Quodlibets

PS

The more I read about Obama, the more I like him.  Mind you, I know I've announced my support for John Edwards, and I still feel that way (I cannot get enough of Edwards talking about the pronounced inequalities of America, and I still love him for talking about poverty when no one else is and when it's an escalating problem), but I am having a really, really hard time not getting swept up into Obama-mania.  Some of the things I read today have nearly brought me to tears, and it's a sad truth that I like nearly everything that makes me feel like crying in a good way.  Obama's win, in some ways, is breaking my heart.  In a good way!  It's hard to explain, but it's like my favorite music.  The beauty of it makes your heart feel large and your eyes well up and sometimes spill over.  As much as I support Edwards, Obama makes me FEEL something, and it's something that's pretty near unquantifiable: pride in my country, love for it, hope for the future, sheer joy and the overwhelming trepidation that comes with wanting something so badly.  On NPR, they were playing portions of his speech from last night, and his voice just sends chills up my back.  There is a simple power to him, and it's something else.  It's indescribable.  It just is.  I can't think when a speech has made me feel that way--at least, not a speech made by a contemporary person.

I've said all along that part of the reason some of us hate Bush so much is that he's made us ashamed to be Americans.  Barack Obama is seemingly going to be the opposite.  He's going to be a president that makes me (and probably lots of us) proud to be Americans again.

Who am I voting for in our primary?  It's getting murkier and murkier for me, but I'll say this:  I love that I have two choices that make me happy.  I will feel genuine pleasure in voting for either Edwards or Obama, and that's the best feeling about politics I've had in a long time. 

Mamarama

Happy Mother's Day, Moojie.  You're the bestest.  I'm sure I could smoosh out some more sappy stuff about you, but it's pretty evident to anyone who knows me that I think you're awesome.  So I'll spare you the sappy crap and just say "Thanks."

You put up with a lot of shit and you hem a lot of pants.  Thanks. 

Sweet Fat Cat

Allie, 1989?-2007

Tree

So pretty!

Thanks-giving

In no particular order:

--Mom, Dad, Sis and Brother
--S
--Caffeine-free Diet Coke
--health insurance
--a steady job that I like OK
--books
--Italy
--food, in all its glory (fresh mozz., asparagus, potato filling, guac., cupcakes, etc on and on)
--kittens and puppies and all manner of baby animal
--music
--health
--being able to love people, and being loved
--living in a fantastic city
--S
--all five senses, intact
--being alive

The Greatest Tragedy

I didn't write about the anniversary of 9/11 yesterday because I didn't know what to say.  I've watched for five years as our politicians (on both goddamn sides of the aisle) turn this event into a political battlefield; both sides have held up widows and widowers as pawns in their games, and it's sickening and disheartening. 

9/11 was a tragedy, yes.  But part of that tragedy has been our inability to process that tragedy and make the outcome of that positive.  9/11 should have forced us to confront our place in the world.  It should have helped us understand that we are a part of the world, the world that lives with machine guns outside of synagogues (Rome).  The world that fears bombs in the Tube (London) or suicide bombers on busses (Israel).  It should have brought us to greater understanding of the other parts of the world that live like this all. the. time.  But instead of becoming more global in our thinking, we've paved the maverick's way, the way that says we can kick all their asses. 

We can't.  There's really nothing ever that can stop a man getting on a bus with a bomb strapped to him.  9/11 shouldn't be about making the world safer, though it's a noble goal, and I do think that special attention needs to be paid to those fundamentalists (of any stripe) that would use violence to impose their will on the rest of the world.  (But wait.  Haven't we become that fundamentalist?  That's another story; we can't be safer if we are just like them, if we decide to use bombs and guns and torture to stop them from doing the same thing.)  But whatever lessons could have come out of that horrible day in September of 2001 just haven't seemed to. 

I don't know how to say this any differently.  I don't know how to express my frustration that our government has kept this public in a permanent state of panic about terrorism.  Things are simply out of our control, and no amount of guns or bombs will bring those things under our control.  Instead of having a terror alert color chart, we should simply live aware that these things happen.  That it's a situation that has been omnipresent in many societies the world over for years and years.  That we've been lucky, and stupid to think that it wouldn't touch us.  But someone has scared us into thinking that we need to beat up the whole world, like a big bully.  Bullies never win; they always lose by provoking mentally the victims.  That's us.  We're going to lose, ideologically, if we don't radically reassess.

But this is about 9/11.  We should remember 9/11; we should think to where we were and what we were doing that day five years ago.  We should remember that as the day we truly entered the environment the rest of the world has been living in.  We should remember that day as the day we could have become a better country, a better place to live. 

But we've gone another way.  And it's almost too sad to bear.

bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky

Four years ago, S kissed me.  And we never really looked back.  There've been some bad times, but most of the time, I know that I'm lucky that he loves me so much, and I'm overwhelmed by how much I love him.

Happy Anniversary, S.  You've put up with me for four years.  You deserve a medal.  Thank you for the love, the photos, the laughs, the new people and places, and thank you for loving Rome.  I love you, and I'm lucky.  I know it.

Florida. Sunset.

We went out to Captiva island for the sunset. 

We ate a very good dinner, and sat a picnic table and waited.

As we waited, a wedding party, dressed casual and beachy, came to the bar.  They ordered appetizers and drinks, and right before sunset, they went down to the beach and did a small ceremony, as they watched the sun set.

