Added track to sleepy-time mix

Yes, I am still gradually adding to the sleepy time mix, which, if I've done things correctly, is downloadable here (without this song).

So, here's the newest addition. Is there a more beautiful song with which to tuck in your children and prayerfully end a day?

John My Beloved

I'm not nearly ready to try and say something worth reading about this album, except that it's exceptional. So far this is my favorite track. There's a lot of reasons why, though I recognize I've always been immediately partial to songs using a sustained note over the entire chord progression... (see also: this song, 10 years old this year and that sustained note halfway through still gets me)

Working on the non-verbals

Now that the girl has fully mastered norwegian babble, she's been working on things more sophisticated than actual words, like non-verbal communication.

Since the other day, she's been offering elaborate conversations, all in babble, but accompanied with complex movements of the head, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, shoulders, arms, and hands. Hips are not excluded, either. She knows exactly what she's saying. We don't, though we are certain she is drop dead serious; there's no mistaking that.

There are very clearly multiple levels of communication going on: explanation, exclamation, negotiation, rationalization, interrogation, collaboration. All that in the hands, though mostly in the shoulders lately.

She's really concentrating on developing her shrug. It's already close to perfection. She'll lift the arms and twirl the hands for extra expression. She'll do it repeatedly to get it just right. It may be a shrug to express delight or to shift the blame. The repetition gives us several tries to understand, as if it weren't clear the first time.

She's furrowing and raising eyebrows. Shaking, nodding, bowing, tilting, turning the head. Raising, folding, flapping, crossing the arms. Pointing, wagging, waving fingers.

I could go on and on. I didn't know the body was capable of such expression, especially not from a 1-year old. Scarier: she's observing all this elsewhere, carefully recording this, seeing, studying, downloading and installing, learning and practicing.

Maybe even from us.

La Vie des Gens

Our cinéma closed in September. There is one that's even better, but it requires a 30 minute drive on country roads. It's worth it.

This was at least the third occasion to go out on a weeknight to hear a director humbly present their film. Each time it's been an immense privilege. I like country cinemas that show good films and invite their directors, films and directors that otherwise would remain unknown. And it was also a privilege to realize, halfway through the director's talk, that I was understanding what he was saying. I was not lost, I was enjoying it as much as anyone else was.

This is probably not a film that will make its way subtitled to the states, and for that I'm sorry. It's a year of following a firecracker of a visiting nurse and her host of patients that become like family. We don't always fear death; we fear growing old, the limitations and the ailments and aches and the pains that come with it. And in spite of it all, there are smiles and bright spots, most often due to the visits of caretakers, those moments when solitude and loneliness are broken.

It's a tribute to humanity, and to those who give of themselves for others.

The title is simple and brilliant: it's about the life of people.

If Christianity is about visiting the sick and caring for the widows, we could all learn a thing or two from Françoise.

If you don't know about this guy yet...

...your introduction is overdue. Enjoy. Thank me later.

and then there's this.

je suis enchanté.

Dad Troubles

The train home was set to depart in one minute when the other kid announced he needed to pee. The trip home was set to take well over an hour. The alert sounded, the doors closed, and we started the journey.

He said he could hold it.

The train has small signs pointing to a bathroom. I see people coming and going from what looks like one. I take the kid, we go down the steps, through the train car, to a door marked as a toilet. I try the door and it's locked. I ask the girl on the phone if it's occupied. "No, I don't think so." Does it work? "No, I don't think so." I try again to be sure with no luck.

I begin looking for rare corners where a bladder could be relieved with even less luck. I ask him if he wants a diaper. He reassures me he can hold it, but the small dance and look of discomfort on his face aren't terribly reassuring. He goes back to sit with mama while I sweat it out.

We could jump off the train at the next stop and find some place, but we don't have enough time to get back on and the next train wouldn't pass for a long time. As I'm trying to figure it all out, I watch a woman walk to the bathroom, pull out a tool for unlocking the door, and enter. The girl on the phone looks back at me with large puzzled eyes and shrugs; I see her recounting the story in disbelief to the person on the other end once the woman leaves.

I go back to the diaper plan. Erica and I have done some strange things on trains involving the needs of our children, but how do I discreetly remove the underwear of a three year old and replace it with a diaper among the other passengers? I set up a modesty booth using the reserved spot for a wheel chair, my coat, and our stroller, and I'm ready to do the job with confidence, but when I announce it to him he starts wailing. He's exhausted from our day, irritated from a bladder that's about to burst, and on the verge of falling asleep, peeing his pants, and throwing a temper tantrum all at once. He's yelling "I WANT TO GO TO THE TOOOIILLEEET" so loudly that I abandon the idea rather quickly and return him once again to his seat where it's even more visible that this thing is gonna blow sooner than later.

