Michael Ondaatje - The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler

I would ride your bed

and leave the yellow bark dust

on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek

you could never walk through markets

without the profession of my fingers

floating over you. The blind would

stumble certain of whom they approached

though you might bathe

under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh

at this smooth pasture

neighbour to your hair

or the crease

that cuts your back. This ankle.

You will be known among strangers

as the cinammon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you

before marriage

never touch you

- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

I burried my hands

in saffron, disguised them

over smoking tar,

helped the honey gatherers...

*

When we swam once

I touched you in water

and our bodies remained free,

you could hold me and be blind of smell.

You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women

the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.

And you searched your arms

for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it

to be the lime burner's daughter

left with no trace

as if not spoken to in the act of love

as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched

your belly to my hands

in the dry air and said

I am the cinnamon

peeler's wife. Smell me.

good jazz

you feel in your feet - you need to move, to tap, even though bebop isn't particularly danceable; but it possesses an energy of the body.

Great jazz you feel in your hands because it washes down from the top of your head to fill your entire body; it fills you. That's the feeling I get when I hear Sonny Rollins's The Bridge, which you'll know that I've been listening heavily to this week.

The assuredness that characterises the playing on this album is hard to pin down but takes particular forms. Sonny's solos here are the mature culmination of his thematic explorations earlier on in his career, but they seem different in a way - compared to 1957's Night at the Village Vanguard or even Saxophone Colossus he plays less notes, more blues, and is unafraid of medium tempos and ballads. You could almost say this album is mellower in many ways than prior speed-fests, but that's a useless distinction. His gravitation toward the 'normal' or the 'mainstream' is not a mellowing-out of style but a movement downward toward the content of the music.

For example, the motivic solo that opens the album on 'Without a Song' is a paragon of grace. Of course to talk about the programmatic content of any jazz solo is complete garbage, but, as a way of understanding it, I could describe what he plays here as the return to self. Bird's freewheeling, catastrophic solos are slyly symbolic of the kamikaze consciousness of the 40s and 50s and concomitantly the terror and the exhilaration of life in the big city; it starts from a point then changes so rapidly as to become ecstatically mutilated. Sonny's solo is, on the other hand, a cry of understanding and acceptance, and a return to self. I enjoy listening to it for a different reason from Bird. Bird was crazy: Sonny Rollins is wise. There is a pleasure and a kind of hope in hearing that he had arrived at that place even in this place.

Psychological speculation aside, this is also music possessed of excellent technical mastery. The motif in the tenor solo is a simple repetition of the tonic note surrounded by the major pentatonic on the tonic (say that ten times). Sonny starts with pretty much just that, and then takes the line through the changes for awhile, but always with an incredibly detailed ear for when the line passes back through the tonic note. Every time he plays the Eb, even if it's buried in the midst of a line flying through the changes, it pops out at the listener and grounds even his wildest improvisations with the colour of the motif. I'm pretty sure that that particular musical awareness of the motif is part of the perception of assuredness that I get from this. It feels strong and stable.

I'd go on, but as it is I'm not being paid to come up with this shit. The rest of the album is more of the same; that is to say, powerful stuff. Hits : 'John S.' 'God Bless the Child' 'The Bridge' but everything's gravy, really. Highly recommended.

Bridges

I am assured by the gurus of social media that blogging at an irregular pace will cause me to lose all of my readers. That seems to contain some truth, but I dislike the notion that my readers will lose their erections if not repeatedly stroked at regular intervals. I'll blog whenever I damn well feel like. That said, please don't leave me. I'm all alone here.

I spent the last few weeks catching up with the developments in music of all sorts and trying to put my life back together. So: in that vein: Gogol Bordello. After the guy out on the street who shouted after a taxi cab 'What are you, fucking retahded?' they were probably the best thing that happened to me in Boston. I only wish I'd been down in the mosh pit instead of slowly developing a neckache from headbanging while turning my head to the right to try and follow Eugene Hutz's ridiculous stage antics. They are an an explosive band that has made their brand of gypsy punk-polka into a great party and an even greater philosophical triumph. Ask me again sometime how that happens - I'll figure it out eventually. I think that dancing like a fool is only enjoyable with the subtle realisation that it could be necessary for the health of the soul. Otherwise it's pointless and embarrassing. Or maybe I just don't know how to party. Anyway, Gogol Bordello tickled me well and good and at the end of the night I had a neckache, which is always a good indicator of fun being had. Those crazy immigrants.

