Ray LaMontagne

"Don't let your mind get weary and confused
Your will be still, don't try
Don't let your heart get heavy child
Inside you there's a strength that lies

Don't let your soul get lonely child
It's only time, it will go by
Don't look for love in faces, places
It's in you, that's where you'll find kindness

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

Don't lose your faith in me
And I will try not to lose faith in you
Don't put your trust in walls
'Cause walls will only crush you when they fall

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now "

...with friendship and independence

you're a voice in a box
a face on a screen
some words on some paper
how much does it mean
to chase down this knowing
to seek this unknown
to fill up our minds
and hope our heart's sewn

New Mexico

life through my studying eyes

For someone who has had 24 transitions from summer to fall, this is neverland.
My body and brain prepare for the cold, my eyes remain in wonder, my skin soaks it in, hoping to retain as much as possible for the delayed chill.
Its magical and feels as though I've been blessed with extra time, that my life could possibly go at a slower pace, and be enjoyed more densely with every found second.
land of enchantment, land of entrapment,
my little embankment of sunshine and time.

Nothing Brings Me Down

"Home alone and happy
Nothing brings me down
Full of wine, unsteady
Nothing brings me down
What's left of the rain runs down my roof
Nothing brings me down
The night is lush the air is still
Nothing brings me down

Dum dum dum dum dum dum

The windows are open, the flies are in
Nothing brings me down
The phones are off the music's on
Nothing brings me down

Dum dum dum dum dum dum

Home alone and happy
Nothing brings me down
My love for you is ready
Nothing brings me down
My love for you is ready"

-lyrics from the Emiliana Torrini song

can questions lie?

must a funk be analyzed,
broken down,
categorized,
justified,
explained
to be gotten out of?
because i don't want to know why i'm here.
i just don't want to be.
or maybe i do? maybe i don't want to face the truth of what i am feeling and why?

can't i just leave question marks?
and use them as a ladder?
is there an escape?
is that the answer?

Funny 'cuz its True

More Bill Bryson from The Lost Continent

"Having gone without dinner the night before, I intended to indulge myself in that greatest of all American gustatory pleasures - going out for Sunday breakfast.

Everybody in America goes out for Sunday breakfast. It is such a popular pastime that you generally have to line up for a table, but it's always worth the wait. Indeed, the inability to achieve instant oral gratification is such an unusual experience in America that lining up actually intensifies the pleasure. You wouldn't want to do it all the time, of course, you wouldn't want to get British about it or anything, but once a week for twenty minutes is "kinda neat," as they say. One reason you have to line up is that it take the waitress about thirty minutes just to take each order. First you have to tell her whether you want your eggs sunny-side up, over easy, scrambled, poached, parboiled, or in an omelette, and in an omelette, whether you want it to be a plain, cheese, vegetable, hot-spicy, or chocolate nut 'n' fudge omelette; and then you have to decide whether you want your toast on white, rye, whole wheat, sourdough, or pumpernickel bread and whether you want whipped butter, pat butter, or low-cholesterol butter substitute; and then there's a complicated period of negotiation in which you ask if you can have cornflakes instead of the cinnamon roll and link sausages instead of patties. So the waitress, who is only sixteen years old and not real smart, has to go off to the manager and ask him whether that's possible, and she comes back and tells you that you can't have cornflakes instead of the cinnamon roll, but you can have Idaho frieds instead of the short stack of pancakes, or you can have an English muffin and bacon instead of whole wheat toast, but only if you order a side of hashed browns and a large orange juice. This is unacceptable to you, and you decide that you will have waffles instead, so the waitress has to rub everything out with her nubby eraser and start all over again. And across the room the line on the other side of the "Please Wait to Be Seated" board grows longer and longer, but the people don't mind because the food smells so good and, anyway, all this waiting is, as I say, kinda neat."

Shoulda got a Mac...

thanks...http://faildogs.com/

The Lost Continent 2

One more, because this one deserves an entry of its own, haha!

...inside a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant...
"We were ushered into the dining room with nine strangers and all seated together at one big trestle table.
There must have been fifty other such tables in the room...
I've never seen so much food. I couldn't see over the top of my plate. It was all delicious...I ate so much my armpits bulged. But still the food kept coming. Just when I thought I would have to summon a wheelchair to get me to the car, the waitress took away all the platters and bowls, and started bringing desserts--apple pies, chocolate pies, bowls of home-made ice cream, pastries, flans and God knows what else.
I kept eating. It was too delicious to pass up. Buttons popped off my shirt; my trousers burst open. I barely had the strength to lift my spoon, but I kept shoveling the stuff in. It was grotesque. Food began to leak from my ears. And still I ate. I ate more food that night than some African villagers eat in a lifetime. Eventually, mercifully, the waitress prised the spoons out of our hands and took the dessert stuff away, and we were able to stumble zombielike out into the night.
We got into the car, too full to speak...I felt as if I had eaten the contents of a cement mixer. I lay on the back seat of the car, my feet in the air, and moaned softly. I vowed that I would never eat again, and meant it. But two hours later, when we arrived back at my brother's house, the agony had abated and my brother and I were able to begin a new cycle of gross overconsumption, beginning with a twelve-pack of beer and bucket of pretzels from his kitchen and concluding, in the early hours of the evening, with a plate of onion rings and two-foot-long submarine sandwiches, full of goo and spices, at an all-night eatery out on Highway 11."

