been, but they were pretty good and I will definitely be checking them out as soon as I have money I can spend on music again. The crowd was all Pearl Jam's though. The arena was maybe a third full after My Morning Jacket left the stage, but by the time the lights dimmed for Pearl Jam it was full.
They played a lot of new songs, which was okay, but did prompt me to turn to Spillz at one point and say "This is Pearl Jam trying to be Limp Bizkit and I wish they would stop". At one point they also seemed to be channeling Bruce Springsteen, but that wasn't quite as distressing.
The highlight of the show for me was during the firts encore when they played an AMAZING rendition of Bob Dylans "Masters of War". I want that, if anyone knows where to find Pearl Jam concert bootlegs (I have't looked very hard yet).
Yes. Now I go to get on a plane.

"You agitatin' my dots?"

So here I am in DC, and it's 12:19 but for me it feels like 10:19, only exacerbated by the fact that I slept through three hours of West Wing DVDs that my aunt was watching. So now, though I should be sleeping, soundly and deeply because I have a big day tomorrrow, I am watching a very old X-Files episode, "Blood" from 1994 this was episode 3 of the second season. In the first couple of minutes I got to see an old school ATM, a monstrous laptop with a modem line, and second season Scully with the huge glasses. w00t! This was still when the narrative of the show was exactly that, a narrative, like Mulder or Scully was reading from their report. There is a classic David Lynch/ Twin Peaks piece of cinematography in which a police office shoots a woman who is attacking Mulder and the screen goes white. Also a newsclip montage featuring the Rodney King beating, the OJ Simpson low speed pursuit, and Chalres Manson. For the record, considering my age at the time of the original airings of these video clips, I'm kind of amazed I was able to identify them as instantaneously as I was. Says something about the power of media saturation. This episode also features The Lone Gunmen, double w00t.

It's been years since I watched these old old X-Files. For the record, back in the beginning I was not allowed to watch the X-Files. It was on Friday nights and Friday nights were "no tv" nights. My aunt had a couple of videos that I watched obsessively when I would visit her, and sometimes my friends would tape episodes that I could borrow. Looking at them now, they have an awesome Twilight Zone/ Outer Limits sort of feel to them. It makes me sad to think about how different it was at the end, how wrapped up in its own mythology and lost from the awesome surreality that gave it its initial magic.

For the record. The picture is an old one of Scout in which she is trying to retrieve a toy from under the couch. She was persistent, it took her three days to retrieve her toy, but retrieve it she did. I have such smart kitties.

The title line has to do with a commerical that came on. Occassionally I am blown away by commercials and how awesome they can be. The first one I remember really loving was for Subway, in which there was a guy with a large picture of a panda bear and he said "Why should you eat lunch with me? Cause I'm so pretty! Pretty preeetty panda, Pretty preety panda!" and he tilted the picture back and forth. It was AWESOME. If I could find that commercial and have it on my computer I would do it in a heartbeat. Anyway, this commercial is for some package delivery service. Yes. Commercials. This is why I watch tv so very infrequently. It gets into my head and scares me.

Flaming Celluloid at 2:30 in the morning

My review of X-Men III: The Last Stand lives over here where the spoilers remain safely behind a cut. Please go read it, I am interested to hear what other people have to say about this movie.

Where'd she go?

Where'd she go?
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Currently Reading: White Apples by Jonathan Carroll.

Have you ever had a book get into your head so completely that you have moments when you can't remember where you end and the story begins? The last book i really remember that happening with was Someplace to be Flying by Charles deLint. That's one of the books that will come with me whenever i move. It's happened a couple of times, and it's never been a mundane affair.

These are the books that remind me that the world is full of wonder any mystery, and that to spend too much time trying to figure it all out is to detract from the simple truth of it all. The last two weeks have been very painful, and they continue to sleep in my consciousness, waking occassionaly and demanding my thought and analysis for many or few moments.

But from the other side i can see that the wounds have released me. Floodgates i had not realized i had erected have come crashing down. I am writing, i am looking at the art around me and thinking "i can *do* that". i was quietly mistaking apathy for peace, and it took a giant jolt, a paradigm shift, to alert me to the sneaking desperation that dogged my steps.

I can list for you the single moments that have struck this chord in me, but they wouldn't mean for you what they have for me. They are my secret places, and I can't tell why they meant what they did for me when they did. Perhaps if I had caught them at another time they would have been meaningless. In the case of "Here i dreamt i was an architect" that is, in fact, what happened.

True beauty is found in the simple, serendipitous moments.

I am trying to break your heart

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

And I'd be lying if I said it wasn't easy.

