movie love in the 00's

I am listening to two songs from Bjork's upcoming album that I downloaded this morning. I really love what I hear, what I feel.

Yesterday, I was lost in a book, Movie Love in the 50's, and there was this boy that kept standing in my vicinity every time I tried to move away, to a place where I could read without being in any one's way. Eventually, I looked up to see who this was being pretty annoying, and realized that it was the boy I had written a missed connection about last week.

To backpedal a little here, he wrote me back asking me who I was, I told him who I was yesterday and then I wanted to reread what I had originally wrote and found that he had thought it was some girl in boots. And so obviously, I was real embarrased that I had written him back divulging my idenity and worried about ever seeing him again, and then here he is the next day, standing wherever I am standing. After noticing it was him, embarrassed, I ran into the art department to try to hide, and then he was in close vicinity there also. Rather than being even somewhat mature, I kept running around the store, trying to hide, only to find him somewhat near. After too long in the store, he finally left, and I could finally stop giggling and hyperventilating. Then I thought about what a jackass I had been, how I should have just said hello when I first saw him rather than trying to hide.

The one song that I really love is "Triumph of a Heart." Turn it up real loud on a pair of headphones and try not to dance, listen to all those voices, try picking them apart. At some points, I can only count four, maybe five voices. So if just three or four of you guys and me ever gathered together, we could maybe do something just as cool.

I got a phone call from my dad's cousin today. He wanted to talk to me about my dad, to find out how I was doing, and invited me over for dinner at his house whenever. He encouraged me to call him whenever I wanted if I ever wanted to talk about my dad. He was really nice and talked with compassion and a few words of wisdom about the shortness of life. I do have some questions about my dad, but I don't know if I want to ask them. I don't know if I want to know the answers - if I would be asking the questions because I cared, or out of morbid, finger-wagging curiousity. What does it mean to care? Where is the line between compassion, curiousity, and voyeurism? Yesterday, my dad's sister called me. I never look forward to her calls, but answer them because she seems to be a wreck and so I try to be forgiving when she calls me and tries to guilt me for not caring about my dying dad, or calls me and cries, or ends the phone conversation by telling me to have a nice life. When my uncle Pat called me today, I realized what constitutes that vague term maturity. But yes, yesterday, my aunt Herta called me and talked to me vaguely about how I am doing, how my dad misses me, and imploring me to go back to college, telling me how important it is (another grating thing about her, about anyone really - when they try to tell me that).

She asked me if I knew where my dad was, and I said no. She started to cry again, and told me that he was in a federal, and then she stopped talking, silently crying. I finished her sentence for her. Prison. And there was some assent from her in some form and then she said he wanted to call me. Sure, why not? And while I am curious to know why he is in jail, I am pretty sure it involves drugs in some way. And she then asked when would be a good time for him to call because she didn't want any of my roommates to have to know. I told her that I had my own cell phone and he could call whenever, and I don't really care who knows. That is very likely why I am writing this here, as a way to make sure that I am not secretive, because there have been too many other points in my life when I have been secretive. There was that other time in jail, my dad spent in middle school, followed by being deported. That was something I did not talk about at the time, an area purposely avoided. There have been other instances of family drama, usually all caused by my father. There was not acknowledging my sexuality to myself or to anyone else for a period of years until college. And I have been trying ever since to live a life open. That to not tell things is to be shamed by them, to be on the receiving end of various modes of power. But there is also the problematic issue of telling these things and still somehow suffering shame through them by the well-meaning, but totally out of place, apologies and condolences of listeners, which is not what is wanted either. And how to strike a balance? How to ensure that you are living openly and without shame, without recieving pity from people who are not comfortable, or not entirelly accustomed (because which one of us is?) to living totally free from shame, and from the feeling that we should somehow offer either physical or verbal pats on the back, when that is not what is wanted, when doing that, is itself exersising power, a sharming veiled behind good intentions. I am not sure. I wish I had more time to work out these thoughts, to talk about the feelings this Bjork song inspires in me and to offer a theory of love and life that is joyous in its non-naivete, in its knowledge of this world. Just three or four of you, and the sounds we could produce! Just as much beauty could probably be sung alone also.