CCR--that change music

Every time I have a big change in my life I listen to Credence Clearwater Rival (CCR.) I must get to the bottom of this:

Growing up my dad was extremely picky about musical choice, everything I listened to was deemed “noise,” but his classic rock, now that was music. My mom would have no part in this, as the second my father walked into her life she terminated the fire-engine red corvette, blaring speedboat that required earplugs upon each lake destined adventure and confined the rock music to the basement (ohh, women…)

My dad, though a trooper, was determine to culture me in the world of rock n’ roll on his own time. Since Zeppelin, can hardly be considered nursery rhyme music, my dad fought for a selection of ballads a bit less temperamental—Credence.

Though my ears had become accustomed to the Best of Credence Clearwater growing up, it wasn’t until High School I actually became aware that they could possibly be that one band that I listen to when nothing else feels settled.

In part, their music has won me on the very basis of pure nostalgia, in part because my dad thought it was cool, but soon I developed some reasons of my own. You see, they have the kind of lyrics and tone that doesn’t fed depression, but doesn’t fuel happiness either. The only band I can listen to when in sheer glee, or when I’m (in the words of Anne of Green Gables,) the depths of despair. Something about the music is comforting regardless of my current emotion.

Something about CCR takes me to that “so be it” mindset, and whatever is, seems perfectly fine to be as is. And the cool thing about it, is though the songs all have different memories that flood when I hear them, even if it was not a particularly great memory, it is the only music that the bad memory connotations don’t affect me.

It brings me back to my dad, a beach trip with a friend, graduating from high school, a family camping trip, my high school guy friends using it to run out to at a basketball game or playing pool in our basement, a certain someone from high school, a certain someone from college, moving to college, crying, feeling really happy, a birthday and now heading off to London…

As cheesy as it sounds, and as cheesy as other people think it may be, I can’t help it, it just fits, it’s my change music, except the cool part is, the music never changes.

More poetry...

~Put it on the Tab~

My hearts in my throat, I taste blood when I breathe, I had no idea this would be killing me,
From this posture I’m gleaming, so ready and deceiving, an air of confidence unfit to measure,
Here’s to wit—just one last time, here’s to charm—you can put it on my dime; a glass raised to the stars, I’ll exit with the charge, here’s to every seamless thing you wanted me to be,
I knew this would end, but to pretend, a performance for you to treasure,

I dare not explain myself, but as certain as misery, I strive to explain you,
Something must compensate this sorrow; some part of this pay had to be a mistake,
Over and over it presses in my head, over and over everything that wasn’t said, this recipe for askew,
No book, no stare, no voice, no prayer, could fasten all that’s designated opaque,

Though before I bow out, a dance so shrewd and discrete, I feel I need to give one more toast to the freedom love promised to be,
Liberty to choose, life to loose, a looseness to let go when the curtain falls in blither,
How wrong had I been, a puzzle to discover, this independence gave me little to see,
Unearthed by emotion, struck by this fight, choice transformed into restriction, a folly untaught of pleasure,

Hand me the sentiment, I’ll take the bill, let me in peace, while I piece together this view,
Fingertips clench heartstrings, misted eyes can hide, you leave me with nothing short of fake,
One last smile, one final gaze, and as your silhouette lingers, the beauty hurts as unsullied as new,
Composure leaves the best of us, though it won’t desert me tonight, I pick up my dignity, I fumble for my pride, closures overrated because compassions overdue—there’s nothing left to take.

A bit of poetry never hurt anybody, right?--

~Every Love Story Has a Way Out~

Half of nobody; have to be half of somebody, so I wait,
Missing pieces they bind us, broken we scramble for hope,
Empty to be filled, something has to fill us, what a state,
Time, like a rope, it twists and turns everything we ever spoke,

Your eyes have grown dull, your smile like steal, like a statue of cryptic emotion—I swear I’m too late,
So pretty in lavender, so pretty in spring, too afraid to notice, so all you do is joke,
I waited and waited, as dreamers often do, but as feet shifted against gritty asphalt I knew it was me I should hate,
Words dissolve into laughter, pain shrinks back every tear, smiling like a portrait, chiming in on cue, and with every elapsed word, I broke,

Scenes from foolish movies, fragments of fanciful plays, paperback stories of fruition, songs that foretold: promised us a further fate,
If only, we could spill out every shoddy word, befuddled becoming the new poised, candor replacing wit, subtleties in smoke,
To be truthful, flesh and bones did promise us human, sentences and words, promised us a right, but no precedence could assure how this would rate,

You deem yourself strong, but strength can be so weak; you think this is the right thing, but you forgot to remember that even a hero is bound to need, and as words squelch a silence that is screaming to speak, eyes can’t deny eyes, and even you start to choke,
If I could sing a thousand emotions, palm every forgotten tear, fill every empty promise, paint over the scratches in every broken dream and undo every single fear—nothing could sate,
We are what we are, it is what it is; but if you would have let me, I would have tired, for what it’s worth—I would have—but all that’s left is splintered hope,
Half of nobody; have to be half of somebody, so I wait.

