I thought I’d do Unconscious Mutterings on the actual day they’re posted this week, instead of midway through. New month, and all. Also? I’m doing them in honor of my teen years, when Levi’s 501s where the thing. After all, it’s week 501.
I say… And you think…?
And so it is September.
For me, this month is always a bit odd. It’s technically still summer for another three weeks, but after this weekend, most of use will be out of our more relaxed summer mindset, even if we aren’t going back to school, or sending children there.
Here in Texas, the weather in September generally remains at full-on summer temperature at least through the middle of the month, which makes the autumn season seem to take forever to arrive, and makes it seem too short when it actually does, and yet, even though we haven’t yet arrived at the changing of official seasons, even though we’re still seeing temperatures peaking around the 100 mark during the day, there are hints of fall in the air.
The leaves are not as vivid a green as they were even a week ago, and there’s a hint of bite under those hot temperatures. That bite is so subtle that you can’t feel it unless you’re actively seeking it out, but it’s there, underneath your top layers of consciousness. 100 degrees in September feels ever so slightly cooler than 100 degrees in August.
And then there’s the light. As early as my birthday (August 17) I start noticing that the summer light is waning. I don’t mean the time of sunset – we all know the days are slowly shrinking as we approach the autumnal equinox – I mean the actual daylight. Somehow, once we’ve passed the mid-point of August, and all the more when we flip the calendar page to September, daylight seems a fraction less bright, the angle of the sun having changed just a bit.
September days, then, are warmed by thin sunlight, colored by fading leaves, and occupy a space that isn’t quite summer, but isn’t exactly autumn, either.
“By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer.”
~ Helen Hunt Jackson
I can’t sleep because my migraine meds are making me wired, so why not do a little late-night (or is that early morning?) word association?
I say… And you think…?
Like this meme? Play along at the Unconscious Mutterings website.
This weekend the US celebrates Labor Day, and Fuzzy and I are hosting a joint birthday bash/pool party (I turned 42 on 8/17 and he turns 40 on 9/7) so I thought I’d celebrate with a cocktail-inspired Thursday 13. The fact that this is one more way for me to be not-writing my novel or not-writing my collection of short stories is mere coincidence. Cheers!
“Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.”
~Bret Easton Ellis
I’m not generally a fan of Philip Glass. I mean, I like his music better than I like, say, the music of John Cage, but when it comes to orchestra and quartet music, minimalism is just not my style.
However, earlier this evening I was poking around YouTube because after a friend introduced me to “chambersoul” musician Shana Tucker’s awesome fusion of classical, jazz, soul and folk forms – and did I mention she’s a cellist? – I found that my interest in my own cello was renewed. It’s been sitting in the closet for over a year, partly because I haven’t been in the mood to play, and partly because my hands hurt from so much typing, and partly because the C-string needs to be replaced and I’m terrified the string will hit me in the eye during the process.
But I digress.
So I was poking around iTunes, because I’m all about instant gratification, and I found a song by CelloFourte (aka Tate Olsen) that I quite like, even though his band (Skillet) is largely unknown to me. (I’m even less of a Christian music/Christian rock fan than I am a Glass or Cage fan, because while I believe everyone is entitled to self expression, I think praise music is a bit smarmy. To me, it always comes across as insincere. (I think they doth PRAISE too much.))
But browsing for music is all about finding the unexpected, and so I was surprised to come across a Kronos Quartet album called Dracula. Now, the Kronos Quartet has been in business almost as long as I’ve been alive and their repertoire includes a healthy blend of contemporary, classical and contemporary classical (no, that is NOT an oxymoron – it refers to modern music composed in a classical style). Even though they seem to be partial to Glass, I generally like their albums.
But Dracula? Really?? Could it be that one of my favorite quartets had celebrated one of my favorite stories?
As it turns out, it could. The album isn’t at all recent, but is the recording of Kronos Quartet’s performance of Philip Glass’s Dracula quartet, which is basically a modern, alternative score to the original 1931 movie which starred Bela Lugosi. In fact, KQ has played the piece live, under the movie, more than once.
