This is Yellow

Believed to be Beautiful: Teak Bowl

2010-10-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

Fifth anniversary of our first day as a couple was this week. We selected this large teak bowl as our gift to those years and the many to come. It sits on our table holding the most important things: tiny pumpkins for fall, stacks of cards for after dinner games. Andrew asks me over and over again, can't I smell the wood? Can't I smell the teak? No, no, I never can, but I believe it's beautiful anyway.

Believed to be Beautiful: Tin

2010-10-21T18:06:00.000-07:00

Each time I go to open this little tin, I forget for a moment what is inside. I open the lid and aha! there it is - the millinery rose I'd placed in there years ago. I love the treasure of it - the forgetting and remembering. I love that the act of opening the lid is as much a ritual as the experience that follows.

Believed to be Beautiful: Horse

2010-10-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

Andrew rolled his eyes a little on this one. He was 75% off, chipped, strange, and really, useless, but I had to have him. Carried in my bag, wrapped in a handkerchief for the long walk home, I have never once regretted the purchase of this horse. He sits on a shelf near my desk, spending time with an old Avon owl, and I like to think that when no one else would, I brought him home, and gave him a small, static, beautiful life.

Believed to be Beautiful: Dice

2010-10-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

You know those collections that just sort of...happen? A friend sends the tiniest die you've ever seen, then another gives you a small bag of dice with the most perfect green dots. Some are made of wood, others plastic. We use them, yes, but I love them more for their beauty than their practicality.

Believed to be Beautiful: Safety Pin

2010-10-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

I lose a little more blue paint each year, tiny scraps flaking off as it's used for yet another project, but even though I an entire box of shiny, new pins, this one has always been my favorite.

Believed to be Beautiful: A Day Off

2010-10-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, household beautiful, those were my rules, but having already broken them once with the work doodle, and really, being my own boss, I decided that rule breaking is really fitting for a day off.

On the schedule:

Waking up early and surprising Andrew with a packed lunch and scrambled eggs with Virginia ham and sharp cheddar, a treat of coffee from Andrew who ran out and pick up a perfect latte to sustain me long enough to lounge the early morning away, a phone chat with my mother about her impending graduation!, a long shower outfitted with new conditioner, enough time to place a thin-thickish line of jet black liner on my lids and really, enough time to talk myself out of it and then into it again, a green scarf wrapped and knotted around my neck, tall cognac colored boots thumping on the pavement on the way to the corner coffee shop, one triple latte and a seat by the sun, a cell phone photo when all other gadgets are forgotten, lunch at the museum cafe and a seat outside near the sculpture to enjoy my new book, cleaning the apartment, preparing dinner and a special dessert, grocery shopping for necessary supplies (apple streusel cake is necessary, right?), making plans with the hubby for a Saturday of apple picking and movie watching.

It's really, really beautiful.

Believed to be Beautiful: Stamps

2010-10-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

I use them, all the time, the stamps in my life. I put them on letters to friends and family; I tuck them inside vellum envelopes and send them off, matching images with personalities. I like the ones from he 70's - vibrancy, activism, spunk. These I framed - not to keep safe - but to keep visible.

Believed to be Beautiful: Buttons

2010-10-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

I have quite a few in my collection, quite a few from my childhood - even more from other's childhoods - but these I keep on a thin green string hung near my desk. I like to admire them as if they are jewels, glinting in the light.

Believed to be Beautiful: Notes to Self

2010-10-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

Old Post-It: First thoughts matter most.

Believed to be Beautiful: Doodle

2010-10-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

So, today's bit of beauty is not technically from home, though I spend enough time at work that one might consider it a kind of "home" and as such, the same rules would apply, yes?

This doodle and note was scribbled out by a very sweet friend in the office, and though its sentiment is forthright and seemingly obvious, what makes it so beautiful to me comes down to one word: boring.

I believe, among the compliments a life might gather, that being one who makes a space less boring is among one of the very best possible traits to have recognized by friends and co-workers. I like a good story now and the, a little chuckle amidst the gloom, and I like even more when that's recognized by someone else I respect and enjoy. The little sun is beautiful, both in it's doodly lines, and its reminder of the silly it was created to remember.

Believed to be Beautiful: Pencil Sharpener

2010-10-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

"I cut / / / / /

I multiply everyday images. I apply an aluminum point.

To the landscape.

To the sentence.

To the photo.

To the figure.

To the word."

-from "Grafik" by Juan Felipe Herrera

Believed to be Beautiful: Doily

2010-10-06T18:43:00.001-07:00

"Somebody embroidered the doily.

Somebody waters the plant,

or oils it, maybe. Somebody

arranges the rows of cans

so that they softly say:

esso—so—so—so

to high-strung automobiles.

Somebody loves us all. "

-Elizabeth Bishop, from "Filling Station"

Today's beautiful comes courtesy of Lisa Solomon, and honestly, should have made its appearance here long, long ago when I was the lucky recipient of its glory after a drawing on her website. It is so delicate, so lovely, and at the same time, it is a reminder of everything I've known growing up - the strength of creating, the stability of the knotting, knitting, stitching, and gathering of threads by human hands. Often, at work at my desk, I run my hands over the tiny raise of the vinyl on the glass and I imagine that it's a kind of braille that tells the story of my childhood through the possibility of the future.

Believed to be Beautiful: Teeny Tiny

2010-10-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

This one is an awkward shot, scanned in from film, cropped in awkward ways by what was mostly likely hurried and unsteady hands. The teeny tiny deer, bone china horse, and fishing gnome were all gifts from people I love. I give them each new stories each time I bend down to the shelf where they live. I should be honest and tell you that they were, after this roll of film was shot, joined by two small pink pigs, one itsy bitsy white mouse with his cheese, a tiny hippopotamus, and uniquely minuscule Donald and Daisy Duck, joined by an equally teeny Goofy. There's no use for them other than pure childlike joy, but I believe them to be beautiful with their tiny painted details (most of which are off-center), and their ability to remind me that small and silly is worth it - every time.

Believed to be Beautiful: Ice Cream Scoop

2010-10-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

There are better ones, yes. There are ones that swoop the bottom of the curve to get the last bits, ensuring a picture perfect dome. There are ones that warm the pint, melting their way through the cream so that the arm rests. There are ones that heavier, made of metal. There are ones that are flat and allow for much, much more of the treat. There are ones, I have seen, that create neat little stacks, though I am not sure if stacks will ever rival the rotundity of the classic scoop, settled in its cloud of rough craggy cream.

This one, this one piece orange wonder, was my mother's ice cream scoop. In its life it has served most of the people I've loved. It's portioned out bowls of bliss for family, friends, boyfriends, and husbands. It's done so in many homes, through many states, by many hands. This scoop has helped heal heartaches, fulfill birthday wishes, reward triumphs, soothes defeats, and sometimes, simply helped to busy a worried mind.

