Katzenjammer: Welcome to my crush list!

Posted by | April 24, 2012 | 5 Comments

Katzenjammer!

Katzen-what-er?

Oh noes! You don’t know them? Let me fix that, like, now!

I’m surprised by how many of my friends in the States have never heard of this sassy, irreverent and ballsy, sweet and dark but ever-playful Norwegian girl-band, because, seriously? They are the best thing ever. (A special thanks to my friend Barbara in Bath who introduced them to me). Their style is eclectic, a bit folksy, a bit pop, a bit gypsy, a bit rock… but always its very own Katzenjammerishy magical thing.

Katzenjammer is bursting with all-things-life and when you listen to them, you cannot help but sing, grin and tap, if not full out stomp, your goddam feet! I dare you not to. One reviewer wrote, and I quote(!): “Prepare to orgasm from your ears.”

Their band name is German (means “cat-wail” or “cat cry”), they sing in English, and they are four young women. Their song lyrics are a breath –nay, make that a gust!– of fresh air.

They play, oh, something like eleventy seven instruments (some of which they discovered and saved from a dusty demise in one of the girls’ attics), including accordion, contrabass balalaika (a 3-stringed, big-ass Russian instrument), guitar, zither, melodica, ukulele, trumpet, banjo, and, as far as I can tell, pretty much anything they can shake, rattle, roll, strum or blow air into. They constantly switch up who plays what instrument and, also, who sings lead.

I could not love them more. They may be new(ish) to these parts of the world, but I’ve got them singing in my heart right next to Leonard Cohen, and if you know me at all, that’s saying something. And no, their style does not at all remind of Leonard Cohen, except in ballsy, open-hearted, say-it-like-it-is-ness.

Say-it-like-it-is-ness?

Oh yes! It’s one of my favorite qualities in all the world. If you say it like it is and you have things to say, why, it is pretty much a guarantee that I will like you, and, if then you set your say-it-like-it-is-ness to music or verse or story? Why, for certain I will crush on you. And for sure I am crushing on Katzenjammer: expressive and, often, dramatically so, but never in a put-on kind of way.

Also, be prepared to be inspired by how comfortable they are moving in and being at home in their bodies and expressing themselves in a bodily way, just as their bodies are: curvy, straight, tall, short, light, dark, small medium or large. In a culture where women on magazine covers all look pretty much a yawn-inducing shade of same? Katzenjammer zings!

So, you’ve never heard them? I’m about to be bossy, ready? Go! Now! Hear!

From their second album, “A Kiss Before You Go,” not yet available here in the States, but, PleaseGod!, any day now, I Will Dance (When I Walk Away):


YouTube Link to video

 

From their debut album, “Le Pop,” A Bar in Amsterdam:


YouTube Link to video

 

And for irreverent, ballsy and bursting with life-juice, Hey Ho on the Devil’s Back is a hands-down win in all categories:


YouTube Link to video

 

Sometimes listening to Katzenjammer makes me sad. Not while listening, but after, and it’s not them, but me. It’s got something to do with an expressive and playful part of me that is tired to death of being stuffed into and made to be quiet in a dusty closet. It wants to say and sing all there is to say and sing exactly as it is.

So yes, I’m adding Katzenjammer to my list of crushes, right alongside Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Rufus Wainwright and the Indigo Girls, sharing a scene with Johnny Depp and Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, clinking glasses with directors Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Suzanne Bier, the Coen Brothers, the Wachowski Brothers, and street artist Shepard Fairey, exchanging verses and stories with Paul Durcan, J.K. Rowling, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda and T.S. Eliot…

Dear Katzenjammer, Welcome to my crush list! You are in fantastic company. xo Heidi

P.S. You can find Katzenjammer on Facebook. It’s a fun and hopping page. They are very generous with their postings.

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Reviews | Tagged: | 5 Comments

Take that, If Only! (Or, practicing to sing back up for Leonard Cohen)

Posted by | July 18, 2010 | 9 Comments

You know those dreams you’d do if only? If only you had a good voice… if only you didn’t freeze up… if only you didn’t blush… if only you had the technology… if only you knew the technology… if only you knew people…

And then one day you’re on German Guy’s porch reading “Stranger Music, Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen.” Leonard Cohen, your hero, your inspiration, your number one crush (when it’s not Clint Eastwood. Or Pablo Neruda. Or Billy Collins. Or or…). Leonard Cohen, whom you secretly fantasize singing back up for.

