here's the mutiny.

post-productive.

2012-01-08T15:36:00.001-05:00

It has been a singularly productive weekend in the D-C household, at least from my end. Mike worked all weekend, bringin' home bacon, and aside from the hour and a half I covered at another store this morning, I was off both days. It was great! Yesterday, despite sleeping late, I was able to make enough food for at least one week, if not more. I made split pea soup with leftover christmas ham, turkey noodle soup with leftover christmas turkey, and steel-cut oats with hazelnuts, raisins & golden raisins, and brown sugar for five breakfasts. I also half-cooked about 8 portions of whole wheat farfalle, half-steamed a head of cabbagge and a head of broccoli, and sautéed four sweet italian chicken sausages so that we have about four quick skillet meals there. It makes me feel a lot better about my busy week to have food all planned out. No fast food, the money's already spent, and max five minutes prep time after work. Eating food is pretty much the best time of my day every day and I am pumped to have good eats all mapped out. Last night we headed on over to the lovely neighbors' house to imbibe in some jelly jar beer drinking, apple chip eating, and olive oil tasting. It was a delicious evening-- all the better because it preceded some more productivity this morning, when the gorgeous Carrie and I made some delicious energy balls out of peanut butter, oatmeal, honey, coconut, flax seed, and mini chocolate chips. We, who labor so hard during the week, are domestic goddesses by weekend! Let the week begin!

choosing to live a settled down life

2012-01-03T22:49:00.001-05:00

is true attendance, no matter what
my migratory friends say. i embrace
the freeing irony of commitment, tell
myself my feet are rooted in rich loam,
with room to wiggle toes,
widen, expand. i may wake up
in cement shoes tomorrow,
but the poems i compose in my mind
are physical as tread marks on highway,
and my dusty floors are a published tome.
work is work and home is home and my flight is
hearth fire, my high is connection,
and my harvest is habit, pattern--
unlocking, undressing, settling in.

low resolution.

2011-12-31T18:10:00.000-05:00

It's the end of another calendar year, a year which I can barely remember. I cannot honestly claim to have spent the year constructively, but I can say I kept my head down and worked hard. I'm plumb tuckered. I have thoughts about the new year, commitments I want to make, commitments I need to make but am afraid to put into words.

For me, for my relationship, I need to work on being a more present, authentic Megan. I need to figure out how to give less of myself to my job and more of myself to my life, to my relationships. OR-- how do I live a life less compartmentalized-- a life in which I can spread myself fairly over the people and activities that need me and which give me life. How does that work?

I need to read more poetry, write more prose. Turn off the TV. Move my ass. Clean my house. Walk the dog. Purge. Play outside. Take care of myself. I need to be with family. Leave my work at work. Plan my sister's wedding. Work with my hands. Cook with vegetables. Be nicer to my husband.

I never knew 2011. And now it's gone. I can do better.

Working & Playing.

2011-06-26T16:46:00.000-04:00

I just got to spend the evening and ensuing morning with one of my best friends in the world, Darcy. We went to see Umphrey's McGee at The Lawn with our Mikes, we walked our pups around the block a couple of times, we had breakfast at Trader's Point Creamery (goat cheese & mushroom scramble with grits for her, chicken potato fritters with cottage cheese for me), and then we Goodwilled. I bought a cool chair, which I may or may not paint, and Darce bought some books.

It was so good to spend time with my dear friend. We can always pick up where we left off, we can share things with each other that we can't necessarily tell other people. She is such an easy friend, and I wish we lived closer. We always said we'd live next door to each other, she, with a houseful of welsh corgis, and me, with a houseful of babies. Well, we'll see.

Now she and her Mike are on their way home, and Walter is recuperating from his romps with Linus, and I am going to try to recharge from a difficult difficult week. I'm going to watch some tv, do some laundry, and make my Mike some food.

Tomorrow: Monday! Ugh.

Thankful Thursday

2011-06-16T19:44:00.000-04:00

It's a beautiful day today, my day off, except for a dumb and drawn out conference call at one. I spent the afternoon shopping (groceries, light jersey flyaway sweater, summer shirt, summer dress) and getting my oil changed, cleaning kitchen & dishes, and doing laundry. Now it's a gorgeous summer evening, I'm drinking freshly pressed Rwandan coffee, and watching Walter scuttle across the floor. He scuttles, lays down, scuttles, lays down... Looks up at me with big beady eyes and his fat wrinkly neck. This sort of evening reminds me of all I am grateful for....

My husband, who is a human being totally other from me, totally outside my realm of knowledge and understanding. He is such a good foil for me, so different from what and who I thought I wanted or needed in a partner. I love him, love his otherness, and love the possibilities the world holds in store for our family.

My job, which, too, is outside my original plan for my life. The company I work for is good and conscientious, the role I am in pushes me out of my comfort zone and into a place where I am pushed beyond myself, on a stage that is larger than it seems. I am rarely 100% happy, but I am always challenged relationally, creatively, and as a leader.

My family, who I love more and more the older I get. I miss them constantly.

Walter P. Cheek, the frog dog who breathed happy squirmy puppy love into my life after we lost our family dog, Shelby, last March. Walter is one third dog, one third bat, and one third piglet. He is fat and snotty and has stolen even Mike's heart.

New friends, old friends, the time and space and opportunity to be with people who fill up my tank.

My house, my '97 Monte Carlo, all of the "things" that make my life comfortable. My books.

Right now, what's figuring prominently into my good spirits is the sunshine, the breeze, the wheezing of my pup, the Real Housewives of wherever, the competing smells of clean house, incense, coffee, roasting turkey tenderloin. I am happy, right in this moment. I could stay for a good long time.

shalom.

be grateful. be mindful. be wakeful.

2011-04-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

I survived March, but managed to miss the first half of April somehow. How do these things happen? I hate that shit-- I've lost a month to what? Work? Stress? Coffee? And what do I have on this end of it? A dirty house. A dog with long toenails. Friends and fam and a Mikey who aren't getting attention or good Megan lovin'. I've got to figure out a better way.

At my job, we talk a lot about "Best Practices" which are tried and true methods of doing our job in the most efficient way possible. My thing now is, what is the "Best Practice" for my life? Which practices are going to be the most life-giving? How do I be present to my right now? And can I be present to all of my parts? Can I be present to Home Megan and Work Megan and Friend Megan and Daughter Megan and Wife Megan all at the same time? Not right now. I don't know how.

I remember the first time I went to Oregon, how obsessed I became with being present. I did it so wrong, and I have regrets-- I became present to my environment to the detriment of relationships-- present to mountains and books, yet not to people. Totally missed the point. The second time I went, I vowed to be better. I formed relationships and then didn't follow through with them. I'm always missing something. These days, more than most.

If I was ever to get a tattoo, it would be these words: be grateful. be mindful. be wakeful. I know tattoos are for art, but God, I need one as a reminder. I'm so forgetful, so forgetful.

Mike and I just got home from vacation, and it was so good to get away, to leave the house and the dog and our jobs for even a short while. Escape. Now it's back to the grind, the drama, the bullshit.

I just need to fix this. I need to figure this out. I'm 26 in two weeks-- my friend says this is the quarter life crisis. Maybe. Maybe it is book withdrawal. Mountain withdrawal. Pencil & paper withdrawal. Sunshine withdrawal. Dirty floor syndrome. Good lord.

shalom.

who knows where thoughts come from? they just appear.

2011-03-26T14:35:00.004-04:00

I worked for 18 days in a row and today I am not working. I made vegetable soup with garam masala. I swiffered and swept. I did dishes. I did laundry. I ate. I pet my dog. I'm going to dye my hair. I'm watching Empire Records. It's a catch-up day.

I want to be here...

At least I am here with this...

I need a few days off to mellow. And get more shit done. Painting, cleaning, arranging, blogging.

Anyway.

Don't let the man get you down.

just smile all the time...

2011-03-12T19:33:00.002-05:00

All week, I've had this lyric in my head: just smile all the time... and I couldn't remember what song it was from. It's "How to Fight Loneliness", by Wilco. Ha. I feel like that's pretty apropos. I've been working so much, and so has Mike, that we never see each other. And I'm in the "I miss my school friends" state. I miss my girls. And I'm tired. And complainy.

My dad and I just joined Weight Watchers. We start tomorrow. I did this for the first time my sophomore or junior year of high school and HATED it. I had to go to these meetings at six am on Fridays before school with my neighbor and I was miserable and I cheated. Now, everything's online and there's a mobile app and it seems easier. And it's time for me to do more for myself. And I'm happy enough with myself to feel like I can handle it no matter what happens. I'm ready.

Also, a gin and tonic is only, like 5 points.

WINNING.

i wanna be in a zydeco band.

2011-03-06T23:07:00.002-05:00

Tonight my favorite radio station played zydeco for half an hour and it was a very good drive home.

Today I was thinking about high school a little bit, and how my friends and I never really went anywhere, we just hung out in people's basements and listened to music and watched movies. I miss that. Now it seems like we have to always "go out," which, if you are a hermit like me, you find exhausting. Most of the time, I would rather just stay in and hang out.

You're invited.

you bravos had better be ready to fight

2011-03-04T22:07:00.002-05:00

I had an exceptionally long day today. One of my employees didn't show up to open so I had to work a twelve hour shift, which I have done before, for sure, but I wasn't prepared for it and there is nothing more that guarantees that my day will be rough than a buzzing cell phone waking me up in the morning. Anyway. The day was just long.

I've been on a Warren Zevon kick lately. There are a lot of things I am aware of now that can be attributed to past relationships, but Warren Zevon is probably the best of them. I think he's a poet. Mikey doesn't like him, but I think his music just really puts me in a certain time and space that I will never get over.

pinterest.com is awesome.

I am eating at least one vegetable every day this year and I am doing a good job. Last night I made brussel sprouts in veggie stock w/ garlic & thyme and they were kind of good. I mean, what an underrated vegetable. I think this year, when I make corned beef and cabbage, I will make corned beef and brussel sprouts, because hello? tiny cabbages.

I am thinking bedtime now. Off tomorrow-- supposed to do lunch w/ some girls, but haven't heard anything from them, so.... we'll see. Paint swap with the neighbor chicks in the afternoon. I'd like to read. I have Heather Seller's new book You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, I have Dave Eggers' Zeitoun, I have Doug Frank's A Gentler God, and, oh god, I have The Autobiography of Mark Twain vol. 1

Anyhow. sleep. sleep. sleep.

building little houses.

2011-03-03T13:26:00.005-05:00

It has been since September since I've even looked at this site, hardly even thought about it, you know? We've been keeping our heads down, tucking in, tuckering out, working hard, building things for ourselves and our little family. I honestly haven't had much to say to the internet. Let's see. What's been happening?

We got a puppy-- little Walter, the French Bulldog baby, who is the love of my life. I am covered in little puppy hairs and bulldog snot all the time, and I don't even mind. He has made coming home that much nicer, and he snuggles me when Michael and I have our upstairs/downstairs time.

I am so in love.

In October, I got to go to Michigan and do a reading in Saginaw with my beautiful poetry friend, Jeremy. I took Walt and got to meet Jer's fam and ate brussel sprouts and witnessed a zombie apocalypse. Then I got to got to Holland to see my amazing Darcy and eat pho and then I fell off the face of the earth.

I worked really really hard during "Holiday"-- my store was a freaking machine and we made money and all of that good stuff. I realized that I'm pretty good at my job and that there is something about me-- some strange, secret Meganness within me which makes me a leader even when I don't want to be a leader, despite the deep-seeded social awkwardness which I seem to wear like bows in my hair. However that happened, whatever that is, I'm doing a pretty good job. Even though I don't love it. I like it well enough to keep it up and figure out where I'm going. I also like that idea that we are taking care of ourselves financially and that we don't have to worry about money really. I mean, we worry, but we have more than 18 bucks in our checking account, which, for me, is a nice feeling. Haha.

I am really wanting to start decorating my house. I want to paint and arrange and make my house pretty.

I want to blog and document and photograph.

I've been thinking about my friends and all of their goals and all of their ambitions and about how hard they are all working to achieve these dreams which they have always had and how they have always knooooowwwwnnnn what they wanted to do. I don't think I am that kind of person. I have always wanted to be somewhere pretty and eat things that taste good and drink things that taste good and look at things that look good and be warm and comfortable and amused and I have never given much thought to ambition. Except that I like to read and I love to write. And I like being my own boss. Maybe that's why I'm okay where I'm at. I used to mind feeling directionless. Now I mind less, as long as I'm happy and my husband is happy and my family is happy.

Anyhow, it's almost spring and I'm feeling tired. I need the sunshine and I need fresh air and open windows. I can't wait. Life outside of school is at once predictable and unpredictable, and I am learning to savor.

solo sunday

2010-09-12T17:41:00.003-04:00

Sundays have always been for popcorn and apples and cheese and football and movies and root beer. Almost every Sunday of my life, my family would come together in the evening. We would substitute popcorn with seasoned salt, apples, cheese, summer sausage, for dinner. It was the one day of the week we would eat around the TV. It was the one day of the week when, as children, we were allowed to drink pop. We'd watch a family-friendly TV show or a late football game or a movie, and sit together and throw popcorn to the dog.
My parents still do this.
I miss Sundays with my family, more than any other day of the week. I miss Sundays in Normal-- church at Heartland, egg & potato scramble at home, and a day of nothing. I miss my family. I think that I was lucky to live with my parents after I graduated from college; it allowed our relationship to evolve in a way it probably wouldn't have otherwise. I miss my sister in Denver and my brother at Purdue. My parents are only 45 minutes away but I think I'd be happy with them down the street.
I've been by myself this weekend-- Mike's at a Bears game in Chicago-- and it has been nice. It's been the first time I've been able to sleep alone here without being scared of wind and noises.
The cornfield is completely dry, and the sound of it as it chafes against itself in the wind is so soothing to me, like waves lapping the shore of lake Michigan. And it smells good.
I made popcorn.
This is not a bad day.

all of the candles, lit.

2010-08-24T19:21:00.002-04:00

Today is my husband's 29th birthday, and on Sunday, we will have been married for one year. There are two strange concepts in that sentence, both related-- husband, married. We went to see Crosby, Stills, & Nash last night, and for the second year in a row, they did not play Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, which is my favorite. They did play Norwegian Wood, which is a song that I like a lot, and Behind Blue Eyes, which is a song that I dislike a lot. I drank several vodka tonics, and today I have a headache.

I made German Chocolate Cake Balls today. They are ugly, but delicious.

I lit all the candles and hung a sign. He's on his way home.

mid-summer, a post!