This scoop requires, at times, the help of another force to clean its curve, to remove its scoop, to complete the cone. It isn't always the best with respect to form and function. It's set in its ways, this one. Regardless, this orange scoop is by far the most beautiful I have ever seen. Sometimes, when I pass through the kitchen late at night, head filled with unquietable wonders, I see it perched against its white porcelain home, tacked high on the wall, and I find comfort in its story; some days I find comfort in just knowing it's there, waiting.

Tonight, in celebration of paying attention, I will pull down my favorite bowl, open the freezer and shiver from the frost, stand on my tip toes and take down that old ice cream scoop and wrestle with my good intentions over one scoop or two. I will make a bowl for Andrew and wrestle with him over two scoops or three, and I will wash the scoop by hand, as I always do, and put it back where it belongs - in my mother's daughter's home, waiting to be used.

Believed to be Beautiful: Strawberry

2010-10-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

This one was a gift, though it isn't my first. I have one that was my grandmother's, tucked in with a few of her sewing bits my mother offered me when I left for college. I have a few that came pressed in the bottom of a bag of old bobbles I rescued from an attic in a CT antique mall. I have one scraggly one I made myself during a late night surge of craft and creativity that didn't quite work out as I'd imagined. But this strawberry, a tiny pin cushion of sorts, was a gift from a friend that was left for me as a surprise in my grad school mailbox. Nestled in a carved out orange, it still smells of citrus. It belonged to her grandmother, a woman she loved fiercely, a kind of loves that comes from family ties and complications, a kind of history built on its complexities, and that kind of history makes it even more beautiful - tiny white stitches at its end carrying the reminder of its creation.

It's seemingly simplistic, a classic symbol of stitching recalling memories of mothers and grandmothers tangled in strands of colored thread, clothing punctured by tiny pins that, though removed from the mouth for safety, never quite make the cushion. I keep this strawberry on my desk, just off the edge of the hutch, and I watch as it dances when the typewriter's electric purr begins. I want, without weighting myself with too much sentimentalism, to tell you that it is in those moments of dance that I recognize how alive this small object is, how alive it is with a life I cannot even begin to know.

2010-09-29T13:44:00.000-07:00

October first and I am renting charisma with both hope and structure. I'm tugging on the wisdom of a good friend and creating rules for my challenge. I am setting parameters for my project and with three months worth of posts dotted out on small scraps of yellowy, lined paper, I am ready to begin. Each month with its own theme, each weekday pulling words from what's been waiting, each post a very small door into a very small view of a very small life with very big loves.

For October, I looked to the blackboard inside our door scrawled with a William Morris quote:

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

As someone with many live's worth of collections and a small apartment curated with curiosities, I keep this line in mind in the thrift shops, on the street corners, while digging through piles of abandoned paper scraps (oh those paper scraps do lure). I keep this line in mind when I meander around our home during the early hours of the weekend, visiting my treasures and considering their worth.

There's a part of me, like the skinny girl they swear is screaming to get out of the chubby ones, and that part dreams of minimalism - a bed, a table, two chairs, and a small shelf of books. There's a part of me that dreams of being able to move with one small box and a floral carpet bag - a modern Mary Poppins with magic only in the metaphor.

The me that's writing this, the me that wins, loves her books like babies, her grandmother's spoons like diamond rings, and that collections of her husband's Berenstain Bear books? Priceless. But do I know these to be useful? In part, I guess, as I can always fancy uses for the loved, but more than that, I believe them to be beautiful, and I do not know of another excuse that might rival the presence of beauty, and perhaps more importantly, belief, in a home.

So, this month is a little about sharing with you, yes, but maybe also with myself as a reminder of sorts, these objects believed to be beautiful. One small space a day during the week, a handful of words, a reexamination of life in parts, in the believed to be beautiful bits.

Stray Voltage

2010-09-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

"I make this stuff up. but then I feel the stray voltage of my rented charisma, hear the jerry-rigged authority in my voice, and I, too, believe. I'm convinced."

-from "Dance in America" by Lorrie Moore

On the bus rides - two per day, ten per week - I listen to stories through tiny headphones and I hear some words and not others. I like the crackle and inflections, the innuendos I'm not listening close enough to untangle, and the way the arch of the narrative always grips me, regardless of my attention to its reason. Monday afternoon, leaving work behind, welcoming the blur of strange faces weaving gently into the seats of the bus at each stop, I heard a familiar Lorrie Moore story come through the speakers. I prepared not to have to fuss with myself over my inattention as I'd read it so many times before, but when the line quoted above rounded out its words, I felt a queer rush of excitement; I felt as though someone had made an addition, and addendum just for me, tucked in the lines on the familiar. I love lines that whisper themselves back to you once they're gone.

I'd urge anyone to read the story in its entirety, to know the words in their origination and not simply my own torn bastardization, but even now, struck free from where they began, less beautiful from the missing lines and more beautiful from the implied possibilities, I cannot help but cheer the notion of rented charisma, the the bits of imaginary that bleed into the observed. I am cheering the notion of believing the unbelievable or uncommon yes, isn't that what every great oration is made of? It's more than that. It's a borrowing against the wealth of one's self and being faithful enough to know it will be returned.

I'm challenging myself to the months of October, November, and December. I am challenging myself to carve a space here each day where even when I believe I cannot, I will rent charisma from myself and be convinced.

Steps, Steps

2010-08-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

If you cannot be the poet, be the poem. - D. Carradine

*Photo courtesy of the talented Stephanie Lazensky

The More Things Change...

2010-08-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

...the more they are, and are not, the same. There's more to come - there always is - but for now, there is a new (old) chair with a strong wooden frame and a soft, comforting rock, and a little table with just enough room for a book, a cup of coffee, and a tiny flowering plant. There is so much that is new and so much that is old, both types of which I'm working to appreciate.

On Why I Teach

2010-06-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

"If you see a whole thing - it always seems beautiful. Planets, lives...but up close a world's all dirt and rocks. Day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern."

-Ursula K. Le Guin

I spend a lot of my time thinking about the patterns of life - the bits of experience that, when strung together, give some semblance of a whole, of a graspable center. I spend time reading student writing, reading student emails, reading student body language, looking for what they are trying to tell me, and maybe most importantly, what they don't realize they're saying to me. I look for ways they connect, for what resides below the surface; I look for patterns of a person behind the ubiquitous title of student. It is, without a doubt, the hardest job I have ever had. It is also, without a doubt, the most rewarding.

This quarter of teaching was my hardest yet - a group of students that brought themselves full force into the classroom without apology - big, fat personalities overlapping and intersecting, confounding and supporting one another, challenging my way of being in the classroom, and asking more of me than I thought I could or wanted to give. They bonded with each other and their voices grew louder each day, taking classwork and lifework and meshing them into what often felt like an intense technological chatter that I could not define. I whimpered from the start of it - they took my comfort zone of fun, feisty classrooms, and pushed my boundaries. They asked me to teach them, not the class I'd hoped they be. I felt, for the first few weeks, completely incapable of making sense of their behavior.