~Color fails the Colorless~

Words they restrain us, as the proscribed is all that’s needed to say,
Heartbeats they deceive us, as nothing within something can reveal its state,
Moments, like music, drive us by their highs and lows, a game unfit to play,
Empty eyes deceive me, but in the end, a hallowed core will never sate,

Hold it all together; you can’t just slip away,
Hold it all together; everything won’t stay the same,
To tame the current to turn, to teach the sun to be dark, to stop the world because you want it to, a silly notion to embark,

Off the trail, only to be on the trail, out of the way, only to be in the way,
A viscid of beauty, this mask etching with holes, crying for any cover to conceal the hearts fate,
Time it tortures, as day after day, this struggle cannot find its pay,
Like a web of dreams muddled in pain, a web of truth, founded too late,

Hold it all together; you can’t just slip away,
Hold it all together; everything won’t stay the same,
To tame the current to turn, to teach the sun to be dark, to stop the world because you want it to, a silly notion to embark,

As the blind sees no form, the lost no religion, so to the unfeeling love will never sway,
Though faith cannot cease, as it’s convinced this may one day rate,
Nothing, so sorry to be nothing, something, so hopeful to be something, but to be uncertain, this I cannot pray.
These eyes of insuperable measure, this voice of weakened tone—a paradox that leaves me with nothing left to say.

~Excerpt from "Night"~

As the brightened moon makes shadows mold from its light, does this ever wake you, panicked in a fright,
You move from side to side, afraid you just might fear, and in those scarce moments do you wish someone was near,
A hand reaches for water, eyes blinded by the clock, you think “should I go to the bathroom” or should I just lay in mind games and slowly should I rock,
You give into this annoying task, your bony feet slap onto the floor, and behind the creaking bathroom door, the moon sees your face no more,
Alas, this late night furry ends, alas your fidgets are calm, and as you pull the sheets over your head you are too tired to care what’s going wrong,
But the thoughts they torment, so you moan and pray that someday these thoughts might be okay,
And madness turns to exhaustion, exhaustion succumbs to sleep, and in this night your restless dreams will make efforts in your next days work very hard to think...

Prayer: powerful? Useless? Undecided? Yeah….

Every night I lie in bed, shut my eyes and pray. The thing I like about prayer is that nobody has to know what you are praying about, nobody has to know if you are praying for them, it can be completely intimate, just between you and God.

Though I pray diligently each night, and often whisper small prayers throughout my day, to be completely honest, prayer can be frustrating. Sometimes I’ll pray about things for months on end, for years even, and nothing seems to change. At times I feel as though I could yell at the top of my lungs, a chorus of praise and desires flooding the ears of Heaven, and yet, still nothing. That’s why I started keeping a prayer journal.

I think about what it is that I’m praying for, and I write it down on the ivory pages of my journal. I only use the journal a few times a month, as my prayers don’t often change, but many of times the way I pray for something does change, and I will then write down the new way it’s being prayed for, and wait in exuberant expectation (literally) to see how God will work through my prayers.

Lately though…lately I’ve felt discouraged, as though my prayers would do far better shouted into a cave, then voiced up to God. Though this afternoon when I was checking my voicemail, I had received a message from one of my professors, who had been thinking about me and praying for me and she was just calling to tell me that.

I wish I could better explain the feeling that consumed me when I heard those words. She had been praying for me—what better thing could you ask of a person. And this was no person who I talked to on a regular basis, no person who necessarily knew to be praying for me, but she had been. God knew that I’d needed those prayers, and he instilled it into another’s heart to pray for me.

Suddenly I didn’t feel that my prayers were as empty as I’d deemed, suddenly, I began to realize that maybe all the people I’d been praying for needed those prayers, as I’d been needing the prayer, and just because I hadn’t seen direct results of my prayer, in no way meant they were useless.

In Isaiah 40 it asks who can be the consoler of the Lord—obviously no one. It paints that indelible theme that God knows more then we can ever know, and does things that are beyond us ever single second of our lives. Just because we become tired, just because we repeat the same things and just because things don’t always end the way we want them to, doesn’t mean we should cease prayer.

Prayer: powerful! There is not space enough to support why I believe this. And what a joy I find prayer to be, as I lie there each night, talking with God, and not only do I get to talk, but he really listens. Now that is cool.

Fairytale-Shamarytale...if only I could let it go at that!

Sometimes I wish life was a fairytale; that endings were happy, love reciprocated, beauty authentic and dreams went straight to gold. I know it may sound ungrateful, but at times, I wish it just the same.