2010-07-21T15:59:00.003-04:00

At the urge of a very very few, I am posting:

Actually, I feel as though I post much more frequently. Perhaps it is a sign of my insanity that every day, multiple times a day, I compose these snippets of blog posts in my head and wish that my hands weren't full of steaming milk or espresso shot glasses or toilet cleaner or brooms or something. Perhaps I have no real excuse, as I have an insanely smart phone, smart enough to read Dostoevsky for me, maybe, and definitely smart enough to blog from. I confess. The phone is a pain-in-the-ass. Why prolong the pain?

So I'm in the midst of this accidentally-self-imposed period of isolation. I work constantly, I see Mike, Michelle, the neighbor children, occasionally my parents, and of course, my employees, who know far too much about how much gin I drink. My god. I have lofty plans of organization, beer brewing, making my home look like a home, painting, gardening, and stuff in general, but circumstances conspire against me, circumstances SHIT on my plans, and so I work and become dumber. Yes. Dumber. People who know me, like, really know me, ask me what I'm reading and I'm like, weeellll, I get these self-help emails every morning around 4 from The Universe? And they're like, Oh yeahhh? Last time I talked to you you were all like Thomas Merton this and Wendell Berry that, and I'm like BITCH I get high on coffee fumes sixty hours a week what do you want from me?! And then I go watch food porn on the Travel Channel.

Mike and I are spending the summer working, seeing good bands, building IKEA furniture, meeting the neighbors, and trying not to run head-first into the many walls of work, money, mortgage, and adulthood. For me, one of the weird things about this time in my life is meeting new people. I know I should do it, I know that it is part of being a human being, living within the grid, but then there are always awkward points-- yes I'm married, yes I'm only 25, no I don't have kids, no I don't want them for a long time, yes my last name is different, no I don't stay home, no we don't have a home church, no we aren't interested in yours, yes that's gin in my glass, yes these cigarettes are organic. OH MY SWEET LORD. This is the heartland, folks. This is the heartland.

Anyhow, the point is I'm going to try to post some more. I think it's good for my health.

shalom.

another friend, by her own hand.

2010-04-18T21:41:00.002-04:00

Is it so difficult, this living?
The in and out and in and out and in and
every day, the work, the studies, the breath,
the dirt, the love, the unlove, the sugar and salt,
coffee and tea, flour, eggs, all of it. It is too much?
And yet, the people here, the fucking people,
who live.
This?
This, your choice.

i love this bar

2010-02-27T21:46:00.002-05:00

It's Saturday night. I spent all day with my parents, who have been out of the country doing missionary/humanitarian work for a month now. We finished the crossword, drank coffee, saw a movie, and went out to dinner. We talked the moth over, up and down, discussed our dog's end-of-life arrangements (awful sad.) and enjoyed each other. Now mike and I are out at a local bar. We ran into neighbor guys, so now I am drinking an over-sweet cherry wheat and contemplating the IPA I am going to brew in the garage once indiana can sustain a 60 temp. I hate karaoke. How about you? Nothing can match the karaoke in the irish bar in the basement of the mall down the street from where I lived in freiburg, germany. Every week, the same italian guy would sing "I'm too sexy" and strategically remove his clothing. I was 1t. It was fabulous. No drunken hillbillies in middle america can compare. Anyhow, mike is conversing and the rednecks are yodeling and thusly, I am blogging. I recognize that it has been awhile. I find it difficult to make space in my day for this crazy. But yeah.

I have been thinking a lot about siddha yoga.

Shalom.

dear deer

2010-02-04T22:15:00.002-05:00

On Monday it was almost forty degrees and as I was driving home over the reservoir I saw these four little deer and two of them were standing, munching contemplatively on dead grass, nosing through melting snow and sodden mulching leaves but the other two were laying on the ground, resting long necks on each others curled bodies and my heart did this strange dumb welling-up thing and at that moment I knew that nothing would make me happier than laying down with deer in a pile of dead leaves, spooning.

dinner

2010-01-27T20:33:00.002-05:00

I marinated chicken breasts in margaritas, chopped onion and turkish red pepper and garlic for several hours. I filled a square pan with refried black beans, set the marinated chicken on top of the beans, doused the whole of it in enchilada sauce, then covered thatall with cheddar, jack, and asadero. Baked for an hour at 350. Served with mexican rice. Spicy ant tart and cheesy and delicious. Yum.

ugly days

2010-01-27T13:20:00.002-05:00

I'm sick and it is my day off and there is a lot I should be doing, for example, dog hair all over my floor and stains on my throw pillows and my bathroom is dirty and my god, there are dog hair tumbleweeds gently rolling across my nice wood floors! But the shades are all down and still the light in the room hurts my eyes and even though I used my neti pot I still am stuffed up, and there, i just sneezed. yeah, today, I am too dramatic to produce measureable results. I hope I don't bonus based on those metrics.

Shalom.

what i'm looking for.

2010-01-25T04:48:00.002-05:00

When I was living in oregon, driving that huge
Cadillac boat all those miles up and down the mountain,
I scanned constantly for the sharp glint of animal eyes near the road, and
It was life or death, all those hard curves, empty cliff edges.
Here, the shine on the road is mostly trash, gleaming
Crushed on gravelly shoulders. But this early, I am
Sometmes rewarded for my watchfulness by hungry deer and
The occasional owl.

long days, short nights

2010-01-24T22:14:00.002-05:00

Hard to believe how much time has passed, and so quickly. Five months, I've been married, and I was thinking it's been ten years since my first kiss, almost three years since I graduate from college. I have my own Starbucks now, and I love it. I seem to fall into these things I never planned on- retail, marriage, indiana. But I'm happy- happier than I would have imagined ten,five, three years ago. I want to travel and live in trees and read all the books, still, but I feel happy and contented, unquestionably so.

I do wish I could find more time to write. I'm going to do better.

broken seams along the way

2009-11-20T23:26:00.002-05:00

listening to: "man of the hour" - pearl jam

we meet so many bruised people in this life.
people bruised on the outside,
and inside. people broken by god
knows what.
sometimes i am buffeted, too. but
mostly i am so lucky.
all we can do is hold on and ache.

carrot peelings - composting

2009-10-12T13:20:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking and reading a lot about food lately, realizing how much of my time I spend thinking about eating and what to eat and how. The shows I watch on TV are mostly about food, I spent a lot of time at home making food, and now I'm reading these books about how to make food responsibly, how to make a chicken that actually tastes like chicken, and how to experiment with price/money/what to spend a lot on and what i can scrimp on.... blah blah blah. Darcy and Stephanie and I were talking this weekend about how at the beginning, cooking seemed domestic and "wifey" but we kind of all agreed that we like to cook-- that cooking is a fun, delicious, solitary science, that it makes us feel like we've accomplished something wholesome and good. One of the things I want to do in this new household that Michael and I are building is to make most of our food, and to do it responsibly. How can I be an ethical home cook? Where can I buy local food? Can I do it inexpensively, in a time crunch? It's fun to think about all of this-- to realize that I get to make these decisions myself-- this is my home, mine and Mike's, and we have the privilege of making it what we want it to be.

Anyway, today I'm making pot roast with potatos, carrots, pearl onions, and green beans. Served in sourdough from a local bakery. Yum!

Current reading list:

My Life in France, by Julia Child
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver
More-with-Less, compiled by Doris Janzen Longacre

bliss.

2009-09-12T16:45:00.002-04:00

(an excerpt from my Vegas notes)

Been thinking about the idea of "home" a lot lately-- I think I posted about it awhile ago. My ideas of home seem to be evolving as my life is changing, as my heart is changing shape and composition. I feel like I'm undergoing an alchemic change. I think that I am home where I can be quiet, where I can be fully Megan, in the quiet of my hotel room, in the midst of shrieking Las Vegas, I can see desert and know I am home. But I am home in mountains, too, and in water, and under trees. I can be home in the suburbs. I am most home at home, in the fields of corn and soybeans, but it is a relief to think that I can be home anywhere. And, I will add, that anywhere now must include Mike, as he is a catalyst of my change-- two elements joining, becoming something that is both wonderfully and obviously two parts, but also completely other.

you will greet yourself arriving

2009-08-18T14:16:00.002-04:00

In the morning, the sea of soybeans is eddying in the wind. the bats under the eaves squeak and settle in for the day. stray stalks of corn stand proud in the early sun, glowing gold, surrounded by lesser plants, volunteering.

whatever, etc...

2009-07-26T23:06:00.000-04:00

Mike and I sat outside last night in the dark and listened to a large animal in the field kill a small animal in the field. It was neat.

I think I may be too abrasive sometimes.

shalom.

i wish i were a freeway laid out clearer than a bright day

2009-07-24T14:39:00.002-04:00

listening to: "broken" - tift merritt

i feel as though i've become dumber since i left michigan and oregon and settled down in indiana. the people i know here say i'm one of the most articulate people they know. what does that mean? i am secretly dumber than they think i am? ummm.

shalom.

needs no conversation

2009-07-21T14:08:00.003-04:00

listening to: "islands in the stream" - feist & the constantines

I've been thinking about it, and while I feel impassioned in the mountains, I feel peaceful in cornfields. I'm wild about mountains, but I'm at home with fields and fields of green silks. I grew up behind a cornfield, I know the scratch of running bare legged through knee-high plants, the sting of loose rocks of feed corn flung hard at tanned arms, the throb of corn cuts at night after an afternoon spent in homemade crop-circles. I know the amity of a darkening twilight overlooking the field, watching fireflies wink on, and I swell with pleasure in the early morning, watching sun creep up over dew-wet plants. I feel small in the mountains, apart from them, swallowed, and I like that. But when I'm surrounded by cornfields, I feel oneness and belonging. Four years ago, I claimed placelessness-- emotional wayfaring-- transience. I was proud to be apart. But now, though my friends laugh and shake heads, I am so pleased to wake up somewhere familiar. The window in my bedroom overlooks a cornfield again, and it tickles me.

shalomshalom.

baby get ready

2009-07-17T16:51:00.002-04:00

listening to: "fishin in the dark" - nitty gritty dirt band

I won't lie-- the only reason I have good-energy days at work is because of the midol-- cures body aches and contains caffeine, and, unlike coffee, doesn't make me pee every twenty minutes. Eh, no, today was a pretty fab day at the Bux. I did a good job and my team did a great job and I'm proud of us. Because we're cool.

44 days until the wedding and I wish it was 4 days, despite the fact that everyone keeps telling me, oh, no, megan, savor this moment, blah blah blah. Honestly, I've f'ing savored the moment. I'm ready to get this show on the road. I'm frustrated with all the wedding planning nonsense, irritated with the greed of the marital-industrial-complex, pissed off about all of the gender stereotypes you think you won't have to deal with because it's 2009 but still somehow find yourself getting your nose rubbed in with more frequency than you expected, and altogether anxious to be on the other side of this. We bought a house in Brownsburg at the beginning of July-- a beautiful house with vaulted ceilings and wood floors and a cornfield in the back yard. Mike has been living there since we closed on the house, which means he is 45 minutes away and I am at my parents' house with only one job and lots of wedding drama to deal with by myself. On the upside, my time at the coffee shop is going well-- I'm interviewing (for almost 3 hours) next Thursday for a position as store manager, which is badass, in case you need me to point that out to you. Also, I forgot to say, in the new house, I get a room that is all mine and it is a library. Well, not yet. Right now there is still a life-size sticker of Dora the Explorer on the wall, but soon it will be a library, with bookshelves and an antique couch. I haven't had a bookshelf since junior high. Just sayin. Anyway.

I've been scribbling some, mostly dream poems, pretty nonsensical, with the occasional brutally realistic love-poem thrown in. I've been sleeping a lot-- and I could sleep more, but I'm trying to resist becoming a slugabed.

I'm going to try to post more. My computer is dead and it's hard to find time.

shalom.

been down one time

2009-06-02T16:54:00.002-04:00

listening to: "never going back again" - fleetwood mac

Although we're excited about what's to come, and while we may feel varying degrees of AWESOME, this is actually a very sobering time for us as we spend a lot of time in conversation about joining together all of the minutiae of our lives. It's hard, all of this talking. We didn't think much about how complicated it was going to be. Bank accounts, credit scores, mortgages, families, discussions of future division of labor and money... It's overwhelming, though it's good for us. We're figuring out how to healthily fight with each other, which cannot be a bad thing. The reality of the situation is that we met less than a year ago, got engaged April 17, set a date for late August, and, oh yeah, we close on our house late this week or early next week. I quit my second job at the brewery last week, and while I will miss the easy on-hand cash, I am enormously glad to have gotten away with my sanity. Anyway, we are so excited and so stressed out and we can't wait to get this show on the road, but meanwhile, wow. This is intense.

