so.

beautiful.
10,000 Words

the city of oaks

I've been thinking some about Raleigh, in part because Ariel and I are official couch surfers, thus inspiring thoughts of what visitors to the city would appreciate. I've already thought about such things, but in a sporadic manner. Once was when my friend Steffi, who I know from Pamplona, but is from Germany, visited. We went camping up at Falls Lake, and to the capitol building for a limited amount of time (I think I had to work?), and then another friend showed her Duke Gardens, which I have yet to see. Over the past however long since I got back from Pamps, I've learned to love this place more and more. Raleigh has some really great characteristics. I love the local culture in the Triangle...though I guess I should have started that sentence by saying that the Triangle is great. Driving sort of sucks, considering gas is only getting more and more killer. But as a student, able to get free bus passes (which reminds me...I need to use that more), connections take a little more time, but are fairly stress-free, and very cost-free. Having spent time in Durham and Chapel Hill, I feel like I don't know a super ton about them, but definitely enough to like them. Well, other than that UNC place...blech. ;)

But yeah. Raleigh has that good mix of city and small town feel. I can go out and meet lots of new people, but I'll also probably see at least one person that I know. And meeting new friends tends to go well. There is so much going on, and it's at your fingertips (i.e. pick up a copy of the INDY!). Being as how I like good beer, I appreciate the fact that the revolution of the past decade that has brought America to the forefront of Microbreweries has such good representation in Raleigh; Boylan Bridge Brewpub, Big Boss, Lone Rider, for example. Plus all the other breweries that are represented on tap. It's great. I was just talking to a friend the other day about how Europeans seem to have an impression of the US as being a place full of such atrocities as Busch and Budweiser and Miller.....but really, we have a better variety than even Europe has.

Anyways, here are a few places that I like.

Shakedown Street. I tend to be here Wednesday evenings for the open mike night. It's a fun place. Full of colourful pictures of Joplin and Marley and Lennon, as well as friendly, fun people.

CupaJoe..... pretty much a fantastic place to be. Fresh-roasted coffee, people that will become your friends, and potential awesome roommates such as mine.



Mitch's Tavern. Bull Durham (? not sure if that's the name...) was filmed here, so Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner sat at these tables. Actually, one over to the left, as I've been told...
This picture was as they were closing. It felt like a forest of chair legs.
Mitch's is one of my favourites, and has been since I was a wee freshman. They have excellent prices. You pay extra for random stuff; so, like, if you want extra cheese, you get one of those little plastic tiny cups for $.50, butttttttt you didn't have to pay for it up front no matter whether you get it or not. The service is good. the atmosphere is pretty much some of the coolest ever. And....yeah. The food is excellent. And fresh. And the produce is local, and their specials depend on what is in season. Also, there are a couple of balconies...though the waitresses were chatting about how more than four people can go out there at their own risk...



Raleigh.


This was taken from the Boylan Bridge Brewpub. Which has probably the best view of downtown available, and all from a pleasant patio with lots of seating. There tend to be more people who want to be seated than there is available seating, but it's worth the wait. Especially when you grab a cold pint and stand on the wall gazing at the moon and skyline, as Mom and I did this night.

Oh, and that little diagonal line to the left above the moon might be an airplane, but I'm not sure. The exposure time was set for my camera's night setting, so several seconds, and apparently captured something moving through the sky. I think it's pretty sweet.

Tiny Desk Concert

NPR music makes me happy.
A few years ago, they were the magic behind my discovery of the lucid (in the luminous sense, and only because it was the adjective that came to mind. Perhaps his music makes the world glow. Probably...) Andrew Bird. The Tiny Desk Concert is my current background noise...my limited exposure to these wee snippets of music have been pleasurable and informative. And sometimes rather full of laughter (see Gogol Bordello's video*).

Just a thought. Since I'm not very good at discovering new music on my own, it's nice to have a source I can count on.