Then German Guy comes out and finds you singing and just like that he says, let’s record it.

And so you do.

Here you go, my friend. Sisters of Mercy. Take 1. As is. Because if I mess with it I’ll spend my whole Sunday on technology and it’ll never get done. Or be good enough for If Only. And if I think about it for 2 more seconds I’ll chicken out.

Press here to listen.

Categories: Heidi's Crushes | Tagged: | 9 Comments

Time Capsule Thursday #8: Walden Pond, Johnny Depp & Badass edition.

Posted by | August 21, 2009 | 1 Comment

A weekly Time Capsule, of sorts, in which I pause and notice. And write down what I love. And notice all the reasons I don’t want to die before my time. And get curious. And am inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem “Gratitude” (in What Do We Know). And do my own little tradition (with a hat tip to Havi).

Italicized* questions are from Mary Oliver’s poem

What made you happy?

Walden Pond: Cool water and me in sun and in shade with trees and bees and dragonflies. Here’s one. Do you see it?

Dragonfly at Walden Pond

Dragonfly at Walden Pond

What did you notice?*

Johnny. Johnny Depp! That’s right: be-still-my-heart-pirate-scissorhand-Johnny made an appearance— not once but twice!—in my dreams last night. He recognized me in a crowd and I turned around to see if he was talking to someone else, but it was me. And he told me I’m going to do well because I already know a lot about him.

Come again, Johnny? I know a lot about you? All I know is that you’re a fantastically creative badass hottie who takes roles that inspire you without giving a shit what people say or think of you. Or if you do care, we’d never know. You do it anyway.

What did you admire?*

Not to be redundant: Badassery. Of every ilk. My radar has become finely tuned to it. If you are a badass, I’m probably crushing on you right now. And taking notes. I know, I know, that is so not badass. What can I say. I don’t care ;) (What’s that? Badasses don’t wink? Hrmph! I don’t give a rats ass).

Moving on.

What did you appreciate?

Light and night. Sun and shadow. In-between spaces. In-between places. The in-between time. Or to borrow one of Neruda’s favorite words: crepúsculo.

What did you [over]hear?*

“Dad! I need my shadow!” (Young boy when the dad’s shadow fell across his own as they walked)

Here’s a picture of my shadow at Danehy Park, one of my favorite city places. It’s built on an old dump! This is the marsh, where you’ll find all manner of birds. City parks, ahhhhh.

What stole your breath?

The light. Especially at crepúsculo, at dusk. The other evening I went nuts with my camera. Here’s one of my favorites, though I sure did have a hard time choosing!

What would you like to see again?*

The dragonflies hovering over the water while I swim at Walden.

What else did you notice?

When I take new ways I see new things. Like this, on a street I’d never walked down! Someone’s youth, RIP. (I’m quite sure there’s not an actual body under there.)

What surprised you?

An aardvark. Also in my dream! Aardvarks, which are more closely related to elephants than hogs or anteaters (the latter more typically assumed) have a fantastic sense of smell and a super tough skin. So tough, in fact, that termites and ants can bite their tongue when they go burrowing for food into their nests and the aardvark is like, la-de-da-ho-hum… whatevs…

I’d love to be more “whatever” about what people are saying or thinking about me. Yeah, I need me some of that.

What inspired you?

“We claim to be missing resources. But the defining factor is never resources, it’s resourcefulness.” -Anthony Robbins

What did the quote mean for you?
Go for it, Heidi. Operation Aardvark. Smell it, girl. Toughen up. Keep at it. Figure it out. You’re doing better than you imagine. You know more than you think. Don’t stop now.

That’s this week’s slice of life, my friends. Feel free to join in with noticings—big or small, happy or sad, old or new—of your own. I’d love it if you did! And, until next time, keep noticing…

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Time Capsule | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment

What moves you? What turns you on? Shepard Fairey, at the ICA.

Posted by | August 7, 2009 | 5 Comments

What moves you? I mean, what really moves you?

What takes your breath away and renders you incapable of averting your eyes?

What fascinates you? What grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let you go until you look, really look?

What wakes you up in the middle of the night? What makes the sweat pool in your palms?

What moves you? What makes you want to get up and shout? What makes you melt down and weep?

