Set to “shuffle”, of course:

Queen, “Who Wants to Live Forever” – I don’t even hear my favorite band (when I was a teenager) playing. I just see Duncan losing Tessa.

Weird Al Yankovich, “Another One Rides the Bus” – Everyone is looking at me funny at work as I laugh myself hysterical. One of the reasons I’m glad I don’t live in San Francisco anymore!

Social Distortion, “Ring of Fire” – Social D just rocks.

Devo, “Mongoloid” – Makes me think of my niece, Laura. I hope her life is as good.

Also heard: Evanescence, Muse. Nothing particular comes to mind. But enjoyed.

So I officially withdrew from certification school today, and will get a 45% refund on my tuition, which is fine with me, as it is more than I actually have left to pay on my loan. I got a Microsoft certification out of the deal, although not the one I originally signed up for. More importantly, my time after work is now my own. Assuming I get time after work.

Sometimes I think it’s a wonder any of us manages to communicate with anyone else in this medium we call the internet, which is so lacking in the context most of our communication has, such as visual cues, or real-time responses which enable us to elaborate on what otherwise would be quick, casual comments.

I’m trying not to be bothered by a recent incident in which someone I very much respect jumped down my throat for a rather vague comment I made in someone else’s journal. She just misinterpreted what I said, and I was surprised and hurt by that. But everyone takes stuff out of context or reads too much into it or jumps to conclusions from time to time, even the best of us, and I did my best to explain myself, but maybe it was too little too late.

Anyway, how is everyone’s day going?

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

— © Mary Oliver

People are posting “Galveston stories”, so here’s mine. I’m a Southern California girl, born and raised. Beaches, palm trees, green, wet winters, brown gold, dry summers–that’s what I grew up with. Every summer my family would camp in the mountains and body surf down at San Clemente or Laguna. Then, at the tender age of 17, I went off to college in rural Iowa. Not only wasn’t there fast food for fifty miles, they had a one-hundred year winter there my Freshman year. And, it turns out, snow doesn’t just fall magically on December 1st and then disappear New Year’s Eve, the friggin’ stuff stays and storms and piles up until well into April. And sometimes it arrives in October!

That’s just wrong.

Well, anyway, I put up with that and the total lack of KROQ for four years (and by my senior year of college I was walking through the snow in sockless tennis shoes), and then after graduation I headed off to graduate school at Rice University in Houston.

Houston had palm trees. Houston had green, wet winters (sometimes I had to scrape ice off my front windshield), Houston had a gay community and decent college radio.

And then there was Galveston. I didn’t get down there much, but I remember the first time I did. My girlfriend stayed up on the sand while I waded into the water. I stood there, the waves crashing over my knees, and I cried.

It wasn’t home, but it was the next best thing.

Be safe, Texans!