lost and found

About a month ago, I lost one of my favorite earrings. I’d just got my hair cut, and went to Hammersly’s for Tak’s birthday dinner. Carelessly, I’d thrown my earrings in my handbag, and when I went to get my sweater, one of them fell out. Just in case, I left my name, number, and a description of the errant hoop with the very nice hostess. While I was willing to let it go, I was really sad; I’d bought the pair at a cute shop in Brooklyn with my girlfriend, and they represented a time and place that was special, both in meaning and where I was in my life. Plus, I wear them all the time!

Luckily, the earring turned up (Tak had a feeling it would), and we were happily reunited. But it makes me think of my possessions in an interesting way. In Christopher Moore’s book A Dirty Job, people’s souls reside in their objects; when the person dies, a soul collector or Death Merchant takes the item and sells it, making sure it goes to someone new who will love it. For some of the characters in the book, the item is an entire clothing collection, breast implants, or a cigarette case. Sometimes I wonder in what thing of mine would be the lucky object/s that’s holding my soul.

The soundtrack of our lives

There's a fun Facebook meme about the 15 albums that changed your life. It was really hard. For me, music is so intertwined with memory. For the most part, I have very clear picture where I was when I heard something, who I was with, what I was doing. Being of an age where "albums" denotes an entire disc, turning the record or tape over, and listening to it--I did a lot of that, in the car, in my room or someone else's. To narrow it down to 15, though--I could do 20 and maybe be happy. Tak was running down a bunch of artists, and I wasn't able to include them. Either it was song-specific, or I couldn't pick just one album by one artist, whether it was the first one I heard by them or what I think to be the best one (e.g, the Police, Suzanne Vega, or Crowded House). Some are so part of my formative years that I had to exclude recent albums I've loved--or it's just too many from one time period. The most life-changing ones I heard in high school (and those are many).

Or--none of the great discs I've heard in the last few years from top to bottom rocked my world in a fundamental way. Which is not to mean I don't appreciate and love some of my recent faves--Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights, Death Cab, Bravery, Keane, the Matrix and Garden State soundtracks, or Amy Winehouse. Well, there were many mornings that I was able to get through the day fueled on Keane's Under the Iron Sea, but it wasn't life-changing. Then there are the potentially hazardous records associated with various romantic attachments from 20ish (eek!) years ago. Am I going to advertise that on FB, or here, even? Nope, sorry.

The other scenario is there are times we'd listen to a bunch of stuff, and all that music meshed together indicates a time & place, but to choose one artist/album would be unfair. For example, I heard Jane's Addiction's "Nothing's Shocking" about the same time as "Pretty Hate Machine" by Nine Inch Nails. Neither one made my list because even though they are life-changing albums back to front, they are both very spring/summer/fall 1990. Same with Depeche Mode/ Pet Shop Boys/ OMD/ the Smiths/ New Order/ O Positive/ U2/ REM/ 10,000 Maniacs. They are all high school for me, flowing from freshman to senior year. I did single out the Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, but cited the Singles, Head on the Door, and Disintegration; also War by U2. College? Some of these bands carried over. I have one mix tape (and I made a ton of mix tapes) with Bob Marley, CSNY, Sting, NIN, Jane's Addiction, RHCP, Dead Can Dance, REM, Kate Bush, and Bongwater. Or when Tak & I started dating, I had my crazy mix of stuff, he brought the hardcore (Tree, Sam Black Church, Minor Threat), ska (English Beat, Madness, Specials, Bim) and the inbetween (Bosstones, Op Ivy).

So, what would have been some of the others?
Stay Awake (various artists): This is an awesome disc from 88-89 of Disney classic songs being covered. Gems include the Replacements doing "Cruella DeVille," "Castle in Spain" by Buster Poindexter, Bonnie Raitt's "Baby Mine," and Suzanne Vega doing the title song. We still listen to it since I have the tape deck set up in the kitchen.

Best of Blondie (Blondie): I loved Blondie in 5th grade, but didn't get an appreciation until college & after. Classic.

Seven Worlds Collide (Neil Finn & various artists): I couldn't single out one Crowded House record, but we listened to this a lot the summer before I got pregnant. When I was pregnant with Owen, for my dad's birthday we saw Neil Finn at Avalon. It was an incredible show, and one of the best I've ever seen.

Which is another meme in itself: Most life-changing live shows.

Another year

"Every year unfolds like a petal inside all the years that preceded it." –Naomi Shihab Nye

Oh, yeah, I had a birthday! Since we were in NYC, we met friends in Hoboken for lunch, went to the cray-cray Toys R' Us in Times Sq. with the indoor Ferris Wheel. While we were tromping around looking for a Disney store, I saw a pair of Tokidoki rubber rain boots and got an immediate case of the "I wants."* Then some solo shopping to The Point Knitting Cafe, Purl, and Uniqlo. Followed by pizza, cake (strawberry shortcake), and lambic. Owen went to sleep fairly quickly, followed by a drunken evening at Tom & Jerry's.

Remember: beer before liquor, never been sicker. And lambic *is* beer. You'd think I'd be old enough to know this, but older is not always wiser.

Being righteously hung over did not stop me from eating my two-day-old red velvet cupcake from The Point (which I think is really from Magnolia's) that survived intact the train ride home. The cupcake was smartly "packaged" in an upside-down coffee cup & lid. Sure, it looked like a Glade air freshener, but it worked! Oh, and I can thank my mother-in-law's still-warm and homemade omusubi, rice balls wrapped in seaweed.

*I did get the boots as my present to myself, but thought about it for a week first.

late summer thoughts

Today there is just a little chill in the air, enough to need a jacket in the morning. My toes are cold and I wonder if I should have worn closed up shoes. Not yet, not yet! The grass in the cemetery across the street has been freshly mowed, its scent mixing in with the odd salt of the sea, blowing from the east. The bright sky reminds me to hurry, hurry, there are things to do before school starts--which this year, has a whole new meaning.

There are many other things I need to catch up blogging on--the craziness of last week & the weekend, the new Martha Speaks show, the girls whose knitting club got booted out of the library because it wasn't literary--but listening to Neil Finn on my way into work, and the hint of fall that comes in late August, before the humidity & return to summer that happens in September, really struck me, the way it always does at the end of summer.