104

"and love will protect you to the edge of the wood.
and a monster will get you, and love does no good."

103

"i haven't got time for this mickey mouse bullshit!"

102

101

#33 on list of slightly creepy and alliterative
things i should probably not like:

taxidermy tableaux




or
"holy noah's nutty-as-a-fruitcake ark."

100

99

"a sea black with ink."

98

97

96

should:
listen to something besides kaki king,
tell you where to get off,
build a backbone.

95

i unashamedly love this goddamn song.

COLD! AS! ICE!

94

93

i missed a day and all i did was:
- bake cookies
- think about "milk" a lot
- go to a pre-hannukah party
- build an ikea desk
- drive around
- visit my old work
- agghhhh
- think a lot about you
- double agghhhh

92

91

i chopped off all my hair. no, really. all of it.

90

this is going to be harder than i thought. all of it.

89

"gonna get on that airplane and wave bye bye bye bye bye bye. bye bye baby. well baby, bye bye. bye bye baby. well, so long, next time. so long, next time."

88

yesterday i took a walk in the snow and ate french fries with my gloves on. today i just feel sad.

87

humor me, a california girl, for a few minutes.

a propos,
a new beautiful track from jack frankland, titled "icy."

86

there's a town about 15 minutes away from home that is called "the cats" in spanish. i go there sometimes to drink coffee and peer into antique shops with my mother. it always seems to rain. i don't know. i've been thinking about that a lot today. los gatos. the cats. it was supposed to snow today and it did a little, only a few lazy little snowflakes falling. as kara called it, "total sad charlie brown snow." they never touched the ground, i don't think. there's so much i want to do and i think i'm going to do it all.

85

accomplishments of today:

1. read dystopian novel against better judgment
2. returned books to library
3. ate crackers in bed
   

84

dear will robinson sheff,

there is something endlessly beautiful about the way words spill out of your mouth. there is something in that tripping rhythm that i would like to speak myself, like every phrase could fall out from between my teeth like some ship tipping over a wave. how do you do it? from "in ghosts, lit by moonlight or dawning" to "at quiet of midnight, cold and dim, they say," no, really.

love,
yael.

83

two good things:

1. this time next week i will be home. home home home.
2. "seas too far to reach"
   

82

fuck this shit (as personified by a sad harmonica-laden instrumental track by belle & sebastian).

81

dear will sheff,

"and you're out singing songs, and i'm down shouting names at the flickerless screen, going fucking insane. am i losing my cool? overstating my case? well, baby, what can i say?"

goshhhhhhh.

also just felt like saying that the daytrotter bookery has seen me through the past month, you have a lovely reading voice. and as for your subterranean song answers, i think katie nanna from mary poppins aka the bride of frankenstein is a perfectly acceptable secret shame crush. mine was that guy who played jesus of nazareth. although i never saw him play jesus of nazareth. i saw him play in this british spy thriller where he had to stalk the moors and then an adaptation of a george bernard shaw play and mostly he was just gaunt and dylan-y looking the whole time. anyway.

what i was going to say is that it has been well over three (at least, i think, maybe four?) years since i first heard "a stone" and it still just rips me up inside. thanks.

love,
yael.

80

dear will sheff,

you're all lit up. i wish i didn't love this song as much as i do.

love,
yael.

79

"bruce wayne campbell interviewed on the roof of the chelsea hotel, 1979" still reminds me of this summer, of sitting in the backseat as my father drives back from carmel, heading north on the freeway with the sky turning pink. first there are the dunes and the seaside pines and the eucalyptus trees and the grubby ground cover with little purple flowers. there's a little airport by the side of the highway and there's a mangled shell of a crashed plane lying in a field, and five different barns ready to tip right over, and row after row of garlic and beetroot, artichokes and strawberries, leafy and green with the sprinklers waving lazy arms of water. and then it's dark and there's a winding line of headlights, coming and going, and i know the hills are all yellow even in the dark, and i hear in my ear will sheff singing, "the warmth from the space lights illumines the sea as the laughingest mouths wetly open, but we set them sighing," and then i know i'm home, the stars hold me in all around, i forget the ground, i forget the crawling way real people sometimes are.

