Filed under: Books, Home, Posts by John | Tags: Books, Dave, Libby, Portland
Portland, OR :: It’s hard to believe that in just eight days the slug-line for these posts won’t say “Portland, OR.” While we will spend the month of October in Salem, just 45 minutes south of Portland and no further from the Pacific Ocean; and while the bulk of the OTNR project won’t begin until November when we travel down to California (I want the project to end in Oregon, rather than start there) – I am already homesick. I pretend that when we get back next fall we will just jump right back into life, but it can’t be that way. We’ll be strangers in our own city, at least for a while.
The more practical matter at hand is packing. I’m so busy with grants and my writing projects that Kate gave me just one responsibility – to pack my books – and a firm deadline: the end of August. Into the third week of September and my books are only half-packed. The issue is that I have been hand-entering the ISBN of every one of my estimated 1,000 books into a program called Bookpedia on my computer. “Very monk-like,” Dave says. And it’s true. I told the story in an earlier post about the monk who sold his copy of the Gospels and gave the money to the poor. Books may be my final test of salvation. I think they are an anchor for me, but they may also be dead weight. I have 200 books set aside to bring with me on this trip. Libby jokes that we will need to buy a second trailer just to carry them all.
Filed under: This Week in Listening, This Week in Watching | Tags: Dancing, Flight of the Conchords, Kate, Libby, Molly, YouTube
Sitting in Starbucks this morning I watched a man outside the window briefly dance his heart out with the little one year-old boy he was babysitting. It was dazzling: he was black and spoke with an accent I couldn’t place; the little boy was wide-eyed and red-headed. They stomped their feet and threw up their hands and laughed and had great fun, and all as cars whizzed by on NE Glisan and nosey coffee patrons started writing blog posts in their heads.
Libby posted a couple great dance videos on her blog yesterday, both set to “Lisztomania” by Phoenix. The first video, which you can watch below, is a Brat Pack mash-up. The second, which you can watch here, is an updated version by a group of friends calling themselves the Brooklyn Brat Pack.
And I suppose this post is as good an excuse as any to post a video of my favorite scene from “Flight of the Conchords.”
Now, dancing around the living room with Molly is one of the great joys of my life. She’s going through a pop phase. Her favorite song right now is “Lost+” (featuring Jay-Z) from the Coldplay EP “Prospekt’s March.” Her favorite line is from Jay-Z’s third verse:
So it’s tough being Bobby Brown
To be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now
And the question is, is to have had and lost,
Better than not having at all?
Time was I could cut quite the rug. But I don’t dance in public anymore. The picture at the top of the post is from my trip to Malawi last year. At a party a couple weeks ago some of my friends tripped the light fantastic. Kate was in there mixing it up too – the party was for her. I stayed on the margins smoking the rare cigarette and watching with amusement.
Watching these videos, and then seeing the man and kid dance this morning outside my window, it occurred to me that I need one good dance party like a thirsty man needs water. My style of dancing involves some of this and some of this and a lot of this. Next time the conditions are right – that is to say, next time I am around friends who tolerate (or even encourage) this kind of foolishness – I hope I go for it.
