Once & Again: The Past and Pending by The Shins

I meant to post the video for "Past & Pending" by The Shins.

Like life, like death, music and the stunningly desolate landscape are beautiful. Together, they are almost incomprehensibly bittersweet. But you and I have always known that.

It's filmed on highways. And under bridges. I watched this video several dozen times after I got the news, and I wept and I wept and I wept. But always because of what once was. No, don't believe that. Because that which once was was no longer. And then wouldn't be again.

A wise man -- I'm fairly certain I caught his name as Side Arm Pete -- said: "And after the tears, there is love." Humbly, I would add: "And still before, and in between the tears, there is love."

Whimsy may be a luxury of the undestroyed. I may be a snob, but I've never trusted people who haven't suffered. No: who haven't known true suffering but bleat or bitch because they think they have? Anyway, I love to imagine driving one of the old cars straight off of the HIA, to motor along the two-lanes I love most. After that I would wheel about the old hometown with circumstance and style.

I meant, before, to post this video. Why are French horns so beautiful? Is it because the fist is placed resolutely inside the trumpet? The Past and Pending (and Rilke's future, to be sure). Here are the words again, too:

As someone sets light to the first fire of autumn
We settle down to cut ourselves apart.
Cough and twitch from the news on your face
And some foreign candle burning in your eyes

Held to the past too aware of the pending
Chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale.
Enter the fog another low road descending
Away from the cold lust, you house and summertime.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay
Offer me little but doting on a crime.
We've turned every stone and for all our inventions
In matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

The Past and Pending by The Shins

As someone sets light to the first fire of autumn
We settle down to cut ourselves apart.
Cough and twitch from the news on your face
And some foreign candle burning in your eyes

Held to the past too aware of the pending
Chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale.
Enter the fog another low road descending
Away from the cold lust, you house and summertime.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay
Offer me little but doting on a crime.
We've turned every stone and for all our inventions
In matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.

Precious Moments, or a Beginner's Guide to Speaking Trailergentsia

Last night Renee, Al, Jefe, Jon, and I were at a fire party, and one of our Verm friends was aksing how long Renee and I had known each other. Nee and I always freak a bit when we have to admit it's been almost 20 years. We met in Vermillion in 1989, when she was a rising star in the theatre department and I was a hapless Spanish/theatre/psych major before I fled to the bright lights/big city of the Minneapple. That was also the year I met Mully, Jefe, Al, and Gregg.

Sometimes, when I think of certain Trailergentsia/HIA stories, I must laugh aloud. The other day whilst driving (my students always write "whilst" -- wot up wid dat?) I was for whatever reason recalling the night before Eldora's (Mama Abeln) funeral, when Renee and I were sharing a full bed and I had tried molesting her in my sleep. In the morning, with the covers pulled up to her little nose, big eyes peeping out, Renee said, "Um, Katy? Um....last night you tried to have your way with me."

I recoiled in horror at my own behavior. Clearly my oversexed psyche was trying to take advantage of Renee's vulnerable state. Poor Renee, thinking she would find comfort and succor from her trusted friend, was instead shamed and violated by my nocturnal lasciviousness. But then, I realized, God, would it have killed her to put out a little? I mean, I was stressed and worried too. But that's Nee, always thinking of herself.

T'other day Mike and I were driving in central residential Vermillion when we passed a house that I realized was the original site of the "bepaned portals." Shore 'nuff, I looked at the interesting windowstry on the abode, and there they were, in all their be-glassed, see-through-ishness glory. I told Mike I thought maybe it was a sign that the Trailergentsia/members of the HIA may need to start recording our history for the ages.

Another thing that made me giggle aloud as I was driving on Cherry Street last night was the time a whole gaggle of us were chowing at Cherry Street Grille in the late '90s. Mully and Gregg had recently taken a trip to Belize, and were chatting about their adventures. Gregg was puzzling aloud over one of the features of this tropical community, and Mully attempted to sate his curiousity by saying, "Welll, Gregory, you know how it is on the penninsulahhr..." She sounded like a freaking Kennedy, I shit you negative. And now she and Gregg live in a tropical paradise, and she's in upper management and Europeans have discovered Gregg's art, and well, little did we know Mully was portending of the future.

Reality

This handsome young lad is now old and stale.