We haven't seen everything

Low hanging clouds and almost-fog give way to overcast skies as I drive in this morning. It's Wednesday, that most malleable day of the week, and I woke this morning at 4:00 AM. I wasn't woken by anything in particular (at least, not that I am concisely aware), I was simply awake. I know better than to fight that circumstance in the early morning, because once I'm awake, I stay that way. So up I got, very early, and early out the door.

The iPhone is set to an all Bruce Cockburn mix this morning which, with more than twenty albums to draw from, covers a lot of possible songs.


Lovers in a Dangerous Time kicks off the playlist as I point the Miata toward the college. This song could be the anthem for the supporters of marriage equality, and particularly during the current Supreme Court DOMA case:

When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime --
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight --
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight
When you're lovers in a dangerous time

As I listen to the song, I am reminded that I recently had a long-time friend show a homophobic facet of their world view, quite unexpectedly. Questions popped out of my initial hurt: Don't they know we have a gay son? Do they really mean this of/toward our children, whom they have known for a lifetime? Is this a true representation of how they really feel?

Somehow, they didn't know this about our son, as it turns out. They hadn't thought through all of the nuances in their comment, and were quick to retract it when my wife reached out with some of the questions raised above. Years of friendship are stronger than one painful incident, after all.

But what if we didn't have a gay son, couldn't put a known face to this struggle? Would I have been as quick to question the comment, or would I have let it sadly pass? Would they, in turn, have been as quick to acknowledge the unintended ramifications of their statement?

Hatred of others is so easy to fall into, as long as the others don't have specific faces and names. The history of propaganda has clearly taught us that. Let us be clear on this point: to say you can hate the "sin" (the word usually used in this phrase) but love the person is to hate the person. You can add a thousand words of justification to that idea, but it doesn't change the fact that you have directed your hatred toward an aspect of someone else. You have made that one aspect of a complicated human being into a defining and unreconcilable state of being "other," and separated. How else can the recipient of the remark possibly take it?

My commute ends to the final notes of You've Never Seen Everything. This song has one of the most beautiful chorus melodies wrapped into one of the most difficult songs to listen to. Difficult not just because its verses are all spoken poetry, but because of the song's subject matter. The premise of which is that no matter how much you think you've seen, someplace else something totally outside of your imagination or experience is taking place. That and the idea that we sometimes let all the bad news in the world block out the sunlight:

Nobody's making me say this
I'm talking to you
Been traveling 17 hours
Irradiated by signals, by images
of viruses, of virtues
like everyone
Like exiled angels we swing out of the clouds
Above night city-
Fields of light broken by the curve of dark waterways

On the other side of the world
an unhappy teenage girl sets fire
to herself, her house, her neighbourhood and some that dwell therein
Sorry simulacrum of sad dawn

You've never seen everything

and the chorus:

Bad pressure coming down
Tears - what we really traffic in
ride the ribbon of shadow
Never feel the light falling all around

The song never gets any more cheerful, but the poetry and imagery in it is worth a read or, even better, a listen.

Bruce is right, if rather darkly so. We haven't seen everything. That is sufficient reason for moving forward gently and speaking with care. We all have much yet to learn from those around us, as well those who live far away. From everyone we are tempted to cast as "other." From those we do not know yet, with their faces and names.

Today's full commute playlist:
- Lovers in a Dangerous Time
- World Of Wonders from Bruce Cockburn Live
- If A Tree Falls from Big Circumstance
- You've Never Seen Everything from the album of the same name

- Posted via Hermes.

A naked moon and music

The popular dude is back, sauntering in like Sunday through Thursday never happened. Are we ticked that he disappeared for six days, without a word? Nope, we're always glad to see him. He exudes that sort of confidence, does Friday.

Today's commute soundtrack was equally self assured. It has to be if its going to pit John Denver up against Miles Davis or Nada Surf.

The first track is from John Hassell's 2009 release (and I love this title!) Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.


Sampling and soundscaping are terms frequently used when talking about Hassell's influential work. According to ECM (who released this album), Hassell described this album: “A continuous piece, almost symphonic, with a cinematic construction” and drifting “clouds made out of many motifs.” It is certainly complicated and haunting, and very much worth the listen (headphones recommended). Regardless, that title deserves to be a poem. Then again, that isn't a bad way to consider this album, as musical poetry of the complex rather than sweet easy rhyme variety.

The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.

Barking, by Jim Harrison

Good stuff, Maynard!

Today's full commute soundtrack:
- Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny: Cinema Paradiso (Main Theme)
- John Hassell: Time And Place
- Miles Davis: Moon Dreams
- Matt Nathanson: Faster
- John Denver: I'd Rather Be A Cowboy (Lady's Chains)
- Nada Surf: Blond On Blond (acoustic version)


- Posted via Hermes.

Rain and Racism

Thursday morning, grey and lightly raining, as befits early March in the Pacific Northwest. This is what we know, what we expect. It tells us the natural order is still preserved. To someone from somewhere else, this might be the final one-too-many wet day in a row that sends them fleeing for somewhere else, but we are (mostly) comfortable with our gray and rain.

