can't sleep. thinking about trains. and rice.

It's 2:00 in the am as I write this. I'm in bed. Eating rice.

See, I'm not tired. I was just laying here staring at my lamp and thinking about how on Tuesday morning I'm gonna get on a train and head out to spend Thanksgiving with my brother and sister-in-law and their family in Oswego, New York.

And then I got really excited.

Like, tooexcitedtosleep excited.

So naturally I got up and got some rice to eat. And, well, I guess I could have sat down at the table to eat it, but, I mean, it's 2:00 in the am. Normally functioning human beings are in bed at 2:00 in the am. So that's where I am.

In bed. Eating rice.

Thinking about going on an old fashioned train journey.

Okay, maybe not so old fashioned. But a train journey all the same.

Upon Further Recommendation

sometime in the growing dusk of a sunday afternoon, when after threatening all day the snow has finally decided to start falling, but it's clear that the decision was a little reluctant because there's no haste in its descent, you should sit on your back porch with a mug of hot chocolate and a pair of slippers and listen to Sufjan sing about Christmas.

Hey, Can You Watch My Stuff for a Sec?

I'm in the Union right now trying to read Mary Wollstonecraft, and a guy just came up to me and, nodding to where he had been sitting, asked if I'd "watch [his] stuff for a sec." I nodded and said that "yeah, sure. I'd be happy to." And at the time I meant it. But now I'm wondering, what did I just agree to?

The "stuff" in question.

This isn't the first time I've pondered this question. Pretty much every time I'm in a public space and someone asks me to watch their stuff while they go take care of some business or other, I can't help but to wonder and worry a little about what my responsibilities actually are. Naturally, it's implied that I'll watch their things keep a wary eye out for any robbers, thieves, or street youths of any sort. But if while I'm watching, as per the owners request, one of these potential malefactors comes and begins rummaging around in the "stuff" I'm watching, how am I supposed to respond? Implicit in the request to watch, is a request to prevent the stuff from coming to any harm. But what does that mean? How far should I take it? How far would or could I take it?

Ok, putting myself in the situation I imagine I'd probably say something like, "Excuse me...excuse me. Hi, yeah, I was asked to watch these those things by their owner," and then...Yeah, that's pretty much all I've got.

This is a problem. See, that's just a statement. It's not a threat or a warning. It doesn't really do anything to disincentivize any untoward actions beyond making the perpetrators aware that there are witnesses to their misdeeds. While I think social pressure can be helpful in this situation and that people are probably less likely to do bad things if they know someone is watching, is emphasizing social pressure the extent of my responsibility to the owner and his stuff? How confrontational have I committed myself to being?

This is really the crux of question for me, because, frankly, I tend to eschew confrontation...pretty much at all costs always. So am I expected to go outside my comfort zone and, I don't know, raise my voice and say something like, "Hey, leave that stuff alone! It ain't yours!"? I mean, I guess I could do that without too much trouble, but I'd really rather not. See, it seems to imply a threat of sorts, and I really doubt I'd be willing to back up such a threat if it went beyond verbal sparring. Not because I'm necessarily scared to make a scene, but I'm not really into the whole "getting into a fight" scene.

Now before you go writing me off as a coward, let's look at things a little here. Who's to say the villain here isn't going to pull out a switchblade and go all West Side Story on me. Am I willing to be a dancing, New York street gang Mercutio  all for the sake of a laptop and a backpack? Frankly, no. But should I be? I do carry a knife of my own, so it's not like I'd be completely disadvantaged, but when I inevitably win, what lengths will I have had to go to in order to achieve that victory? Will I have killed a man? I'm not like Johnny Cash here. I couldn't shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Do I really need that kind of emotional baggage, just because some stranger asked me to watch his stuff? Is the next 50 years of emotional well-being worth the couple hundred buck of stuff sitting at that table over there?

I can see him coming back now, so I guess my worries are appeased for the now, but the question remains, how far am I expected to go and how seriously am I supposed to take my responsibility, to watch someone's stuff for a sec?

