Long Walk Home – Bruce Springsteen

Last night I stood at your doorstep
Trying to figure out what went wrong
You just slipped something into my palm and you were gone

I could smell the same deep green of summer
‘Bove me the same night sky was glowin’
In the distance I could see the town where I was born

It’s gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
A long walk home

In town I pass Sal’s grocery
Barber shop on South Street
I looked in their faces*
They’re all rank strangers to me*
Well Veteran’s Hall high upon the hill
Stood silent and alone
The diner was shuttered and boarded
With a sign that just said “gone”

It’s gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It’s gonna be a long walk home

Here everybody has a neighbor
Everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again

My father said “Son, we’re lucky in this town,
It’s a beautiful place to be born.
It just wraps its arms around you,
Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone”

“Your flag flyin’ over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t”

It’s gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It’s gonna be a long walk home
It’s gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It’s gonna be a long walk home
It’s gonna be a long walk home

bruce springsteen is the boss, and maybe it’s because youth springs eternal from those husky timbres. to be young, to be fearless, feckless, invincible, immortal and maybe i should be young again.

Time Is Running Out – Muse

matt bellamy and dominic howard are smaller than they look.
——————————

there are certain times when you tell yourself that it will be worth it in the end, that you should cling on for dear life, that you will learn, grow, mature. but these are just platitudes for an immensely awful time. at either rate, there should be resolutions for silence, wordlessness, and to speak without talking.

You’re A Wolf – Sea Wolf

Paolo Colzani worked at the Gualtiero Marchesi in Milan, in Tantris in Munich, Grand Hotel Quisisisana in Capri, Hambleton Hall in England and he was the best restaurant manager whom i have ever been under. on tuesday afternoon, he left abruptly and today he came back, saw me and smiled “hello boy” and the only thing i could do was to shake his hand, smile wanly and go “thank you”.

in typical paolo-esque fashion, he went “what are you thanking me for?”
“for teaching, for enabling me to learn.”
“good, then you can thank me.”

such was the conversation we usually had, and today wasn’t any different.
——————

i wished i had better stories to write, but these days it’s all i can do not to be consumed entirely by the concatenation of events and people. there are too many things to say, too many things to process, but i have to start living because it is all that i can do.

Oh No – Andrew Bird

in the salsify mains of what was thought but unsaid
all the calcified arhythmitists were doing the math
it would take a calculated blow to the head
to light the eyes of all the harmless sociopaths
oh arm and arm we are the harmless sociopaths
oh arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths
calcium mines were buried deep in your chest
oh calcim mines you buried deep in your chest
oh no we’re deep in a mine
oh no a calcium mine
so let’s get out of here
past the atmosphere
squint your eyes and no one dies
or goes to jail
past the silver bridge, oh the silver bridge
wearing nothing but a one-sie and a veil
oh oh deep in a mine,
oh oh a calcium mine
arm and arm we are the harmless sociopaths
arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths
in the calcium mines buried deep in your chest
oh the calcium mines buried deep in your chest
oh oh deep in a mine
oh no– calcium mines oh no

Oh No - Andrew Bird

and i cannot believe that i cannot attend ‘dru bird’s concert because i have no available leave in my first three months.

He Doesn’t Know Why – Fleet Foxes

Penniless & tired with your hair grown long
I was looking at you there and your face looked wrong
memory is a fickle siren’s song I didn’t understand

In the gentle light as the morning nears
You don’t say a single word of the last two years
Where you were or when you reached the frontier
I didn’t understand

See you rugged hands and a silver knife
Twenty dollars in your hand that you hold so tight
All the evidence of your vagrant life
My brother you were gone

And you will try to do what you did before
Pull the wool over your eyes for a week or more
Let your family take you back to your original mind

He Doesn’t Know Why – Fleet Foxes

today i played five awesome games of basketball, and watched a dad teach his son to roar like a man, and not scream like a girl, and it was cute, simple and delightful.
——————–

i have to read because i have to read and because not reading cannot be an option. today i purchased marber’s closer and debbie and i concluded we were very similiar in some aspects, and it wasn’t exactly illuminating as much as an affirmation, and i am glad to conclude on a point.
——————–

there is much warmth in the grandma’s bittergourd soup.

Tenuousness – Andrew Bird

in the car ride to the double storey marketplace near queenstown library which sold $2.50 kway chap, i asked my mom if i were a dazzlingly intelligent child who spoke almost as soon as he could walk but her answer was in the negative. “you were so quiet that grandma was impossibly worried, and then you entered kindergarten and no one understood you.”

not many still do these days, and then some.
————–
today i served an englishmen and his family and it was my first physical contact with an individual who suffered from parkinson’s, and in the blue eyes of a man who strived to not let his nervous system betray him, i felt an enormous sense of maudlinity. but i knew for a fact that he would not sought to be pitied, so i didn’t.

betrayal is something that never stood well with me.

Fine Young Cannibals – Wolf Parade

will we eat men like air, will we swarm round dead carcasses and dance around them in a procession.
——————————

there are times you continually question yourself is this worth it, will things happen, will they work out in the long run, what happens in the future, what happens if they do not, and sadly at this junction in our lives there’s not so much you can do as much as set your head down and work, to build a story of contracted employment, to create a tapestry of recorded events, a collection of bullet points. there has to be something beatific in what we are doing at this stage of our lives, but this is not a story for me to tell, and at this moment i’m dreaming of lying on a stack of hay in ireland, of travelling up to the isle of skye in scotland, to be a farmer for 20 days, to slow things down, to breathe again, to live again, to write again, to have the capacity to love again.

I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From – Kings of Convenience

the kings of convenience sing the most convenient of titles, and while this might seem like a depressing blog title for the first post of 2010, it’s in the most pessimistic of events that one remains this most optimistic. resolutions for the first decade of the second millennium: to have an awesome career, to treasure old friends, to be a better man, to find love. one always needs to be a better man and to find love.

i met dawn yesterday, and it was one of the most happifying moments in 2009. take care you silly cow, make more stews, wear more clothes, go out in the snow, make snow angels.

(not babies)

Daughters of the Soho Riots – The National

a rummage through my drawers during my one of frequent computer crashes revealed a plethora of cards; there was a stack of eighteen taped postcards for a birthday 6 years ago and it was funny, cheerful and sad given that i hardly talk to any of writers these days. those were innocent, more honest times and it funny that i once lived so hard for love and mauldin that these days i hardly believe in it any longer, but i suppose that comes with the passage of time, that people irrevocably change and not necessarily always for the better; maturity, but at what cost? we were so much closer to people in the past, and it is queer that these days we just become more distant just to protect ourselves, to get what we want and to a large extent i have always been a failure at that because i always wore my heart on my sleeve and the moment i stopped doing that i just stopped existing. there’s been lots of regrets, of should-haves, could-haves, would-haves, but there has to be a recounciliation with all these, that i could have been a better person, if only. a friend who wrotes lots of letters to me once said that i should stop being afraid of growing older, and i did, but there’s always a part of me that remains unsure if that was the right path to take in its eventuality.

so how now sir, what happens next.

Blindsided – Bon Iver

there was supposed academic closure on friday but some ghosts never really go away. five years ago didn’t seem that long, but that’s how things are going to be.

bon iver is an anachronistic spelling of the french word for good winter, but at this moment in time it is and isn’t the most congruent word for my current situation. but we shall see, we shall see.