-The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson

The Lost Continent

Bill Bryson is amazing. I can't wait to read all of his other books. I'm not quite done with this one, but wanted to share so of the best passages so far. His wit, sarcasm, and ebb and flow in pace are ideal for a book like this. If you've ever taken, or ever WANTED to take a cross country road trip, please read it. Being someone that has done that, it was exciting to read how his take on various places, like the Grand Canyon, were almost my words exactly for describing the experience, suggesting something very undeniable and universally moving about the oddities and beauties of the United States.

"The last time I had been in New York was when I was sixteen and my friend Stan and I came out to visit my brother and his wife, who were living there then. They had an apartment in a strange, Kafkaesque apartment complex in Queens called Lefrak City. It consisted of about a dozen identical tall, featureless buildings clustered around a series of lonesome quadrangles, the sort of quadrangles where rain puddles stand for weeks and the flowerbeds are littered with supermarket carts. Each building was like a vertical city, with its own grocery store, drugstore, laundromat and so on. I don't remember the details except that each building was taller than the tallest building in Des Moines and that the total population was something like 50,000--bigger than most Iowa towns. I had never conceived of so many people gathered in one place. I couldn't understand why in such a big, open, country as America people would choose to live like that. It wasn't as if this were something temporary, a place to spend a few months while waiting for their ranch house in the suburbs to be built. This was home. This was it. Thousands and thousands of people would live out their lives never having their own backyard, never having a barbecue, never stepping out the back door at midnight to have a pee in the bushes and check out the stars. Their children would grow up thinking that supermarket carts grew wild, like weeds."

and in Vermont...
"One village I went through had about four stores and one of them was a Ralph Lauren Polo Shop. I couldn't think of anything worse than living in a place where you could buy a$200 sweater but not a can of baked beans. Actually, I could think of a lot of worse things--cancer of the brain, watching every episode of a TV miniseries starring Joan Collins, having to eat at a Burger Chef more than twice in one year, reaching for a glass of water in the middle of the night and finding that you've just taken a drink from your grandmother's denture cup, and so on. But I think you get my point."

and in Amish country...
"Travel articles and movies like Witness generally gloss over this side of things, but the fact is that Lancaster County is now one of the most awful places in America, especially on weekends when traffic jams sometimes stretch for miles. Many of the Amish themselves have given up and moved to places like Iowa and upper Michigan where they are left alone. Out in the countryside, particularly on the back roads, you can still sometimes see the people in their funny dark clothes working in the fields or driving their distinctive black buggies down the highway, with a long line of tourist cars creeping along behind, pissed off because they can't get by and they really want to be in a Bird in Hand so that they can get some more funnel cakes and SnoCones and perhaps buy a wrought-iron wine rack or combination mailbox-weather vane to take back home to Fartville with them. I wouldn't be surprised if a decade from now there isn't a real Amish person left in the country."

-The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson

Selfish self discovery?

The article linked below is a good one about a topic close to my heart.

All we have in this life is ourselves. I was not put on this earth to have children, to make a husband happy, or to find the cure for cancer. (I couldn't believe it when someone accused me of being selfish when I said I did not want to have children later in life. I don't even HAVE the children yet...how is it selfish? I am NOT HAVING them in part so that my pursuits to know and better myself don't take away from their lives. But they aren't ALIVE yet...how could it be selfish if their is no one to be selfishly affecting?) While I am here, I owe it to myself to make the most of my time here, as do you. In doing so, I have been told that I've touched others to do the same in their own lives, find their purpose, travel, make their own mind up about the way they want to live their lives in a way they never gave themselves the option or chance to do before. So, you see, if we all take care of ourselves, truly getting in touch with real happiness, not materialistic happiness, not happiness through power and control, that positive energy will emanate out to improve the world.

But it all starts from within. And its not selfish. My recent read of Eat Pray Love really hits this home as well, a huge theme being, when you set out to help yourself, you end up helping others.

http://www.srichinmoybio.co.uk/blog/life/is-self-discovery-a-selfish-act/

textbook excitement

Certainly can't recall ever being as exciting about a textbook as I was when I read this:

The old adage "You get out of it only what you put into it" aptly describes a cognitive perspective. Some students approach learning in passive and "shallow" ways, either failing to engage fully or relying heavily on rote memorization. Both cognitive research and our experience as educators tell us that the resultant learning is likely to be both superficial and transitory. In contrast, other students' attempts at learning clearly are aimed at deeper understanding; they relate new information to what they already know, organize it, and regularly check their comprehension.

-Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, by Roger H. Bruning (Author), Gregg J. Schraw (Author), Monica M. Norby (Author), Royce R. Ronning (Author)

So beautiful...

This song on its own is incredibly beautiful...if you have a chance, please find and listen...

But personally this week, my love was able to do this for me from a whole time zone away. He was able to make me feel safe, to make me feel like I could make it through the stress of uprooting my life to drive for 4 days through 3 time zones to reach an amazing but stressful destination which I had never before seen and now have to call home for 2 years. He was able to be so reassuring and supportive when I feared the change in circumstances may change us for the worse. He was able to show such faith in me, and his own pursuits inspired to continue my own. He was able to kiss away my tears, able to let me sleep in his arms...able to be the most amazing, beautiful, sensitive, understanding, patient, anddidisaybeautiful man who I am lucky enough to love.

Lay Down Beside Me (Alison Krauss featuring John Waite)
[John Waite:]
I've spent my life
Lookin for you
Findin' my way
Wasn't easy to do
But I knew there was you
All the while
And it's been worth
Every mile

So lay down beside me
Love me and hide me
And kiss all the hurtin'
Of this world away
Hold me so close
That I feel your heart beat
And don't ever wander away

[Alison Krauss:]
Mornings and evenings
All were the same
There was no music
Til I heard your name
I knew when I saw you smile
And now I can rest for a while

[Together:]
So lay down beside me
Love me and hide me
Kiss all the hurtin'
Of this world away
Hold me so close
That I feel your heart beat
And don't ever wander away

And hold me so close
That I feel your heart beat
And don't ever wander away

[she hums]
he sings
Love me and hide me

[both hum]
he sings
'Til I feel your heart beat

I'm not in Kansas anymore...

for more click here

thanks to Scientia potentia est

out of my mind...

....excited...a bluegrass band is performing on my campus tomorrow!

"Back-to-School with the Squash Blossom Boys

The Squash Blossom Boys, an eclectic bluegrass quintet hailing from Corrales and featuring UNM students, will perform the “back-to-school” UNM Greg Johnston Summer Concert Friday, Aug. 22, from noon – 1 p.m. on the University Honors Plaza.

Photo: The Squash Blossom Boys - 'Promoting Sustainability with a Twang'

The band combines elements of jazz, rock, reggae and traditional roots bluegrass to create a unique sound that explores the roots and boundaries of the musical genre.

Additionally, the band utilizes a carbon neutral solar trailer that uses energy from the sun through photovoltaic cells to power UNM events. Designed by Nate Campbell, a Sustainability Studies student at UNM, the inspirational trailer has the ability to reach a wide variety of audiences while appearing both inviting and professional. It is used as a means of education and networking in sustainability."

http://www.myspace.com/sbb

speechless...

...twice in one night...

Picture Tour from UNM Website

But really, please come visit for yourself!

Look Ma! No Hands!

Through much of Indiana, and certainly the rest of Kansas, there were no need for hands on the wheel. Thats not to say I drove with my knees or sans hands but its seriously different country out there. I saw signs boasting, "Lincoln County HAS jobs!", "Come see the World's Largest Prairie dog...only 60 miles to Entrance!" and in Colorado: "FREE LAND! We have water, we have land...we just need YOU!"

I was, however, completely charmed by the last 40 miles of Kansas and the first 40 of Colorado, as fields of sunflowers overflowed and the edges of the highway median held sunflowers rushing out to the cars flying by, "Thanks for coming! Thanks for visiting!"

Tonight I'm in Colorado Springs and I hope to get some good pictures of the Amazing mountains and Pikes Peak in the morning!

ROAD FOOD!

One of the best parts about a road trip, as everyone knows, is getting to eat all kinds of fun crap!
I got to stop at my beloved Hardees, and was able to hit up Jimmy Johns and Buffalo Wild Wings in Lawrence Kansas, along with a wonderful noodle shop called Zen Zero. Today was Red Robin's awesome Turkey, Bacon, Avocado sandwich on a croissant with bottomless steak fries, after starting the day off fittingly with a Colorado Omelette from IHOP...yum...

Word from the Wheel...

Left with nothing but profuse pondering from the wheel of my Mazda3, I reflected on the physical distance that will be between myself and my family and friends.
But especially one in particular...Life will not be the same without my museum buddy, my trad trawling, grateful dead devouring, ceramic swirling beer buddy; my tree hugging, road tripping, jet setting for China political advisor of a dear dear soul, Pete...
I raise this plastic glass of free Drury Inn white zin to you!

listen.

i love the expand and contract of his tummy
i love the rise and fall of his shoulders
i love the steady, solid beat i feel from his chest
i love the sexiness of his snoring
i love the linger of his lashes on his cheek

i love that a man like this could be alive.
and that i am lucky to listen to this life
as it lovely lies beside me.