Saturday, December 11, 2010

Hi. I went to bed four hours ago. Also I'm twenty.

It is snowing outside.


This is the end of the longest not-blogging stretch since this thing began. Be aware the following post may ramble. I woke up ten minutes ago from a four hour night's sleep, and sandy beaches macaroni and cheese beeswax.

This part is for everyone who works in food service and likes it just a little bit. You have a thankless, essential job. You FEED PEOPLE. If you make coffee, you are arguably even more important. You keep them from killing others early in the morning. You make them happy. If you didn't wash your hands and be sanitary, you could kill them.
I know what you are thinking. Where on earth did that come from. Well, I have worked in food service ever since I started working. I have worked at the State Fair, Perkins, Panda Express, Einstein Bagels, a fancy Greek restaurant, and will soon add Starbucks to that list. Pathetic, I know. And that's just the food service jobs. Also I didn't get fired from any of them.
Point being: I like food service. I like setting food down in front of people or handing it to them and watching their faces light up. When I worked at the Greek place, they had this salad. If that salad were a person, it would be the sort who stops traffic. It had hot grilled salmon on top and all these different colors of fresh greens and veggies on it. When I brought that to hungry people, they looked at me like I was a savior.
On a more serious facet of it, food service provides strange opportunities sometimes to encourage and comfort people. Some of the people I've served were sad. I don't know why. Perhaps I never will. But I had the chance to be kind to them, show them respect and sympathy even without knowing their sorrow. And sometimes I did know it. Even the jobs that have a much shorter customer interaction time give enough time to smile, compliment them, whatever.
Enough of this tangent. Point is: If you work in food service, I don't care what people imply or treat you like, you're important. Somebody has to do it. You may impact them, you may not. You will probably never know. Personally, I like the mystery.

Other thing. I'm twenty today. I know that's not that old, but whatever. It's a fifth of a century, a quarter of my probable life span, two decades, the end of teenagerhood, one year away from legal drinking age. I read somewhere that when you reach twenty, your character is pretty much formed, for better or worse. I agree and disagree both. I do see myself forming a character and developing habits. But I never, ever want to stop changing, to stagnate, to get senile. I want to be curious till the day I drop dead. I want to take an interest in other humans till that day. I want to make compassion a habit that stays with me. I want to create things my whole life, things and art that communicate what words often can't. I want to pay atttention to culture. I'd like to be like those wonderful, alive older people I know who've not lost contact with the world, who care about what goes on in it and why. And that won't happen unless I keep it up now, today, this very precious second, because that's all I've got.
Credit where credit is due, now. Maybe you know who Michael "Eyedea" Larsen was, maybe not. If you do, you're probably thinking come on, he's old news, that was October. Well, hush up for a minute. He was an emcee from St. Paul, a rapper/spoken word artist. He died in October at age 29. By his own estimate, he left between 300 and 400 notebooks full of writing. His lyrics tell me he thought existentially, compassionately, intelligently. Some people go through life never ever asking why, just how. Here's the paradox. In my opinion, if you don't know why, how is pointless. He asked why. I don't know that he found an answer. That makes me want to cry.
For no reason, hearing he was dead bothered me more than I expected, almost more than it should have. I think it was the senselessness of it. All death is like that, but the thought of all his potential and how I'm not sure he found comfort or peace makes me angry. Yes, angry, what's more, angry at God. Angry in a silly way, because yes I know and believe He's got a plan, a reason. My experience tells me that. But sometimes I don't understand. WHY. why whywhywhywhy. Please don't tell me "but He knows better than you, He's sovereign, He's God" I KNOW THAT. sometimes I've got to ask why. There are things I do not understand, because I am finite, and He is not.

What I'm saying here is, the pat answers do not kill the pain. And how dare I write that about a man I did not know, who died intoxicated and life-threateningly, manically, depressedly sleep-deprived of the combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. I dare. that's how. Music and writing and art allow you to know someone you've never seen, who may have died before you were born, who may live a thousand miles from you. It makes me realize the incredible amount lost when someone dies, all the personhood that no longer keeps us company, welcome or not.

Death angers me. That's all.
In the end, though, I must not stay angry. That's counter-productive and wrong. I have to learn what I can from him and keep it. Follow the example he and countless other people have left, and in that way, they keep living. Their work and art and love outlive them.

Rosie Carlson. You once wrote a post about how some people who are not Christians are kinder and more loving than some that are. I concur. It's just a fact. Love them all anyway. Love them because He first loved me.

the end.

-me

Friday, August 13, 2010

I haven't mush to say. Great way to start a post, no?

