{un- done}

***I am back fulfilling a promise to myself and to someone else. and to say to you: 'hi, thanks for sticking around buddy'. The post today will be accompanied by my favorite song from the new CD, "Oh My Darling", by a wonderful young lady named Basia Bulat. Her new CD is getting play in Europe, we heard a song by chance on the radio in Vienna. It's true that there is always jealousy mixed in with happiness when your friends become successful, but I console myself by saying better a good friend then some bastard who 'aint my friend, amiright? You know you are hitting the big time when you make it onto Mcsweeney's Reccomends which puts you in the same league as "Shaving without shaving cream when you first get out of the shower" and "A brisk early-morning walk".Those are some important things, no joke. Mcsweeney's happens to be the bookhouse I fantasize about being published on one fine day, and so I congratulate my dear friend. You could say I'm shaking hands with her with my right, and shaking my fist with my left.




Basia Bulat- snakes and ladders. ***







Amelia had learned how to fall asleep on her father's back, bobbing with the rhythm of his steps, feeling the heat between their two backs; a warm damp blanket. Today this warmth was not enough, a cold fog had settled on the mountainside, and it was still too early in the morning for the sun's warm breeze to cut through.

Her father had learned to sense her level of alertness: if he felt a limp baby body on his back, like carrying a misshapen sac of water, she was in a deep sleep. If Amelia was hard again his back though he knew she was awake, her movements and posture working against his. He felt her back tense up now, her shoulder pressing in and out of the middle of his back; she was rubbing her eyes. She was awake for good.

Amelia felt the light, cold dampness of the fog on her arms and face, a sharp contrast to the warmth on her back. Her hands started to shake, her gums chattered against one another so that she could feel the hardness of the teeth forming underneath. All of these strange feelings built up inside of her chest. Moisture clouded her eyes, and small sobs broke free moving from her chest and out her mouth. The strange contrast of heat and cold had been changed by her body into a single feeling she recognized in the warmth of her tears and the heaves of her sobs.

Amelia's cries broke her father out of his day dream. As usual during his runs, he had been playing an old memory over in his mind. This time it was his wife, years before they were married. She had been talking about how they, as a couple, would fight. She was happy with their arguments: small squabbles that wouldn't amount to anything. Better many little fights, she said, then letting tensions build up, higher and higher, until eventually coming out in a huge emotional battle. But Amelia's high pitch squeal brought him back to the mountain. Perhaps they should turn around now, it would only get colder the higher up the climbed. And yet they were so close to the top where they could warm up in mountain lodge. He would just have to push hard, get them into the lodge faster.

To Amelia the sound of her own cries, and her closed eyes, brought the whole world of sound into a stronger focus. She realized, listening to the sounds, that her father had been singing to her. Her ears remembered those other mornings where her father sang, and from that came the memory of the singing voice relaxing the weight in her chest; she held in a sob, feeling it melt away, and listened to those vaugley recognizable sounds coming from behind her.

Amelia began to soften on her father's back. He gasped on the thin air, singing in short bursts between hurried breaths, making up the words. He saw the last trail marker and felt Amelia, as soft a pillow, and knew that it was only five more minutes to the top. He thought about his wife, about their separate morning routines, about her driving to work on this Saturday morning, somewhere below the fog. A cold wind blew down from the peak; a shake against his back. He felt freezing rain bitting against his skin, and he clenched his teeth.

Amelia was awaken by her fathers body. Its rhythm was unusual, no gentle bobbing but quick ups and downs. She felt her head lean forward, wind moving around it, and horrible cold on her skin.

His legs burnt from the acid building up in them, but he kept on sprinting.

They were almost at the top.







LINKS: BASIA BULATS NEW CD COMES OUT IN CANADA ON SEPTEMBER 18TH