I don't care if you read this.

Demon cupid from Artemis last week

Wye Oak, Civility
The Beatles, The Beatles

I've been trying to make myself listen to this Wye Oak CD all week now. It's become a meaningless personal challenge, the sort of absurd mission that separates the amateurs from the professionals, and by professional - I've been working on this - means not that you make money at it. You can make money doing a lot of stupid things, in fact I've made the most money in my life doing the stupidest things in that category. Professional, and professor too, find the power in the verb, to profess which is but a letter away from process which is close to progress.

F, C, and G are the three chords upon which most Beatles songs are built. I asked Maya what Beatles song we should learn together and she was markedly cagey about it, but I am not letting it go so she offered up "Dear Prudence." That one is pretty much D F C G with a couple of different G's and D's, none that I can't handle alone; it's just when you string them together is when it gets difficult. I have come to embrace that I am an amateur musician at best and that my professionalism comes in (arguably) after the music is made and released into the world. And when you look at music, writing about it is a bit absurd, meaningless, requiring a profession to do so, whereas the amateur enjoyment of music is practically innate.

I'm not sure what question I'm trying to answer with all this, but I suppose that's why blogging is so enjoyable. It's unabashed. It is amateur and professed. It's open. I supposed I'm answering the NYT blogging is dead article, a haughty pronouncement from a newspaper, but then I haven't read it past the caption where it s says "so-and-so used to blog but he Facebook's now" and I know immediately that they are missing the point, conflating the medium and the verbal state of using that medium. It matters to the medium-providers because they sell you trinkets along life's journey, bags of Cheetos at the gas station on the way to seeing the Grand Canyon of professing yourself into the air.

(This discussion was interrupted by a meeting to talk about changing domains (literally and figuratively) and How We Do Things and then a lunch and discussion about this very thing)

So yeah, I still want to listen to Wye Oak, the spirit is willing but the flesh is week and the clock is running out maybe. Listening (that's all I really do anyway, listen) to "Dear Prudence" backs up my suspicion that the song is both simpler and harder than I think and so is anything I ever profess to want to do and though I will never see a dime off of learning to play "Dear Prudence" with my daughter - unless I come up with a way to sell a story about it - but it will be like all professions, processing, and progressions, a means to transcend these early bounds and see everything from the sky.

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The Cheetos made me think of something that happened at the grocery store last night: I was filling up the conveyor belt with stuff when I noticed an older black woman in front of me having trouble with her card. They went back and forth while I loaded up things until the cashier presented her with a receipt "It says declined" I was still in my own head when she walked off and I though to ask how much her bill was. "Like $18" said the cashier as she pulled a Coke and a bag of Cheetos and some yogurt for the morning out of her bag. $18 was a drop in the bucket of what I was buying, what I am fortunate to be able to buy for I have gotten that same little recipt from the cashier for a similar bundle, and looked to see if I could catch the lady to pay for it myself, but she'd gone. I felt terrible - an old lady should be able to have Cheetos and a Coke if she wants one at 7:15 at goddamn Wal-Mart - but it was already 7:15, longer than I'd planned to spend in there.

The cashier tried to undo the purchases to ring up my truckload of purchases but the register wouldn't let her. She hollered out for a manager but none came, no one was at the desk. Nothing worked; she didn't know what to do and I had all my stuff sitting there. I'm not sure I could even get it all back into the cart at that point. After 10 more minutes, the guy in line behind me started having some sort of allergy attack. We all needed to get out of here, but a vortex had opened under that old lady being denied her Cheetos. I wanted to just buy her bag of groceries anyway just to get through it, but it was too late for that; we were stuck in the brink until the cashier figured out some way to cancel each item as a seperate order. I thought she was going to break one of her carefully painted nails. I thought the guy behind me was going to start crying, though I guess it was the allergies.

Finally, the system corrected itself and in the tight embrace of equillibrium I was divested of $182 - noting that her $18 would've made the even $200 to which I thought this all would come -  and cast rolling into the night. I don't know what all this says. I don't care if you read this. I wouldn't blame you if you weren't. There are a million horrible facts about myself being revealed in each sentence, I'm sure, and it would probably be in my best interest to not say any of this, but here it is - professed, processed and progressed from.