Monday, October 31, 2005

Do you look in the mirror?

-or-
An Open Letter to Def Leppard:
We do not come see you because we're curious what you've "been working on lately." We come to see you because we want to hear all the singles. Over and over again. Period. Thanks for "Love Bites." "Foolin'" was a nice touch. Maybe we left before "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Still.

We didn't get our $1's worth. Not even with the rousing cover of Badfinger's "No Matter What," a personal favorite that brings back memories of Larkin, my now-deceased freshman-year college roommate.

Pyromania? Hands-down favorite album of 1983. Still remember singing tracks word-for-word in the showers at summer camp with my best friend, Shannon. Hysteria? Concert in 1987--maybe the best concert I ever went to. Still remember being with Shannon once again (we were die-hard DL fans), our legs dangling over the ledge at the Odessa, TX Coliseum, clutching the railing for a better view.

2005 at Schmirnoff? Not so much. Not even the light show measured up. Company was awesome. Show... yeah. Not so much.

"Rock of Ages." Can you think of a better way to open the show than, "Gunter glieben glauchen globen... All right. I got something to say... It's better to burn out. Than fade away..." I didn't think so.

Long live rock 'n'roll. You betcha.
Then again, what can you really expect when you get four tickets for $4.20?

Rock of Ages. Rock. Of. Ages.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Be the change.

All good things must come to an end. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. Change is in the wind. Time changes all things.

Nothing remains the same, no matter how much you might want it to. Every day, every second, we are changing. Gravity is pulling. Life is pushing. The planet is moving and we move with it. Moments are frozen in photographs, in memories. But, often, what we see in our mind’s eye, in the printed photograph (or, more likely, in the digital one on our computer) is a reminder of what is past, what has changed.

Some change we welcome. Some change we recognize as being a vital necessity in moving forward, in simply continuing to live. And some, we beg for a rewind.

There’s no rewinding life. There isn’t even a pause button.

“Don’t ever change." A typical yearbook sign-off. Does anyone really want that? Would we want to be who we were at seventeen forever? Would we want those around us to truly not change? I don’t want to be who I was at seventeen, or even twenty-seven. Yet I can remember moments from both of those years of recognizing change and desperately wanting everything to remain the same. I thank God it didn't. I know exactly where I would be if nothing had changed from when I was seventeen. It wouldn't be pretty.

We can't look back at all change and say that. Sometimes things change and we don't know why, and maybe we never will, but perhaps it's because we can’t see the full picture yet. Maybe we will in the moment before death. Maybe not.

But just as there is no pause and no rewind, there is also no fast forward. We can't see the future. So maybe the changes that come our way are meant to be. Maybe without them, we'd never get to wherever it is we are supposed to be.

I have a ring with this quote from Gandhi inscribed on it: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Perhaps, at the end of the day, that is the change we should pursue, and the change we should embrace. Our own conscious changes to make the world a better place than it was before we came along. Even if it's just our own small world. If we approached each day wondering how we might make life a little better for someone else, for those we care for (and for those we don't - a difficult, but important, task) instead of thinking about how we might make our own lives better, I think our own lives would, inherently, unmistakably, be better.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

a short conversation

Me: I need a day off so I can figure out my life.
Lexi: ...I think that might take a little more than a day.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

like angel wings covering the sky



Friday, October 21, 2005

Trust 2.0

[begun 10.19.05]

I had a bizarre thought today and I'm still in the process of having it, so bear with me as I work it out here. I've been anti-bloggy lately, but had a surge of blogginess so I'm taking advantage of it. Here goes:

Is it possible that Trust actually = Distrust?

My friend K left for Germany today, where she'll meet up with her boyfriend who left a few days ago. When we were speaking on the phone a couple of nights ago, she in Atlanta, I on my front porch sipping a glass of wine with my cat (I was sipping the wine, not the cat, she was just on the porch with me), we talked about how much nicer it is to travel with someone than alone.

"But," K said, "I just sleep the whole time anyway, so it doesn't really matter."

"Yes, but when you're at the airport, there's no one to watch your stuff if you have to go to the bathroom or get some water or a soda."

"Good point."

It wasn't that long ago that we'd simply turn to the person closest to us at the airport -- no matter who that person was; we were no respecters of people when we needed our things watched -- and say, "Would you mind watching my things for me?" And they'd smile and nod and you'd leave them with all of your personal belongings while you trotted off in search of a diet Coke. And often when you'd return, they would ask you to return the favor. 9/11 changed all of that. If someone asked you to watch his/her things today, you would not only likely refuse, you might call Security. (I'd actually probably say yes, but that's a different story.)

All this is backstory. Because my first thought after that conversation was that it's sad how little we can trust each other today; circumstances of life have dictated that we don't. A select group of terrorists have mandated that we can't. So when we do put our trust in someone, is it really a matter of checks and balances? Are we trusting them so they will trust us? Are we watching their things so they will watch ours? Does true trust exist, and, if so, what does it look like?

If asked, I would categorize myself as a very trusting person. I tend to believe the best in people until proven otherwise. And then I still believe the best in them. And I believe it again. And again. Until proven enough times and then I walk away. As I posted months ago in my 100 things about me post -- I give people a lot of strikes. But once I count them out, it's pretty permanent. The fact is, I rarely reach that permanent point, though I could make a pretty good list of people who have stricken me from their lists. But I digress. And that's probably my next blog posting.

So when someone says to me, "I'm telling you the truth," or "Trust me," I'm much less likely to believe it's true or trust them. If it really were true, would they feel the need to iterate it? When I was teaching, I would always tell my students to strike sentiments like, "It is a true fact that blah blah blah," because if they are stating it as fact, we believe it to be so.

All this (maybe) brings me back to my original thought: Do we trust others because we have to? Because not to is much worse than choosing to believe that what others present as fact is, in fact, fact? Is there any true trust left in the world, and are there any truly trustworthy people? Or does Trust actually = Distrust?

my favorite building

reflected in another building as I walked back to the office last night. yay, camera phones. such awesome quality...

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Photos, 10.19.05

Posted a day after the fact.


The sun setting over Beltline. My fascination for sunsets never fades.


Me, reflected in my steering wheel. I don't look very happy, but I wasn't unhappy. Just blurry, perhaps.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Wow.

I just went to my browser to type in www.pandora.com and somehow typed www.braindead.com. Awesome.

and we all keep scurrying

"He wakes up in the morning
does his teeth, bite to eat, and he's rolling.
Never changes a thing.
The week ends, the week begins...

And all the little ants are marching
red and black antennas waving..."

- Ants Marching, Dave Matthews Band

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Is this just me?

Does anyone else ever have a day where everything's going fine, you're in a perfectly good mood, then you get this weird feeling of being upset or anxious or frustrated and you have no clue why? And you track back through the last hour or so to see what put you in that mood and can't find anything?

It's probably just me.

Fine.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Starbucks, my addiction.

Does coffee ever taste like dirt to anyone else? And when it does, why do we still drink it? Obsessively?