Excused absence

Spring began this week, and with it, I hope, will come more than improving weather.

The winter that just ended was a blur, largely because of work, which meant little to no time or energy for blog posts. Things are, generally speaking, crazy at work. Several factors combine to make it so:

1) August through March is the busiest possible time in my job. That is the stretch that encompasses the college football and college basketball seasons. This year, we had two bowl games, one NCAA Tournament team, at least one major coaching transition and the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament in town.
2) The unprecedented changes currently unfolding in how people consume media.
3) The collapse of our economy.

The fact that all that coincides with Jasper's first six months of life and it's been all the more wild and wonderful, frustrating and fascinating, terrible and terrific -- all together, often back to back, in minute-to-minute spans.

On top of that, as a factor of Nos. 2 and 3, last week we got sizeable pay cuts, four furlough days and a capped pension. And while my job remains guaranteed (knock on wood), some of my good friends at work face the prospects of layoffs. And friends elsewhere are enduring much of the same.

It's all utterly exhausting.

Which is why the three-day weekend I'm on now is so very good. It's been so nice just to have time with Amy and Jasper. To simply go play in the park, like we did on Friday.

My 2008 playlist

This year's list didn't receive as much deliberation as last year's. Nonetheless, here are 15 songs I found myself listening to over and over this year (and as with last time, the songs weren't all released this year):

1. "The Wolves (Act I & 2)
Bon Iver; For Emma, Forever Ago
Dan and I caught them live at one of the few shows I made it to this year. This song has a sing-along that hooks me every time. It's better still in person.

2. "All the Wine"
The National, Alligator
How can you not love a song with lines like, "I'm a perfect piece of ass" and "I'm a festival" in the first verse?

3. "Fade"
Calexico, Hot Rail
Q and I finally caught this band (one of my favorites) live -- the night before Jasper was born. Although they didn't play this song that evening, it is the one I find myself returning to as I listen to their material. The jazzy undercurrent to it all entrances me.

4. "Golden"
Red House Painters, Old Ramon
Another one linked to Q, who introduced me to this band just in the past month. The whole album has a feel, to me, like another of my all-time favorites, Big Head Todd and the Monsters' Midnight Radio.

5. "Cath..."
Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
Just because.

6. "Random Rules"
Silver Jews, American Water
Had me from the opening line.

7. "Say It to Me Now"
Glen Hansard, Once (Music from the Motion Picture)
Loved the movie and the album, but this is the one song I can go back to time and time again without feeling too sugary sweet. A little yelling never hurts.

8. "Hasir"
Modeselektor, Hello Mom!
Found this in one of my Radiohead benders. Thom Yorke recommended the band in a podcast he participated in. Good for the gym, among other places.

9. "Your Hand in Mine"
Explosions in the Sky, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
Came across this -- and loved it -- this spring. Then a co-worker died and his children, who are about my age, had this as one of the songs playing as people filed into his funeral. Completely changed how I think about the song, but still a favorite.

10. "Hold On, Hold On"
Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Casey introduced me to Neko by saying something along these lines, "If God had a voice, she'd sound like this..."

11. "Come Pick Me Up"
Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
Hard to go wrong with this guy. Really need to get to one of his shows sometime.

12. "Go First"
Damien Jurado, Caught in the Trees
Another of Q's tips.

13. "Outfit"
Drive-By Truckers, Austin City Limits Music Festival (2003)
Reminds me of where I grew up. I liked it before Jasper's birth. I like it more now that he's here.

14. "Love and Some Verses"
Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
Makes me think of Amy.

15. "A Change is Gonna Come"
Sam Cooke, 30 Greatest Hits - Sam Cooke Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 (Remastered)
Thought about this song a lot in the run up to Election Day. Then the day this summer that about 75,000 people gathered in Portland to hear Obama speak (as documented by my colleague Bruce Ely below), I began to wonder if he and the future first lady might dance to it months later at the inaugural ball. I hope they will. Amy, Jasper and I will, I suspect, that night in our basement.



That's it from me. What'd you listen to this year?