Currently listening to: lots of fleetwood mac
Currently reading: 10 Conversations You Must Have Before Getting Married (And How to Have them), The Five Love Languages, Lisey's Story, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Currently watching: Arrested Development (again), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (again)

shalomshalom.

got a bad case of noisemaker blues

2009-05-08T01:45:00.002-04:00

listening to: "southtown girls" - the hold steady

i'm not terminally happy, if that's what you're wondering.
i still work two shitty jobs, seventy hours a week.
i'm getting married august 29th, which is like 145 days away.
i'm visiting potential homes that smell of cat piss.
bridal stores call me at my house and on my cell. which: torture.
my parents are going to africa for the summer, and i need them here.
i have had a unibrow since i was in junior high. no one could be happy about that.
i don't drink nearly as much gin as i would like to.
my mexican friends in the brewery kitchen have ceased calling me "te amo".
and yet.
in less than four months i am going to be joined with my heart's friend.
and when i'm not entirely overwhelmed by the stress of this coming summer,
i am deeply satisfied.

shalomshalom.

worlds on worlds

2009-04-24T12:08:00.004-04:00

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like golden stitches in a piece of embroidery. Love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in. Though it contains all the world, the sun, the moon, and stars, it is so small as to be also in our hearts. It is in the hearts of those who choose to come in. The room of love is another world-- you go there wearing no watch, watching no clock. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than worlds on worlds, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together. You come together to the day's end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. You take it all into your arms, it goes away, and there you are where giving and taking are the same, and you live a little while entirely in a gift. The words have all been said, all permissions given, and you are free in the place that is the two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room?

by Wendell Berry,
from
Hannah Coulter

come on join the party

2009-04-23T18:16:00.005-04:00

listening to: "eminence front" - the who

Well guys, I'm getting married! So excited and so happy and such a fun time in my life. Huzzah!

this is me & mike right after he asked me to marry him

so pretty and such a megan ring. we got it right.

the view from our cabin in the smokey mountains.

i am so happy. this is so crazy.

shalom.

trade you my empire for ashes

2009-03-22T15:07:00.002-04:00

listening to: "middle cyclone" - neko case

Got good and churched this morning. I always go to church when my brother and sister come home. That's pretty much the only time. Other Sundays I'm more or less allowed to sleep. Usually the pastor of my parents' church is loud, quick-talking, and abrasive. He would be at home in a used car lot, I think. I generally find his sermons offensive and condescending. Today we had a substitute pastor who lacked the oomph of the original but was just as condescending. The sermon was on the woman caught in adultery from John 8-- She is caught in adultery by several high-ranking religious men who ask Jesus if they can stone her to death, as the law demands, and he basically says whichever one of you has never sinned, he can throw the first stone. After I'd caught on that this was going to be just another sermon about Jesus forgiving the whore (that's the usual gist of these things) with no mention of the asshole who'd gotten her into the situation in the first place or the fact that women are still stoned in several countries for lesser transgressions, after I'd caught on to this, I basically zoned out. I noticed that there was a bird stuck in the sanctuary of the church-- the enormous auditorium, the Jesus emporium-- and was swooping to and fro, trying to find an out. He flew down one of the organ pipes, and landed briefly on many of the hanging lights. I followed the flight of that poor bird for probably ten minutes until the final address of the pastor caught my attention. The exact phrase that drew me back in was, "how many of you have ever been tied up?" Wow, I thought, never heard a sermon like that before... Unfortunately it was just an illustration of forgiveness, instead of a foray into more engaging conversation, but Emily and I exchanged a glance all the same. Altogether it was a pretty boring church adventure-- usually I leave that place burning with some kind of heathen irritation or anger, but today I just felt slightly dull. It has been that kind of a week. And that kind of blog entry, looks like.

shalomshalom.

i do my best but i'm made of mistakes

2009-03-18T13:08:00.002-04:00

listening to: "i'm an animal" - neko case

It's March! Springtime! This is the second day in a row of beautiful weather, though I am unable to take advantage of it today. Yesterday was Saint Patrick's Day, and last year around this time I was with Jeremy and Kristi, romping around downtown Chicago with all of the pretty green Irish-for-a-Day crazies, listening (and getting more excited than anyone probably oughta) to the bagpipers, and drinking Tullamore Dew. This year was more subdued, but still nice. It was seventy degrees outside, and Mike and I sat out on the deck of a bar for hours in the sunshine. Everyone had their dogs out and the locals were all done up in green-goth-garb. It was lovely.

It's been a hard month for me at work. At the coffee shop I feel torn between my desire to interact with the customers (who are the reason I work there in the first place) and the pull of the ever-increasing politics of the business. I can't seem to do anything right. No matter what. Last night I fell asleep and dreamed I was at work. I helped customers, I talked to my regulars, I had coaching conversation, and when my alarm went off at 4:15 I woke up and was surprised to find that I wasn't already at work. I got up and went in, and worked what felt like my second shift of the day.

As far as the other job goes... I can't keep it up much longer. My heart races as soon as I sit down in my car to drive the 14 miles to work. By the time I get there, my hands are shaking and I'm having a hard time breathing. There's no real reason for these mini-anxiety attacks. The job isn't stressful, not really. It's just waitressing. But even when I try to tell myself, Megan, you know your reactions, breathe, try to breathe through it... even then, I kind of wig out. I need to quit my job, but I've never quit a job before for any reason other than moving to a different state or graduating. Never.

I know I'm lucky to have jobs at all, even two jobs that occasionally feel stupid. I just want to, first and foremost, be healthy and happy, and also I would like to enjoy what I do every day. I also know that I am young and that I do not necessarily get to do what I want to do. Millions of people are unhappy at work. I am willing to work a job I am not passionate about if, in exchange, I have the time and mental-well-being to work at my writing. Right now I don't have that. When I talk to my friends, I feel guilty when they ask me about my writing because when I tell them I haven't written in months, they know as well as I do that I am screwing myself over with no real result or reward.

There are good things in my life, though. Mike and I went to see Umphrey's McGee last weekend-- a two-night show at the Egyptian Room. Both nights were amazing and we had so much fun dancing around like crazies and drinking terrible beer. I was recently in Michigan and got to see my buddies, and have gotten to talk to a lot of faraway friends in the past several weeks. It's springtime, finally, and I'm in loveloveLOVE and I can drive with my windows down and I'm reading David James Duncan's The Brothers K again and starting David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and I have almost completely cut caffeine out of my diet and Neko Case's Middle Cyclone is awesome. Life is not so bad after all, it seems.

shalomshalom.

dreams, they seem to cost money, but money costs some dreams

2009-01-30T13:45:00.002-05:00

listening to: "yeah sapphire" - the hold steady

We have twelve and a half inches of snow here in Indianapolis today. It's awfully cold and icicles are dangling from every possible overhang. I have the day off today and am trying to pay a few bills, drink some coffee, and run some errands. Tonight I am making soup: butter bean, sun-dried tomato, and pesto soup. May use cannellini beans instead of butter beans, but not sure yet.

I have a car now, have I mentioned that? It's all mine-- I bought it from Mike for a case of Diet Dr. Pepper and a dollar. 1997 Monte Carlo, bright red. Only 87,000 miles on it. Whatwhat. I'm excited-- it's the first car I've owned, with my name on the title and my money going into it. Yes.

Oh, I was going to post our music line-up for the winter/spring:

February 11: The Pretenders
February 25: Yonder Mountain String Band
March 13 & 14: Umphrey's McGee
May 19: Elton John & Billy Joel
June 19: PHISH

That's it, so far, though we may be adding to it. Can't seem to help it. Nothing in April because of the Tennessee trip. I need to see my Holland friends soon, so I'm maybe going to have to plan a weekend up north.

Have to get moving now or I'll fall asleep and not wake up til I have to go to work at a quarter to five tomorrow morning.

xoxoxo

shalomshalom.

to believe in this living

2009-01-22T00:05:00.004-05:00

listening to: "angel from montgomery" - john prine

years ago, outside of love, i
wrote a poem about a broken window
in my young heart, never thinking
that there would ever be
such a welcome doorway.

tell her they ain't even keepin' score no more

2009-01-17T13:39:00.000-05:00

listening to: "ask her for some adderall" - artist/band name here

some day i will have a job that is not like high school. right?

maybe my bright red boots, if they had wings

2009-01-12T14:36:00.002-05:00

listening to: "take it from me" - the weepies

Well, I'm ready for springtime, I'm ready for a caper, I'm ready for something to happen, for something to move. I've been on the cusp of new things for a while now, always teetering, never quite falling into the next great adventure. I want to find something to do and wring the life out of it like an old testament bird.

Have I told you that I'm crazy in love? Not in that giddy, nauseating, jittery sort of way, but in a really chill, confident, satisfying way. I like it. I'm going to keep it.

I'm tired. I'm going to nap before work no.2 or maybe read. Trying my hand at an interesting trio of writers at the moment: Anais Nin, Bill Bryson, Milan Kundera. Mmmm. I have to renew my subscriptions. New Yorker, Paste, The Believer. Okay naptime.

shalomshalom.

fighting our way up dreamland's spine

2008-12-27T14:20:00.002-05:00

listening to: "everything you can think of is true" - tom waits

It's two days after Christmas and the thermometer outside my window reads 64 degrees. I almost hit rabbits with my car on my way to work this morning-- rabbits who should be sleeping in the ground or under sheds, warm and fat, not rabbitting around the neighborhood. Geese have been flying all morning, and the frozen ground is thawing in brown puddles, which my dog lies down in. I want to sit in front of my fire drinking hot toddies and eating sugar cookies this week, but if this weather continues, I'll be half-tempted to sit all day outside, despite the wind and mist.

I want a goat.

My family's all here for awhile, and I like having them here, but it reinforces every minute my need to move the heck out. I need quiet and space and room and quiet, for god's sake. Also, to feel like an adult, with the capacity to make adult decisions. Here I'm sort of encouraged to make adult decisions while being partially treated like an adolescent. Must move out... It's in the works.

I'm going to Normal, leaving tomorrow afternoon. I haven't been back for a year, almost to the day. We shall see...we shall see.

Ok, must get ready for work at the brewery.

shalomshalom.

my method is uncertain; it's a mess, but it's workin'

2008-12-09T16:54:00.003-05:00

listening to: "please please please" - fiona apple

i don't think that i could ever have one of those jobs where you sit in a cube all day. i used to think i could do it-- in fact, i really hated having to use my body while i was working. i was not a slothful child-- i played outside all the time, played soccer for a few years, ran around. but in junior high, when we were forced to run in circles for an hour twice a week, and then return, sweaty, to the classroom, i developed a sort of distaste for activity. it was hard to be an adolescent girl-- we wanted so badly to ignore our physical bodies but couldn't because they were smelly and awkward and changing. yes, i think that is where the distaste began. but i realized recently that now, i would be extremely unhappy in any position in which i could not use my body and exert myself. i really like working with my hands-- i like making things and fixing things and getting dirty. i'm not afraid of getting dirty or hurt. i run around for seventy hours a week and sometimes i hate it. but i sleep well now-- my body is ready for rest when i lay down at night. i had the day off on friday and went with my dad to go haul firewood for the winter. it was the highlight of my week: the smell and the scratch and the splinters and the cold air, the visible breath. i'm curious about where the change came-- when did i begin to appreciate the things i could do with my body? in oregon? backpacking in the mountains? through essays or books i read? through the knowledge that i am skilled at using my hands? i know now that there is no separation between the mind and the hands-- or at least there ought not be. to say that people who work with their hands don't know how to use their minds is ignorant and ironic-- aren't the people who sit in their offices all day in their ergonomic chairs the ones who use their minds exclusively, while their bodies fester? wendell berry says, "The great question that hovers over this issue, one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what people are for. Is their greatest dignity in unemployment? Is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal? One would conclude so from our attitude toward work, especially the manual work necessary to the long-term preservation of the land, and from our rush toward mechanization, automation, and computerization. In a country that puts an absolute premium on labor-saving measures, short workdays, and retirement, why should there be any surprise at permanence of unemployment and welfare dependency? Those are only different names for our national ambitions." (What are People For?, p. 125) berry also says, “We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone.” (The Body and the Earth, p. 140) the point, i suppose, is that i want to get my hands dirty. i'd like to move in the direction of doing something good for other people, but perhaps gradually. i'm ok with slinging coffee and beer for now. at least i can sleep at night.

can't find a damn thing in this place

2008-12-05T03:20:00.001-05:00

listening to: "car wheels on a gravel road" - lucinda williams

sometimes, when i'm driving home late at night, coyotes run across the road. i think they're trying to tell me: we're in on a secret.

if there was a better way to go then it would find me

2008-12-04T14:59:00.002-05:00

listening to: "extraordinary machine" - fiona apple

Well, it's freezing here in Indianapolis, but the sun is out. I seem to have misplaced the ice-scraper for the car, so I used a stick this morning. Mike noticed and shook his head and told me I wouldn't have this problem when I start driving his red car, which has a functional heating/defrosting system. Then he tossed me his ice scraper. I'm in love.

I've been waking up in the middle of the night with poems. It's fun, but the sleeping-megan who writes these poems is kind of acidic, I think. I read them in the morning and wonder who she is. Will post some of them soon, probably.

These are flannel days, and I wish I could sit at home and read big books, but work is just as busy as ever, except now we play Christmas music and I want to box my own ears. We're all sick with colds, which means bad attitudes and nighttime snoring, but hopefully we'll get past it. It's snowing.

I'm planning a few trips: next weekend is Megan the Red's wedding, and after Christmas I want to go to Normal to see the Normal friends. I would like to get up to Chicago to meet some of my Michigan friends, and Mike's family wants me to come home with him more often to Northern Indiana. I work too much.

Anyhow, I'm almost finished with season 1 of Heroes-- have you seen it? I like it a lot. I'm going to watch some now.

xoxoxo

a three-time loser

2008-11-13T21:51:00.001-05:00

listening to: "jailhouse tears" - lucinda williams (with elvis costello)

a long day in yet another series of long-ass days. i wrote a poem. and now must sleep.

SOME FURTHER WORDS, by Mr. Wendell Berry

2008-11-09T18:56:00.003-05:00

Let me be plain with you, dear reader.
I am an old-fashioned man. I like
the world of nature despite its mortal
dangers. I like the domestic world
of humans, so long as it pays its debts
to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.
I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose
is a language that can repay just thanks
and honor for those gifts, a tongue
set free from fashionable lies.

Neither this world nor any of its places
is an "environment." And a house
for sale is not a "home." Economics
is not "science," nor "information" knowledge.
A knave with a degree is a knave. A fool
in a public office is not a "leader."
A rich thief is a thief. And the ghost
of Arthur Moore, who taught me Chaucer,
returns in the night to say again:
"Let me tell you something, boy.
An intellectual whore is a whore."

The world is babbled to pieces after
the divorce of things from their names.
Ceaseless preparation for war
is not peace. Health is not procured
by sale of medication, or purity
by the addition of poison. Science
at the bidding of the corporations
is knowledge reduced to merchandise;
it is a whoredom of the mind,
and so is the art that calls this "progress."
So is the cowardice that calls it "inevitable."

I think the issues of "identity" mostly
are poppycock. We are what we have done,
which includes our promises, includes
our hopes, but promises first. I know
a "fetus" is a human child.
I loved my children from the time
they were conceived, having loved
their mother, who loved them
from the time they were conceived
and before. Who are we to say
the world did not begin in love?

I would like to die in love as I was born,
and as myself of life impoverished go
into the love all flesh begins
and ends in. I don't like machines,
which are neither mortal nor immortal,
though I am constrained to use them.
(Thus the age perfects its clench.)
Some day they will be gone, and that
will be a glad and a holy day.
I mean the dire machines that run
by burning the world's body and
its breath. When I see an airplane
fuming through the once-pure sky
or a vehicle of the outer space
with its little inner space
imitating a star at night, I say,
"Get out of there!" as I would speak
to a fox or a thief in the henhouse.
When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

My purpose is a language that can make us whole,
though mortal, ignorant, and small.
The world is whole beyond human knowing.
The body's life is its own, untouched
by the little clockwork of explanation.
I approve of death, when it comes in time
to the old. I don't want to live
on mortal terms forever, or survive
an hour as a cooling stew of pieces
of other people. I don't believe that life
or knowledge can be given by machines.
The machine economy has set afire
the household of the human soul,
and all the creatures are burning within it

"Intellectual property" names
the deed by which the mind is bought
and sold, the world enslaved. We
who do not own ourselves, being free,
own by theft what belongs to God,
to the living world, and equally
to us all. Or how can we own a part
of what we only can possess
entirely? Life is a gift we have
only by giving it back again.
Let us agree: "the laborer is worthy
of his hire," but he cannot own what he knows,
which must be freely told, or labor
dies with the laborer. The farmer
is worthy of the harvest made
in time, but he must leave the light
by which he planted, grew, and reaped,
the seed immortal in mortality,
freely to the time to come. The land
too he keeps by giving it up,
as the thinker receives and gives a thought,
as the singer sings in the common air.

