Last night I say Imogen Heap at the Boulder Theater for the live taping of eTown. She was incredible, enchanting, odd and held such a capacity for touching deep chords. While my favorite continues to be her well-loved single Hide and Seek, I think the most beautiful piece she played was from her new album Ellipse. It’s called Little Bird.
Thanks to Nichole for adding this video to my FB wall this morning.
Today was one of the most beautiful snowy days I’ve seen in Boulder. My office on the east side of the city faces west towards the Flatirons, a strange and beautiful cropping of Rocky Mountain foothills that jut up and tilt towards their “fourteener” kin. Today, as I looked out after a cold ride to work and even colder walk from car to building, I smiled one of those memory-inspired smiles. It is as if the cold snap in the air and sparkling white atop pine and rooftop alike threw a part of me back to when I was young, tramping through the Michigan snow and feeling the quiet solitude that seeing beauty at that age brings.
And then, when I left work it was another recognition altogether. It was a feeling of duty, of hassle, of perseverance above all else, of just making it through the constant bite and threat of it, the cold. The cold. The halls of our house, whichever house it ever was, were always drafty with it – the winter chill that could keep me awake at night, the bitter insults that rattled the walls beneath to keep me awake at night, the regret for past and fear of future that kept me awake at night, the quiet solitude that never knowing what to expect at that age brings.
When I face the icy cold, a rare type of winter weather here in Boulder, so often I catch myself taking on a funny automatic stiffening of my spine, hunch of my shoulders, and set to my face. If I am not careful, every obstacle becomes another reason to resent the world, another force against which to tighten for fear of the blow, for fear of the layers of skin and heart and breath that may so easily be broken by the cold snap, deadened by the frost. So many things stiffen with the weight of the cold. The trees, the locks, my jaw.
I have heard that our sense of smell has the most power of all the senses to conjure memory, to unwind wounds, to bring calm or raise the flags of danger. But today, I am in awe of the power of weather to destroy, to nourish, to uplift, to oppress and to recall. It is a beautiful power even if the things which it conjures are not always so beautiful.
Sliding up and slipping out. Of bed. Of movement. Of sweetness. Of grace. A fall, but not far, the sidewalks twisted barely listed in the yellow pages, you are almost gone. It is a funny moment when the stars seem to bounce light all the way to the street, when a smile from the 90’s seems to warm my bed, and a waft of that musky cheap too-popular-then cologne stops me in my well-shod, much-aged tracks.
I think I know how faces fall, how lines set in and postures stoop. I think I know where the beauty goes. Even the most beautiful things turn on their heels, fall silent, keep figure instead of fires burning. Even the eyes that well with something special and shining can beam wet with a wonder that slides. Slides up and slips out.
Image by David J. Nightingale with prints and more available at chromasia.
Quirky, gorgeous, vocal, affectionate and plays rough, that’s my Olive! Only she isn’t my Olive. I’ve been falling more and more in love with her and learning her grooves and the meaning of her tone (like that urgent yowling I get in the early evening when she wants wet food vs. the inquisitive short little question mew I get when she wants to know whether it’s play time or lap time) but she’s not my Olive. I’ve finally learned that a little ball of tin foil is much preferred over the organic cotton catnip mouse or the felt ball with bells but she isn’t my Olive. You see, the shelter made a little mistake three months ago when letting me take her home instead of giving her back to her original guardian, so now it’s time to give Olive back to the man who has loved her for years. So, though my only previous post on Olive was one aimed at shedding light on the ways in which Olive gently terrorizes me and my sleep at times, this one is the ten things I love best and will miss most about Olive.
1. Chatty Kathy
This girl is a talker! Morning, noon and night she chatters, yells or chirps away announcing her entrance, requesting permission to land or simply giving fair warning that things are about to get ugly if her favorite food is not in that dish in 30 seconds. Seriously.
2. Smarty-pants
Okay, this cat is abnormally smart, even for a cat. She knows exactly what I mean by “no” and “stay” when I’m about to open the front door and responds to a very civil “down” when on the dresser or table. She also plays fetch like a dog. I should’ve known I was in trouble when she escaped her cardboard carrying case on our first ride home from the shelter!
