renewables

"There is only one effective, sustainable way to produce “green jobs,” and that is with a fixed, durable, long-term price signal that raises the price of dirty fuels and thereby creates sustained consumer demand for, and sustained private sector investment in, renewables."

(Thomas L. Friedman

"Is It Weird Enough Yet?"

 NYTimes.com Op-Ed column

September 13th, 2011)

World.

Listening to "Pet Sounds" and thinking about how brilliant people are.

 

Sometimes I try to prevent myself from rediscovering TinyMixtapes.com, but then I accidentally find it again and spend precious seconds minutes hours lifetimes wanting to live, eat, and breathe these people and playlists.  Some favorites....

"My decadence is bigger than yours"

 Hard to go wrong with some Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Nine Inch Nails, and the Rolling Stones.

"You Say Potato, I Say Get the Fuck on the Dance Floor"

I'm in love.

Ellie Goulding, Brazilian Girls, Biggie, then some Justice, N.E.R.D., The Whip, Justin Timberlake.

"Strippers like good songs, too"

1.  Tom Waits, 2. Norah Jones, 3. Leonard Cohen, 4. Portishead...and we haven't even gotten to Kings of Leon, the White Stripes, or Emiliana Torrini.

"Stop being passive-aggressive and fucking hit me"

The Misfits, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, and lots of goodness.

"Music to Write Home About"

Yes yes yes yes YES.  I agree - expect a letter, 'cause I'm writing it.

Sufjan Stevens.  Deertick.  The Clash.  Granddady.  Bright Eyes.  Pavement.  Bob Dylan.

"I wanna fuck my roommate: the story of in-house sexual frustration"

These groups could easily compose a soundtrack to my life.

The Kinks.  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Feist.  Roy Orbison.  Yo La Tengo.  Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz.  Radiohead.  Mos Def.   

Other notable playlists:

"All I want to do is smoke a blunt, listen to dubstep, and have sex with you"

"I want to strap some headphones on my belly and blare some tunes to get my fetus excited to enter this world"

"Harsh noise guy meets indie pop princess; needs to prove accessible music sensibility"

"I'm a closet christian dying to come out"

"Hipsters, stop acting like you're in hell."

I think if I submitted a playlist request at this moment in time, it might be something like "I want too many things. Like to save the world."

Anyway.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

(Mother Teresa)

mine

my mind is havoc, teasing this scapegoat body that most label as mine

Repeat.

March 12th, 2007

I couldn’t sleep last night. That’s the worst, isn’t it? Lying there, wide awake, with nothing to do except think about how you REALLY should be sleeping right now and how tired you’re going to be in the morning. I know it happens to everyone.
I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about Adam; missing him and the idea of him. Missing having someone to care about like that, to wonder about his days and to leave little insignificant surprises on his desk. I was thinking about how absolutely pathetically desperate I am for that connection. However awful it seems, it almost doesn’t matter who the boy is. That’s terrible, but true. Recently I’ve been falling fast and hard for just about anyone who will reciprocate it, no matter how serious they are about starting something.
Anyways, I wrote three little poems/scribbles/whatevers. Scribbled them in my food journal, which has been woefully neglected recently save for lovesick poems and bold “fuck you”s.

I
I came to you for your long hugs and willingness,
Your twisted sheets and floppy Hair.
I came to you, let you so far in.
We saw what’s real, together.
But now I’ve forgotten
What is real?
This ripping, aching sob?
This jealousy, regret, sadness?
Nothing is real anymore,
not even the floppy hair.

II
We shared.
We shared our favorites, our dreams, our hopes.
We whispered randoms until we fell asleep,
Lips still forming.
We were real, silly and quite weird.

We stopped all that;
It meant nothing to one.
We stopped all that.

III
The cold walk, the sweatpants the anticipation.
The warm room, always music.
The warm boy, the warm voice, the warm guitar.
Touchy soft floppy swishy tangled legs and muffled.
Accepted.
“What do you need?”
ridiculous line drawings, funny only to two.
Two on the inside, two on the inside
Come back! I think we have the same mind…
Calling each other by our first names, our line drawings.
By whispers and gasps
And letting go, sinking into each other, falling,
calm loose soft sleep.
Morning glasses, music, smiles, classes, you made me so late again.
Repeat.

Lucky.

I've started to question- not just raise my hand in class when I don't understand what the professor is lecturing at me, but to really question who I am, what I am a part of, what I know, and how I want to live my life.  I've started to gain a bit more awareness of how my decisions weave into a complicated network of actions and choices and people and lives and futures and truths.  I've begun to see many things differently.  My values, words, activities, and thoughts are very different from what they have been in the past, and will probably continue to shift as I learn and question more in my life.

I'm learning what the phrase ESSE QUAM VIDERI really means (the Latin phrase I first encountered as a member of the Archons at Kenyon College).  It's become very different for me to just wear the phrase on an American Apparel shirt as opposed to actually living it.

I've started to really think about what I value and why I value it and how I incorporate (or fail to incorporate) my values into my day-to-day life.  Maybe I'm up in my head too much, or developing a debilitating guilt complex, or isolating myself, or acting like a crazy liberal college kid out of touch with the “real world,” or beginning to live in a way that doesn't mesh well with other lifestyles and choices.  Maybe I'm doing all of those things, but additionally taking steps to figure out who I am.

I made a list yesterday in the back of my Spanish class notebook titled “Things I Can Do.”  I wrote it mostly to identify things I can do that I am proud of as opposed to things I can do that I either don’t care about or am not proud of.  I made it very quickly.

Things I Can Do

-          boil an egg

-          identify sassafras

-          smile

-          use a spade

-          calm a crying baby

-          do laundry using washing and drying machines

-          sing all the words to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”

-          question

-          manipulate SPSS

-          fix a small issue with a toilet

-          buy a Mountain Dew from a vending machine

-          clean a bathroom

-          navigate the internet

-          break a sweat while sweeping

-          use a Phillips screwdriver

-          read newspapers, street signs, academic journal articles, books…

-          write papers for classes

-          recognize that I am very, very lucky