The trip

We are back in Oklahoma for a much-needed vacation as well as a pre-holiday visit, spending the first part of the week with my parents in Norman and the second half of the week with Amy's parents in Edmond.

Good to bring Jasper back to see all his relatives (familial and otherwise, when it comes to my side) en masse. Good to see family ourselves. Weird, always, I think, to see how my hometown has changed for the better and the worse in the eight and a half years that I've been away. Weirder still to come back with our son to Norman, which makes me think of Bruce Springsteen's "My Hometown."

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around, this is your hometown

I had that conversation -- with myself, mostly -- oh, about nine years ago. I was getting out, one way or another. Not because of anything bad, but rather just because I knew there was more out there and I needed to go see some of it. Now, upon returning for a visit with Jasper, that's bittersweet in a way. This town was once mine, but it's not really anymore and it's not his, either, and I don't know if it ever will be.

Not that it should be, in my mind, though I know that drives a lot of people I love nuts. Whenever and wherever the time comes, 18 to 20 years from now, I hope Jasper goes out on his own to make his own way, to figure it out for himself, to make his own mistakes beyond the comfort of a safety net because I know how important that has been for me. I want him to know what's at his core -- Oklahoma, in some regards, yes, but the Northwest as well and who knows where else -- but to have the independence to stretch beyond whatever Amy and I have instilled in him and to make his own path wherever that will take him.

I think although I may communicate it a little differently than many, that's one of the goals for most any parent: To raise a child with all the love and support and tools they'll need to someday stand on their own. I know mine allowed me to do so -- even though my mother, in particular, hates it now. And I'm sure she's not alone in that.

Thing is, though, Oklahoma still feels -- to me -- too constricting. Right now, at least. Maybe that'll change someday. Today, however, I don't even know how I'd make a living here, how I'd feed my family. I drive around town and see storefront after storefront closed, in an oil-rich state that has thrived in eight years of an oil-driven administration. I see the hometown paper a shell of what it used to be, seemingly unable to adequately cover the big stories in its own backyard. I see the big local paper doing innovative things on some levels, things to be applauded and perhaps even emulated, but I also see it still lacking real depth and texture in its journalism. I see a hometown that, best I can figure, would hold one option for me -- a university job, if I could get one. A university job, no less, in a field in a state with a brain-drain problem. Regardless, though, at 31, I haven't been gone long enough, learned enough, experienced enough or simply had enough to settle for that.

I've caught up online recently with people I went to high school with, people who either stayed behind or already came back. Folks who -- and I don't say this critically because I'm certainly a creature of habit in my own ways -- are doing all the stuff we used to do 10 and 15 years ago. People who are coaching their kids in gyms they once played in themselves. People who are still invested in a football team to a wholly unhealthy degree. And I know it works for them, and I'm happy that it does, but it is not something I can imagine. It feels foreign to me, and part of that makes me sad -- not for me, but because I know others wish I felt differently.

Anyhow, I feel like on these trips I have to explain myself to some extent. So that was my attempt.

Now, for Karen in Stillwater (whose joy I've apprently been stealing due to my infrequent baby postings, my mom reports) and others wanting to see Jasper, here are some pictures of him with two of his aunts -- my sisters.


Jasper and Sarah.


Jasper and Chelsea.

A thought

I went on a cleaning spree while I was off the past couple of weeks. In sorting through one closet I found a bunch of cards Amy and I exchanged over the years. One - from back in college - had one of my favorite quotes on the back.

For all the knowledge that we will never succeed in the work of our lives, we must continue to choose to continue. For all the frustrations and fears that each of us has and will have in our short time, we must choose to pursue to the end of choosing the best we know for each other, and in that choosing, long and late, we will connect with each other.

-- A. Bartlett Giamatti

Seems fitting these days, in many ways at work and in politics, no?

