misfirings

while taking a shower, i heard a girl yelling from what sounded like our front porch. "BUDDY! BUDDY!!!!!!!!!" she was calling for her dog, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk in front of our house, bicycle splayed next to her and a tiny dog on a leash, staring at her. 

as i hurried out of the shower to see if i could help her, i had the thought, "what if it's a trick? isn't the lost dog act the oldest trick in the book??" and then i realized that the person luring others with a lost dog is typically an adult and the kidnapee is the child. was this eight-year-old girl going to kidnap me from my own front porch? no. i saw a giant black lab bounding toward her just as i opened the front door, so i went back inside. i did not get kidnapped. my brain skipped the logical path and found another.

five teenagers were killed by a train today in canton. they drove around a car that had stopped at the lowered railroad crossing arms. the train dragged the car a mile before it could stop. on the train were a number of blind people with leader dogs, heading back to chicago after a convention in detroit and a group of librarians heading to chicago for a conference. i'd imagine that hitting a car full of teenagers would really color your week in detroit or your soon-to-be weekend in chicago. coming or going. i wasn't even on the train but i can't get it out of my head. we live in a world with so many precautions and so many warnings that when something that is typically so orderly (e.g. trains on fixed rails) does so much damage, it kind of throws things off kilter. in 1995, members of a cult released toxic sarin gas into a number of subway cars in tokyo, killing twelve people and causing short- and long-term blindness to thousands of people. haruki murakami wrote a book about it, called underground. i read it last summer and like all his books, it really stuck with me. these are two completely unrelated things, but as soon as i saw the news report, the word "kasumigaseki" flashed in my brain. i don't even remember if that is the name of a place or a person in the book, but it just popped right up. i think these misfires are really awesome, when two unrelated things can cause familiar recall. and this, my friends, is why most psychology nerds are married to other psychology nerds because i suspect i bore people to tears with this sort of business.

aaaaanyway. look! my good pal anthony has a show in berlin! big time kudos.

today i only had to go to work for three hours. we walked the kids to the bowling alley, bowled two games, and came back. they were the longest three hours of my life. there was crying, fighting, pants wetting, and i said, "stay on the sidewalk!" and "get out of the arcade!" so many times my eyes crossed. i feel like a mean mom, constantly nagging them, but when you have eight seven-year-olds that won't listen to a single word you say and also enjoy a game called "let's try to slap moving cars," it kind of just happens. i'm getting really good at pretending to be excited when i watch kids do their 7 millionth handstands in the pool. the trick is to wear sunglasses so your eyes don't have to waste too much energy lying. only your mouth has to say, "wow! that was so good! you're like a dolphin!" my mom pretended to care deeply about every handstand i ever did. and now i know that she was probably faking it 85% of the time. and for good reason. even after long days, i still would rather work with kids than adults.

this album is soooo good. it came out in 2001. what a fool i've been for eight long years, only to find this now!

where did everybody go?

who could hang a name on you?

july 2, 2009. ypsilanti, michigan.

i fell in love with a tiny donkey. he was seven days old. i would call him tingalayo.

frontier ruckus and chris bathgate played songs on a stage in a field next to a carnival. it felt like an oddly familiar dream, the kind where you are at your grandmother's house but it's actually your elementary school. i had such a strong feeling of being in that exact place before, hearing that music, in that field, punctuated by screams from the nearby gravitron. 

carnival worker: hey! you! you in the boots!

me: huh?

carnival worker, extending his foot to display standard work boots: mine are better.

atop the park shelton, fireworks are quiet. twelve stories above woodward avenue, detroit is sleepy and polite. michigan summer begins.

cats and dogs are pounding on the roof of my parked car in a pay lot in pontiac. wait it out. wait it out. wait it out.

the bratty, asshole kid convention @ target rochester hills is happening right now! free admission!

snake hill

i took a solo road trip to the upper peninsula last week. the drive was lovely. i stopped to salute the mackinac bridge and test the waters of my favorite great lake at her northernmost point. i crossed the bridge to the tune of conor oberst and the mystic valley band's "difference is time," and when i pulled up to the toll booth, the attendant leaned his head out of the booth and said, "sounds

 like the blues...i like it. i like it." and so do i, sir. i stopped at a few yard sales along US-2, but didn't find anything worth a quarter or two. kate and i took a tour of an iron mine, walked through an old iron town, saw a band of 1950s reenactors play at the friendliest yacht club on the lakes, and kate was even kind enough to drive me into wisconsin long enough to pick a flower and take a picture. 

 

i stopped briefly on the drive home at the curio fair in st. ignace and paid fifty cents to climb the tower. the view was pretty. and quiet. i carved my initials into the mess of graffiti inside and then drove home to the tune of these excellent records:

with road trips and lakes and woods and lonely, aging tourist attractions, it's beginning to look a lot like summer.

i started my job at summer camp with a week of training. i spent the bulk of today's shift decorating a bulletin board and riding a turtle. every friday, we will spend the morning at the public library and the afternoon at the city pool. i think this job is going to rule.

last night, i stumbled upon an hourlong documentary on the making of conor oberst's newest record. (watch it here). it's been in constant rotation in my car stereo for the last three weeks. i really like it. it sounds like a sweet 70s band of dudes that would wear satin bowling league-style jackets. oh wait, they DO wear sating bowling team jackets!

 i like everything about the record, right down to the paper colors in the liner notes and the photo on the back of the sleeve. sometimes i fear that seeing the process will make a record less magical (i still haven't seen the national's a skin, a night, which is the story of boxer, one of my favorite records of the last five years) but one of my kind doesn't spoil any of the magic. in fact, it makes it sound even better. the songs are really good, they seem like really good dudes, and it's better than watching an hour of daisy of love. i want one of those jackets. i want to be in the mystic valley club. it seems like they just drink beers and bro out and jam these excellent songs into being. mystical! magical! they roll into town on july 15. see you there.

bon iver - wisconsin

this song belongs in some kind of hymnal.

i went to lutheran school for kindergarten and first grade and every wednesday afternoon, we went to chapel, where i would squirm around until it was time to sing. we sang songs from a hymnal and i remember how delicate the pages felt and how musty all the books smelled. my favorite one was called "i am jesus' little lamb," and even on the days we didn't sing it, i would flip to page 648 and sing it to myself in my head. that happened in 1989. i haven't thought about that until i heard this song about wisconsin.

betsy played bon iver's "for emma" on the jukebox at the emory last night and it felt so strange hearing bon iver in a public place. mine! mine! mine! like the seagull that i am.