recommendations

h is for heartwrenching

i just love that antony of antony and the johnsons. so much emotion in his songs. i can't get enough of the fistful of love song, which has really sad lyrics. i looked them up after hearing the song many times and finding it really sad sounding. i wondered why it sounded so sad given what i assumed it was about. (i assumed it was another kind of fistful of love because i live in san francisco. and because i enjoy me some rad margaret cho stand up comedy. and because my hilarious, raucous lesbian, italian friend tells fisting jokes at the dinner table to 13 year-old catholic school boys {don't worry, it went right over his head. and luckily his mom, who was at another table, didn't hear. not that his catholic, wild partygirl mom would mind—ah san francisco how i love your seemingly incongruous ways.}) anyhow, my point is, it's a beautiful song. here is a wonderful youtube version. i'd love to see him live.

in other recommendations, i'm reading the zookeeper's wife and it is really good. chock full of truly amazing stories that are both uplifting and devastating at once. it's primarily about this heroic zookeeper family (of humans and other animals) in poland during the nazi brutalities, but also about other stories around them. the people in these stories show such outstanding courage, compassion and strength in the face of a (largely unimaginable to me) cruel time. because the stories are so specific and different from other stories i've read that take place in nazi-occupied countries, they really paint a picture for the reader. makes me think more about this iraq war too. just makes me, not living in the battlefield, understand a little more the terror of war (something most of us are so detached from). that part is really depressing because it makes me feel helpless and that i should be doing more, that most of us here should be doing more to resist the war (and other wars).