Category Archives: Soundtrack of My Soul

What I listen to, where to buy and what I like, because some of the best music I own was happened onto through other music-phile’s recommendations

Geekly Goodness, Licking Your LIterary Labito, Soundtrack of My Soul

Om Mani Padme Hum

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As close as coffee is to my waking body, Quan Yin, or Avalokiteśvara, is to my waking spirit. I have a long history with her. As a child I had a friend who would “fly in” from various parts of the world to play with and comfort me. I was chided, punished, and thoroughly teased and humiliated for my “lying” and occasionally humored for my imagination, but I refused to deny my “imaginary ” friend.

Once I was looking through a large encyclopedia like book with a librarian, I was in fourth grade, that is the one detail that is clear, because the teacher who had sent me to the library to “be rid of my nonsense” was Mrs. Coons. I am certain I was being forced to look up and verify some piece of argumentative or informative trivia I had spouted to the class. This was a favorite punishment of mine, I really didn’t care if I was humiliated for being wrong or ignored for having been right, I got to spend an hour in the research section of the library learning and reading.

Going back to that day I have no recollection of what book we were using or what we were looking for actually, but the book was one that required adult supervision, being rife with full color illustrations of nude paintings and sculpture that had newsprint blanks paper-clipped to the page to save our poor impressionable minds from seeing the same parts we all had or saw on others in our living quarters of poverty.  What I do remember is that as my guide through this pitfall packed tome turned one of the newsprint covered pages, I saw her, my friend, perfectly depicted in a watercolor. I was old enough by then to know better but I blurted out, “I know her, that’s my friend!”

“Impossible,” the frustration and disdain in her voice wasn’t even colored with concern, as she slammed the book shut, “she is some mythological creature from Vietnamese culture.” In hindsight her choice of geographical placement was certainly colored by the war America’s sons were fighting. In that outburst, I declared myself a liar and possibly a budding communist and heretic and lost one of my few allies in that school, but I couldn’t help myself, I did know her.

If she had said “Tibet,” or “China,” or “Korea,” I might have found the  name of my friend more quickly, but it would be the 1970’s before I would learn that her name was many but in the form I knew her she was  Kuan Yin and was the Chinese Bodhisattva of Compassion.

Mahayana Buddhism has been calling me for years, I have read sporadically, meditated, attended events and listened to talks from the other branches of buddhism but certain Dharma is not to be learned without a teacher.  For 2016 I have found a center to study, meditate and learn from those who practice. My best description is that spiritually I can play the instrument of compassion be ear, but I cannot yet read the music.

I am the bard of old who can tell a thousand stories but has not mastered the art of the alphabet so the stories fluctuate with the telling, and he longs to write them down so they can go out and benefit the world.

It was a difficult decision but I had reassurance from the universe that I had made the right decision. I am a great believer in signs and when I first drove up to the Kadampa Clear Light Center a cat (a species not known for welcoming behavior towards me) jumped through my open car door window and settled warm in my lap, and a crow lit on the center roof and cawed at me, in Phoenix, where crows are rare. So yeah, think this is the right place for me to be and I look forward to sharing my adventure this year.

Please feel free to comment with questions, ideas and thoughts on my musings from your own path. Buddhism like the pure light of most spirit paths is the circle that takes in the good. All paths remain of equal validity to me, nor can I trod one that asks other than full respect for all living things.

Listening to “Songs of Kuan Yin” a collection I picked up in 2008 from my much missed record store in Tempe, reading “Transform Your Life” by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, and “Bodhisattva of Compassion” by John Blofeld.

Feel free to donate as well. I am working slightly less than full-time right now and moving once again means added costs so welcome but not desperate and note on your donation if you want it to be used for medical bills, living expenses, ongoing Random Acts of Kindness, or still gonna make it happen when health allows hike through of the Appalachian Trail.

Mostly, thanks friends for reading, I appreciate truly being seen and heard most of all.

Namaste.

 

Appalachian Trail Here I Come, Soundtrack of My Soul

Look at those lights behind the trees; Don’t the Highway sound like the ocean

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And yes, if you know the song, I do have someone in mind.

I know when I have hit my emotional and physical wall because all my daydreams are spent traveling, and all my night dreams are about being a nurse in a multi-bed hospital or some other somebody’s something and just trying to find enough time to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom.

And I long so hard for the sound of the ocean.

I pine for a road trip, tires on freeway, waking up in strange rooms in towns I can’t pronounce. Only responsibilities are gas in the tank, air in the tires, and deciding yeah or nay on the picnic and hike or the World’s Largest Ball of Contiguous Twine.

It is no coincidence that I fascinated by all things nomadic and drawn to all things deeply rooted.

The two biggest reason I have my 20 Wishes are first to face the big bad realities of life and death with aplomb instead of fear; the second is to counteract the constant dripping tedium of adulting.

Everyone gets when I am struggling with the former, the Big C has street cred, but the other gets no sympathy, not even from me, but sometimes its hardest.

Anyway, all philosophical deepness and poetic meanderings aside, even these meager ones brought on by repeat listening to Lake Street Dive’s immensely satisfying time and key changes (listen to them, you will thank me!), I really, really NEED this trip to the great AT.

I kind of hate that my timing coincides with people getting all excited by it, but I have been working up to it far too long to let trail hiking  popularity dissuade me.

So starting with a negative balance in the books. My staggering medical debt is down below $2000, there is also some personal debt to friends and family who helped me in the last two years, and my student loans,  and an ambulance bill.  Thankfully working hard and will have ALL of it gone by December (except student loan.)

And my physical state is the equivalent of my bank balance. Been just keeping track without changes. Currently back at almost sedentary with less than 5000 steps in a day. Weigh in at 220 lbs. Stand 5’5″ and walking/trotting a brisk mile definitely winds me.

But

Off all treatment meds for a couple months, always try and keep pain down with Tylenol, Ibuprofen and my roller, yoga, meditation, diet, etc.

So this is nowhere near impossible. In fact compared to other things I have done this should be a Breeze.

 

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul

Our life together is so precious together, we have grown

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(Just Like) Starting Over was a number one hit this time of year in 1980, it was the lead single off the new Double Fantasy album and John Lennon had just been shot. I loved the song while I mourned his death. It is a song I associate with this time of year, like “Favorite Things,” not actually a Christmas song but I still always put it in my December playlist. I have started over again, and again, and again.

In 1980, every time I sang along with my AM radio, I truly felt that I was getting my second chance in a life that had up to then been pretty traumatic. I fit in my skin and I felt loved, and safe and useful.
I was honor graduate and a recent NCO and I was madly in love and recently married. I had reconnected with my family of birth, felt loved and supported by my foster family the Urbanawiz, and had just learned I was pregnant.
Life couldn’t have been better.

Something happened the following spring that changed everything. What happened is not the point of the blog, but in that moment the old me ended and I believed myself worthless and for the next year or so behaved accordingly, as my life, except my work and my writing which suffered but survived, fell apart and away from around me.

But I started over.

Christmas of 1983 was spent with Bill’s parents, I had two amazing baby boys, a husband who I knew loved me, even if he had a bad temper and a tendency to wander into other women’s arms. My writing was still earning me a bit of money and acknowledgement, my family of birth and I were actually pretty close for a change, Connie and Ed, my foster parents, were being the parents I wished I had, my skin might not fit but I felt loved and useful and almost safe.
The following spring I was alone with another child on the way, no idea how to survive the crushing emotional and financial burden of truly single parenthood, but I tried, I truly tried to hold it all together as my life, except my writing and my work at the VA which suffered but survived, fell apart and away from around me.

Then I started over.

December 14 of 1988 my children were finally home after a year long separation from me (the persons bringing the suit on my fitness lived out of state, so the boys were in state custody for their protection) It was a bloody and vicious court battle (his side, I had no lawyer) in which every mistake from my past was dragged up and thrown at me on the stand and even I became convinced that I wasn’t the best thing for them after all. But mostly I loved them and the judge said the only way they could be together for Christmas was if one of us stopped fighting. So I said if surrendering my rights would get them a good, safe home with the Bartleman’s I would stop fighting and sign. Which I did.
I said Good-bye, tickets were bought, and the day they were to fly out, the Guardian Ad Litem got a phone call from a very drunk and angry man (who used unapproved by court language) to tell her that it wasn’t a convenient day for them to arrive. I had exactly 7 days to get together a household that could pass court inspection, but I did, and the boys came home for good. I felt grateful and so full of love and very, very scared.
That spring I was in a full time position as Director of Volunteers at Catholic Community Services and life was really, really good. I was still frequently scared and overwhelmed but I was doing this thing called life and all my sons were healthy and growing and happy.

I was truly starting over, this would be the winning chapter of my life.

Except my life story is more like a GOT novel than my preferred Tolkien or L’Engle or even Lewis novel.

So many more restarts in my life I could make this the longest blog in history, because as often as I fall or get knocked down, there is again “starting over.”

A year ago today, on my way to someone’s house to drop off some organic produce, I was rear-ended by a possibly drunk hit-and-run driver, which began my toughest year yet. January 1 in the same emergency room in which I had been treated I watched a code blue run on a little angel, after 3 fruitless but heroic hours, first her parents and then I held her lifeless body as my heart broke along with all the others who loved her.

Since that opening of the year, I have moved twice, been first on the scene in two rather gruesome crashes and provided first aid, witnessed a violent suicide, and helped a man in the road who had been assaulted until the cops and ambulance arrived. These opportunities to be a good samaritan cummulatively have made my PTSD the worst it has been since 1981. And add in that I have had a return of my rather big share of physical medical issues.

As of today, my GFR is borderline and my anion gap is too low, my blood pressure is through the roof and I don’t know yet if the drugs that may save my life may inadvertantly take it.

Nothing makes it harder to enjoy your own excess and good health than another’s poverty and suffering so I try to keep a low profile socially.

My sisters and I are in touch and we love each other which is good. My sons remember that I exist off and on when I remind them, although they are usually too busy to help or socialize unless its an actual holiday, even than its my DIL that invites and only at the last minute. But they are my kids, so I still love them to the moon and back. And i am very proud of how their lives are unfolding. They may not think much of me, and maybe I deserve that, but I think I have pretty awesome kids. So family this year is good. I love my family to the moon and back, twice

My writing except for some poems in October and a half finished novel in November are a complete no go.

However I love my job, I am useful there and my inherent silliness is a bonus. This week I am even going to try 40 hours of work as its my second week of treatment break, and they really need me.

Also this year has reaffirmed that I have the best friends in the universe, this universe or any of the other Geek universes I regularly visit. In no particular order – Sara, Laurie, Cathy, Amie, Pat, Regina, Jen, the Videans, Angela and Amie (and others I am probably forgetting) have literally and figuratively saved my life and its general accoutrements this year. I love you guys to Gallifrey and back.

Gil, and Saja, and Bam, and Tam get special notice for always making me welcome, inviting me to visist if its been more than a few days without seeing me, and most importantly of all is they way you are so willing to accept the time and efforts I can share. I cannot think of a more special title than Nanna Jo, and you make such an effort to include me, even this year when I know how much easier it would have been to do otherwise. Love you guys to the moon and back by train, twice!

And yes, I have another scan Monday morning, this time to look at my bones and back. (Playing my own medical game of “Where in my body is Cancer San Diego?”) But my tongue is flat, my spirits good, and every morning I wake up and see the face of someone I love its just like

Starting Over!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh_Q-4KUAB4

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul

Who wants to be right as rain….

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In light of my recent close encounter of the crazy kind, the Adele lyrics that popped up in my cover song have a whole new meaning. I know I explained my whole Ipod augury fairly recently so I won’t explain again.

The good news is that however drama, drama, drama my cover song is; my cross song is “Sunrise” by John E Jaan. I have a few Renaissance artist CD’s that are in constant rotation besides the illustrious Owen Phyfe’s and the drummer from Tartanic showing off his other instrumental and composing skills is one of them. The CD is called “Invocation,” and is a musical prayer that can turn my day around. I purchased mine at the AZRF, can’t find it on CD Baby but I believe he is still with Tartanic, and he is on FB so you can probably purchase one anywhere Tartanic is performing, or maybe him personally. You will thank me if you do, it is beyond lovely.

So recent past song on todays “random” is Rascal Flatts and “When the Sand Runs Out” and that pretty much sums up how most bad things happen, both the times when I let fear surround and the fact that sometimes when I am out on that limb it just snaps right off.

So health update. I have bad days and good days. The good days are getting good enough I am trying a few shifts this week. Okay, one tomorrow, then two in the middle of the week. When we see how that goes I will make more decisions about the week after that. No green bananas, but thats okay, overripe bananas make great banana muffins.

As to my financial situation, it is also improving slowly but surely. And crossing my fingers that I have found just the right place to live in Tempe. I will be renting a room from a friend but get to not live alone, help her out with finances and keep the dogs so all around win.

LOL, song for “self” is Citadel by Anna Nalick, some auguries are so spot on its scary. My relationship with others is the song written by Terry Melcher for his mother (Doris Day) “Bring Back Happy Endings” and this is my song as much as “Over the Rainbow” or “Rainbow Connection” I hum and sing it a lot, but no one really recognizes it. Take a listen, especially if you know his story. My hopes and fears is Sammy Davis, Jr singing “What Kind of Fool Am I,” and the final outcome is “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

So if you really want to know how I am doing, listen to the music the universe picked for me, and you will pretty much have it in a nutshell.

And have a great week-end, I am headed back to Nanowrimo!

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away

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I do believe in yesterday, yesterday is the place where seeds were planted for today’s harvest, where mistakes were made for today’s lessons, where choices and promises were made that I honor, I do believe in yesterday. I learn from yesterday, I cherish yesterday; I do not regret yesterday.

I also believe in tomorrow; tomorrow is the place where adventure still waits, hope often dances and dreams do come true. I believe in tomorrow, I do not fear tomorrow.

I live here in today. In this moment, the past cannot be changed, and the future is the flower of today’s tilling, planting and fertilizer. So today I will dig until my back aches, throw all the seeds of compassion and gratitude I can, laugh heartily, love easily, forgive even quicker and if I find today is a little more full of shit than other days, I am going to work it into the flower beds thanking the cycles of life that produced it.

So has anyone noticed that I still let you know what I am listening to when I write my blog? I do this sort of augury where I ask the universe what I need to know today and then pick an artist, genre, etc, and hit random. Today is brought to you by the Beatles.

Cover Song (what colors my life) today was “Yesterday” and the cross (what helps or challenges me) is “Let It Be”, my foundation is “Eight Days a Week”, more recent past “Get Back”, my future is “Love Me Do,” and far future is “All You Need is Love”; for self I have “Paperback Writer,” and my relationships is “Penny Lane,” for hope and fears I have “We Can Work it Out,” and final outcome is “From Me to You.”

Totally fits, too. There is a shadow hanging over me, yup, in all this I am also mourning the fact I met someone who I fell head over heels with who was anything but right for me, my Maurine, and I miss them. But it is more than that, I have some serious medical, emotional, professional and financial decisions to make. And I want to have control over the things I do not have control over, I want to feel safe. Everytime I turn my phone on now it tells my I am 28 minutes from Home. I haven’t updated my address in the phone yet, because I want to believe there is an external home for me, somewhere. But I know better. Then comes my help and my challenge;

Let it Be. Call her Mother Mary, Quan Yin, God or Gaiea, I have used all these and others at different times in my life, but the energy is the same. It is the same love I felt from Connie Urbanawiz, Louse Aten. It is the love I see in the eyes of the mothers whose babies I have nursed (even the big adult babies). I am surrounded and warmed by the very pure love I feel towards my children and friends, all of them. I know that everything will be alright. However it looks, it will BE alright.

So many miracles around me, so much love, so many opportunities to make lives better around me, in that, the service of others and the creation of art, is all my real happiness.

Namaste my friends.

Biting into Happiness, Blog, Licking Your LIterary Labito, Soundtrack of My Soul

“I’ve got nothing on my mind, nothing to remember, nothing to forget…..

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….  and I’ve got nothing to regret”

Another year older as of yesterday, or more accurately the last 364.25 days; I am in my late 50’s, far past any medical expiration date and even farther past any expectations of certain teachers, counselors and nay sayers.

“But I am all tied up on the inside, no one knows quite what I’ve got, and I know that on the outside, what I used to be I’m not anymore.”

I am another year older, with the weight and wrinkles to show for my journey once again through the valley of  “I’m Not Dead Yet.” I tire easily and breathe with too little exertion. I am walking and swimming and keeping track of what goes in, effort out, stretching and rolling and seeding and making step after step and breath after breath towards my  goals.

“You know I’ve heard about people like me
But I never made the connection.
They walk one road to set them free
And find they’ve gone the wrong direction.
But there’s no need for turning back
Cause all roads lead to where I stand;
And I believe I’ll walk them all
No matter what I may have planned.”

I am still so far from the person I want to  see in the mirror, the soul reflected clearly in the mirror of meditation and just as far from the person I would be for my patients, my friends, my family and lovers. So another year begins…

My next guided spiritual journey is through Buddhism, brought to me by Pema Chodron’s “No Time to Lose,” and my current life coach is “The Book of Forgiving.” I am back to “Thrive” and “Your First Triathlon” for my physical training.  I have a greater yearning to travel, not just the far away places still on my bucket list like Australia and Antartica, or even Alaska (what’s with all these “A”s), but a stronger yearning to go back to Noank and Mystic, to touch my ocean and on the way hug and connect with the few people who did not so much remain through my life as periodically  resurface.  Each person I chatted with or thanked for my birthday greeting in real time or FB is a reminder of how gifted I have been with people to both love and by whom to be loved.

“Can you remember who I was?
Can you still feel it?
Can you find my pain?
Can you heal it?

Then lay your hands upon me now
And cast this darkness from my soul.
You alone can light my way.
You alone can make me whole
Once again.”

So many people, so many different times, so many ways I have been broken, or fallen down, and every time life has placed a hand if I would reach, not so much to pull me up, but to walk beside me as I faced the challenges. We all get broken sometimes. It is up to us to make a new and beautiful mosaic, or sit in the ruins and throw the shards of our life at every body else’s art.

“We’ve walked both sides of every street
Through all kinds of windy weather;
But that was never our defeat
As long as we could walk together.
So there’s no need for turning back
Cause all roads lead to where we stand;
And I believe we’ll walk them all
No matter what we may have planned.”
To my children and friends, those especially who care enough to follow my blog, I am grateful that you hold my hand even if from miles and miles away.  From old friends I have not seen in decades like Serein (well one decade), and TC, and my own Donny to the friends who have been there as I fulfilled my life long dream and became a nurse like my sons, Sara, Gil, Pat, Regina, Jennifer and the whole wonderful Videan Clan, to my newest friends and joys like Saja, BAM, TAM, Archer, Stephanie and Brian, I can only say thank-you and I will do my best this year to be the woman you deserve!
Todays Blog is brought to you by “American Pie” by Don McClean. There isn’t a bad song on the album. And I can lend you the vinyl or the CD if you live nearby!
Also cannot recommend enough “The Book of Forgiving” by Desmond Tutu.
Now who is up for a vegan smoothie and a 5K walk?

 

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’

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So sipping some coffee I may or may not get to add to my long term caffeination while listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong perform the most sublime Porgy and Bess.  Someday I will have an awesome pair of headphones to put on and lay on the floor and listen to this 2 disc classic LP set, but my turntable is blissing me out just fine right now.

My bodies clean up crew is apparently having some kind of competition, not unexpected, but this is the part of the process that is always the hardest, whether illness or accident or death of someone I love.  The crisis is over and re-actions are complete, in this case the last treatment available done, and follow-up scans and blood work taken, but the real work is just starting.

Now comes recovery and learning what the new reality will be and shifting myself to fit that reality in a constructive way.  Everyone has challenges. Even good things like the birth of a perfectly healthy new baby, accepting a new better paying job, or the completion of a long time creative venture have this piece of limbo – the summer of the cycle, where everything holds its breath waiting to see how the wheel will turn. Nothing is familiar and there are no more familiar rhythms leading you to the next note or word. Forging forward is tiring when I cut a new path, whether the journey is a chosen happy one or a necessary rough one, for some reason this is the part of the journey where I am most likely to implode emotionally. (I am great in a crisis, its later I need two baskets to carry me cuz one won’t even due.)

My body got that memo and seems to be trying to expedite the process.

Knowing how hard this part is for me, I made myself a brief social commitment for the afternoon, and agreed to give someone a ride so I couldn’t cancel.  And because of really special reasoning that very possibly only Miss Laurie might understand (cuz MY Doctor is brilliant and well informed but NOT in any way attractive or personable!), the social engagement I picked today is a Sci-Fi Singles Meet and Greet.

Hey, if anyone asks me on a date today, they are definitely worth saying yes to, LOL. I look awful, I can’t shave cuz I might nick myself and bleed everywhere, I can’t get rid of my nice Italian facial hair (sparse mind you, but that doesn’t actually make it look more attractive, pubescent boy beard on an old lady is just not sexy!) because well, the chemicals; aand my hair is coming in greyer this time and making my adorable cut have a mind all its own. Hee hee hee. I am at my worst appearance wise and totally bringing mints cuz sure my breath is well, chemo special. But i am going. And dammit, I AM having fun!

And I am wearing my T-shirt. It says “Being a person has become too complicated, time to be a unicorn.”

Cuz, my own private joke and truth today, and well, my nose, think Despicable Me’s Gru.

I will be back later and report on my new friends and any Prince’s I meet.

For now, just thanks for all the love and support.

And Hey, still looking for links in the comments section to other Blogs, good deed doing, or other like minded people and places.

And Porgy, I is your woman now……..

If you can get this vinyl, do it! If not and you live nearby come on over sometime and I will share!

 

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul

Gotta Find my Corner of the sky…..

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Music once memorized is just waiting for a chance to reawaken in my brain. Music from the original Pippin is back on rotation on the inner soundtrack, maybe not as catchy or memorable as other Schwartz compositions, it still makes great earworm.

I picked up the latest Broadway recording and am glad I heard the new arrangements sung first by the live cast at Phoenix Theater or my change avoiding brain might have dismissed it as unworthy.

Thanks to Sara R for wanting to attend the Phoenix Theater production as a birthday treat and Paul Stovall for nailing the vocals and choreography with such deliciousness, I can relish the revival as well as I did the original. I had a bit of a relationship with the Fosse run in ancient times and I have to say chipper little Anthony as Pippin never felt quite right, nor did a few of the sexy siren scenes played with all the Mormon chasteness possible with Fossiesque choreography. Still think the incest momma plays better with a more born again blonde look, but all in all this pop musical look at the eternal question of “to be or not to be” managed to make me hum through a very tough day yesterday, and wish I had the time and money for seconds.

Pippin is playing one more week at Phoenix Theater so if you have a chance, go see it!

Crowfae gives it:

“Pippen” as staged by Phoenix Theater gets a solid 7/10  Shepard Pies!  (This is a flagrant abuse of Oberon’s rating system, I am certain, (although it is quite quotable so Oberon would watch it per his own statements in “Hunted” by Kevin Hearne) there was neither sausage, bacon nor significant peril warranting  time away from belly rubs, hunting or naps.)

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul, Suburban Homesteading by a member of the Hopelessly Citified Brown-thumb League

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs…

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In case you are one of the many who don’t know, that is the first line from one of my all-time favorite poems. It is not by Robert Frost, although two poems by him are in this category, and clearly not Dickens or Emerson or even Whitman, although they as well have followed me from the time when I was green and golden and sang in my chains like the sea. Have you guessed the poem yet? The poet? No cheating now, no Googling the metaphors or opening line, I will tell you in the end.

I have a lot of favorite poems, but to make the “all-time” list I must have first memorized portions of the poem prior to graduating high school and still find depth and meaning in its lines.  These poems, and the music of dead minstrels who played around me as the poetry wove into my adolescent awareness, are the things I am listening to these days.  My Ipod is playing Dusty Springfield, Karen Carpenter, Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, Dan Fogelberg,  Maria Hawkins and Nat King Cole, Bob Welch (in his early Fleetwood Mac days); and some living ones too, like Dave Brubeck, Simon and Garfunkel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and these are all joined be even more old minstrels whose status I can’t remember without Googling them myself,  like  Hot Tuna. And all these  voices of the 1970’s are just lovely background to what I am listening to the most; hours of  Interviews I am transcribing about a remarkable someone’s  life in that time.

The music isn’t just background; these artists are after all,  like the poem,  “all-time” favorites. New artists have joined my favorites music list over the years like Queensryche, or Dreamtheater,  Sharon and the Daptones, The Black Keyes, even recently Adele. I listen to these favorite artists repeatedly, appreciating them more with familiarity, but they can never be part of the personal history that makes the oldies resonate.

Even my TV time is currently rife with nostalgia, I am watching season 1 of  The Waltons, and a little more recent (OK, a lot more recent) but with its own poignancy the 2002 documentary   “Lost in La Mancha,”  about Gilliam’s ill fated quest to make my absolute favorite book EVAR into a movie, the production of which was once again just called off last month.

So that is what I am listening to and watching this week, and I can wholeheartedly recommend all of it, especially if you are too young to have heard or seen any of it the first time. All of these artists contributed something important and unique to the face of modern music, but I will also completely understand if you just laugh at me and tune into the modern fruits grown from these folk, jazz, blues and rock music roots. Because after all the owls have not yet borne your farm away and your wishes still race through the house high hay.

And the poem, by the way is Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, for whom my youngest son was almost named. As to my homesteading updates, I am about to cook and eat the one winter squash (aka spaghetti squash) that made it to adulthood and harvest, I have already consumed the one cantalope, and the scorching Arizona summer is upon us, so the garden is going to sleep for awhile.

Improvement over last year, although I am a loooong way from any form of urban self-sufficiency, I did actually eat from my garden this year. Yea! This was a first since moving to the desert. I will be studying, planning and feeding my garden dirt in preparation for the next planting season…as I always say “Nothing  is impossible, it’s not that I can’t, its that I haven’t yet.”

Now back to patiently transcribing….

Blog, Soundtrack of My Soul, Triathlon Training

Unbelievable how hard a little discipline can be, and to what am I listening?

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My training blogs are probably my most self-serving blogs of all. Why are they self-serving? Isn’t trying to lose weight and get fit a national obsession and therefore sharing how I am achieving broadly useful?

Although I do hope that another non-athlete, someday stumbles across my blog the same way I stumbled across others writings and are inspired to realize they can have fun if they get off the couch and out of their comfort zone (James Owen (in the inspiring sense) and Jayne Williams (in the athlete who looks more like me sense) were the two primary writer’s who helped me get started and keep going last year, but the real reason I keep training blogs is that it keeps me accountable. Telling others what I am going to do, and then honestly reporting whether I have done it or not, is the support my weak self-control needs to make it through the tough choices. Getting fit is not easy, it goes against my very nature, at least until it becomes second nature.

Last night was a perfect example. I am back in the habit of television grazing at night. Aware of the obstacle coming up in the course of my first night back into healthier behavior, I closed out my “MyFitness” as soon as I finished my last bite of dinner.  I also reminded myself that I intended to blog today about how well that first day of training went.

See, it went like this, wander out to the kitchen to check on dogs or watering or phone charging, hand on fridge door thinking of See’s chocolates I got for Easter (most awesome gift from the family I serve), then “Wait,” my brain says to my appetite, “You have no reason to be hungry, in fact you aren’t hungry I can tell, AND you closed out your calories for the day AND you have to blog tomorrow, you really want to blog about how you screwed up the very first day!” I remove my hand from the fridge and get a glass of water. I even actually resort to a glass of calorie free flavored water on the third trip which seemed to help quiet my candy craving for the rest of the night.

I drank a lot of water last night.

But I did meet my exercise goals, and I did meet my calorie goals. Today is a sit-up, push-up, stretch and roll day (yes, it is true, my calves and glutes are slightly sore today but not horrible) and I will walk 3 miles today as well . But that is all later, off to deal with some other self-care responsibilities. So on to the final question…

What am I listening to….? Well I have been crooning along with my old buddy Doris Day, housecleaning to Leo Kotke, and being moved by Jason Isbell and the 400 (all of course courtesy of my friends at Hoodlum Records who are about to have the best vinyl sale EVAR! for Record Store day April 21.  Go check out the list at http://www.hoodlumsmusic.com/blog/ )

Funny thing though, that when I really need to de-focus from pain, discomfort, or the inner whine of the excuse wheel I find my motivation not in music but Podcasts and Audiobooks. So what did I listen to yesterday? I am running and listening to a marathon of all the DML podcasts http://www.thelondonbroilshow.com/dml/ from I-tunes. My AZRF friends will know these guys as “The London Broil”, they are just intelligent enough and silly and funny enough to hold my interest indefinitely. I am back up to episode 10 (they just put out episode 23) and I have to say, I would totally go with the adult size Big Wheel, how about you?