ID theft

My favorite living author, Sherman Alexie, pops up again. An excerpt from a LA Weekly piece well worth reading in full, available here:

And then I turn the corner and see him, the Indian guy onstage. He’s taller than me. His skin is much darker. His black hair is twisted into perfect braids. I’m jealous. I mean, yes, I’m a handsome guy, but the man onstage is gorgeous. He looks far more Indian than I do. Everything about him screams Indian. I feel inadequate in his presence. How am I going to read my poems after he has already read my poems so well? But then he sees me. He stops performing.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks me. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Year-ender benders: 10 4 07

First, a disclaimer: These year-end music lists are wildly overdone. That very fact is what's kept me from ever doing one of these before, and what might keep me from ever doing one again. That said, it's been a very good music year for me, all around. I've seen more shows and been introduced to more new music than ever before and I've even played a little music myself - poorly but happily - on several occasions.

Basically, if you know me, you know I'm a big music fan. I'm not a music snob; not that there's anything wrong with those folks - some of them are my very good friends, and they're among the people who've introduced me to some of the best music I've come across. (Thanks, Quentin.)

So, with that said, here's my top 10 songs of 2007. I'm posting them now because I'm on vacation this week and I fully expect December to be chaotic. My twist on the traditional list: The first five are from bands I was lucky enough to see in person this year. The second five are ones I discovered, rediscovered or was introduced to otherwise this year. Clearly, they weren't all released in 2007. And they're listed in no particular order.

Whether you're a music snob, fan or novice, I hope you find something here to enjoy. It's been fun listening to all of it this year.

1. "West"
Lucinda Williams, West
June 10, Crystal Ballroom

We went to see her on the night of my 30th birthday. I don't think she played this one, but it's one of my bittersweet favorites from her latest release nonetheless. It includes these two verses, which are a fitting description of one of the driving forces - to me, at least - behind our migration here almost a decade ago now:

Come out west and see
The best that it could be
I know you won’t stay permanently
But come out west and see

Who knows what the future holds
Or where the cards may fall
But if you don’t come out west and see
You’ll never know at all

I think often of the sentiment behind those lines. In particular, it hits me each time we drive as far west as these roads go - which we don't do nearly often enough - and watch the sun sink into the Pacific.


2. "Impossible Germany"
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
Aug. 22, Edgefield
Previous post

This was one of the songs I most wanted to hear at what was my most anticipated concert of the year. And about an hour or so into the set - in a night full of great songs - the band delivered just as I'd hoped. My favorite lines remind me of our adventure out here, alone together, each rounding out the other:

This is what love is for
To be out of place
Gorgeous and alone
Face to face

With no larger problems
That need to be erased
Nothing more important than to know
Someone's listening
Now I know, you'll be listening

Great lyrics and my all-time favorite guitar duet, between Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline. Or as Paste Magazine put it: "(T)he two-and-a-half minutes of vocals are merely the set-up for the three-and-a-half-minute instrumental coda that delivers the emotional impact at which Tweedy’s words have already hinted. ... Their twin melodic lines diverge and converge again and again like lovers seeking both individuality and intimacy, a combination as elusive as 'an impossible Germany, an unlikely Japan.' "

Sappy? Yeah, but it's my list. Don't like it? Make your own.


3. "Your Ex-Lover is Dead"
Stars, Set Yourself on Fire
Nov. 15, Crystal Ballroom

Clearly, sappiness is out the window here - as is any illusion I'm too terribly plugged into the music scene. Although it was released more than three years ago, I hadn't heard the song until this year, and I hadn't seen this band from Montreal until this November. (Can't find an image of the concert poster from that night, so the cover of that particular album appears instead.)

Bottom line, though, is this is a great song for those odd - and here, thankfully, impossible - occasions of running into an ex:

God, that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said, "Yes, I think we've met before"
In that instant it started to pour,
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name...

Really, for much of the show, the band was too precious for my liking - with an almost "Breakfast Club"-like vibe full of '80s earnestness, complete with the members hurling flowers into the crowd. So that's what made it all the more delicious when the band delivers such jaded lyrics amid such sweeping, elegant, layered and almost orchestral music. And it was all topped off by what my friend Jann calls the "live-music experience moment" when Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan turned their mics to the crowd at the song's peak and hundreds of us all chanted along, joyfully:

Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...