Whom do you crush on? What do you admire? Whose picture would you plaster on your wall?

What turns you on? What makes every last hair on your arms rise to attention? What makes your brain light up like ten thousand fireflies? What inside or outside you is so intense it could spark a flame in a monsoon?

What takes your breath away? What threatens to dismember you if you don’t give it a pen already? Or a brush? Or a pound of clay? Or a voice? Or a mallet? Or a wrecking ball?

What turns you on?

That. Do that! For the love of life, do it already.

That. See it. Play it. Make love to it. Pay attention to it. Get curious about it. Read it like a 4-year-old asking for that bedtime story night after night. See it again and again until it saturates every pore in your skin. Hear it until you catch its essential thread. Feel it until the need you hadn’t even known was there cries “Uncle” and begs for mercy.

Last night I went to see the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the ICA in Boston. It was my third time in as many months. The first time I went I had no idea. I went because my friend had tickets. I said, “Shepherds? Fairies? Wha—?”

Shepard Fairey began as a street artist in Boston in the 80’s when he began making posters of Andre the Giant. Something inside him needed expression and, apparently, he listened and gave it a voice. Or rather, a can of spray paint.

I vaguely remember noticing Andre graffiti plastered or spray painted on the random box, or in the corner of a billboard, and every so often, large on the wall of some abandoned building. Eventually I saw the ObeyGiant posters in enough places that I wondered what they were all about. But I never really stopped to find out. I was too immersed in my own inner saga, my turmoil, my drama, my bad dreams, my own world of trying at once to fit in and be special.

Which is sort of his point. Or at least the point where I go with Fairey’s “ObeyGiant”, which is to remind us of how “powerful visuals and emotionally potent phrases can be used to manipulate and indoctrinate.” In other words: Believe this. Not that. Try this. Buy that. This is cool. That’s not. We are good. They are bad. And so on…

When I walked into the Shepard Fairey exhibit for the first time, I was greeted with the Obey images that had been peppering the odd places in my city. Oh that, I thought… hmmmm, weird.

And then I entered the next exhibit room to find larger-than-life murals that fairly took my breath away.

Standing back, I saw a Palestinian woman peering through a curtain, a boy too young to shave with machine gun on shoulder, an Arab woman’s fiery eyes on a face otherwise veiled. Up close I could make out newspaper headlines, ads, propaganda campaign slogans, the subtle juxtaposition of visuals we can’t help but constantly take in unless we live in a cave (and maybe even there), the information we are spoon-fed at every meal and at every snack and at every drive through, all of which add up to what to me feels some kind of endless noise.

It comes at me from everywhere. Clutter. Filler. Agendas. Causes.

Not even in the privacy of my own home, with no TV, does it stop. I shut my laptop, and there it is, still, yet so not still, but frantic. Chattering. Blathering.

It’d be easy to blame. I often do. My blame lands, probably fully justified in many people’s minds, on a million and one targets, many so beautifully portrayed in Shepard Fairey’s art.

But blame deflects. Blame very quickly turns into the very same noise and clutter and filler and agenda and endless causes that made me point the finger in the first place.

When I stop and recognize the part I play in what I would blame, I’m left with an inner noise so loud it makes me feel an awful lot like this. I’m tempted, and often do, add distraction to the noise so as to numb it. It does, for a nanosecond. But not very well. When I stop and when I notice I am often, these days, brought to weeping. And then always I am left with a powerful longing for essential.

Essential. Ahhhh, fresh air.

Essential. Ahhhh. Direct. Upfront. No excuses. No apologies. No convincing. No preaching. No converting. No finger wagging. No pointing. No hemming and hawing. No hiding. No pretense.

Essential says: Here I am. This is it. This is what I’ve got. No more, no less. Hello.

It sounds a whole lot like truth. Truth with room for black and for white and for every color in between.

Essential. So heartbreakingly honest. No need to cover up.

The weeping stops. Everything has grown oddly still. And into this you-could-hear-a-pin-drop quiet comes the sound of hooves. Far away at first but quickly gaining. Pounding in my chest like a herd of wild horses galloping down a beach.

Life. It wants out! And it’s coming.

(Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand will be at the ICA in Boston through August 16. Hurry!)