The music alone is amazing – it really feels scary, mysterious, creepy, cautious, hopeful, and triumphant at various stages. As I have a DVD of the movie, I’m considering playing the two together some dark October evening (it begs for a dark October evening. Dracula doesn’t work in the late summer twilight. Trust me on this).
Meanwhile, I found a YouTube clip, of the music and the film, which I’ve shared below.
Enjoy.
I’ve never been particularly good at sleeping, and when Fuzzy is away for business my sleep patterns get even more skewed from the usual, fairly nocturnal schedule we generally keep. Why? Because in addition to being a reluctant sleeper, I also have a vivid imagination. Even when Fuzzy is home I’m often caught in dreams that are strange, disturbing, or just plain scary, but when he’s away the phantoms come out to play.
To be honest, I’ve always been easily spooked at night. I’m not afraid of the dark – I actually prefer a room to be as cool and dark as possible when I’m trying to sleep, but that state of mind that comes just as I’m falling asleep leaves me stuck in a sort of personal Twilight Zone, albeit one without Rod Serling’s narration.
The thing is, it’s not every night, and it doesn’t seem to have a trigger. Instead, I have a kind of…eerie mood…and when it strikes I know I’ll be lying awake, quietly freaking out over every little sound. As a teenager, I would combat these moods either by reading until the sun was up or I literally fell asleep with the book in my hands (whichever came first), or by turning on the radio. Many nights were spent listening to the Larry King Show on AM radio, and I still remember some of the interviews. (That’s also the show that introduced me to the song “Talkin’ Baseball,” which remains a favorite even today.)
Larry King hasn’t been on the radio in decades, so on those nights when Fuzzy is away and the eerie mood descends upon my brain, I turn on NPR, which usually means that I go to bed hearing the BBC overnight service and wake up to Morning Edition. Except, I’m not really hearing any of it, because I keep the volume just at the edge of being able to discern individual words.
I’m not sure why the radio works for me, or why it has to be talk radio, specifically. I mean, music wires me, so I know why that doesn’t work but… Anyway, my current theory is that hearing live radio reminds me that there is a living world outside my head, and therefore the mental ghosts don’t have real power.
Of course, sleeping with three dogs in my room (at least two of which are usually in the bed with me) is helpful, as well. If I wake in the night, convinced that I heard a sound, I watch the dogs. If they don’t react, I know there’s no threat outside of my imagination.
The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows. ~Gaston Bachelard
This past weekend was my birthday, and it was quiet, but lovely. I turned 42, and wrote a column about it over at All Things Girl.
Meanwhile, I’m revisiting Unconscious Mutterings:
I say… And you think…?
The mid-issue update of All Things Girl went live this morning. My column can be found in the Everything Girl section.
It’s called, Leo Rising: Thoughts on August Birthdays and Turning 42, and here’s an excerpt:
By the time I was married, I had grown to love my late-summer birthday so much that I declared August to be my month. Oh, I’ll be gracious and share a few days with others who have the luck to be born in August, too, but as I said, those people form a select few. Even better, like me, most of those rare, special people with August birthdays are also Leos. I mean, I’m in good company: Lucille Ball, Madonna, Martha Stewart, Linda Ellerbee, and Julia Child are all August Leo Women, and the Men of August include Steve Martin, Garrison Keillor, Matthew Perry, and my junior-high crush, Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Leos then, and especially August Leos, really are born to roar.
You can read the entire piece here.
My most recent post over on All Things Girl is an interview with Army Wives cast member Joseph Julian Soria. You can read it here.
As much as I complain about the summer weather in Texas, there are certain parts of summer I love. As a kid, my summers were spent at the Jersey Shore; now I pretty much live in my pool from mid-May through mid-September. In any case, I haven’t done a Thursday-13 in ages, and since I’ve refreshed the blog, it seems appropriate to visit favorite memes.
Here, then, are 13 Things I Love About Summer (Then and Now):
So that’s my list…what are your favorite things about summer? I really want to know!