Waiting...

Tuesday, and a damp not-so-dark drive in this morning. We're in the doldrums of a Pacific Northwest winter. Little dripping cloud icons as far as the weather app reaches into the future.

Maybe it was just that we were coming off several days of unusually cold weather, but yesterday actually felt warm by late afternoon. Just warm enough to stir a longing for spring. It's not all that far off now, is it?

The iPhone music app was also in anticipation mode. Specifically, it was focused on waiting. It should have been in random shuffle for today's commute, but it clearly got hung up on its strangely self-imposed theme. Five tunes, each by different musicians, each song's title beginning with the word "Waiting."

Two-tune Tuesday

It's Tuesday. It is also hard to put any other piece of sentence-ending punctuation to the end of that sentence.

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve
of Tuesday to Tuesday and you’re gone,
summering, a ship on the farthest wave.

- from The Young, by Roddy Lumsden

It is, however, not snowing or icing, and the temperature hovers at a fluctuating 33°-34° F (1° C) as I drive in this morning. I set my alarm for 4:00 this morning just in case, to check for snow or ice and what that might portend for the college on this week of fall quarter finals. One quick look told me I could safely slide back under the warm covers for another hour or so.

The worst thing possible on a very cold winter early-morning is having to get out of a warm bed. The best thing possible on a very cold winter early-morning is getting to go back into a warm bed. So it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

A two-tune playlist was all I got this morning, since both tunes were long running. Nick Cave's O Children is a tune I could easily let repeat over and over. A lot has been written about the lyrics in this tune, with interpretations running the gamut of children in concentration/labor campus to the legacy one generation imposes on the next. I have no idea what the song is supposed to convey, but it is wonderful music.

Then Charlie Haden's recently (2005) reconvened Liberation Music Orchestra did a nearly 17 minute medley around America the Beautiful from the Not In Our Name album). Haden brought the group back together to record a message of protest to the politics of the Bush II presidency and, in particular, the actions being taken by the US against other countries. Charlie uses the music to articulate a different definition of patriotism and to make the statement that what was (then) currently taking place was not being done in our (collective) name or with our blessing.

That is the history of this ensemble, albums of protest and declaration, mostly about military action abroad. The band on this album is a veritable who's who of jazz greats and the music is wonderfully rich and powerful.

So only two tunes this Tuesday morning, but two wonderfully rich and powerful tunes.

Today's playlist:
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, O Children
- Charlie Haden, America the Beautiful (Medley)


- Posted via Hermes.

Frost, depression glass and Thanksgiving

The popular dude is scantily clad this morning, shiveringly cold. Cars parked outside overnight are now on the roads with small quickly scraped-clear port-holes through which bleary-eyed travelers are peering. Cars that pulled out of garages this morning are smugly clear-windowed.

It is coffee (or tea, or mate) weather. Coffee served up in a thick, probably chipped, utilitarian mug that absorbs the heat and warms the hands as much as the coffee warms the back of the throat.

It seemed those rose-pink dishes
she kept for special company
were always cold, brought down
from the shelf in jingling stacks,
the plates like the panes of ice
she broke from the water bucket
winter mornings, the flaring cups
like tulips that opened too early
and got bitten by frost. They chilled
the coffee no matter how quickly
you drank, while a heavy
everyday mug would have kept
a splash hot for the better
part of a conversation.
- Ted Kooser, from Depression Glass

Mom had an extensive collection of depression glass (her set was amber) we sometimes used for special occasions, too. Like Thanksgiving.

Explain Thanksgiving, a uniquely North American holiday, to someone from another country. The back story, told usually from the imperialist perspective, is easy enough. What we've made of the holiday which commemorates that "first" hard winter and the First Nations people that helped the settlers through it, though... "It's really a holiday about food. We spend a couple of days whipping up a big dinner, usually turkey, stuffing, gravey, mashed potatoes, and a list of other traditional foods, and then sit down with friends and family to eat. The Dallas Cowboys usually play a game on Thanksgiving, so the TV is likely on somewhere, too."

