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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Last night I saw My Morning Jacket and Pearl Jam at the Verizon Center in DC. It was awesome. Ok, well it wasn’t NIN and TV on the Radio at Red Rocks (::sob::) but it was definitely a great show. I’ve never heard My Morning Jacket Before, so they weren’t as exciting as they could have been, but they were pretty good and I will definitely be checking them out as soon as I have money I can spend on music again. The crowd was all Pearl Jam’s though. The arena was maybe a third full after My Morning Jacket left the stage, but by the time the lights dimmed for Pearl Jam it was full.
They played a lot of new songs, which was okay, but did prompt me to turn to Spillz at one point and say “This is Pearl Jam trying to be Limp Bizkit and I wish they would stop”. At one point they also seemed to be channeling Bruce Springsteen, but that wasn’t quite as distressing.
The highlight of the show for me was during the firts encore when they played an AMAZING rendition of Bob Dylans “Masters of War”. I want that, if anyone knows where to find Pearl Jam concert bootlegs (I have’t looked very hard yet).
Yes. Now I go to get on a plane.

So here I am in DC, and it’s 12:19 but for me it feels like 10:19, only exacerbated by the fact that I slept through three hours of West Wing DVDs that my aunt was watching. So now, though I should be sleeping, soundly and deeply because I have a big day tomorrrow, I am watching a very old X-Files episode, “Blood” from 1994 this was episode 3 of the second season. In the first couple of minutes I got to see an old school ATM, a monstrous laptop with a modem line, and second season Scully with the huge glasses. w00t! This was still when the narrative of the show was exactly that, a narrative, like Mulder or Scully was reading from their report. There is a classic David Lynch/ Twin Peaks piece of cinematography in which a police office shoots a woman who is attacking Mulder and the screen goes white. Also a newsclip montage featuring the Rodney King beating, the OJ Simpson low speed pursuit, and Chalres Manson. For the record, considering my age at the time of the original airings of these video clips, I’m kind of amazed I was able to identify them as instantaneously as I was. Says something about the power of media saturation. This episode also features The Lone Gunmen, double w00t.

It’s been years since I watched these old old X-Files. For the record, back in the beginning I was not allowed to watch the X-Files. It was on Friday nights and Friday nights were “no tv” nights. My aunt had a couple of videos that I watched obsessively when I would visit her, and sometimes my friends would tape episodes that I could borrow. Looking at them now, they have an awesome Twilight Zone/ Outer Limits sort of feel to them. It makes me sad to think about how different it was at the end, how wrapped up in its own mythology and lost from the awesome surreality that gave it its initial magic.

For the record. The picture is an old one of Scout in which she is trying to retrieve a toy from under the couch. She was persistent, it took her three days to retrieve her toy, but retrieve it she did. I have such smart kitties.

The title line has to do with a commerical that came on. Occassionally I am blown away by commercials and how awesome they can be. The first one I remember really loving was for Subway, in which there was a guy with a large picture of a panda bear and he said “Why should you eat lunch with me? Cause I’m so pretty! Pretty preeetty panda, Pretty preety panda!” and he tilted the picture back and forth. It was AWESOME. If I could find that commercial and have it on my computer I would do it in a heartbeat. Anyway, this commercial is for some package delivery service. Yes. Commercials. This is why I watch tv so very infrequently. It gets into my head and scares me.

My review of X-Men III: The Last Stand lives over here where the spoilers remain safely behind a cut. Please go read it, I am interested to hear what other people have to say about this movie.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Currently Reading: White Apples by Jonathan Carroll.

Have you ever had a book get into your head so completely that you have moments when you can’t remember where you end and the story begins? The last book i really remember that happening with was Someplace to be Flying by Charles deLint. That’s one of the books that will come with me whenever i move. It’s happened a couple of times, and it’s never been a mundane affair.

These are the books that remind me that the world is full of wonder any mystery, and that to spend too much time trying to figure it all out is to detract from the simple truth of it all. The last two weeks have been very painful, and they continue to sleep in my consciousness, waking occassionaly and demanding my thought and analysis for many or few moments.

But from the other side i can see that the wounds have released me. Floodgates i had not realized i had erected have come crashing down. I am writing, i am looking at the art around me and thinking “i can *do* that”. i was quietly mistaking apathy for peace, and it took a giant jolt, a paradigm shift, to alert me to the sneaking desperation that dogged my steps.

I can list for you the single moments that have struck this chord in me, but they wouldn’t mean for you what they have for me. They are my secret places, and I can’t tell why they meant what they did for me when they did. Perhaps if I had caught them at another time they would have been meaningless. In the case of “Here i dreamt i was an architect” that is, in fact, what happened.

True beauty is found in the simple, serendipitous moments.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

And I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t easy.

Listening to: “Engine Driver”- The Decemberists

I wrote last night. For two and a half hours straight, fueled by coffee and beer and cigarettes. Suddenly I understand why Warren Ellis hangs out in the pub. In that short short time I knocked out over 5000 words neil gaiman says 1000 words a day is perfectly respectable.

I don’t know if what I’ve written is any damn good, but it feels good simply to have done it. Sometimes I forget that writing is just like anything else, you have to do it in order to keep doing it. I mean, I guess I didn’t really forget it, I’ve been much more compulsive about writing in my journals since i stopped trying to write creatively. but this felt good. like stretching in the sun, after a long languid winter.