Categories: Creativity, Heidi's Crushes, Reviews | Tagged: | 5 Comments

A tight box + big energy + curiosity + Leonard Cohen = change

Posted by | June 2, 2009 | 14 Comments

Change. It happens. It’s the way of things, of life.

Inside me something’s been pent up for something like forever. Tied up. Stifled. It’s some kind of energy.

Isn’t energy a property of matter related to its ability to perform work? You know, work. As in motion, movement. (I had no idea I had this physics stuff left in me. But don’t get your hopes up. Or, don’t get worried, whichever the case may be. That’s it for physics. Promise.)

Lately some kind of herculean pushing is going on inside me. As if something’s gotten way too small for the space it’s in and now it’s pushing to get the hell out. Sometimes its energy is desperately intense, like it’s buried alive, trying to claw or hoof its way out. Even when more subdued it feels like something growing that has run out of space: there is no way it can keep growing, or even stay alive, where it is, how it is.

IT wants expression. I don’t know exactly what IT is, but its medium is written. And I do have some hints about IT.

This whole buried alive feeling is getting reeeeeally uncomfortable. It’s amping up majorly. We’re at a Spinal Tap 11. Or “a todo full,” as we said growing up in Chile.

I’m curious about the box. The coffin. The majorly confining thing that feels like it’s killing me alive.

Thing 1 about that.

Something is afraid. It is trying to protect me. It has to do with wanting a guarantee of success. Or, better said: It wants to know I won’t fall flat on my face, because from its point of view? That would suck.

Suck how, I wonder—

Um, duh! Major shame. Crimson cheeks. Hide in closet kind of shame.

From its point of view it’d actually be better to stay stuck and stifled in the box than out and free and in danger of falling flat on my face in shame.

Thing 2: “What will they think” and “it’s too much”

These thoughts invariably come nipping at the heels of the push to express in a big way.

Ironically, all the hints I get about the IT point to ITs having to do with taking the shame out of being human. Hmmm! Curiouser and curiouser.

The IT wanting to be written has to do with saying things without pretense. Without prettying them up. Without uglying them up. Saying things as they are.

But in order to say things as they are or in whatever way they ask to be said, I have to get out of their way. The agenda of having me look good doesn’t fit. The hidden motives of teaching anyone anything, making a point, or having a cause don’t fit.

IT may very well allude to or come right out and talk about things people often feel they should hide. (And it’s so not about airing dirty laundry. No). But again: Hello, Shame!

It sure does seem that much (all?) of the reeeeeally hard and stuck stuff of our world—hate, war, prejudice, murder, lies and everything that separates rather than connecting us—touches on shame in some way.

Who would we be without our shame?

I know many people who would say that shame is what keeps us in line. Case in point: Watch the news. Notice the language used in relation to the “bad guys”. Or, adults saying to children: Shame on you!

But really: How IS that working for us? I’m beginning to suspect that line of thought. It seems much more true that shame keeps us hiding and small and, ironically, doing the things that make us feel ashamed.

In all this pondering I have noticed something odd: The people I find most beautiful, endearing, attractive, crush-worthy… and the stories that most speak to me, are not Pollyanna-ish Hallmark-y tales with pretty Hollywood endings. At all.

Rather, they share a quality of almost heart-breaking honesty and openness, usually or often about the very things that would shame me. They are at once incredibly vulnerable and incredibly strong. These people look life in the eye, no matter what looks back. They are as resilient as they are fragile. Their skin is as leathery tough and wrinkly as it is tender and soft. Their transparency is breathtaking. And they don’t care what others think of them. Or if they do, they don’t let that stop them. They go ahead anyway.

Which brings me to: Leonard Cohen. Whom I saw. Performing. On Saturday night. In person, people, in person!

And, um, Leonard Cohen? In case you’ve not been near planet Heidi for the past several years? Newsflash! I am in love with him. In love. Unapologetically and irrevocably: in love.

(Blushing-aside: In fact, halfway through the concert, pro’bly during Chelsea Hotel or Suzanne, I turned to my dear friend who was visiting and had gotten us the tickets, and told him that if there were, you know, any chance of, um, you know, with Leonard Cohen, that, well, um, we’d have to find him—my friend, that is—my camping mattress and sleeping bag so he could sleep on my living room floor for the night. Or something. He laughed and said, of course. Yah. Now that’s a friend!)

