whirlwind trappings

Yes, I am still in a whirlwind, but I am embracing the crazy ride I’m on. I can already tell you that my 2011 is a wild, wild wave.  I am currently doing a lot of looking in, doing a lot of personal writing. I can’t say how long the void of posts will last; I can tell you that this introspective writing is so good for me right now.

As I tend to do in blog-lulls, I offer some other more interesting places to check out on the web for now.  This round-up includes so many things that are feeding my soul.

1. Thao & Mirah- Went to their concert. Fell in love.  I love women voices.  I love people who sing head-to-toe. I love people who throw themselves away and jump straight into passion if only for a set.  While their concert was more aggressive and raw, this Benetar cover is an example of why they are unbelievable.  Please listen.

2. Sleeping at Last- Their song ‘Side by Side’ is so large in scope and so full of awe I am floored every time.  This is exactly the song and more so exactly the album I need right now.  I just happened to click on their link, downloaded their album, and now I swim in it. And thanks to Derek Webb’s Noise Trade, you can download the album for free and make a donation to the band. Find Sleeping at Last here and sink in.

3. Here’s two similar things I saw first on Best Little Bookshelf in Texas. I love books, the physicality of having a story passed right to me.  And I love these two projects that speak the corporal and visual love of a printed work. See a Lithuanian bookstore’s ad campaign here and enjoy a longer exploration at Corpus Librus. And thanks, BLBIT.

4. I will admit that I don’t read as much as I love books. This I blame on my love for the screen, the need for movies and tv to soothe, to inspire, to cut deep.
For cutting deep, I’ve turned to the primetime soap Grey’s Anatomy. The first few seasons which showed an ideal group friendship got me through some very cold, pretty lonely first nights in Armenia when what I was missing my own group of comrades. And yesterday I finally got to see the sixth season through the end. Yeah, I wept through those last two episodes.  But hitting more personally, a single-episode patient said very tenderly that “Loving someone is a choice you make everyday”. Common, I know, but a reminder that love’s most important decisions are made, not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today.

Ongina, from Season One, who's status as HIV+ is a stepping stone to a performance that challenges us to love all of ourselves.

For inspiration, I have latched onto, stay with me, RuPaul’s Drag Race.  Reality TV. Drag Queens. Ru. A perfect storm, really. But, unlike most reality tv, this is a show that represents the pinnacle of its subject. Drag will not become more mainstream than this.  And as such, the ladies are giving it all on the stage.  There is no contract coming; there is no bigger stage.  And these girls are bringing it.  And as for inspiration, I watched the reunion show after Season 2.  I saw human beings who have dared to explore parts of themselves, their silliness, their anger, their feminine power, parts that much of the world would tell them to box up and bury.  I saw these people who dare to embrace all of themselves, letting all of their parts, even those they might fear, speak out in their lives.  These are people looking to love themselves and share that.
And let’s be real, I like the bitchy drama. (Thanks to ExtraHotGreat for turning me onto this show. Watch it all online here.)

And to soothe, I turn on Parks & Recreation. Before the new episodes aired in January, NPR’s Linda Holmes pleaded that people watch this show, that the writing was the best she’d ever seen, so tightly written for each character. Critically, it’s a easy win. Basically, I guffaw.  And guffawing feels really good.

5. Finally, I stay afloat when I write. I recently bought Alice LaPlante’s printed short-course The Making of a Story.  It’s challenging and caring.  I’m a couple chapters in and I know it’s a project I’m riding through the summer.

That’s quite enough for now. I promise to come back soon. But until then, keep up a good cultural diet with me. I’ll see you soon.

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oh, buds on trees!

A couple of days ago, I saw something discarded, stopped, pulled out the camera and took a lot of pictures.  I think for some reason I felt just like that umbrella.  Maybe you can see what I mean:

I am tired of having to think so much about how and how much I can walk.  I hate counting the blocks and wondering if I can make it to the grocery store and back on my own.  I don’t want to feel so useless.

