And She Was (Talking Heads)

Language: Italian

I don't know what it is about Talking Heads lyrics, but for some reason, like Aerosmith, they always seem to work really well when Babelpopped.

I am very nearly the last employee of the store now who isn't related to the owner. It's hard to tell if this is a good thing or not: I have, at least theoretically, money coming in for another couple of weeks that the rest of the employees don't have. On the other hand, they're all ahead of me in the finding-new-work department, having had lots more time to try to find something. So possibly I'm not better off but not worse off either, just a couple weeks later in time.

The wind-down of the store is kind of emotionally difficult. Former employees are angry about various things. Some of the few remaining part-time people are taking the opportunity to unleash varying amounts of abuse on the customers (which really is a temptation, though so far I'm pretty nice, if occasionally blunt). The customers themselves either want to tell me how sorry they are that the store is closing (which I've heard hundreds of times now and can no longer respond to with any kind of sincerity: I've never known what to say in the first place, and having to come up with something twenty times an hour is pushing me to some kind of edge or another), or they are completely oblivious about what's going on. Some of the better customer questions lately:

Are you guys hiring?
Soooooo, do you know when you'll be getting more bananas in?
Are you guys having some kind of a sale?
What do the ["Going Out of Business: Everything 20% Off"] signs mean?
How come you're out of so much stuff?
Is [item] included in the [Everything 20% Off] sale?
Are you guys really going out of business?
So, why's the store going out of business?
Do you know if you have any [item] in stock?¹

And you just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. And shake them. Until something important ruptures, and they collapse on the floor and start twitching and drooling. Some of them are, obviously, pretty close to the twitching-and-drooling thing already.

And you get angry with the customers who say "Maybe I should have shopped here more." And you get angry with the customers who say "Maybe if your prices hadn't been so expensive." And you get angry with the customers who want you to explain what went wrong, why the store didn't work out. And you feel kind of sorry for the owner and his wife, because you're well aware that they did try to make the place work, and they're no more happy about having to close the place than you are². And you're kind of pissed at the owner and his wife, because the owner, at least, was always kind of an ass to everybody -- disrespectful, dismissive, superficial, overbearing, secretive -- and it's difficult not to get pissed at people who are like that. And you're anxious whenever somebody asks you where you're going next, because you don't know, while simultaneously being pissed whenever people ask how the owners are doing and don't even seem to realize that you, also, are affected by the closing, and it's like by not asking they're telling you that you don't really count, that whatever happens to you is of no consequence compared to the OWNERS, who are actual people, worth caring about.

And so, ultimately, you wind up in a state of being nowhere in particular all day. The world is moving, and you're right there with it, and you are. Too many emotions from too many directions to deal with, so you just kind of push them off to one side somewhere and focus on giving the right change and shrugging in what you hope is a pleasant manner. And then when you get home and find out that the husband has dumped over a tray of plant cuttings that you were trying to start, everything comes up all at once in such overwhelming intensity that you literally find yourself unable to speak for half an hour.

Really not going to be able to take much more of this.

¹The answers, by the way, are:
No.
Never.
Yes.
That we're going out of business, and everything is 20% off.
Because we're going out of business.
Unless it's beer or wine, yes.
Yes.
Because it wasn't making money.
No, because I can't keep up with what we're sold-out of. Learn to fucking read.

²Though, muting your sympathy is the awareness that they have a much more substantial financial cushion than you do. They might be hit harder emotionally than you are, but they're not in any particular danger of having their electricity turned off, either.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And they found themselves in the grass,
and she could feel the respiration,
and the factory could see nearly to the main road.
She's making sure it's not dreaming,
sees that the lights of the neighboring house
are beginning to increase. The hour
to return to the concentrated one: a minute,
and the world opens its eyes.

Chorus:
It was moving, and it was right here, (and it was) with
the world; she was moving, was floating over it (and was).

And she was going to drift through the courtyard,
and dressed. Removing her
lot slowly, and moving, she was
to increase in and over the earth.
The universe enters, in that
sense: this all goes to that drift.
I'm not moving that earth on and over the yard.

(Chorus)

She was happy to doubt this purpose: without this purpose,
she isn't sure where the time has gone. No,
to think what not to say to them, that next
time they think.
That is approximately what was made.

And she was watching,
and things were similar to the film.
She has had a pleasant height, and is
moving, in all the "outside" senses.

(Chorus)

They were joining the dispersed world:
missing enough to think that's in order, all right.

Don't Worry Yourselves; He's Against Government (Talking Heads)

Language: Russian

Francis asked me yesterday how I was feeling on "Election Eve," which made me realize -- this is very nearly the feeling I used to have on Christmas Eve as a kid. Except that on Christmas Eve, I wasn't anticipating that I might unwrap a box and have my face clawed off by badgers, which is still sort of (metaphorically) a possibility here.

I voted already; held my nose and marked the Governor dot for Chet Culver, even though I don't like him, because the alternative (Jim Nussle) is ridiculous (by Iowa standards; he'd seem the sober, rational alternative to somebody in Texas). So now it's all over but the waiting. Possibly I should have waited to vote until today, so I could still feel like there was something for me to do.

