home

word to the wise: keep blankets in your car just in case you're driving home from a concert five hours from where you live in the middle of a snow storm and you get a flat tire.

i thought getting a flat tire would be a stressful and frustrating experience. instead i just laughed at it because it was so ridiculous. fortunately there are some good people out there who helped us out.

a little over twelve hours after leaving, we finally made it to joint base andrews. and it's still snowing. hard. and it looks like i won't be going home anytime soon. and i'm kind of okay with that because i don't really consider where i live to be my home anyway.

home is such an abstract thing. i have lived in my house my entire life, yet it's never really felt like home to me. i guess home is where i feel i can truly be myself, which would be with certain friends, or in my car, or at a show. i guess music is wherever the music takes me.

Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.

hba's last 2009 show

yesterday was spectacular. and i truly mean that with no exaggeration whatsoever. it was like it was epic but without making a big deal about itself. therefore, spectacular is the word to be used.

if i were to make a list of things that made yesterday stand out amongst other current days, it would include, but not be limited to:

- alex reenlisting in the navy

- visiting low watt studio to lay down some vocals for against grace with my friday friend and my barff, which will lead to be thanked on an ep and a free copy of that ep. i am a rock star.

- eating a famous hot dog at snoopy's

- reuniting with my p-pali anna at the pour house. we hadn't seen each other in YEARS. THANKS HBA!

- great set list with full band versions of NO GUS songs

- rafetto borrowing my FIELD glasses during Good Enough

- "what's your beef preference?"... "all is good"... "where's the beef?"

- "thanks for coming again... and again... and again..."

and in the moment... i swear we were infinite.

perks of being the wallflower has been my favorite book since i read the first page ten years ago. since then, i have read it countless times. sometimes i've even read it twice in one day. just because. i'll read one book, the perks, then another book. if i'm bored i read it. happy? i read it. sad? i read it. i used to carry my copy around with me wherever i went. my copy of the novel is ten years old and the pages are well loved and on the verge of breaking free from their spine. i have 28 post-it tabs marking my favorite passages, as well as post-it notes in the book with my thoughts. the top corners of pages are bent where there weren't enough post-it tabs.

i guess you could say i'm kind of in love with the protagonist, charlie. of course, it certainly helps that he was born on my half-birthday and that i'm probably also a wallflower. i just relate to this book so much.

my current favorite passage, from pages 62-63, which i find highly relevant right now:

I had an amazing feeling when I finalLy held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm Of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loVed those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad timEs because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And How much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I Bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope that they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.

phoenix

my body's weak and i'm struggling
this self destruction's torturing my mind
there's beauty in this agony
i'm bulding up a remedy
and soon i will emerge from my cocoon

all of this loss and all of this pain will turn around
shake it up, make it beautiful
in life we must die before we can be reborn



- - -
lyrics: "phoenix" by honor by august

World AIDS Day

December 1st.

World AIDS Day.

Though it's technically not a holiday, I always feel compelled to say "Happy World AIDS Day" as if it were a day like Valentine's Day. This, of course, would be inappropriate, but maybe in a way not so much. If I said it I would mean "Be happy you don't have AIDS in a world where infants born with the disease are lucky to survive to their fourth birthday!"

A popular thing to do on Facebook on December 1st is to have a red ribbon as your profile picture for the day. I've decided not to participate in this this year because while I know it isn't true, it's like people are saying, "Stop AIDS TODAY" but not any other day. It's like being thankful for things only on Thanksgiving or telling people you love them only on Valentine's Day or getting drunk just on St. Patrick's Day.

I am, of course, wearing my GAP (PRODUCT) RED INSPI(RED) shirt today. It helps me to take a look at my life and feel slightly better about myself because I don't have AIDS or even HIV or even diabetes. Just a few cuts and bruises, which is nothing to really complain about.

I decided that it would be a good idea to include an exerpt or two from Hanson's Take The Walk book:

AIDS is an ironic disease. It amasses a gigantic death toll. It tears families apart, communities and countries. Yet AIDS itself isn't what actually kills you. It simply sabotages your body's ability to fight off contagions so lesser sicknesses can whittle you down to nothing before you die. When you ask many people in Africa how their family members of friends died they will simply say, "they became sick," avoiding the recognition of AIDS as the cause.

Last fall I did a landscape preservation paper on Avalon Cemetery in Soweto, South Africa and received something like a 98% on the paper. Researching for and writing the paper inspired me to add on something to my book that's a list of things I want to happen do before I die. I wrote "See a cure to AIDS."

My most favorite excerpt from TTW:

True hope is not dependent on science, vaccines, or new shoes. True hope is not rendered valid only when we come across some often invisible finish line to prove to others that our far-fetched expectations were not in vain. True hope does not exist on the other side of brokenness, failure, and loss; it exists in the midst of it. True hope kneels beside us in our darkest hours and greatest failures, and casts light into the shadows of our stories. It tells us that no matter how difficult life gets, we are not alone. True hope cannot be extinguished.


I'll leave you with this. It's a link to a video of Hanson performing "Lay Me Down" in Falls Church last October. Watch it here.

Happy World AIDS Day,
-ef