But, seasons pass in years, as they do in months, days, minutes, and now I am feeling an upswing from spring.  Those tiny buds, those blossoming cherry trees, those barely showing leaves and their earliest salutations.  It’s wonderful how the breaking of spring tends to break a monotonous gloom.  I am happy to be walking in the sun.  I am happy to be here in the US, going to the grocery store again and again.  I am happy to be healing, slowly but surely.  I am happy for parks, for people walking their dogs, for cupcakes, for late night talks with friends, for being alive and able to enjoy.

______

My sister, my tiny bright star of a sister, called me on Friday night to tell me she made third bass drum in marching band.  The thought of her lanky frame carrying that big round drum, gliding along in formation around the field, thumping out rhythms with memory and concentration; the thought of these already short years she has before her in a marching band, the bus rides to games, the late night uniform storage, the contests, the cadences, she has so much to look forward, too.

I am bursting with pride.

______

I bought a book last night,  My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer. I wasn’t going to buy more books while I was here (WHO AM I KIDDING?).   This book, though, almost creeped up and into my arms.  It’s an anthology of stories inspired by fairy tales from around the world, written by some great names like Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, and Michael Cunningham.  EXCITED.

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opera swoll’

So it turns out Plácido Domingo is a big deal.

I had such a great time with Sima Cunningham at Calumet that I started looking back over the month, and I realized that the past month or so has been a feast of Yerevan musical offerings.

At our All Volunteer Conference a few weeks ago, I was sitting next to a friend of mine, Kath, who was interupted mid-knit by another volunteer with ticket news.  They’d be buying all the seats that afternoon.  My ears tend to prick up any time I feel like I might be missing something.  I blame this on Rizzo the Rat in A Muppet Christmas Carol munching a gala apple and explaining to his co-apple-vendor, “I’m creatin’ scarcity.”

I asked what they’re buying tickets for.  “Placido Domingo,” Kath says.  “He’s one of the world’s three great tenors. There’s Pavarotti and Carreras, and–”

“And this guy!”  I was getting it. “Yeah, I’d like to go,” I said, as if I’d been invited.

After committing, I ended up with a very expensive ticket, one that cost almost a fifth of my monthly income.

“It’s worth it,” Kath explained.  “In the States a ticket like this could run you $200 if you could even get one.”

After the concert of course, after I was able to get to Wikipedia, the picture would become clear.  Apparently he’s not just one of the three great tenors, he’s one of what the world calls ‘The Three Tenors’.  He’s had a ton of parts the sheer number of which bowled me over.  But let’s get real.  He’s been knighted by Queen Liz II.  He’s received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the US and gotten similar awards from Spain, France, Portugal, Austria, Lebanon and even Malta (Hey Malta!).  He’s got 9 Grammy’s including one for some Mariachi work (Ay ay ay!).  Dude is opera-swoll’.

On the days preceding the concert, I turned down invites to other activities and when asked, I couldn’t remember the guy’s name.  He was known in my conversations as ‘Pablo Pirhana’ right up to the taxi ride to Yerevan’s Sport Complex Concert Hall.

Despite an incredibly impressive marble on marble on marble foyer, the hall itself creaked underfoot; uneven stairs were not-so-masked by dusty carpet.  When the lights went down and Domingo came out, after he had already started singing, not one, not two, not even three, but four sets of Armenian concert-goers climbed over my lap to get to their seats.  Ushers, not in uniforms but in typical Rabiz wear, answered their phones and even called out to each other over the trying-to-be-rapt audience.

But they couldn’t keep it up for long.  The guy flexed his vocal chords too damn hard for anyone not to pay attention.  And in between his three minute triumphs, soprano Ana Maria Martinez trilled and frilled herself right into my musical dark places and lit up some of those unclaimed rooms, filling them with some kind of new affection for music.

There’s something about opera, it seems, that transcends.  I didn’t know this before.  When I’d go see some well-liked artist play, say Sufjan Stevens or Eisley or more intimate shows like Final Fantasy or whatever, those players made me want to go home and grab my guitar and belt out a few in my room.

