Currently Stray Age By Daniel Martin Moore see related

Just some new stuff...

I wear my heart on my sleeve, especially when it comes to my musical interests.  This is a known fact.  My preferences can be scattered, but are incredibly passionate when I find some new band or solo artist with what I see as that certain something.  Right now friends, I would say I am in love.

I have spent the past seven days or so home from my day job and inconsistently home from my other occupation, (waiting tables/tending bar at Ted's Montana Grill) thanks to an insane amount of snowfall in the DC area.  While this provides an incredible amount of time for finishing my Master's degree, I have opted to forego such a logical pursuit and have instead spent countless hours finding new music.  One particular gentleman discovered was not entirely new to me, as I have recently begun educating myself on mountaintop removal, but I had not yet taken the time to explore him as a solo artist.  This man, Daniel Martin Moore, is incredible.  It's You, from his debut album Stray Age, would be the perfect backdrop for any intellectual romantic movie, while the title track, Stray Age is so simple it stirs up my complex feelings, some too gnarly for blog display.  You can stream the album free at the SubPop label website just by signing up for a free online account.  Warning, it's definitely a romantic, swoony kind of sound you're going to hear from this gent, so if you're feeling particularly prickly around the upcoming holiday, President's Day, you may want to hold off on trying him out until March or so when nicer weather can help to soothe your mood.

If you're interested in the mountaintop removal link I previously referenced, DMM is releasing an album called Dear Companion with another fellow Kentucky boy, Ben Sollee, to benefit Appalachian Voices, an organization committed to protecting the beautiful landscape of Appalachia. It drops February 16th, the same day Joe Pug releases his first full length album, Messenger.  If you go to his website, you can download an MP3 of his second EP, In the Meantime, for free and request his first EP, Nation of Heat, to be sent to you, free of charge.  Then, especially if you live in the NoVA/DC area, pay this generous man back by purchasing tickets to see him Justin Townes Earle at The Birchmere on March 7th.

This concludes my musical update.  You're welcome, in advance, for this recommendation, the five or fewer of you who still read my crumby old Xanga blog.  As promised thousands of times, I am going to try to be on this a little more, sharing thoughts, views and general grumblings with the rest of ya.  I'm into a Wendell Berry book right now, The Art of the Commonplace, which is giving me tons of food for thought, and perhaps an itch to move out of this city and into the country to begin my life as an agrarian.  I wouldn't put too much stock in me actually doing that though...as previously stated, my heart is always on my sleeve. 

Currently Coal Country Music By Various Artists see related

To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

I should probably think about this some more, but perhaps that is why it has been so long since I last wrote.  I spend too much time thinking about what to say, worried about how honest it will be that I ignore the beauty of the medium, of blogging and writing just what you feel.  So with disregard for the backspace button, except in cases of grammatical error, I will write, if only to lessen the weight.

It may be the fact I'm 25, staring down 26 and rounding the corner on 30 which has gotten me thinking.  Maybe it's the increasing amount of Facebook statuses declaring occupied wombs and ring fingers which has turned this thinking towards my lovelife, or lack thereof, and whether or not I want to remedy it.  To the shock of some, I am quite an introverted person.  Outgoing is more a job title than a characteristic for me.  More often than not, a mug of hot water and bourbon and a good book would be my preference for a Friday night than getting dolled up and heading out to prowl the bars.  Sure, time is not usually mine to waste in intellectual pursuits thanks to the demands of three jobs, but I also think I keep such a busy schedule to avoid intimacy.  Not in the pornographic sense, but in the general, we are all God's creatures sense.   My nieces are the only people I can hug and mean it, well, them and my mother.  My only cause for tears lately have been over mountaintop removal (an exploitive and deplorable practice by the way) and while watching Dead Man Walking last night on hulu.  This, despite the fact I recently lost a favorite great uncle, spent my first Christmas without my grandmother and have been disappointed time and time again by gentlemen I thought were decent people.

