six inescapable magnetic words resonate- imaging-

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six inescapable magnetic words resonate- imaging-

ashes and wine

been a bit ailleurs this week {ie somewhere else} was literally supposed to be in santa barbara visiting my sister... and then the jesusita fire started, and everything got...smokey, so to speak. so i didn't go to santa barbara and instead kept my eye on the fire, the evacuations, the devastatingly captivating images of the fire in the mountains and streets of a place i'd once known as home. beautiful and nostalgic images in my mind of my years spent in the gorgeous town of santa barbara were dominated, more than anything, by my constant concern for my sister's safety. and i twittered a lot. and i don't mean anxious chatter or jittery fidgeting {though restlessness abounded} but i mean literally twittered about the fire, read constant updates on twitter, and got way too much information for my overly active imagination that proceeded to run away from me.

anyway, during the worst night of the fire, sometime well after midnight as they were still evacuating people, i needed distraction but couldn't look away long enough to find one. and my dad, lost for any way to really help me calm down, said in a serious-bordering-on-exasperated tone "why don't you, just, write some poems or something." alas it's not easy for an engineer integrated circuit designer dad to have an overly creative, imaginative, emotional, sensitive {etc..} daughter, but he tried. and in fact, about a half an hour later i found myself absorbed in turning the verbose, redundant thoughts that were overwhelming my mind at a furious rate, into simple, sleek, perfectly shaped haiku poems.

if you haven't noticed, i've been a bit obsessed with haiku lately. it all started just with me attempting to find a fun form of poetry to work on with one of the girls i tutor {hi olivia ;)} and then i got kind of hooked.... because the challenge of streamlining my thoughts into seventeen syllables became fascinating, and rewarding. and helped to clarify, and speak louder than i'd anticipated, and set these thoughts to a new rhythm. then i worked on haiku with another one of my students {hi abby :)} and we were all hooked. at times the rhythm lulls me into..something...somewhere else...

and especially on this fiery night, it soothed my fears a bit. and took me away. i posted the haiku on twitter each time i wrote a new one, one after another, hoping that anyone else who was worried about the fire, might too, find some element {other than fire :)} of comfort in the brief words. and how gratifying to hear from readers that in fact, they did.

here are some of the poems i wrote during those tense days in the beginning of the jesusita fire in santa barbara, and a few of the spectacularly calamitous images of the fire. the flames were all along and above the 101 freeway, and my sister said that while driving on the freeway beside the fire, it was hard to look away {though dangerous, as she was driving} from the dramatic view.

and all along, the song ashes and wine by a fine frenzy has been playing in my head... {santa barbara is known for its vineyards} and in fact, funnily enough, it's playing on my sterio as i type this. 'don't know if our fate's already sealed. this day's a spinning circus on a wheel ... there is nothing left to say but is there a chance, a fragment of light at the end of the tunnel, a reason to fight? is there a chance you may change your mind? or are we ashes and wine. the day's still ashes and wine, or are we ashes..'

it's the not knowing
and knowing what you know won't
stop fire from burning

a sky so dark, thick
air, smoke hard to remember
yesterday's calm blues

we sit and wait, i'm
here on twitter while she's there,
watching fire and news

it's the little things
you want to hold on to when
it's time to let go





she sees fire light the
mountains, sky, smoke in her eyes
close mine, i see her





ash falls from the sky
gentle like snow nothing's as
it seemed anymore




you don't feel until
it touches you, don't see 'til
you look in their eyes



images via latimes and noozhawk

Songs of the past become present

Often, for me, music can document a certain moment in my life, take me to a place, rekindle a feeling, envelop me in a season or an entire period of my life.

I was sitting in my favorite café the other day (not the below-mentioned one on rue du Commerce, but my favorite family-owned café back here in California) and a Björk song was playing. When I came home I started playing all of my Björk songs over and over, and moments of my life that I hadn’t thought of for years came back to me in a matter of seconds.

