I grew up in an area where baseball did NOT rule the sports landscape – it was, and is, ALL hockey, ALL the time.  To be fair, football gets a fair nod in the fall, until the weather turns cold enough for everyone to flood their backyards into ice rinks.  But baseball was never on the radar – the closest MLB team is a 6+ hour drive away.

Funny how one sport can steal your heart when you date a lifelong, die-hard Red Sox fan.  To become that intimately acquainted with the game, over the course of not one, but two postseason knock-down drag-outs with the Yankees, much less the fans of both, left a huge impression on me for the seasons to come.  I fell for the Americana factor of baseball; I fell for the vast variety of backgrounds players came to the game from; I was done for by the boyish charm of grown men jumping like children and erupting in joy with each progressive postseason win.  Grown men, all unified by the drive to win and a tiny glimmer of misfit personality in each of their eyes.

Unsurprisingly, I’m a huge fan of this man:

(image via sfgate.com: http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/09/08/sp-giants09_phli_0500571259.jpg)

The Giants’ own No. 55 and proud owner of back-to-back NL Cy Young Awards, Tim Lincecum, aka “The Freak” and “The Franchise”.  Watching this kid throw, with a wicked fastball and a downright nasty changeup, my appreciation for the game – and anybody who’s able to get a decent hit off of him – grows mightily.  Watching him, as well as the rest of his very underrated team deny the Phillies of a third NL pennant tonight, was pretty damn sweet.  These Giants are a mix of youngsters and journeymen, SF veterans and players brought on who were making their way through the fold – case in point NLCS MVP Cody Ross.  It’s a team with a mix of a scrawny ace pitcher and an infielder affectionately known as “Panda” for his overwhelming size.  Nobody but their fans saw these Giants coming, and they fought their way on to my beloved sport’s grandest stage.

Orange October didn’t just get an extension.  It’s just warming up.

The thing is, for the past 3 days, I’ve been trying to narrow my list to 20 albums, and it’s just not gonna happen.  My Dad’s a music teacher, so I grew up very much surrounded by every genre of music imaginable, in the best ways imaginable.  Between listening to NPR every day on the way home from school, to my grandfather playing classical music during every Sunday night family dinner, to 9-hour drives to visit my extended family filled with the sounds of Santana, Huey Lewis and the News, Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, and so many others — How could I possibly attempt to put margins on such a huge part of my life?

For the sake of the threads, I’m listing albums that have had, and hold, a deep impact on me – just their names take me back to a specific time and place.  Some of the highbrow among you may scoff at some of the entries, and that’s fine.  I see the entries, and I see – and hear – the 1-mile-exactly bike ride to my grandparents’ house. The sleepovers with my girls. The church youth group that made up so much of my high school experience. Dad’s band hall in my high school, and the crisp fall nights spent in a marching band uniform at football games and parades. The morning I left my hometown for college. The all too brief days where my brother and I felt 2 and 1/2 years apart in age as we actually are rather than the 7 it often feels like (which is a whole other entry unto itself). Driving a friend home from rehab. The radio playing in the ER when I’d dislocated my shoulder. A then-boyfriend surprising me at work with flowers in the middle of The Gap. Flying across the country to a new city to visit someone I loved. Flying across the country to a new city to start a whole new, scary and exhilarating life. When I hear a piano being played, I immediately recall the years I sat in front of one, practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing; I can’t bear the sound of musicboxes because it’s a reminder of the end of my parents’ marriage.  These aren’t just hollow tracks. These are breakups and celebrations, triumphs and tones of solace on the harder days.