But, and this "but" feels wildly weighted, they showed up; they showed up every day. They came, all twenty of them, to almost every class, they did their work, the discussed the readings I assigned, they completed the papers, they came to office hours (many, many office hours), they attended individual conferences, they emailed me (many, many emails), they formed revision groups, and showed up to my office with revised papers that showed very little recognition of the original type. And after time, I stopped noticing the classroom chatter that took the class concept and almost seamlessly tailored it into a metaphor for their current personal lives, when they braided each other's hair, simultaneously played games on their iPhones while raising their hands, laughed and talked at a decibel that gave passersby the impression that I taught Introduction to Drama. After a time, I stopped trying so hard to teach the class I wanted and I decided to teach the class I got.

Sometimes, I think it's important to pay attention to the dirt and rocks of life. I think that the pattern that allows us to conceive of a whole is nothing without the lumps and bumps, but I am grateful too that we can, stepping back, see that beautiful whole. I am thankful for the combinations that arise when we allow ourselves to encompass the mess of ourselves, and I am thankful for the classroom that can do the same.

I spend a lot of time fretting over student commentary that feels unflattering or critical, words that are most often spoken in haste and carry much less original weight than I give them in my mind. I worry about not noticing what and who needs me, of not offering students something valuable in our time together, and so I focus mountains worth of attention on the "dirt" of it all. Yesterday as I was grading papers, I came to one of my current student's reflective commentary letters, a space in which the students are asked to reflect on their writing process, what they've learned, and the revisions they've made. At the end of the letter she said something that changed my life a little, that shook away some of my tendency to see so much that doesn't work. I hesitated sharing this feedback with worries that it might come across as a selfish assertion of accomplishment, but I realized, as I reread it, that it is so much more. It says so much about how many of the amazing teachers around me teach, about what we do beyond our subject matter, of what the relationship between a teacher and a student really means - a relationship that cannot be calculated by simplistic letter grades and scantron evaluations. She wrote:

"She inspired me to better my writing skills, sit in the front of the class for once, and most importantly communicate and believe in my complex ideas. Someone who can inspire a group of college freshman to write, and to write well, is someone who deserves more than a teaching degree, but a degree that should say: ability to teach people how to have a life and share it."

So, at the end of two years of graduate school, one year of teaching, numerous hours of laughing, crying, worrying, yelling, reading, writing, and learning, I am left with a gratefulness to my students, yes, for pushing me, but also to my peers, to the teachers that taught me how to have a life and share it.

No Place I Know

2010-05-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

I will back with regular posts soon, but for now I have a very exciting announcement. My very talented mother just opened her first shop selling her handmade bags. Using all recycled, thrifted fabric/leather, she designs gorgeous, unique bags and I am so proud of her. She has a new website, too! Please go and show her some love as she begins her first shop and her first blog!

No Place I Know

and my current favorite bag: leather overnight

String Theory

2010-04-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

From other

angles the

fibers look

fragile, but

not from the

spider's, always

hauling coarse

ropes, hitching

lines to the

best posts

possible. It's

heavy work

everyplace,

fighting sag,

winching up

give. It

isn't ever

delicate

to live.

-Kay Ryan, "Spiderweb"

As National Poetry Month winds to a close, I've been thinking of these lines, mulling over their deceptive simplicity. I wanted to share them here, just in case you fall into the same trap I do - the trap of believing that a life lived well is clean, simple, delicate. Every once in a while I like the idea of championing the work of it, the scaffolding, the mess of it at times.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick

2010-04-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

My candle burns and both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -

It gives a lovely light.

-"First Fig," Edna St. Vincent Millay

In this space, life has been quiet, waiting, and I return to ranunculus and meatballs and I remember when life was just slow enough for all those moments to make their way into words. Outside of this space, life has been bustling, to-do list compiled, little ticks marking of accomplishments while providing rhythm to my day. I'm beginning to think there's another genre out there - task music - music made from the accumulation of all those little ticks and scratched lines on a vertically weighted page.

Even in the middle of the movement, I've been good, full of a life that is simultaneously so joyous and frustrating, so exhilarating and exhausting, that even when I am tired and grumpy, its got good origins.

I'm back to early, early mornings of work, sitting by the window grading, typing, reading, sipping coffee and promising myself that if I finish my task I will reward myself with more time in that same spot, which I love, but this time with a poem, a letter, or photograph.

Last night, still under the weight of the list, I poured an iced coffee with milk and a splash of vanilla, turned on some TED talks and got to work. Before I knew it I had one assignment down, a handful of student emails read and responded to, a desktop cleared, and a couch returned to three cushions instead of 1.5 and a pile of paper. The pace isn't slowing, but my speed, or maybe more importantly, my stamina, is improving.

Rain and Poetry, or Poetic Precipitation

2010-04-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

A window to the south is rough with raindrops

That, caught in the screen, spell out untranslatable glyphs. A story

Not told: so much not understood, a sight, an insight, and you pass on,

Another day for each day is subjective and there is a totality of days

As there are as many to live it. The day lives us and in exchange

We it: after snowball time, a month, March, of fits and starts, winds,

Rain, spring hints and wintry arrears. -James Schuyler, from "Hymn to Life"

It's National Poetry Month - one of my favorites. A very talented friend of mine took my challenge and is writing a poem a day, so if you have a minute, please visit his site- there's so much life and humor in his work.

Oh, Meatballs

2010-03-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

For my vegetarian friends, please turn away now.

Tonight, after hours spent tidying and separating the laundry pile threatening to consume our apartment, I set to the task of making dinner. I looked in the fridge: goat cheese, aged white cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, Gruyère cheese, asparagus, and ground chicken. I thought for a while - first about my husband's obsession with cheese, then about what an amazing deal we got on that ground chicken, and finally, about what in the heck I would do with these items. I considered the Greek yogurt and almond milk and thought of creamy options, but ultimately felt too weighted by their richness. I thought about how much I've been wanting meatloaf lately, but became weary over the idea of chicken meatloaf and a side, but I couldn't get past the craving, so I thought - meatballs! I know writing about what we eat is nothing new for this page, but what is a little different is that those meatballs turned out to be so amazing, and I mean so, so good, that I immediately took a shot of my bowl because I knew I'd have to publish what I clumsily tossed in the bowl so I wouldn't forget how I got there, and also so you might, if you wish, try to do the same. Trust me about these meatballs, though.

Ingredients:

1lb ground white meat chicken

1/2 onion (grated)

1/4 c Parmesan cheese (grated)

1 egg

1/4 c breadcrumbs

3 green onions thinly sliced

1 tsp oregano

salt and pepper (I'm heavy on the pepper)

Mix all the ingredients and shape into tiny (I like them to be about 3/4-1 in.) meatballs, placing them on a plate or sheet pan as you go. Once all the meatballs are formed, cover the plate or pan and place it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (I often cheat and stick it in the freezer for half that). To cook the meatballs, heat olive oil and a smidge of butter, just a smidge, in a sauté pan, adding the meatballs, but making sure not to over-crowd. Turning a few times during cooking, I lost track of exactly how long these took, but it took less than one episode of Pushing Daisies (which I watch on the ipod in the under-cabinet dock while I cook) for me to complete the mixing, shaping, chilling, and cooking, so it's safe to say that it wasn't too long.

