ding dong merrily

It's Christmas. And I am happy.

Phone me in the head, why don't you

There's a band called The Spoonbenders based in Buenos Aires, as it happens. You really should listen to them. ALRIGHT, I admit, I am not entirely subjective. But still. They sing in English with the best lyrics I have ever heard. These lyrics are mainly written by the lead singer, whose marvelous use of English has long gobsmackered me. Born in Spain, and then carted about continents for years before settling in Argentina, he has a way of molding a language to suit his purpose that produces sometimes comical ("I just felt tenderised," he said in one sweet exchange, while in another claimed he'd been "hornified" by something unrepeatable on this blog) but always appealing results. Then I heard his wonderful tunes, with lyrics such as: "As I fall to sleep, something travels with my mind," and my favourite "I'll phone you in the head..." Readers, I am phoning you in the head. Go listen to The Spoonbenders at: http://www.myspace.com/listentothespoonbenders

Swimming

This time we got to swim. Cold feet, it turns out, warm up pretty quickly by a wood-pellet stove in a round rock house on the Oregon coast.

Racing

It's not, dear readers, that I have nothing to say. It's that I have no time to say it, lately. What with the running around and great and numerous activities. I will come back and say more things when the time : things to say ratio has righted itself a little. I'm sure you're all on the edge(s) of your seat(s).

What have the Romans ever done for us?

I know America is not very fashionable right now, but being the day that's in it and all, I just thought I'd say hurray for all the delightfuls it's given me over the years, among them the wonderful words of e.e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer ... (my list trails off into a roll call of looming great literaries and a reverie on the lovely moments spent with well-spun words missing arguably unnecessary vowels); the music of the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Sufjan Stevens, Johnny Cash, Will Oldham (I can't keep these lists up or they'll gobble the screen); movies like (almost all the best ones I've ever lived in); that growing-up J1 summer on Cape Cod; chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream; one big love and several big life friends; last month's Portland sunshine; this computer I'm typing on that brings me to you; heroes, heroines and in the dark ages of Ireland when things were low, hope. Oh, and this picture. Happy Fourth of July.

Surprise!

I lose my mobile phone. A lot. Not proper lostness, just temporary misplacement. Every five minutes or so. Often when I'm about to leave the house. So, every time, I call it from my landline, and when I hear it twittering its location is revealed. Aha! Under the bed! Behind the cushion! In the fridge! My phone and I are emotionally reunited and EVERY SINGLE TIME I get excited when I see that I've missed a call. I check the missed calls, all gleeful that somebody wants to talk to me, only to be reminded that lo and behold the missed call is from MYSELF, from my own landline in fact because I just that second called my mobile in an attempt to find the cursed apparatus. Every. Single. Time. Technology is clearly wasted on the likes of me.

Cold water

I wish
we'd
swum up
to the waterfall;
instead,
we let
our feet
get cold.