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Uploading pictures regularly to Flickr. |
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One night after the others had gone to bed I stayed up late talking with Kathy. We talked about what it means to become yourself, to be yourself, how to move from one place to another, how to go through changes honestly when it feels like the rest of the world would rather keep you where you are. Gazing at the stars, Kathy said, "It's hard to be yourself when you're around people who don't know how to be themselves."
— August 15, 2004 |
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"With this understanding I am learning to be more gentle with myself. Don't try to do it all, just do what you can and feel good about that. Allow space for mystery and serendipity to come in. Allow for accidents and mistakes, for time spent doing nothing, for experience."
— the ever lovely Keri Smith
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. — Albert Einstein
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"Can You" by Christian Barter.
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I can be reached at romanlily ~at~gmail.com. Or you can join the notify list here. |
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August 11, 2005
Subway music
This spring I wanted to give myself a little late birthday gift, so I bought an iPod. I customized it with a Rumi quote on the back (corny, I know), and admired its sleek styling and listened to it occasionally in the car.
But I didn't really use it much until last week, when I accepted a freelance assignment downtown and started getting back on the Atlanta subway for my commute.
I'm struck by how different the commute is when I'm carrying the iPod. It somehow transforms the train station from a depressing, dirty waiting room to the set of a Wim Wenders film.
How this happens feels like a little mystery to me.
One morning last week I was waiting for a train into town, watching people glide down the escalator and shuffle off with their briefcases and their lunchbags. At the time I was listening to Kate and Anna McGarrigle, French-Canadian sisters who sing these marvelous old folk songs with deep, hymn-like resonance. (They are actually Rufus Wainwright's mother and aunt, if you must know, and yes, I originally came across them because I was basically stalking Rufus Wainwright.) Kate and Anna were singing, and the people were coming off the escalator, and I was astounded by how composed and beautiful everyone looked, moving slowly onto the platform in their fresh clean clothes and groomed hair.
Later, waiting for the second train to take me one stop north, Kate and Anna sang a little waltz, and I found myself dancing along slowly, in the most subtle way, shifting my weight from my heels to my toes very casually. I doubt anybody noticed, but it felt strangely satisfying, surrounded there by everyone else waiting for the train lights to come down the tunnel. A dance that only I knew about.
I was wearing a favorite new sequined skirt; it seemed appropriate to dance at least a little.
The current ad campaign running in Atlanta's main subway station at Five Points happens to be a campaign for the iPod. So sometimes I wait for a train, listening to my iPod while standing in front of an iPod poster. I have yet to break into the type of crazy stylized dancing you see in the iPod ads, though.
This morning, I rode in on the train listening over and over to a song by REM called "Hairshirt." This undersung number is probably one of their most beautiful, delicate and inscrutable bits of music, off of 1990's Green, which was the album REM released just before they fumbled the ball, started making terrible music, and gave away their rock legitimacy forever. (But I digress.)
The music is mournful and soulful and ethereal:
I could walk into this room
and the waves of conversation are enough
to knock you down in the undertow
All my life I've searched for this
Here I am, here I am
in your life
It's a beautiful life
my life
It's a beautiful life
your life
Everyone boarded the train, and from my seat by the window I looked down below at the highway running parallel to the train line. I saw drivers in their cars on their way to the office, mothers in the cars with their children, everyone in their own little universe, moving along at sixty miles per hour. And the sun baptizing all of us. I saw a clean-cut man in a minivan wearing a bowtie and a jacket. I saw a working man driving a painter's van. All of us there in the morning, obeying the instinct to rise and work, to care for the children, to head into the office, trusting the roads to take us where we needed to go.
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