Just like those early pioneers, contemporary traditionalists will enjoy green bean casserole, jelled cranberry that, when slid from a can, looks like sliced pink dog food quivering on the platter, and baked sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows and sweet enough to set my teeth on edge.

Still, any meal shared with family and friends, and with coffee, served with pie, in well worn heavy mugs - hard to go far wrong with all of that to be thankful for.

Today's Playlist:
- Weezer - Space Rock
- Train - Cab
- Pink Martini - City of Night
- Ron Affif Trio - Eric's Zinc Bar Blues
- John Mayer - Free Fallin' (Live)

- Posted via Hermes.

Before the sun is lit

Tuesday, the "what day is it?" day of the week. Still the beginning of the work week, but also still early days. Wet. Choosing from the multiplicity of PNW terms for the various nuanced forms in which water can fall from the sky here, I'd say alternating misting and drizzle. Wiper speed: indecisive.

Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
- Adelaide Crapsey, November Night

The campus is quieter in the early morning in the wet wintery months. Probably, nobody wants to get out of bed and out into the wind-blown wet any sooner than absolutely necessary (don't look to me to blame them!). I pass not a single moving person or car as I travel the length of the campus and the service road along the golf course toward my office.

In the sad November time,
When the leaf has left the lime,
And the Cam, with sludge and slime,
Plasters his ugly channel,
While, with sober step and slow,
Round about the marshes low,
Stiffening students stumping go
Shivering through their flannel.

Then to me in doleful mood
Rises up a question rude,
Asking what sufficient good
Comes of this mode of living?
Moping on from day to day,
Grinding up what will not “pay,”
Till the jaded brain gives way
Under its own misgiving.

Why should wretched Man employ
Years which Nature meant for joy,
Striving vainly to destroy
Freedom of thought and feeling?
Still the injured powers remain
Endless stores of hopeless pain,
When at last the vanquished brain
Languishes past all healing.
- James Clerk Maxwell, from Lines Written Under the Conviction That It Is Not Wise To Read Mathematics In November After One's Fire Is Out

Or maybe also not in the wet depths of November before the sun is lit and glowing weakly, filtered through the clouds.

Today's full playlist:
- Eric Tingstad & Nancy Rumbel: Clear moon, quiet winds
- Tim Janis: September (Piano Reprise)
- The Living Sisters: Hold Back
- Jakob Dylan: Something Good This Way Comes
- Terence Blanchard: In Time of Need
- David Gray: Caroline


- Posted via Hermes.

Sailing into the weekend

It's happened. At some point this week, and I wasn't paying sufficient attention to mark the exact day, we hit that time of year when my car's rear-view mirror stays angled into night-mode both coming from and going to the campus. Pre-dawn and dusk now tightly bookend my working day.



A warm gourd of mate to play against the morning chill while I finish up this post and all is well.

I have had the i-device on my Bruce Cockburn playlist the last day or two, so it is all Bruce for the drive in this morning.

Rainfall on rolling green
Wavy lines and peacock sheen
Rainfall on rolling green
Prettiest world I've ever seen...

...Born under a rainbow sign
Flash of wave in space and time
Molten glass and hearts that shine
Stone to gold in fire refined
- Rainfall

Or maybe a little more commute-appropriate...

Down on the plain of 10,000 smokestacks
Trucks butt each other to establish dominance
The newspaper next to me leans over and says matter-of-factly
"Sacred mountains towers above meadows" - uh huh - and above us

Grim travellers in dawn skies
I see the beauty -- makes me cry inside
It makes me angry and I don't know why
We're grim travellers in dawn skies
- Grim Travelers

and (for those whose commute is more freeway than side street)...

Billboards promise paradise
And tattoos "done while you wait"
Possible futures all laid out
On the sweeping curve of the interstate
- Life Short Call Now

Or more comfortingly...