Listening to: "Engine Driver"- The Decemberists

I wrote last night. For two and a half hours straight, fueled by coffee and beer and cigarettes. Suddenly I understand why Warren Ellis hangs out in the pub. In that short short time I knocked out over 5000 words neil gaiman says 1000 words a day is perfectly respectable.

I don't know if what I've written is any damn good, but it feels good simply to have done it. Sometimes I forget that writing is just like anything else, you have to do it in order to keep doing it. I mean, I guess I didn't really forget it, I've been much more compulsive about writing in my journals since i stopped trying to write creatively. but this felt good. like stretching in the sun, after a long languid winter.

Admissions

Currently Reading and Up Next
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Currently Listening: Camera Obscura "Happy New Year"

This morning I fell in love with an unexpectedly quiet busy street. I love moments when it feels like the world is sleeping and I am watching.

I have great difficulty admitting I am wrong. It hurts. It is so hard to look at something that seemed so genuinely to be *truth* and to realize that it was not.

I was wrong about him, and I was wrong in my dealing with him. These admissions have no bearing on the factual reality of a series of unfortunate situations in which I was treated badly. The point is that, in retrospective analysis, I can see a number of instances in which I made the wrong decision, and I don't like being wrong.

What bothers me the most is when I am wrong in my estimation of people. I am a fairly guarded soul, I don't let people in very easily, and when I do it is geenrally because I truly *want* them to be a part of my life, and have some fair bit of evidence that they want to be a part of my life. To have let someone in who has proven unworthy of those small bits of trust has proven... hurtful.

Moreover it hurts that I do still want him to be a part of my life, because that was what I wanted when I let him in in the first place.

Really I just want to be the cutest girl at the comic*con. I suppose I'd haveto actually go to a comic*con first.

DC Northeast Boundary Stone 8

DC Northeast Boundary Stone 8
Originally uploaded by zhurnaly.

Despite my proclamations that I am a romantic, that I am naiive and find beauty in the world, very few things make my jaw drop open in pure, unadulterated amazement. This did. "In 1791-92 Andrew Ellicott and the free African-American Benjamin Banneker surveyed the border of the District with both Virginia and Maryland, placing boundary stones at every mile point; many of these still stand." -From wikipedia.
If there were any doubt in my mind that DC is the place for me, this has assuaged it. Thank you zhurnaly.

Sorrow drips into your heart from a pinhole

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I had something to say here, and I don't know if I remember what it was.

It had to do with the inevitable futility of trying to do something *good* in the world. With the ways in which people destroy themselves by slow degrees, and the ways in which we justify these things.

I throw myself into the LSAT with what can only be described as the half hearted full tilt enthusiasm of desperation. I do it because it's something to do, and it makes more sense than every other option.

All I really want is for things to be as peaceful and wonderful as they are in my head. A kind hearted guy who loves me will keep me warm at night, and we will challenge one another and debate the important things, and be secure that no matter what else, we love each other. We will have a sun filled cottage, or fourth floor apartment with a fire escape. We will have two cats lying on the foot of the bed on Sunday morning, and maybe even a well behaved dog.

We will be content with one another, and that will give us both the strength to take on the world.

I am realizing that I need to believe in love, I need to love and be loved, because without that I will wither away into a jaded, sad knot of pain. I have taken on a great task, I have huge dreams, and most of the time I can keep myself warm enough to keep those dreams floating in the air. But sometimes I get so cold inside, and I never know when that's going to happen, but that's when I need someone else to warm me. I need someone to look at my dreams, and to see that they are worthwhile, good dreams, and I need someone, or many someones to help me keep my dreams floating. And I of course, will help them keep their dreams up in the air.

I need someone to help me remember that the world is worth saving.

never heard the melody 'til i needed the song

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Listening to: Tom Waits "San Diego Serenade"

Confusion turns to fear, fear to terror, terror to confusion, confusion to sadness, sadness to emptiness, emptiness to anger, anger to acceptance.

After acceptance I'm ususally able to sleep. And after sleeping I can usually come back, and look at the situation with fresh eyes, and rested emotions, with the rationality that I value so. But sometimes I just have to stop myself and wonder what the hell I'm doing.

I may never hear again

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

For the first time I can actually determine that my hearing is less the day after a concert than it was the day before. I feel like I need to turn my music up just a touch louder to hear it, I can't hear the conversations in the hall quite as clearly. Next time I'll be bringing ear plugs. Cause I like being able to hear. Also, it's easier to hear the music without all of the hum, and I don't miss the hum, especially when I can feel it in my chest competing with my heart for rhythmic superiority.

An awesome concert. I would have loved it if I had paid for tickets, I loved it even more because I didn't. Also, hanging out with spectacular people for a couple of hours can never be bad.


And Britt Daniel and I had a moment.