I will close my eyes and make up stories in my head; the hero will always save the day, and as ridiculous as it may be, my knight and shining armor never fails to whisk me away.

Maybe in real life fairytales look a little different. Maybe in real life a fairytale is having both a mom and a dad who love you, a roof over your head and siblings who make everyone proud, not to mention “you” being the stellar scholar or athlete that never ceases to shine. Though in my opinion, this sounds like a very dull fairytale, despite what goodness it may appear to entail…

I’ve been reading Paradise Lost, thumbing through the dense poetry leaves my mind a whirl, but the concept sticks none the less. The world is fallen, whether we want it to be or not, and God will make something of this fallen place—I have confidence.

Sometimes though, as selfish as it sounds, I wish that people would say how they really felt, and I wish that the truth wouldn’t hurt as badly as it has in the past. I wish people would fight a little more for what they wanted and talk about it a little less. And I wish, that once in awhile, people would chase after you admitting they were wrong—I’d like it if someone surprised me.

Will I ever be Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Belle? I’m guessing no. But sometimes I sure wish…

I suspect I read books because when I’m in that book, I’m somewhere else, when I’m in that book I can feel the characters and be the characters, and for a few select hours I can be divinely beautiful or astonishingly clever, in the turn of a page my ideas can be challenged, and the providence of a seemingly important life is put to the test.

Jane Eyre was a revolutionary for her time, as no women (I have read of) matched her honesty-infested charm, Joe March, a free spirit that loved so hard and so deeply you cannot help but fall in love with her, Jane Bennet was so sweet and so demur, one wants to jump right into the book and force her to show all that she felt, and how can one not fall in love with Cosette? Or feel an odd sense of pain when the Phantom cries about his inability to be loved by another. Literature: so tragic, so beautiful, and so seemingly real. But is it?

I suppose it’s real enough for one to relate, real enough to inspire. But I cannot help but ask, if my life was a book, wouldn’t someone surprise me? It certainly wouldn’t have ended like that.

And though I fear that whoever may be reading this is drowning in the vagueness of all that I share, for something so trivial and public, this is all the thoughts I can express.

Though, I end with this: do not waste your life in fear. Because I think most of us want a little fairytale, and as I do recall, the coward rarely saves the day.

The Ant Charmer: a lemon scented death

--Why make poison in pleasing fragrances, it only gives animals poor scent associations

~ I carry a can of Raid strapped to my waist, because that’s what you do when you live in a jungle of ants. It works quite grandly, I simply bust out the ironically lemon scented poison from the side of my hip, and point the can face to face with the little insects.

Killing ants is not always easy, but someone has to do it. I am not going to lie, there have been times (more then one) that the spray has found its way in my eye, nose and yes, even mouth. Not to mention on my legs and feet, though this holds little weight in the situation because when you have Gerty, Pete, Simon and everyone they’ve ever known crawling up your leg at lightening quick speeds the last thing you focus on is where the poison is going. The only skill is simply to make sure the poison is aimed in such a fashion that their glorious ebony structures stiffen, thus falling on a pile of lifeless ant corpses awaiting the broom or dreaded vacuum to whisk them away to their burial of nothing more then common dust.

Now, if you have not quickly noted, I will be hasty to inform you: reader, I do not care for ants. Do not misunderstand me, it is not that I seek in my daily activities to kill the miniature beasts, but if they get in my way it is only natural that I un-strap the can of Raid and complete my duty. As an apartment renter, a cleanly individual and a female (which I feel gives me some stance in the realm of not liking insects) I find it my duty to extinguish the ghastly creatures, or else they’ll keep breading and eating, and quite possibly explode from a people food overdose, and what a way to go? Gluttony is in no way noble, and is certainly not as glorious as Raid.

What I fail to understand are there methods; for creatures so small they are smart you see. Once my turbo finger violently strikes the Raid nozzle they vanish, and yes, some to their grave, but many back into the cracks and corners of the dingy old wall and carpet. And you see, though I am fully aware that their brains are relative to their actual size, I would still assume that they are small enough to not understand their war against us. One would assume?

Furthermore, what if the ants are out to get us? I wouldn’t put it past the buggers to have a divine conspiracy waiting to be unleashed, screaming to be told. I think those massive ant attacks are a foreshadowing of what’s to come. When you look down on your bedroom floor and see what closely resembles dancing coffee, then look again and see a mutiny of ants, this my friends is the beginning, pretty soon their strategies will work and our chemicals will fail. Pretty soon strapping Raid to my side will only be effective on the decoy ants. That’s it: I’m balming this place, because if Raid won’t work, maybe a thick cloud of poison will. Or better yet, I’ll suck it up and fight them, mono y mono—there has to be a way….yeah, moving (don’t worry, I’m out in three weeks.) Until then I have my lemon scented Raid, maybe I should try the Rainforest Breeze scent next time? ~