Under a Red Roof

Four-Four

February 2, 2009 in Remembering, Traveling by Colleen | 1 comment

I was tagged by my friend Amber to post the fourth photo in the fourth folder of my collection. This is not actually in the fourth folder, but the sixth, because the other fourths were photos I had already posted on the blog, and redundancy is such a drag, you know? You know? Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Anyway, this is me outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris about a year and a half ago. Something about the lighting makes my head look like a giant melon, don’t you think? That’s not the only funny bit to this photo, well not to the photo, but to the general story of the day.

This is our first day in Paris, having arrived only a few hours earlier. We were doing our best to stay awake. At this point we’d been up for about twenty-eight hours, and as we are neither in college, nor rock stars, this does not come easily. However, I felt like, this time, I was going to be able to make the whole day without napping. This time, I shall beat jet lag!

Then we entered the museum, and with the hush of the people and all of the marvelous works of art, the cadence changed. Rather than experiencing the energetic buzz of the city, people moving, cars honking, scooters swerving, we felt the profound quiet of great art and architecture. We became part of the ebb and flow of the museum, yet found ourselves set wholly apart from it. The onset of fatigue was so potent that it set off a crazy chain of events. First, we swayed like drunkards, no matter how carefully we tried to walk – left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Colleen laughs as quietly as she can, Gregory laughs quietly at Colleen laughing, museum-goers give sideways glances at the crazy Americans who should have respect for work that is neither silly or funny. More laughter from Colleen, then Gregory…and well, you know the rest.

Finally, after we had seen everything we had wanted to see, interspersed with lots of breaks on benches to compose ourselves, we waved our white flags in utter defeat. Jet lag won again. We slowly walked back to our apartment, climbed the stairs, and collapsed on the bed, sleeping for four hours.

Don’t Change

January 30, 2009 in Listening, Remembering, Spotlighting by Colleen | 1 comment

Isn’t this a beautiful cover? When I first saw it, mind you, this was on a cassette tape, so the image wasn’t terribly large, I thought it was a photograph of an exquisite sculpture. Only upon further inspection did I learn man and canine were made of flesh and bone. I find it both incredibly sexy and tender at the same time. The man has beautiful shoulders and arms, and the dog – a Greyhound or Whippet? is awfully sweet and poised, paws balanced just so. Definitely on my top ten list for album covers. Yes, definitely.

In keeping with yesterday’s post, I thought I would give a full blown Spotlight on this, my favorite INXS album. I first heard “The One Thing” and “To Look at You” when I watched Reckless with Aidan Quinn and Darryl Hannah way back in 1984. Save these two songs, and especially “The One Thing,” I have no recollection of the film, but the music is enough for me.

I know that taste in music is highly subjective, but I really feel like this is a timeless classic. While it does bring back many memories, the music never seems dated to me. INXS never went over the top with gimmicks or synthesizers, so there are no Flock of Seagull moments while listening to it. Not that the FOS were bad, but when you listen to them now, you know they are an 80’s band.

One of the finest and exceedingly rare occurrences in music is to have an album where every song is a gem. Shabooh Shoobah is one such example. It starts with “The One Thing” and keeps up the pace with clever lyrics, Michael’s very sexy, sometimes tender, and powerful voice, and ends with the crescendo “Don’t Change.” It is really difficult for me to choose favorites because I have a really hard time hearing the end of one song without longing for the next, so I will tell you my favorite lines from each song:

“The One Thing” – The way you move soft and slippery, cut the night just like a razor, rarely talk and that’s the danger.

“To Look at You” – I understand, I sympathize for a day dream, fairy tales and I love you

“Spy of Love” – Standing above this moment, listening to all I say, the spy of love will track me, will catch me.

“Soul Mistake” – Promises are carved out of lust, with a fire in the heart, that burns without regret, I vow to play the part.

“Here Comes” – Here comes my kamikaze, here comes God’s top ten.

“Black and White” – Got a need inside and I don’t know why, it’s a strong feeling that grows and grows.

“Golden Playpen” – Night club, ice cubes crackin’

“Jan’s Song” – Friends won’t argue, friends don’t care, now is the moment to get out of here.

“Old World New World” -Natives wearing turquoise and silver, dirty dogs barking in the distance, ooh people of a thousand tongues, I’m learning the primitive rites.

“Don’t Change” – Don’t change for you, don’t change a thing for me.

Oh my goodness, twenty-five years later and I still love it!