On a different beat, I hit up Sonny Rollins and two albums from opposite sides of the Williamsburg Bridge - 'Saxophone Colossus' and the expertly named 'The Bridge'. Sometime in the middle of his career he stopped performing altogether and was often seen practicing alone on the Williamsburg bridge, the crazy hairy man. One expects strange things to have happened to his music after that hiatus - so it was confounding to most critics when 'The Bridge' came out and it seemed to sound pretty much like what he'd been doing all along, which is just gravy as far as I'm concerned because he's Sonny Rollins.

But anyway, what happened? He did swap out his pianist for guitarist Jim Hall, who as an accompanist is far stranger than anybody save Monk could have been - listen to the A sections of the title-track rhythm changes. The electric guitar changes up the soundscape, too. The pounding, effervescent swing of his earlier records is still there, but no more the grounding presence of a piano. Guitars play less notes at once, and with less range in terms of pitch, and Jim Hall as a particular guitarist is also very fond of counterpoint rather than continuo-style block chords. The result is an emptier, freer sounding record where the interplay between Hall's deadpan counterpoint and Rollin's bubbling energy often becomes delightful. I was a little depressed with the ballads, to be honest, where they both seem to become trapped in idioms that signify more than they deliver in terms of musical interest. I rarely like jazz ballads anyway, unless Coltrane's playing them. But those uptempo numbers! I couldn't tell you what he found up there on the Williamsburg bridge, but it must have been some kind of awesome.

In contrast to that album is the earlier Saxophone Colossus - a fairly universally well-regarded one. The piano's there, so the swing is a little more focused and hard-rocking. Which is not to say normal, Sonny's anything but, but he's a genius in a slightly more (to our accustomed ears) expected way. The calypso opener St. Thomas, now a well-deserved standard, set the precedent for his later calypso albums, in which he all but plays the same tune with a series of different titles (Don't Stop the Carnival, for example, with who I think is Bobby Broom on guitar). Me, I don't care. The careless happiness of the calypso underneath the colorful urgency of the saxophone is a winning move. And, as if to point out that they haven't gone completely native, he turns up the swing for a second solo.

For an interesting comparison, you might look up his later recordings of St. Thomas with Jim Hall, or Jim Hall's solo versions of that tune.

In America you get food to eat

won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet

you just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day

it's great to be an American

Ain't no lion or tiger, ain't no mamba snake

just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake

everybody is as happy as a man can be

climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me

sail away

sail away

we will cross the mighty ocean into charleston bay

sail away

sail away

we will cross the mighty ocean into charleston bay

in America every man is free

to take care of his home and his family

you'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree

you're all gonna be an American

sail away

sail away

we will cross the mighty ocean into charleston bay

sail away

sail away

we will cross the mighty ocean into charleston bay

- randy newman

1988, the Pixies

Frank Black (or is it Black Francis in this year? I think it's Black Francis) is sweating. So is Kim Deal, who is the most beautiful person ever to grace the electric bass with her presence. She radiates a smile at the audience as she begins to play. 'And this I know...' the smile vanishes. She giggles out the bridge, tightropewalking between exuberance and incoherence. She's wearing a huge raggedy grey smock and black francis has a dark collar of soaked shirt and they're both nodding and singing and spit is flying everwhere.

Freeze the action for a sec -

we are at a juncture in history where lovering and santiago and francis and deal weave wide streams of logic around the heads of bewildered college students. They never coalesce. They are playing four different songs. And kim deal is almost crying with the labor of the moment - she is all lips and teeth and the relentless charging of six bass notes with centuries of womanhood

nodding and singing and spit is flying everwhere, and Lovering and Santiago are suddenly there as well, and it is transfigurative. Rock and roll shining on stage, emanating from the unwashed and sweat-soaked underwear.

HOW TO BE HAPPY

Lie.

adam constructs an elaborate rationalisation of his constant inebriation

There is a reason for the College Experience. For College Experience, read : excessive drinking, smoking, recreational drug use and free sex (or at any rate, frequent pre-marital copulation. It most certainly is not free). The reason has something to do with generations of stratified pre-conceptions aided and abetted by movies like American Pie and Eurotrip and Harold and Kumar. But really - the marketing basilisk bites its own tail. These movies wouldn't have been able to sell their brand of ridiculous college-hijinks schtick if there weren't an audience that was (if not actively participating in it) appreciative of such a lifestyle.