I don't believe that "scientific genius"
in its naive assertions of power
is equal either to nature or
to human culture. Its thoughtless invasions
of the nuclei of atoms and cells
and this world's every habitation
have not brought us to the light
but sent us wandering farther through
the dark. Nor do I believe
.artistic genius" is the possession
of any artist. No one has made
the art by which one makes the works
of art. Each one who speaks speaks
as a convocation. We live as councils
of ghosts. It is not "human genius"
that makes us human, but an old love,
an old intelligence of the heart
we gather to us from the world,
from the creatures, from the angels
of inspiration, from the dead--
an intelligence merely nonexistent
to those who do not have it, but --
to those who have it more dear than life.

And just as tenderly to be known
are the affections that make a woman and a man
their household and their homeland one.
These too, though known, cannot be told
to those who do not know them, and fewer
of us learn them, year by year.
These affections are leaving the world
like the colors of extinct birds,
like the songs of a dead language.

Think of the genius of the animals,
every one truly what it is:
gnat, fox, minnow, swallow, each made
of light and luminous within itself.
They know (better than we do) how
to live in the places where they live.
And so I would like to be a true
human being, dear reader-a choice
not altogether possible now.
But this is what I'm for, the side
I'm on. And this is what you should
expect of me, as I expect it of
myself, though for realization we
may wait a thousand or a million years.

May-August, 2001

your mother had a wooden spoon and a shamrock tattoo

2008-11-05T15:35:00.002-05:00

listening to: "i know you" - lori mckenna

I think one of the things you never hear about adulthood is that upon entering it, you will be required to learn several new languages, and that the adult world has zero patience for young people who don't know how to speak those languages. For example, the language of money: insurance, finance, economics-- these things carry with them an entirely fabricated vocabulary which sounds to me like someone cut up a William Gibson book or a copy of Stephen Hawking's God Created the Integers, put the words in a bag, pulled them out, and said "ok, this shall mean this and this shall mean that and this word that you may have read in school means something new here. surprise!" I do not like it. I don't like to think of crazy things like insurance and money anyhow, and I certainly do not like their language. Can't we all just read Mary Oliver and John Berryman and be jolly? No. Apparently not.

In other news, I now have health insurance and have gone to the eye doctor.

more like the trees and less like the clouds

2008-10-29T18:54:00.002-04:00

listening to: "evergreen" - ryan adams and the cardinals

Today I had the day off from both jobs, a rarity and a mixed blessing. I spent the morning babysitting an eighteen-month old and a four year old, taking my dad to the airport (he's flying to Istanbul right now), and coaxing free shots of espresso out of my friends at corporate coffee, inc. I cleaned the hell out of my room this afternoon and have collected a football-sized ball of dust from the corners of the walls, the top of my paintings, and the blades of my fan. No joke. It's no wonder I've had this cough for months now-- I've been inhaling gobs of dust in my bed. I thought I must have been smoking weed in my sleep or something, what with all the waking up with dry-mouth. Seriously. Anyhow, my room is clean now, and all of my clothes have now moved from the floor of the bedroom to the floor of the closet. Which does not bother me in the slightest. And I found my knitting. :)

all you can do is do what you must

2008-10-22T17:40:00.002-04:00

listening to: "buckets of rain" - bob dylan

it seems like time has been muddied over the past year and a half. one year ago i was in oregon and in this particular moment, i can't even think about it. a year ago. and i've been out of school for a year and a half. unfathomable. f'ing unfathomable.

these days, i'm so tired. tired all the time, tired. i've been working these insane seventy-hour work weeks and i am just so exhausted. i can't see my friends, i can't see my family, i rarely see mike. and my god, i am bored. i am so bored. i need a trip, i need to sleep more than four hours at a time, i need to meet people, i need to go out. oh my god i am bored and i am boring and i am working so much and i am not doing anything.

how do you move past this place?

published?

2008-09-16T15:51:00.002-04:00

So, I submitted around to online lit mags this summer and was notified today that I've been published by Stirring, which I've always enjoyed reading in the past. Cool, yeah? Check it.

Aside from this, I'm just trying to get through my days without falling asleep or falling apart. I try to see Mike as often as possible. I'm trying to wean off of the caffeine. Might take a nap now.

Pretty excited that someone read my poem :)

two days off; cooking, writing.

2008-09-10T16:18:00.002-04:00

i had yesterday off and also today. my parents are in orlando, working, so i have the house to myself, windows all open, lights off. it's very nice.

yesterday morning i got a massage from a girl at work who is an aesthetician and deep tissue massage therapist. she came over to my house and i laid on a mattress under a window and wrote poems in my head for an hour. it was amazing and soothing and she was so intuitive and skilled. perfect way to begin my two days off. spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning my room, listening to liz gilbert's eat pray love on cd, writing in between loads of laundry.

i made dinner last night for mike: steak tips marinated in balsamic vinegar, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, fresh basil from my plant outside, olive oil, and garlic. sauteed the steak in the marinade with onions, garlic, and shallots. topped it on the plate with homemade herb butter. asparagus risotto. garlic flatbread. broccolini sauteed in the herb butter. the best part was the dessert: sugar plums sauteed in melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, all served over lemon ice cream, which was originally vanilla ice cream, which i doctored up. it was amazing. i forgot to take pictures. had some kind of red wine. all supplies from trader joe's. :)

today was for sleeping and dishes. we're going to see journey, heart, and cheap trick tonight at deer creek-- er, excuse me, verizon, so i bought a six-pack of two-hearted and made big sandwiches: smoked turkey, muenster, bacon, romaine, mustard on fresh french bread. extra plums. i'm excited.

mike's mom is visiting this weekend, my parents come home friday, and tomorrow work begins again, in earnest, again. but these two days have been a welcome oasis in the frenzy of working i've been fizzling around in the past three weeks. i apologize to everyone i've not called back, emailed back, texted back. i can barely brush my teeth sometimes, but i promise i will write you or call you soon. i miss my friends and soulmates.

shalomshalom.

no no no no no.

2008-09-05T18:58:00.002-04:00

i can't stand sarah palin. i can't stand mccain.
i just wanted to say that.
i think i should move out until november.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/97457/an_open_letter_to_gov._sarah_palin_on_women%27s_rights/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/05/palin_bush/

http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/09/05/sarah_palin_down_syndrome/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/05/palin_bush_quiz/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/05/maher_obama/

now september.

2008-09-02T16:29:00.001-04:00

turns out it's september now. it's been raining here for a couple of days. i like it; we need the rain. i started my second job two weeks ago as a server at a brewery about fourteen miles from my parents house and only a couple minutes from mike's apartment. i like it so far-- it's pretty chill and the people are cool. i just need to figure out how to make people give me tips. fat tips. anyhow, i've been working double shifts for the past two weeks and still don't have much of a chance to sit down. i'm lucky i've showered, to be honest.

the trip to michigan was amazing. it was the first time in probably nine months that i felt anxiety slide off of me and could really sit still and be with people. these friends are so easy to be with, too. that's so rare. it was wonderful.

on my way south i stopped in wheeler to meet mike's mom and grandparents on his birthday. listened to some jimmy swaggart with his grandpa and drank sunday afternoon away at some tiny bar across the street from his house. it was quite a trip.

anyhow, i'm tired and drained of all creative energy, but feeling curiously positive despite all that. must get ready for work.

xoxoxo

come head-on, full circle, our arms filled with miracles

2008-08-15T00:07:00.002-04:00

listening to: "go places" - the new pornographers

It's stupid and ignorant to say I'm not used to being happy. I'm sure I'm happy a lot of the time. Probably I don't recognize it. Likely, I allow myself to be overtaken by mundane bullshit often enough that I'm too numbed out to realize the stretches of happy. I do it to myself, I know this.

I'm trying this thing now where I make myself happy. I try to think about all the crap at work, all the financial bullshit, all of the neuroses and anxieties I nurture-- I think about these things and I try to give them some time and space and recognition. Now, as I'm writing this, I realize that I'm doing what we talked about so much in Oregon-- holding that which causes you pain or fear and anxiety, and loving it-- giving it the attention it wants so it will be satisfied, leaving you open and free to experience joy. It's at the heart of the contemplative practice and it is a large part of the way I self-counsel. I'm doing this because there is so much joy that I want to experience. Sometimes I am so happy. And I can tell I'm not doing a good enough job holding my anxieties because mostly I just feel guilty for being happy. Guilty and anxious. I get physically ill. How pathetic is that? How do you experience joy? With nausea, headaches, and insomnia, of course!

Anyhow, I want to keep practicing this-- I mean, it's part of practicing mindfulness, I think, so I know it's good for me. And by God, I've got a couple things going on right now that make me happier than usual. So I want to feel 'em.

In other news, I saw A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor last night at the Indiana State Fair. It was mellow and funny and sweet. The band was gorgeous and Keillor was Keillor and the seats were small and hard. We got to eat corndogs and drink sweet lemonade and watch a tractor parade. Honestly, the McLean County Fair was better. The Idaho State Fair was better. I had higher hopes for you, Indiana State Fair! At least you had Garrison Keillor. And fried cheesecake.

Emily's getting better, slowly. She was diagnosed with salmonella earlier this week, which they've started medicating her for. We went to Broad Ripple today for coffee and ended up visiting a neat head shop and a vintage shop and a couple of other cool boutiques. I'll be glad when she's at full steam and ready to go out and get some liquor in 'er.

T.J. leaves for Purdue on Saturday morning. My baby brother is going to college and I cannot believe it. He can't wait and I've barely set eyes on him for days, that's how busy he's been getting ready and getting in some face-time with his pals. My mom is already a mess. Lord, what an adventure.

Next week I head up north for some Oregon-reunion-time. I have five days off in a row, and I'm getting paid for 'em. Vacation pay-- I can't wait.

Hope everyone is well.

shalomshalom.

a vial of hope and a vial of pain

2008-08-10T19:51:00.002-04:00

listening to: "neon bible" - arcade fire

spent the past two nights elsewhere, but this morning on my way home i passed my parents, who were driving to church, which meant that i had two hours at home, in the quiet. i used them reading from the best spiritual writing of 2001 (edited by philip zaleski) and trying to get my sister (102.7* fever) to drink lime gatorade. i wouldn't have wanted to drink it either.

i'm uncommonly happy in some ways, which is strange to me because i'm not enjoying my job hardly at all, and the coffee shop is such a large part of my life right now. i'm not going to fight the happy, though. it's been awhile since i've experienced feelings akin to these-- this is such a fun stage. i know things get less fun, eventually. i mean, hello? duh. but like i said, i'm not going to fight the happy. so many people use so many excuses to keep themselves from being happy. i don't want to keep anything from myself.

if you get a chance, look up strategic withdrawal: a tool for restoration, by david james duncan, from orion. also read this poem from this week's new yorker. count how many times you get the chills.

Trouble
by Matthew Dickman

Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother’s house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the “H” in the HOLLYWOOD sign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful.

Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous
for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.

shalom.

don't want to spend all of the day here

2008-08-05T17:50:00.002-04:00

listening to: "you really got a hold on me" - she & him

things i sometimes want to use as facebook statuses
but probably will not ever use as facebook statuses:

megan...

...thinks your kid is ugly.
...does not care about your wedding pictures.
...fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
...will cut you.
...is kicking your dog.
...is rich, married, published, and 130 lbs.
...really doesn't give two shits about your wedding pictures.
...loves her job.
...omglolroflwtfidk?
...for serious, more wedding pictures?

went on a little walk downtown, messed, and got back late

2008-08-04T15:11:00.002-04:00

listening to: "bring it on home" - led zeppelin

Emily is home from Senegal, and we are all grateful to have her back with us. She suffered from a wicked case of dysentery during her last week in Kaolack, and spent all of Thursday in the emergency room, having exhibited symptoms of what we thought might be malaria, but now looks to be residual dysentery. She still has a medium/high fever, chills, and cold sweats, but the tests for malaria came back neg, so we're hoping it's just a virus. Because we kinda like that kid.

Things are okay on the home front, though my general restlessness and desire to live like a normal (read: independent) 23-year-old seem to be grating on both me and my parents. I know that not all people graduate from college and are immediately able to live on their own and support themselves and I know very few people who pay off all their college loans immediately. Anyways, I'm still hankering for a car, but have to suss out my finances before I apply for any car loans or lay out a couple grand (which I don't have) for a clunker of any sort.

I was offered a job as a server at a brewery about 14 miles away, and I filled out the application today. I had to alter my availability at S*Bux for the first time ever, which did not please my manager and was a rather painful experience all around, but I'm one of the only ones there who don't have two jobs already, and I just feel like I have to dig myself out and start moving in a direction, any direction, as long as I'm not just stewing here in Indy. I feel like I'm in gestation. Mike wasn't excited about me getting a second job, not because (in the case of S*Bux) it limits my availability at my first job, but because it limits how available I am to him. But he has two cars and an apartment and a well-paying job and insurance and he's older and more-or-less already dug out of the early-twenties-pit-of-occupational-doom. I will make time for him because I want to, regardless of my two jobs, but I resent being told to be sure to make time. If I needed a guilt trip, I would go to church. I am hoping that having a second job will a) supplement my income, b) make it possible me to get a car, c) break up my S*Bux boredom, and d) not kill me.

I saw Radiohead last night, and it was incredible. Probably one of the best shows I've ever seen. No, not "probably." It was one of the best shows I've ever seen. And that is true even though the circumstances were a little ridiculous! The girls I was supposed to meet got into a car accident on the way to the show and ended up not coming, so I was stuck by myself. Instead of being awkward and uncomfortable and not enjoying the show, I decided to have a good time. I drank a lot of beer and made friends with a group from Montreal and Grand Rapids-- really cool folks who actually like the music-- who like the band because they're talented, not because they're trendy. Radiohead played "Everything in its Right Place" and at that moment I transcended onto a higher plane of existence. It was amazing. Their music is so hypnotic.

