bridges.

i'm going to be twenty three on sunday. twenty three. (and no, it's not old. and yes, i understand that there is nothing exciting about this birthday other than its existence.) but twenty three. i remember being sixteen and my cousin, my absolute idol, was twenty three. a college graduate. a member of the work force. an adult. how she feels about the subject, i can't say. but i do know that she was a grown up in my eyes. self assured. taking control.

and now, i'm the twenty three year old. and it's strange. oh so strange. because here i am. roughly a fourth through my life. and i'm still in school. so in a way, my certainty seems so apparent to others. oh, she's in law school; she's going to be a lawyer. point a to point b. but it's not. first, i have to actually get through law school, which will be a feat. then i have to secure internships and positions along the way. and decide what i want to do. and pray to God that sometime between now and may 2012, our beloved capitalist economy has found a way to right itself again so that i can justify going into $100,000 worth of debt. (that justification will be in the form of a fat paycheck in the bank and the ability to actually start my life.)

because now, right now, i feel like bull pushing against his cage. my life, it's here. it's right here. but i can't have it. not yet. more school. less sleep. more this and that and the other. in the meantime, i worry that my life - this life i have waiting for me (a love and a family and a house and a car and three dogs and two point five kids and baseball games and the perfect business suits and all of those things) will get away from me. because it's way patiently right now, but it might get tired of being on hold.

yes. law school is a step to that life. but it is more than one step. it is an old, rickety bridge strung between two sides of a canyon that can kick up winds over one hundred miles per hour. so, the process is slow and tiring, and at the very best of times, a precarious negotiation between the desire to get to the other side and the fear of falling off altogether.


all of this is to say that what's waiting, at least for now, makes all of this worth it. but there's a nagging fear that the life i put on hold will run off without me.

for now, though. i wake up in the morning and trudge to my fortress and build a shelter out of thousand pages books. sometimes - in fact, more often than not - i like it here.

collecting

warning. this is a long, rather inane, post. beware.

here's a list of the songs i just bought on itunes:

1) i will possess your heart - death cab for cutie
2) valentine's day in juarez - the ike reilly assassination
3) crazy rap (colt 45 & 2 zig zags) - afroman
4) fields of gold - eva cassidy (yes. i like it better than sting's.)
5) was i on your mind - jessie baylin
6) down in mexico - the coasters

i didn't think much of it until i made a playlist of all these purchases (it's a weird habit, i know). then i realized that if anyone was listening to my music (say through all my open windows or the flimsy excuse for a front door), i would come across as a highly afflicted sufferer of musical a.d.d. (or worse, musical ineptness).

now, i'm no musician. i can't play an instrument. i really can't sing (well, i can sing. just not well.). but i do appreciate "good" music. (dare i use a parenthetical tangent here? i think i do. by "good" i don't mean "better than." i will not snub you if your musical taste includes an affinity for britney spears or miley cyrus. [i might judge a little. but don't we all?] i will recommend some other musical selections if you solicit them from me. but i think the larger purpose of music is to fill a place in our lives. and if what you need is over-produced girl pop, have at it. that's not to say that i don't wish the mega-goliath music industry supported artists whose raw talent far exceeds some [or most] of the pop genre's biggest stars. i do. and it doesn't mean that i don't much prefer supporting indie labies and local radio. i do. very much. all of this is simply to say that we can talk about all kinds of musical elements and attempt to create some sort of graduated scale where we evaluate music and subsequently judge people's choices, but the more important thing is keeping music alive and well. that we nurture musicians of all varieties. that we appreciate that different people like different things.)



okay. parenthetical over. anyhow, i'm listening to my new music (yay) and cleaning my apartment (yup. tank top. sweat pants. dancing to the beat while dusting and windexing. drinking a beer.) and have this funny thought i mentioned earlier. but the thing is, i bought each of these songs for a reason. take crazy rap. folk afficianado i might be, but there will always be room in my heart for talented rap artists. they bring something new to my world, and i love that. and i love this song because it makes me think of summer at the beach, playing games under the house, and laughing with my brother and our friends. that's the space it fills.

death cab? i've never been a big dcfc follower. never got into it when the group became the biggest "not big" thing when i was in high school. but their new album, narrow stairs, is a really interesting evolution. so i'm learning about their musical growth. and i love that.

how about eva cassidy? funny story. i'm sitting in a coffee house reading criminal law cases when this woman's voice comes over the speakers singing "fields of gold," a song i knew all the words by the time i was 8. and i was taken aback by the harrowing sound of her voice and the song had new meaning. again. another space. my contemplation space.

and if you don't listen to the ike reilly assassination, you should. start with we belong to the staggering everything. it's a great album and i've been collecting all of the songs off of it over the last month or so. wonderful new things.

jessi baylin is great. she's adorable and funny and candid. and her music fits right in with my musical m.o.

and who doesn't have room in their musical library for the coasters? c'mon. origins of rock n' roll. appreciate it. enjoy it. you'll learn a lot from it. and have fun doing it.

so there. my musical musings. and loves. post your favorites, too.

xoxo.
t.

stewart v. motts v. cardinals

the student lounge at my law school is a sad excuse for any type of "lounge." random couches - relics of days gone by and best forgotten - are huddle in one corner by a tv. a few tables and unrelentingly uncomfortable chairs. two refrigerators. in the basement. the only redeeming quality it has is fleeting: the cardinals/ brewers game is playing on fox sports.

i claimed my couch, timbuk2 bag perched on one cushion, my self on the other. i pulled my torts book out of my bag totally ready to brief the two cases i read earlier today only to hear the tell-tale fox sports theme noise (yes, noise. to call it a song would do a great disservice to musicians and their industry). needless to say, torts went out the window. i made myself comfortable on my sad excuse for a couch and decided the cardinals were, in the long run, a lot more important than stewart v. motts.

to make it better, the study group behind me has spent the last twenty minutes predicting the cardinal's eminent demise (it can't go this well for them forever; there's no point in cheering for them when they have so many fans). i was tempted to turn around and say something, but i though a post into the internet world would be more fun.

it's unfortunate that the game doesn't qualify as a reason to miss class in milwaukee (oh yes. i missed school to watch the cardinals in my pre-graduate career in saint louis. and it was understood.)