I served ours with steamed asparagus and toasted pine nuts over a bed of angel hair pasta with shavings of this cheese on top (I'd like to thank Haggen for selling their tiny "cheese bites"- sample sizes that make it possible for us to try amazing cheeses like this one).

Reality Bites

2010-03-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

I recently read a post on another blog about the dangers of only seeing what someone wants you to see, of only viewing the lovely moments and assuming that someone else's life must be so much better (based on a blog) than your own. The blog went on to recount some of the less than "bloggable" bits of the day and I was so charmed, and so relieved, that I thought it might be nice to do the same for this space, because even though there are lots of daffodils and strawberries and yogurt around this place, there are other, less advertisable bits that are just as much a part of who I am:

Last night I begged Andrew to go to the store and find Cupcake Pebbles cereal after seeing an advertisement in a magazine. Although the box describes the sparkly pebbles as being a "wholesome, sweetened rice ceareal," I can assure you that the word "wholesome" is stretching it. That said, I love it - in all it's sickly sweet, tacky glory, and I am enjoying a cup of amazing french press coffee and eating it dry, straight from the box, for breakfast.
OnStar commercials make me cry. We only watch tv shows on Hulu, so that's the only time I see commercials, but without fail, every time, they make me cry. I would really like to be one of those operators - it's on my secret job-want list.
Speaking of my secret job-want list, I'd also really like to work on QVC. Fake nails, tons of makeup, big hair, naming every caller sweetie, and saying "bless your heart" when they tell me how much they love seeing me on air, all while measuring jewelery on close-up shots and alerting everyone that I've already purchased three of the items myself for Christmas gifts - fantastic.
There is a very good chance that I will eat four pieces of cinnamon toast for lunch today because it was such a good lunch yesterday.
There is a pile of dishes in the sink that I've been promising myself for the last two days that I will wash to surprise Andrew (he normally does the dishes). Instead, I've been using that time to play our old Nintendo - yelling at Mario just seems that important.

Spring Break II

2010-03-25T09:46:00.001-07:00

Things one must do while on break:

Eat sliced strawberries and Icelandic yogurt by the window.

Invite a dear friend over for lunch, being thankful that he both brought you lovely flowers and smiled through the worst quiche you've ever made.

Spring Break

2010-03-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

...is for reading, big bouquets of daffodils, yellow notebooks for jotting down ideas, setting up bell jars covering menageries of tiny plastic deer and miniature bone china horses, sewing quick skirts out of thrifted sheets, enjoying lattes outside neighborhood coffee shops, squinting at the plentiful sunlight, snacking on sliced strawberries, opening windows, putting favorite albums on repeat, dancing in the kitchen to the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack, putting together puzzles and watching favorite films, and taking the time to be grateful for the moments of rest.

Class Photos

2010-03-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

First: You should never try to take pictures while laughing - focusing just won't happen.

Second: You should make clear to certain male students that this is not a "Men of 101" calendar.

Third: You should file class photos in a folder on the computer desktop labeled: You Laughed. The reason you should do this, you might ask, is because even though it's blurry, and even though that blur might be a metaphor for your teaching some days, you all still laughed - a lot. As a class you laughed through difficult, frustrating talks about the implications of claims, the importance of signposting and explicit frickin' language. You laughed when the forwarding of concepts seemed impossible, and again when it was so obvious that everyone in the classroom was smacking their heads like a bad cartoon. You laughed in the frigid, freakish wind when mobs of other students walked by, watching you all huddled together like grade school - digital memories of bunny ears and peace signs being made (those symbols obviously never get old).

Fourth, and finally: You should visit this folder often, and you should remember that the best and worst of teaching is the laughing - them at you, you at them, all of you together - and if you get it right, there's enough going around that one type balances the other, that everyone is the part of the punchline at some point. And when you aren't even looking, you might notice you've learned more than you thought you could, about writing, and people, and life.

Weekend

2010-03-05T08:36:00.000-08:00

After weeks, okay maybe months, of stress and worry and sickness and to-do lists, and trying to to see the "big picture" through the lens of an ever-shrinking present, this weekend I took a deep breath and let go. The sun came out and the temperatures rose and the most perfect breeze blew the scent of freshly cut grass through the city of Bellingham. Walking through the streets, we noticed the silence of winter give way to the bright yellow hello's of daffodils just welcoming the warmth. We opened the windows and celebrated the coming spring, made avocado sandwiches on multi-grain english muffins topped with thinly sliced tomatoes. Large glass jars of sun tea did their work in the windows as we untangled the piles of life we'd left to languish around the apartment in the last few weeks. When the sun set, we watched films and snacked on almonds covered in dark chocolate, sea salt, and turbinado sugar, played card games, and finished off the sun tea in glasses clinking with the music of collected ice cubes. We roasted chicken and sauteed kale and thanked Saturday for nudging itself in between what was and will be.

Mood Swings and Music

2010-02-25T10:25:00.001-08:00

A little Thursday music capturing the moods of the day.

2010-02-21T17:40:00.000-08:00

freshly sharpened pencils

yellow daisies painted on china

doodles from my students - taped above my desk

this line: "Death is the mother of beauty," and

this one: "The day is like wide water, without sound," and really,

all of Wallace Stevens

yellowed paperbacks with green or red edged pages

iced lattes with a smidge of vanilla

tiny gifted cloth strawberries smelling of citrus

pale green rubber bands

getting lost in a new book

bookmarks - new ones, old ones

brown kraft paper

Melville's comment of "thought-divers" - "I love all men who dive-"

Lego calendars

mason jars full of a rainbow of markers

the possibility of all those colors

orange scented lip balm

ginger snaps

Agnes Varda and Susan Sontag together

postage stamps, always postage stamps,

miniature bone china horses

scones with plum jam

.18mm pens

the Fantastic Mr. Fox soundtrack

this song on repeat

snail mail

packages that just keep unfolding with lovely treats

pale yellow post-its

roasted cauliflower

almond cookies

Encyclopedia Brown mysteries

surprise visits from my husband during his break from work

paneer pakora

and while we're at it, mango lassi

corn dogs and fries made by old men in suspenders

origami boxes

sweaters with leather buttons

cherry coke slurpees

wedding bands

faux bois

mustard yellow mugs

Holidays

2010-02-15T18:17:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like a holiday to catch up on work, tick multiple items off the to-do list, put a dent in the weighty "shoulds." All of that sounds lovely, it does, and it might sound even lovelier if it had actually happened. Instead, I took a long walk with Andrew, picked up two zippers from the thrift store for $.54 for a project, and snapped a few photos of the sculpture on the corner of our street. It isn't permanent, and it's already a favorite, so I gifted myself a few shots to keep after it's gone.

Paddington visits Bellingham

2010-02-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

My sister recently sent me a Paddington Bear doll that she purchased for me in London. As soon as I took him out of the mailer, he asked to be given a home, so I obliged.

Of course, as soon as he saw how nice it was, he wanted to go outside, so again, I obliged.

It came as no surprise when Paddington then asked, once we were outside, if he might take his marmalade sandwich to the park.

There's just no saying "no" to Paddington Bear.

Inspired by this.

Celebrate Increase

2010-02-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

"Off my face! you're the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring."

-Margaret Atwood, from "February"

I'm twenty minutes ahead of schedule this morning, so I decided to sit down and have a cup of coffee at the computer, taking a moment to look over what I'd already written for this post, the one I've been working on for days. What I found was a picture, a stanza, and a half-blank screen - proof that I'd been typing and erasing entirely too much. So I'm taking these bonus minutes in my day to give myself a few boundaries, to force myself to sit down and say what needs to be said:

Thank You.

When I decided to post every day for the month of January, I was on the tail end of a very rough Fall. I was tired and losing hope, defeated by the little things as much as the big. I wasn't writing very often, and some days even talking felt heavy with the weight of implications. When I decided to post every day, I worried all of that would come through, resulting in a web of sad, solemn posts that no one, not even my mother, would read.

Instead, you cheered me on with comments, and reminded me that even when I felt I had nothing to say, there was something to notice, to put to words, to set by a photo; even in the dark I found outlines of light. What I realized is that little promises we make to ourselves and to others, often others we hardly know, can be a powerful sort. What I found as I wrote is that yes, people hear what you don't say, but they also hear what you do, and we can't possibly know what hits home, what connects us, what words make sense of someone else's thoughts. So, I think, in the "just in case," I'm going to keep saying my own words in case they are your words, too. I am going to keep trying to make sense of the senseless, to notice the unnoticeable, and to write what I most often want to silence. Because it's so easy to think someone else has it all figured out, and what joke that turns out to be.

In part, the I am also giving myself thanks - the part of me that kept going, that refused to chastise myself too much for the short, seemingly insignificant posts, for clicking the keys minutes to midnight in an effort to not give up, and for noticing what's worth writing about, what's worth taking the time to snap a picture of, gather into a list, and really, to appreciate. What I found is that it's all worth it, even the breakfast pan just before the eggs, when the red pepper looks like confetti dotting a green spinach park.

So, I think I'll keep up with the posting, even if it isn't every day, and I'll keep privileging the deceptively simple, and I'll be thankful that this space brings me closer to new friends who are not near to me in distance, and even closer to the ones who are. I will be thankful that when I turn um, older, on Monday, someone else in another country will be doing the same, and I'll know that we share more than a day of cake and candles and I'll be grateful to this blog for giving me the chance to discover that.

Twenty-seven, you were rough on me, but I sent you away with a bang. Twenty-eight, bring it.

After

2010-01-31T23:32:00.001-08:00

I love waking up the morning after a party and perusing the apartment for the "littles" left behind. I like the sprinkles crushed on the ground like bright blue confetti sized for mice. I love the empty glasses, proof of the crowd, the sweets no one could finish, although so, so many were consumed. I love the way the rooms feel quieter than they ever have before.

The reading went swimmingly, and it was so lovely to share the podium with such thoughtful, inspired talent. We wrapped up the evening pouring red wine and sparkling white wine cocktails dotted with thin wheels of blood orange. We snacked on cupcakes and bowls of nuts spiced with garam masala, muscavado suagar, cayenne, and fresh rosemary. There was laughing and chatting, and I think I smiled more than I have in weeks. It was the perfect way to round out the month, and as this is my last promised post of the month, I like to think of it as a little celebration - of the reading, yes, but of this small triumph of my own, here, posting even when I wanted not to; posting when the lure of excuses was almost enough to suck me in to its grips. Soon I will post a piece about this month of daily blogs, but for tonight, I'll rest and prepare.

Tonight! Tonight!

2010-01-30T17:52:00.000-08:00

I've gotten nothing but jitters as I do my last practice reads, timing myself to ensure I don't bore anyone to death. For those of you who aren't here to witness me *actually share my work in public, I'll be thinking of you, because I know you are all just awesome enough to cheer me on. Here goes nothing....

Made It

2010-01-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I survived, and most those around me survived, too. I pulled a bedraggled looking group of students as energetically as I could to the finish line, and we laughed our way to the very end. Tonight is going to be about salted stove top popcorn, a movie, a little internet puttering, and maybe even a little crossword puzzling, all from the glory of freshly cleaned flannel sheets. Andrew's stocked my bedside table with drinks and movies, and although he'll be at work instead of home to enjoy it, I think he's just happy I'll be resting my way to a more coherent me.

Cheap Thrills

2010-01-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

After classes and conferences today, Andrew took me on a special adventure to the thrift store to find a little treat to soothe the week that feels like it won't quit. I browsed old tupperware, made googly eyes at some very nice, but uneeded Pyrex, shuffled through boardgames and puzzles, and even considered thumbing the clothes (too draining on my psyche), but it was Andrew that found the prize. Hanging on a wall in the back of the store was a large oil painting - abstract and very nicely framed. We both looked at the price and then looked at each other, confirmed that our eyes were not fooling us, remembered our coupon that would make it even less, and scampered away to check out. For less than the cost of a canvas, we purchased a piece of art, and it's beautiful and odd and I cannot, no matter how hard I try in the dim evening lamplight, capture its amazing colors. It was cheap, but it was a thrill.

Dear Birthday Fairies,

2010-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

Please?

Yes, you're right. It is amazing. And yes, you're right, I do need it.

Nothing But Words

2010-01-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

I like a little something at the beginning of a post - ideally a photograph, but a doodle can be nice, too. Tonight, Wednesday, I'm 21 individual student conferences in, and about 3/4 short on energy and brain power. The good news? Andrew made dinner for me, tomorrow is Thursday, which is almost Friday, and come Saturday night, it will be nothing but words. For now, I'm going to get to bed early (very, very early), rise early too, and read, and somewhere in the middle, I'm going to hug my husband, send a package, and make someone laugh. I'm take going to take this week to the mat, and I'm going to kick some butt.

Gleaning

2010-01-26T22:48:00.001-08:00

I'm reading some of my work during a creative writing sampler for my grad school on Saturday, so I've been gleaning from my notebooks, collecting snippets and compiling something *hopefully coherent. I'm beginning to think that the good thing about a week this busy is that there's no time to worry about flubs and flops. I am thankful to be surrounded by some pretty talented people, especially this one, so I'm looking forward to a free night of entertainment followed by a wine and cupcake party at our place. Andrew and I want the guilt free glasses on wine, so we'll be the ones without cupcakes, eating puffed brown rice and peanut butter squares.