Are we as complacently comfortable with the un-acknowledged racism we all live in, I wonder? I wonder this this morning in particular because of a conversation I had with a colleague yesterday which was reinforced by a powerful op-ed piece in the NY Times this morning (thank you Twitter!): The Good, Racist People, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.



Selma, 1965. Photo from a tweet by Michael Beschloss

As a white heterosexual male living in the U.S. I live with a silent privilege that is not equally enjoyed by everyone. So certain is this privilege that I rarely notice it. I have to stare at it intently to recognize it, even though it surrounds me everywhere I go. It would otherwise never cross my mind that nobody surreptitiously follows me around a store because they think I look like a shoplifter. It isn't remarkable to me that the way I speak doesn't cause the person on the other end of the phone to subtly change they way they "see" me and the tone of our interaction. I am generally not described to others first and foremost by the color of my skin or my ethnicity. And while I have certainly had to work hard to get to this point in my life and career, I really was afforded opportunity.

Day to day, minute to minute, none of this is exceptional to me. It would, however, be exceptional to many people of color in our country, to many people of different sexual orientation, to those with visible and invisible disabilities, to people who speak English with an accent, to many women. People who work every bit as hard (harder in many cases) than me but who simply do not have the same access to opportunity that I have had.

It doesn't even strike us as odd that everyone who isn't a white heterosexual male has a term to describe them, to describe the extent to which they are not white, heterosexual, or male. We may argue about these names, occasionally settle on different branding terms as societal awareness shifts from generation to generation, but we still use these terms to catalog difference.

Way out on the rim of the galaxy
The gifts of the Lord lie torn
Into whose charge the gifts were given
Have made it a curse for so many to be born
This is my trouble --
These were my fathers
So how am I supposed to feel?
Way out on the rim of the broken wheel

Water of life is going to flow again
Changed from the blood of heroes and knaves
The word mercy's going to have a new meaning
When we are judged by the children of our slaves
No adult of sound mind
Can be an innocent bystander
Trial comes before truth's revealed
Out here on the rim of the broken wheel

You and me -- we are the break in the broken wheel
Bleeding wound that will not heal

from Broken Wheel, by Bruce Cockburn.

It's one thing to be acquiescent about rain, grey skies, low hanging clouds, but quite another to continue on as complacently naive about our relationship to our fellow human beings. This is the uncomfortable conversation we must continue to have until this fundamental relationship between us all changes for good. Anything less is acquiescence.

Today's commute playlist:
- Buena Vista Social Club: Pueblo Nuevo
- Shirley Horn: Once I Loved
- John Barry: Dances with Wolves
- Sigur Rós: Daudalogn

- Posted via Hermes.

Fragile Routine

Thursday, a steady fine rain lands quietly on my windshield this morning, briefly accumulating only to be periodically swept aside by the wipers. Lightness is just starting to return to the early morning commute. Headlights a still needed —as evidenced by a headlight-less black Camry that quickly came and went from nothing to nowhere— but only just.

It has a been a spell since I last entered a post here. The usual routine was interrupted by a family medical emergency and all the other-worldly trappings of time spent driving to and from, waiting in, planning around hospitals.



Routines are luxuries, really, flowing from the conceit of believing we are in control, we are making the plans, we have choice in all things.

You are creating distinctions
that do not exist in reality
where “self” and “not-self” are like salt
in ocean, cloud in sky
oxygen in fire
said the philosophical dog
under the table scratching his balls

- from the poem In Every Life by Alicia Ostriker

Maybe routine and non-routine are a difference without a distinction, just different ways of marking days and hours. Every parent quickly learns that babies don't come with instruction booklets, and even children quickly learn that life isn't predictable. So why do we so often strive to make it so? None of us know the full measure of our hours, so do we treat each hour as precious and worthwhile, or as if each was dependably planned on? If you ever need to be reminded of the fragility of plans, spend an hour in the family waiting room of a critical care unit.

Perishable, it said on the plastic container,
and below, in different ink,
the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed.

I found myself looking:
now at the back of each hand,
now inside the knees,
now turning over each foot to look at the sole.

- Jane Hirshfield, Perishable, It Said

Routine or otherwise, Thursday has come around again.

Today's full playlist:
- Fountains Of Wayne: It Must Be Summer
- John Mayer: Gravity
- Bob Marley: I Shot the Sheriff
- Jónsi: Animal Arithmetic - Live
- Madeleine Payroux: You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go





- Posted via Hermes.

The gaseous state of steel wool

Friday. Fog. Freezing fog, frozen streets alternated with wet roads, and grey stubby vistas. Shapes resolving out of cotton as I drive cautiously forward. Not cotton, more like the phase-changed gaseous state of steel wool, if steel wool had a gaseous state. Certainly more that color.


But phase-change requires pressure and Friday isn't about pressure, is it? For the traditional work-week crowd Friday is the wrap up of the week and the portal to the weekend. Friday, after all, is the Popular Dude of the week.