So right now it's Monday and I'm in the cafe of my store on my laptop. I'm a little over-caffeinated for a day off, but have moved out of the twitchy stage and into the good-energy phase. I've finished hammering out my new availability with my boss, I've filled out my application for the brewery, and I think it's going to rain. I hope it does. The air outside is so thick and heavy. It's sickening. If it rains, the humidity will break and maybe our basil will stop turning brown and withering. My newest succulent, the East African Paddle Plant, is looking pretty gross. A whole leaf just turned into jelly and fell off the other day. I don't know why, but I hope it stops because it is a dang cool plant.

Anyhow, I am hoping things will fall into place, or that at least one thing will work out okay so that I can have some semblance of order in my life. I don't need or even want everything in my life to be orderly, and I can make myself happy in most places, at most times, but one or two well-ordered things can really make my day. That's all.
Be well, friends.

shalom.

me and my friends are like double whiskey coke no ice

2008-07-23T13:56:00.003-04:00

listening to: "constructive summer" - the hold steady

So, the new Hold Steady (Stay Positive) is really good. Excellent summer bar-rock. It's the perfect mixture of grit and lyric, beautifully imbalanced, and it makes me want to drink and spin in circles, though perhaps not simultaneously.

I've opened the store for the past two days. 5 a.m. is early, but I love opening because it means I'm done with work at 1:30 in the afternoon and I can either nap and stay up all night or I can go to bed early. Like, unreasonably early. Like for example: last night I went to bed at 7:30. Seriously. I closed my curtains and turned on both fans and took an ativan I borrowed from a friend and slept all night, all freaking night, only distantly registering my ringing, vibrating phone (hi friends!) and the fire alarm T.J. set off trying to bake a pizza. (?) When my alarm went off at 4:10, I didn't even cuss at it. It was a good morning.

So now it's 2:01 in the afternoon, I'm done until Friday evening, and it's time to put my nose ring back in and take off the coffee-stained khakis and not work. I'm babysitting tonight, which is money, but other than that, I'm just going to try to chill a little. I need to make some phone calls (Darcy! Zelle! Lizbeth!) and do some hard-core bedroom/laundry cleaning. I also need to purge my closet of old/unworn clothes. But, ah, I might not do that. I might just chill. Oh! Mike and I are going to see Rush tomorrow night! So that's going to be fun. Emily comes home in six days, which is also exciting.

Um. I don't know if there's anything else going on. It's a beautiful day here-- we had a storm the other night and it kind of cooled the air and dehumidified us a little. The windows are open in our house, anyways, and there are babies, little fat ones, so cute, across the street in one of those tiny inflatable pools, splashing, and I'm done with work and I'm not wearing any pants yet and damn it, I'm in a good mood. The end.

shalomshalom.

they didn't seem that different up until this one little incident.

2008-07-19T15:41:00.002-04:00

listening to: "one for the cutters" - the hold steady

today i am like my dog who, spiteful after
a bath, rubs her wet body on each
wall, across every hard surface, against
thick trees, the rougher,
the better.

said yes and amen.

2008-07-18T12:57:00.003-04:00

listening to: "i will rise up/ain't no more cane" - lyle lovett and his large band

in the oregon days, every monday and wednesday, karis and i would drive down the mountain in the big fat cadillac, boat-floating around sharp turns and trying to avoid careening into deer and transients. we had these ecstatic conversations, these orgies of speech, and if we hadn't been driving to aa meetings, i'd think we were on something. sometimes we had awkward nights of silence, but more often than not, we'd just launch into these fantastic monologues. there were whole quarter hours in which one of us would talk without saying anything, but at times, the things we'd say would bring the other into a new state of consciousness, each of us building on the other's ramblings, until we'd arrived at this crazy state of bliss. today i was cleaning out my computer and i found this, unlabeled, in my oregon 08 folder. this may as well have been a direct transcript from one of those cadillac nights.

i think, bizarre as it sounds to put this in words, that we dance with ourselves--our spiritselves--that we move awkwardly together--awkwardly because we were never supposed to be separate from one another, because in truth, we are not other, we are the same, we are meant to be one. i think that we dance--rarely in sync with ourselves, the physical self and the spiritself--jerkily, sometimes, and often without grace. i think that it's a dance of confusion, of trying to find a way back into blessing, to oneness, to connection. and i think that when we experience moments in our lives of clarity or perfection or love or exquisite beauty, we have stepped, just for a moment, into the rhythms of our spirits--that we are, for a brief time, dancing in the same beat as our spiritselves, and that the joy we feel in those moments is our souls freaking out on the ecstasy of connection.

wow, right?

always gets me into trouble

2008-07-13T23:29:00.002-04:00

listening to: "brandy alexander" - ron sexsmith

It's Sunday? I said this before, but seriously, I have no concept of the movement of days. I was loitering on the interweb this evening and was all like, why hasn't anyone blogged today? But lo, it is Sunday and everyone else has a working concept of which days are which. Damn it.

I have the day off tomorrow, sort of. We've got a store meeting at 6 and then I'm supposed to help set up Summer Phase 2 afterward, so probably I'll end up at the store until midnight, and then I open Tuesday. I almost drove up north somewhere to see Mike? I got home from work and was struggling with the idea of spending the evening at home doing nothing (except laundry) with my parents, watching Next Food Network Star and HGTV's Design Star all night, and he was all like, come up here! and I was all like, huh? seriously? and then i was like, fuck it, why not? so I almost did it. But I think once I got in the car I would have had a hard time not driving all the way into downtown Chicago or all the way up to Holland or all the way to Normal or hell, I might have kept freakin' going, all the way to Oregon. That was the mood I was in today. I need a major change.

I need to move out.
I need a job that is a different job.
I need to write a poem.
I need a car.

That's all.

I bought a subscription to The Believer.
This is to along with my subscriptions to Paste, the best music mag in the world, and The New Yorker, the most pretentious lit mag in the world. We also get Smithsonian and Fast Company. Along with some sporty shit and some Jesusy mags. Magazines make me feel pretentious in a good way, like in the same way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes me feel pretentious in a good way, like in the nerdy way. You know what I mean? Anyway. The Believer's great, you should check it out. It's put out by McSweeney's, okay, by Dave Eggers, do you hear me, and thus, by proxy, by pirates.

Also, I used one of my few remaining amazon.com gift cards to purchase three new CDS:

Ron Sexsmith's new one, Exit Strategy of the Soul

She & Him's (Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's lovechild) debut, Volume One

The Hold Steady's brand new one, doesn't even come out until Tuesday, Stay Positive

Anyhow, I'm excited for new music. And suddenly, for a night at the bar, seriously drinking. It's been awhile. Pray god there's good music playing. I need a drink, I think. Or something. A trip. I don't know. Something. Yeah.

Shalom.

why don't you come and play here?

2008-07-10T14:57:00.003-04:00

listening to: "why do you let me stay here?" - she & him

It's Thursday right now, not that it matters. All of my days kind of look the same these past few weeks. I don't even bother keeping track of the day-- I just make sure I'm at work 10 minutes early and that whatever dog I happen to be taking care of at the time is fed, watered, and peed. I subsist mainly on espresso-- my recipe? About a tablespoon of simple syrup at the bottom of a 24 oz. glass, then six shots of espresso poured over ice and about one shot of half and half. I drink two of these a day, or more. Today I didn't have time to drink anything but water until about noon, and baby, I could feel it. I suppose there are worse things to be addicted to. Real drugs, for example. Real drugs, liquor, the blood of the innocent... you know. The hard stuff. Caffeine is nothing. Plus it makes me twitch all crazylike.

Yesterday I stopped at Trader Joe's and spent a lot of money on things I mostly don't need. Recycled plastic toothbrush? Check. Organic lavender lotion? Check. White bean hummus & bagel chips? Got 'em. Two bottles of Two-Hearted Ale? Oops, drank those last night. Plants? Oh yeah. I can't go to Trader J's without buying plants. So yesterday I bought a new succulent and a new orchid. Let me introduce you to The Bad Seed and Enid...

I keep making room on my windowsill. The other plants are going to feel put out, I'm afraid. I mean, Sal Paradise is already dead and the sphyllium is on his way out, I fear. Oh well. Enid is so pretty I don't even care.

Well. I need to shower and sleep before I go out to play tonight. Enjoy the gorgeous day, friends.

shalom.

galileo's face in his beer glass

2008-07-08T01:18:00.006-04:00

listening to: "starfishin'" - amy correia

Well, to be honest, I accidentally slept until an obscene hour this afternoon. I don't even want to tell you. I feel much shame. Oh okay. 3:30. I woke up at 3:30. And I tell you what, I was shocked. Just shocked. I mean, I got up to let the dog out at 8, but then I went back to bed. FOREVER. No seriously. 3:30 is just ridiculous. And guess what? I decided right then to just say, fuck it. The day is gone anyway. I'm just going to make it worse. So I drank a bottle of $3 Chuck Shiraz and cleaned house. And finished season 2 of Weeds. And then I met the fella to see Hancock. And then came home. And stuff. And now it's 1:30 in the morning and I have to open in 3 hours so I'm just going to stay up, I think. I mean, I tried to sleep. I tried for a good 45 minutes. But I couldn't; I just got twitchy. So I'm up, I think, for the duration. I've been playing with my camera a little, but I'm pretty sure my computer reacts to the camera the same way it'd react to porn. Very slowly, and very easily overheated. So it might just take this ol' thing 3 hours to edit these 26 photos. Blah. Preview? Yes.

the number to the house is on the door

2008-07-07T02:14:00.003-04:00

listening to: "confetti" - lori mckenna

in the quiet moments of my day
i try to practice complete presence
knowing that these small minutes
are wasted by my inability
to consecrate all time and all thought
to full consciousness.
this knowledge frustrates all that
is inside me, struggling for peace,
and i want to scratch words into my arms
to remember:
be grateful.
be mindful.
be wakeful.
in these low twilights i need
sleeves of tattoos, reminding me
that i am me and i am you and i am here.
i need kestrels on my shoulders and
cormorants at my feet and
spirals on both palms telling me
to hold what is mortal
and to open my veins
to whatever comes.

shalomshalom.

can you show me the sparkle of your china

2008-07-04T14:24:00.004-04:00

listening to: "bodhisattva" - steely dan

I've spent about the last ten days house-and-dog-sitting for Josh and Joe in their gorgeous museum-esque condo (it's for sale, y'all!) while they were in Disney World. Basically I was snuggling the handsome greyhound, Madero, and generally taking a brief vacation from reality. Break from reality? Has been nice. I didn't really internet during that time, but spent a lot of time by myself and I watched Dracula and the 8th and 9th seasons of Friends. I read T.S. Eliot and Bret Lott and I am Legend (so much better than the movie). I met a boy... I worked a lot. I got to drive a nice car. I don't know what else to say.

I finally heard from Emily, who's stuck in Senegal until the end of this month. Her host mother sounds like an abusive creeper. She won't let the girls drink more than a liter of water, even though they walk ten miles a day in hot hot heat. I want Emily to come home, but thankfully they're moving her to a different city where she will have the opportunity to actually do some service work in a girls' school, hopefully working with art.

Today is the fourth of July, though I won't be celebrating except by drinking extraordinary amounts of espresso at work all night. Perhaps I shall take sparklers and dance around our empty parking lot. We'll see. This is the second year in a row I haven't seen any damn fireworks. Makes me miss high school/post-high school fireworks at Clayton's grandparents' house, laying in the grass with Elizabeth and Sophie, getting bit all up by mosquitoes and drinking lemonade, probably singing Phish songs to each other and making fun of our respective boyfriends. God, we had fun.

So this fella that seeing I'm took me to hear Steve Miller Band and Joe Cocker last week, and we have plans to see Brooks & Dunn, Journey, Heart, Cheap Trick, Radiohead, Jimmy Buffet, and Rush. What a line-up, eh? Don't laugh. We have a good time. :)

My parents are in Orlando right now, and when I got home this morning, there were five boys strewn around our living room in various states of sleepy disarray, plus an alarming number of empty soda cans, chip bags, and frozen chicken nugget containers. Also empty cartons of milk and strawberries. And there was a whole bottle of ranch dressing in the fridge that wasn't even there before. I am glad I wasn't present for the hootenanny last night, whatever form it may have taken. Someday, I am getting my brother drunk. Don't fight it, Teej. Jesus will forgive us both and probably we will have fun.

Yeah, so. I'm going to go get ready for work.

Stay out of trouble.

shalomshalom.

now captain don't do me like you done poor shine

2008-06-21T21:15:00.003-04:00

listening to: "i will rise up/ain't no more cane" - lyle lovett and his large band

I just love the baby cardinals. There are three of them, and a momma and a daddio, brown and red, and the babies, who I have named Albee, Ted, and Lucinda. They squeak so cute and their mouths are all yellow and wide and I like to watch Hans and Bernadette (the momma and daddio) feed them. Everyone should have baby cardinals.

The Cubs beat the Sox twice. Ha.

I feel anxious about work all the time now. It's just coffee, damn it.

I cough still.

Today wasn't the best day of all.

But I'm going to Michigan for an OE reunion at Justine's cottage-- I'm the only one who's asked for those days off. I want to go. I can't wait.

I'm going to go watch Prairie Home Companion, in further preparation for seeing Garrison Keillor at the Indiana State Fair later this summer.

Maybe tomorrow will suck less.

--i saw nobody coming, so i went instead.

2008-06-18T21:23:00.003-04:00

I've been reading John Berryman's The Dream Songs this week, along with some historical/fantastical fiction, along with The Alchemist and Elizabeth Gilbert's The Last American Man. Spent a while at the library today and, while disappointed in their poor selection, checked out some Ian McEwan and so will be starting Saturday in the next few days. Also, my new Paste magazine came in the mail the other day and I haul it around in my satchel hoping for a spare moment.

Monday night we went to a baseball game-- the Indianapolis Indians-- minor league stuff, but fun, a beautiful evening, and great ambiance. I've been toting my blue little camera around with me most places and took some fun ones at the game.

I've been oddly under the weather lately-- a horrible cough is my main complaint, but I cough so much and so hard that my whole torso just aches from it from the shoulder blades to the ribcage. I feel fine aside from the cough, and so I dose it with a cough syrup/expectorant and go on about my business. I just worry that it won't go away and I won't be able to see a doctor until I'm insured. In August. Yay America!

We have a nest full of baby cardinals in a small tree right outside my bedroom window. I can see directly into the nest if I'm sitting on my bed. Open yellow mouths and brown fuzz and tiny tiny chirps, and the mother and father both flying circuitously around the yard, stopping by to regurgitate food into the little mouths or to sit on top of them for a few minutes at a time. I like them.

Here's a couple photos from the game:

Me and my lungs are going to go watch the Top Chef Reunion show now.

shalom.

ze plants!

