These songs are from Another Green World, which battles Sigur Ros' Agaetis Byrjun for the coveted spot of being my favorite album of all time.





"Everything Merges With The Night" is the penultimate track to the album. I suppose it fits, since the entire record has this lovely, serene texture to it, and this song gives the best representation of that serenity. I've been listening to it over and over again this morning, and... it is having a calming effect on me. Something that I've probably needed as of late.

At least it does while the song is playing. Then "Spirits Drifting" comes along and sounds just like the title, and I suddenly become distressed. I then hit back, and I hear the beginning of "Everything Merges..." all over again, and I feel better again. It is beautiful.

I've written about "The Big Ship" a lot, and mostly I just rewrite my interpretation of it over and over again. But it's the one song that so clearly evokes an image in my head, and so I feel more of a connection to it and thus--I mention it all the time.

Right now what I'm imagining is a country kid from the mid-19th century, one who knows only the world that surrounds his cottage. He goes out exploring the countryside, and after a long journey he stumbles upon a river, and just as he arrives this large ocean liner comes streaming down past him. He has never seen a ship before, much less one this size, and can hardly fathom how it would fit along this river. But there it is, as large and as graceful as anything he's ever seen in his life. And suddenly the thought strikes him that this might be the most perfect image he'll ever see. Then the moment passes, and the liner fades out of sight, and he realizes that he will most likely never see such beauty again. And even while realizing he could not have done anything differently, a small tinge of regret suddenly hits him.

---

It was my brother's birthday yesterday.

For whatever reason, I have always thought that whenever someone in my immediate family had a birthday, I would subsequently have a bad day. I think it started years and years ago, when I noticed a trend that at some point one of my parents would always yell at me whenever my siblings had a birthday party.

Yesterday wasn't bad. But it was difficult.

My diet as of late has mostly consisted of cough drops I have lying around. And just about everything else has seemed completely unappealing, to the point where I'm just going back to the cough drops. I don't think I'm sick anymore. I'm just used to the taste of cough drops, I suppose.

Of course, yesterday being a birthday meant that I had to actually force myself to eat, once at the birthday dinner and again when the birthday cake was brought out. The dinner itself wasn't bad, but I couldn't bring myself to eat more than half of it. The cake was... well, I made the cake, to start. I got bored while putting frosting on so I slapped a Twinkie on top and then fashioned a face out of it using Froot Loops and 2 mirroring candy canes as a handlebar mustache. Unfortunately, I don't know if it was the Twinkie bit I got on top that made it difficult to eat or what, but... somehow, I had myself my first bad piece of cake.

So, that's a first.