A few pictures...

A rainy day. Meeting at work. Luckily I had my iPod...

Waiting for the tram to come.

Here it is!

Hello Portland!

Stumptown at the tram? Yes, please.

The Curse

February 23^rd marked 9^th time I’ve seen Josh Ritter perform in concert. If I were to count the time I saw him play at a peace rally in Friendship Square, it would be the 10^th. I basked in the feel-good glow for a week after the concert. I love the aftershocks of amazing evenings.

I fell in love with music the first time I saw Josh Ritter live. A heady all-encompassing love. I’d always liked music, and certainly had plenty of it but had never listened to music that moved me. I never felt the charge of live music. Had never felt like a song was written just for me, or have a song connect with in every fiber of my being. I was 21 years old and sitting in an uncomfortable seat in the Kenworthy theatre, flanked by my parents, and when Josh sang his songs with his eyes closed and his puppy dog smile…. That was it.

It’s been seven years since that first concert and he still sings with his eyes closed and a puppy-dog smile on his face. I still hear the music speak to every fiber of my being. The difference is the memories that are attached to every song. The roller-coaster of emotions that make-up the concert. Giddy happiness from being at the concert, the loneliness of the songs I used to listen to when I lived so isolated in Lewiston, and then there was the aching sadness of “Lantern.”

***

It’s been quite a year, Internet, since I last wrote. Well. I guess every year is “quite a year,” but I still feel like I have a hangover from the end of 2010. All is looking up though. I’ve moved in to a new apartment that’s all my own. I have exciting adventures lined up, and I see signs of spring everywhere.

Small Town
by Philip Booth

You know.
The light on upstairs
before four every morning. The man
asleep every night before eight.
What programs they watch. Who
traded cars, what keeps the town
moving.
The town knows. You
know. You've known for years over
drugstore coffee. Who hurts, who
loves.
Why, today, in the house
two down from the church, people
you know cannot stop weeping.

new new new

There’s a funny role reversal happening here. We’re sitting in the coffee shop at Powell’s City of Books, and I’ve been writing furiously for the past hour. Chris, on the other hand, has been leafing through the stack of books that he pulled from the shelves. I’ve only picked up two, and don’t intend on making a purchase. He was just bemoaning how much money he’s likely to spend. This makes me laugh.

It’s 2010. Wow. Here’s to a better year than last!

Empty Hearts

Syntax

by Maureen N. McLane

and if 

I were to say

I love you and 

I do love you

and I say it

now and again

and again

would you say

parataxis

would you see

the world revolves

anew

its axis

you

poetry, poetry, poetry

I love poetry.  

That much is probably obvious if anyone ever takes the time to look through the archives of this little blog.  It's also obvious to all of my friends, as they all have had to sit down as I proclaim how much I love a poem before I read it to them. I just love the lilting language and powerful images and...well I could go on and on and on, but I won't.

One of my dear friends is getting married next summer and has asked me to not only read a poem at her wedding, but to choose it as well.  Yay! I love any chance to read lots and lots and lots of poetry.  

I did find a love poem that would be wonderful at a wedding, maybe not this wedding, but wonderful anyway.  Here, I'll share it with you!

Superbly Situated

by Robert Hershon

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to

right from the beginning--a relationship based on 

good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments

as breathing regularly and not falling down too often

or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn't mind if somehow

i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects

so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is 

how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers

so far away you could touch it--therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting

to tear down the empire state building and replace it

with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as a part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness

i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes

i'll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house

a regularly scheduled flight--something that can't help being

in the right place at the right time--come take your seat

we'll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines

fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state

the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve