ok. so i realize that a lot has happened since i last blogged, but i feel so far behind, i'm going to just summarize very briefly. if you don't know who these people are, i'm sorry.



well, here goes...so my friend ryan beatty arrives in chicago thursday night. megan comes over thursday night as well. we go out. i get sick to my stomach and throw up all night from drinking 2 beers on an empty stomach. megan goes to work in the morning. ryan and i hang out, eat lunch, talk about this and that and pick up megan after work. we go to goose island brewery (maker of jesse's favorite honker's ale). we get to my apt. and there are jesse sprinkle & josh tillman on the front porch. perfect. we go out to a swanky nightclub on huron and get turned away cuz of the dress code. we go to ripley's on clark instead. everyone except jesse and i do jager depth charges all night. i have an amaretto sour and that's it. we take photos. we go home. jesse & josh pass my guitar back and forth and sing songs. they sing lovely. these boys are in bands. ryan is frontman for serene (run out and buy serene's newly released self-titled full-length cd @ a megarecord store near you! i found mine @ tower records! yeah, i paid for it even though ryan said he'd give me one...and you should go buy one too if you like death cab for cutie or appleseed cast (ryan's favorite band) or sunny day real esate or the six parts seven or even ida i think. i happen to love this album in case you're wondering. ryan is so beautifully dreamily emo. he hates that word, 'emo', hehehehe but he doesn't read this so it's okay. keep your eyes peeled for a fall tour coming near you if you're one of the fortunate ones.) he's also 1/3 of holiday runner and sometimes guitarist for the stickman jones collective. jesse is drummer for poor old lu, 1/3 of holiday runner, frontman for the world inside, drummer for serene and sometimes drummer for the stickman jones collective. (jesse is an awesome drummer.) josh is in a band called stately english except they're not calling it stately english any more they're just calling it stately because they don't wanna get confused w/ bands like bad english (which is what i'm currently using) or modern english (which i'm also using i hope) but jesse still calls it stately english and i think i will too but if i'm lazy i suppose i'll just call them stately. josh is a talented songwriter, singer, guitar player & awesome drummer (so i'm told). josh is also in a band called saxon shore and he recently drummed on the recording for a band called demon hunter. death metal w/ occasional pretty vocals. throughout the night denison witmer is in the background. partly because we called him at 2am for some reason and confused the hell out of him because we woke him up. but mostly because megan and i find ways of bringing his name up. it's been the joke since cornerstone, that deni's name somehow always comes up, and ryan and jesse find it quite amusing.



ok. so we have fun. nobody could sleep friday night, especially those who'd done the jager/red bull shots. poor ryan. we make lots of noise. spitting is involved as well as open windows and heads below. i am 100% sober all night long. i don't spit. i soak in the sights and sounds of long distance friends gathered in a little apartment in bucktown, chicago, and i think about how big our country is and how far apart the east coast is from the west coast and how i'm here in the middle in a town called chicago and how i want to be bicoastal but haven't even made it to being unicoastal yet.



saturday morning, no one has slept very much. i get up. i shower. mikey is coming to say farewell and to eat lunch with me. mikey arrives. we go to get mexican. we share a burrito. we talk. i'm sad. mikey is moving 1000 miles away to boston. mikey says goodbye to everyone. mikey drives away. ryan is loading his van. we sit on the front steps a while, soaking in the midafternoon blazing sun, and we talk and prepare to say goodbye. ryan asks me when i'm moving to seattle. i answer. saying goodbye to ryan is not easy. jesse and josh finally load their van. it's time to say goodbye. megan and i see them off. i have just let one friend go east to boston and three others west to seattle. i am still in chicago...i drive megan home. we laugh about the weekend and already we miss the seattlebound boys. but we will see them again in a few weeks so we comfort ourselves w/ that thought. but mikey, there is no comfort there. mikey goes to africa in a month and will not be back in the midwest until christmas. africa is a long ways away. so is christmas. i am nauseous again and go to my mother's house and take a nap. i go back to my apartment and later book hotel rooms for both mikey and the seattle-bound. i go to sleep relieved with the knowledge that all my roadtripping friends are safe with a roof over their heads for the night.



sunday morning i go to church an hour late as usual. the sermon is on stuff that is good for me to hear. i talk to folks. talk to rand my pastor. always good to talk to rand. couldn't ask for a better pastor. go home to meet connolly & olarn my high school buddies to hear of their trip to visit my best friend josh in new york, a trip i should have been on. we walk to anne sather cafe, eat omlettes & swedish pancakes & fruit and they tell me all about the trip. i miss josh terribly. i remember the time in oakland when he and i snuck into the observatory at night up on the big big hill and we climbed up on these steel beams that overlook san francisco and the golden gate bridge and all the lights from the city were so beautiful and we sat and looked and soaked it all in. for some reason i will never forget that moment. and so i sit and listen to olarn and connolly tell me stories of a place that josh has been living in without me for the past 5 months and i have never been there except via phone and email and these two have been there in the flesh and i am missing out. and i worry thinking about how it was easier to keep in touch with josh when he was on the west coast than when he moved to the east coast and i think about mikey moving to the east coast and wonder whether i have a mental or emotional block against the east for some reason. but i guess for the most part i was josh's constant when he was in california, and now he's with lielle and she's his constant so it's okay as long as josh is not alone. spending time w/ connolly and olarn is good and refreshing and relaxing. i know they love me even when i disappear for weeks at a time. friends who knew you when you were 16 are good to have around when you've just turned 30.



i hear from mikey later that night to let me know he's arrived safely at his friend's place in boston. he's tired. we have a short conversation. his voice feels further away now that he's in boston, in a different time zone. i wonder if i'll get used to that.



monday night ryan calls me from spokane, wa. he's lost jesse along the way. i worry because jesse has no cell phone. i pray. i wait. i call ryan past 1 am chicago time, 11pm seattle time. he has just walked in the door. all is fine. jesse and josh are fine. i can go to sleep. both coasts have received the friends i have sent and i am in chicago, coastless still.



saying goodbye is not an easy task for me. saying goodbye to people i care about is even harder. saying goodbye to 4 people i care about going in opposite directions in the span of 45 minutes...that's just cruel...it's like the anti-mastercard commercial. but i survived. but megan leaves for iowa on friday, megan who's been my summer sister at the wildwood...the house will seem so empty without her at tim's...the boys are going to miss her so much...TIM AND I are gonna miss her so much...sheesh. at least we'll have one last hurrah in seattle the end of this month. and then deni will be coming to chicago in september.



caleb comes to town tomorrow morning. he called me this afternoon i think from philly. it's always good to hear from caleb. he keeps it real for me. isn't afraid to tell me when i'm being silly. i've even given up calling myself a heathen cuz of him. it'll be cool to spend time w/ him and hopefully rand can hang out w/ us too. i've never observed them interacting, and those two have been the biggest influences in my life these months since my dad died, so it would be interesting to see just what they're like around each other.



anyways, i am jumping off into the deep tomorrow...i am going to a "small group" from church...rand lured me into the idea of going by telling me the facilitators are cool like caleb. we shall see how i survive the small group setting, as i have been so out of that scene. i'll probably get weirded out, but oh well...i'll manage.



i have skipped every concert i had planned on going to since ian's concert in milwaukee...my entire body should be twitching by now. well, i'm seeing tony bennett on thursday at ravinia. i suppose that counts. speaking of ian moore, i am going to see him in houston on october 4th. i haven't told him yet. i need to make sure his entire band is playing. not that i wouldn't go to see just him play. i love his acoustic show! but i want the whole ian moore action company (IMAC) experience, ya know?



so here's what i've been listening to:

in the aeroplane over the sea--neutral milk hotel (like holy schmole, i so totally love this album! ian told me i should really really get it and so i did and boy oh boy was he right on the money...i am listening to it as i type and the tears still come to my eyes...this is the album that ian & those boys from port elecki had done covers from that literally bowled me over at the schuba show...totally awesome stuff...)

kids in philly--marah

serene--serene (yeah, you know what to do...i got mine at tower records. you can get their 1st album at cdbaby.com)

when we were small--rosie thomas

via satellite--ian moore

summerteeth--wilco

the bends--radiohead

keep it like a secret--built to spill

will you find me--ida

someday my blues will cover the earth--his name is alive

revival--gillian welch

oh mercy--bob dylan

wide swing tremelo--son volt

sebastopol--jay farrar

very emergency--the promise ring

100 broken windows--idlewild

everybody makes mistakes--starflyer59

we have the facts and we're voting yes--death cab for cutie

being there 1&2--wilco

amelia's boot--erik brandt & uhq

orange juice--annie quick

"and you're a grown-up and still unsure/ and i'm thirty and i don't know nothing no more..." (from 25 december by everything but the girl)



why is it that the older you get, the less you feel like you know? i remember when i was a child, i was convinced that i had access to all knowlege if i could just plug into the source and concentrate hard enough--the answer would come to me eventually. i think this was the result of my being extremely skilled at multiple choice tests even if i knew nothing about the subject, considering i didn't study very much. i suppose you can argue that if you plug into God, you'd have access to "all knowledge" himself. but i think the reality of my own personal cluelessness has set in as i have gotten older. is it a bad thing to feel like you know nothing? i don't feel so helpless about it...it's just how i happen to feel these days.



on the upside, i do feel changes going on inside of me, positive changes. it's like my heart is reverting back to when i knew innocence. that's like a long time ago for me, cuz i've seen some crap from an early age. i feel like the real me is finally emerging. man, i'm a late bloomer...i suppose it's better to go through this at 30 as opposed to 60. i still feel like i don't have it all put together, but i don't really care about that. i'm actually comfortable with the uncertainty that i'm living with these days. who will i be by the end of 2002? where will i be going in the next couple of years? what will i be doing?



so ryan beatty who i met @ c-stone is on his way from dansville, ny with a u-haul on his way to seattle. he was supposed to caravan w/ jesse sprinkle & a dude named josh (not my josh) but jesse's car is in the shop, so ryan left first and will hang out here in chicago until jesse catches up tomorrow night. megan is coming down to the city to help me host. so i'm just getting the apartment ready...i'm kinda concerned cuz ryan's 6'7" and i have an attic apt. w/ sloped ceilings. he'll have to stay away from the edges i guess.



oh, the photo...this one right here from a recent jaunt up to milwaukee. that's mikey bales of UHQ, my favorite fiddler. he's leaving for boston in a couple days which makes me sad, but i guess i should get used to being left. everybody comes through here and then goes coastal. i don't know if my arms are long enough or strong enough to stretch across both coasts, east & west. i may need to pick a coast someday...there are voices calling from both sides. i just wish josh lived somewhere besides poughkeepsie/beacon, ny. we were supposed to have our big rock candy mountain in california w/ our buddies from high school, and what does the dude do? he moves to new york to be with a girl. go figure. well, i suppose i'd do the same cuz lielle's pretty hot. ha ha!



spread some love and support your local music scene~



stuff i've listened to--

roobrik--the world inside (jesse sprinkle)

mix cd of mostly sad songs cuz i'm a "glutton for pain" according to a friend, like whatever ok.

100 broken windows--idlewild

denison witmer mix cd--get ready for denison to come to a venue near you! fall tour starts in september!

summerteeth--wilco (God bless jeff tweedy...)

a friend of mine emailed me regarding writing and what vargas llosa had said about writing to another author, that the day you find beauty in this world around you which you now see only as boring and bland, on that day you would become a great writer. that got me thinking about my own experiences of looking for and finding beauty in unlikely places. for me, i can't say my life's been all that boring this past year. it's been one helluva rollercoaster ride. but there has been a lot of pain. a LOT. i am still not comprehending the total impact of my father's death on my life and my heart and my current and future self. but one thing i'm grateful for is that i didn't throw myself into a pit of despair and melancholy. sure, there are bouts w/ both as well as with anger and loneliness and deep deep sadness. but i made a choice to fully experience the pain and to accept it as a privilege and a beautiful part of my life because it amplifies the love my father had for me and the love i still have for my dad. i'm not a glutton for pain, as it may seem. but if that's what i'm going to be given for awhile, i want to gain from it rather than be crushed by it.



i do miss my dad though...just the other day i started crying in my car because i was feeling really blue and i knew that my dad could comfort me if he were around. there are some things in my life that i can receive comfort for only from my dad. and now that he's gone, i don't know where i'll get my comfort from. it's been 3 months. an entire quarter of a year without my dad. and all i see is a lifetime ahead of me still without my dad. i mean, i know he's doing okay and all, and bill mallonee told me this thing about the communion of saints or something and he said my dad's more involved in my life than i may think. i hope so. it would just be really cool to just be with him again, follow him around like a puppy dog. i feel like such a grown-up now without my dad around. and at the same time i often feel like a lost little girl.



well, go find some beauty in your world, even in all the profanity and darkness that exists in our midst. it just takes a tiny bit of light and hope...there's beauty to be found whereever you look.



stuff i've been listening to:

kids in philly--marah (AWESOME! thanks for the heads up, c!)

s/t--ian moore

ian moore's got the green grass--ian moore

summerteeth--wilco

being there 1 & 2--wilco

100 broken windows--idlewild

from dayton with love--morella's forest

river bends ep--denison witmer

safe away--denison

80's ep--denison

of joy and sorrow--denison

philadelphia songs--denison

various mp3s--sweeter than you--aaron sprinkle; goodbye--emmylou harris; a case of you--joni mitchell; 25 december & i don't know anything--ebtg; the weight of my words--kings of convenience; sandalwood--lisa loeb; beautiful--annie quick; picture--mojave 3; time has told me & fly--nick drake; we're just friends--wilco; goodbye (this is not)--over the rhine; dancing lessons--sinead o'connor; dreams--the cranberries; will you find me--american music club; golden slumbers--ben folds; birds and ships--natalie merchant & billy bragg; bread--clem snide; hold on to me--cowboy junkies; farewell & bicycle tricycle--rosie thomas; walk w/ me--damien jurado; time of dying--ian moore; steadier footing & blacking out the friction--death cab for cutie; promise--pedro the lion; i didn't understand--elliott smith; the leaving day--the world inside (jesse); admiral of the oceans and viceroy of india & you are like that friend to me--serene (jesse & ryan)

so erik brandt of the urban hillbilly quartet has threatened to have me LIQUIDATED for having listened to the original amelia's boot UNLESS i provide him a cd-rom of the millions of photos i've taken of UHQ this past month. now, i'm not scared of erik or anything like that--he's such a softie i'm sure i'd have no problem taking him--but i thought it might be a good idea to make good on my promise and get those photos to him. so i was going through the million or so photos this weekend, and i came across this one of erik & mikey. i really like it! don't they look halo friendly? UHQ are probably one of my favorite bands to photograph. i mean, how many bands do i get to see where the frontman plays an ACCORDION?! let's see...i know of only one band like that and that would be UHQ.



so it's been over a week since i've been to live music. well, except for friday nite at mikey's parents' house in milwaukee. they had an outdoor "concert" of sorts with songbooks and mikey playing violin and a next door neighbor on flute, and other stuff that i missed. oh, i got to hear mikey play guitar cuz i brought my j-45 and he played "the star of county down" on it. so i guess he's a rappin' fiddler who plays irish folk songs on guitar. but anyways, in terms of official concerts, i skipped my entire lineup this weekend. caleb would be so disappointed...i even bypassed jimmy eat world & the promise ring. i've been wiped out, what can i say. i thought going to j.e.w. would cheer me up, but when i thought about it, i really had no desire to be at the riv for a sold out show for j.e.w. a zillion youngsters kicking me in the shins...hmm...i would've gone for it under normal circumstances, but i was kinda feeling blue yesterday and didn't want to deal w/ humans.



