♫ When I Listen To...

                                                                              David Gray

I am in the passenger seat of Tookie, also known as my friend Janet's Hyundai Tucson.  Janet is driving, the windows are down and there is a perfect breeze, one of those kinds that makes you feel like a teenager again, like at any moment you are going to put your hand out there in the wind and let it ride the waves.  Janet knows how to drive with a confidence that I always lacked; the smaller roads, the blind curves mixed with the rolling hills never so much as cause a flinch or one moment of hesitation.  Of course Tookie is American, so I being in the passenger seat am the one that could be clipped by any small oncoming British car driving 100 mph around the bend.  As I flinch at another "close call", I look at Janet who has a smile that is sunshine, her smile is the biggest of southern welcomes; and when I am in her presence I know that I am in the presence of a person with the most gentlest of spirits and this always puts me at ease.

Nuzzled up in the backseat directly behind Janet is Brandi.  Brandi's hair shines in the late day sun, she closes her eyes when the breeze blows in her face, sweeping her long hair behind her shoulders.  I hope that she is taking it all in; I hope she is getting it, I hope she is getting me.

"Babylon" comes on our adventure mix as Janet takes another bend.  I can't help but think of Pretty Woman and the line, "corners like it's on rails."  That's how Janet drives.

♫ Friday night I'm going nowhere, all the lights are changing green to red.

Around the bend we come to an expansive field of green, I want to say that it was almost like a cabbage patch; whether it was or not, I'm not sure.  Almost as if on cue, Brandi enthusiastically says, "Pull over!"  She slides across the backseat, opens her door, and crosses both lanes of what for a moment is an empty English motorway; and in a moment that I will never forget, she starts spinning around in this field, her arms open wide!

♫ Let go of your heart, Let go of your head... And feel it now

In my memory, I always see her twirling in that garden in slow motion.  She gets it!  As the song is winding down, my beautiful English sun is getting closer to setting, and our trip is one more bittersweet moment towards the end; Brandi crosses the street once more, slides back along the backseat, buckles her seatbelt.  Janet puts the car in drive, checks her mirrors, turns on her blinker and gets back on the road.

And David Gray sings on.

Romance

This Thanksgiving week I was lucky enough to get to meet up for dinner and a movie with one of my oldest friends that lives out of town but was home for the holiday.

Here we are:  Me and Miss Eden (again, this is just one of my favorite pics of us--- it wasn't from this weekend though)

We were talking about the movie Brave and I stated that I liked the direction Disney was going in with their female characters.  Eden told me that she missed the classic Disney characters.  I quickly went on a rant about what was Disney teaching little girls back then... that your life is miserable and that you are doomed until your Prince Charming comes along and then at last all is perfect and right with the world?

Eden being the eternal romantic that she is quickly called my rant out for what it was:  "Karstee, you sound so jaded right now!"

We had a laugh and then we left it at that.

The next night I was cozying up in bed reading Les Miserables when I came upon this little jem:

"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in.  Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other.  Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.  The rest is the rest, and comes afterwards."

I love this... and this is how I know that I am not as jaded as I sometimes come across.  Just as I made the argument last February with an old co-worker about what constitutes romance, I believe I am a student of the most old fashioned kind of romance, but with a modern idea of self.  You will never find me looking for love on a dating website, I will never think that a husband helping with the dishes is romantic (isn't that just common courtesy?); but I also don't think that a man comes along and everything is complete and you drive off into the sunset with birds chirping happily up in their branches and the sun setting on the previous life that you leave behind just because you've found your guy!

I do however believe in romance.  I also believe in myself.  I believe that I will find a man that complements me not completes me.

The point of this post is just to simply serve as a reminder:  You are looking for something rare, and those things take time and work!  In the meanwhile, keep believing in and cultivating your romantic side, tone down the jaded cynicism, but keep a healthy dose of realism!

Grateful

                                                    ♫ "You should listen to your heart
                                                      It's going to tell you what you need
                                                     Take care of yourself
                                                    And don't you worry about me" ♪

About a month ago I got to meet one of my favorite singer-songwriters: Tristan Prettyman!  I had left a comment on one of her pictures on instagram, welcoming her to Denver and saying that I wished I could be at her show but only had enough money budgeted for her album.  Lo and behold, she responded within minutes telling me she'd put me on her guest list.  It was amazing, and her performance was great!  I got to meet her after the show and I was so happy!

 

Sit back, because I am about to tell you why I am so starstruck by this amazing person! 

The first time that I saw Tristan Prettyman perform was in 2008, my dear friend Andrea asked if I wanted to venture out to Boulder to see Tristan's show.  I had seen Tristan's name on iTunes but had never listened to any of her music before that night.  She was amazing live!  I fell in love with her music and oddly enough her whole vibe!  The lyrics, the crowd interaction, the way the people in the crowd danced (which I started calling hippie dancing).  It was magical.

That night after the show my friend and I were driving back home from Boulder and it was snowing a blizzard!  David called while we were driving and it was a short conversation since I was driving and it was snowing, I didn't know it at the time but it was one of the very last conversations I would have with him.  I didn't know that my whole world was about to flip turn upside down and I didn't know that the friend sitting next to me in the passenger seat (that I had just barely reconnected with) was going to be one of my rocks over the next few years.

** Here's a pic of us (doesn't have anything to do with anything in this post, other than it is just my favorite pic of us, it's blurry, but I still love it!):

I also, didn't know that Tristan Prettyman was going to be a rock of a different kind.  Listening to her music was therapeutic, yes there was a song that I used in an indulgent way that made me dwell on things (♪ And if this sadness won't ever leave, I guess I'll build it a home so it has a nice place to stay), but at the time that was what I needed.  And when I moved into a different phase of grieving or letting go or fooled myself with inappropriate crushes (♪ I've seen things from a different view, and I realized all the things I already knew-- your not for me, you know I don't think that you'll ever be good for me, or ♫ Well I just want to laugh my way through life, and ♪ Gonna let it all roll right past me cause when I'm here I'm always happy), I'd find a new song of hers that spoke to me in that phase!

With her latest album, I feel like I have been invested in her own journey.  Through her blog and through her instagram she shares so much of her story and how she got to the lyrics that manifested themselves into an album!

Tristan is the walking embodiment of how good "letting go" looks!  Letting go of the things that have been done to us, the wrongs that people commit against us, and all the negative stuff that can build up.  She channels it into writing, into giving, into yoga, and who knows what else?

I know that I have been processing stuff that went down in 2008 for what seems like FOREVER!  If it feels like that to you guys, my 9 readers, trust me it feels double that to my own self.  Nothing is more frustrating than holding yourself to other people's timelines,  or to feel like you are never making progress, or to feel like this one thing is going to destroy you if you can not figure out how to let go of it,  or to finally feel like you are making progress only to have a setback out of the blue.  Lately though, I feel like I finally get it.  That same friend that I went to Tristan's show with in 2008 recently met up with me for a coffee, she told me something along the lines of... "You are never going to be able to bury it, it's always going to resurface in one way or another so quit trying to bury it... what happened is a part of you."

So when Tristan asks, ♫ "If you could go anywhere, what would you see?  Take a step in any direction... just make believe!" I can see where I want to go, and I know it's within reach, and I know that along the journey I will have a good soundtrack and really good company!