Part of it is the experience of being away from home. That's what happens in college, usually - in NYU, anyway, most small towns in America are less well represented than a tiny country like Singapore (kudos to Terence for pointing this out), and aside from the odd Brooklyn/Queens/Bronx and the even odder Manhattan native, almost everybody from NYU is hours if not days away from home. The concomitant relaxation of restrictions undoubtedly fuels the drugs-and-free-sex ethos that permeates the residential halls.

I would like to believe however that pointless rebellion only constitutes part of our lifestyle. Part of it is also the experience of becoming an adult in an increasingly bewildering world. Part of it is the slow realisation that the ideals of our childhood cannot apply to the Real World, or better yet, must be paid for in the things we hold most dear. Perhaps the drugs and the drink are our way of cushioning our way into the stupor of adulthood. Pete Townshend was right - I never want to grow up, if growing up means getting comfortable, if growing up means losing my rage (what use is your virtue otherwise, Nietzsche says - I agree), if growing up means settling down and becoming part of the Civil Society I loathe. It is more of a conflict than teenage hormones and piercings and leather jackets imply. It is the fundamental disease of youth without which progress is impossible. Ray Bradbury wrote that all 17 year olds are all fundamentally insane. I am 18. I wasted two and a half years in the army becoming angrier but not older, more efficient but not more mature, wiser but not more self-assured.

The drink and the drugs are cushioning against the horrors of adulthood. They are also a vindication of youth. Adults are afraid of alcohol and of marijuana and LSD because they have conditioned themselves against reality. But I want to be high not because it makes me passive and comfortable; I want to be high because it makes me more truthful. The adults are comfortable and any touch of the truth rankles. I say for this generation that we are not afraid of the truth. That is our war cry. We are not afraid of experiences and of conflict and of violence because they are the path to a better world, and we have dreamed of a better world. We are now bringing this dream to war with reality, with the aid of some drugs and some drinks but mostly with the aid of the untainted innocence that is our birthright.

I say : let us embrace the conflict. Let us embrace the violence. We are warring against corporations. We are warring against liars. We are warring against the appropriation of pleasure for reasons outside the self. We are warring against God. Let there be rage and let there be violence - change and goodness know no other name.

music is an affirmation of consciousness

Music is an affirmation of consciousness. Its structures belie a primary joy: the joy of existing and perceiving. The act of music-making is the fundamental act of triumph over existential angst.

The improviser chases the sacred. Scales and rhythms and pitches and sounds are our tools; by the exercise of what is inherently sacred (mind) we seek to elevate the physical.

The act of performing is an affirmation of love. Music itself expresses consciousness and joy; performance expresses the desire for communion with other consciousnesses. The appreciation of music by an audience is the moment of communion with the performer, where his subjectivity transcends its logical status as an unprovable hypothesis into an experiential reality. This is love. Hence performance seeks the same status as love, in a primary acknowledgement that both performer and audience exist in joy and consciousness.

2011

It has been a great year. Coming to New York has been the best thing that has ever happened. Yet I've been sad and lonely and broken more times than I can count this year, and happy and full of life even more than that. I guess I'm thankful that I'm still breathing - we all should be.

This year has been a year of learning. I've learned that it's more important to be a good person than to be smart or clever or funny - not that those things aren't important. But they are secondary. The only thing we have in this short existence is the presence of other people to help us on our little way. It is the mystery of our lives, a nonsensical proposition we accept in order not to feel so alone - and we are accepted in order for others not to feel so alone. We have no reason to believe that anybody else exists, but the assumption is necessary - it defies logic. Yet it is not merely comforting but necessary.

I am glad for the presence of other people in my small, dark and terrifying world. It makes the nights bearable and the days joyful. My dad was right - and Zarathustra was right - you can live on the mountaintop as long as you want, but out of love you must descend into the valley to share and be shared. I miss my old friends and I cherish my new ones. I accept them unreservedly.

Every new year is bittersweet - I treasure the accumulation of the detritus of thought, of work, of love and friendships, and yet I know that I am one year closer to not existing anymore. At this age I rail against the thought. I am too much in love. But barring any bus accidents, it will get easier. Death is a slow process, and I hope by then to have accumulated the presence of the people I treasure the most to make my passing pleasant.