but i'm much better now, thank you...next concert...well, i WAS going to see the juliana theory @ the metro on wednesday, but jesse sprinkle & ryan beatty (of serene) might be coming through town on their way to seattle and will be crashing @ my apartment. i suppose i should actually be home for that. but i do definitely have to get to a concert soon or i'm convinced i'll turn into a pumkin.



i'm really missing my summerteeth cd...i lent it to a friend at work who's taken it all the way across the state for a weekend getaway. that is probably my favorite wilco cd. and since i missed wilco when they were home, i guess i miss summerteeth even more. oh well. gotta share the wealth. i wonder if caleb misses his 'nothing feels good' cd that i am still holding onto the way i miss summerteeth?...now i feel bad....

i’m at my old hideout in the parking lot of the 94th aero squadron restaurant facing south onto the cobalt blue taxiway lights of palwaukee airport. it’s a nick drake kind of night, and i’m feeling as hollow and fragile as a glass christmas ball ornament. i’ve taken my too-full heart and smeared it across the night sky covering the expanse of the continental united states, and it’s getting bloody around here. didn’t know my heart could cover so much ground. my thoughts are floating over the east coast tonight. i could call josh right now, but i won’t. times like this it hurts more to talk to him, and it doesn’t help when his solution is for me to move out to the east coast. but olarn & connolly are out there w/ him right now, and i’m feeling left out. it’s my own fault; i was supposed to go visit too, but i didn’t. i could be on the east coast right now. but i’m not. i’m coastless, and so many i’ve come to love are coasted, be it east or west.



mikey (of uhq) moves to boston in a week. i hear boston’s pretty far from chicago. yet another friend to join the ranks of the eastern time zone. at least megan will stay in the central time zone w/ me, even if she is moving back to iowa city in a couple weeks. all this being left behind is making me restless. i have thoughts of just driving away, away, away. where to? who knows. wherever. does it really matter?



the stars are hard to find tonite. the moon isn’t showing it’s face right now. the sky looks gray, even though it’s not cloudy. it must be really humid or something. i am tired from being blue...i think the barbed wire fence is going up around my heart. i’m always putting up those darn things and then having to tear ‘em down again. i don’t want a barbed wire fence-enclosed heart. as losing my dad taught me, it’s better to leave my heart exposed to the pain and to soak it in. don’t ask me why, it just is. it’s more real that way. and it’s about being real, ya know? it’s my only chance at true happiness.



you know what the perfect music is for a night like tonight? pedro the lion, emmylou harris, nick drake. yeah. perfect...perfect for making you want to put a hole in your head that is...i should go listen to some debbie gibson or maybe some hanson. except i own neither. well, it's james devours planet & the covenant circle tomorrow. that should cheer me up a bit. actually, i'm feeling much better. like 5% or someting better. cheerio. spread some love, y'all. i'm toast...



stuff i’ve been listening to:

'cross the big pond--vigilantes of love

devotion & doubt--richard buckner

american english ep--idlewild

s/t—serene (it’s ryan & jesse! go get this cd at your local big music megastore)

s/t—holiday runner (it’s ryan & jesse again! can’t get this anywhere ‘cept from the boys)

wood/water—the promise ring

very emergency—the promise ring

england, half english--billy bragg & the blokes

being there 1&2—wilco

s/t--jimmy eat world

and all the colors...—ian moore

via satellite—ian moore

ian moore’s got the green greass—ian moore

denison witmer mix

misc mp3s: hold onto me & you’ll be loved again—cowboy junkies; time has told me & fly—nick drake; this is not goodbye—over the rhine; whole—pedro the lion; goodbye—emmylou harris; a case of you—joni mitchell; pictures & yer feet—mojave3; the weight of my words—the kings of convenience; nightswimming—r.e.m.; thinking out loud—ron sexsmith; sandalwood—lisa loeb; valentine—old 97’s; dancing lessons & hold back the night—sinead o’connor; will you find me & western sky—american music club; halo friendly—damien jurado; bread—clem snide; flying as she falls—heather nova