back and forth-ness

I pulled my high school journal out of its place on the shelf last week, to look back at what I wrote on September 11, 2001.

it's a half page of earnest printed penmanship, phrases like "live in infamy" and "dumb terrorists" smushed together in an account of an event I didn't understand.

I opened this old blogpost draft today, in the mood to blog, not sure exactly what about. perhaps it will be a sequence of thoughts, some from the past and some from the now, juxtaposed as if on shuffle mode. that's often how my brain seems to work anyway: non-linear, constellatory, like a small racquetball inside a hollow dodecahedron or something.

1
I've noticed lately that my vocabulary, at least when I'm standing in front of a classroom full of students in Louisiana, has opened its arms to "y'all." the southern, folksy "y'all" hasn't displaced "you guys" entirely as my collective second-person greeting, but it's obviously gaining ground. I can't decide if I like it or not, but at least it feels fairly normal.

2
I need to read some more Joanna Russ.

3
these two podcasts turned out to be in conversation the other day (and by 'the other day' I apparently mean about a year ago). according to my notes, I listened to this one, "The Oddest Thing in the Universe" by Reasonably Sound, first, and then, from the BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage, "The Human Voice." why language? how? apparently we human beings had all the physical capabilities for speech long before we used them to communicate in spoken words. spoken language is a strange, purposeful biproduct. maybe I should re-listen and see if the two episodes mean any more now that I'm almost finished reading Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet.

4
I've taken to putting all my old collection of mp3 music files on shuffle every so often, just to see what comes up. here's a list of what did:

Jack Johnson - Posters
Good Charlotte - The River
Blumfeld - Heiss die Segel
Peter Fox - Schwarz zu Blau
Ben Kweller - Run
Eve 6 - Girl Eyes
Andrew Bird - Hole in the Ocean Floor

when did I acquire Andrew Bird music? I don't remember. I do remember that the German stuff is from friend Yvonne, the rest from miscellaneous acquaintances in college.

5
in April 2016, I went to a musical about music (Once) all by myself. just before the second song--which sounded so familiar to me somehow--there were a few lines of dialogue I had to write down. I wrote them on an empty edge of the program. I wrote them down again in a sketch book. and I wrote them down here, too. the moment in these lines is so strangely memorable:

- are you breathing?

- yeah, I am.

-you won't die if you play this song with me.

and then she plays. they sing. he lets himself pick up the guitar again. his life is changed.

6
I've joined the community/campus choir that just started up last week. the director keeps talking about a particular rendition of one of the songs in our repertoire. was my youngest brother a part of that choir in 2014, or not yet?

   { the pinboard on the wall of my office }