For 2010 I give thanks for the presence of people. For 2011 I resolve to be peaceful, to give thanks for kindness, and to be kind.

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Despite Pete Townshend's famously-reneged-on promise, rockers get old - usually with informative, if not interesting results. The increasingly inappropriately-named Sonic Youth's latest album The Eternal is a thudding collage of times and places that paints us a compelling picture of a group of aging hipsters who've internalised tragedy for no loss of rage.

What struck me about the sound of this album, with respect to the few before that, is how much more stable this sounds. It's not that they've lost their penchant for the two-guitar-noisebox-freakout (they haven't) - but where these were inchoate screeches of rage on Daydream Nation, lovestruck soundscapes on NYC Ghosts, and structural punctuation on Rather Ripped, here they are the self-assured sonic statements of a bunch of musicians past their age but not past their time. It's as if Thurston and Lee's wild noise generations have ceased to become acts of rebellion but instead have become a fully-fledged language that the whole band speaks with the ease and looseness of long-time native speakers. Where a younger Sonic Youth might have delved into more extravagant textural fuckery, this older and wiser band seems content at times to sit back, make noises, and revel quietly in the chaos.

The effect of this is perhaps more in keeping with the general feeling of the album - less personal than Rather Ripped, less political than Daydream, more focused and more song-y than NYC. In many ways it is a retrospective - 'It's been quite a ride/with you my sweet, here by my side' Thurston sings on 'What We Know'. And the creepy Kim Gordon tour-de-force that is 'Massage the History' is a powerful lament of past grief. It's no surprise that they're looking back somewhat - Kim and Thurston are what, 50? and no serious philosophy would refuse to look back and make sense of a past that must have been wilder than anything I can imagine.

Lyrically, Sonic Youth have always been dodgy - the half-written jive-verse served to signify a rebellion against the very foundations of language at its best ('Teenage Riot') and a somewhat misplaced grandeur at its worst ('Rats' - also, 'werewolf commando poison tongue?' Really, Thurston?). Here they've perhaps given up on the idea of ever writing traditionally good lyrics. Instead, they've written several highly functional songs that eschew irony purposefully. It's refreshing in some ways that they've given up posturing, and where the lyrics grate they at least make you think about what they mean, and they never mean nothing (I wish I could be/music on a tree). It could be the fan in me being charitable, but of all the strange barely-coherent inhabitants of the alternative universe, I find that these guys are probably part of the few who've transcended the need for songform and parse-able lyrics. They're still pretty terrible at it sometimes. At its best though, the lyrics hint darkly at meaning the way the music hints at structure and beauty, and never fail to bubble up from the texture at the right moments.

And that's important because primarily the Youth are a music band rather than a lyrics band, and the lyrics are fundamentally un-divorceable from the music, unlike say Paul Simon. I for one am glad that they've decided to stick to song form after the brilliant-but-almost-horrible sprawl of NYC Ghosts. As in all of their work, the actual music is the (very) necessary counterpoint to their lyrics. Now that they seem to be content with what lyrics they can muster, they can relax and let the music carry the lyrics to wherever the hell they want it to with the assuredness of master inventors. When Kim Gordon whispers grief in 'Massage the History', Thurston's wide-eyed guitar reveals a persona not broken by grief but coming out of grief looking at the world with new hope and old anger. That's a hell of an achievement for anybody, never mind a 50-year old rocker who's led the charge himself on several occasions.

I'm sure Pete Townshend is sorry that he wanted to die before he got old. Now nobody will let him live it down. He should also be sorry for missing the best thing that could happen to a rock and roller - growing old, facing down your demons and shouting your triumph and your grief to the sky. That will be the legacy of our generation, and that's what Sonic Youth have done here. Kim Gordon sums it up herself at the end of 'Massage the History' - 'Come with me to the other side/Not everyone makes it out alive'.

xmas 2010

It annoys me that I should have to talk about my feelings up here where I have made the altar of reason. But I suppose I disposed with the sacrosanct along with the sacred... so what the hell.

This year has been the best and the worst at the same time, the highest and the lowest of conditions. Just 11 months back I was still 3rd Sergeant Adam, waiting for my release into the civilian world. And then it was a storm of music and friends and preparations and saying goodbyes. And then it was a storm of newness, and those were days of ecstatic freedom and then it ended.

