on solstice hill

It's rash, hopping out of the train halfway home, still lugging the guitar, already tired and ready for home and quiet.

Still, I am pretty resolved. It's the longest day. I want to remember the sun the way it is here, lingering, making summer evenings that love you, take hours saying goodbye.

So we follow the fence a longer way than we thought we had to. Far off ahead, the sky is black - not the direction we want to look anyway. The wind picks up. Finally, the footbridge, red against the leaves glowing above and the tracks glowering below. Past the joggers, into the woods, we are mostly alone.

The light: oh! I want to drink it; mingled with the air, it's a golden wine, rich and strong. On the trees, it disorients, dazzles. Looking up, we see kaleidoscopic gilded green, the threat of black up ahead, the depth of the blue still visible in the broken clouds. I glance to the side into a dream I once had, or maybe a dream I dreamed of having so long ago I've forgotten. I still can't remember what it was about, but it must have been a good story.

We take a shortcut and are brought up short on the hill's far shoulder. Two rainbows climb above the rose garden below, fragile and wan and all the more lovely for that. We stare and try to find words, only briefly.

This time, we take the stairs, exerting ourselves for the sake of speed, and it pays: we're at the top with twenty minutes or more to spare, and we spare it, breathing deeply, sucking at the wind that shoves and prods and ruffles us, looking. We soak in the east side, then head a few steps to the west, see what the far-off sun has done with the blankets of clouds hanging, it seems, just overhead, just out of reach, a painting done with God's brush on His living room wall.

It lasts a long while. I say once how I feel, and that is more than enough.

The black in the east catches up to us. I try an umbrella for a bit, then give up and give in to being pelted by the chill summer storm. On the verge of letting go, heading downhill and homeward, we see the sun's farewell, the last gap between cloud and horizon, invisible until now, with all the desperate fury of the last light reaching out to us through it.

Knowing every moment that we need to go, we walk to the west tower, see the city settling into the twilight, watch the gold and red fade into memory, the sky fade into cool satisfied dark, even as it keeps pouring on us.

Soaked and giddy, we start back down, trying to hurry without losing hold of the ground, delighted soggy fools. All the way home, though, I feel I've been watered.

On the way down, I mentioned the dream, and she smiled at me.

holidays i learned about in school roughly 15 years ago and never forgot despite never observing

1. Juneteenth

Happy #1, everybody.

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gardens of the world

A long time coming: pictures of flowers and buildings and things in the Gardens of the World in the Marzahn Recreational Park, my May Day excursion.



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playlist for 1 august 2009

Step 1: Master guitar technique.
Step 2: Master angry facial expressions (to convey INTENSITY).
Step 3: Profit.

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and even then they sometimes thought he was a bit of a twit

What they took for passivity in him was a deep and innate respect for expertise, and a too seldom-questioned faith that the one whom the powers that be had placed in a position of responsibility was possessed of such. His tacit certainty that his own expertise ruled in his given spheres they took for stubborn arrogance, and so a year was barely enough for the vacillation between contempt and exasperation to subside.

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ascents and sensibility

It's Ascension Day here in Germany. That is to say, it's Ascension Day wherever the Gregorian calendar is found, and in Germany it is Christi Himmelfahrt, which name amuses me endlessly. I am inspired in this amusement by the wife of my boss's boss, who is sort of matronly and at the same time is the sort of person who laughs at German words that end in "-fahrt." And who can blame her.

(Tammie, I don't really think you're matronly.)

Peter Leithart has posted a totally neato meditation from a couple of sermons by Leo I on why what we celebrate (and by "we" I mean next to nobody in any church I've ever gone to, which is too bad) is such a big deal. His blog is a good one to subscribe to. It'll make your brain sweat sometimes.

In Germany, Christ's Fahrt to heaven is also a public holiday, which I totally failed to take into account when scheduling my English courses, which is why I am sitting here having been stood up by all (2) my students this evening.

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- why should i not admit it? - my heart was breaking

I've recently completed a little Kazuo Ishiguro kick, having just reread The Remains of the Day after reading, in close succession, Never Let Me Go and An Artist of the Floating World. He's become a favorite - between his books and M. Robinson's Gilead, I think I've become a legitimate fan of fictional memoir.

It's a bit odd to me that Remains should be the most highly-acclaimed of the bunch. Certainly in some ways it sums up Ishiguro's oeuvre: meditations on regret, unrealized love, and misguided loyalty, all couched in episodic reminiscences that reveal, piece by piece, the truths and hurts the characters can't bring themselves to acknowledge outright or up front. But it's also a bit broader, it seems to me, than either Artist or Never Let Me Go, with at least one scene's concept bordering on being a gag. The narrator is more obviously in denial of the reality of his past, somewhat unbelievably unable to acknowledge the contradiction between his professed beliefs and feelings and the actions he describes himself taking.

But for all that, it's as emotionally wrenching as either of the others - more so than Artist, which it resembles more closely. I suppose that's Ishiguro's real master stroke - it's disarmingly amusing to watch a protagonist craft such a clichéd caricature out of himself, amusing enough that his own growing realization of what he's lost in the process feels like an ice bath in comparison.

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seems like a good thing

as far as I can tell
you and I are surprises to each other

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r.i.P.od

I will miss you, old friend. You have helped me be bitter and overjoyed and lonesome and tired and awake, made the colors brighter, the journeys smoother, the heartbreak somehow beautiful, the delights to transcend the brief lifetime memory allows them, good work to seem a bit more possible.

I am not crying, but I'm giving it serious consideration.

You would know, if you were a thing that could know, many things I did, many things I said that I'm glad no other human heard, many things I wished I could have said to another human, many things I saw that no one else will ever see. You were connected physically to the interior of my ears, which makes it hard not to imagine you could even have known some of the things I thought, some of which I went on to write at your urging, some of which I went on to bury in the songs you put into me.

Thank you.

Now I suppose I should put some real effort into finding my Shuffle, though perhaps it's best to spend some time just grieving before I try to move on.

2002-2009

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you're a lot prettier than i am

I've seen a fair bit of debate on the topic, but I'll have to come down on the side of Knocked Up being one of the sweeter movies I've ever seen.

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ah worked mornin' t' evenin' in the cotton fields all mah lahf

The English curriculum I use is pretty good about presenting a variety of accents in its listening activities; occasionally it's clear that the students are expected to be most used to hearing Oxford English or some London accent or other, and so the tracks featuring speakers with those accents tend to be a bit harder for my students, who mostly hear my muddled American accent, but so far I've heard English, Scottish, Australian, Canadian, and various ESL accents on the tapescripts, which is nice.

And last night, my students were introduced to the vocal stylings of an elderly black lady from the American South, pictured (of course) sitting out on her verandah, where she no doubt sips a mint julep or sweet tea now and again as she reminisces about her share-cropping childhood. Her accent was of course a bit inconsistent, which some words "standardized" a bit, but the marks of a fine high Southern accent were there - and my students loved it.

So, my Southern friends (particularly any of you who happen to be elderly, black female Georgia natives), know that your way of speaking English is possibly the most aesthetically appealing to elementary-level German speakers in the entire world.

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blug blurgle blah

I have bad speaking days.

When you live overseas and operate in a second language, it's perfectly typical to have days where you're just not on, where you can't seem to speak at whatever level you've actually reached in that language. Today is like that - the German I used to order my coffee and lunch was comprehensible, but mushy and stumbling.

And then I got here to church and talked briefly with David and realized my English is that way too, and it seems the fact is that my lips and tongue just never quite got out of bed this morning.

It's kind of weird.

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