(I know, I know, I could be out there helping the Democrats GOTV and calling people and knocking on doors and whatever. It's just that it's kind of tough to get real fired up about a party whose only real voting hook is that they're not the Republicans. I mean, this particular election, not being Republican is good enough for me, but the Democrats have been useless -- Supreme Court nominations, PATRIOT Act, torture, gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, estate tax, etc. -- and I don't feel it's fair to expect me to give them any more effort than they're willing to give me. Plus I have to work anyway.)

But so here we are. Hope everybody gets video games and ponies. No badgers! No badgers!

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I see clouds move through the sky; they
see me. The wind moves clouds away,
over the building, it moves clouds by
living. I want to select a building.

I smell of the pine shafts and of peaches in the woods.
Pinecones fall by the highway, which I see.
There will be a highway which goes to the building:
I'll select a building I want to move into.

[a]
It's over there (It will be over there.):
my building has each of the conveniences.
It's gonna be for my lungs: these will make a life.
I will obtain things easily after I make this; it is gonna
fell in love with itself. (I will weaken somewhat independently.)

[b]
It fell in love with some, it fell in love with some of you who will visit the building;
accept the parks, and come up those highways to me.
I will be working, but if you come visit work,
I'll make myself put it down: my friends, they are important.

[c]
Do not make your uneasiness about me.
It would not worry itself about me. I'm what
you are. Do not make your uneasiness about me,
do not make your uneasiness about me.

I see positions through this large nation;
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I examine my favorites; I think some
people think they work for me.

They fell in love; they are as valid as some. They use some civility;
therefore, they work it and they attempt it. Be strong, strong:
it is necessary to live in my building. I will be by the luckiest guy, who
has buildings for that. Soak them, so that they will go forward.

[a]

[b]

[c]

Ascending the Stack of Life (Talking Heads)

Language: Portuguese

Spent most of the last two days being held hostage in the new apartment's "office" by a couple guys who were in to put down vinyl in the kitchen and bathroom, and laminate in a hallway. This is unpleasant by itself, but it's even more unpleasant to have to take everything out of the kitchen, bathroom, and hallway every day and then put it back again after they leave. I've gotten better at stacking things, but it's depressing, too, because there's no net progress from all of this work: always previously, when I've taken stuff from one place and stacked it up somewhere else, there was an overall net increase in the amount of usable space.

They're not done; they haven't actually even started on the bathroom yet, so there'll be more of the same on Monday.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I tried that marijuana:
each time I start, I'm nervous
that he'll come to beat in the door,
because he's all, the eyes make that in me?
I don't want to know that he forgives,
and for me, pardon is
a sojourn for one.
Perhaps we never will, when that
finds another time.

I can see my stack of life, above that
return of the days. I can see the nights; I
can see that people in the street
open those windows.
One hundred wooden floors below me,
he piles up more of those houses. Above that,
they stack highly, higher, higher --
I can feel a back and forth
balancing. Building it more highly,
learning higher on this tower.

I started the harm:
pierced my eye (a pencil in that).
I can start for home backwards, or wait badly for
all that, because he is paranoid.
I only had the Scumbags' amusement,
and superstars say that their names
will make an appositive. That one
is the same as both.

I can see my stack of life above:
my bedroom reaches to the stars.
I can see the house where I was loaded.
When I was growing above that,
they say that I could never keep my trousers.
I remember that the days and nights were insane.
Are all the pirates in this ship? The people there
(if they're sober) are ascending;
the rest will have us shout, per the morning.

Shout, it cries out,
it's just you and I.
The taste of an automobile
with nobody in the wheels:
that control turns outside of the
road we are all on.
In our sexy machine
all the passengers shout of the shouting;
shout!

I can see the stack of my life above.
I can see that it is torn into pieces. That
was not an accident. It is all in.
I laugh to hear it opens its window above.

To go, "two, three, four, five,"
perhaps they go to the high one (the deep one?).
I am arresting too firmly on much of that,
and now I am growing above myself.
I started feeling funny.
Those houses pile up more highly,
they are higher, higher above the stack of
buildings. The stars of that road
turn music up . . . and
hey! I started earning a number.

Downward From the House (Talking Heads)

Language: Russian

This is the one that started everything. I don't know why I did it in the first place, but I was hooked, I think, when I noticed how dramatically different the first four lines were in meaning from the original song.

Lines like "Entirely moist -- hey you could dream," or "Furthermore: to go, it tore up the flame," were just gravy.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Watch what you could obtain after
cold babies. Strange, but no stranger.
I will be the usual guy
of grief from the house.

Not downward, hold tightly, expectation
above possession. Inside, for the nasty weather.
There has got to be expensive grief
downward from the house.

Here's your packet, ticket, bag: time to skip outside.
Transportation, here.
Closely, sufficiently, but too far (possibly you know where),
warfire with the fire.

Entirely moist – hey you could dream.
Shake down a raincoat, go for a walk in extensive daylight
of three hundred, sixty, five degrees of grief
downward from the house

It was once on the spot sometimes; it listens to itself
to go, it comes in first.
People of place on their road to work. (Baby, it made you. Furthermore:
to go, it tore up the flame.)

My house, from ordinariness
will be power. He wants not to hurt no one.
Something's confident. It is which conserved jar? It protects me from my feet of grief, downward from the house

Any visible middles of support, and you did not see anything,
but all it put together.
Me he does not know. you hope. Staring into fire, television,
warring with the fire.