Jes and Ian

-Raekwon, 1999

Almost ten years ago I became certified in audio engineering and took the first job I could find. I was hired quickly and easily at a place in Bethesda, Maryland called Potomac Talking Books. The company recorded narrated books and magazines for the Library of Congress. I enjoyed written materials and loved anything to do with tape  and sound so the job was a great placement for me. My duties were to sit outside the recording booth (a metal pod that was just large enough to hold a voice actor and a book), monitor their narration and read along a copy of the material, listening for mistakes. When mistakes were made, I’d rewind the reel-to-reel recorder in front of me to the sentence before the mistake, and punch in (hit record at a precise moment). A light would go on when the recording began and the narrator would expertly begin reading with matched tone again. I became an expert at rewindstopplayrecording. It was automatic. Instinctual. I took great pride in this ability.

But I’m not good at reading and listening

After the recording was complete, the stack of (sometimes a dozen or more) reels were sent into the QC department where they were pored over by a team of glassed-nosed übernerds for pronunciation, background noise, poor punch-ins, and mistakes that were overlooked.

I overlooked a lot of mistakes.

As good as I was at instinctually working the tape machine I was really bad at this job. QC would make a list of the mistakes that had to be corrected in re-recording sessions and the actors would make the corrections at the beginning of their next scheduled session. The actors hated re-recordings because they didn’t get paid the same as the initial recordings ($50 per 88 minute side). The actors started hating me, their broken failsafe. A month later I left the job and started working behind a desk at an insurance company.

I told you that to tell you this

While working there I met an actor named Mark Ashby who was an absolute narration prodigy. He would do an 88 minute side in 90 minutes. In essence, he’d sit down in the studio and make more than anyone else in the place. He was fantastic and efficient. As a result he was asked to read a lot of different materials. Including material that was wholly inappropriate for his voice. Like Ebony magazine featuring an interview with rapper Raekwon.

I heard about this recording and, during my lunch break and without permission, went into the tape library, grabbed the tape, spooled it up and bussed it out to my Minidisc recorder. I stole government property between mouthfuls of Boston Market. I was never caught and I think the statute of limitations has expired so, without further ado, please enjoy one of the gems of my iTunes Library: Mark Ashby reads Raekwon.

I just got home from the shock trauma unit, having spent the afternoon there. My brother was admitted last night after getting into a car accident involving a windy road, rain, a car, and a tree.

He’s in quite a state: laying there with a collapsed lung, tired, in pain, and getting a lot of tests done. But he’s okay. By okay, I mean alive, talking, and stable.

My whole day has been spent alternating between thinking he’s okay and thinking that he’s not. And I find myself frustrated with the whole arrangement of things.

A month ago, my brother was dropped from my parents’ insurance plan. Now he gets into an accident that involves a helicopter, multiple days in the hospital, multiple tests. He has no job right now.

This is not okay.

But he’s alive. Thank goodness. And he’s relatively whole, and will likely come home soon. The guy is a trooper, and tries to be pleasant to everyone and probably should have kicked us out a while ago today. He was tired when I saw him, and that was before anyone else got there. Damn it if he shouldn’t have just blown up at us without regards to propriety, and sent us home. This kind of stress shouldn’t get trussed up to save others. This sucks.

And now I find myself doing the same thing. I feel so at ends right now. I need a place to vent, and I never update this bloody site. But really. I mean, come on. It feels foolish to think that what I write here matters. I cannot write too much in order to protect my private life from my work; I cannot write anything worth reading if it’s not personal. When I delve into feelings, I find myself just bitching. When I try to be witty, it all falls flat. This is nonsense.

And as I write this entry, with the hope that it is honest to my feelings, I find myself tucking all of these things up and getting ready to go back to work tomorrow, to support my godsister tomorrow at her high school play, to have a play date with my cousin for both of our sakes, to go to a family event on Sunday. After all that’s done, I find I am trying to figure out how Ian and I can contribute to whatever costs my brother will incur from this hospital “adventure”, even though I already am flirting with burnout and am dealing with a severely compromised budget as it is.

No matter how much I wish for my brother to feel better and to take care of himself, I really find this entire situation to be ridiculous. After all,  I cannot figure out a reasonable way to do it for myself.

Ian and the crew had their annual Guy Weekend extravaganza at my place last weekend.  As I certainly couldn’t stay at the apartment, I decided it was high time for me to take my grandmother’s advice and participate in a poustinia–a personal religious retreat.

You’re welcome to read more about poustinia at the Madonna House website, but suffice it to say, it generally involves holing up in a room with nothing but you, some basic furnishings, a book on poustinia, and a bible. You eat bread and water/tea for the day and spend the rest of your time in contemplation.

Alright, alright! I know that most people would not think of this type of arrangement as all that fun. However, as a person who wanted to grow up and become a hermit, (albeit, I also wanted to be a contortionist, a ballerina, and a paleontologist), I like the idea of being open to solitude and simplicity. And with the clangor of numerous obligations in our lives today, I think most people can appreciate that a day without noise would not be a bad thing. What? Sit at a window and enjoy the breeze, you say? How can I refuse?