For those of us lucky enough to have lived through those bad ex's and moved on to domestic bliss, those lines are all the sweeter.


4. "Road to Joy"
Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
May 2, Crystal Ballroom

I was tempted to pick "Cleanse Song" from this year's "Cassadaga," which I like very much, and which was all the trippier amid the all-white stage setup/band attire and psychedelic-like video backdrop that was running nonstop at this show.

But as I thought back through the shows I saw this year, the version of "Road to Joy" (2005) that Conor Oberst and his crew closed the May 2 show at the Crystal with was the single-best show-stopper I experienced. (Wilco's "Via Chicago" was my favorite live song of the year, but it was the second to last song they played that night.)

"Road" kicks off fast and only gets better, with Oberst coming ever-closer to losing it as he runs through versus like these:

So I'm drinkin', breathin', writin', singin'
Every day I'm on the clock
My mind races with all my longings
But can't keep up with what I got

And so I hope I don't sound too ungrateful
What history gave modern man
A telephone to talk to strangers
Machine guns and a camera lens

So when you're asked to fight a war that's over nothing
It's best to join the side thats gonna win
No one's sure how all of this got started
But we're gonna make 'em goddamn certain how it's gonna end
Oh yeah we will, oh yeah we will!

Then everyone pauses to catch their breath, some militant-like drums come in and then it leads to this:

Well I could have been a famous singer
If I had some one else's voice
But failures always sounded better
Let's fuck it up, boys; make some noise!

Then they did just that, all hell broke loose and the Crystal's floating floor was bouncing like I'd never felt it before as they ran through the song's final verse. My friend Quentin said as we were walking out that he was initially surprised to hear "Road" as a closing song, but I came away thinking it was just about the perfect rock 'n' roll finisher.


5. "Spitting Venom"
Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
March 15, Crystal Ballroom

Image from stop.down @ Flickr

Another great show-stopper, but this time it's from a show I - like many others - remember entirely too little of, unfortunately. Opens with these great lines:

We were spitting venom at most everyone we know
If the damned gave us a road map then we'd know just were to go

From that oh-so-happy opening, the song builds to a near frenzy before coming to an almost complete stop about halfway through. Then the band introduces some horns, then drums, then some Johnny Marr guitar, then Isaac Brock comes back in with these decidedly more optimistic vocals:

Cheer up, baby
It always wasn't quite so bad
For every venom then that came out
The antidote was had

And then - on that night - they pushed everyone the rest of the way into that full-on frenzy before walking off the stage and leaving us all to somehow make our ways home.


6. "Just Like a Woman"
Jeff Buckley, Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition)
Previous post

My favorite musician covers Bob Dylan. I bought this late on a Friday night in January as my qualms about the impending arrival about 30 began to set in. Was up reading about Buckley and his short 30-year life. Now, here in December, I see it has been covered by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Calexico in "I'm Not There," the new Dylan bio-pic. Out of all the versions - from the original on down - I've since heard, this is far and away my favorite.


7. "Crayon"
Caribou, Up in Flames

Sugary-sweet electronica by mathematician-turned-musician Dan Snaith of Ontario. His group has a new one out this year - "Andorra" - but this 2006 song was my introduction do the band, and it still makes me smile whenever I hear it.




8. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"
Radiohead, In Rainbows

My favorite band from college returns with its groundbreaking, screw-The-Man, pay-what-you-want epic album that's sure to be on many best-of lists for the ballsiness of that move alone. I loved "OK Computer" back in the late '90s, and while that one is unsurpassed in overall concept, I have to say I've been wearing this one out from Day One. Especially this track, and the one after it, "All I Need." The layers of sound, led by wave after wave after wave of guitar are almost enough to put you in a trance.




9. "Heretics"
Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha

This one's been stuck in my head since the day I got it as a free download for buying tickets to a now-canceled Decemberists concert. Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else hear a little Lou Reed in Mr. Bird's voice?