So where was I? Oh yes. About my love—

Leonard Cohen, exquisite lover of word and world, is my hero. Such accessible poetry. None of this intellectually aloof blah blah. He is clever, but never in an I-need-to-impress-you way.

But most of all I love him for not hiding his humanity from me, from you. He is imperfect and heart-breakingly honest about his foibles and mistakes. Which makes him all the more beautiful. He teaches me to embrace wherever I am at.

And he shows me how to age with the utmost of grace. Talk about vintage wine. Oh my. The man is 75 and he’d skip onto and off the stage. He was sporting his fedora, of course. His backup musicians were all stellar in their own right and when their moment came, Leonard Cohen was the embodiment of generosity: he’d take off his hat and listen, rapt, sometimes getting on one knee right alongside them. The man can listen.

The entire concert felt like some kind of a passionate, mysterious, sensual, divine yet oh-so-human prayer.

Thank goodness my days praying to inaccessible perfect gods are over. Give me human. Give me heart. Give my honest. Give me life, any day.

I’m left to ponder this: What if I cared what people think AND went ahead and expressed IT anyway? What if?!

“But what about that shame?” something asks.

“Awww, Sweetheart,” I say to it, “it’s OK. Here, give me your hand. There’s enough room on this human bus for every part of us. Stay with me as long as you need but how ‘bout you and me get the hell out of this tight box and start writing? What do you say?”


YouTube Link to video
Categories: Creativity, Heidi's Crushes | Tagged: | 14 Comments

Me and Billy Collins

Posted by | October 8, 2008 | 4 Comments

It’s not for not having people who love me. Not at all. And it’s not for not loving people, including a number whose side I would pick up and fly around the world to be at in a moment’s notice if ever they said the word. There’s even a dear I have no doubt would hide me in his basement or attic in the likes of a WWII occupied Europe. And I the same for him. And maybe a few more like him, both ways.

So no, it’s not for a lack of love. At all.

But sometimes I feel alone in all the world. Sometimes alone wakes me up. Sometimes it cries me to sleep. Sometimes it sits on my chest with no intention of leaving anytime soon and it’s hard to catch my breath.

Before you go feeling sorry for me, let me just say there are plenty of times I don’t feel alone and plenty of other times alone is just fine. After all, I love my space and my time and my books and my many-a-million things, like the weathered wooden ladders that I found yesterday and lugged home and washed and put in my bedroom and living room to hold all manner of scarves and cool fabrics and Humlum and more.

I am a girl who can get endlessly curious which means I am not likely ever bored. And I am a girl who gets off on eavesdropping in cafes. And on buses and subways. (Watch out!) And I can look at practically any person I pass on the street and find at least two, if not ten, ways I relate.

All that to say, sometimes I don’t give alone a second thought.

But last night was not one of those kinds of alone. Last night was an alone of a lonely variety. Last night was an alone in all the world alone. An I am completely on my own alone. In moments when I am believing thoughts like these it’s probably good no one around me is desperate for an eye because I’d probably hawk my left one to feel connected.

But I’m picky on top of that, because not just any old connection will do. I notice I’m not picking up the 2 a.m. drunks at People’s Republik. I notice I don’t say yes to anyone and everyone. In fact, I don’t say yes to many things.

Also I must tell you that this isn’t about sleeping or sex. Not necessarily, at least, though of course those would be nice too because sometimes a girl just hankers for body. You know?

OK, who’m I kidding: sometimes a body, the smell of skin, and a neck to nuzzle into are missed so much my molars ache! And maybe I would hawk my other eye. So yes, that would make me blind right about now.

So what is all of this about, really?

It all boils down to connection. It’s about wanting to feel gotten. It’s about wanting someone to say, “I understand. I get it. I so get it.”

All of this I was noticing last night, with not much hope of anything changing, really, when Billy Collins came by for a visit. Be-still-my-heart Billy Collins. Can-always-make-me-laugh Billy Collins. Down-to-earth and ever-accessible Billy Collins. You should know that I’d probably hawk my nose for Billy Collins in person, but this morning finds me with my nose intact: alas, last night’s Billy Collins came in my mind’s eye. No matter. I’ll take Billy Collins any way he comes.

Billy Collins writes poems about big things like love and everyday things like egg salad. Last night he brought me his poem, “Marginalia,” and while alone didn’t leave, I notice that alone fell asleep in good company. Billy Collins had gotten me.

