I wish there were words to describe my utter bliss
and happiness and joy and exhilaration and ecstasy that THE NEW COLDPLAY ALBUM HAS ARRIVED. IT IS IN MY ITUNES WAITING TO BE PLAYED A MILLION TIMES ON REPEAT.
PRAISE JESUS.
Seriously, I'm nostalgic about this. I started college after a summer of constant Viva La Vida playing and now I'm ending college with this album. It's like the parentheses of my college career. ahhh. I can barely type that without some tears!!
obviously there will be updates once I listen to the whole thing and decide on favorite songs/lyrics. but for now all I want to do is snuggle up in bed with this lulling my to sleep. so that's what I'm going to do right now :)
Happy Coldplay Day!
The Peace of Wild Things
I've been enjoying Wendell Berry poems lately, specifically his Sabbath poems, which are occasioned from his walks on his days of rest (which is a beautiful way to birth a poem, if you ask me).
And I love this one. The last line of this absolutely pounds against me - because it is true and I'm challenged to remember that.
I hope you enjoy this one too....click here to hear him read it. (Also the last section of this one is astonishing)
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The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
a late-night poetry editing session
and the heart-ache to be in Nica that I experienced today led me to this poem. I wrote this one two summers ago and am thinking of ways to improve it now. But I like the memory of it.
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thunderstorm in Cedro Galan
Everything is falling into puddles.
It’s the rain that drops so heavy
on the these tin roofs that I fear
the skyline eroding,
or imagine it being torn
like a cat’s claws through curtains,
strings of it collapsing
into the carpet of dirt
and then trampled
and then buried.
The storm has brought
the power down
the way the mothers make dinner here,
some mighty force behind their hands
grinding, transforming things
into what they weren’t before.
Flattened tortilla shells,
black beans,
avocado soup
materializes like the darkness –
abundant and from nothing.
around me, small fingers
are threading themselves into moonlight,
like they could pull themselves up into it
even with everything falling down.
This is what I love:
how my skin is melting from my bones
with the weight of this country, how I can
touch Nicaragua’s spine, sharp and naked,
how I can rest in bed at night,
sweat lacing the insides of my knees
and weep to the sound of rain,
sad and synchronistic.
and what I love is that even among
this groaning there are the little ones
who will braid my hair, who hold my hand
with sticky-mango-juice-coated-moonlight-moth fingers.
They will sit on my lap while the rain pounds
and hum little songs in Spanish.
Their mothers will watch them squirm,
craving to be playing soccer,
and look up at me with their familiar eyes
brown and so dark that I have the sensation
of even my veins swelling up like the river
behind their neighborhood, too full.
worn as if it had been a shell
I just read this nine times in a row. and think it is lovely and heartfelt and beautiful. (via Picker)
from “Adam’s Curse” by W.B. Yeats
terrifying tunes
I love Halloween season! I've always been fascinated by all things spooky slash supernatural slash magical (I know, sort of weird...) and so I think this time of year is super fun.
Here are four not-so-scary songs whose titles remind me of the holiday that is upon us.
1) Haunted by Leagues (LOVE this song...this band opened for Mat Kearney and I got to chat with them after the show. they rock)
2) Ghost by Parachute (my favorite song about stalking. so catchy)
3) Haunted by Taylor Swift (because a playlist isn't complete without Tswizzle)
4) Walking with a Ghost by Tegan & Sara (takes me back to my high school days. so punky and high energy)
a person-poem
yesterday I was doing work at my favorite little coffee shop and then this elderly couple came in. I was struck by how beautiful their interaction was that I stopped working and took out a piece of paper and sketched out this poem.
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He leads her in, through a maze
of off-colored couches and armchairs
to a table near the register,
and sits her down in a seat
and maneuvers her feet flat against the floor
and rubs her arm and says,
I’ll be right there. I’ll be right back.
She sits dead-still like a tree
which moves in small bits at the touch
of wind – the rustle of an arm,
a small flinch of eyelid as the window a/c shushes
air across the still pockets of age
that settle on her cheeks,
and on all the corners of her body.
He orders a chocolate milkshake and slice
of cake, sits it down in front of her
and spins the straw around the frosted glass
while she stares the same stare,
and he wraps his creased fingers around hers
and moves her hands in his as though
they were the same branch, the same tree.
She opens her mouth with the sound
like fabric rustling, and lips moving with
effort, a stale repose laying still
across her face. There you go, there you go,
that’s a good bite, there he says and shuffles
the fork to her lips, smiles with all the effort
of wind, a gust or breeze that settles just so.
He wipes crumbs from her face, he lifts her
from her place and thanks the woman
At the register who calls them by name,
And who watches them leave, the same
Way - an arm beneath her elbow, a hand
Against her back, a pause to open the door
and there you go, just like that.
She’ll settle into the car seat
and watch trees, hum quietly at the radio
While they pass the streets she used to know,
And they’ll turn toward home and she will
Not know to thank him for anything when
They get inside, or to ask him questions
When he tells her his thoughts.
He’ll love her with the endurance
Of pulling up her socks
every morning, and she’ll be a tree –
rooted in the same, unchanging season
where the wind rustles the bloom,
her memory, and shades the ground the tree’s in:
of two roots promising not to move.
girl power
here are some of my favorite female-as-the-lead-singer-songs of the moment:
(thanks for this one, Eric!)
possibly our house-theme song of the moment....