2008-06-14T00:47:00.001-04:00

the Christmas cactus from Erin in Oregon:

Shamrocks from my mom & dad at Easter:

spiky little guy:

more X-Mas cactus:

I am having fun with this little sucker. :)

i can't really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else

2008-06-13T23:59:00.005-04:00

I finally took the time to download the software for my new digital camera. It's such a cute camera, all tiny and blue. It was a big step for me to be okay with owning a digital camera. But ah, can't go back now. And it's fun to take little pictures with it. And I can put them on the interwebs! So, lucky you.

find my direction magnetically

2008-06-10T23:35:00.002-04:00

listening to: "rise" - eddie vedder

It's a whole new week, and I'm told it's Tuesday night.
I've come up sick all of a sudden, but I'm getting better.
Indiana is flooding all over, but we're okay, though friends farther South are under water.
We're feeling the humidity, or at least I am.
It makes me feel slow and stupid and badly constructed.
Can't stop listening to Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago.
You should check it out.
It makes me breathe deeper.
My starling ivy is dying.
I don't know why.
Too much water?
But my Christmas cactus, the one from Erin in Oregon, it's growing.
I've been trying to get it to root since December--
I kept it in a mason jar of water for months,
until it put out some good little roots.
I planted it with Oregon agates and petrified wood,
and I couldn't tell if it was doing anything.
But all of a sudden last week, little hairs grew out of its joints.
And today when I was misting my plants,
I saw that it had tiny bright green leaves growing where those hairs had sprouted.
I couldn't be happier,
though my ivy's dying and the orchid's lost its flowers.
And last Friday night I talked to a nice boy about poetry for awhile.
I miss talking about poetry, even when I haven't been drinking.
But especially then.

I don't like summer weather: the humidity or the heat.
But I love the thunderstorms.
And there's no beating the summer vibe:
stolid, syrupy paranoia mixing with fresh days of rain.

shalom.

now you know

2008-06-04T14:55:00.002-04:00

listening to: "flume" - bon iver

I just saw a bumper sticker on a minivan that said,

"If Mary was Pro-Choice there would be NO CHRISTMAS!"

Am at loss for words.

don't bother me

2008-06-04T12:55:00.002-04:00

listening to: "the wolves (act I and II)" - bon iver

Last night while I was watching Hillary Clinton's speech from New York City, my grandmother sits down on the arm of my chair and says something about how Hillary has a pudgy face. Then she pats my cheek and says, "But don't worry. I love your pudgy face."

I have to tell myself that she's a little crazy. Otherwise most of the things she's said to me this week are just plain mean.

all i've got for you

2008-06-02T14:43:00.002-04:00

listening to: "razor love" - neil young

Well, T.J. graduated from high school. Today is his party. Right now there are two grandmas, one mom, three mom friends, and one mentally disabled aunt in the kitchen. Along with five dozen hardboiled eggs that smell like farts. Everyone is crazy. And I've been sleeping in my parents' closet for four nights now.

angels in the architecture

2008-05-25T12:26:00.003-04:00

listening to: "you can call me al" - paul simon

It is far too nice a day to be shut up in some church. It's Sunday, I know, and traditionally one goes to church and suffers gracefully through an hour and a half of posturing, postulating, and piety, but today I couldn't bring myself to do it. I've been trying to find a church that's liberal and open and peace-loving, and having a little bit of a hard time of it. It's difficult to find everything I want in a Christian church because, um, I fundamentally disagree on a few principle tenets of the faith. But I want spiritual conversation/input/somethingorother, and I don't know where else to go, plus I need to meet new people. Anyways. Today, there was nothing doing. I drove by twenty three churches on my way to this coffee shop. Holy places stuffed with holy people, people growing ever warmer with the heat of conviction, wiping away a sheen of sweat, sweet with the Lord's body and blood. I couldn't turn my car into those parking lots. And so I ended up here in this coffee shop, in this patch of sunlight. There are worse things.

poetry under the influence

2008-05-17T01:22:00.006-04:00

sole sleeper

what i like about being

alone in bed

is first the quiet and

the space

and then of course

dozens

of tiny deaths

and the pleasure

of waking up.

broad ripple

2008-05-13T20:19:00.002-04:00

I meant to blog today.

Instead, I spent the entire afternoon outside on the patio of a coffee shop, reading and drinking iced coffee and eating apple/cheese panini and getting sunburned.

Now I'm so blissed out by the sun, I just typed globber.com.

Yep.

Y'all, go play outside.

tiny giants made of tinier giants

2008-05-07T18:01:00.004-04:00

listening to: "dashboard" - modest mouse

It's a grey, dark day here in our little suburb, but I like these days, I like the way the breeze blowing through my open window in the morning is chilly, the way the tree outside sounds, its baby leaves swishing against each other, the way the strands of my ivy brush against my lamp, and I, snuggling deeper into my blankets, can spend hours in my bed in the grey morning light. I have the day off today, and spent it doing very little. Enjoying the light, the chill, the nothing to do.

I escaped the house a while ago in order to escape the reach of the television set. I went to Starbucks, of course, because I don't know where else to go. But I like my Starbucks-- it's quiet and clean and I don't have to go far. I just needed to get away from the TV. I find that if it's there, I will watch it, most of the time. And I do not need to numb my brain any more by sitting in front of that stupid box ingesting stupid shows with stupid plots and letting that morbidity sink deeper and deeper into my skull. I mean, I do read. I read a lot. But the more time I spend in front of the TV, the shorter my attention span becomes and the less I am willing to expend energy reading difficult texts. I've given up on The Brothers Karamazov too many times, and I don't even want to tell you how many John Grisham books I've read. It's embarrassing. So I'm going to actually put forth effort into consciously moving away from the television set.

I finished writing a letter to Erin (from Oregon) today. I keep having dreams about her. We are walking in the woods, running our fingers over tiny leaves, tasting the roots of trees to figure out how old they are, and building small homes for small mice. We are having beautiful conversations. I wake up feeling as though I've been walking in the woods. It is a nice way to wake up. Sometimes I spend the rest of the day wanting to walk to the edge of the gorge to hunt for petrified wood. Those are days when it's hard to make frappucinos.

A few lists.

books I bought this week,
in exploration of the mystical/contemplative:
Dark Night of the Soul, John of the Cross
Showings, Julian of Norwich
Psalms for Praying, Nan C. Merrill
Centering Prayer, Thomas Merton

books I bought this week for fun:
Things I Learned About my Father Through Therapy, Heather B. Armstrong
He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, Jessica Valenti
The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert

books I have read (or reread) in 2008 so far:
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
God Laughs and Plays, David James Duncan
What is the What, Dave Eggers
You Shall Know Our Velocity!, Dave Eggers
Every War Has Two Losers, William Stafford
Into the Wild, John Krakauer
The Answers Are Inside The Mountains, William Stafford
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, Dave Eggers
Rules For the Dance, Mary Oliver
Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr
The Pelican Brief, John Grisham
The Testament, John Grisham
Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende
The City in Which I Love You, Li-Young Lee
Blessed Are the Peacemakers, Wendell Berry
The Subtle Knife, Phillip Pullman
The Darkness Around Us is Deep, William Stafford
Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

poets I want to read this year:
Octavio Paz
Sharon Olds
Naomi Shihab Nye
Charles Baudelaire
Beth Ann Fennaly
Czeslaw Milosz
Pavel Zajicek
Michael Palma
Franz Josef Czernin
Joy Harjo
William Carlos Williams

shalom.

green light through leaves in my window.

2008-05-06T13:47:00.002-04:00

Spring

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

by Mary Oliver

two colors in my head.

2008-05-06T00:09:00.002-04:00

listening to: "everything in its right place" - radiohead

I just saw Barack Obama.
And.
I also saw Stevie Wonder.

I'm the winner.

And I know who I'm voting for tomorrow. :)

ev’rybody’s laughing, ev'rybody's happy.

2008-04-28T13:14:00.004-04:00

listening to: "sun king" - the beatles

The other day in Holland, I was at Lemonjello's drinking an iced coffee with a double shot of espresso and some raw sugar. I was with a bunch of girls sitting on the patio, and this bum walks up, and apparently one of the girls knows him? And says he's a friendly bum? So, good. A friendly bum sits down at our table and tries to talk to us. Miriah is a nicer person than me, so she talks to him while I talk to Anna. But he turns to Miriah, jabs his thumb in my direction, and says he wants me to be his girlfriend. Miriah tells him I have a fella at home, which: false. But still. Then he nods, as if agreeing with himself, and says, "I like her size." He leans back in his chair, folds his arms, shaman-like over his chest, and grins, saying,
"That's me."
"That's me."

Probably the best proposition I've ever encountered. Ever.

Anyway, I had a blissful, gorgeous three days in Holland, followed by a very nice evening with my sister in Goshen. I got to play with my friends, commune with Darcy, talk writing and relationships and life and Europe and whiskey with Jeremy, see all my sorority sisters, drink Mad Hatter IPA (yay!), and do the T-REX DANCE WHATWHAT!?!? It far surpassed my meager expectations of the trip. And it made me realize that, underneath the boredom and blah of living in Indianapolis and not having many friends, I'm happy. My soul, it is a happy soul. The universe loves me and I feel grateful to swim in the crazy mystery of the world. :)

Recently, I have decided to practice a new theory of self-preservation: saying YES to myself. Because I realized that most of the times I say no to myself, I only make myself more unhappy. I don't say no at important times, when I really ought to say no. I say no to the mundane things. When I would be far happier if I just let go and said yes. So in that spirit, I bought bright red shoes and glittery sunglasses. I went to bed early. I gave chemicals to my christmas cactus. And I'm going to get a perm. Yep.

Oh yeah, I turned 23 on Saturday. I'm old now. And boring. :) My parents gave me a cute tiny blue digital camera, and as soon as I figure out how it works, I'm going to start posting pictures here like MAD. So be watching out for that in the future. Emily gave me a cool photo of the pulp of a pink grapefruit. It looks like innards. I have to frame it, but I'm excited to hang it on my wall.

So. Things I saw on my country-road drives through Indiana:

Towns:
Swayzee
Aroma
Normal
Leisure
Windfall
Strawtown

Miller's Merry Manor, a "joyful" seniors' residence outside Warsaw

signs for the Salamonie Reservoir

hundreds of red-breasted blackbirds

67 funeral homes

Sad Farms of:
longhorn cattle
ostrich
buffalo
llamas
alpacas
elk
very tiny goats
dingy horses

Anyway, right now I'm sick; I have a cold. I don't have time for it, but whatever. Taking some zinc to get it over with faster. I'm going to go bring the dog in. I think it's raining.

shalom.

if you're waiting for your life to get better, don't wait for the weather

2008-04-21T23:34:00.002-04:00

listening to: "hot romance" - parlour steps

I can't believe it's actually April. No seriously. It's late April. My friends are finishing school this week and next week. Emily's leaving for Senegal. T.J. is graduating from high school. All time has blurred together. And the past few months have been fast.

I'm going to Holland in the morning. I'm trying to take this trip one step at a time, not really scheduling everything. Whatever happens happens and that's cool. I'm also trying to be organized. I folded my clothes. I picked a couple of books and narrowed down writing utensils and notebooks. I have alcoholic/caffeinated offerings for a couple of my friends. I'm choosing CDs. I'm leaving at 8. I'm excited.

And also.

Stephanie and Darcy and I are planning to do the T-Rex dance all night on Wednesday.

Nothing more need be said.

I wrote a couple of poems I like over at No Cars Go. I've never really written that many "love" poems that aren't taken directly from my experience. But lately I've been struck by phrases I hear my friends say. And then I morph the phrases. And then I write poems about them. And it's fun.

Mostly, at the moment, I'm tired. I've worked a lot of 8 hour days. It's hard to stand up for 8 hours at time. Especially when you're covered in frappucino. I'm just sayin'.

Yeah, that's it.

Holland, here I come. :)

shalom.

death is on the tip of her tongue and danger's at the tip of her fingers

2008-04-15T15:07:00.002-04:00

listening to: "streets on fire" - lupe fiasco

Today at work a very kind woman came to the front register and, after ordering a drink very nicely, handed me a religious tract entitled "God Will Forgive Even You." It was full of saccharine personal anecdotes, misinterpreted scriptural quotations, intense guilt-mongering language, and quite frankly, it was very offensive. It was clearly marketed toward women ("Feeling guilty about something? Anything? --Abortion? --Premarital Sex? --Inadequacy? --Worldliness? God forgave the soldiers who killed his precious only Son. He can forgive you, too, if you kneel before him in humility")

This is not the first time. People will leave those tracts anywhere, we've found. Propped up on the faucet of the sink, tucked into the toilet paper dispenser, in the windowsill next to tables, pushed between the cushion and arm of the comfy chairs. The last guy to hand me a tract face to face, though, was in the drive-through in a big red Hummer. He nonchalantly handed me a fake million dollar bill, and drove away saying "There's a million dollar question on the back..." The million dollar question, it turns out, was "Do you know if you're going to hell when you die? Here's a sure way to find out!"

What's that Appleman poem? Oh yeah.

O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice--
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good--
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.

Right.

it was your heart hurting, but not for long, kid.

2008-04-14T23:09:00.002-04:00

listening to: "our life is not a movie or maybe" - okkervil river

I feel that, despite its seeming simplicity, my life right now is unconscionably cluttered. Maybe it's because life is too simple-- I don't have a car, therefore I have a pretty small range of motion, I work full time making the same coffee over and over again every time I turn around, I try to suss out the same work politics and drama every day, I live with my parents so I don't have the added stress of paying rent or making my own food (though I do have the fun bonus of owing the U.S. Dept. of Education my firstborn child). Maybe I'm bored. I mean. I'm bored. There's no maybe about that. I am not used to this. I require more stimulation than this.

I read these great books, The Brothers Karamazov, God Laughs and Plays, Eat Pray Love. I have the beginnings of these really big spiritual ideas. And then I'm like, "meh." I am so damn intellectually lazy these days. I need a shot in the arm (something in my veins bloodier than blood)(thank you, Wilco). (Or maybe I just need to fall in love in the key of C...)

Anyhow, it'll be good to go up to Holland, even if it's boring, even if it's anticlimactic, even if it sucks, if only for the four hours all to myself, driving up and down. Lord.

