keep your eyes on her.

voices from the dead.

the other day, my uncle left me a voicemail.  he’d been cleaning out a shelf in the closet in his spare bedroom and came across an old Panasonic four track cassette recorder.  after a few attempts, he got it to play and the tape that was currently loaded was a recording my parents had made of themselves circa 1976.  it’s so strange to hear their voices, especially my dad’s, after all this time.  listening to it, it’s completely evident where my sense of humor comes from— my dad does most of the talking and seems completely comfortable in his role as deejay, as if he’s the host of some late nite talk radio show.  even just hearing the lingo he uses— “right on”, “cool cat”— is enough to make me laugh.

danielle was over last night and listened to some of it and was saying how I sound just like my mom.  I don’t hear it but maybe I will someday.  I used to not believe people when they’d tell me I look like her but I’m seeing it more and more these days.

and ultimately, we do become our parents in a lot of ways.  I just hope I’m able to be half as good of a person as either of them were.

you have tamed me

I’m not sure why, because it’s not one of my favorite songs by her, but Regina Spektor’s “Baobabs” has been stuck in my head since yesterday.  woke up today with it still in my head…

You have tamed me
Now you must take me
How am I supposed to be
I don’t have my thorns now
But I feel them sprouting
They’ll grow right through if I don’t watch them
They’ll grow right through even if I watch them
And a sunset couldn’t save me now
These baobabs, and baobabs, and baobabs some more
But you can’t outweight fate
You have tamed me
Now you must take me
T-t-ta-t-t-ta-t-t-ta-tt-ta-t-t-ta-tt-ta-t-t-ta-t-t-ta
And I wouldn’t raise my child inside the city anyway
They grow up too savvy
And they grow up too fast
And they know about buying shit
And they know about sex
And they know about investment banking
And also about brokerage burns
And they know about the numbers
And they know about the words
And they know about the bottom lines
And also about stones
And they know about careers
And about the real deals
And they all grow up and become people’s people with people skills
But you have tamed me
Now you must take me
How am I supposed to be
I don’t have my thorns now
You have tamed me
Now you must take me
How am I supposed to be
I don’t have my tho-or-or-or-orns

april is the cruellest month...

actually, I think it was february.  that whole month just sucked so much… cats gone, boyfriend MIA, awful weather.  but march and april are definitely not far behind.

it was so nice to get away from things for awhile and even being back was great for a short time but now that I’m back and firmly entrenched in the day to day, it’s the same old shit.

list

–noun

who doesn’t love a good list?  to-do lists, grocery lists, lists of books to read, guest lists… what would life be without them?

this probably just gives away my awful secret— that I’m a big honking nerd deep down inside— but it gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure to hand-write a list and then cross things off it, one by one, until it’s just a piece of paper full of scratched out words.  it makes me feel, I don’t know, accomplished somehow.  I would definitely put this on my top 10 list of satisfying things, if such a list existed.

what’s your favorite list?