But this.  This I can never do.  Those movements, those swings and dips and warbles and leaps and flights I will never hear coming from my own throat.  Here these souls were, waddling out onto stage like any old sally or jim in fancy clothes, but then they sing.  They sing; I melt.

At one point I turned to my friend Pat, “My toes are curling.”  And after every song, I found myself clapping uncontrolably.  That actually happens.  It’s not just done by characters in Looney Tunes or in some movie like August Rush.  It happens in real life.  You’re with them, carried somewhere, and when you land you are thankful and in awe.

It’s like this: Last winter I was considering adopting a dog.  On my walk to work I noticed a few black and white puppies living under a rusty container serving as a construction site’s office.  Seeing my interest, one of the workers asked if I’d like to hold one.  I said, “Yes, the black one.”

He then dove under the container up to his waist, grabbed the hind leg of that puppy and dragged it screaming to the ground in front of me.

“No!” I yelped and reached down to cradle it.  I took the thing into my hands and puppy-whispered her.  I rubbed the back of her neck, her ears.  I scratched her belly, holding her away from mine when I noticed the hundreds of fleas scurrying across her skin.  She went still, limp in my hands.  She looked at me, motionless while I rubbed her fur and whispered a still sound to her.

When I put her down she didn’t move.  She just crouched for a few seconds as if she’d had an out of body experience.  Some being had lifted her miles into the air, made her feel wonderful sensations unlike anything she’d known before, and then placed her back where she was as if it might never have happened at all.

Opera… opera is something like that.

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a night in yerevan with miss cunningham

The other day I was in Yerevan and met some friends at the city’s bohemian bar, Calumet (“It’s cal-oo-may!” I was told.  Excuse me).  The floor near the stage was covered in foot high wooden tables and multi-colored bean bag chairs flat and dusty from heavy butt traffic.  I found my way onto half a bean bag, pulled my legs up to my chest to keep them out of a stranger’s lap, and listened to Sima Cunningham blast.

She fits the big-voice-in-a-little-body cliché, but that big voice is so much full of soul I almost cried while she was singing about an alien coming to earth and falling in love.  I have no idea what she actually said in that song; I just felt lucky to be seeing someone commit to sound like that while I was sitting right there.  Perhaps it was the wall created by people standing behind our bean bag collective that made me feel like it was just a few of us and that voice.  When she wasn’t belting herself, she was backing up her multi-instrumental compadre who’s most impressive work was certainly a harmonica solo which wailed over his own electric guitar work.  He made me want to study harmonica.  Really.

Her voice is somewhere around Brandi Carlile and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and a lot of Asthmatic Kitty projects, but her 21-year-old voice made me feel younger.  Ok, I’m 25, but I’ll restate: I felt at taken back a few years, like things were more sunrise and new leaves and gentle.  Whether she was wailing on her cover of “Jolene” or poppin’ around on her own “Them Apples”, I could have listened to her all night.

Unfortunately some drunk guy with a euro-fro got hold of the electric guitar, and despite efforts to interrupt his chordless noise-strumming and uncomfortable mic-wailing, he kept going and going.  I got going myself, walking out onto cold, late-night Yerevan singing “Hey Jude” and remembering how just a little while ago a whole room full of us sang the song together, led by a sweet, sweet voice.

Good news for you/me/us all: she’s giving her second album, Time Is Never Your Friend, for FREE on her website.  FREE.  So her tender “Last Christmas”, a folksy trip through the last holiday in her childhood home, will get me good an teared-up while I mourn the loss of my youth/pine for holiday tradition back home, etc.  The album itself in no way measures up to the sheer pleasure of listening to the young soul set a room on fire, but seeing as how she left Armenia the morning after her show, she’s not likely to be playing around here again any time soon.