Now it's christmastime and I'm carrying a grief heavier than my heart. It is in part a grief for the past and the familiar that I have left behind and the unfamiliar that is in my lungs and forces a new death with every passing day. But it is mostly a grief for the futures that will never happen. These days are the fulcra about which the rest of our lives revolve. Every lost opportunity is met with its echo - a wave of grief propagating ceaselessly into the future. I grieve for one particular future that is lost, in which I prophesied happiness that is now lost to me.

There are other things: the bittersweet feeling of letting the old year die and welcoming the new one. There are songs and fireplaces, and family and the sounds of children. There are the voices of old friends and the faces of the new. All of these things are the messengers of happiness. I am grateful for them, but I still grieve, and when it passes it will not be a restoration to life but the first step in preparation for death. In the meantime, I mean to live, and that may require tears.

I'm a long long way from home

and I miss my lover so

In the early morning run

when the cold wind blows

when the cold wind blows

- Singapore army song

I did not anticipate being this far away. I did not anticipate being this alone.

On Rage

There is much cause for anger for an atheist. Everyday I am confronted with new evidence of the unbelievable stupidity and ignorance (not to say violence) that religion causes. People around the world are suffering from the effects of religion, not just because religion is misappropriated by Bad People, which it is, but because religion and its texts are engines of extremism, in the words of Sam Harris. No religion that professes a text that supports slavery and capital punishment to be the Word of God will ever be free of extremism. It is not Bad People that are solely to blame: religion is inherently to blame.

The causes for rage are many - not always a personal rage, I must admit. These are things that are to some degree removed from my personal experiences. But isn't the idea of sociopolitical and humanistic awareness basically the expansion of one's own experience to include the happenings of wider society? The concern (and indignance) is valid, I feel.

Yet there is, from another point of view, little cause for rage for one such as myself. I have religious friends who are as much human beings as anybody I know. The ideological hatefulness of religion shouldn't negate my mostly-positive personal experience of religious people and religion in general.

What I'm saying I guess is that as an atheist I should be on my guard against the sort of dogmatic hate-mongering that is the mark of extremism. Which is not to say that I should not be highly outraged whenever a human being's dignity is compromised over some laughable point of theology. However, the quality of outrage is not personal, if it doesn't happen to me. It is a specific outrage directed at injustice, not a spiteful and personal vengeance. It is too easy to be monolithic about morality and blindly apply narratives across the spectrum of my experiences.

I think that the acceptance of reason as a guide to living necessitates accepting the plurality of experience. No One Thing is true - if it is we are incapable of understanding. This might mean that I find religion reprehensible on one hand and deeply love my religious friends on the other. It doesn't make much sense, but at times the reality of feelings and experience don't make sense. It is only human to make the best we can of it.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

Leo Igwe at the 2nd Annual Conference for the Free Society Institute of South Africa

'To the question that brought us here today – is a secular viewpoint our best guide to moral clarity? – my answer is yes. The secular, not religious, outlook provides us a reliable framework for the expression and realization of moral excellence. The secular viewpoint is based on evidence, reason, science, common sense and human beneficence. The secular outlook is open to revision and improvement. Secular morality is a morality for this world and of this world, not for the next; it is a morality for our happiness and well being in the here and now, not in the hereafter. It is a morality for this temporary life not for an eternal afterlife in an imaginary paradise. Secular morality is a morality by us, from us and for us, not a moral decree of God from God and for us ‘wretched’ humans. Secular morality is informed by the quest to be good and to do good for goodness’ sake, not the quest to be good and to do good for God’s sake or for heaven’s sake or to avoid going to Hell.'

There is nothing more to life than chasing down every temporary high

For a unbeliever,

life is a rush from peak to peak

backpacking up the steps and slopes

then a wild toboggan ride through the valleys and up some ways

I beg you not to think that that's so sad

as you daughters of the faith are wont to do

one climbs and falls

(one climbs, at any rate)

and, ascending to each peak one isn't concerned with

breathlessness and aching legs

but the sun reflecting off the lakes and the trees.

it will pass, as you say.

after the last ascent I will ride alone into the valley of death,

that cold and windy place -

but There is nothing more to life than chasing down every temporary high,

I am happy to say.