On a similar note, Take Away Show** has fun videos. It's just nice to see musicians that...well...don't need their voices edited to not sound like junk.***

One more thing (and related to getting well-produced singers into situations where you see their true mettle and hear their real voices. As of recently, I love this song. It's just so pretty. The first couple of days I listened to it, I listened to it over and over and over and over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZ3WlFPGME&feature=related


(The translation techniques course I'm taking must be getting to me...I never used to use footnotes so rampantly.)
*I can't seem to find the original npr posting...but this seems to be in three parts. Highlights include climbing onto desks. As well as just...everything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUzivmtbis8&playnext=1&list=PL619347578D62CD26
**Beirut!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc3ZAs17uAg
***http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

Poems, vegetation (reproduction).

Blackberries are fruit and phones and they are not black.

Blues.



If fairies showed themselves to me, they would, on this day, have been dressed in these flowers.


But why is the rum gone? Metaphorically speaking, of course. This is beer. More specifically, mine was. Hers is.

Gimmick. Sam Adams, your glass is not needed. I have too many. But your friends, the ones that told me about the design, the superior bubbly technology, were convincing. I am convinced. I will take it home.


Rain. I am behind these window blinds, shut in by the door, quiet. Interrupted. The force of these convocations of molecules, hurtling from some cloud that grew tired of the weight. When I open the door, it is true; rain. Heavy, violent, creating a wind of its own. I sit under the small roof overhang, protection--almost. A little spray, a little cold; trees dimly illuminated in their sway-dance, twisting above houses.


Pizza and conversation. Birthday. I owe my friend a present. From last year. It would be bad, but the wait has meant an even better present, an understanding of what will mean the most when she and her future husband are overseas, away from family, away from these rolling hills and pine trees. I purchase the petals; three canvases, bought from a family man with hair wrapped in a tower of religion. Devotion. She will like it; she has approved my idea, picked the scenes that resonate most, and I will paint in time for them to become hers, and later journey across the waters to Germany. Pizza. Conversation. Art and friendship.


Spring, its radiant excesses emerging from quiet metaphorical sleep in warming tangible soil. Flashes of yellow, white, pink, purple, blue, yellow. North Carolina confuses itself, not knowing whether to grey the skies to assist the contrast of vibrancy, or compliment the prosperity of life with fluff in the azure expanse, golden orb crowning where ageless cultures were in turn confused, sacrifices made to a day-star. Celebration of renewal, Persephone re-emerging from the deep, met by the colours of her joyous mother. Spring.

Church. All the candid pictures I love to capture of my friends, sometimes falling back upon my head when they take hold of my camera. A moment to see myself as others might.



Percy on the rug. A collision of pattern an color, living and motionless, neither of them stagnant, both of them sometimes questionably clean. Ancient Egyptian deity on top of inspired cliche turkish swirls.

Vortizontical

I was playing with an Etch A Sketch just now, and happened to glance down and notice, for the first time in my life, that the knobs are labeled "Vertical" and "Horizontal". Amazing. So much better than just picking it up and turning one to see what the cursor thing does.

Cursor? What is that thing called, anyway? Definitely not cursor. I'm pretty sure Etch A Sketches are a little more oldschool than computers. Or at least, more oldschool than computers with cursors. I can imagine them being invented around the time that computers filled entire rooms and did, like, basic math equations, or whatever they were good for. But I doubt that the cursor was invented yet. Crazy how much technology affects our understanding of things....

But.

Anyways.

The labels made me think about how I've never been able to remember which was which simply on their own. Which is vertical and which is horizontal, that is. And I don't mean the Etch A Sketch knobs; I mean the words themselves. Like, seriously; I've never been able to remember which was which. I always have to think of a short friend of mine who used to say "I'm vertically challenged." And then I remember. She's short, so vertical means up and down, and horizontal means the other way.

Seriously.



Every.

Single.

Time.

I don't know if it's just habit at this point. I might actually know the difference between horizontal and vertical. But I'm not really sure. Because whether or not it's a habit, I do, every time that I read/want to say horizontal and/or vertical, I think, "Vertically challenged people are short people...". And then I know, either which one to say, or which one I'm reading.

I guess I could also think about vertigo, and the fact that it occurs when people are upon heights. What would hortigo be? Fear of Kansas?

Aha. I crack myself up.