Marginalia (by Billy Collins)

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.
Another notes the presence of “Irony”
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Poetry | Tagged: | 4 Comments

Everybody Knows

Posted by | October 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Leonard Cohen, songwriter for songwriters, brilliant humble genius, the man who takes the shame out of our secrets, who shines a light into our human closets and gives us a chuckle over what otherwise might make us weep…, has a million lines that I adore, and “Everybody Knows” is full of them. This one feels especially apropos of this administration and the financial mess we’re in:

“…everybody knows the boat is leaking, everybody knows that the captain lied, everybody’s got this sinking feeling like their father or their dog just died…”

Rufus Wainwright, cheeky as ever, hams it up and nails it. If you want to skip to the song, skip to 1:50. But if you’re a fellow Cohen-lover, start at 0:00. I hope you enjoy!


YouTube Link to video
Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Poetry | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment

Sometimes I want to be…

Posted by | September 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Sometimes I want to be my niece Caroline who’s cool and groovy, an awesome swimmer with a butterfly stroke that makes you jump up and down with joy (she’s 8!) and a growing leaf collection. Caroline loves girly things AND earthworms. She thinks slugs are a bit disgusting, but that doesn’t stop her from examining them up close and personal and telling me that I should make a new massage kind of crème from the clay she’s found on the Whidbey Island beach, plus slug guts, ginger-ale (to make it more liquidy) and cinnamon—she only added cinnamon when I said my clients might not want to leave a massage smelling like slug guts. Always creative, Caroline takes things in stride and can sit back quietly. She takes her time to answer a question that she doesn’t know the answer to off the top of her head. She won’t say just anything to make the asker happy.

Sometimes I want to be my quiet writer friend who’s taught himself to play guitar. At home he will sit down on his awesome antique art nouveau couch and just make up songs. He says things succinctly if he says them at all and when he says something it sits there strong and tall like a mountain, sometimes even for days. Or weeks. It is enough to drive an impatient Mexican jumping bean girl crazy but there you have it. Sometimes I wish I could be more like him.

Remember the laps that were comfortable to sit on when you were a kid? Sometimes I want to be like my friend Barbara’s big lap. Figurative big lap, people, figurative. What I mean is that when you talk to Barbara you feel so at ease — she doesn’t have an agenda for you because she knows that you, somewhere inside yourself, know what’s best. People who love you and don’t have an agenda are amazing people to have in your life and hands-down the best listeners. They aren’t just nodding their heads and pretending either. Neither are they playing devils advocate to every thing you mention that sounds the least bit “negative”, neither are they thinking of what they will say next. They don’t freak out if you cry and quickly smother you with Kleenexes. They aren’t afraid of snot. No. They are really just right there with you. Even a half hour of presence like that can turn a whole day around. I can be that way with my clients. And sometimes I am that way with my friends too. I like that.

Sometimes I want to be my stuffed bear Humlum because he never ever tries to change anyone. That doesn’t mean he hangs out with people he doesn’t like for very long, mind you, and I have seen him roll his eyes on occasion, but still. Point made. Humlum does not even try to fix my obsessive habits, like refreshing my email or facebook page to see who loves me. Or who doesn’t. He knows that when I finally have had enough I wil sit still and write or cry or go to the park. He never says I told you so, Heidi. He is endlessly patient. He knows I’m creative and persistent and that in my time I will figure how to wear myself with ease.

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Poetry, Re-imagining | Tagged: | Leave a Comment

What will he think!

Posted by | July 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Of late, I’ve been in the throes of a crush and a throng of “what will he/they/you think” harpies has been talking in my ear at about the volume of an 11 on the Spinal Tap amp. A ticker tape of my thoughts yesterday might have looked something like this:

Let’s check facebook. Don’t you think it’s time to post a new status line? How about a line of poetry?

Yeah, OK.

Maybe something from The Four Quartets. You love T S Eliot. How about this one: “Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go… human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

Mmmmm. That’s great. I love it.

Hmmmm, but what if he doesn’t?

You shouldn’t care what he thinks. C’mon, you love T S Eliot. It’s going up!

OK, OK. What about a new picture? I don’t like that one that’s up.

How about that one Lizi just sent where you’re holding Isabelli. It’s beautiful.

I look old.

You look 40.

That’s what I meant. I look old.

You are 40.