On Musics, Ep. 1

I've found that a lot of what I seem to write about here on the blog is music. I mean, of the 23 posts that I've written in 2014 (counting this one), 6 of them (again, counting this one) are about music, or at least use music as a vehicle for making my point. 6 out of 23. That's like...a little more than 25%. (Be proud, I did that in my head.)  Sometimes I feel a little bad that I don't diversify my writings more than I do, but I've decided that rather than feel bad about it, I'm just going to embrace it and lean into it. So rather than push back the feeling that I shouldn't write about music, I'm going to make a conscious point of writing about it.

See, music is important to me. It stirs emotions and causes me to think about and view certain things certain ways. For this reason I try to be relatively selective about the kinds of music that I listen to. When I listen to a song I don't necessarily choose the emotions that song will evoke within me; however I can choose what songs I listen to and thus help to shape my own emotional states.

I realize that last paragraph makes it seem like I try to be all controlling about my emotions. I don't. In fact, rather than using music to affect and alter my mood, more often than not I seek out musics that reflect the emotions that are already present. In this way I think that music becomes a kind of catharsis for me as it seems to extract and distill my emotions into a form that is more readily experienced. I kinda like that.

So like I said, I think I'm gonna start a series of posts that I'll call "On Musics" in which I'll post a song (or two or three) and I'll kind of talk about why it (they) have been calling to me of late. I've even gone back and tagged all my past music post with the tag "On Musics."

Not this isn't to say that music is all I'll be writing about from here on out. I'll definitely still bring in the random musings of my life, but this is going to be a recurring thread that I'll revisit as it feels appropriate. Some days I may write a lot, getting deep and philosophical, and other days I may just post a song with a couple quick thoughts. Today it's going to be the latter.

And so, for today's inaugural "On Musics" post (although frankly it's not really inaugural because, like I said, I've written about music quite a bit before now, though not in any organized way), we have Dana Falconberry's song "Palmless."



I also rather like this live recording of it:



I woke up early this morning to finish some grading before class starts (at 8:30 in the am) and this song was in my head. It has proved to be just the perfect blend of melancholy and beautiful to capture the mood of grading papers in the dark and chilly morning hours of fall.

Autumnal Beauty

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." - Albert Camus

Fall is solidly upon us. With the lovely crisp autumn weather comes an abundance of publicity for the rapidly changing colors of the leaves. No doubt you've seen that Camus quote on countless facebook posts and instagram photos in the last few days. If you haven't, you surely will.

I love autumn leaves as much as the next guy. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I enjoy them a lot more than a lot of the next guys. But at what expense do these leaves gain their notoriety? As we focus so intently on the leaves, do we not blind ourselves to other aspects of nature's beauty? Now I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, it's just the way we humans work. When we focus on one thing we can't help but neglect another. Kenneth Burke would agree with me, and in fact in his book Permanence and Change he made a similar point when he asserted that “a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing – a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B” (49). So maybe we can't help but ignore other beautiful things when all we seem to see are the changing leaves.

Now don't get me wrong here, let me repeat that I love the autumn leaves. They're beautiful. They bring joy to the soul and peace to heart. They're the flag bearers of nature's final celebration before the world shuts it down for a few months. (Curse you Persephone and your weakness for pomegranate.) In fact, two of my favorite songs (maybe in the top 150 or so...maybe) bear the title, "Autumn Leaves."

First off, the inimitable Eva Cassidy:

Secondly, Cannonball Adderly feat. Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Hank Jones and Sam Jones:

Again, I want to make sure that it's absolutely clear that I don't hate the changing leaves. My feelings are so different. In fact, they are quite the opposite.

But like I started off saying before I was interrupted by the perceived need to establish and reaffirm my affinity for the leaves, our rampant love affair with the changing leaves comes at a price. Namely, we don't recognize the beauty of the flowers of fall.

Now I hear your complaints and acknowledge their validity. Yes, it's true, flowers do get all the glory and publicity in the spring and summer. And maybe you're right, maybe it would be only fair to let the leaves have the fall and leave it at that. But I don't like that. I don't like putting a limit on the amount or provenance of the beauty we can enjoy. I say that we should be willing to open our eyes to any and all beauty as it presents itself too us, from whatever source, and that we should do so year round. Not only should we recognize flowers in the fall, but we should recognize and celebrate the beauty of the leaves during spring and summer (heaven knows their ever-present greenness is a welcome relief after living the winter months among nothing but literal shades of grey).