78

today was my last radio show. that's a little bittersweet but it gave me a chance to self-indulgently play my favorite songs. you can download the whole two hour show here.

77

i. mirah - 'apples in the trees'

ii.

76

thankfully not at this level of crazy
yet.

75

dear bill callahan,

"i guess everybody has their own thing that they yell into a well."

i don't know. i don't think i'm loud or angry enough to yell "fuck all y'all" into a well. i might go for a "well, um" (oh wow, seriously no pun intended) or a "goodbye?" though.

love,
yael.

74

"you don't know me, but i know you (you don't know me)
you have no idea what i do (what i do)"
(lyrics made much less menacing
by a well-placed banjo)

73

this was yesterday
in a few weeks

72

1. motorcycle jacket/"leader of the pack"
2. otis redding telling me to stay in school, also telling me i am wise.
   
3. ryan adams is right, california casts long shadows. also heartwarming is his mechanical bear collection and celebration of jewish holidays.
4. when i watch murder mysteries with my parents, we have this rule where we can only eat chocolate after the murder is committed. because there is always build up and suspense and then the murder, and there is always chocolate.

71

1. braving retail therapy
2. totally therapeutic, by the way
3. otis redding on vinyl
4. chocolate pecan tart
5. poirot + hastings
   

70

i'm thankful for my family and my friends
being home and having a home
finding the wilco book for $5 instead of $30
just because the cd is missing

69

"you're a fool and i'm sorry that six years down the road, you still can't separate what you wanted then from what you want now."

68

i'm home! i'm home i'm home i'm home! i hugged my parents and my cat and i'm home!

67

here are my shoes.
and my legs.
tomorrow i'm going home!

66

this photograph reminds me of home. it's henri matisse, taken by henri cartier-bresson. at home we have a big framed poster of it in the hallway, from an exhibit in tel aviv. before i left, my mom found a postcard of it, somehow. it hangs by my bed.

65

"So you can see
For yourself
If you don't believe me

There's so much less
To this than you think"

64

dear bonnie-prince-will-palace-billy,

you are awesome in the truest sense of the word -- like, you inspire awe. not only with that glorious moustache, but just in general. i am honestly a little terrified of you. but you are still (perhaps even more so because of it) amazing. oh my god, insane. please do not bare your teeth at me.

this is not all i see,
love,
yael.

63

i never post about television, but how could abc cancel pushing daisies? it's beautiful and morbidly funny and lee pace is just about the most handsome man on tv now (minus jon hamm, oh, don draper, it is so hard to hate you) and this week's episode featured a nod to arrested development ("you're magicians?" "illusionists!"). ugh, why?

62

this isn't funny at all. i've always hated math and now everything is numbers.

61

this time next week, this time next week.

60

"I want a good life
With a nose for things
A fresh wind and bright sky
To enjoy my suffering"

59

my mom used to read me "little bear" when i was young. except in hebrew, it was called "doobe-dov." i think he made a space-suit out of a box. i remember he made birthday soup, too.

58

throwing away the pomegranates my parents sent me

there were two of them left, red and pink and tan, nestled in a bed of bubble wrap and cardboard. at first, i didn't eat them because i had already eaten three. i broke them open carefully, juice feathering in the lines of my palms. and then, i didn't eat them because i couldn't, because they reminded me too much of home, this cardboard box on the bottom shelf of my bookcase, with those two pomegranates like dumb red eggs unhatched. and so i carried them to the backyard, to the garbage bin and its gaping mouth ready to gobble up scraps of paper and fruit flies and pomegranates alike. i didn't think of opening them each fall with my father, the tap of a knife against the edge of a metal sink and the soft ghostly bodies of rotten seeds floating in a bowl of water. i didn't think of my mother, and how she'd packed them so carefully, so that they wouldn't crack and bleed before they reached me. i didn't think of anything at all. i went to bed at three in the afternoon, and woke up feeling like someone had cut me open and emptied me out, like two rocks at the bottom of a ditch.