Aw, screw it. I have to work in six hours or something. I'm going to bed.

holly was a hoodrat

2008-04-10T16:26:00.003-04:00

listening to: "how a resurrection really feels" - the hold steady

God help me if someone ever judges the quality of my personhood by how clean and organized my house is.

imakicksumass.

when they kiss they spit white noise

2008-04-09T18:32:00.002-04:00

listening to: "first night" - the hold steady

Today was a non-work day, the first since last Wednesday, actually, so I slept until noon. My brother and I got up around the same time and made plans to go to Broad Ripple. We ventured into daylight and drove down Allisonville Road, a street I like solely for the fact that I can't turn onto it without wanting to sing "Allison Road" by the Gin Blossoms. In fact, I think I will listen to it right now.

Ah. "Yeah I didn't know I was lost at the time...On Allison Road."

Anyway, we drove to Broad Ripple and decided on the Egyptian Cafe. Rose & cherry shisha, chicken shawarma & gyro sandwiches, iced coffee. T.J. smoked peach Swisher Sweets and I had my American Spirits and we talked about his spring break trip, his friends, college, you know. The art of smoking hookah. All sorts of things. For three hours. It is a truly beautiful day, cool and sunny. It's a great day for driving and listening to DeVotchKa. We stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home, as I am destined to visit Trader J's on each and every day off, simply because it is my happy place. They have Rogue Beer there, brewed in the Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon. You know. Where I lived. Next time I am buying some. As it was, Teej and I admired cheeses and potted herbs for awhile, sampled a piece of spicy chicken sausage with pineapple in some kind of Hawaiian sauce which I liked but T.J. said tasted like his throw-up. Um.

I finished reading Liz Gilbert's Eat Pray Love today and I think I might start it again? So much of what she said was so spot-on. I think I might have had trouble reading it because it spoke so strongly to my heart? I don't know.

I still have, in my stack of books, to read The Answers Are Inside the Mountains (W. Stafford), What is the What (D. Eggers), Every War Has Two Losers (W. Stafford), and The Brothers Karamazov (F. Dostoevsky). Blah. Most of the time these days, I feel too brain-dead to read "smart" books. I need to power through that feeling and do it anyway.

I haven't killed my plants yet. Right now they are happily chilling in my open bedroom window, filling the air with a fresh photosynthesized scent. Thank God.

Today I feel pretty Zen. I don't know what that means.

my heart won't stay entirely in this rib cage

2008-04-06T23:15:00.002-04:00

listening to: "take it from me" - the weepies

"I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?' Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering. And both of them, unfortunately (or maybe obviously), are what I'm dealing with at this Ashram. When I sit in my silence and look at my mind, it is only questions of longing and control that emerge to agitate me, and this agitation is what keeps me from evolving forward.

When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being-- and a normal one, at that? The thoughts came up as usual-- OK, so it will be-- and then the attendant emotions rose, too. I began feeling frustrated and judgmental about myself, lonely and angry. But then a fierce response boiled up from somewhere in the deepest caverns of my heart, and I told myself, 'I will not judge you for these thoughts.'

My mind tried to protest, said, 'Yeah, but you're such a failure, you're such a loser, you'll never amount to anything--"

But suddenly it was like a lion was roaring from within my chest, drowning all this claptrap out. A voice bellowed in me like nothing I had ever heard before. It was so internally, eternally loud that I actually clamped my hand over my mouth because I was afraid that if I opened my mouth and let this sound out, it would shake the foundations of buildings as faraway as Detroit.

And this is what it roared:

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW STRONG MY LOVE IS!!!!!!!!!!

The chattering, negative thoughts in my mind scattered in the wind of this statement like birds and jackrabbits and antelopes-- they hightailed it out of there, terrified. Silence followed. An intense, vibrating, awed silence. The lion in the giant savannah of my heart surveyed his newly quiet kingdom with satisfaction. He licked his great chops once, closed his yellow eyes and went back to sleep."

Liz Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

i'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears

2008-04-04T21:55:00.002-04:00

listening to: "gotta have you" - the weepies

Well, I failed at napping this afternoon. So instead of sleeping, I cleaned the bathroom and went to buy some CDs. Here are the ones I purchased:

Neon Bible (Arcade Fire)
A Mad & Faithful Telling (Devotchka)
Say I Am You (The Weepies)

I have mostly listened to all three this afternoon and very much love them. They're all quite different from one another, and I like them for different reasons. So. Next on the list of CDs to buy (or general artists I need more of): Hideaway: the new Weepies CD that comes out April 22, some Paul Simon, lots of Leonard Cohen, more New Pornographers, more Neko Case. Also interested in Jordan Zevon's new CD, maybe some Tift Merritt, possibly Bob Mould, a bit of Collin Herring. We'll see.

I rented Atonement tonight and thought it was beautiful. Visually beautiful. And well written, fairly decently acted, with a nifty musical score. But mostly it just looked pretty-- and I don't mean that in a condescending way. I was pretty riveted. Recently I have also watched and enjoyed: Dan in Real Life, Sunshine, Once, Waitress... maybe that's it. I feel like there are more. Oh well.

Anyhow, I work again at 8 in the morning, so I think I might drug myself and pass out. Yes.

both candle and the mouth crazy around it.
say who i am.
say i am you.

-Rumi

we just dug ourselves into the rebel side of heaven

2008-04-04T11:53:00.002-04:00

listening to: "rebel side of heaven" - langhorne slim

I'd like to say something smart, but I'm far too tired. 4:10 a.m. is early to be awake. It's still dark for 3 and a half hours after that. Anyhow, I'm far too dodderingly tired to be coherent, let alone smart.

I got my new Paste Magazine today. Upon first listen, the sampler's pretty good. I don't like it as much as last months, at least not yet. But it does include exciting folks like The Weepies, Jordan Zevon, The Republic Tigers, and KaiserCartel. Yum.

Anyways, it's odd to get off work at 11 a.m. and then have the rest of the day. But I think I'm too much of a zombie right now to do anything. I need to fold laundry and clean the bathroom. But first I might nap for a bit. Yeah.

we know a place no space ships go

2008-04-02T12:00:00.002-04:00

listening to: "no cars go" - arcade fire

I saw this at dooce.com, but wanted to post it here as well because damn. Intense.

Life Before Death
This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living.

Also, check out Phil Hansen. Follow the links on the left, and be sure to read the descriptions underneath. So interesting and cool.

Last night I went out with some girls from work to The Egyptian Cafe and Hookah Bar in Broad Ripple. We smoked rose shisha and had chicken shawarma wraps on the best homemade pita bread I've ever eaten. My god, it was nice to be out with real people, actually out, conversing with one another, having fun. We went back to one girl's apartment afterward, watched Sunshine, which I liked (I knew I'd like it because Paste Magazine liked it... and I'm a dweeb for Paste.) and drank rum 'n' cokes, which I liked as well. Today is my first day off in nine days. Tomorrow begins another seven day stint of work. I. Am tired. But I've got a haircut appointment next Thursday, tentative plans to invade Holland later in April, and a sweet paycheck coming my way. Um. That's all.

I'm going to watch some terrible TV and maybe read Eat Pray Love.

right.

reconstruct the time we had

2008-04-01T11:02:00.002-04:00

listening to: "ocarina" - birds & batteries

At Hope College, we had this thing called the Poetry Blitz. It was illegal. We printed off thousands of poems. Thousands. And then we covered the campus with them. We hid them under stairwells, on the bottoms of chairs in the cafeteria. We taped tiny poems to individual letters on computer keyboards. We tied them to trees, rolled them up and nestled them inside tulips. We printed them big and left them on walls. We tied them to bikes, to bike racks. We slipped them under classroom doors. We had code names. The administration instructed the cleaning crews and grounds crews to get rid of any poems they found, but they never found all of them. And sometimes the cleaning staff rebelled. Last year, my costume shop cleaning lady, Bonnie, came to see me. She asked if I had put up the poems in the basement of the theatre building around the costume shop. She told me they made her day, that every day, she felt like she could sit and be quiet and read poems for a minute, and it changed the whole feeling of her day. It was delicious. I missed the blitz this year, so I'm doing my internet version. Well. I'm posting poems (William Stafford, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Cornelius Eady, Li-Young Lee, Tom Waits, Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, William Carlos Williams) here. And linking to my poetry blog. I'd do more if I could today. So. Happy April! Love and poetry to everyone. :)

_______________________________________

A Ritual to Read to Each Other:

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

—William Stafford

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid:

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

—William Stafford

After Arguing Against The Contention That Art Must Come From Discontent:

Whispering to each handhold, "I'll be back,"
I go up the cliff in the dark. One place
I loosen a rock and listen a long time
till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush
of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind --
I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side
or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward...

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark--
"Made it again!" Oh how I love this climb!
-- the whispering to the stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
"Made it again! Made it again!"

--Mary Oliver

Poem (The spirit likes to dress up...)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

--Mary Oliver

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

--Wendell Berry

I'm a Fool to Love You

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don't want nuance
To get in the way,
When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father
After choosing a man
Who was, as we sing it,
Of no account.
This man made my father look good,
That's how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an island
In the middle of a stormy sea,
He made my father look like a rock.
And is the blues the moment you realize
You exist in a stacked deck,
You look in a mirror at your young face,
The face my sister carries,
And you know it's the only leverage
You've got.
Does this create a hurt that whispers
How you going to do?
Is the blues the moment
You shrug your shoulders
And agree, a girl without money
Is nothing, dust
To be pushed around by any old breeze.
Compared to this,
My father seems, briefly,
To be a fire escape.
This is the way the blues works
Its sorry wonders,
Makes trouble look like
A feather bed,
Makes the wrong man's kisses
A healing.

--Cornelius Eady

This Room And Everything In It

Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment.

I am making use
of the one thing I learned
of all the things my father tried to teach me:
the art of memory.

I am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about love
and its difficulties.

I'll let your love-cries,
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.

Your scent,
that scent
of spice and a wound,
I'll let stand for mystery.

Your sunken belly
is the daily cup
of milk I drank
as a boy before morning prayer.

The sun on the face
of the wall
is God, the face
I can't see, my soul,

and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater idea.
And one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,

I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
Now I've forgotten my
idea. The book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind...
the even-numbered pages are
the past, the odd-
numbered pages, the future.
The sun is
God, your body is milk...

useless, useless...
your cries are song, my body's not me...
no good ... my idea
has evaporated...your hair is time, your thighs are song...
it had something to do
with death...it had something
to do with love.

--Li-Young Lee

Sonnet 117 - All we were going strong

All we were going strong last night this time,
the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, an evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen—ecstasies—
among so much good we tamped down the crime.

The weather's changing. This morning was cold,
as I made for the grove, without expectation,
some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,
to read her if she came. Presently the sun
yellowed the pines & my lady came not
in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.

--John Berryman

Keep Your Eyes Open When You Kiss

Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when
You kiss. All silly time else, close them to;
Unsleeping, I implore you (dear) pursue
In darkness me, as I do you again
Instantly we part .. only me both then
And when your fingers fall, let there be two
Only, 'in that dream-kingdom': I would have you
Me alone recognize your citizen.

Before who wanted eyes, making love, so?
I do now. However we are driven and hide,
What state we keep all other states condemn,
We see ourselves, we watch the solemn glow
Of empty courts we kiss in .. Open wide!
You do, you do, and I look into them.

--John Berryman

Frank's Wild Years

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead
he sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4 % and put down payment
on a little two bedroom place
his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
made good bloody marys
kept her mouth shut most of the time
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a
thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan
they were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths
drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then
Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed north
Never could stand that dog.

--Tom Waits

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

--Sharon Olds

True Love

In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex—surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond.

--Sharon Olds

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

--Sharon Olds

The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

--Sharon Olds

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

--Billy Collins

The Art Of Drowning

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,

a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.

--Billy Collins

The Best Cigarette

There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.

Billy Collins

Dedication for a Plot of Ground

This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in a Brooklyn boarding house,
went with him to Puerto Rico
bore three more children, lost
her second husband, lived hard
for eight years in St. Thomas,
Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed
the oldest son to New York,
lost her daughter, lost her "baby,"
seized the two boys of
the oldest son by the second marriage
mothered them -- they being
motherless -- fought for them
against the other grandmother
and the aunts, brought them here
summer after summer, defended
herself here against thieves,
storms, sun, fire,
against flies, against girls
that came smelling about, against
drought, against weeds, storm-tides,
neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,
against the weakness of her own hands,
against the growing strength of
the boys, against wind, against
the stones, against trespassers,
against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,
domineered over this grass plot,
blackguarded her oldest son
into buying it, lived here fifteen years,
attained a final loneliness and --

If you can bring nothing to this place
but your carcass, keep out.

--William Carlos Williams

First Praise

Lady of dusk-wood fastnesses,
Thou art my Lady.
I have known the crisp, splintering leaf-tread with thee on before,
White, slender through green saplings;
I have lain by thee on the brown forest floor
Beside thee, my Lady.

Lady of rivers strewn with stones,
Only thou art my Lady.
Where thousand the freshets are crowded like peasants to a fair;
Clear-skinned, wild from seclusion
They jostle white-armed down the tent-bordered thoroughfare
Praising my Lady.

--William Carlos Williams

shalom.

you better mean what you say; why don't you say what you mean?

2008-03-30T23:46:00.002-04:00

listening to: "transliterator" - devotchka

I have been getting the urge to wander lately-- even through the neighborhood. And if you could see my neighborhood, you'd understand what a futile venture that would be. We have this one tree, a tree which is apparently the oldest tree in the subdivision. And I know this because there is a plaque screwed into the tree saying "this is the oldest tree in the subdivision." Yeah, there's a bench a few yards out from the tree, and a spotlight illumining it. So that you can sit in the median, in the middle of the street, between two lines of cookie-cutter earth-toned houses and retention ponds, staring at this one left-over tree. And then go kill yourself.

In other news, sometimes people don't know people as well as they think they know people. And that's all I have to say about people.

Anybody want to hunt up some trees without screws in 'em with me?
Yeah?

Let's scratch this wanderlust itch.
I'll bring the wine--
you bring some picture books and poetry.
We'll leave our shoes at home and
wear hats.

shalom.

our love is god, let's go get a slushie

2008-03-30T00:50:00.002-04:00

watching: "heathers"

Heathers is such an excellent movie. EXCELLENT!

Go watch it. NOW.

i've got more records than the kgb, so no funny business...

2008-03-28T19:54:00.003-04:00

listening to: "paper planes" - m.i.a.

Last night I slept wrong on my neck and now I can't turn my head to the left. All I want to do is turn my head to the left. Apparently that's too too much to ask. I'm using my dad's computer right now, which is nicer than mine, and much smaller, except he spilled coffee on it and now the "r" button doesn't work so every time I want to use an "r" I have to copy/paste it in. Which makes me really appreciate the letter "r". And makes me desperately desperately love all the words that don't include the letter "r".