These thoughts began swirling around my head on Sunday night as I was out for my evening constitutional making my way down this lovely path...

...that runs parallel to the railroad tracks near my apartment. As I was thinking whatever thoughts one might think on such an outing, I began to notice wildflowers growing all along the side of the path. I stopped thinking my thoughts and focused on the flowers. 

And boy howdy am I glad I did.

And so I've decided that here on the illustrious pages of yo mama llama I will give these autumn flowers the recognition and acknowledgement they so understatedly deserve. In truth, the beauty of the scene was really an experience far beyond my poor power to capture with just the camera on my phone, but the following photos provide at least a small taste of the splendor of my Sunday evening walk. 

Now clearly these aren't the most vibrant flowers around, especially when compared with their spring and summer counterparts. But when paired with with the subtly morose charm of an overcast sky and a bit of chill in the air, these flowers seemed, to me, perfect.

The sky grew dark and as I turned off the path and headed for home, I was presented with this sight:

Which led me to conclude, once again, that sweet mother, Indiana is beautiful.

Don't Cry Out Loud

So I'm sitting here innocently doing my work while listening to my music library on shuffle. That in and of itself is an adventure because there's a lot of seemingly dissonant genres that each evoke very distinct and oftentimes contradictory emotions. But mostly it's fine. Going from "It Takes Two" by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, to "R.O.C.K. in the USA" by John Cougar Mellencamp, to "After Hours" by The Velvet Underground, to "I've Got a Woman" by Ray Charles, to "My Cherie Amour" by Stevie Wonder, to "I'm from Nowhere" by Neko Case, to "Bright Whites" by Kishi Bashi was like I said, just fine. But then this happened:

Rather than just being able to listen to it in the background and still get stuff done, it demanded all of my attention. 

All of it.

What I really wanted to do was to sing along as loudly as I could. To somehow let Melissa Manchester know that she wasn't alone. That I was with her. But I couldn't. See, there are other people all around me:

and I don't think they'd much appreciate it.

So while I can't do anything about it now, rest assured, dear reader, that later today as I drive home I will most assuredly demonstrate my solidarity with Ms. Manchester by belting with full vigor:

Don't cry out loud. 

Just keep it inside. 

Learn how to hide your feelings. 

Fly high and proud. 

And if you should fall, 

remember you almost had it all.

Sick In Bed

As the title of this post might suggest, I'm sick. And in bed. I don't understand how people can function and go about their lives despite being sick. Maybe I'm just a total baby, but even though it's just a cold that I have, I can't do anything. Yesterday I had tons of things that I needed to do. Like reading for my professional writing theory and modern rhetoric classes. And grading. Can't forget that grading. But anytime I tried to do those things, my head would start to pound so hard that my teeth hurt. And then there's the incessant dripdripdripdripping of my nose that eventually gets so bothersome that I shove wads of tissue up there just to stopper up the flow. (And if you've ever seen how cavernous my nostrils are you'll know just how much tissue this requires...ok fine, I don't use actual tissues, I use toilet paper. I'm too cheap to buy tissues. Also, I don't know why I'm calling them tissues. In real life I call them kleenexes.) But then the wad of tissues causes the flow of germ-ridden mucous to back up and start flowing the other direction, dripping down the back my throat.

That's all fine and miserable, but then, in due time a body-rollicking cough fights its way to symptomatic preeminence and no matter how many drugs I take (I don't even know why I take them, they don't do nothin) I'm left a dripping, hacking, miserable husk of a person huddled under my covers. It's like I'm a Victorian painting or something. In fact...

Ophelia by John Everett Millais

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but that's how I feel, you guys. That's how I feel. 

And because that's how I feel I don't get a single thing done that I really need to get done. Instead, I just lay in bed and sleepwatch movies all day. Movies like Swiss Family Robinson, and Candleshoe, and Blackbeard's Ghost, and The Monkey's Uncle. Even reading for pleasure is awful, so movies is all I'm left with. In fact, I'm gonna have to wrap up this post real quick-like because all these words and such are making my head pound.

So yeah, long story short, I have a lot of respect for people who actually get stuff done when they're sick. I don't know how you do it, but hat's off to you.