who is john harrison?

I am really loving this interview.

what seemed like a position turned out to be a pose

Top ten songs I am listening to:
10. Lightning Bolt - Jake Bugg
9. Gone, Gone, Gone - Phillip Phillips
8. Grace For Saints and Ramblers - Iron & Wine
7. Starman - Sally Shapiro
6. Can't Hold Us - Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
5. Another Guy - Travis
4. Recover - CHVRCHES
3. Easy To Love - Ivan & Alyosha
2. Overgrown - James Blake
1. All That's Gone - Tom McRae
 
These lyrics by Tom McRae really do something for me:

I thought I’d write you a letter,
‘bout all of the things that have changed
Since the days when we were king and queen,
Of all of we surveyed.

We knew all the coolest places, wore the future in our skin,
And we stood outside on winter nights
And smoked ourselves thin.
And we were clever and cynical and fashionably bored,
We were walking and talking, time out in New York.
But, honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone.

And I used to have opinions and I wore them like my clothes
But what seemed like a position turned out to be a pose.
And we said that we both gonna be big, rock and roll stars
My soul never found a buyer, unlike all my guitars.
And I’ve lost touch with many things, wrote myself out of the scene
The time has worn a whole in me, the place I keep my dream.
But, honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone,
Honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone.

And I don’t have a story now, at least not one you’d care to write.
These memories I keep for me, bits and pieces of a life.
And I apologize for not dying young or opening up a vein,
And for keeping close the one I love, but never naming names.
To my friends, I still sound hopeful, that’s just whistling in the dark.
‘cause I’m down here in the dirt with the fossil of my heart.
But, honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone,
Honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone.

So hope this letter finds you just as well as when we met,
Ambitions may have faded, babe, your beauty never did.
In the night when I have drunken off and I’m full of hope and wine,
I recall a melody, your voice and mine.
And we can still be king and queen, if only for tonight,
‘cause somewhere in our history, our future’s shining bright.
But, honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone,
Honey, all that’s gone,
Baby, all that’s gone.

before i burst with excitement

Weather:  Overcast
Mood:  Jittery
Music:  James Blake's Overgrown and Tom McRae's From The Lowlands, both excellent and will likely stay on my playlist for rest of year
Last Movie: On The Road (C, or I mean zzz)
Reading: Nothing, absolutely nothing (should I start reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods?)
Last Pleasure:  Cha cha dessert from Eggettes
Last Worry: Oh, Chi Young, where are you going to go to college?
Last accomplishment:  Read a two-hundred page document for work, about medical diagnosis related grouping - phew
Looking Forward To:   BEFORE (freaking) MIDNIGHT, Star Trek Into Darkness, Vampire Weekend new cd
Not Really Looking Forward To:  This next year where people go away to colleges
Gas Price: $4.32/gallon premium
Clothes: Land's End Canvas navy blue polo, Uniqlo gray regular fit jeans
Today's Headline: Miss. Man Arrested In Suspicious Letters Case
Last Website Visited:  smittenkitchen
Last Meal: Tonkatsu and salmon teriyaki combo dinner at Akagi's
Last Purchase:  Kirkland brand sunglasses from Costco (these Wayfarer lookalikes are polarized and frame is made in Italy, all for $26!!!)
Item Off My Wishlist:  This Peel Lamp - that's just plain cool
Latest Evidence It's A Beautiful World:  

the brothers tsarnaev

My only connection to Boston is the New England Patriots, my favorite sports team for the last decade or more.  And then I know Conan is from there, and so is Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and there was a tea party once, and Harvard is somewhere near there.  But now, I know more.  There is a famous marathon, on Patriots Day, a state holiday.  And then on Patriots Day this year, 2013, near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two brothers left a couple of bombs that ended up killing three people, including an 8-year old boy, and injuring over a hundred.  There were lost limbs and the like.  The two brothers were immigrants who have been here for about ten years, from near Chechnya.  Yeah, I had to Wikipedia Chechnya to find that it is a federal subject of Russia (and I had to Wikipedia federal subject of Russia too).  Apparently Islam is the primary religion among Chechens, and these brothers, despite outward appearances of being fully assimilated American-raised young men, left online hints that they are radical Islamist sympathizers.  The law enforcement made quick work in identifying and locating them.  Less than four days after Patriots Day, the older brother is dead from a shootout, and the younger brother went on the lamb, caused the entire city of Boston to be on lock-down mode for a day, and was eventually taken into custody after hiding out in a boat in someone's backyard.  He was discovered by the owner of the house who came out to the backyard to take a breath of fresh air from the lock-down and found blood on his boat.  And then there are lots of stories from the marathon itself about acts of heroism, how people went out of their way to help each other, how tragedy brings out the best of people, how dreams were dashed but faith in human spirit were renewed.  I saw on tv a story about this young woman who was running her first marathon.  About half way in, her knee started to bother her.  She persisted on.  Then about half a mile from the finish line, the marathon got shut down and she couldn't finish, nor could she find her family.  She sat on the sidewalk of a side street crying to herself.  Another marathoner who did finish was walking by with his wife, saw the sobbing young woman and without hesitation gave her his hard-earned medal.  He said to her, "You're a finisher."  Yup, this is all high drama, like a Russian novel, except real.

unwritten

There's a difference between what was and what could've been.  There's an awful lot of one, but an infinity of the other.

That's what the Doctor said in last night's episode of Doctor Who (The Rings Of Akhaten).  Yes, it does seem that often times we tend to define ourselves by our history and our memories, but the other half, and maybe greater half, of who we are are the hopes and dreams, some lost and unfulfilled and some still remain as flickers in that bottomless pit.  That imagined life both haunts me and propels me.  History is done, but what about the stories that I didn't write but could have and the stories that I could still write?

I always wonder what if I knew the right things to say or the right things to do so that the future that I wanted didn't just hang up and give up on me for good.  I am not so sure that I could ever recapture those same feelings I once had about another human being and about life, on that boat, in the golden late afternoon light, with the water glistening and the curtain in our cabin dancing flippantly to the breeze.  All the magic was really not entirely about what was happening but what was going to happen for a lifetime to come.  But alas the lifetime was never a lifetime. It was just a moment.

But my dreams were endless, infinite.  Enough to feed a parasitic monster til it could feed no more and spontaneously combust.  Then we turn back to the blank page and realize every unwritten word was still there.