I have also decided to add the physical books I own to this challenge and at least attempt to read them I'm not hung up on completion; if a book doesn't grab me in 50 pages I will let it go. As long as I feel like I've given it a good try.
B Sides and Broken Hearts
Hyperbole and a Half
The Long and Faraway Gone
The Cuckoo's Calling
Lake Wobegon Summer, 1956

I've thought about reading the books I've collected on my Kindle, but I have a pretty serious library problem and my holds have held me back from reading books I own. But I have cut way back and I put all of my owned books on my to-read list and I look forward to at least trying some of the following:
The Royal We
The Husband's Secret
Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation
We Are Water
Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America
Freshwater Road
Kumquat
We Are Not Ourselves
Open Mind, Faithful Heart: Reflections on Following Jesus
We Are Called to Rise: A Novel
I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains
The Book Thief
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Banks of Certain Rivers
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
Salvage the Bones
America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
Les Misérables

Song After Sadness

Despair is still servant to the violet and wild ongoings of bone. You, remember, are that which must be made servant only to salt, only to the watery acre that is the body of the beloved, only to the child leaning forward into the exhibit of birches the forest has made of bronze light and snow. Even as the day kneels forward, the oceans and strung garnets, too, kneel, they are all kneeling, the city, the goat, the lime tree and mother, the fearful doctor, kneeling. Don't say it's the beautiful I praise. I praise the human, gutted and rising. by Katie Ford

I started eating batteries because I thought they would give me energy and I liked the way they buzzed. But they are corroding inside me and eating me away. They don't give me energy, in fact they sap what I have and they don't even buzz anymore.
Note to self: Stop eating batteries.

What I Miss

wild onions, Queen Anne's lace, train tracks, grapes growing on a rock wall, rocks, ravines, forsythia, lilacs, roses and buttercups, hills, woods, ponds, lady slippers, drinking beer outside, that purple cool air that hits you just past Janosec's no matter how hot it is, 543, the dark, the stars.

On my mind

11 in 2011

I love year end lists, but I find music very hard to rank, or even winnow down to manageable. So this is a list of 11 songs that got caught in my ears this year that I don't think I've mentioned before.


Storms (Fleetwood Mac cover) by Jessie Baylin
America, Bill Callahan
Vomit by Girls
Cruel/Kind by Gold Leaves
Thunder Rail, Austin Lucas
Not Enough by J Mascis
Novacane, Frank Ocean NSFW
Straight Into Darkness, Tom Petty
Downbound Train cover, Kurt Vile
History of Plastic, War on Drugs
Holy Holy, Wye Oak

Enemies

by Dante Micheaux         [for Ishion Hutchinson] The thing about entertaining them, about keeping their company, about fraternizing, is you must remember they are bloodless and have many faces, though it’s easy enough to walk in sunlight, where either you or they become invisible, never together seen; easy to get in bed with them, to bed them, to be seduced by them— listing in their own dominance. Remember what makes one human, animal, is not the high road but the baseness in the heart, the knowledge that they could, at any moment, betray you.

Gold Leaves

To Be The Thing

To be the thing
by Dorothea Lasky
To be the name uttered, but not to have the burden to be To be the name said, but not heard To not breathe anymore, to be the thing To be the thing being breathed To not be about to die, to be already dead To not have to disappoint To not have the burden of being late Or punctual To not eat, to not have to eat To not feel anything To not be the one's whose affect is criticized To not pick up the fallen over boxes To be everywhere but the boxes or plates To not break the plates To be beyond breaking To have been broken To not bear the burden of not being present To not have to feel the pain of being hurt To have transferred that pain over So that hurt is only part of the imagination And the imagination is everywhere, is every color To not contain color, to be color To not make sound, to be sound To not have language, to echo, to plan language To be the stream of words To not be sad for To not have those be sad for To not eat alone To not fuck those who do not find your corpse attractive To not fuck Or stuff To be ashes and non-placed Not displaced, but to not be in any place To enter the ocean on not a whim, but a physical force Where there is no center Where there is no safety There never was There was never any anger There was never anything to look at I never looked at anything I just went and walked I tried to love But love is hopeless And I have lost all hope, so bleak I am beyond I am beyond what might be considered low There is low nor high, space or time, I have Gone away from that which is uttered I have not burdened to be spoken of or spoken for To croak everyday to the livelong bog I do not speak a thing I exist No, no I don't I never did And you may have But I never did And you may have called out for me But I was already gone And I am already there That which you speak of I am already spoken for In a world of light and ashes They all call my name They have waited for me And now I know I was always Already there With them

Thanks REM

Lydia Loveless

Lydia Loveless :: Hardscrabble Youth :: Paste mPlayer

I like her.

Jason Molina

I don't remember where I heard this guy, but I really like this song.

Preach.

Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside

cute

Live on Radio K: Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside - "Danger" from Radio K on Vimeo.

Rest in Peace

Rest in Peace

New from Denmark

The Midwest Can Be Alright

Maybe nowhere special, sometimes it's not a lot of fun...

Joyce Manor

Dig it.