Tags: Music

Old World New World

January 29, 2009 in Listening, Remembering by Colleen | 3 comments

That’s the name of a stellar INXS song, from my favorite album Shabooh Shoobah. The awesome and, quite sadly, departed too soon, Michael Hutchence sings: “Old world, new world, I know nothing, but I keep listening.” Just a little aside here, too, INXS was my first concert at Red Rocks, and it did not disappoint.

Anyway, I’ve had the song and the sentiment stuck in my head ever since I started seeing people from much younger days on Facebook, for some it has been almost twenty years! I sit in wild wonder at all that I do and don’t know about their lives. It is both strange and wonderful, to see long lost faces and know where everyone is and what they’re doing.

Take these photos. This is Rob, the Batman fan formerly known as Bob. We met in high school, but neither of us has any recollection how it happened. There are plenty of other clearer memories, however, like opening day of Batman (the occasion for cooking a steak at my house), the opening of the Super Saver Cinema (Rob, do you remember what we saw?), and a night at the drive-in to see the Gubernator in Total Recall where I promptly fell asleep (that’s our giant bag of popcorn I’m holding).

As luck would have it, Rob found me just last week, and, even luckier, was in Portland on business on Monday, so the hubster and I met him at the Kennedy School for dinner. It was a grand evening of Gregory getting to know Rob while reminiscing for hours over cocktails and yummy food. We also reveled in the fact that it seemed as though no time had passed. That is friendship. Thank you, Facebook, for this lovely reunion, and Rob, see you next time you’re in town!

One more time, with jazz hands!

Pause

November 21, 2008 in Remembering, Writing by Colleen | 3 comments

When I was in college, and had been studying French for about ten years, I needed a break. I was bored and tired and getting kind of cranky with it, so I took German for a year. Boy was that interesting! I learned a lot – like German is hard and well, uber-foreign after so many years of French. My mouth struggled to make umlauts and not caress words. I also learned that my brain, like a library, has a distinct foreign language section. When I couldn’t remember a vocabulary word or phrase in German, my electrical impulses went zooming to French, found what it was looking for and out it came from my mouth. It was both funny and strange. “Guten tag Herr Zimmer, je m’appelle Colleen.”

The greatest bit that I learned, however, is that a pause (German word for break) is a marvelous thing, for when I returned to French after my year of German, it was with renewed interest and vigor. I even decided to become a French teacher! Though I never found a job, but that is another story, isn’t it?

Like German, I started this blog as a pause from Polite Society. I had finished my rough draft and felt like I needed to keep up the momentum while I let it rest. Well, now that I have started my second novel, I feel like an old pick-up on a cold morning. I turn over, then wheeze and sputter before pumping that gas pedal to keep me from dying. I know that if I just let the engine warm up a little, I’ll be good as gold. But, in order to do so, I need to focus on this one task, rather than divide my time, which I must admit, I’ve been doing rather poorly. Neither the blog nor the book is up to snuff at the moment.

So, in this somewhat cryptic fashion, I am letting you know that I am taking a much needed pause from the blog. I need to focus on my novel, get her humming to life. Thanks so much for reading and commenting these past months, and check back from time to time. This won’t be the last you hear from me!

Truths Revealed

November 17, 2008 in Remembering, Thinking by Colleen | 2 comments

Well, finally, sheesh. I was so tickled that my Arizona pal Kelli, tagged me, but then when I sat down to do it, not a single thing popped into my head that I hadn’t said before on the blog – maybe I should keep the cards a little closer to the vest, huh? So after days of thinking, I asked the hubster to help me out, and here’s what we came up with. This time, I’m going to tag people back, too, but not six because I don’t know that many, at least in the blogging world! So how about it Amber and Sarah? Six random facts for the good of the order…

1. I was once a pastry chef for a creepy uni-browed man named Bruno. And why was he creepy, you might ask? He told me that I should wear red lipstick to work. Yeah, like that would make the cakes taste any better!

2. I have a very keen sense of smell. It drives my hubby nuts. “Do you smell that?” “Um, no.” “Well, I do, and it’s awful! Help me find it!”

3. I am a J Crew-aholic. Thank goodness for good sales.

4. I can have a very short fuse, particularly with my cat Milo. He likes to paw at the blinds, making this awful racket, like he’s doing right now. I yell, then he runs away and comes back in two minutes to start it all over again.

5. I love maps of all kinds. I find them beautiful and inspiring.

6. I love Star Trek movies! My favorites are Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and First Contact. Even though I’ve seen them both many times I always cry when Spock dies and love it when Data says for how many milliseconds he was tempted by the Borg. Good stuff. This also brings me to random fact number six and a half: It is Star Trek, not track. Whew – glad I cleared that up!

Have a great day…