To Africa

My good colleague Diandra Jones and I Skyped each other last summer after I had just found a place in Stockholm (Solna, to be exact) and had begun to settle in. I remember waking up early one morning and jumping on line and finding her there. Then I was woken up again, in a whole new way, when she told me she had fallen in love with a man from Ghana, where she had been on a educational dance tour for AIDS. She and Apu married this past December and tomorrow she ships off for Ghana for good. To say I've been concerned about her safety would be an understatement. Yet I also trust her judgment and she reassured us on Saturday at her going-away party that she would high tail it back here should she feel the need. Good luck, Diandra. I haven't wished that much good luck to anybody ever!


Here she is with another former Northtown Academy colleague, Mario Ortiz.

Quote of the Day

"I thought I was dead, too, but then I realized I was just in Kansas."

--Little Bill Dagget, "Unforgiven"

Notes to Self -- June 22, 2008

In on-line dating, don't be shocked at what shows up.

Don't waste your time watching Italian national football matches unless you want to watch the team they are playing and maybe not even then.

Here's the story of one of humanity's loneliest people.

Don't expect any politician, even the one that you really want to believe in, to be 100% that person you want him to be. You will only be disappointed. (This is more of a warning to self rather an a reflection on recent events.)

Drink more margaritas and/or bloody marys. It's summertime!

Expect ghosts, even if you don't believe in them.

Greet the ghosts that you don't believe in. You will like that they like that.

Listen to more Bob Dylan but don't be sad when you realize he's not the genius that so many think him to be.

Keep enjoying your reading. Enjoying reading is one of the greatest things one can do for oneself.

Just because you can watch unlimited movies from Blockbuster.com, that doesn't you have to.

Don't forget that we're all pretty sure that we only get around but once. Don't live like you're going to die tomorrow, nor in 400 years.

Oi då sverige

Förlust.

In the Most Burning Moments of Sunshine, I like the Music of the Dark

I don't really get it. I've never been a true goth kid, even as a teenager. I started to see a pattern a few years back after seeing Radiohead on a torpid and steaming summer night in Grant Park downtown Chicago and seeing them again two years latter, once again in the heat of August humidity so thick you felt like you were swimming with every step. The weather was recurrently quintessential Chicago summer; the tone, upbeat. The following summer when the weather warmed again and the barometer registered high humidity I craved that dark, crepuscular tone that pulled me into myself like a Swedish winter. No! Too much light. I need me some darkness with my sunburn! Once again a few years back, school lets out and the new Tom Yorke (Radiohead musician) CD (The Eraser) finds the light of day in the mushy June heat and beacons me into the darkness of June. This year, school lets out and humidity sucks me in and wave after wave of Radiohead and Mozart's Requiem and Grizzly Bear and Elliot Smith and Jose Gonzalez make their way to my car CD player, iPod and desktop to be pumped out the speaker system and push back the waves of humid heat. Sure, I'll take it again, and again, apparently.

Svensk tjej/killlar...

You should be able to get something out of these, even if you're not a speaker of Swedish.

Just in Case You Didn't Already See This...

tee hee