On with the list, in no particular order:

• Bloc Party / Silent Alarm
• Ben Folds Five / Whatever and Ever Amen
• Semisonic / Feeling Strangely Fine
• Foo Fighters / The Colour and The Shape
• Birdmonster / No Midnight
• Sheryl Crow / Sheryl Crow
• Santana / Supernatural
• Janet Jackson / janet.
• Coldplay / A Rush of Blood to the Head
• Jars of Clay / Much Afraid
• Elvis Costello / My Aim is True
• Alanis Morrissette / Jagged Little Pill
• Weezer / Pinkerton
• Lisa Loeb / Firecracker
• Third Eye Blind / Third Eye Blind
• Rilo Kiley / More Adventurous
• Fleetwood Mac / Rumours
• Counting Crows / Recovering the Satellites
• Sting / Ten Summoner’s Tales
• Paul Simon / The Rhythm of the Saints
• Tina Turner / What’s Love Got to Do With It
• Sarah McLachlan / Surfacing
• Carole King / Tapestry
• R.E.M. / Automatic for the People
• Lauryn Hill / The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
• U2 / How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
• The Strokes / Room On Fire
• Stone Temple Pilots / Purple
• Pearl Jam / Vs.
• Franz Ferdinand / Franz Ferdinand
• Johnny Cash / Orange Blossom Special
• Andrew Bird / Noble Beast
• The Cardigans / First Band on the Moon
• Blues Traveler / Four
• Snow Patrol / Eyes Open
• No Doubt / Tragic Kingdom
• Dido / No Angel
• Barenaked Ladies / Stunt
• Jem / Finally Woken

There are countless other artists I could list, whose entire catalogs would have made this list.  Here’s to the next handful and then some that will get added over the years ahead.  Happy listening, everyone, to my list and your own.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean–

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver

(via the wonderful http://pasty.com)

You can – and should – call it mesmerizing, stunning, God’s autumnal brushstrokes.  I call it Home.

According to my mother, I’m a Very Girly Girl.  A few friends here and there echo her observations; some others are naturally stylish and as such, blow me out of the water where the, let’s call them….Womanly Arts are concerned.  I consider myself middle of the road, if only because growing up in a small, isolated midwestern town didn’t offer the kind of exposure to the unreal standards for beauty I’ve experienced in city life.  There is certainly a big difference between maintaining one’s looks and being “high-maintenance” about them, but there’s no reason that the former should lack……polish.  And no matter which degree of the spectrum you fall into, making yourself up should be – if nothing else – Fun.

Today’s flavor of fun, for me, came in a tube of red lipstick.

My summer and fall are about to become chock-full of special occasions and accompanying special memories, so I decided I’d turn my appearance up a notch or five.  In the last few years, I’ve always stuck to The Natural Look.  And then came along a little show called Mad Men. How clever that a show based on advertising managed to pitch an era of suave, easy, utterly cool-tempered men and their knockout counterparts – women with a plethora of fire behind precisely painted liner and lips.  Faces that made a statement.  And oh, how I bought it.

The first veritable toe in the water came by way of a deep red dress.  I not only managed to look like a woman rather than a giant tomato, and I immediately loved the way I felt, loved my reflection.  It makes perfect sense – red is, after all, the color that sends pulses racing.  And then came my face. How on earth to achieve a face to complement that dress.  I’ve inherited my grandmother’s incredibly deep-set eyes, so anything more complicated than a single swipe of shadow, liner and mascara would be pointless. Said eyes are green tinged with blue, so a red lip was a logical option that hadn’t really crossed my mind. Yet.

As I was meandering about the cosmetics counters in Macy’s I came across one counter girl after another,  too busy re-powdering their noses to actually – gasp! - make a sale.  I resigned myself to get on with getting home, and started thinking of modern style icons with a throwback look – Scarlett Johansson, Dita VonTeese, Salma Hayek, Liv Tyler. Interest? Piqued. At the last counter I passed, a salesgirl happened to capitalize on the curiosity written across my face.  I noticed the counter was Dior, a go-to brand for me when finances allow.  As soon as I uttered the words “red dress” and “wedding”, the salesgirl was off to the races. Some liner, lipstick and gloss later, I found myself wearing a Very Red pout.  A statement.  Appropriately, the shade of lipstick chosen for me is named “Scarlet Siren”.  Though I have yet to go back and buy that cosmetic trifecta, that statement was a very loud, very clear Yes.

From the time I walked out of Macy’s and all the way through my front door, I had a swagger in my step.  The adrenaline of stepping outside a comfort zone, with the added bonus of the look-at-me, you-want-this-but-can’t-have-it factor.