And this from a guy who was once associated with the Squirrel Nut Zippers, those swing-dancing, jazz hipsters of the late '90s fame.

10. "We Winter Wrens"
Dolorean, You Can't Win

This little Portland band - recommended by my friend Quentin a few months back - is my favorite find of the year. Their music is, as I wrote a recently, something I can listen to for hours. I'm no man of great faith in any traditional sense, and while their music is full of religious overtones it's still enthralling stuff, to me, at least. Classic lo-fi alt-country. The occasional Wilco-esque sounds don't hurt, of course.

I've been listening to song after song of theirs as I've put this listing together and their selection has been the toughest choice, hands down. They're just all good for the listening. It's a album to put on, hit play and walk away. If I had to pick favorites, I'd go with "We Winter Wrens," "Beachcomber Blues," "33-53.9°N / 118-38.8°W" and the title track - the only and prettiest song I know of to have simply one line and repeat it over and over. In doing so, though, it somehow shifts from a resigned acknowledgment of defeat to a beautiful acceptance of life's unending challenges. (Again, sappy. But it's my list.) All three of their albums, though, are well worthwhile and all too overlooked.

So, for good or bad, that's my list. All of these are available from your favored sources online. Check them out. And let me know what you liked this year.

Part 2 of the Alexie video posted earlier

Go Indians (finally, for once, it's appropriate)

Last week one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie, won the National Book Award for young people's literature for his most recent effort, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." If you haven't read it, check it out. Regardless of age or race, there's something universal to his autobiographical story that's both powerful and beautiful.

I had the chance to attend one of his readings a few months back when he came through the Portland area and spoke a few miles from my office. Funny guy, in print. Funnier guy, in person (see video below). He's kind of the new Kurt Vonnegut for me - someone who addresses life's tragedies head on, often with a healthy dose of humor, which is often the only way to survive, as Kurt wrote. But more valuable than that in my eyes, with this book he seems to have fully stepped into an exciting and important role that's been foisted upon him - like it or not - for some time now: Indian role model.

Alexie is Spokane/Coeur d'Alene. He grew up not too many hours from where we live now. I used to work with a Yakama woman who knew him back before he became, oh, just one of the best writers and most famous Indians alive today. He's pretty much the closest thing there is to an Indian rock star, as evidenced by the number of us who turned out that night in Beaverton to see him speak. I'd never seen so many rez plates and Leonard Peltier bumper stickers in seven-plus years in lily-white Oregon as I did that night. And that was before I walked in and saw a crowd full of proud Indian folks. It was like going home, in a way.

So there I sat, in the back row, listening to his reading and the Q&A that followed in which he talked about the "irony of indigenous immigration" one minute and how "even the evergreens are paler in Oregon" the next, just smiling and feeling like it was, somehow, an important moment. I realized as he spoke that I was watching something I never would've seen as a kid. The only real Indian role models I knew of - beyond immediate family - were the dead ones in history books, and those all have a certain, um, bent to them.

Part of me wanted to tell him about that afterward, although it would have only completed the the fanboy-meets-rockstar-and-geeks-out moment.

In the end, my friend Casey and I did get to talk with him afterward - after she totally caught him off guard by complimenting him on his sportscoat, which he swore to us came from T.J. Maxx, which got us all to talking about places to score cheap clothes (how Indian is that?) - and he told us a funny story. Turns out about the time he met his future wife, he was trying to ask out my former colleague. Or something like that. I don't remember all the details. Like I said, I was a little star-struck.

I mean, this guy is a famous Indian role model. And he's actually alive. And there I was shaking his hand and carrying on a conversation thinking, "He's only 11 years older than I am (what am I doing with my life?!) ... I know someone who knows him ... This guy was on national television last night, albeit on 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.' (Wait, why aren't Letterman or Leno or Charlie Rose inviting the Indian guy on? Oh, yeah. He's done at least some of their shows before, too.")