3. Risky Business Tycoon
The first thing Olive did when I brought her home is get as high as she could, walking up above my kitchen cupboards. And last week she jumped up on the 1/2 inch balcony ledge from the floor with perfect calm.
4. Mink Coat Showoff
This girl has the silkiest softest fur on the cat planet, like a sable (and the color of one, too). You can’t not pet her every chance you get.
5. Shoulder Percher
Every night when I get home from work, she is immediately at the door rolling around and stretching then as soon as I bend down, she is on hind legs reaching for her favorite spot – hugging my neck perched have on my shoulder, half on my chest purring away and kissing and nuzzling my cheeks.
6. Knee Sleeper
Olive, though contradictory to some of the late-night cat attacks I’ve experienced when she’s upset or hungry, is a very sound sleeper. She sleeps, as Jenny’s Gloria does, tucked up in my knees. We’re both side-sleepers.
7. Seaside Eye Flutterer
Olive has the most amazing aquamarine eyes you’ll ever see. I’ve read it’s the breed (she’s a Tonkinese) and they are the only ones who have them, but whatever it is, she’s a princess through and through.
8. Schweepy Snorer
Olive has the sweetest little nosey kitty snore. Period.
9. Sink-a-holic
Olive drinks out of the bathroom sink. That’s it. Not the kitchen sink, not her bowl, not the toilet. Just the bathroom sink faucet on a slow drizzle.
10. Late Riser
Granted, once in a while (often when she first arrived) Olive gets up at that weird 4 am time slot and wrecks havoc on my dreams. But usually, when I wake up in the morning, she is still asleep in that ball behind my knees. I stir (an unusually late-riser for a corporate girl), she stirs. I stretch, she stretches. Then I give a soft little drawn-out, “Oooooliiiiive” and she makes her way to that little nook in between my neck and shoulder for a little snooz-cuddle-snooz-we don’t really need a shower-snooz time before we start our days.
Knitted Olives by Em-En of the i like lemons blog.
Stones. Billions of little stones piled thick and spread thin across uneven ground as if to hide the fault lines. Leveled, they are tumbled, some crumbled together a layer upon layers of would-be memories. And then in the heat of summer, they spray to fortify and the ground slowly hardens to a walkable black crust. Then the gloss of the tar. Then the yellow lines. Then we move point B from point A with no point but the inertia of wanting that thing that just wasn’t where we were.
And then over time, a miraculous truth pushes itself up. A miraculous and relentless truth pushes itself up through the piles and fortitude and glossing over and coded directions. And the truth will have its way. And the truth will crack every stretch of hiding. And the truth makes the most beautiful thing out of asphalt, don’t you think?
Street art by Roxana Zegan found at Dear Ada.
the law of conservation of energy:
energy cannot be created, nor destroyed, it just changes form
the law of inertia:
any physical object is resistant to change in its state of motion
Where does it go? Where did it come from? To whom does it belong, this warm amber ripple down the throat up the arms over the shoulder down the back around the ribs to the sternum again. This energy arising and subsiding, surfacing and plunging, never gone but never really born to begin with either, always moving always wanting. I am no match for the sheer invincible science of it all, but I can be one thing: the container within which it changes, it moves yet goes absolutely nowhere beyond the birthing walls nor digs deep enough to stay six feet under anything. And I can decide how thin my walls and how fragile my glass. I must. Lest I shatter a thousand times over in and upon myself, ground to make perfect new eyeglasses for the seeing out from another set of browns, or blues, or if lucky again, greens. Pearly, did you call them?
Venus and Jupiter have not fallen anywhere. They’ve just kept moving.
The children: carrying around snowman heads. The flakes: big and round and wet and plentiful all day. The sky: gray and socking us in. The sleeping in: long, then longer still. The winter: pure Michigan. In Boulder. In October.
The most beautiful thing I saw today was a moment of low-hanging cloud rising for the norther Boulder foothills in a way that made it look as if the snow sitting there had simply levitated to build a bridge to the gray that luckily, unlike in Michigan, will not last for the next five to six months. It was a moment inside a day of cuddling up and hunkering down, waking then snoozing then waking then sorting through dreams. And the low-hanging shelf-like clouds stopped my mind in just such a way that I smiled and remembered this whole thing is so odd. To be alive. To be sunny one day and pushed down with the weather system the next. So odd. And sometimes, so beautiful.
