Posts from the “Music Videos” Category

So td and I have been busy with unwriterly things on our respective continents. The past weeks have been filled with managing life, as is sometimes necessary.

td and Robin have been packing up house (and office and business) and moving from the city to a smallish town about two hours outside of Melbourne. I’ll leave it to her to fill us in on the details, but it has been quite a lot of work what with the packing and cleaning house 1 and cleaning house 2 and unpacking.

I’ve been playing nursemaid and companion to my mom several days each week. Just a few weeks shy of her 75th birthday, she took a tumble up the back steps (because that’s how we do things), breaking her left wrist and left knee cap. Both required surgery and are in immobilizing splints. Needless to say, she isn’t going anywhere or doing much of anything for herself. Before her fall, Mom, my sister, and I had planned a couple of road trips for May and then Mom was supposed to come spend a few days with me.

Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid family vacations.

Having experienced a few family vacations, I may file that tip away for future use.

The good news is that td and I are excited about our new piece of fiction, which we are working on in tandem. It may be different from our other stories, but then again many of our other stories are different from each other. The story begins with two best friends on a road trip through the desert. If there are no other interruptions from life, the universe, or the like we plan to have it done and out this summer.

And we should be here more regularly!

Today I Started Loving You Again

td Whittle

Posted on June 26, 2012

My dress sense was exceptional, even back then.

My fav cowgirl combo, with white tights and panda shoes, circa 1969

Nostalgia is a funny thing. I find, as I age, it becomes funnier still, or perhaps curiouser and curiouser is a more apt phrase. With some regularity these days, my long-term memory tosses up random files from the Life Narrative Archives of my brain.

Of course, if we are honest with ourselves, Freud and I both know that this memory selection-process is not random at all. These moments of reverie are triggered by my present life looping back to my past in subtle but poignant ways. Sometimes, it’s the way sunlight slices through a room at a particular time of day; or the texture of a shirt I’ve dug out of my closet, that’s still wrinkled from its last wear; or the feel of a sandy wind blowing across my face, on a certain patch of beach, at high tide.

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Had a Great Time, Wish I’d Survived!

td Whittle

Posted on June 14, 2012

My introduction to the idea of a zombie apocalypse came early, as I was not yet four years old when my parents loaded my older sis (who was six) and me into the back seat of the family car and headed off to the local drive-in to see Night of the Living Dead. We watched the terror unfold as most children do, with our eyes peeping through our fingers, and frightened squeals spluttering from behind our palms. At random moments, my mother would take exception to some grotesquery and slap at our heads, ordering us to “get down, don’t look!” which would prompt my sister to assert herself as the elder sibling by shoving a pillow over my face – ostensibly to protect me…

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Dreams

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on December 17, 2011

Isn’t that plane flying awfully low…

Listening to the radio the other day I was surprised to hear a story about stilt walking. I was even more surprised to be taken back to a recurring childhood dream. In the dream I’m standing in our yard just off the front porch when a man on stilts rounds the corner from the back yard. Sometimes it was my father on the stilts, sometimes some other man (or men); I either don’t remember (or never knew) who. The feeling the sight evoked was a mixture of beguilement and distress. Although the sight of someone on stilts was exciting, it was also somehow just wrong. That memory started me thinking about the other recurring dreams I’ve had–and there have been several, aside from the naked at church/school/work dreams and the forgot to study for finals/go to class all semester/show up for work dreams.

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Slouching Toward Christmastime

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on December 11, 2011

spirited coffee

“The Angels were all singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting wind up the sun and moon Or curb a runaway young star or two.”
~Lord Byron

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Walking beside us was Nina Simone

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on December 3, 2011

This is a shelf in my medicine cabinet. I couldn’t tell you exactly when it became so, to put it politely, non-utiliariarian. It holds a postcard from a coffee shop that no longer exists, a postcard from a place I’ve never been, my everyday perfume, a couple of Escada perfume samples I rarely wear because they’re a bit heady for my daily life and, the newest edition, a box of worry dolls. The dolls, a gift from the last hotel I stayed in, are supposed to take away worry and allow peaceful dreams and came with instructions to transfer one worry into each doll before bedtime. Of course my first thought was I’m going to need a bigger box of dolls.

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Anticipation

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on July 23, 2011

While this music makes me a bit anxious, the video is trippy fun to watch. Mostly I’m looking forward to the movie, Another Earth. And I suppose this anxiety-inducing music is appropriate both for the unsettling mood of the movie trailer and for the anticipation.

Midweek Music – Mid-90s Edition

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on June 23, 2011

I have to say I didn’t even know that Milla Jovovich sang, but there she is at 18, looking almost exactly the same as she does today, in a video from 1994. It got me thinking about what music I was listening to during that period and the answer was a little of everything. Except maybe grunge. Nothing against the Seattle Sound, I just sort of missed it the first time around. Here’s a sampling of the what I do remember from the mid-90s. Omitting the Wagner.