The return of my ramblings come with a good live version of Speedway by Counting Crows. You can check it out below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWuC2m3OlA8
I think we are all thinking about getting out and I know we all have things we can't tell anyone.
April has arrived since my last blog entry and with it came the very welcoming start of the baseball season. The game, its history and its statistics will always hold a place in my heart. A place slightly deeper than my country's national game and its own history. Though there is sadness starting this season with the deaths of a young rookie, a forgotten colourful character and the old voice of a team. The journey from 1-162 in baseball is never easy like the journey from 1-100 in life. Only baseball fades before winter and many of us struggle into our winter.
I find a lot of comfort from nature but have failed to properly appreciate it so far this spring. There seems to be something missing, not outside, but inside of me. The loss of spirit or the breaking of soul. Should such things become lost or broken. I suppose I should make more of an effort but right now my heart is not in it very much. I hope to find a smile by May.
I have been listening to a lot of Teddy Thompson lately, he is a British folk and country musician and producer. I love his country like voice and for some reason it reminds me of the great Roy Orbison. His father Richard Thompson was listed in the top 20 all-time guitarists by Rolling Stone and his mother was one top British folk artists of the 1970's. Below are links to some of Teddy's songs along with a Counting Crows cover of Meet on the Ledge by his father's band Fairpoint Convention recorded live with Dutch group Blof.
Meet on the Ledge (Counting Crows and Blof)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWuC2m3OlA8
Change of heart (Teddy Thompson on Letterman)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLMDIOUlB1E
In My Arms (acoustic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzb77AALN08
We Can Work It Out (Beatles cover with Martha Wainwright)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCnvWHZd4Ro
I haven't done much "poetic" writing lately either. Below are the last two pieces I have written.
No Similarity
I am a damaged person
Parts of me need repair
They have been stressed
With too many thoughts
Burdened by life and love
The self-hatred and hurt
Have scarred too deeply
I am lacking something
While missing everything
Spring brings its newness
All my laughter is ancient
Colour faded like a picture
The one of a boy smiling
Looking off at the horizon
Seeing a kite flying above
Green and red on blue sky
I will forget this child soon
There will be no similarity
When he looks back at me
On a cold November night
Most likely a rainy Tuesday
For adults need their misery
Mine is a strange adaptation
Taken without a prescription
Nature could cure my soul
Love would nurture my heart
Words should smooth my mind
But stubbornly and struggling
I try and disappear like a boy
Who should never see himself
As a frowning man over thirty.
11/04/09
After writing the piece above I came upon this passage in one of the books I am reading. The passage below is from The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji.
"There are wonderful moments sometimes - a splash of colour, the sweet taste of icy kulfi on a Sunday afternoon, the feel of hot steam on the face and arms from a gasping locomotive - that stand out purely in themselves, sparkles of childhood memory scattered loosely in the consciousness. They need not tell a story, yet moments lead from one to another in this tapestry that is one's life; and so we feel bound, unhappy adults, to look past and around those glimmer points in our desperate search for nuance and completeness, for coherence and meaning."
Statistical Anomalies
My spirit feels like it has died
I am in mourning for its return
A friendly and witty disposition
Lacking my current disillusion
Shunning the light for darkness
I have always embraced spring
This year it is receiving nothing
No admiration of April's tulips
The colours spread like a quilt
One knitted loving by old hands
With eyes squinting and crying
Time hardens and softens hearts
Or it softens and hardens hearts
I am not sure about very much
People love despite not trusting
Until love cannot survive alone
There is nothing left to be done
Except returning to our old self
Relearning how happiness works
Finding ways to smile naturally
When all movements seem odd
Living can be a foreign concept
After beating ourselves senseless
With doubts about being worthy
Should anyone stumble upon us
Swimming in the puddles of rain
Formed by April's lasting clouds
Those postponing baseball games
Making weird statistical anomalies
Only a entire season would correct
I used to be a rubber armed pitcher
Always happy playing and laughing
Overly competitive and committed
Now very little holds my attention
A few fleeting minutes of normalcy
Until my doubts return full fledged
Distracting me from accomplishing
Anything out of my potential talents
Failure is disgusting like a raw fish
But in the water it is still beautiful
Success is living through any day
Learning to feel better at the end
When the blinds are pulled closed
Leaving us with our own loneliness
Knowing it does not have to be so
Because it has not always been so.
14/04/09
On the weekend I watched Synecdoche, New York and I thought it was brilliant. The movie is as mentally challenging as Charlie Kaufman's other works Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. But I felt this one was superior because of the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman as a morose theatre director. Kaufman's movie makes us wonder if we are in the present or the past and if we are awake or dreaming. We could be everything at once and we could be everyone at once. Samatha Morton is also very strong in this movie and information about the movie is below.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383028/
I suppose I should return to a book, a song or a movie. The Flying Troutman's by Miriam Toews is holding my attention the best, so it should get some glances before the Jays game.
More than enough.
john.
No comments:
Post a Comment