OK. Ryan Adams can help us all.

Yes, I have a ridiculous thing for Ryan Adams. Well, not really him. Just his music. Imagine how excited I was to download his new music from itunes the other night! You've never heard a cover like Ryan and the Cardinals tackling "Down in a Hole". Your heart ever been broken? Ryan's your man. Check out the version of "Oh My Sweet Carolina" from the Bridge School Concert series. It makes ME homesick, and I don't even know which Carolina he's singing about.

Somehow, listening to him lately has led me to investigate my crushes. I have my un-Godly crush on Michael Chabon, author and Pulitzer Prize winner. 'Course I loved his work before all that, due to The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. A must-read for all. There is my unflagging admiration for David Foster Wallace, despite his incredible use (or misuse) of footnotes. Oh yes. And I do not care at all that he wears headbands in his press pictures. Very Loverboy; very 80's tennis chic of him!

Try Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and see if you agree. I have a feeling...

Almost Halloween

Yes, yes. I am going out of my mind due to the sheer volume of partying from across the street. The kids from Brooks Institute can really get saucy, that is for sure. My sleep deprivation may be apparent here but don't worry. I catch up quickly.

I was in San Francisco for a few days. Amazing what happens when you let yourself open, and experience. I met interesting people, had a few excellent, mindbending conversations, bought some killer (very sexy) boots that brought a whole other side of my personality to the fore. So there was that.

I looked around, imagining myself living there, walking the city day by day. Some things are better left in theory, but some need to be brought in to the world; to manifest destiny for ourselves and others. I had a glorious feeling this weekend: a surge of excitement, followed by the utter calm of knowing what I was to do next. So good to feel.

I connected with a lovely friend, who brought me along for her haircut. This was dramatic, because 10 inches came off for Locks of Love, replaced by a sultry, sophisticated look. She looks fabulous, and it was a stunning transformation.

So I am in transition again, this time not so hurried. I want to embrace it all, and get back to the first home I knew after Kansas. Back to the Bay Area, as an all new me, 15 years later! Wow!

The pomegranate is a symbol I seem to stay with. It is the link between Persephone and Hades, the corporeal world and the divine. My dear friend Sue gave me a beautiful necklace with an image of the pomegranate on it. For now, I will wear it on my neck, as I see what comes up for me. It's the season.

me pondering

two weeks in, hanging in the room...

Calypso? Penelope?

I have been flooded with images over the past few days, mostly back in the Odyssey. Most of this, dear reader, is memory (which, as Hillman points out, is part confabulation). Yet memory is the mother of the Muses; the access to creative arts and expession.

Oh, I digress. A lot.

Anyway. I was thinking about Penelope, the patient, crafty wife of Odysseus, the one who never gave up pining away for her husband, gone twenty years. She tells her suitors (who clearly view her as a prize, and a total package - Odysseus' kingdom as a bonus) that she will entertain their entreaties for her hand when she finishes her tapestry. Every day she weaves; every night she unravels. She is the penultimate "home" Odysseus longs for; the idea toward which he moves.

But, there are a lot of other women, nymphs, and goddesses in this tale. Odysseus is sunk under time and again, by wrathful Poseidon and the sea. He is tired from the long war, and the losses of friends and years away. In this tale, it is the feminine that pulls him through, anoints him, pleasures and heals him. He charms others, regaling them with tales of his adventures, but the women pull him to action, recognize his strength, as well as his cunning. They see his wound (his scar) and both compassion and passion arise.

And some want recognition. Calypso implores him to stay with her, forever, in a state of bliss, warmth, sex, and love. She wants him to stay, and see that her devotion is so great that she is deigning to care for him. She reminds him of how she pulled him from the sea, near-death, crew dead and gone. She hid him and healed him herself. And, by order of the gods (thank you Athena), she lets him go. Calypso stays behind in her lonely paradise, and Odysseus faces the sea, alone, with his strength, wits, and longing for home.

So I think of desire. Lately there has been a lot of talk about this coming up in me and my friends. Desire for stability or excitement; family or freedom; the past or the future. Desire is full of endless distances (or something like that -- robert hass), and I am beginning to see how desire moves us. Whether island to island, or to weave and unravel, we long for.

At the end of the day, you know, I'm just a girl from a Glen Campbell town! (you know, needing more than wanting, and wanting for all time...)

"Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured." -
Homer, The Odyssey

wink and a curtsy,
steph

well. so it begins

I am trying something new. This year has been full of new things, and now I am launching headfirst into computer stuff I know nothing about, while simultaneously starting a PhD program in psychology. A good time to sort out the thoughts, and keep the neural pathways exercised.

Beyond all that, look for pictures. I have been taking them every day for several weeks now, as autumn comes, and as I feel the shifts and changes that come with the new. At some point we must share or feel stifled, I think. This is where the sharing begins!