The woman across from us puts down her book to interject, saying there's a toilet on the train further back. I'm skeptical but we go immediately. We pass through at least two cars with no luck when we finally see an agent. The train comes to a stop and he says goodbye pleasantly to the descending passengers when I pull him aside to ask him if there are any working toilets on the train. No, sorry. So I ask: if I hop off to let my kid pee on the train platform can you hold the train? Yes, of course, but it'd be better at a platform that's less crowded. (The stations further out in the country are perfect places to pee, he's implying, and he's not wrong.) I understood and agreed. Can the little guy wait 10 or 15 minutes? With that I expressed my hesitation. Doubtful. Go ahead, and he waved me off.

We run to the nearest discreet corner and unload as quickly as possible. In my haste to get back to the train, I yank his underwear and pants up so hard that I lift him right off his feet into the air and he pitches forward, almost doing a face plant but catching himself on the wall next to him. The Agent's watching the whole thing and laughing at my misfortune. The kid cries, "I DON'T LIKE YOU WHEN YOU DO THAT!" I pick him up and we run back to the train, he's over it with a timid giggle of glee, the agent blows the whistle, the doors close behind us.

We hustle back toward our car and when he spots Mama on the other end he yells, announcing proudly and enthusiastically in front of all the other passengers, in English no less, "HEY! WE PEED OUT THERE!!!"

This is parenthood, and its absurdity never ceases to amaze me.

fitting music

it's a rare gift when you stumble upon some music that seems to catch the mood of life at the moment.
this is what life sounds like lately.

Finding Vivian Maier

She had an eye for the bizarre, the grotesque, the incongruous. She liked headlines that revealed the folly of individuals, where you could say 'I told you so.' Some man murders his wife then gets caught in cold blood. I told you so. The things that revealed the folly of humanity. If you look at her art, she sees the bizarreness of life, the incongruity of life, and the unappealingness of human beings.

This description of Maier and her work made me think that she's a kindred spirit to Flannery O'Connor, a woman only one year her elder. Certain aspects of their work make a lot of people flinch, but they'd most likely have left one another unfazed, and certainly could have produced some interesting, albeit dark, collaborations.

And while this edge to Maier's personality and body of work can't stay unacknowledged, it's an overstep to reduce her work to this single dimension. Like the self-employed journalist she pretended to be, she did an incredible job of capturing and reflecting the full spectrum of the human condition in its honest entirety, good, bad, and ugly, be it a moment of tenderness, beauty, absurdity, or darkness. The vast scope of her work is precisely the reason it resonates as it does. She had a curiosity for the details of who we are and what we do, and in my mind that's most often what makes a good artist.

There are moments where I like that cliché conversation starter: what will you ask God when you get to heaven? 

I imagine sitting down with Him for a long chat about mental illness. What is it? and Why? and Is it really illness? and Why do the mentally ill so often serve as artists, and as such, chosen as prophets? Why do the mentally ill seem to actually have a better grasp on some things than those of us who are "sane"? Who's really mentally ill here? What's the real delusion?

(cross reference to the lunatic in Revolutionary Road...or Sufjan Stevens' Age of Adz...)

Zoom out to the human condition in which Maier was trapped and tried so desperately to capture, perhaps in an effort to escape. God, what's really going on here? What are you up to? and Why?

Another question: why did we ever stop using Rolleiflex cameras?

All photos stolen from vivianmaier.com. Film website here.

Grieving with St Vincent

What's in the box?
My wife. 
She died? ... Sorry Vin, for your loss. 
I never understood why people say that.
They don't know what else to say. 
How about What was she like? Do you miss her? or What are you gonna do now?

This quote came back to me the other day when I learned a friend's dad died and I thoughtlessly fumbled an "I'm sorry" in his direction. But it took me a while to remember where the quote came from.

Saint Vincent attempts to pack a little too much sappy fluff into one movie, but its message carried by Murray's terrific performance remains a worthwhile one. Wisdom will always come from unexpected places to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. This scene was just one example, where Vin gives great advice on grieving with those who grieve, probably because in his own way that's what he's done most his life.