I'm looking at different grad schools than before. Seattle Pacific, Pacific University, University of Oregon. I've been thinking, why should I force myself to stay here-- what's the point of "toughing it out"? I'm not going to win a "toughing out Indiana" award, so why do this? I feel stupider here, some days, which worries me a bit. It's difficult to self-motivate, yes, but that I can get past. What I mean is that I am making myself dumber by not working toward anything and by not doing as much reading, and not the sort of reading I ought to be doing. And to be honest, I don't much care about grad school, but I know I need it, so I'm going to try for it. But even if I don't end up with an MFA, even if I do brew coffee for awhile, I think I still need to get out of the midwest. And I need to get out on my own again. Because... I can be less stupid when I'm on my own. Or more stupid. Either. Both. Doesn't matter.

I paid off one credit card, I have maybe 2 or 3 more payments on the other. Then there's just the US Dept. of Education to worry about. After I'm done with the Visa card, I'm going to buy a truck. So I can maneuver myself about a bit.

Anyhow. My neck hurts. I'm tired of Ctrl+V-ing my "r"s. rrrrrrrrr!

shalom.

he says her name, it echoes in my head like it was a canyon

2008-03-27T23:09:00.004-04:00

listening to: "everybody knows" - ryan adams

I don't usually experience sharp, distinct, concrete desires, aside from the usual: must eat, must sleep, must have space. But today, I was blending a grande double chocolaty chip cream frappucino and it struck me, explicitly, very palatable, very corporeal, that I wanted to be in the basement of City Lights Books in San Francisco.

Columbus and Broadway, baby, I remember it. I wanted to be sitting on that church pew, reading Southern Lit, moving into a nook or cranny to check out Eastern Religions, and then make my way to the Social Issues section, read up on the prison systems before I browse the feminist poetry selection and read about veganism on my way back up the stairs. I just had this very clear vision of sitting down there for a couple of hours without anyone bothering me.

If I was there, and had a hundred bucks, here are the five books I'd buy:

The Essential Chomsky

McSweeney's Issue 25

The Subject Tonight is Love

The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in the Ukraine

Twenty Prose Poems

Mmm, anyone want to go on an adventure with me? I'm ready. Let's go.

It's thundering here. I'm going to bed.

i tell my love to wreck it all

2008-03-27T16:20:00.002-04:00

listening to: "skinny love" - bon iver

even my toes smell like coffee.
i'm not even kidding.
don't ask how i know that.

yesterday i went bowling and we got yelled at by the league bowlers. who were doing very poorly. supposedly because we were standing near them. it was silly. so then we just tried to be obnoxious. and beat their high scores.

i want to go to holland in april. i might. if i can rustle up a car.

i am too tired to have thoughts that flow together or are more simple than "my toes smell like coffee." i need a nap.

north of the river all the streets are the same

2008-03-25T12:18:00.002-04:00

listening to: "what i'm trying to say" - stars

last night i was up until 4 looking at online lit mags. i submitted five poems to one. which will probably lead nowhere. but i figured it's about time i tried. the whole thing made me nauseous, though. everything i've written looks shallow and overly-simplistic when i think about it in the context of publication. i don't want to feel that way about my work. ugh.

i have this one small life to live

2008-03-24T13:59:00.001-04:00

listening to: "wedding crows" - the josh davis band

I spent the morning reading some beautiful memoirs by people I am or have been very close to. And then I decided to reread what I wrote about myself in my senior seminar "LifeView" paper. And I liked it. So I'm putting the end here for you. Ha.

Let’s be honest, because at this point we have nothing to offer each other besides our honesty and our good wishes. Let’s be honest, because what’s the point of lying? Let’s just be honest. It’s easier. I promise. Here, I’ll go first: no kidding, no running around, no bullshitting.

I keep telling people that I have no idea what I want to do with my life. And it isn’t true. If I am going to be honest, which I’ve just promised to do, then I need to tell you that I know, broadly yet exactly, what I want to do. You’re probably thinking, “Okay, Megan. That’s great. So why are you lying?” Well, the truth is, I’m ashamed of my dream. It is so impractical, so far-fetched, that when I do venture to tell people—even the people closest to me—I get concerned looks, head-shaking, and short lectures about money and realism. And I take those looks, that head-shaking, and the lectures because I have always imagined that most people—especially adults—are much smarter than I am. But after months of these reactions, I’m upset. I kinda think that the headshakers are full of shit. Because there is no reason that I shouldn’t get what I want—no reason that I should be unhappy with my life. So in a few minutes, I am going to tell you my dream, and you are not going to laugh, because if you do, I will call you names behind your back and shake my head at you. Because I’m an adult now, and that is what adults do—I have seen it.

Anne Lamott wrote in her amazing book, Traveling Mercies,
It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools—friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty—and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.

I find enormous freedom in this truth-telling. I mean, yes—it’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around. We grew up believing—because we were encouraged to believe—that adults inherited this mysterious knowledge, that one day we, too, would share in the knowledge, that we would be smart, wise, virtuous. But now I realize that to come of age means to understand that a lot of the stuff we learned from the adults in our lives was made up. It was made up, and now we, as adults, have to start making it up, too. I don’t know about you, but I’m uncomfortable with that. It’s hard for me to settle myself around the idea that everything from here on out is freestyle, improv, invention.

And yet, if I think about it even harder, the idea is enormously freeing. It means, I think, that the people who told me that my dream was impractical were saying that because it is unusual, because it doesn’t jive with the way they live their own lives, because it isn’t what they know. And that’s totally valid. I accept that. But it means that when they were giving me advice, they were giving me advice for their own lives, not necessarily for mine. And if the rest of my life from now on is improvisation, then who’s to tell me exactly how I should live it?

Maybe this sounds too individualistic. Maybe it sounds like I’m just looking for an excuse to disregard the words of those who hold authority over me. If that’s the case, then I’m sorry—that is not my intention. My goal in writing this is not to assert myself as a rebel or a brat or a mutineer. Instead, it is to help myself understand that it’s okay for me to work impractically toward living a life I love. And I think that that understanding is important.

Here is My Dream:

To be honest (because that’s what this is all about), I want to be a writer. You’re probably cringing. The world is full of writers. America is full of writers. And they’re all pretty damn hungry. It’s true, you’re right—that’s what my parents say, too. But I can’t help it. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I want to write poems as long as I can still hold a pen. I guess I’d like to be published, but honestly I’m not thinking about that now, and I hope that being published is never in my top-five list of things to do before I die. I hope I never give a shit about the politics of the writing world. I want to learn how to be a better poet, to be more confident in my work, to be a part of a writing group. I want to learn to love everything that comes out of me as something of value, even if it isn’t pretty. And I want people to like my writing.

But I don’t just want to be a poet. I also want to live a particular sort of life. I want to live in a home in the mountains, out of sight from roads and other houses. I want to live near some kind of water. Probably a river. I would like there to be a lot of trees, a lot of green. I want to live on a pretty large piece of privately owned land. I want a studio separate from my home. I don’t think I want a television. A good sound-system, yes—but not a T.V. I want to marry someone I love and I never want to divorce. I want to marry someone who is not only able to tolerate, but able to emotionally support a writer’s life. I want a husband who respects me as an equal and is demonstrative and emotionally available. I want a healthy sex life. I want a big kitchen table with benches on either side and a husband who likes to cook. I want to be pregnant; I want to be able to have my own babies, several of them. I want my children to be smart, I want them to play outside all day and read under the covers at night. I don’t want them to even look at a video game. I want them to learn from the currents in the river, the dying breaths of pacific northwest salmon, the position of the sun, the color of the leaves. I want to have good conversations with my children; I want them to love me and to never be disappointed in me. I want my husband to always want me, to be excited to begin and end the day in my bed.

And that isn’t all. A huge chapter of the larger story of my life is that I want to live in community. Wendell-Berry-style-community. In his book, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, Berry writes,
A community identifies itself by an understood mutuality of interests. But it lives and acts by the common virtues of trust, goodwill, forbearance, self-restraint, compassion, and forgiveness. If it hopes to continue long as a community, it will wish to—and will have to—encourage respect for all its members, human and natural. It will encourage respect for all stations and occupation. Such a community has the power—not invariably but as a rule—to enforce decency without litigation. It has the power, that is, to influence behavior. And it exercises this power not by coercion or violence but by teaching the young and by preserving stories and songs that tell (among other things) what works and what does not work in a given place.

This is how I want to live my life. This is where I want a marriage to flourish. This is where I want my children to grow up.

Does my dream sound ridiculous? I think, in a way, that it must. Poets don’t make any money, wanting to live life without a TV is an antiquated notion, kids need video games like they need food, community like that doesn’t exist, blahblahblah… I’ve heard it all. But the fact that it may be ridiculous in today’s automated, wasteful, over-caffeinated society doesn’t mean it’s invalid. At least, I hope it doesn’t.

In that quote from Anne Lamott I mentioned earlier, she writes that “life hands you these rusty bent old tools—friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty—and says, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.” Well, I sure hope that’s true. Because, to be honest with you, those are the tools I want to strive to use. My liberal arts education? Yeah, that was keen. The MFA I hope to procure? That’ll be nice, too. But those aren’t the things that I want to define me. And if the legacy I leave behind when I kick it is that of friendship, prayerfulness, conscientiousness, and honesty, I will justly have achieved my purpose. I guess I just hope that my path in life and the goals that I set for myself will lead me in the direction of life-giving and kindness.

she would make me cool

2008-03-23T23:08:00.002-04:00

listening to: "the coolest" - lupe fiasco

dear meg,

please stop writing sermons.
don't be so cocky.
go write some neat words down on yer notecards.
eat a gummy bear, damn it.
bugger off.

love,
meg xoxoxoxo

let's pretend we're in antarctica

2008-03-23T10:53:00.004-04:00

listening to: "wraith pinned to the mist and other games" - of montreal

As usual, church today was frustrating. Frustrating bordering on offensive. My favorite part was when they played Hemingway's Nobel Prize acceptance speech and then talked about how, because he didn't have a personal relationship with his lord and savior Jesus Christ, Hemingway was a lonely, sad little man. A sad little man whose tremendous body of work will probably be forgotten by everyone in the world in the near future because he never asked Jesus into his heart.

(expletive expletive, pause, breath)

Sure, Hemingway was a sad bastard, and I'm not even a huge fan of his literature, but what he said about a writer's life was right on, and for the preacher to say that solitude = spiritual emptiness is not only stupid, it negates a very rich and ancient tradition of people finding themselves/spirit/God/fulfillment in solitude. Here's Hemingway's full speech:

Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with good luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

Again I thank you.

Pretty great, huh? I thought it was incredibly ignorant of the pastor this morning to use this as a part of an illustration. Here's a memo for you, preacher: we're all alone. You might see this as a bad thing, a sad thing, or hell, you might be so deluded that you're pretty sure you're never alone. But you're not the authority, though you might claim to speak with God's. Loneliness is good for you. Solitude is good for you. Your sadness is good for you. Even Ranier Maria Rilke (a Christian writer...) said this:

"...for at the bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone..."

"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them."

"Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you."

"Your solitude will be a hold and home for you even amid very unfamiliar conditions and from there you will find all your ways."

"What (ask yourself) would solitude be that had no greatness; there is but one solitude, and that is great, and not easy to bear, and to almost everybody come hours when they would gladly exchange it for any sort of intercourse, however banal and cheap, for the semblance of some slight accord with the first comer, with the unworthiest...But perhaps those are the very hours when solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of springtimes. But that must not mislead you. The necessary thing is after all but this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going-into-oneself and for hours meeting no one-- this one must be able to attain. To be solitary, the way one was solitary as a child, when the grownups went around involved with things that seemed important and big because they themselves looked so busy and because one comprehended nothing of their doings......Why want to exchange a child's wise incomprehension for defensiveness and disdain, since incomprehension is after all being alone, while defensiveness and disdain are a sharing in that from which one wants by these means to keep apart."

"I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing."

"We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so. That is all."

Oh well, just read the damn book. Letters to a Young Poet. Changed my life.

Anyway, the point is, it was difficult for me to hear this man this morning discount a writer because that writer was lonely. Because, god help me, that is the life I want. Rilke writes of seeking solitude? Well, I try to do that. That's why I'm being so defensive. I pissed the royal hell out of my dad on the way home because I said the Hemingway reference was ridiculous and ignorant. He said he thinks that a pastor like that probably knows what he's talking about, whereas I just shoot off. But I don't think so. I think that this man really believes that loneliness is from the devil and if you're sad you must be sinning. I think he's a fool.

And I think we're kidding ourselves if we say we aren't lonely. We're all, at the bottom of things, lonesome. Pretty much any good writer wrote in solitude. The ones who didn't... well... I might make the assumption that their work is not as strong as the ones who did, because it didn't come from the same deep place. And so I don't think Hemingway needs any assvice-- sorry, advice-- from the fundagelicals of Fishers, Indiana. That poor sad solitudinous bastard. He might be going to Evangelhell, but he was a damn far lot smarter than any of them.

And now I'm done, because I just realized that I'm being defensive and disdainful and am sharing in that from which I want by these means to keep apart.

Shalom.

perhaps it isn't what you wanted or even what you're looking for

2008-03-23T01:05:00.004-04:00

listening to: "the silence between us" - bob mould

My hands are all fucked up now.
They're burnt, calloused, scarred.
I have bad cuticles, which someone told me is the ugliest thing you can let happen to your hands.

Today I was dipping my hands into yet another bucket of acrimonious sanitizing liquid so that all of our store can be covered in chemical goodness when I started thinking about Gone With the Wind, and how pissed Rhett Butler was at Scarlett when she "ruined" her hands working to feed her family and how her rough hands were a sign (yet another sign, in her case) of the fact that she wasn't a "lady."

But my fingers are calloused because I can sew a wedding dress in three days and I'm pretty sure I've doused my hands in 200 degree coffee without flinching. My right wrist is scarred because in Oregon I drank too much whiskey once and fell down and then the next day stuck my hand inside a chicken. My hands tell stories.

And my hands can still be soft.

But I've got a mean handshake.
And both middle fingers still work.

I never much wanted to be a lady, anyways.

the guy with the broom came and swept them away.

2008-03-21T20:59:00.002-04:00

listening to: "death of a shade of hue" - of montreal

Tarnation, I need some sleep. Last night, I woke myself up EVERY HOUR for NO REASON and it sucked. Because I had to get up at five in the MORNING! It's STILL DARK OUTSIDE THEN, y'all! And REMAINS DARK FOR AWHILE! Rough. It's rough. It's tough to be a poet barista, y'all. Damn hard life.