Hello, thank you very much.

Yeah, so?

C’mon. What are you going to do? Stop living because you are god-forbid-40? Let’s upload the pic already.

But it shows my sticky-outy tooth. Better not that pic.

Oh not the sticky outy tooth! Wouldn’t want a sticky outy tooth! It does not show that one anyway. That one’s on the bottom.

Oh, you’re right, but it shows the one that’s a bit narrower and crooked.

Hello! It’s a crown! It can’t help it.

Hello, shut up! Don’t tell!

Would you stop it already? What’s wrong with you! Why do you care so much what he thinks? You don’t even really know him!

I do.

No you don’t.

OK, I shouldn’t care what he thinks. I know I know. I hate that I care what people think. But I don’t want to be alone and I like him. He knows places I’ve been. He was there.

C’mon, can we just decide on a picture already? You look so happy in that one holding Isabelli. It’s a brilliant smile on both of you. Your eyes are sparkling.

Yeah, but it shows the wrinkles around my eyes.

That’s what happens when you smile.

But he’ll think I’m too old for him. You know he’s 2 or 3 years younger anyway.

So?

Men want women with fresh eggs.

Oh get off it!

No really. If I came into this world with, what, two dozen is it? Then, um, we’re probably down to like, um, 3?

What!

I read it somewhere.

How do you know he even cares?

Hello, it’s wired into men to care. The biology thing, you know.

Oh c’mon. People hook up all over the place. Even in nursing homes.

Don’t remind me.

What?

About nursing homes. That’s the whole point. I don’t want to be old and alone. Don’t want to die alone.

Hey, look at the people in The Notebook. She had Alzheimer’s and died in the arms of the love-of-her-life.

Yeah, my point exactly: the love of her life. They met and connected when they were young and beautiful and on account of that would do anything for each other when they were old and incontinent.

Can we get back to the picture?

OK, the picture.

C’mon, this is the best one.

But it doesn’t show my body.

You want to?

Well no but I don’t want him to think I’m hiding my body. He’ll think I’m fat.

You aren’t fat! Get off it.

But he might think so if a lot of my pics are head shots. Plus the shirt’s too bright.

You love that shirt!

I know, but it’s too pink – he prefers dark.

What? So, let me get this. You are going to stop smiling to hide your sticky outy tooth and to look like you have no wrinkles and you are going to stop wearing pink because it’s too bright and you think he prefers dark?

All fevers break eventually. The temperature either comes down or, not to put too fine a point on it, the person dies. That’s the reality of it. My what-will-he-think fever broke last night. I lay in bed in the dark on a full moon hot night and had a thank-the-good-lord cry. A good cry sure does feel amazing when it finally comes, doesn’t it? A timely cry can beat an average orgasm hands-down. So anyway, I lay there and cried out to whatever is out there and that would be me: Me in Presence. Kind me. Me with a wide open lap and embracing arms. Me that is there at the end of every day. Me that I wake up with. Me that is there whenever I stop to notice and allow space for Me. And that, my friends is the Me that will be there if I make it to be old enough to have lost all memory, which would be a blessing anyway because then I wouldn’t be able to remember whose liking I ever cared about!

My fever has gone down. We’ve got a low-grade temp today. I posted “over and out” on my status line and here I am, telling on all my schemes. That is always the best thing to do with schemes, by the way, tell on them. And laugh. Laughing about the whole crazy saga of the mind always helps too.

Lastly, like it or not, I leave you with my big, toothy, pink-shirted smile holding my little toothless friend Isabelli, who I hope will be spared of ever caring what any boy or anyone else thinks of her!

Isabelli%20y%20Tia%20Heidi.JPG

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Heidi's Musings | | Leave a Comment

There is a crack in everything

Posted by | June 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Gashing and slashing wide and black I went back to bed and asked for a crack, however small, just enough for a little light and I dreamt of Holland: stark in summer, from above, wide angle, everything fast, like a bullet, like death, and like those, in slow motion. I’m scanning for a road and find one on last winter’s ski runs. Small angle zoom in on three men on skiis falling, still in slow mo —- air air air, pulled inexorably by earth’s grav(e)ity. The middle man is caught and on his sides the other two try in their way to set him free, like a bird on L. Cohen’s wire.

Categories: Heidi's Crushes, Poetry | Tagged: | Leave a Comment
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