taking stock

Edited: Listen to that beautiful and haunting song here... and really, why don't you just read the post again with the song playing in the background.

Good Things:

1. hearing a mysterious and haunting song and being able to identify it (eventually) and listen to it again and again, making it a soundtrack for my own melancholy: "Cars and Telephones" by Arcade Fire* (interestingly it's a song that's never actually been released on an album; they recorded it as a demo in 2001 and somehow it made its way onto the web and has become a favourite -- the band was reportedly surprised when fans started requesting it live)


2. two male goldfinches bouncing on sunflowers in front of a red brick wall


3. coming upon a wedding reception outside our local riverside tearoom where a bride lifts her big white skirt to reveal ruby shoes picking their way across the gravel driveway and her bridesmaids, in simple black dresses and also wearing ruby shoes, place small, tasteful bunches of red roses on black tables


4. the orange, black and white underside of a monarch's wings lit by low morning sunlight against the azure sky


5. the word azure


6. the morning air nipping my bare arms like fresh wet dew while the sun warms my back


7. smelling freshly mown grass instead of car exhaust on the way to work


8. being woken from a dream in which my first boyfriend is weather-stripping the window of my teenage bedroom (at my dad's request) while I pretend to sleep. I tell him coyly, "I hope you can still get in..." and then I'm woken by my husband kissing me goodbye in our dark bedroom, me in our bed, while a faint morning light peeks through the window. It takes me a minute to situate myself.


9. the sweet sadness of watching my Grandma Ruth's old pink and mauve couch remain unwanted on our front lawn, and finally, putting it out of its cat-scratched misery at the dump

* I can't get you a youtube video right now, but I can give you the lyrics just to give you a sense:

I read the pages about me
In her autobiography
They were brief and to
the point
A flash, while you are getting dressed
A memory that needs to be repressed
I'll just wait until it's over
Since you've gone away
I never know just what to say
Since you've gone away
I never know just
what to say

Cause I like cars more than telephones
Your voice in my ear
makes me feel so alone
Tonight I'm gonna drive
The silver moon is
shining bright
Over the interstate
God saying hurry don't be late
Soon the sun will rise
That's when the romance dies
And I'm just tired of running around

I walked
To get the mail today
I guess
Your letter never came
I'll just
Check again tomorrow

A flash, while you are getting dressed
A memory that needs to be repressed
I'll just wait without saying a word
Since you've gone away
I never know just
what to say
Since you've gone away
I never know just what to say

Cause I like cars more than telephones
Your voice in my head makes me
feel so alone
Tonight I'm gonna drive
The silver moon is shining bright
Over the interstate
God saying hurry don't be late
Soon the sun will rise
That's when the romance dies
And I'm just tired of running around

But fuck it I love you even ifI'm gonna feel like shit
By the time I get
to you
Now the sky is turning blue
The stars they disappear
One by
one as the daylights nears
And yes you're in my head
But that doesn't
make you here
And I've lost all my friends
But you're the one I miss the
most
And now I'm almost there
Yeah I'm almost to the coast
And if I
had any notion
Of how I'm gonna drive my car across
the Atlantic Ocean,
I'd be fucking set.