So I was biking back home from work the other night, and it hit me that it was not unbearably hot. Not just that, the mugginess was gone. It was like I could almost smell snow. I hear you. Lucie, you say, it's August. you are insane. Yeah, whatever. I felt it, I tell you. And the lightning was flashing all over the place, and I raced the storm home, and you know what? School gives me mixed feelings.

I hate not having a life. During school, I mean. As Radiohead so wisely says, you do it to yourself. It ain't healthy.

There are deeper things on my brains right now, I promise. But sometimes I have to write about seasons changing. Because it means life changes too. The only freaking constant is change. And God. Fortunately.

And I can't put all the deeper things into words sometimes. As someone who loves writing and finding the perfect word or turn of phrase, that is sad and good at the same time. Some things don't belong on the internet, they don't belong in the black on white cage of words on a page.

it just belongs in feelings. they're painful and gorgeous and sometimes unreliable but life would be deathly boring without them. And there's some weird ache right now. Don't know why, maybe it's autumn, things dying. Or there's no reason at all except the world being fundamentally screwed up. Not permanently, mind you.

This is why Sigur Ros hit it big, people. They bottled ache, feeling, longing....right. Ima go listen to them. and scheme for Give Em' Epic.
and be a little emo. I have my rights, and one of them is to slight emo-ness.

so long.
-Lu

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

daggers make a dichotomy

I cannot get these two songs out of my head for anything. I think it's been two weeks at least.


Daggers, by The Chariot

Take it all back
Is this the fashion, "Medic" painted on a white dress or is this the formal crowd?

Where is the battle?
Absent from wealthy minds and far from all concerned?
Now take your places and may peace breed.
Fight your war. Old men, keep dreaming of battles for young men to fight.

War, it's only skin deep.

Make your spine just like your pride and if you find a heart I hope it bleeds grace.

Sell "peace" as limited time

For "limited", I say, is a choice so fight. Take your voices down. Tear it down.


the part of that song where everything quits except the bass, the drums and the clapping haunts my dreams, i tell you.



Dichotomy, by Becoming The Archetype

In this hour the tower shall fall
Initially they rationalized with futile speculations
Which brought about their ultimately fatal calculations
They sewed their own eyes shut
To protect them from the light
Closed the doorway of their minds
Barred and sealed it tight
Their foolish hearts were darkened
Their vacant minds deceived
The lies that they exchanged for truth
Became all that they believed
They exchanged the incorruptible
For the image of fallen man
Worshiped created rather than creator
The image rather than his hand

The heavens wait in silence
For the coming of the end
As man perfects his own imperfection
Destruction closes in

In the grave they chose to make their beds
And now all that they've created
Comes crashing down upon their heads
Death is waiting
In this hour the tower shall fall.

(i sincerely wish for a human voice on the other end this time.)

-Me

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I like songs I can't understand. And I have tan lines.


Cyberspace, old buddy. Missed you. What's that? Where have I been?


Sleeping. Getting rid of the guilty feeling "I'm not doing homework" that I've been living with day and night waking and sleeping for nine months.

It's the strangest thing in the world. School dictated everything I did more intensely than it ever had before, and now it's gone.

THREE CHEERS. I have remembered how to spend a happy, productive day doing whatever the heck I want to. Read: knitting, READING READING READING hanging out working designing sitting on the front porch and creeping with sarah/rachel.

I'm residing in St. Paul for the summer. Come invade: woman cannot live by creativity and philosophy alone, though I deeply enjoy trying.
These is enormous value to just existing.

Song of the second: ZOL, by BLK JKS (that being the song I didn't understand. You know why I like songs like that? Well you should tell me, cuz' I'm not quite sure.)

Later. Someday.
-Gyp

Thursday, March 18, 2010

An owde to ze threeft stores.




Let us hear it for the thrift store
oh secondhand place
you ruin me for malls
you cause my wallet to rejoice

You contain so many things
Shoulder pads
Stirrup pants
Acid wash jeans
Counterfeit handbags
Mugs shaped like evil dwarves
These things make me die inside

But you bring me back to life with weird handkerchiefs
and gypsy scarves
and ancient silverware
and new skinny jeans for three dollars
and knee-high leather moccasin boots
and a REALLY FUNNY cross-section
of the homo sapiens

You are the greenest thing going
And I like you a lot

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Basshunter, urban outfitters,yelling at hipsters,and other deep things.





this is jimi. (hendrix) you knew that, didn't you.


