The movie Boy. Not just the film itself, which is fantastic, but experiencing it as part of the Portland International Film Festival. It was my first time at PIFF, seeing a whole new community of people serious about an art form, and they’ve been here all along, right in my town.

The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Michael Hecht.
In this book Hecht helps us out of the stew of cultural assumptions we spend our lives cooking in, explains various ingredients in the broth, and shows some ways our particular stew differs from recipes prevalent in other places and times. The reader stands refreshed and dripping. The book is frequently funny and profoundly smart.

The audiobook of True Grit, as read by Donna Tartt. No, I haven’t yet seen the Coen Brothers movie. Right now I’m just falling into the voice; both the narrative voice, Mattie Ross as created by Charles Portis, and Donna Tartt’s very effective rendering thereof. A whole worldview, concisely and amusingly evoked.

And since I saw them a few weeks back, I can’t stop listening to The Handsome Family, whose music brilliantly combines doleful and joyful. I don’t know how they do it but I’m very glad they do.

But here are three good things, as a counterweight:

• Tales of the Madman Underground, which I read on the plane coming home, thanks to Sharyn. Craziness and mutual aid. Harshness and humor. Small-town Ohio. I adore this book, and have already quoted from it to my Ohioan mother, specifically this line: “But I’d been raised pure Ohio: the Zeroth Commandment was Thou Shalt Not Be Any Trouble to Anybody Ever.”

• Florence and the Machine. I heard them for the first time today, and I’m listening as I type.

• Writing comics that I know will be drawn by amazingly talented people, and being kind of able to picture how they’ll come to life on the page, but knowing, too, that the aforesaid amazingly talented people will surprise me.

“Good can’t help but do a little Evil
Evil can’t help but do a little Good.”

And I know what Tom Waits looks like, but despite that, I’m gonna find it hard not to visualize the form Fluorescent Hill gave him the next time I listen to one of his albums.

Unrelated, except insofar as estate sales evoke melancholy almost by definition: I was pleased to discover that I could get Little Sue albums on emusic, and it made me realize that my music collection is currently underrepresented in moody alt-country. Suggestions?

What gives this mess some grace unless it’s kicks, man/Unless it’s fiction

It took me back in time. Not because it was around when I was a teenager, but because it made me feel like one.

Used to be, any time I fell in love with a song, I’d take the lyrics and construct an interpretation that made the song about me, or something I was obsessing about.

This morning, I knew, intellectually, that Okkervil River was not actually singing about:

– not knowing where a story is going and feeling smothered by your lack of ability to articulate it (What pulls your body down, and that is quicksand/So, climb out quick, hand over hand/Before your mouth’s all filled up)

– the idiot conviction that once you do find the flow, often by somehow psyching yourself out (What picks you up from down unless it’s tricks, man? )

– that you’ll somehow know for all future stories (When I been fixed, I am convinced that I will not get so broke up again)

– and that the writing will be amazing, even though it won’t be easy (What a dream in the dark/About working so hard)

I knew they weren’t singing about any of those things. Didn’t matter. Any lyrics that didn’t fit, I mentally elided. Just like back in the day, I transformed “Dancing in the Dark,” minus some less-than-relevant verses, into a song sung from the point of view of a dateless middle schooler bemoaning her fate while scribbling away on Susan Cooper-inspired fanfic. (I’m sick of sittin’ round here trying to write this book/I need a love reaction)

This capacity to insert myself into a song was also good for writing critical analyses of literary works — and, come to think of it, I’d often use the same technique of simply ignoring any aspects of the narrative that didn’t fit my interpretation. (This went over with varying degrees of success, depending on my level of persuasiveness and the professor’s own convictions about the work.)

Y’all, what songs have you appropriated for your own purposes?

So let me tell you about my dumb problem. No, really, it is a dumb problem.

I have playlist block. Specifically, I have workout playlist block.

I know there are fabulous songs out there that would help increase my heart rate on the elliptical trainer or get me through one more set of curls.

Yet I end up resorting to songs that have been on my workout mix since said mix was on cassette (seriously): Beastie Boys, Fishbone, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Etc.

And it’s not that I don’t have newer music! I do! Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Eagles of Death Metal, Franz Ferdinand, M.I.A., the Gossip, Okkervil River. Etc.

But when I scroll through my library, I’m paralyzed: is this song fast enough? Will it sound good next to that one? “Just put a lot of songs on; if you don’t like one, you can skip it,” says practical Steve. But! But! Which songs??

Guide me, Internet friends. Favorite fast workout songs? Songs that start slow and get faster are good, too.

Earlier today, someone was congratulating me for the Oregon Book Award nomination for Rules and some other things on the librarian side that I haven’t blogged about. I thanked her. She said: “This has been a great year for you!”

I smiled, or tried to. “Mostly,” I said.

Lots of good things have happened to me this year, and I’m both honored and grateful.

But whatever else 2008 has been and will be, it is, for me, the year my father died.

I know that based on his lyrics, John Darnielle’s feelings about his stepfather are just about the opposite of my feelings about my dad.

But tonight that line rang so true and so hard that the tears came. Again.

I am gonna make it through this year.

If it kills me.

I rode along, saying “On your left, pardon me, thank you” to the occasional pedestrians who looked a bit surprised that a cyclist was actually using the path, listening to the nearby traffic, feeling smug and empowered.

That feeling only intensified when I got back relatively close to home — Grant Park — and discovered that, it being Friday night at the beginning of the school year, there was a football game going on, and the band was playing.

They were playing this**:

(Okay, they didn’t have three cellos and a full orchestra. But it sounded pretty sweet from a marching band, too.)