Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum

I'm making a Nick Cave mix for my husband, burning Sri Sai Flora & Nag Champa, sour and sweet - having drunk sake & absinthe and on my walk home observed many of my ordinarily perfunctory actions and made a point to commit them to conscious memory - observing the people and the environment surrounding me, thinking about how I walk and carry myself, thinking on the perhaps lucky fact that I have lived in this city for 24 years, Paris and Chicago for two, walked at early anti meridian hours through some of the most abject and desperate neighborhoods and have never once been assaulted. Thought about what I might say to other young women unfamiliar with life in a major city. I thought much about so many projects I wish to pursue, things I want to create and leave in the world. It feels so good right now, here, to be here, with our blue icicle lights and candles and dessert wine glasses and beautiful home. I am so grateful for it. I know so many many people will be sleeping on the streets tonight, and the next night, and the night after that. Some people will die there.

Beauty and haunting influenced my mind as I walked, particularly by the Hariku Murakami book I am reading now (gift from my husband), taking me to Alice In Wonderland-like places. I saw walls where one can tell there was once a door. I adore them; they mystify me. They make me yearn for other worlds they would lead me to, the worlds my child-self know are there.

Each of these songs makes me cry and die inside sweetly just a little bit. The darkest tears buried most deeply, the most real. That is what this music does to me. Tugs at the very core of me, because it is so unpretentiously honest, and evokes that same most raw emotion from me that it displays in itself. If what we surround ourself with are mirrors for who we are, I couldn't be more proud that anything other than this feels that it is the most honest and true refection of myself. It may be imperfect by some standards, but to me the things that are soul at the expense of apparent technical excellence are the most perfect of all. And if there is any way I might define my own self - greatly lacking in precision but heavy and real and raw with soul -  that is how it would be.