H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y

This perhaps would have been even more apropos on September 7th but, you know, it's delightful either way. Seriously, Bing and Bowie.

e e cummings I love you, you dead beautiful soul you

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what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

excerpt from poem 75 in 100 selected poems 

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things for me to remember

Aujourd'hui I taught Relief Society, which is the ladies only class of church.

I baked cookies and stuck a picture of Carl Sagan on them and gave them out as treats in class because it seemed like the right thing to do.

The sign he's holding says, "Don't forget, no billboards in space, love Carl."

Carl Sagan was a really lovely cosmologist (one who studies the cosmos scientifically as apposed to mystically).

And here is the evening:

other things that are great out of context

(Don't think it's weird that I frequently think "Ah, this is the song that I would like people to play/sing at my funeral" I've just been to a lot of them in my life so...) I want this song at my funeral (preferably if you could get a live ((hahahahahaha)) and huge symphony and choir):



(ignore the title 'ode to joy,' that's not part of the statement. let's just have some cathartic and boisterous emotion, that's all)
(the anime is quite an interesting choice there)
 

quotes taken out of context are fascinating

"Everyone worries about underarm
antiperspirants," Moynihan adds, "but
nobody quits smoking."

Timothy Moynihan, education chair and consultant for the division of medical oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, as quoted in Scientific American.

snoqualmie falling

I was thinking of lots of things to say, to actually say about my life in ways that would be clear, or at least, would be an earnest attempt to be clear about current happenings in my life. I had lots of them planned as I was making my rounds through the parking lots but now I am tired and speechless. Speechless kind of how people are when they come up to their car as I'm tapping in their license plate number to issue them a ticket. Except, they're not exactly bereft of speech due to shock or awe (or weary brain death), it's more like a total non reaction. They just look at me, unlock their door, throw in their book bag, never saying a word.

blue whale, I saw you swimming alone

If you call me I will sing to you because I would like the practice.

In a similar vein, ask my brother-in-law about the loneliest whale.

maybe this will help you with your headaches?

There's this woman here whom I love––she's so cheery and wants to reach out to people and uplift them––she seems to have severe alzheimer's but through this I get glimpses of the colorful life she's had. One of her shticks is to tell kids they'll be bored in first grade. She can see they're energetic, creative, and intelligent and so she believes they'll be bored in first grade and lately I've begun to wonder if that isn't incredibly true.

The first week of first grade I started having migraines 24/7, eventually after months or maybe a year or so? I was prescribed some daily pill and this ended the 24/7, though not the migraines. They're supposed to be juvenile migraines and I'm supposed to outgrow them and I kind of have. They don't happen as severely as often but nothing makes them go away. No OTC pain killers, no prescribed nasal sprays, no peppermint oil, no ice packs, no caffeinated beverages. Some things make my headaches manageable but the only thing to do with a migraine is to lay in a very quiet, very dark room and hope to fall asleep quickly. Once I had an intense back massage that made a migraine go away, the kind of massage that leaves you feeling bruised and battered for days afterward.

Except.

This past year by forcing myself to go to old ladies choir despite the pain I discovered that learning to sing a song in German started to make the pain go away. And so I've been experimenting. Reading Jorge Luis Borges poems in Spanish and then in English and then in Spanish again: this helps! Taking a three hour nap then reading e e cummings and drinking copious amounts of powerade while sitting on my bed with the early evening sun shining through my window MAKES THE MIGRAINE AND NAUSEA GO AWAY!

And today? Drinking more copious amounts of powerade and reading Sherlock Holmes The Redheaded League out loud to my my mom made it all go away.

Goodbye, migraine.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

If I can force my brain to be thoroughly engaged and interested or challenged and thoroughly hydrate/flush-out my system - the headaches, the migraines, the nausea all go away. I'm sure this has to happen before I'm completely migrainely debilitated, but!

But maybe she's right and we were all just bored in first grade. It's the first argument I've heard that has swayed me in my staunch support of and loyalty to public education.

right after waking/right before sleep, from the train on the way to Seattle in May

I will go with simple, moveable, and science

"What is film to you?" the interviewer asks Carl Theodor Dreyer.
"My only great passion," he says.
as recorded in the introductory portion of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Jesus: a Great Filmmaker's Final Masterwork

I love that man.