57

this song, and backsliding, not in the hellfire and brimstone kind of way, but in the way that makes it hard to get out of bed, hard to do anything at all.

56

two videos that i have been watching all week and that give me goosebumps (each in their own good way):

that's kind of it.

55

"i'm always in love" jeff tweedy (2-28-99) lounge ax, chicago

i really love wilco. i mean, really. i have a hard time talking about it but i try anyway and most people get this kind of wary look in their eyes when i bring up jeff tweedy because, well. yeah. but this live, solo acoustic version of "i'm always in love" from 1999 -- it physically hurts me. i don't know quite what. maybe it's the simple chords and the way they grow quiet and then loud again, or maybe it's jeff's voice, on the scratchy side of a warm echo. maybe it's that this song, which was so beautiful and upbeat and charming on "summerteeth," suddenly seems so much more earnest and soft, like "if this is only a test, i hope i do my best" makes me just want to cry. that's about it, really.

54

"wilco will love you, baby."

53

take the time.

there's this moment in "i am trying to break your heart" where jeff tweedy starts playing "poor places" on an acoustic guitar and the chords make it hard for me to swallow. with the time change, it's no longer dark when i wake up and this morning there is all this light filtering through the tree branches. i feel a little empty, a little buzzing. i can never tell if it's "my father's voice trailing off" or "dreaming of." oh, "someone ties a bow in my backyard to show me love" just makes me want to carry loops of string in my pockets just in case.

52

ryan, sing it: "i'm so very tired and i wanna come home. everything inside me, it cant hide me, i'm expired, i've got nothing to show. whatever's on the outside's knocking, you better let it in. whatever's on the inside's dying out, am i gonna lose your love? am i gonna lose your love? am i gonna lose your love? am i gonna lose your love?" love, yael.

51

it's windy outside.

50

creepy. also the harmonica in the elected's "desiree" and weirdly warm weather after a storm and oh my god wanting to take a pill and vacuum the whole house and go to sleep.

49

I.

dear will sheff,

i can't believe you're playing cafe du nord the day before i come home. not like i could go anyway, seeing as i'm only like three months twenty, but still. and the night before that, you're playing and talking about music at herbst theatre. how could you do this to me? how could you be so awesome and yet so two days early?

of course, i forgive you. show those sf folks a good time while i'm taking finals.

love,
yael.

PS. kudos on finally releasing that 7" with charles bissell. awesome.

II.

the outro to the american analog set's "come home, baby julie, come home."

III.

48

MAZEL TOV

47

if you are american and can, or if you haven't already, PLEASE VOTE.

46

small tragedies: i dropped my phone into someone's loogie today. since i have enough chocolate to last me a lifetime (or at least the next 3 weeks [probably]) i think i am going to spend my money on candles that smell good and pretty underwear. it's worth a try.

45

here's to me plugging my friend jack, because "blue, yellow and red" is one of the loveliest things i've heard in a long time.

44

mostly
maybe
kind of
we'll see

43

it's cool to love your family.

42

i feel like often what describes ryan adams is "nice tune, nicer t-shirt collection." except this is actually probably my least favorite on the record and his t-shirt collection is great but not as good as elliott smith's, and i really think ryan adams should stick to lots of pedal steel and great legs. he's really good at that kind of thing. ugh, what i'm trying to say is that there are not enough videos out there that adequately describe the strong points of ryan adams and if he goes on letterman, he shouldn't sing "fix it."

41

dear phil elverum,

"the heat from the closeness of me tilting towards the sun was storing up to ignite the night and light up the coldness of the cave. the billowy flames lit up my face, the thinning smoke hung in the branches waiting for wind. my front was warm, the cold backs of my arms never felt the dawn, the night was long. when the real dawn came i saw it crawl over the hill, and i felt clean. i shook my hair out in the light, i looked up and hurt my eyes on the painful powerful sky, i looked down and felt motion under me. i looked out across the freeway, at the people flying by. and i turned my head, i closed my eyes, i felt my size. i recalled my fire and my lack of dawn, my one sided warmth, i just wanted more, but i'm small, i'm not a planet at all. i'm small, i'm small, we are all."

it's pretty true.

love,
yael

40

too much!