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dissolve, burst, rush

Do you know that feeling you get when your whole life seems to pump through your body all at once?  That overwhelming feeling of being right here but also everywhere else, and all those people, old friends, grandparents, that aunt that makes your favorite snack, your best high school friends, your mentors and soul-wrenching past loves, the regulars from the restaurant that always smiled and made the same jokes, every person who’s ever made you hold your breath, made you see God in cells, every bit of love that’s ever come from anyone.  All of it rushes at you and swells into your soul which pushes out your feet into the ground and gives to the weight of the sun and holds the hand of the tree and whispers back at a distant morning bird.

I was listening to this song, full of movement and pulse and light, walking out of my house down this dirt road.  With the sun on my shoulders and music in my heart I almost dissolved right there on the gravel.  It seemed like the only real thing to do.  Here comes my mother carrying the only record of my entire life in her palms.  She’s traveling across an entire planet to hug me.  That kind of love is the same that has, this whole life, flown into my veins and swirled around my soul and radiated. It’s from my family, from this whole strange world, and I think I just might burst into the smallest particles and ride with it.

As I listened and felt, I began to imagine all the people I saw floating away like some kind of playful rapture vision.  The lady in the pale pink sun dress and floppy white hat, the kid on the tiny bicycle, the grizzled old man in the dusty suit, the timid white dog, the vegetable vendor under the sun umbrella sorting bunches of grapes, the old pirate lady with her head wrap and snaggle tooth, my waving friend, the group of teenage boys eating ice cream cones; I imagine them all as they swoop up into the sky like released balloons.  On their faces is a look of surpise, like when you’re still a small child and your dad lifts you up into the air.

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iranian, mexican, tegan and sara in the city

I’ve written before about how much I love Yerevan sometimes.  I was just in Yerevan again and experienced some old and new favorite things:

Old:
1.  Even though it has only been open a couple of months, and even though I don’t even live in this city, the fact that I’ve eaten at Yerevan’s Taco Maco 9 times in a collective 7 days means this is already an old favorite.  And they’ve updated the menu to include a Grande Nacho.  GRANDE. NACHO. Six years ago, my first major travel experience (to New Zealand for two months) ended when I finally landed in Dallas and saw my family run at me at the airpot.  They took me immediately to Taco Bell.  When we arrived they went to the bathroom and left me standing at that little zig-zaggy queue maze looking up at the menu.  I cried.
If you have been in a simalar situation, you know what it means for me to look up at a sign here in Armenia that says GRANDE NACHO, order it, and then taste exactly what you were hoping to taste.

2. The Vernissage. I’ve travelled quite a bit, been in many places famous for their open air markets (all over Central America, Rome, Italy, India, Thailand).  But this market, right here in Armenia is by far the best market I’ve ever been to.  It you pop out of the metro on Nalbadyan Street, you’re right there at the tip of it.  There it starts with men who have spread out blankets before them, placed all their wares out in the sun.  You start there with bits and pieces of machines, old tools, parts of blenders and hair combs.  Then there are men selling cassete tapes and pirated DVDs.  Then your in the thick of it with book sellers and tourist trapping stalls with trinkets and clothes sporting Armenian flag colors.  There are traditional knit-wear sellers and skeins and skeins of handspun yarn.  You spin around in this places moving from finely woven metal works to intricatally carved nardi boards.  There is room for everything, binoculars, telescopes, stethoscopes and surgical clamps.  You can find fake teeth, antique dishes, and old fur coats.  There’s a section for medicine by the kilo and an aisle where you’ll find short poodles and rough looking puppies with, per Armenian vogue, amputated ears.   I am in love with this place and spent the sunny afternoon walking down hallways made by hanging rugs and then through a seemingly endless art gallery stretching along the outside sidewalk.

The New:

1. I have listened to Tegan and Sara’s “Call It Off” at every opportunity.  I played it for friends in Yerevan as soon as we were near computers.  And when far from iPod or Mac, it played in my head.  Since I have very limited access to new music, I have been exploring the far corners of my own collection.  This is the latest additions in the playlist called, “I Didn’t Know I Had It So Good.”