I ran aground in a harbour town
Lost the taste for being free
Thank God He sent some gull-chased ship
To carry me to sea

Two thousand years and half a world away
Dying trees still grow greener when you pray

Silver scales flash bright and fade
In reeds along the shore
Like a pearl in sea of liquid jade
His ship comes shining
Like a crystal swan in a sky of suns
His ship comes shining.
- All The Diamonds In The World

Which could also refer to Friday, that most popular dude, sailing into the weekend at some point later today.


Today's playlist:
- Bruce Cockburn: Rainfall
- Bruce Cockburn: Salt, Sun And Time
- Bruce Cockburn: Peace March
- Bruce Cockburn: Grim Travelers
- Bruce Cockburn: Life Short Call Now
- Bruce Cockburn: All The Diamonds In The World


- Posted via Hermes.

Sprites in the mist

I swipe the windshield wipers to no effect and squinch my eyes like I'm some sort of superhero sending laser beams out from them. I keep my speed low, especially on the side streets where I know from a history of mornings (though cannot see today) the sulky teenagers in their predominantly dark clothes and tune-the-world-out ear buds are starting to queue for a bus they don't want to take. I turn up the defrost setting in the car, as if the obscuring mist outside is really on the inside of my front window.

Nothing I do makes any difference against this Thursday morning fog. This is the type of fog that presses against the eyes and creates a slight claustrophobia out of physical space. It reduces cars to fuzzy headlamps, trees into strangely dancing sprites that refuse to resolve except back into trees and shrubs when you arrive up close to them, and people into the slightest of ghosts.

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!"
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”
- A Man Said To The Universe, By Stephen Crane

So the fog slows the pace of life down a bit, forcing us to grudgingly acknowledge our limitations against elements we cannot see through, but it doesn't bring things to a full stop.

Draw the lines! Assume the crow’s nest, Pip. This ship
sails on music and wind, and away with birds.
- from Soundings by Robert Wrigley

This morning's sailing music, though, was all talk.

Today's full playlist:
- Morning Edition, NPR


- Posted via Hermes.

An impatient season

Thursday morning, early, dark, but clear skied. A beautiful day is forecast, though that is hard to evidence at this hour. Traffic is moderate, but pushy, impatient. Feels like people are running late, rushing to get somewhere other than where they are now.

This morning's first song up is also about impatience. Bruce Cockburn's Pacing The Cage:

Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

If we're honest, most of us have felt that way from time to time. The past few weeks of political brinksmanship back in that other Washington are certainly enough to do that. Same song:

Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

Yes, that about sums it up.

I said, in a post back in November of 2011:

Let us also recognize that this hatred-driven politics is like unleashed fiendfyre, from the last of the Harry Potter stories (don't pull that face, you know you read it, too!). Terrifying, all-consuming, indiscriminate, and uncontrollable, it destroys everything it can reach. From the Potter story, "...the flames chased them as though they were alive, sentient, intent upon killing them. Now the fire was mutating, forming a gigantic pack of fiery beasts: Flaming serpents, chimaeras, and dragons rose and fell and rose again, and the detritus of centuries on which they were feeding was thrown up in the air into their fanged mouths, tossed high on clawed feet, before being consumed by the inferno." Ask them in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Ireland, Palestine, Israel, and much of Africa what the politics of hatred begets, and you may hear a response that sounds a lot like the above quote.

The seasons also feel, to me, impatient to change.



Fall burst quickly into fiery trees of yellows, oranges, and reds. Now, only a few weeks later, the leaves are rapidly browning and falling, sweaters are back in vogue, and stores are starting to sell Christmas and holiday decorations.

And Thursday, the great pretender of the week, is an impatient day in and of itself. Being not quite Friday, with its cusp of the weekend promise, it cannot pass quickly enough.

On the other hand, I have very much needed this full week to start catching up after a summer of too much time away from the campus. As I back into a leaf-littered parking stall outside my office, the impatience to get in and get going is all mine.

- Bruce Cockburn, Pacing The Cage
- Richard Thompson, Take Care the Road
- Lucinda Williams, Right In Time
- Van Morrison, Real Real Gone


- Posted via Hermes.