2010-01-25T19:21:00.000-08:00

...is all I have the brain space for tonight. My hopes for something lovely in this space were dashed by a very, very long day. The good news is, even though it's exhausting and I might cry my way through Friday night, student conferences are the best way I can think of to be worn out by teaching. One-on-one time to talk about papers, class, stresses, is priceless (you usually get to laugh a little, too). For now, I'll enjoy my little treat of orange slices, put on my flannel jammies, and climb into bed before 8pm. I'd feel guilty for turning in so early if it wasn't such of a necessity.

Oh, oh

2010-01-24T19:50:00.000-08:00

I just spilled an entire latte on the couch and myself. On my way to get another towel I tripped on the stack of student papers I've yet to comment on, and remembered I still needed to blog. On the way to the camera, set to find something decent to photograph, something good and not covered in coffee, I noticed the Snapdragons, the ones I almost didn't buy, the little extravagance I thought I could do without. Tonight, on the verge of a very long and heavy week, those little pink buds feel like magic, necessary magic. Deep breath, short pause, begin again.

Lifestyle Change

2010-01-23T20:40:00.000-08:00

The last time I went on a tangent about our culinary delights, it was full of caramel, cream, butter, and chocolate. Although those treats weren't typical of a month outside of December, when we recently changed our diet to fully participate in a medically influenced "lifestyle change," I couldn't help but long for those indulgences. While eating dinner tonight it occurred to me that the "good stuff" might be just as beautiful as creamy caramel layer between chocolate sandwich cookies, so in no particular order, here are a few highlights from this past week:

Dreamy heaps of hummus punctured by a rainbow's worth of fresh, crunchy veggies, cut like matchsticks and piled in encouragingly high mounds on a platter. Tofu marinated and caramelized alongside broccoli, snow peas, and mushrooms, flecked by the curls of quinoa set loose from the pile on the plate. Crispy brown rice married with peanut butter and brown rice syrup, pressed tightly into nostalgic squares that chew and crunch, and can still be called treats. A soup pot full of bok choy, broccoli, leeks, and whole grains, waiting to be bowled up and topped with snowy white nubs of goat cheese. Navel oranges cut into round slices that open and bend to reveal perfect triangular citrus.

TGIF

2010-01-22T23:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the best way up and out of a long week is a night out with a friend, a bottle of wine, cheese, a little chocolate, more friends, more people who should be friends, and so much laughing that your stomach muscles ache. Sometimes the best way out is up, and I'm thankful tonight, six minutes 'til my deadline, to have people who help with that lift.

Paley Perfection

2010-01-21T20:47:00.000-08:00

You know when you're reading a story and it feels as it there were audio embedded in the book? When it's as if you can hear the voices - the dialogue as much yours as theirs? For me, Grace Paley is the epitome of voice and character development - short, simple lines shaping and illuminating people you feel you've known forever. It's not fancy; Paley privileges plain over "pretty," but her prose isn't just plausible, it's palpable. The people are family, even if they aren't, and when you're reading the stories, you're family too.

It's hard to choose one collection, but for the sake of this post, I'm recommending The Little Disturbances of Man. It's slim, just shy of two hundred pages, but so full and so good, that it's the perfect collection to carry in your bag for stolen moments. The stories are short, sometimes very short, but the economy of their length should not be confused with the weight of what's really happening within the lines. Paley's short stories are like a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast - they don't seem like much, but they stick with you; they fill you up.

I had the privilege of meeting Paley a few years ago at a conference. She was feisty and funny, thoughtful and encouraging. She sat in the front row during our panel and I cannot describe the encouragement and nervousness that I experienced while watching her nod her head as we spoke. I have her handwriting in my commonplace book from that time, and I look at it now and again to read what she wrote, yes, but also to remind myself that she was alive, that we were together, that she changed lives, one of which was my own. Politically, socially, she was invaluable as an activist, as a teacher, as a woman, and for all my babbling here, as a writer. I'll end this mini-review with a few lines that stay with me, frequent my pauses, because she's not just in my mind, she's in my ear, and I can still hear her.

"I am ambitious, but it's a long-range thing with me."

"The sun absorbed July and she said it again."

"I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said, What? What life? No life of mine. I said, O.K. I don't argue when there's real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them. The librarian said $32 and you've owed it for eighteen years. I didn't deny anything. Because I don't understand how time passes. I have had these books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away."

The Nitty Gritty

2010-01-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Some days, you wake up and have coffee and putter a little, get some work done, see some friends. Some days you wake early and begin work, go to class, teach a class, hold office hours, attend a staff meeting, attend a workshop on ESL writers. For me, today is the latter, the nitty gritty of life - the long, tiring, aprons of life. It's not without its beauty, but it's a little tougher to appreciate sometimes. It's night now, and there's nothing left to do but apologize for being of my book post game for one more night. Some days it's about just showing up, and today's going to have to be that day.

2010-01-19T20:33:00.000-08:00

The book reviews will have to wait a day, as the last minute drafts-are-due-tomorrow panic have set in and it looks like I'll be spending the rest of my night responding to student emails. It's not a bad problem to have, so I hope you'll understand when the blog comes in second. Back to ease worries and try my best to inspire a little last minute energy.

2010-01-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

For the next few days, I am going to be posting about some of my favorite books. To get things rolling, I decided to begin with a few passages from my very favorite, Mrs. Dalloway. Ive decided not to wax on about its brilliance, as I've done so before, but I also couldn't imagine compiling favorites and not letting Clarissa have her moment. The doodle above is one of my most prized editions (I have too many to count). Sticking out from the side are two bits of paper, one a copy of a poem from the Antioch Review, and the other a copy of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est." I stuck them in the pages the very first time I read this copy, which was actually the very first time I read the novel, and they feel as much a part of the book as Woolf's own writing.

For now, here are a few of my favorite bits from this lovely novel:

"She would not say of anyone in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."

"For he would say it in so many words when he came into the room. Because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels."

"It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, and here"; and she tapped the edge of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people that completed them; even the places. Odd affinities with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind the counter - even trees or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her skepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary when compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death...perhaps - perhaps."

Sunday

2010-01-17T19:38:00.000-08:00

I adore those quick-slow days, when you're never bored, but never rushed. Today was full of the little things that add up to big things, and I am thankful for every one. The two best ladies in my life are on their way to London as I type this, so I'm sending them thoughts of safety and love (and hope that their mother-daughter bond doesn't leave one of them abandoning the other abroad).

Today

2010-01-16T21:28:00.000-08:00

Today begin with coffee and toast and not one bit of mud, so it was already, by 9 AM, better than Friday. There were three hours of reading/talking/laughing for the Bellingham Review, and a little mid-Saturday thrifting. Hello new-old Viewmaster. We're ushering in the evening with wine and a film. I'm pretty sure tomorrow will only get better.

2010-01-15T19:02:00.000-08:00

...is what I'm dreaming of right now. Today began with a slip and slide adventure in the mud as I tried to get in the car, continued with a change of clothes and a hosing off, a rainy/windy/wet walk on campus, and the surprise appearance of mud clods every time I moved. I am looking forward to coffee on the couch, a little magazine browsing in slow, steady fashion, and maybe a silly movie or two. Saturday, you will be nothing like Friday, and I will love you for it.

