One Story

After spending the day reading "Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters" I am left with only one conclusion:

It's embarrassing to unconsciously laugh out loud in a crowed cafe!!

But in all seriousness, today passed in the most deliciously languid way. While I sat here - enveloped in a faux leather chair, my legs bent under me, knees crushing painfully hour after hour against the arm of this coffee house easy chair - I ate, slept and wept for everything Salinger was. . . and wasn't.

There is a particular strangeness, a very indiscernible quality, to everything he has penned. It reaches out to the reader in a way that simultaneously validates and alienates him. Much like trying to dive into Salinger himself, we can't help but be left with the feeling that no matter how close we get, no matter how deep we are allowed to gaze into the psyche of the men and women within the pages we will never fully understand them.

It is in this obscurity though, the aloofness of his characters with their lead door morality, that I find the most condolence. While I have dogged eared, underlined and highlighted many a passage, it is very much the space between the characters and within their identities that resonates.

It is because we are given so much freedom within our own imaginations to play out the motivations of his characters we end up identifying with him so deeply. We are constantly asked to reach out to make those slightly intangible connections between the characters and their actions, between their past and present lives and in doing so we automatically infuse ourselves into the obscure details we are asked to make up. We can’t help but feel, for example in Catcher in the Rye, that young Holden Caulfield’s angst is an angst we know, his anger is an anger we have been driven to; because when it comes to identifying with a story it is not the emotions that need to be universal, but the opportunity to create motivations for those emotions that matters.

I'm not sure I could sum up in so many words, what I adore so much about Salinger’s writing specifically. It could be the way it rolls off the page, so much so it becomes not so much an act of reading, but one of listening. Or it could be the moments of unbearable humour that pop up in-between the moments of intense insight. Or possibly it’s the little details, that become observations of immense meaning and magnitude. For example when Franny Glass was four she believed that she would fly around the apartment when no one was looking. How could this possibly be, she was questioned. Surely she must have only dreamt that she was doing this? But of course it was real, she protested. She knew so because of the dust that was left on her fingers from the tops of the light bulbs. The light bulb dust. . . . of course. There are really only two reasons to even contemplate the tops of light bulbs, if you are changing them, or flying over them.

It is the details, the obscure, simple, or otherwise that we continually take for granted. They are always there, though dulled by the pressing emotional turmoil of immediate needs, wants and desires. Salinger’s characters were ones that through their own genius, acknowledged or not, pointed out these details to us again. These details were a part of their brilliance, were a part of their consciousness in such an ingrained way it allowed them to make the commentaries on people, life, love, loss and hopelessness that we find so profound and meaningful.

But alas the greatest part about reading Salinger may not be the observations made by his characters - but the ones his readers inevitably make about themselves.

J.D Salinger died Wednesday at 91 years of age.

"How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true." - Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters

Thanks J.D.

Don't be Scared, I'm Just Venting

I'm not really this bitter - honestly. But just for the record, think this needs to be said.

Dear Love,

Fuck you.

That’s right, screw you and the horse you rode in on. You and your misconceptions and misgivings. Your sugar coated pre-pubescence is intolerable. You are intolerable. How many a good man has gone down in the wake of your vicious floods? In the aftermath of your formidable tirades? Damn you straight to hell. The hell that you dredge up from the bubbling ground every time your name is mentioned. Do you ever get sick of being used? Of being bought and sold like the one dimensional cavity that you are?

You tricked us.... all of us. Tricked us into thinking that you were somehow necessary. That you in some way, any way, enriched our lives. Let me tell you what you have done for me, broke my heart and stole my dignity. You took the years of my life I will never have back. You looked me in the eyes and said four simple words: you, are, not, worthy.

I hate you. I hate every incarnation of you. I hate the guilt, because I love them, I hate the heartbreak because I love them, and I hate the twisted demented way in which you inject yourself into the smallest moments in some exasperated attempt to force me to need. Listen here and listen well. YOU NEED US. I do not need you, what you need is our ravaged decaying carcases to implant your sick self- procreating egg sack. You need every Rom-Com, every Valentine’s Day, every maladjusted miscreants hopelessness to posses and propagate. You need every depressed housewife’s helpless plea with a husband that ignores her. You need every voice that cries out in loneliness, that cries out in pain – and hope. You need the blonde hair and big breasts, you need to make this all unattainable, you need to make it transient and wash it away.