So with all that going through my head, no, I didn't go all fanboy. I did get his autograph, though, and as I walked away I said a big, open-ended "Thank you." It was for the moment, for the memory and for the book I'm someday going to make sure our kids treasure for not only what it says but what it means. And if I'm lucky, when that day comes, they'll roll their eyes at me because living Indian role models - much less meeting them - won't be any big deal at all. Not anymore.

"I'm only here for this moment"

Last week -- Tuesday, to be precise -- marked the 10th anniversary of Jeff Buckley's death.

If you know who he is then maybe you'll get some of this. If you don't, I'm sorry, and I hope you'll still read on and maybe, sometime, give him a listen.

If you're in the later category, here's a little something to get you started, from his website:

Jeff Buckley was born in California's Orange County in 1966 and died in a tragic drowning accident in Memphis on May 29, 1997. He had emerged in New York City's avant-garde club scene in the 1990's as one of the most remarkable musical artists of his generation, acclaimed by audiences, critics, and fellow musicians alike.

Before we begin, yes, I realize just about everything that could be said about the man has already been committed to print or pixel. You can read plenty of those - from more eloquent, more insightful, more informed folks - here. Some of the bloggers who have been writing this week were even fortunate enough to have seen him perform live. (Lucky bastards.) And NPR had some good stuff timed to the anniversary that's worth a listen here.

All that said, bear with me.

I'd planned to write about this earlier. Then life got away from me - it's doing that a lot lately - and I figured the moment had passed. I figured I had nothing to add to the discussion, and, I'm still not sure I do. But this afternoon over beers and babies in the Hovdes' backyard, they mentioned their short stint in Memphis back in the mid '90s. And just like that, Buckley was back in my mind.

Now, with that introduction out of the way, I have to say the brief bio doesn't really begin to do him justice. But it'll serve as our point of departure nonetheless. And, yes, I'll be the first to say I'm sure I'm romanticizing the guy. (But really, isn't that what happens to all dead rock stars?)

For a variety of reasons, I've thought a lot about the anniversary's approach the past few months and its recent arrival. Part of it's what his music means to me - how I found it, who was in my life at the time, where my life was headed, where I am now and how his songs have been a constant through it all. Part of it is the mystique of the man himself - that voice, the ethereal range of "Hallelujah", and that guitar, from those entrancing first notes of "Last Goodbye", undoubtedly. But part of it is also his passion and what would seem to be his pain. And, no doubt, part of it is his death, both for when (at age 30, which I'll begrudgingly turn one week from today) and how (a drowning, like my uncle) it came. But, most of all, I think, it is the spirit that seems to bleed out of what he created - one epic studio album released in his life, and a ton of live and unfinished studio material, released after his death.

For my money or downloading time, there's an unmatched energy in all Buckley's music to create, and in that act of creation to stretch until hitting that spot where all self-consciousness is lost and an innate gut instinct kicks in. It's in that flicker of time that Buckley (and each of us, in those rare moments in whatever may be the pursuits of our own lives) comes utterly unhinged and sweeps himself and everyone around him away in the ecstasy of the moment that is now.

It's just gorgeous and beautiful and, for me, the epitome of the transporting powers of music. Some of the notes that man pushed himself past all natural limits to hit still give me goosebumps even as I listen to it all again tonight for the millionth time. I burned up I-35 between Wichita and Norman in late summer 1999, damn near wearing out my copy of "Grace," windows down in an old Cougar sans A/C. The wind-whipped roar of the Plains was never any match for Buckley's howl and cry as "Last Goodbye" gave way to "Hallelujah," which in turn gave way "Eternal Life" as I fled the remains of one relationship, pulled back into town and quickly found myself falling into the one - the love with Amy - that would lead to our marriage.

To hear people who saw him live tell it, he'd often stop shows and restart songs because they didn't feel right. Because, in essence, although everyone else in the building might have thought he was spot on, he knew within himself that he wasn't quite in that place that he needed to reach to create the moment he wanted to share.

For those who've been lucky enough to have even one of those moments in our life, I think the simple hope for another one is one of the things that keeps us going. I remember as a kid I'd sometimes get so deeply into whatever I was doing that I would get this tingling feeling, this rippling buzz of energy that would just wash over me at those rare instances, those most graceful and fleeting of gifts life occasionally gives us.

