I'm sitting in a 28th floor bar in Seattle. This city is becoming more and more like the big sister I never had who keeps saying "I told you so." Atahualpa is trying to sing through my headphones, competing with the lounge music. so much changes and so much stays the same ( Read more... )

I guess I haven't written here for a while ( Read more... )

This morning I proofread Braille volume 6 of "Microsoft Office 2007, a professional approach," possibly the most boring book ever written. As I read, I listened to Woody Gothry, The Colombia River collection. Another picture of this area emerged in my head as he sang: the end of the Oregon trail where progress and ingenuity would converge to ( Read more... )

on Saturday, I went canoeing in the arboretum. It was a sacred experience to smell the smell of minerals in the water again, hear the way the sounds of traffic disappeared once we entered the arboretum, and to be a part of juji130's first canoeing experience. I only regret not bringing my guitar, or not taking more time to enjoy the surroundings and ( Read more... )

Last night I dreamed that I was walking across Mill Creek in Walla walla on a foot bridge. Suddenly the bridge ended over the middle of the creek . I stuck my cane out to try and find the next part of the bridge and I couldn't reach it. Then Fiona, Linda's housemate, came walking toward me from the other side and told me to be careful not to fall ( Read more... )

Mu-ZachTwo weeks ago, Paul, one of our band members, became suddenly and extremely morally opposed to a David Bazan song we were planning on playing the 28th. We picked the song as a consensus between agnosticism and Christianity, (both other members of our group are Christian and David Bazan and I are agnostic,) but the song deals with Christian ( Read more... )

Exactly a week ago today, I played Huaynos by a fire in the rain as people planted potatoes. I drank porter and ate amazing lamb stew, and climbed a hill with a woman named Margaret who described the scenery to me as looking like The Heath. "not Thomas hardy's heath," she was quick to point out, "but something more like the Brante Sisters' Heath ( Read more... )

I can feel the coplas, coming, like sheep leaving the corral as mentioned in the previously posted passage from martín Fierro, the poem whose first line has been the title of this journal since the beginning ( Read more... )

I have a classical lesson in less than an hour, and I haven't been practicing because of recording. should I fake that I've been practicing and play a scale/rhythm I've never played for her before ( Read more... )

324
a otros les brotan las coplas
como agua de manantial;
pues a mí me pasa igual;
aunque las mías nada valen,
de la boca se me salen
como ovejas de corral.

325
Que en puertiando la primera,
ya la siguen los demás,
y en montones las de atrás
contra los palos se estrellan,
y saltan y se atropellan
sin que se corten jamás.

--Martín Fierro, canto