Morning

2010-01-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

"At turns charmed and cursed, a girl knows romance

as coffee, red wine, and books"

-Amy Fleury, from "At Twenty Eight"

In the morning, Andrew wakes up and putters at the stove, making me a latte and heating water for his own coffee. When he's done, we switch, and I make him an egg over medium, sometimes toast or croissant, sometimes cheese, always pepper. We check emails and plan dinner, try our best to coordinate oil and water schedules, and aid each other in the search for missing items, like socks, bags, and books. When he leaves first, the quiet of the apartment is heavy, so I turn on NPR and fill the rooms with voices again. I pull books from the shelves that I haven't the time to read right now and I dream of staying in with a big pile of words and another cup of coffee. Most days, this must happen quickly, the day dreaming, and I put it all away with just enough time to dress and head out to the bus. Whatever the case, I'm grateful for this early time, for being awake, for the coffee, for the chatter, for the hope of what will come, even if the best of that is just another morning like the last.

Cracks

2010-01-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

Today was one of those days that shows its cracks. I came home, longing for rest, to find the toilet in the shower, a hole in the shower floor, and two very kind, but very unplanned plumbers smiling and waving at me. We've got a working toilet again, and should have a shower by tomorrow evening, there are warm sugar cookies fresh out of the oven, cereal for dinner, and an early bedtime. Thinking of those in Haiti, I feel silly complaining about moldy broccoli and forgotten folders. So for tonight, although I know they are there, I'll take a break from the cracks and spend some time on the rest of it - starting with a cookie.

Day Dreaming, or Evening Dreaming

2010-01-12T20:35:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy day of reading, student- paper- commenting, class prepping, and, oh, yes, a grad class of my own. Andrew forced me to take a break for dinner and very kindly went to get sushi from our favorite spot so I couch stay crumpled on the couch and still enjoy an avocado roll. I'm evening dreaming of the three day weekend coming up, and hoping there's a latte and a bar of dark chocolate as good as the one pictured above (from Stumptown in the Ace Hotel). There will be school work of course, but I've also got my sights set on a thrifting with Andrew, maybe a rainy walk or two, some more bread and jam, a chocolate cherry cola cake, and, for good measure, roasted vegetables with goat cheese. For now, I think I'll convince Andrew to watch an episode of The Commish before bed. Oh yes, I do love that show.

Weighty Words

2010-01-11T20:25:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about books lately, which really, is nothing new, but more specifically, I've been thinking about books from my childhood that influenced me. It started as a result from a question by a friend, one that stemmed from a course on children's literature at the college, and it's been on my mind ever since. Today in class a student asked me what the word "paradox" meant and I immediately went to the go-to reference in my mind- one from The Weighty Word Book: "So, whenever something seems impossible at first, but turns out to be true, like a parrot-ox, we call that thing a paradox." Tonight I picked up the book again, thinking about all the words, like ostracize, ubiquitous, and juxtapose, that I learned in third grade, when my teacher read a story, or a word, a day for 26 days, beginning again when we begged for more. It's amazing how things stay with us, how I will always remember the word winsome, not only for it's definition, but because I wanted to be just like Mary Marigold, and all her charming, charismatic, cheerful, brightness, and I loved that there was one word to describe all those things I desired.

I think I'll take a little break from commenting on student papers for a little while and sit with a few of my favorite books, and remember how much a simple description, like the unpacking of a lunch, can stick with us forever.

The next day when the bell rang for lunch, Albert said, "What do you have today?"
"Well," said Frances, laying a paper doily on her desk and setting a tiny vase of violets in the middle of it, "let me see." She arranged her lunch on the doily.
"I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup," she said.
"And a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread.
I have celery, carrot sticks, and black olives, and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery.
And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries.
And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with."
"That's a good lunch," said Albert. "I think it's nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice." "So do I," said Frances,

and she made the lobster-salad sandwich, the celery,

the carrot sticks, and the olives come out even.

-R. Hoban, from Bread and Jam for Frances

Home

2010-01-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today has been quiet and relaxed. Coffee, reading, cleaning, and waiting. Andrew returns home soon from a few days away visiting family, and although it hasn't been long, it will be so nice to have him back. The week begins again tomorrow and I'm ready for what it's got, but for now I'll enjoy the last bits of the weekend - maybe with bread and jam.

Night

2010-01-09T00:07:00.000-08:00

Getting home late after a long night of soup potluck, interesting, amusing conversations, and lots and lots of laughter, I return home to this fresh loaf of bread and butter a slice before bed. Sometimes it's the simple things- like bread and butter - that put a day to rest, and I am grateful for such a small but pleasurable goodness.

Panorama

2010-01-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

After uploading all the photos I took of the latest McSweeney's Quarterly, I sat down on the couch to see a screen full of dark, blurry images. I thought about retaking them, I promise I did, but in all honesty, at the end of the first week back this quarter, I decided that this dark, blurry lens is an apt showing of how I am viewing things tonight, so I'm going to just ask you to try to look past the blur. As I've mentioned before, McSweeney's Quarterly is the favorite subscription in this house, and it holds that title against some pretty stiff competition. Four times a year we receive unique, informative, creative collections of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art. In this edition, we added news to that list, with a HUGE one time only newspaper full of articles, interviews, comics, crosswords, two magazine style sections with over 100 pages each, a two-sided card stock insert printed with a comic on one side and a cut out and build rocket on the other, and so, so much more. In a time when print journalism is fading before our eyes, this compilation of authors (Miranda July, Edna O'Brien, George Saunders, and more), art, current events, food, travel, and yes, even sports, reignites my love of holding the physical paper in my hands, feeling part of the news. We've been enjoying the Panorama since it arrived and there's still so much left we haven't read. For $16, it's one of my top recommendations of the moment.

The Lights

2010-01-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

... are on and somebody's home, but she is tired, a little hungry, and almost done with all her reading and lesson planning for tomorrow, so in lieu of a post full of well, her own stuff, here is some other people's good stuff you should read/see/hear:

Spilled Milk
McSweeney's Quarterly - best, best, best subscription
Shari's photo, so calming
oh, and this one of Shari's, too, I hope she doesn't mind
The Wizard
A Complicated Kindness - just finished it, so, so, so good
Madeline

Oh, Tub

2010-01-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

When Andrew gifted me the two day trip to Portland, he did so by handing me a glass bottle of the most amazing bubble bath. It was painful at first to have to remind him, and myself in the process, that we do not have a tub in our apartment in WA, a fact that has been sore since we moved in over a year ago. Fortunately, he included a card filled with little slips of paper printed with the logos of the Ace Hotel, Powell's Books, and Amtrak. Although there is so, so much more I need to tell you about our trip, the tub felt like a good place to begin because I took more baths in that two day span than most children will in a year (lovely exaggeration). I still have dreams about that amazing claw foot tub, the jasmine scented bubble bath, pruned fingers, book pages dotted with watery spots, and the robe, oh, the robe. I'll write soon about the rest of it, because there was so much to make one happy in that brief adventure, but for now I think I'll spend some time remembering the tub. It's the small things, right?