Back seven years, to the student Foyer on blvd. St Michel, summer in Paris, sometime in my first two weeks after moving there, listening to Björk non-stop in our room, dark wooden furniture and a nice big window; past and present blur in the words of the songs that meant something to me in those days, and do, once again, slowly overwhelm and reminded me. Words that described for me the first step I’d take on the cobblestone streets of this new life. Speaking new words, feeling different passions, different fears, my heart beating to a foreign rhythm. She sings to me the preliminary touch of sentiment for the boy I’d never forget, a chance meeting at a corner café my second night in Paris that changed my life, (the very one who became my touchstone, my dwelling, for the next seven years of my life) the words speak to me now of fortune beyond currency and understanding beyond language, of possibility and fate, and of the pain that comes with loss and the steps (both forward and back) that follow, and the people who carried you through...and sang you another song, and helped you find your voice, to sing once more, as you never thought you would.

“It’s not up to you, oh it never really was...”

I hear myself struggling to get a sentence out in French, or to have a conversation on the phone, and worse, the bright turquoise Alcatel cell phone we all had, about the size of my shoe, and the vocab lessons we got from the voice on the mobicarte recharge recording, words I distinctly remember repeating after the voice over and over like disponible, valable and aucun, we’d actually try to repeat the phrases she said on the recording, “vous avez 70 F (soit 10,67 EURO) de crédit disponible.” I’d listen to Björk during métro rides to my classes, across the Seine, past the Eiffel Tower, sprinting for the RER B, and arriving inevitably late to class in the Foyer at St Michel. It’s a Paris that made me nostalgic for Paris, even the following 4 years I was still living there, because in these first few months, it was new, fresh, romantic, the Paris that opened my eyes and swept me away; it was only the beginning... and yes, a few Björk songs brought all of this back to me, and more.

“Unthinkable surprises, about to happen...but what they are...”

There was a definite Björk period in my life, started in senior year of university (University of California at Santa Barbara) I can literally see myself studying for finals with Amy listening over and over to a Björk CD on my Discman (remember those Discman things? I left mine in Paris with a boy who actually appreciated it for his long métro rides to boulot and foot...)

Yes the Björk period traveled with me into Paris, along with my friend Amy (or mon amie Amie as they understood her name in France), and we followed Björk all over Paris, trying to get into private, sold-out concerts, running to FNAC the day Vespertine came out, even though we already had a bootleg copy, just to have the European release, listening to it on my laptop while we studied (studying again, but this time in my chambre de bonne in Paris), standing in line with hundreds of others at the FNAC Champs Élysées very early on a cold morning to get two coveted tickets, and just minutes before approaching the ticket counter learning a new French vocab word...complet.

I did get a picture of the back of Björk walking up the stairs entering the small gothic chapel La Sainte-Chapelle for her intimate concert, and finally, on the day of her sold-out concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in the posh neighborhood of avenue Montaigne, we bought two tickets, au noir, for an obscene amount of francs (I still to this day, have not done the conversion) and later that night, had the most amazing view worth every centime, front-row balcony, close to the stage, perfection.

Björk songs carried me through the first six months of my new life in Paris, but were somehow lost en route to and from late night/early morning dancing and socializing and music on the radio, when watching the sun rise on the Champs Elysées became a common occurrence and not just the place where we’d waited in line one cold morning for Björk tickets.

“I wake up and the day feels, broken..I tilt my hat, I’m trying to get an angle”

As far as I’m concerned hearing songs from another time is almost as good as a photo album, in terms of bringing back images. But then again, as I sit here with my photo album now on my lap, I realize that in my mind, my outfits look slightly better than they really, as captured forever on film, did at the time.

“Coincidence makes sense, only with you...”

Yes, I hear the songs that meant something to me then, and somehow always will, that sang to me of a world I’d yet to know, and words I sing now, in the same language sounding distant, and familiar, that remind me of what is possible, and will with certainty, mean something different to me, once more, when I sing them again, tomorrow.

“If you leave it alone, it might just happen...anyway.”