I'll help you out.

Deciding to be brave.

I haven't decided if my old journals and notebooks are an embarrassment or an embarrassment of riches. I flipped through them the other day and was actually surprised by my teenage self. The first is that I was kind of an a-hole about certain things. The second is that I was so, so lonely.

The third is that I don't really seem to have changed a bit. I mean, I've certainly grown and gained maturity. But some of the deep-down, this-is-who-I-am sentiments are exactly the same. In an entry dated January 26, 1994, I complained of feeling stuck. Mired in a routine where nothing changes. In another entry I just wished something great would happen to me. Something dramatic and wonderful. In another I said I wanted to wake up to a raging thunderstorm or even an earthquake, because it would match my mood -- which would somehow be very comforting. (Dramatic? Me?)

I read the January 26 entry to my husband and he immediately commented on the similarity between old-me and present-day me. I could only stare at the page for a moment, agreeing, wondering how I felt about that. At the time, I decided to laugh -- because, come on, that's funny. Funny-ish. But then, I don't know, now that I've given it some time I am struck mostly by the fear that underpinned every single thing I wrote in those notebooks. I lived in a small world. I was afraid to reach out, to do more. I was scared of who I was or who I was supposed to be. And you expect that from a teenager, I think, but from a grown up lady?

Not ideal.

Driving to work this morning, feeling that familiar sense of dread rising up in my chest, I stubbornly pushed it away. I listened to Walk the Moon sing, "I can lift a car up all by myself" and thought about strength and the strength in bravery. Because, for me, it is an act of bravery to believe in joy. To lean toward the light instead of cowering in the shadows.

Iceland for the win AGAIN.

Seeing more than you care to say.

You can't make your heart feel something it won't.

Hi there. It's been awhile. I don't know. Here's a song.

Making lovely.

I read an article once about how smiling during a workout, particularly on a run, can improve your performance. Something about making yourself smile, no matter how artificial, can get your brain to send out happy signals and give you a little extra push of energy.

Yesterday on the treadmill I was pounding away and a great song came on, and I was feeling it. So I looked up at the black TV screen in front of me and smiled. I looked at my face, the dark circles under my eyes, the overbite, the skin that is inexplicably breaking out (too much Halloween candy?) and I smiled. The screen was so dark I couldn't see how flushed I was, but I could see bits of sweat breaking free from my hair as I ran, and I just felt good. I picked up my gait and upped the speed on the treadmill and went for it. Smiling. Reminding myself to smile. I smiled when feet started to feel kind of leaden, and when my muscles ached and even when I felt a tiny tweak in my right knee. Smiling. Remember to smile.

It hit me somewhere during that time, rounding out my third mile and feeling that familiar mix of tired and exhilarated, that I was excited, feeling really excited about life, and it was something I manufactured right then on the treadmill, pushing myself and wearing myself out and remembering to smile.

I lament sometimes how I am not often excited about life anymore, but what I had forgotten is that excitement is something you make. You can't sit and wait for it to find you. You can't sit back and wait for the circumstances of your life to arrange themselves in a pleasing pattern. Those random, magical moments exist, but they won't find you unless you put yourself out there.

The point of this whole blog has been to recognize those random magical moments, but it's so passive. Observational. I need to start making them, too. Making and celebrating lovely.

(The song I was listening to on the treadmill yesterday).

It's you, it's you, it's all for you.

There's music on Clinton street all through the evening.

I bet I posted about this song before, but it bears revisiting. I was sitting at my desk at work, feeling kind of -- heavy -- and I was thinking: what is a song that makes me breathe. Clears a space out around me. And I thought of this song. It makes me wish for gray skies, rain, chilly wind, bundling into a raincoat.

Tears like diamonds.

Well it looks like I have a new favorite song, judging by the fact that I listened to it 8,000 times in a row yesterday.

Unlock my body and move myself at last/to dance.

The first song here, "Chinese Apple," is a beautiful song by Loose Fur aka Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and other folks. Fun fact: I walked down the aisle to this song! The lyrics are lovely, which brings us to fun fact #2: the lyrics "unlock my body/move myself at last/into warm liquid/flowing blowing glass/classical music/blasting masks the ringing in my ears" repeat themselves in Wilco's "Heavy Metal Drummer," a very different song. Except in that one he says, "move myself to dance" instead of "move myself at last." I like how changing the "at last" to "to dance" totally changes the feeling of the lyrics that follow, and what it might mean to "unlock your body." Both are awesome songs.

Tell me what you know about dreaming.

I can't stop listening to this cover of Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness." I love the, I don't know, desperate melancholy of it. The original has the same vibe, with Kid Cudi's added....smirky affectation, I guess. Both are good, but I think I like this version better.

I belong among the weeds.

This song feels like our frequent walks down to the river, the trails thick with weeds, the heat beating down. It even feels like scratching the bug bite on my forearm, dotted with calamine lotion. These are happy things. Yes, even bug bites in a weird way.

If I had an orchard.

"Do you ever feel like you're failing yourself?" I ask Wayland. It's nearing midnight and he's mostly asleep, so he pulls himself out of a half-snore and mutters, "Sometimes."

"I think that lately -- that I'm failing myself," I tell him as I walk back into the bathroom to take my contacts out. "I'm not being what I should be." You are what you should be, my brain pulls out of a half-snore to mutter at me. I tamp it down. "But that's okay," I say. "It's a challenge. I can take it."