I suppose I say this all because while watching Dead Man Walking last night, Sister Prejean encouraged Matthew Poncelet with a verse from John chapter 8 where Jesus says the truth will set you free.  It got me to thinking about the things with which I am not truthful, how such denials of it are driving me further away from people, and how best to return to a sense of connectedness, not only with ordinary people, but with those who wish to be close to me and deserve to be.  I have run away for the past 8 years and perhaps for my entire life.  I went to college and lost myself in a popularity race I wasn't even aware I had entered.  I returned home downtrodden, and when I found myself wandering down paths which brought me shame and guilt, I ran away from these sins instead of confessing them.  Given the chance, I'll pack up and go without care for whom my absence hurts.  Somehow I have trained myself to believe letting people in is a recipe for heartache, not an opportunity for love.  This has got to stop or else I will end up unbound to anyone, responsible for nothing meaningful and living on the surface as opposed to the depths where surely the risks are greater but the rewards so sweet.   These are just my honest feelings, expressed because they are truth.    

Currently Say It Louder By Sarah Siskind Falling Stars see related

God is good. Anybody got 40 cents?

I live in my headphones.  Since my father purchased these amazing Bose in-ear headphones for Christmas for me last year, I have managed to wear out two pairs.  Thankfully, there's some insanely awesome warranty on these bad boys enabling me to seek a new pair whenever one turns up damaged or unproductive of sound.  I've likely exploited this leniency of the Bose corporation, but I feel little remorse.  Music, somehow, makes my life better.  There are times, however, when I remove it from my life.  These are generally moments beyond my control - i.e. my iPod is dead, I've left my iPhone at home or I am forced to participate in activities such as work or human conversation.  These times are rare, but one such cataclysmic event happened the other day.  With a dead iPod and ten minutes between me and the arrival of my train home, I was left with only the beautiful noise of the Metro Center metro station as a means of passing time.  The underground transportation system of the District of Columbia, being both the biggest source of inspiration and irritation in my life, is full of melodies, if one has the heart and time to hear them.  This day, I think I heard something.  Save an annoying verbal scuffle between two unidentified males, the hum of the metro was that of a presumably homeless woman, belting out, "God is good.  Anybody got 40 cents?"  It was constant, except for times when she lowered her request to 30 cents, and carried this haunting rhythm.  Calling it constant is not an exaggeration.  I am not sure she even paused for breath, so perhaps her asking price should have been for a tank of oxygen as opposed to a quarter, a nickel and a dime.  Or maybe she wanted four dimes, I didn't stop to ask.  Either way, the lyrics of her song caught my attention.  God is good.  Anybody got 40 cents?  I am not a deeply religious person.  Don't misunderstand, I consider myself a Christian, but wayward at best, and in a constant state of seek.  Which is why my interpretation of the scene struck me as so odd.  How often is this the approach I take to life?  Lip service to God, He's good, then out again to find what I need in the elements of humans.  It seems counterintuitive.  If God is so good, why don't I rely more on what He has to say?  Better yet, why don't I ask? 

Usually I write these blogs with questions followed by answers.  I am not sure I have any this time.  I am at a crossroads in life, looking for a job, a new home, a mate, and the more questions that come my way, the harder it is to discern the will of God in all this.  Moving home for the summer, though not exactly what I want now, has seriously come too easy.  A great practicum project, a great friend to let me live with her and a man met at 4th and M who is willing to sublet from me for a month.  Granted, he shuffle walks and calls himself Bubbles, but it's still a hopeful situation.  Is this a prelude to greater things?  Some bigger plan at work for the next two months?  Where is His will and where is mine, and how do I tell the difference? Big questions, sure, and until answers can be found, I am precariously perched on cautious optimism.  I wanted to say hopeful skepticism, but those two words don't seem to fit well together.  Perhaps there's a reason for that...