39

dear mount eerie,

please continue to squeeze all the air out of my chest. please continue being heartbreakingly beautiful. go on, git, i said.

no flashlight,
yael.

38

"you should live how you want. stay with me, we should stay apart, just shouldn't ever have to be this hard."

37

"kid, you're on the right track. if i send you postcards from the side of the road, photographs of moving parts about to implode, if i crawl to keep it together like you say you know i can do, to transmit a moment from me to you, wouldn't mama be proud?"

36

blurghtacular megablurgher

35

you looked so young
in 1995

34

this was the first country song i ever heard. i must have been in elementary school, maybe barely. my mom owned it on a vinyl record of "texas songs" she got when she was young, far before she ever got anywhere near the united states, let alone texas. i loved it right away. t for thelma, that gal that made a wreck out of me.

33

"a sweet sweet smile that's fading fast"
it's been 5 years, elliott
i hope heaven is treating you well

32

"because we love you"

31

i need you
i don't need you
and all of that jiving around

30

3 pomegranates worth

29

dear ryan "foggy-grizzly-fuzzy-aw-shit" adams,

i find that i am almost always willing to forgive you for your ridiculous affinity for metal and creating videos with bad special effects and laugh tracks, mostly because i secretly find these traits endearing to the point where most people might find it offensive. your interest in metal is not a logical reason for me to want squeeze you 'round the middle. also you are totally allowed to write cheesy jams that include lyrics about zombies because they are secretly really great to strut around to.

give 'em radios and ears and wake 'em up with jams on,
love,
yael

28

"The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier
Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,
Head bared to the first snow flake.
Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,
You're crazier than the weather, Charlie."

"Against Winter" Charles Simic

27

26

i daydream during class a lot.
like a lot, a lot.
dangerously a lot.
whatever.

25

"all i wanna do is get down, is get down, is get down in the evening, in the evening and not wanna die tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. i'm humming like a jar full of lightning bugs, walking through a star field covered in lights, wasted like a bum with somebody's wallet, pictures inside of you and me, you and i. so past sad i'm crazy and scary, it's beautiful sorta, beautiful sorta, beautiful sorta but not."

24

i hate being sick away from home.

23

"i have been making a movie of clouds. it’s long. there are so many. and every morning they are different. i may never finish."

i am positively beaming love out of my eyeballs.

22

the answer to all of those questions is:
"way too much."

21

20

i really wish i wasn't missing 'avinu malkeinu.'

19

dear ryan adams,

sometimes i forget how great you are, how you can write things like this:

"be brave- my grandparents lived through the Great Depression and this is not that and they managed and MY WORD they were so in love. They ate love for lunch. They had enough left-overs that I go to that refrigerator in my mind and it nourishes me even now at 33, enough so that I can manage to do things like write a book or some days just keep the faith."

which is really, just very heart-warming and i am glad that someone besides me says things like MY WORD once in a while because mostly people make me feel like a grandma about that.

also things like this:


no, thank YOU.

also sometimes i forget how great your legs are and then i remember how great your legs are and, damn, ryan, you have a great pair of legs on you.

love,
yael.

18

17

i've never seen a wheat field. it makes me really sad sometimes. i'd like to think that if you were here, you'd say, okay. and then you'd drive me out to find one. but that's not you, not really.

16

dear kaki king,

i could not even describe "doing the wrong thing" to people if i tried.

love,
yael.

15

"why must i live and walk unloved as what i am?"

14

"great ghosts" the microphones

"let my undo these ropes and go on living without you
not just change where i live, go on get, i said"

13

not my desk. gosh, i am kind of a creep.
you already knew that, though.

12

el cohen,

you continue to shatter my sensibilities. snap! just like that!



THE FLY

In his black armour
the house-fly marched the field
of Freia's sleeping thighs,
undisturbed by the soft hand
which vaguely moved
to end his exercise.

And it ruined my day--
this fly which never planned
to charm her or to please
should walk boldly on that ground
I tried so hard
to lay my trembling knees.



i just keep getting crumpled.

love,
why levy