It's rarer still, I think, to see one captured on film. That's why I keep this - from the liner notes of the appropriately named "Grace", Buckley's one studio album released while he was still alive - on my desk wherever I work.

I love that picture. His head is thrown back, his eyes are shut, he's bathed in the light, the rhythm guitar player on the far left is following his lead and the drummer on the right is poised for the next cue Buckley would deliver by the simple nod of his head. He's creating, he's guiding, he's magnetic. He's a force in and of himself. And, beneath it all, rests the image of a clock, ticking ever forward, toward whatever end may await us all, someday, somewhere, sometime, as a reminder to do it - whatever it may be for each of us - now.

Those moments seem harder to come by as I get older. But they're every bit as electric and heavenly, if you will, when they do present themselves. (Whoever created this, which I love, apparently sees a little otherworldliness in Buckley, too.)

All this from the man who wrote, as that NPR piece mentions, what might as well have been his own epitaph, from "So Real."

I couldn't awake from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under

But it's also the man who sang - as fittingly closes disc two of the posthumously released "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk" - "Satisfied Mind."

When my life is over and my time has run out,
my friends and my loved ones, I will leave there's no doubt.
But one thing's for certain, when it comes my time,
I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind.

May we all be so lucky.

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut

So it goes. Sadly, so it goes. He was my all-time favorite.

" 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "
- Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

Faith in travel

A year ago this week - La Semana Santa, or Holy Week, as it's known here - we were backpacking through Mexico. And a year ago last night - Good Friday - we stood mesmerized among the throngs lining Alcala Street in Oaxaca following the Procession of Silence.

Here's how it looked then:



Makes me wonder how it went last night, in the aftermath of all the unrest that city has seen in the past six months or so. How it looked passing this church, Santo Domingo, which was has been damaged since we were there.

Hope it was as special as last year. Hope some other lucky travelers stumbled into it unknowingly. Hope the pageantry and passion of the place are still creating such wonderful memories.

Why we travel

The New York Times has an appropriately headlined travel piece up, Under Morocco's Spell. The story is longish, but check out the audio slide show if you're just after the essence.

The story is based in the High Atlas mountains, which we crossed during our drive north from the Sahara into Marrakesh. Stunning doesn't begin to describe the vistas.

At the end of the slide show the reporter says:

"We live in complicated times and you read the paper and get a sense of a very dangerous and threatening world. And then you travel abroad and you meet people who defy all expectations and any over-simplifications that you might develop sitting at home by yourself in America."

Not to sound too preachy about it, but that's exactly the sentiment that sticks with me from our travels this year.

In April, we visited Oaxaca in the days before Easter, when it was rich with religious symbolism and pageantry. Shortly afterward, the city turned into a riot zone with protesters beginning a months-long occupation of the zocalo where we sat and ate fresh pastries and listened to the scratchy whisk-whisk of people using brooms made from twigs to sweep the promenade clean.

In September, we flew into Casablanca in the days before Ramadan. Three years earlier, Islamic extremists' suicide bombings had killed more than 40 people in that city. Terrorism-related arrests continued in the days and weeks before our trip. But despite some concerns people raised going in, the joy of why we travel - the beauty of defied expectations and unraveled over-simplifications, if you will - unfolded before us time after time in our two-week journey all over Morocco.

It was true in the High Atlas. It was true in the Rif. It was true in the Sahara and in the souks. The fear of the unknown, of assuming the worst of anything unfamiliar, is so prominent in this increasingly isolated post-9/11 world. But its fallacy was never more clear to me than when we sat on a rooftop in Fez at sunset, 14 Westerners utterly transfixed and silenced by the beauty of the call to prayer slowly starting, building volume, echoing around that ancient city and into our brains. The reverberations were powerful enough to shatter any preconceived notions of Islam.

So, for me at least, that's the why we travel: To shed some of that baggage we allow ourselves to be burdened with at home. Without fail, we come back lighter for the experience.