In hindsight, I have started carrying change in my pocket.  The lady fueled some thought with her song, but she also fueled some annoyance as well.  With the requested forty cents, maybe she would have only said God is good. 

By the way, the artist I am listening to drops her album on May 26th.  Get it. 

Currently Nothing Is Okay By The Everybodyfields Lonely Anywhere see related

Alfred, the best Taxi Cab Driver ever

I just broke up with my practicum site preceptor.  It wasn't anything serious, just for fun really, and though we toyed with commitment for a while, we somehow couldn't make it work.  She wanted a diabetes prevention program, and I only wanted a dataset I could manipulate and put my name on for some fancy pants journal article.  In the end, though we said we wanted the same things, the truth came out in the wash and we had to part ways.  Just another heartbreak in a long line of them lately.

The title for this blog will be explained shortly, but I want to go ahead and put some things out there before I share.  I haven't done this in a while - write for reasons which didn't include assessment - and in a way, it feels as though the further (or farther, I can never commit this rule of English to memory) I have removed myself from things like this that I enjoy the farther I am also removed from myself.  Strange, but I think it's my twenties giving me a run for my money, determined to instill grit in me one painstaking life changing event at a time.  I wish I could say I have grinned and beared it, welcomed the challenges with a clenched fist, but in some respects I have shrunk from the lessons I could have learned and gone on to repeat them, or better yet, make worse ones.  While I'm sure I'll get it right one of these days, this trial by fire thing of my post college experience has been something else.  However, every once in a while, somebody comes along at just the right time to restore my faith in humanity and remind me of the resilience inherent in every human being.  This gilded provider of wisdom is a man named Alfred.

I'll save a good chunk of the back story on this because, well, I no longer find it necessary to relive gory details.  Friday night I found myself riding home in the backseat of  a lovely metered DC taxicab, alone, with the slightest excess of alcohol coursing through my veins and tears flooding my eyes, drowning my cheeks.  If you know my cries, you can imagine how horribly pathetic this scene was.  All dressed up in my big hoop earrings, the soft murmur of the air conditioning in Alfred's car the only competition for the audible sobs escaping my lips.  Usually, on a return trip from a night spent out and about, I am chatty Kathy in the backseat, never one to meet a stranger, eagerly grilling the cab driver for details of his life.  I tell myself it's to help him improve his English, but really I'm a soft at heart Southern girl who just likes to talk to people. This night, however, I don't say a word until Alfred arrives at the apartment building next to mine.  I apologize for my silence, and tell him it's only because I'm heartbroken that I haven't been friendly.  Alfred asks me my name and launches into a half hour conversation about the wife he worked two jobs for to put through medical school only to have her leave him shortly thereafter for another man.  So here he is, an uneducated 57 year-old taxicab driver who's divorced, starting over again and putting himself through college, and he is the happiest man I have met in a while.  You can imagine this optimistic view of his plight quickly put me to shame, but the amazing thing is, he didn't tell me his story for my pity, he told me his story because he thought it could help me.  A stranger who makes his wage on driving as many drunk, raucous people he can home on a Friday night sat in that parking lot with me for thirty minutes and shared his pain , but also his resilience against the bitterness.  I got out of the car Friday pretty sure I had just been blessed more than I deserve with an experience to share of a man who refused to be changed by the heartless actions of another.  I didn't cry anymore that night, but for the first time in a while, went to bed smiling.  My friend tells me my encounter has the makings of a country song, and it might, but I won't know for sure until I keep my commitment to continue writing.

So there's my story.  I plan on getting a new computer soon, hopefully making these blogs more frequent.  I know no one uses Xanga anymore, but I'm just not ready to change everything in my life.  The old blogs remind me of what I've already weathered, making this storm a little easier to bear.  By the way, if you're in DC there is a lunch fundraiser tomorrow for New York City councilman candidate Kevin Kim.  It's at Old Ebbitt Grill at 11:30.  I'm totally going to be in attendance, trying my hand at another new activity - networking.