Like I tell Violet to say out loud every time she falls on a hike and starts wailing, no matter how severe the injury (it's never severe): "I am ROCKING this trail." I urge her to say it, and remind her: "You fell because you are going for it. You are ROCKING it. And you got that fall out of the way, so now there won't be any more falls."

I'm lying to her because of course there will be more falls. There are always more falls, literal and metaphorical. She falls again not five minutes later and there is a small scrape on her knee. A little blood. She does the open mouthed, full body sob. "Violet," I remind her. "You are ROCKING this trail." And she sucks in a breath. "Yes!" She exclaims, turning the tears off almost immediately. "I got that fall out of the way! I'm getting my falls out of the way!"

It's a good lesson, I decide, and not a lie, exactly. You go, you fall, you get up. That fall is out of the way so you can get ready to repeat the process. Is that what life is? Falling down, getting up. Getting up, falling down? Is life more getting up or falling down? I think it's the middle of that, the comma between the phrases, the pause between highs and lows. Keeping balanced when gravity and inertia are working against you.

My problem is not that I am failing myself, it's that I'm in a pause, seeking the high -- when the pauses are what to seek. Where to stay.

It's maybe why this song "Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes basically kills me dead. It's a song about living in the pauses. "If I had an orchard/I'd work 'til I'm raw/If I had an orchard/I'd work 'til I'm sore."

You go back, but it's never the same.

An odd morning. Monday, gray and dark and cold. Constant rain and distant rumble of thunder. I'm tired, Mad is tired - the whole family is tired because we got a dog from the shelter and the transition has been a little bumpy. Not to mention our daughter who wakes easily during thunderstorms. I wake up to the news that Osama bin Laden has been killed, and that Americans are rejoicing. This makes me uncomfortable - it feels gross that scads of people converged upon the capitol just to celebrate a violent death, no matter whose death it was. Humanity, you know? Life is sacred, or it should be. And so I would hope that a death like this would be met silently, I guess. With pale faces. I don't know. I'm not mourning the guy, but this was ugly business, through and through. And to cheer it on -- well, it's just gross.

I don't know how to shape the day into something better, but I'm working on it. We'll start here, with "The Heron and the Fox" by Little Scream. It's sparse and beautiful. And kind of lush, too.

No one's got what we got goin'.

Well if this isn't the very definition of lovely, I just don't know what is.

Lyrics as poetry.

waking before you/I've got a fever and a childish wish for snow (my favorite lyrics ever)


worried homes have walls/they absorb old phone calls/they spit warm laundry smoke to the cold backyard/but to be a father/I must take my life and solder all my neighborhoods of night to you


we tied our ribbons to the fire escape/they were taken by the birds/who flew home to the country as/the bombs rained on the world


my mind is filled with silvery stars/honey kisses clouds of love/shoulders shrugging off/cheer up/honey I hope you can/there is something wrong with me/my mind is filled with radio cures/electronic surgical words


one brash phrase could crush this fragile day/as my thoughts swirl in some shrill sad cannonade/and one such spur that caused my throat to creak/the one dull dawn I'm sentenced to repeat


the last time we saw you/you looked so much older/your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder/you'd been to the station to meet every train then/you came home without lili marlene

Strange comfort.

(WARNING: this post talks mostly about vomiting. Plus it's kind of depressing.)

When I was pregnant with Madeleine, I was sick constantly. That's kind of an understatement: I'd vomit something like 13 times before lunch, horking bile and weeping every single morning, shaky and tired. I'd force myself to eat a little, sip water, eat a little more, sip water. Sometimes I'd achieve a delicate balance enough to eat a decent lunch, only to throw it up again a little while later. Basically my goal was to always have something in my stomach, something mild and unassuming, so it didn't hurt when it came back up later. The addition of Zofran helped a lot, so I could at least FUNCTION, but I'd still vomit several times in the morning, once or twice in the afternoon.

Music is so tied into this period for me, and there are certain songs I can't listen to without thinking of that time - one is "Overcome" by Better Than Ezra. "Before the Robots" came out the day I found out I was pregnant with her and I hated that album so much. The one song that grabbed me was "Overcome" - and the lyrics, "I feel strange/I feel changed/Overcome/Overcome by you." How weirdly prescient this song was -- I would find out I was pregnant just five hours later that day and I never felt more strange then, and later, so so so so sick, definitely overcome by the little girl growing inside of me. Kind of literally.

Another one is "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" by Stars (pulled over in a parking lot on the way home from work on the hot, hot summer, throwing up into a plastic shopping bag).

Anything by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - that first album of theirs was out around that time, and I really liked it then, but now something about the music and that guy's voice are so tied into that constant nausea that I can't even listen to it now without feeling a little sick. It's too bad, because "Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" is a really good song.

And finally: "Company in My Back" by Wilco - Something about that steady rhythm was so lulling, so comforting and calming. Soothing. Wayland knew it had that effect on me, and one day I came home from work at lunch to find the song playing on a loop through the house because he knew I'd be throwing up at some point while I was there. And I did. And that steady, easy rhythm helped me pull it together as I rested my head on my arm, braced on the toilet seat, wiping tears from my eyes and taking slow breaths to get myself ready to go back to work.

Welcome home.

This video is really beautiful, and by the end of the song I really liked it. Tinkling piano and hand claps = a big YES.

I mean, I might as well.

These songs are in constant rotation lately in our house: songs for spring!

I'm just choking down a salt year.

I can't stop listening to this song. I mean. It's just. Wow.