I sit here with my feet on a warm dryer, in which is a pair of freshly dyed lime green shorts, waiting to be pinstriped with a fabric pen. also a v-neck t-shirt.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to peer pressure. Things like v-necks, and Switchfoot, and Tim Burton, enjoy a period of huge popularity, often due to real worth and merit and artistry, and then become uncool. Why? Sometimes, yes, it is due to a real decline in their quality. More likely, they are "old".

Here is my thought:
so what.
WHO CARES?
why should that decrease their worth?

If you claim to dislike something because other people dislike it, because it's old, not because you have decided you personally are tired of it, or that it isn't good for you:

1. you feel like a two-face (because you really do still like it.)
2. you begin a (small) (dangerous) habit of letting your peers or parents or profs dictate your loves.

I am not saying you have to always like the same things, or that you should love a store only because the rest of the populace doesn't, or that we should not investigate new music or styles or artists or ideas or kinds of washing machines. And yes, I know the opinions of our culture and society influence us somewhat whether we like it or know it or not. You are steeped in your era. Yes, you. Yes, me.


yours truly is sick of this snobbery, this silliness I am guilty of myself.
of throwing the baby out of the bathwater of cool because he's getting gray hairs.
of the feeling you get when you lose sight of your own tastes.
If you like Basshunter, or Urban Outfitters, or Nike, or polka-dot socks, or boot-cut jeans, or cowboy hats, or hardcore, or even that Delilah radio show, ok. I like a few of those myself. you can figure out which ones on your own. as for yelling at hipsters, look up toothpaste for dinner.

Liking something for what it is worth, because it made you cry, or think on God, or remember, or tap your foot.....well, just try it. and if you do that already, thank you for existing. you're out there, i know.

Songs of the dia: Red House, by Jimi Hendrix, naturally, and Watching the Planets, by The Flaming Lips.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

mreeb.(s) also squee.

I was tired and annoyed in the brain the other day, and realized how long it had been since i had blogged. possibly a factor, since writing lets out all the crabby juices.

GUESS WHAT. ITS SPRING. heather says it isn't till the twentieth, but heather is shorter than me, so she can't be right.

There has been a lot of Hard Times lately. meaning the place. we saw a fellow walking in with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, no apparent reason.

you know how i know its spring? Number one, it is rainy. Rain after months of snow tells my brain to run the slide show of squishy grass and camp shetek and lazy excursions with the windows down and a distinct lack of school. Also, when I walked out of Middlebrook today, by the door was a patch of all the cigarette butts people had smoked, buried in the snow, and forgotten. Since that substance melted,they are all living in a big commune on the sidewalk now. I laughed.
hey, did you know there's this girl who recycled cigarette butts into clothing? www.coolhunting.com/style/mantis-recycled. too lazy to fix that link.

song of day. an old old old oldie. the shadow proves the sunshine, switchfoot. or as my pater calls them, twitchfoot.

so long. there might be more coherent writing later. when there are cats in my lap.
-Gyp

Thursday, January 7, 2010

ON the SUBJECT of WEIRDNESS and MUSIC. preferably combined.


Weirdness of most shapes and I are friends. Good ones. Longtime mates. And my love affair with music.....music. music. i like you a lot.

Once upon a time, I could not understand how people could like music wherein the lyrics are growlsy screams. Then one day, not so long ago, in fact more like a few months ago, I told people to post their favorite song on my timeeater wall. Someone posted Underoath's (see above) video for their song Writing on the Walls. I watched it, more out of boredom than otherwise. It. did. something. strange. to. me. I liked it. Why?

we doesn't really know, precious.

short months later, i have addicted myself. PARTICULARLY TO DEVIL WEARS PRADA. yip. Oh crunchy thundery raw goodness. also showbread. they deserve their own post. never mind. later. I am new to this yet, but something tells me we are gonna be friends.

Here's my guess. Somewhere inside me, something was tired of normalcy and fake-it-till-you-make-it and non-rebellion and easy listening and Thomas Kinkade.It hit the spot, that's all I can say. It let something loose that had been percolating for years,and grew, and grew. A good, realistic thing who doesn't like being put into words. If you join me in mine addiction, you may know exactly what I mean. If not, well, maybe the scream bug will bite you someday.

Christianity. Is often not a pretty or an easy thing. Screamy, crunchy, pessimistically-optimistic music expresses that. So. WHaatever. To those who think such soundwaves are not music, perhaps your brain and emotions and life haven't tuned your ears to hear. or maybe you just don't like it. whatevs. I won't make you listen. Just think about it, is all I ask.

here's to Underoath.

-Signed, Gyp.