Through My Eyes: A Journal

By Liz Root

Contact Liz by emailing her at liz@vagrantcafe.com

Archives

8/30/2003
the fact is that this moment, this current revelation, will soon be only a memory. and eventually you will enter into eternity, and what does this moment become then? this moment leaves me with two options it seems. live, or don't. find some meaning, or numb myself. i have to be honest and say that i too often choose to numb myself. sometimes it's easier not to feel. okay, most of the time it's easier not to feel. most of the time i'm exhausted from that question that sits at the bottom of my spirit.

all day, every day, this aching, this longing, this question - it gnaws. it gnaws at every part of me. i can feel it crawling beneath my skin, under ny nails, behind my eyes, on the tip of my tongue. some days are worse than others.
- liz r. - 11:10:57 PM


"I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand." - Annie Dillard

if you ever get a chance to read Dillard's "Holy the Firm", i suggest you do so immediately.

***

i drove west on Leavenworth, with Radiohead's "Kid A" playing in my cd player. something was in the air. you see, today was the first sign of the season to come, and with it came that sense of nostalgia/hope/depression/memories/eternity/romance. all the lingering desires that you can never quite shake. a young prostitute, probably younger than me, walked down the left side of the street, carrying a plastic shopping bag. cars passed, she was alone. i was off to the big chain bookstore to spend too much money. i just wonder how/why we all get to where we are.
- liz r. - 10:55:09 PM

8/26/2003
this post will be a little more, "here's what i did, who i saw, where i went" than general thoughts about things.

this weekend my friend jared (www.jaredneher.com) and i drove to st. louis to see radiohead with my friend kevin (www.kevspace.net). we left saturday evening around 6:30 and got to st. louis aroudn 1 a.m. i think. the trip went pretty quickly actually, due to lots of conversation. unfortunately, i felt like i wasn't contributing enough to the conversation. my overall conversation skills have been highly lacking lately, though i'm not sure why.

sunday morning we got up and went to church. it was all right, though i did like the pastor a good deal (who looks eerily similar to brandon ebel). i was forced to do small talk with a ton of people i don't know, which always puts me in a weird mood. after church, kevin, jared and i headed to the Delmar Loop as the st. louis kids call it. it has a lot of cool shops, bookstores, coffee houses, etc. so we just kinda walked around a bit, though it was pretty hot outside. i found some more annie dillard books to add to the collection, including a first edition of "encounters with chinese writers." i also picked up a couple cds at vintage vinyl: royksopp - melody a.m., and some billie holiday cd. loveliness. after that, we headed back to kevin's for some nap-time before the radiohead show.

the radiohead show: 'twas amazing. kind of surreal. like, it still doesn't really hit me that i saw radiohead. the sound was good, they played for about two hours, but don't ask me what songs, i'm pretty terrible w/song names. jared saw some kids he knew from minneapolis. so we all watched the show together. the lighting was great, and the video was cool as well. (don't you love my descriptive words? "nice" and "cool." i suck.) the band members seemed to be in good moods and enjoying their time up there on the big stage. after radiohead, it took us about an hour (literally) to get out of the parking lot. but i suppose that's what happens when 15,000 people leave somewhere at the same time.

back to kevin's, and we all pretty much went to sleep right away. poor kevin was only gonna get about 5 hours of sleep b/c he had to get up at 6 a.m. for work. sucks to be kevin. jared and i slept til around 10 a.m. or so, and then left to meet some of his minneapolis friends at Blueberry Hill for some breakfast. cool restaurant...pretty famous i guess. lots of famous musicians and entertainers come through there, and the owner has a picture of himself with all of them. from jerry seinfield, to the white stripes to maya angelou. hundreds of framed photographs, no lie. he's a slave to pop culture, and also has many collections, from 90210 to south park to comic books to rolling stone magazines, etc. it's really crazy.

after that, jared and i decided we couldn't be in st. louis and not see the famous arch, so off we went downtown, paid our 6 dollars for parking, and went and saw that beast of an arch. it's very um...arch-ey. however, that part of town is really nice to look at, lots of good architecture and a nice park. lots of old people everywhere, too, which i felt sorry for them b/c it was around 100 degrees yesterday, and i just don't like to see really old people out in the heat i guess.

jared and i hung out awhile and then decided it was time to hit the road. i think it took about an hour just to get out of st. louis and all its suburbs. we stopped at QT for some cheap fountain drinks...lemon lime gatorade is the nectar of the gods when you're in a car with no a/c. and to prove how dehydrated we were, neither of us had to use the restroom until we got to kansas city three hours later. and i had a 44 oz. cup of the stuff. ("44 ounces? how could *you* drink 44 ounces of anything??" (name that movie) we made a pit-stop in KC's westport district for some dinner at the jerusalem cafe. really, nothing like a plate of pita, hummus, and baba ganough (sp?). we then walked around a bit, jared found a cd he'd been looking for about a year, and then we got some coffee at the broadway cafe, which is somewhere i'd hang out at often, if i ever live in KC.

the way from KC to Omaha was a nice drive, though spooky at times. dark, stars on one side of the sky, lightning on the other, with jared's crazy scary music in the background. however, it fit the mood perfectly. i ended up driving jared's car from kc to omaha, and i tend not to talk much when i'm driving. it kind of puts me into quiet-mode, though i didn't really talk much from st. louis to kc, either. i guess i just needed to give the mind a rest.

so anyway...that was my trip. it was a really good weekend, nice to experience some new things, see some new places and spend time with friends. oh, and see RADIOHEAD. try not to be jealous.
- liz r. - 5:02:02 PM