2. Persian New Year!! Edetun mobarak (or something Farsi-sounding like that)!  Armenian universities have a good number of Iranian students looking for a cheaper education and a chance to experience another country.  This weekend was Persian New Year and I met two incredibly warm and jovial groups of Iranians.  Saturday night I went to a small gathering at a friend of a friend’s.  Shortly after I introduced myself,  a small woman in a black dress and heels spread her arms out with a loud, “Ssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”  Everyone paused long enough to hear the faint Iranian tunes playing on an iPhone.  Almost silently the group of about ten people silently shook their booties and nodded their heads.  Silent dancing was then later recommenced multiple times by an older, clearly vodka loving man, who would say, “Don’t! Say!… Anymore!”  Everyone would laugh and then silently dance to the iPhone.  Later they gave up on the iPhone and sang themselves and snapped in a way I previously didn’t know was possible.  The other group included an English speaking guy who very modestly admitted that he was studying English because he wanted to see the world.  He had driven in a van with his friends a full day from Tehran, making his first hopeful journey of many more to come.

I am more and more loving Yerevan.  The outdoor cafes are starting to open.  The Vernissage vendors are packing those few blocks with fresh wonders.  And Taco Maco helps me survive.

I’m now reminded of our World Vision retreat which ended in grand finale with a song.  When I asked what the song was about, I we beffuddled to find that they weren’t singing about God but about how wonderful Yerevan is.  It’s not heaven, sure, but it is pretty nice.

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the crazies

I’m learning some things about myself:

1. Adopting a cat and naming her Sanity does not mean I will be more sane. On her first day at my home, I remember I was crawling into bed while she was still running desperately from bedroom to livingroom hoping we’d be staying up and playing more.  I looked over at her saying, “Listen, honey, one of us has to go to work tomorrow so I can put food on the table.”
Lately I’ve taken to growling at her.  Growling.  This happens mostly around food.  Her previous owner fed her from straight from the table.  And over the last few weeks I haven’t been able to keep her from snatching my bread or nibbling at pasta sauce.

Last night I received a lovingly used oven from my friend, Liana, and made my first batch of chocolate chip cookies (Uragh!).  Sanity took to sniffing around the pile, and my metaphorical mane flared.  I was like a lion over a gnu carcass.  “GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAUWWW!!!!”  Literally.  She stopped sniffing, jumped back to my chair and nestled herself onto my shoulder.  No no, don’t get all what-a-cute-kitty on me.  She was just waiting to try to snatch a bite on it’s way to my mouth.  Swiped right at my lips.

2. Still, I might be crazy, but I need to get with winter and not dress like I’m crazy. Here in Armenia, many women dress like they ARE the glossy pages of magazines.  Their commitment to looking good, to wielding shiny leather jackets and impossibly high heeled shoes rivals the meteorological commitment of US Postmen.  Sure I’ve seen them at their zeezy-beeziest in many feet of snow, but heck, I’ve seen them wearing heels on a mountain hike.

All that to say, I am learning that you can still look put together when it’s cold. When I was a kid in Central Texas and the rare snow fell outside, we grabbed any available article of clothing, spastically pulled them on in impossible layers, and ran for the door.  But this, my friends, is NO way to live in a cold climate.
Consider this picture from spring of 2007.  It was a bizarrely snowy Easter. See my friend, who looks like a cute little American Eagle ad.  Now, consider me wearing, I’m serious, Doc Marten boots, sweatpants under Nike windpants, sweatshirt under cheap rain jacket, cabled scarf, mustard-colored thrift store gloves and a lime green hat.  I even pulled up the sweat shirt hood.  I look like an oaf.  And here in Armenia, where it is as-we-speak snowing, I’ve got to think beyond warmth and keep in mind that I work in an office.  No oafs aloud.

3.  Finally, when I really start to miss corporate singing, I WILL sing with myself. Naturally, you might say.  We all sing in the shower, enjoy those me-myself-and-ringing-tile-walls times.  But last night I wanted to harmonize so desperately, missed my Church of Christ acapella roots so much, that I found myself singing with myself in front of my computer, eyes closed, Sanity in my lap.  My hands were up in the air like I was feeling it, for crying out loud.  It wasn’t until a mid-song moment, deep into the music, that I took a step back from myself, imagined the image of me and thought, I must look insane.