How about this? I give you nothing; I spend not one more moment of my life in pursuit, contemplation, or resentment of you. I take every day and I start to live it, without you. And when you do find me again? I’ll be ready. So good luck to you on your journey, there are plenty of sad pathetic debilitates out there ready and willing to sign on the dotted line. But I sir? I say fuck you.

Just to curb the massive negativity, I think I need to end this on a better note. As only Woody Allen can... :).

Woody Allen - Love and Death Final Scene

Farmer's Market Apples and Latte's

Today is good day. Things that make today a good day:

1) Haircut. While I really can't afford it right now my hairdresser is one of the more delightful people I have met since I moved out here; probably because she is from Quebec. We always talk in exaggerated, mildly pretentious ways about living, art, culture and food - especially the eating part. She was one of the only people who reacted with a "good for you" when I mentioned quitting my job. Most of my haircuts have been after a day at work... she knew.

2) Reading. It always astounds me how quickly I forget how much I enjoy reading. Not just in an escapist sense, but in the way in which I always leave a book's pages feeling refreshed. Even in the mildest of ways. A book is a place which says to the outside world, "No, not right now, she's busy," and generally this is respected. It's hard to look at yourself reading a book and think that your wasting your life. It's the only kind of procrastination I don't feel guilty for.

3) Irony. Just as I began to muse on the pleasure I have been taking in my self prescribed social hiatus I am reminded just how dependant that pleasure is to the knowledge that there is something to remove myself from. Choosing to be alone, when there is someone who wants for your company, is much more fashionable then simply being inconsequential. Like a death, the act of removing the person from the social network causes stress, grief and frustration. While the dead may regret the imposition their passing has caused, they can't help but be simultaneously validated by these feelings of remorse. In my alone-ness every face is a stranger, except the ones I hold in my mind to remind me that my solitude is still a choice.

While this may not be able to go into the category of what makes today a good day, I did indeed see Beethoven's 9th symphony performed last night... by myself.

I sat surrounded by patrons, most of which were older then my grandparents, with tears welling in my eyes at the moment when, after the first refrain by the male vocal soloist, the music builds, the choir collectively hits and sustains that high note, then it all slowly drops away. Like a gust of wind that hits your ears as you pull your self upward for the first time on a summit and stand in amazement at the vastness before you. It was so perfect, it was divine - says the atheist. ;)

There are certain defining moments in ones life when we become intimately aware of the being who exists within us, and despite us. An endless and unconditional sense of love and appreciation which has no external source or measurement. As I vacillate unpredictably between external and internal versions of myself, trying to reconcile the duality of who I am, I am reminded just how infallible and uncomplicated this really is.

Now that's some great art.

Beethoven - 9th Symphony

Reflections and New Music

A few really interesting things have happened in the past weeks and though I can generally say that about the last three weeks of almost any point in life, in particular I have had to reexamine a number of key assumptions - which is good.

1) Money buys freedom, which buys happiness.

Not true, as least in this surveyors opinion. Granted a significant injection of funds into my bank account would not hurt the causes in which I am currently in pursuit, but what does money really cost? One cannot live without working, that is the way this goes, but I cannot work without living.

2) Being unsure is a bad or frightening thing.

I have no idea who I am or what is really important to me. The few notions I have of what makes me truly I have no idea how to obtain, or confidence in the fact that they will actually make me happy. It's an obscurity all my own. The only thing I am sure of right now is my own resourcefulness. I'll be OK. The impact of tragedy is always a hyperbole. What an awesome opportunity to learn. I am not rigged, I flex - with purpose.

3) I am my own worst enemy.

Surprisingly, I am the only one that knows what's really best for me. Even if I don't know it myself. Dependability can be a difficult thing to find in this life. My stubbornness to only do exactly what I want is unwavering. And though that may sound like the statement of a self indulgent teenager, I implore you to look deeper. Don't force the balance, it's already playing for position.


And last but not least, Lyra Brown!!! Amazing new local artist I found. Check out these fantastic tracks.

Pretty Baby

Air Balloons

Unknown Title

http://www.myspace.com/lyrabrown