Yet somehow this morning feels more like a visitation from the ghost of the popular dude. Still popular for all the same reasons, but rather than bounding cockily into the room he's slipping in around the corner of our vision like so much smoke.

Reminds me of a Bruce Cockburn lyric (I know, doesn't everything?) from The Coming Rains:

In the town neon flickers in the ruins
Seven crows swoop past the luscious moon
If I had wings like those there'd be no waiting
I'd come panting to your door and slide like smoke into your room

Speaking of crows, have you ever read the poem Two Old Crows, by Vachel Lindsay? It starts:

Two old crows sat on a fence rail.
Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
Thinking of effect and cause,
Of weeds and flowers,
And nature's laws.
One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,
One of them stuttered, one of them muttered.
Each of them thought far more than he uttered.

I won't give the rest of this short story away, but will say its worth the journey.

And finally, speaking of the journey, my commute soundtrack was again (by design this time) totally Sigur Rós:
- Fljótavík (Live)
- Ekkí Múkk
- Svefn-G-Englar
- Von


- Posted via Hermes.

Frost's white face

Monday morning follows the weekend as reliably as fever follows viral infection, and there is a lot of both rolling about this winter. We're in our winter clearing now, one of those strings of days featuring cold blue skies, bright sun that doesn't warm, and no clouds or moisture. For the Pacific Northwest, this is cold weather, dropping into the low 20’s at night, highs in the mid to upper 30’s, or maybe cresting 40° F (4° C) at the peak of the day.

I know, to many that's not cold at all. Some of you are living with minus signs in front of your high temperature for the day. But for here, for us, this is our cold snap, all nose stinging, icy roads, and frosted surfaces.

The roof of our shed needs cleaning, with tufts of moss and lichen outlining most of the shingles like little English hedgerows separating so many little fields. Up close, bristling with crystalline hoarfrost, it could be a winter country scene.

"Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty—
The squint itself consoled, at ease . . .
The ten-fold forest almost the same . . .
And snow crunches in the eyes, innocent, like clean bread."
- Osip Mandelstam, Alone, I Stare Into the Frost's White Face

So much beauty out of such spare ingredients. Almost monochromatic, yet with a sparkle that would make many diamonds envious, light and shadow playing the roles usually filled by color and contrast.

My commute soundtrack was also simultaneously spare and rich, and one of those coincidentally random combinations that give me pause: two renditions of a single tune by the (appropriately?) Icelandic band Sigur Rós, from two different albums. The first version, from their album Von, is an atmospheric twelve-minute soundscape. The second version (from Hvarf - Heim)) is a mere nine minutes and much more to the point melodically. They really don't even sound like the same piece of music, and maybe the fact that one version has a second "s" in the title suggests they are, in fact, different words and different tunes? Maybe I need to learn Icelandic.

Regardless, they formed a beautiful soundtrack to my extra-early (had to be in by 6:30 AM) morning drive through this dark frosty world toward campus.

Today's Playlist:
- Hafssól
- Hafsól

- Posted via Hermes.

Monday, music, and playful biographies

Monday morning and it is a dark and wet one at that. Not pouring, but just enough misting rain to keep the wipers on at some less-than-full interval. Here's a funny thing about interval wipers: they are never quite the right pace for whatever conditions you are experiencing. Change the setting all you want, and it will remain slightly faster or slower than you really need for the amount of wet across the windshield. Maybe that's just a PNW thing, caused more by the vagaries and variety of rain here than by any fault of engineering.

Our campus enters the second week (first full week) of classes for winter quarter, so things are already starting to buzz as I pull onto campus. Car lights move across the dark mostly-empty parking lots, a small number of students are walking here and there, and the parking closest to the buildings is already starting to fill. Proximity always seems to win when selecting parking.

Speaking of proximity, I did a little housecleaning on my ebook library shelves the other day, with the result that only three currently-in-progress books are sitting in the biographies section of said library. Is it just me, or does it seem these three characters are maybe interacting with each other, just a bit playfully?


The drive in was slower than usual, augmented with a stop for coffee this morning, so the playlist was longer than usual as well. I had to use the skip function twice to pass over a holiday tune (always a risk when I allow the iPhone to pick randomly from my entire music collection), but I let one holiday album tune slip through: Pink Martini's Congratulations from their Joy To The World album. It's a Japanese (and is sung in Japanese) New Year's tune, which still seems fitting enough this early in January. It's mostly rare for holiday tunes to pop up in such a mix, so getting three of them this morning runs against normal odds. I'm guessing the random-play algorithm has some element of 'recently-played' factored in.

A good playlist, overall. Nilsson was the highlight—how could anyone not love that tune?

Today's full playlist:
- Midlake: In This Camp
- Chick Corea & Bela Fleck: Mountain
- Pink Martini Congratulation (Happy New Year)
- Travis: Under the Moonlight
- Harry Nilsson: Everybody's Talkin'
- El Perro del Mar: Walk On By
- Norah Jones: Don't Miss You At All

- Posted via Hermes.