Besides being romantic, speculating about the affair kept us amused during our hour and a half wait for the sun to melt into the Gulf of Mexico.  Lovely evening.

Mooj or Moodge, depending on which one of us you ask

It's Mother's Day, and even though it's absolutely 100% a Hallmark holiday, it's one of my favorites, because I adore my mother, and I love buying her presents and telling her so.  My sister and I seem to have slipped into a fantastic dynamic relationship with my mom.  She's one of my favorite people, and I bet if you asked my sister, she'd say much the same thing about my mom.  But instead of a gushing tribute to my mom, I'm going to make a list of my five favorite things about her.  Here goes:

• She loves loves loves to laugh.  And her laugh is contagious.  And attractive.  She laughs easily, and often, and it's very fun, because you're just laughing right along with her.  As a corollary, she's also willing to be goofy and poke fun of herself.  Once, she was warning a rabbit in our yard that she was about to let the dog out (not sure why, but she was) and yelled, "Runny, Bun!"  She's always willing to laugh about that incident--and we still do.
• She's practical in ways that I'm not.  Sometimes that is just helpful.  I always turned to my mom for help packing shit, whether it be for a move or a trip, because she's just good at it.  She seems to have a knack for it.  She's also the best person to have around during a move, because she doesn't tire easily, and I think she loves being helpful.  She's an immense help, and I'm not sure how I'd do these things without her.  In fact, if I told you how many times I've called her and said something like, "How do I iron again?" or "Wait, tell me again how to hard-boil eggs?" or "What's the best way to bake a potato?" or even, "Help me with my cross-stitch, I need help!" you'd probably be embarrassed for me.
• She's into games.  I don't really mean board games, though I suspect she'd happily play board games if we wanted to, but I guess I just mean games in general.  She likes computer games, word games, number games--you name it, and she's played it.  I'm not sure if it appeals to her love of puzzle-solving, or what, but she's really into that stuff.  She even went through a whole period where she played the original Zelda for Nintendo (or Super-NES) all the time.  I think she won the game, even. 
• She's a great sport.  I mean, she'll attempt anything that Kate and I have a mind to attempt.  The zoo in February?  Okay.  The muddy alternative craft fair in Chicago?  Sure, why not?  Frankenmuth road-trip?  Right on.  So I guess I mean that she also has a great sense of adventure.  My sister, her and I took a trip to Spain together, and though things got a little hairy by the end of the trip (I just needed more alone time than I was getting, and we weren't such big fans of the Spanish cuisine), it was fun.  I'd definitely take a trip with my mom and sis again.  I suppose what I'm trying to say is that she's game for almost anything.  I like that.
• She unabashedly loves pop music.  She'd rather listen to one of those NOW compilations than say, the Beatles.  Not that she minds the Beatles--she just really enjoys listening to pop.  I think it's quirky and hilarious.  She also pretty much seems to avoid, in her personal listening, the stuff she grew up listening to.  Once she told me that she used to fall asleep every night to Dark Side of the Moon, complete with clanging alarms in that one song.  But I bet she hasn't listened to that album in YEARS.  Isn't that funny?

I'm sure there are five million other things I could tell you that I love about my mom (just came to me now--her love of all things Xmas.  Love that about her.), but I'd probably at some point start to be boring.  Anyway, I love you, Mom.  I don't know what I'd do without you.

Rapture

Last night, we went to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  It was my first time, and I was a little bit apprehensive about it.  Would I be bored?  I'm not much of a classical music person normally, though I enjoy ballet music (specifically Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty) a bit, and used to listen to it in my dorm room my freshman year, trying to fall asleep before my roommate Sherry got home.  But that's about all the exposure to classical music that I have.  I've never been to an actual ballet, or opera.  Live bands for me are either the rock bands I see in concert, or the smaller group of musicians that play at musicals.

Anyhow, I needn't have worried.  I loved the experience, and eagerly look forward to going back.  It didn't take me long to decide I liked it--the musicians started playing the first piece, and as the violinists took up their instruments, and readied their bows, I was gone.  I've always liked the way strings sound when meshed with rock music, so I suppose it's no surprise that I like strings when used in other ways.  I'd just never realized how amazing the sound of all those violins playing in the room would be.  It's incredible, the sounds that come out of those things.  It's beautiful even if the music isn't beautiful, if that makes sense.  I pretty much only focused on the violins, and it was even more of a treat to see Joshua Bell, who is a fantastic violinist.  (Though when he's not playing, he's very awkward-looking.  I can't exactly pinpoint it, but he only looks right when he's playing.  Very odd.)  The Orchestra and Bell played Tchaikovsky, which is somewhat familiar to me, only because of my previous ballet listening.

The other thing that was so cool about this performance was Mussorgsky's (apologies if that's spelled wrong) Pictures at an Exhibition.  Normally, I think pictures of 19th century Russia are projected during the 30-min piece, but last night, they projected pictures of Chicago, and it really worked for me.  In fact, it worked so well that the music was secondary, and I'm not sure if I like that or not.  I enjoyed watching the orchestra, and of course, I didn't do that at all while the pictures were being projected.  But it was very enjoyable, so maybe I shouldn't complain.  Like I said, I'll be going back.

Actually, Kate, S and I will be going back on Sunday, but that's to hear Lang Lang, alone.  S is kind of a Lang Lang fan (with limited knowledge), and he really pushed for us to go, so we're going.  Kate's a little worried about being bored, but I'm not.  Maybe we'll be surprised.  Maybe not.  Either way, I like this live classical music thing very much.