Still, it could be worse.

All things considered, I suppose my lonely, wintery Saturday night in Fridge Country was more fun with the me-tracks.  And it didn’t matter how I was dressed (hoody and fake Adidas jogging pants).  And Sanity listened calmly and quietly, purring all the way through my musical venture.

And it actually didn’t turn out so bad.  I mean, there’s the buzzing and the missaying of the word “keep”… but it’s not so bad for my cold winter night.  See:

(My cover of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Turn Into)

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christmas from 6,945 miles away

I was sitting in my room, knitting a hand warmer (out of necessity!) and watching the wedding episode of the Office, when my mother called.  She wanted to tell me about my sister, about how my mother and she decorated the Christmas tree this year, just the two of them, how my sister took the greatest care to arrange each and every ornament on the prickly limbs (even the ratty elementary school projects my mom was trying to hide by the chair).  My sister got a little miffed at my mom’s lackadaisical attitude towards the Christmas-afying, and my mother wasn’t understanding the ‘tude until she realized that my sister’s attention to this family ritual was an expression of her love for her siblings.   My little sister knows that every year before, my other sister, brother and I good-naturedly bicker about who affixes the porcelain dove over a tree light.  She knows that for years we fought over the height-wise placement of my A&M ornament and their UT ornaments.  She knows that the clothe Santa and Mrs. Clause must be placed together, and that every tattered ornament represents a memory which must be recognized and appreciated by the ornament’s display.  So this year she took care to place them all exactly as we would have placed them.

My mom told me this, and I bawled. I’m very happy to be living in Armenia, but I am so so sad to be missing one of the most precious moment-makers of my life which I share with my little sister every year: decorating the Christmas tree.  We’ve been doing it with determination despite the natural spreading of other family member’s priorities, and for the last few years, only she, my mother and I have enjoyed this Christmas devotion together. My mother sits on the couch, pulling reindeer and gilded paper angels out of tissue paper, and handing them to us to hang.  And for at least the last six or seven years, it has been me who has lifted her onto my shoulders to put on the star.

I know that it’s right for me to be here, but the hardest thing about it is missing moments like that.  Heart-wrenchingly hard.

So, for now, we have a new tradition. My mom and sister’s idea.  (Praise God for Skype!!!)  We meet via the interweb, and Macey shows me how she’s done.  This year she lifted the computer up, took me around the tree to visit the Paper Plate Angel and The Box With a Prayer Inside, a prayer that I haven’t read since I wrapped it up that Christmas of 1993.  She giggled while raising the computer up so I could see the prominent placement of the UT ornament, and laughed louder when she lowered me down to see my bottom-dwelling A&M ornament, turned backwards on the lowest branch.  She carried the computer rapidly around the tree, trying to help me find the Christmas Pickle (which really meant showing me a 3×4 swirly light show)

Then, she took me to the tin holding the Nightmare Before Christmas ornaments.  This is the only set that includes one for each family member (although sister-in-law’s and Mom’s are still fluid), and mine, a very skeletal Barrel (she’s holding it in the picture at the top of the post), was waiting for me to place on the tree via skype via my sister’s little hands.  I had heard that there was a new volleyball picture of hers on the tree this year, so I instructed her to place my ornament next to it.

What followed was a long conversation with my sister and then mother about the upcoming holiday season, the absolutely hilarious antics of my mother as her coworker’s Secret Santa, the pondering on the whereabouts of the packages my parents sent to me weeks ago, and of course, what is currently available to eat (and for me to dream about) from their kitchen.

The new, or shall we say ‘interim’, Skyping tradition was concluded with the rendition of the Christmas song of my choice.  I selected “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”, and they sung it with a gusto that about bowled me over from thousands of miles away.

Can you possibly argue that someone does Christmas spirit better?  I mean, just look at this:

I daresay, you cannot.

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