I feel like I could spend a great deal of time justifying this type of practice, whether it be to people who are uncomfortable with Catholicism, Christianity, or with just doing nothing. I don’t think it’d really get me anywhere though.

I really just wanted to write this entry because I enjoyed the time alone in God’s presence immensely. I also have found that coming home from that day has shown the time well-spent. I feel much happier, more present and appreciative with others, well rested, on better grounds with my spiritual life, and far less burnt out than I did before I went.  Though I still find it hard to stop listening to all of these various demands in my life, I am finding the time to have some quiet somewhere in my day. Whether it’s time spent listening to what my body is telling me, what my God is telling me, or what I am trying to say, that quiet time is paying off.

We really have lost touch with the joy of keeping things simple (says the girl who is writing a blog entry).

When we were on our way back from West Virginia, we invented a little game to help the miles go by quicker. Poke fun at the disgusting fast food establishments that grease up the sides of the highways. Here’s a list that we’ll keep updated. Some we think of as originals, some have been passed down through the ages.

Burger King: Booger King
Pizza Hut: Pizza Slut
Subway: Shlub Way
Taco Bell: Taco Hell
Wendy’s: Windy’s
Hardee’s: Fartee’s
Chik Fila: Sick Fila
Sbarro’s: Sbarfo’s
Roy Rogers: ‘Roid Rogers
Boston Market: Grosston Market
T.G.I.Fridays: U.T.I.Fridays

–

On March 1st, it became official that Ian and I had moved to a new place. Though I won’t talk about our new address, out of deference to my personal privacy (yay working in the human services field!), I will talk about our new place.

Not a lot of people got to see our most recent apartment arrangement, but until this month we had lived in a one bedroom (more like studio) apartment in a rowhome. Our bedroom and living room and office all merged into the same floorspace, leaving very little privacy and no room for more than two or three guests. It was a cozy clubhouse, without a doubt. However, as Ian and I have settled into our jobs and into life as a couple (we used to live with roommates), we were feeling like it was time to expand.

We were able to get a lovely apartment in a good neighborhood, with a living room, dining room, two bedrooms, and a study. We’ve got it arranged right now to where it’s more like two offices and one bedroom, but that’s more our style these days. I was able to get my cool old table from my parents’ attic to bring in for my craft and project table, and Ian was able to move his desk off of the dining table onto an actual desk. It’s really been a whirlwind move, motivated almost by a whim. Ian had mentioned an interest in starting to record again, and this was a prime opportunity for me to scratch that mild nomadic itch I have. Since college, I have not stayed at a place longer than two years. I would even say no longer than a year and a half. That makes this my sixth move in about seven years. Let’s do another experiment and see how long I can plant roots in this home!

It’s simple…

If you ever want to sell me anything, wrap it in green. There’s a good chance I’ll buy it. Not neon green or puke green. Moss green. Fern green. Pea green.

Just as the heat of Summer brings nostalgia for deep blues and fiery oranges of snowy Winter nights, Spring reminds me how much I adore green. It’s all around, beginning in the bud stages, light and pale greens, peeking out from winter’s husk of brown bark and dirt. They give way to brilliant greens as translucent leaves yield to warm sunlight. Vibrant and deep greens roll across marble-smooth hillsides of short, damp grass. Wispy tops on tall grasses form an ocean of pastely, Easter green that wave at me as I pass with my windows down. Dirty greens mix with mossy reds and lichen browns to paint the rocks at the edge of the stream. Pea green wraps the torso of my buddy as she tills the soil in our humble backyard garden.

And it grew…

We started with an idea mid-Spring last year and it pushed out a pretty good yeild. I say “humble” but our plot is actually rather substantial as far as backyards in our neighborhood go. We’ve got about 100 square feet. Enough to have 8 rows about 20 feet long. I’ve been so excited about this thing since early March that I’ve drawn up plans in Illustrator so that we can map out what would go where (pencil gardening, if you will), I’ve ordered loofah seeds online so that we can have free loofah all year long and I bought my best friend a pair of tank tops (mentioned above) to wear out while working beside me. Weeding, watering and watching are the fun parts of the work. The free food is merely a reward.

Breakin’ it down to the ground…

Moving your face to knee-level in everyday life is reserved for things like changing the cat box or tying your shoes; but for a short time each year it changes the atmosphere. Suddenly, on a still, cloudy day it’s humid and cool, you smell the dirt and the insects invite you in as one of their own (mosquitoes included). Once they reach the proper timber and pitch, the plickets of water pattering the evening-lit puddles on the trough floor give you an auditory signal that a given row has been saturated sufficiently. Witnessing things you remember as black specks on your kitchen table blossoming into entire heads of lettuce and cabbage, crawling across the ground and up the fence to personally hand you moutains of cucumbers, exploding into giant florets of broccoli and cauliflower is a reward only a child could top.

Of course, you can’t eat children…anymore.