Snow child photo by Aiddy.
There’s nothing pretty about a dirty look or a snide, snotty comment. But there is something beautiful in knowing it is pretty much never about us. And if it truly is, who cares? Human is as human does and what we do is down right rude much of the time. Rude. It’s a funny word that describes a quality of action that slights another, that dismisses or disrespects them. But what dismisses and disrespects one may not mean a rat’s ass to another. And even if it does, one person’s rat’s ass may not weight nearly as much as the next one’s. Though we are held to standards of a degree in public, at work, in our personal relationships, it’s good to know that when it all comes down to it, we’re probably doing our best. Probably. And that’s a probability that renders us helpless in the face of all these dirty, snide, snotty moments. Helpless because there will never really be anything any of us can do to erase or prevent it. The beautiful thing? The most beautiful thing? Knowing that in the nothing-to-do-ness of it all, there is the rest of life, the going-about-our-business-ness of it all, and the words of a dear friend of mine, “Just get over it”. Hard but beautiful.
I’ve a new cat. I adopted her from the local Humane Society, called her Olive and have begun getting used to her ridiculous and endearing Tonkinese quirks as I assume she is getting used to my workaholic Midwestern transplant ones, or well… tolerate. That’s what they do, yes? Cats tolerate us. To a point.
Here is my top five list of Olive attacks thus far (that happen usually while I’m asleep):
1. Feline Fado
She talks and talks and yells and when that doesn’t work, she sings. A loud desperate crooning that happens most often around 4 am, and sometimes shortly after I return home and have not refilled her bowl with the first couple of speeches.
2. SWAT Rush
This is where, having attempted to get a good sleeping spot near my head at night, but having been relegated to lower regions of the bed, Olive completes a cycle of leaping off the bed in dejection, saddling up the side and then suddenly with a fury only felines can muster she bounces on the side of the bed and sprints up and across the pillows only to keep running off the middle of the other side.
3. Simple Little Knife
The second weekend I had Olive, I slept in… late. Too late, according to her. Late enough to deserve a wee little blood draw. I could tell by her chatting, hollering, and singing that she was about fed up with my slumber. But when she hopped up on the bed and seemed to be settling into my ride side, I relaxed to snooze again. Olive, in her wisdom simply (as I imagine in my mind’s eye) raised a little blackened paw and came down deftly with one crawl extracted and snagged expertly into my back. I jumped us both up pretty quickly.
4. Good Love Gone Bad
What is it with cats and their weird chemical rushes that take them from lover to fighter in t-minus three? A little fetch with the bell ball, some vigorous back stroking and a little talk back and suddenly she’s an ears-down, teeth-bared fighting machine. And these aren’t nips – she full-on attacks. I have taken to scruff-of-the-necking her into the bedroom for a closed-door timeout session just to let her walk-off the flood of… testosterone??
5. Sky Dive
Okay, this is the latest, greatest and by far the most aggressive alarm clock maneuver in Olive’s arsenal. She has taken bouncing me out of bed to new heights with this one… literally. She gracefully hops herself up on top of my tall dresser (exactly the place she knows she isn’t supposed to be anyway… and oh, yes she does know) and before I’ve even heard her make the leap, she has landed full force on my near-sleeping back. Bam. Again, we’re up before I can yell holy sh**….
Olive: 5
Heather: 0
A lucky girl, I think so. Which one of us? Probably both.
Maybe it is not a taunting, this bright waving hand in the sky. Left of the moon. North of the girl. Straight home ’til morrow. Maybe it is not waiting, this hovering being hanging low enough to see. Higher than the wishes. Just below the end. And maybe it is not you, a wrath from the past entering my orbit. Faster than I would have imagined. Never fast enough. Maybe it is simply Jupiter and maybe it is just where it needs to be given all the other bodies around it. Maybe. And maybe it is not taunting me. Maybe it is simply beautiful for its own sake.
Photo by Voyager featured at Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Heather Marie Philipp Music