The secret, or rather, the beauty of it all – pun very much intended -, was I had It. I can’t wait to see where this leads me to next.

enjoy my favorite, so simple and complex, the one that had me hooked for good, and the latest piece I’ve written.

‘Blue’

A row of shelves hides a wall and a door here. They are all blue,…  Read More
just blue.

I wonder if you and I would ever paint a wall together, and a door.
Take one color and paint it all, even the hinges and the knob.

And then each other, clothes and all.
Just to put some color on history, not to change it, but to look

at it together and remember what we did to see
over what we cannot see.

-Peter Streckfus

————————————————————————————————-

‘This Is Just To Say’

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-William Carlos Williams

---------------------------------------------------------------------

'Interlude #5'

Maybe if I rise
I'll see the dreams fading
to smoke and mirrors,
and maybe your mirage
won't call this void home,
will let me sleep.

Because I watch the sun crest
over the steepest hill
wait for my strength,
my chance
to align.

For now I watch your impression,
our wrinkled fabric.
Watch the passing haze,
shadows buoyant in morning,
yesterday's truth sloping to periphery.

-SCV

Make yourself comfortable and enjoy.

I, admittedly, am not a heavily religious person.  I weigh my own spirituality equally with and against the idea that those two concepts – religion and spirituality – do not necessarily go hand in hand.  On this particular Easter, however, I feel compelled to speak up, if only for my own carthasis.

Under everyday circumstances, I make a point of not openly discussing the role depression has played in my life.  It is a rather grim picture to paint, and there is an ever-present stigma attached to it.  Few people understand it, and most simply don’t want to.  I can’t say I blame them.

I can say with certainty that I handed over the last 2 years of my life to depression.  For the most part, the memories that I do have of those two years are a blur, save for the mornings I was able to function on.  On those mornings which I remember, the feeling of truly not recognizing my own image in the mirror is forever seared into me.  And I’d like to believe that the reason I can not forget that feeling is because somebody, or something greater than myself, insisted all along that I would not be forgotten.

The person who I didn’t recognize, every morning, threw her arms up in absolute despair, angry with God.  How could You leave me out in this barren, eternal Cold. I would self-righteously adopt the attitude on those days that nobody was going to heal Sarah but Sarah, and the loneliness it fostered bled from one day into the next.

I do want to stop and take a moment to point out that though it felt dehabilitating, the depression I suffered could have been worse.  I made it to and through an extremely fast-paced, rigorous course in culinary school, an environment that is quite chaotic and psychologically perverse in and of itself.  If nothing else, I developed a thick skin the hard way and learned that when you feel as if you truly have nothing left to lose, you have everything to gain.

So I reached out.  I’d discovered that life could be worth loving again, by immersing myself in something I loved, no matter how tough it may have been.  Confidantes were developed, walls came down, and I was determined to soak in the good days as my reserves.  And with each good day that came along, I began to feel…..lifted. A continual out-of-body moment.  On the not-so-good days, I found myself seeking out solace in the fluidity of life and the world around me rather than my self-loathing.

Just after New Years’, I’d rented Religulous, Bill Maher’s documentary on organized religion and the more questionable tenets of faith that believers buy into.  I’m sure Maher was successful in appealing to the more agnostic atheist set, particularly around my age.  But the nervy, academic stance he took throughout the film only served to affirm my core beliefs: His pointed heartlessness spoke measures.  While I consider myself a smidgen universalist and, in turn, would never assail another person’s spirituality;  my path to God is firmly centered in Christ.  Because even when all I saw was darkness, there would be enough light to keep me going.  In the most comical of settings – JesusLand – Maher confronted a worker about the monotheistic aspect of the Christian faith versus the holy trinity. The answer – that the lord can take on different forms just as water – was the profound truth I had been trying to locate amongst my frustration with God lo those months before.  I didn’t have to grasp at straws – He was waiting.

The next morning, I woke up feeling unbelievably restored, but with an added air of confidence I couldn’t quite place.  Weeks later in a conversation about looking back on life, a confidante remarked, “For what it’s worth, these last 2 years will turn out to be the most valuable years of your life, because you learned how to survive, even when you wanted most to give up on yourself.”  That’s it.

I replied, “And I call that Grace.”