First page of the beautiful song archive.

show. uke. commas. creepy.

Posted by jessica on Jul 12, 2011 with 8 Comments
in Funny Stuff, Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
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Today was a momentous day.

And I got home early. Like, before midnight. Whoa.

First, Larry from The Bitter End here in the city called me to schedule me to play at one of their Sunday singer songwriter shows. It’s going down July 31st, folks. I mentioned it tonight to some of my capoeira friends, and they already said they’d like to come.

This all makes me very excited.

And second, I purchased a friendly little instrument today.

A ukelele, to be exact.

And now I get to hear guys randomly trying to strike up conversations with me about my “violin.” Oh well, at least they get that it’s a musical instrument. When I have my little martin guitar on my back, people sometimes ask if I’m a tennis player.

And what else?

Well, I received a rather cryptic facebook message this week:

“hey damn girl we should chill sometime…???”

I read it and laughed a little bit. Because, well, the punctuation. Is he calling me a damn girl? I mean, is he damning me to hell? No? Well then, learn how to use one of those handy commas. The kind that distinguish addressing a noun from damning me to hell.

And then he more than makes up for his lack of commas with his grand finale of question marks. Not just one, mind you, but three. Which once again, makes it rather unclear. Should we chill sometime? I guess the guy doesn’t know. And if he doesn’t know, how the heck should I know? After all, I’m just some damn girl. I don’t know if we should chill sometime or not either, I guess.

The whole thing made me laugh.

And no, I didn’t answer it.

Oh, and I almost got through the whole night without any creepy conversations. And then I met Joe the Doorman. He mentioned something about my ukelele and so I stopped to answer him. Then he started telling me that his mother is in the hospital, and so I listened. We started talking about that beautiful song Autumn Leaves, and how it makes him cry when he hears it. This is all very sentimental and sweet and I was listening and happy to make a basic human connection with Joe the Doorman.

But then it swung from basic human connection to creepy connection.

Cause there was a slight breeze in the night air, and I guess it dislodged some of my hair or something. Next thing I knew, Joe reached towards my face and tucked a lose strand back behind my hear.

That’d be the sweetest thing if we had that kind of relationship. But we don’t. So it was instead, the weirdest thing. Maybe not weirdest, but pretty all up in my business, if you know what I mean.

Luckily my friend Memoria came up then and whatever perceived intimacy Joe the Doorman was trying to embark upon was lost since, you know, three’s a crowd.

In this case, a very very welcome crowd.

Oh, and tonight was my first time to jump the turnstile in the subway. But I was left with no choice. I had money on my card. Mad money. I just refilled it this afternoon. But no turnstiles were working for me. So I went and saw the attendant and her computer was down and so she basically could do nothing for me.

So I jumped it.

And it was actually pretty exciting.

But not to be tried at home, you know.

(unless you are left with no choice. much like Jean Valjean. Or me, tonight).

“can I handle the seasons of my life?”

Posted by jessica on Jan 26, 2011 with 8 Comments
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
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I recently dreamt that I was getting married again. To the same person I had married before. I had a sick feeling as this panicky sense of inevitability consumed me. And then I remember hoping that I would be so lucky as to get a divorce from him once again, so as to be free to marry someone who actually loved me.

I think those are the kinds of dreams that make one a prime candidate for therapy.

Have I mentioned I love therapy? I do. You can say whatever you want in there, guys. And man, we laugh. I mean, I tell her how sad I am, and suddenly something strikes us both as hilarious and we’re laughing so hard that she’s crying. But not me. I don’t really even cry when I cry. At least, I only tear out of one eye. That’s strange, I know. Oh well.

There’s a line in that hauntingly beautiful song by Stevie Nicks, Landslide, that asks a good question. Can I handle the seasons of my life? is what it wonders and I don’t mind singing that lyric because I often wonder the same thing. I don’t even wonder it in words all the time. I wonder it with quiet footsteps, during the times when I attempt to out walk the world and maybe even my own feet and certainly the frames in which I find the stills of my life these days. I wonder it in the way I sit back and watch the world brighten and then shudder and then tell everything else to be quiet because here, well here is a miracle. Two people have fallen in love. Yes, they’re in love, and I am an anthropologist, watching and studying this culture from a distance. I like it; I wonder if it will work where I come from.

But here is the truth: I can handle the seasons of my life. And so can you. The human is a fascinating machine; our spirits are buoyant beyond belief. Sometimes I do not feel this. Sometimes I look at the turtle and I wonder how he is so lucky as to have a shell. I think the hedgehog has the right idea; perhaps I shall grow quills of my own and I will hurt those who try to get close enough to touch me.  But no, as it turns out, I am better at being close to people than growing quills. As it turns out, hiding in a shell gets a little lonely right around Christmas. Though I must say, the acoustics do ring quite nicely with those carols.

Still, these seasons. There is more grace than seasons, I think. Meaning that we are going to be just fine. And when we finally see that we are, we will sit back contentedly and try very hard not to say I told you so.

the breakup box.

Posted by jessica on Feb 19, 2010 with 22 Comments
in Funny Stuff, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
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He said I’d just be ready one day, but I didn’t believe him. My counselor, I mean. I nodded and went through all the motions of agreement, but I could hardly imagine it. I guess because I’d never been there before. It’s like trying to describe the color purple when you’re blind; when you’ve never [...]