I get stronger with each ascent,

and looking out from the hilltops I know that the sun is rising

and say to myself 'It is good.'

for abigail

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America

Gloria Gloria Gloria

Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith and the Doors tackle what could be the greatest rock and roll song ever written - Them's 'Gloria'. I feel like I need to write this to figure out for myself what makes each of these so wonderful, because things like these sure aren't happening anymore.

So, the first thing that I should point out is that the songs are about sex. Not in an excited, teenage way at all. These are songs that elevate sex and place it at its rightful place near the centre of human existence. These songs aren't about sex so much as they cause a Copernican re-centering of the human experience around the sexual act. In this new existence. , love, anger and sadness are merely functions of something far more fundamental.

This is all highfalutin talk though. The specific manifestations of this spirit are far more interesting and (from a musical standpoint) far more analysable.

For example, Patti Smith and Jim Morrison of the Doors are both primarily vocal artists : their expression of the sacred sexuality becomes vocal intensity. When Jim screams 'Make me feel alright!' it is a moment of release. His voice suggests drunken rage; his lyric improvisations suggest the worst(best?) forms of crudity. Its justification is intensity and power - and the comparative sedateness of the rest of the Doors allows him to lapse into refractory periods that build into orgasm again and again.

Patti's vocal style is another thing altogether, partly because she's a woman, and partly because her femininity gives her a different perspective on the whole issue of sex. This is not to deny Patti credit for her own brand of wonderful violence, but that violence is refracted through a kind of poetry. Patti's version is much more symbolic - 'I heard those bells ringing in my heart' - 'i wanna tell the world that I made her mine, made her mine, made her mine' etc. Patti's message brings evangelism and religion into the sexual universe.

Give Thanks

1. A man sat across me on the crowded train out of the city, carrying a bouquet of roses. The two college girls sitting with us were eyeing it. 'It's for my wife. We've been married for 25 years.' 'Oh,' I said, 'That's wonderful.' 'It's a long time. Too long. I told her that.' 'Is that why you bought the flowers?' 'Nah. I got them... just cause. We're past all that apologising and stuff.'

2. 'You know, I swear I'm gonna end up playing funk banjo or something. I'll be playing in the park and someone will come up and be all 'You know any Seeger?' and I'll be like 'I don't, but I know Tower of Power'. 'You high? I asked. 'I'm pretty high' said Dylan.

3. Kim came into the room with a bag of M&Ms. Normally she'd buy me a bag for every week I quit smoking, but I'd fallen off the bandwagon recently. 'What's this for? I've been smoking, Kim.' 'I felt bad not bringing you anything.' 'Um, okay. Tell you what, I'll only eat them after I've quit again.' I ate them anyway, feeling a little guilty.

4. '...and in every generation of musicians, there's somebody who's the Ramblin' Man. He does a deal with the devil in exchange for being really good at music. And he always sings the blues. It was B.B for awhile. Then Dylan. and then Hendrix. Are we forgetting anybody?'
'You missed Robert Johnson.'
'Jim Morrison'
'Cobain, man. He was a saint.'
'What about now, who's it now? I think it's gotta be a rapper.'
'Mos Def. Definitely Mos Def.'

5. It's alright, it's alright - you can't be forever blessed. Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day, and I'm trying to get some rest.

6.oh dear. sato's whining
aw
i go check on him okay
one sec
idk what's wrong with him?
could it be the rash?
i don't think so
he wldn't whine
he'd just scratch
could be something internal
he's a afraid of smthing
maybe he has a stomachache
its not a whine that's sick
its an anxious whine
oh
dunno then :(
and he keeps pacing
idk
i gave him a blanket
to cover with
so he'd feel safer.
:)
well you can't talk to him so there isn't much you can do
i did talk to him
but he's not really listening
do you want to go down to be with him for awhile?

7. Don’t know a soul that’s not been battered,
don’t have a friend who feels at ease
Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered,
or driven to its knees

8. And now, Let the weak say "I am strong"
Let the poor say "I am rich"
Because of what the Lord has done for us,

Give thanks

9. her lymph node test results are out. all 27 are negative from any signs of the cancer spreading!

10. ‘You know, it’s my first thanksgiving.’
‘Is that so? Prepare to get fat, then’
‘Turkey coma. Watch out.’