Monthly Archives: July 2007

a rock to tie a string around

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The Dance

“Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around.” It is a fact and it is also what was going through my mind when I woke up this morning. Today has been such an odd day. Our flat is nearly empty and tonight will be something more like camping than anything else and still I can’t seem to really grasp that any of this is real. Surreal has been my theme word for much of this summer and it continues to be even now… which, I suppose, should not be surprising.

So tomorrow we leave and head north and west to Dublin and a few days after that further west to the States… and so it goes. I have so many thoughts whirling around in my head- none of them seem to stay put long enough to write so I will leave it with the song that was playing in my head this morning and acknowledge that yes… “everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around.” It’s a fact and a known quantity- which is very comforting to me at the moment.

Life Inside the Music Box

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all torn up

Music Box- by Regina Spektor
Life inside the music box ain't easy.
The mallets hit the gears are always turning
and everyone inside the mechanism
is yearning to get out.
And sing another melody completely
So different from the one they're always singing
I close my eyes and think that I have found me
but then I feel mortality surround me.
I want to sing another melody
so different from the one I always sing
But when I do the dishes
I run the water very very very hot
and then I fill the sink to the top with bubbles of soap
and then I send all the bottle caps I own a float
and its the greatest voyage in the history of plastic
and then I slip my hands in and start to make waves
and then I dip my tongue in and take a taste
it tastes like soap but it doesn't really taste like soap
and then I lower in my whole mouth in and take a gulp
and start to feel mortality surround me
I close my eyes and think I've found me
but life inside the music box ain't easy
the mallets hit the gears are always turning
and everyone inside the mechanism
is yearning
to get out
and sing another melody completely
is yearning
to get out
is yearning
to get out
is yearning
to get out

Cartography of Spirit

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turtle in water
“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such a cartography- to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”
–michael ondaatje (the english patient)