Begin Again

2010-01-05T21:12:00.000-08:00

But what if I fail of my purpose here?

It is but to keep the nerves at strain,

To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,

And, baffled, get up and begin again,—

So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.

-Robert Browning, from "Life in a Love"

This morning I did what I always do on the first day of school: I carefully pack my bags and begin again. I like the slow puttering of packing a bag, checking to see I have everything I need (and really, much that I don't). I like the addition of new notebooks and pens, balls made completely of sea green rubber bands, binder clips, granola bars, a coffee mug that's bumpy exterior reminds me of Mr. Peanut. I like the "everything in its place" moment of packing a bag because with me, that only lasts a short bit as the frazzled days of mid and late quarter offer bags crammed, stuffed, and jumbled. Tomorrow I'll pack carefully again, this time for the first day of teaching in the new quarter, and it will be just as exciting, and I will be just as forgetful, arriving at school with my "perfect" bag, slightly imperfect, as I always, no matter how detailed the list, forget something important. Whatever the case, I'm slowing down a bit to enjoy the beginning, to breathe deeply, to try to remember that it's just the start, and in the start of it, anything is possible.

Holding

2010-01-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

I just typed an entire post about the photo above that disappeared when I hit "publish." It's a little late to start over, but I refuse to miss a day, so until tomorrow this message is a holder, simply to say, I have not forgotten.

I Teach and I Learn

2010-01-03T19:38:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I wrote about teaching and the challenges and privileges of the classroom. Somewhere along the way I forgot to back to classroom in this space, and tonight as I finalize my course schedule for next quarter, it seemed a good time to introduce you to my Fall '09 English 101 students. They were feisty, intelligent, challenging, caring, inventive, creative, diligent, stubborn, and most of all, inspiring. On one of my worst days last quarter, when I wanted to crawl back into bed and cry until my eyes ran dry, I had a full days worth of individual conferences. I sat in my office and in twenty minute increments I talked to one student after the other, and it only took about five minutes of the first conference for me to realize that whatever my own shortcomings, in that space, for those twenty minutes, I was there for them, I was their teacher. It's important some times, maybe most of the time, to remember to step outside of ourselves and to realize we might be able to give someone else what we cannot give to ourselves.

On Wednesday I will get a new group of students, new challenges, more laughter, more invention (teaching, I've found, is at least 30% spontaneous invention). I'm looking forward to meeting all of them - hopefully they'll be as lively as the last bunch.

2010-01-02T19:30:00.000-08:00

write more letters (do you want one?)
post more
actually complete the other blog I began, oh, a year ago
doodle more
play more records
develop all those rolls of film languishing in my desk
listen to more music
listen to more new to me music
bake bread
randomly send cookies to people far away
work on taking criticism better
sew a dress for myself
eat breakfast every day, worry less, lose weight (I know, I know)
be happy

An Open Letter to Kari on Her Birthday

2010-01-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Kari,

I missed the last one, and now this one, and really, there's a strong chance we won't be close in distance for your birthday anytime soon. That distance also means we won't be close for the every day stuff, the little ups and downs you have always handled so gracefully, watching you raise a son, or visiting your first house to have lunch and coffee. There are many things I will miss in your life based on our living arrangements (what has to be the farthest two corners on the map), but if we were together today, maybe out celebrating with coffee, laughing at the silliness of life, I would tell you that even though I don't see you most of the time, don't know what fantastic outfit you're wearing, can't see you smile as I remind you of all our inside jokes (strike through poetry!), I carry you with me always.

When we met, I was a basket case, piled under a heap of work brought on by a lit journal with very little staff. I worried and worked frantically, trying to keep it all together. You came in, smiled, and ironed it out, to put me at ease in a way that I still, almost six years later, rely on at times. You are kind, compassionate, and patient when anyone else would have given up and gone home. You remind me to laugh and you give me reasons to keep laughing. You remind me, even when you've already done so plenty of times, that everything will be okay, and I always believe you.

And so, this birthday letter is a thank you card of sorts, because what I really want to say is how grateful I am to watch you grow up, the opportunity to watch you become a mother, and to watch all the other amazing opportunities you master in the future. Finally, I want to thank you for being my friend, because it makes me pretty lucky.

I predict 2010 is going to be a big year for you, New Year baby, and I can't wait to watch it unfold.

Love Letter to a Decade

2009-12-31T19:04:00.001-08:00

Blind I listen to all the little sounds.

How pretty they are.

I arrive and arrive.

Look--I am the statue that thinks it's running.

-from "Everything" by Sarah Manguso

Dear Decade,

This love letter, it's flexible, like our relationship. As it turns out, I've been cheating on you this whole time, spending hours with the past and the future, trying to make sense of our difficulties. I've been distant, I know, but you, the first real time span of my adult life, you've been moody and vindictive. Since we've been together, Decade, I've lost pieces of myself I didn't realize one could lose. I lost my father and a handful of innocence, and you barely slowed down to see if I was still moving. I wanted to break it off with you so many times, but so many more I forced myself to make apologies to your necessity, to come to terms with the reality that you and I, we were stuck with each other.

But now, hours before your end, before I meet a new decade, a new span of time for which to make mixed tapes and write lengthy poems under the guise of night, to love and hate with the same passion I devoted to you, I've decided to make peace with you. I want to remember our time together as something much more complex than a spreadsheet of gains and losses. I want to remember that I grew up with you, and all our fighting aside, you offered me a fullness I couldn't have experienced on my own. Decade, you gave me moments; you gave me moments chained together, nestled and spaced, beautiful and tragic, brief and glorious, you gave me just enough time to realize its value.

Years from now, when I'm getting serious with the next decade and looking back at our years together, I will most likely roll my eyes, scoff at our fights - the silent treatment I gave you too often, the lack of communication that led to too many of our fights, the blame I placed, your refusal to slow down. I will, at some point, realize that we were destined to end and what you needed most was to be taken as you were. I am hoping, in our final hours together, to remember that, to take you as you are, and to try my hardest to follow that rule in my next temporal relationship.

I'll never forget you, Decade. I made you a mix, just to say goodbye the right way.

Resolution One: Early

2009-12-30T09:35:00.000-08:00

"Learn to say 'Fuck You' to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eying, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!"

-excerpted from a letter sent from Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse

Sorting through my file boxes today, hoping for a little pre-quarter organization, I found an old issue of Art on Paper that included a letter written by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse. Beside reigniting my Hesse fire and calling me to revisit her sculpture work, the above portion of the letter felt a little incriminating. It was if LeWitt was writing to me, heard all of my teary, whiny ramblings from the past few months, and was setting me straight. The truth is, and I know of at least three guys in my life who are now sighing and shaking their heads, I've been feeling a little lost, a little unsure, a little, maybe a lot, incapable of the thing I thought I wanted to spend my life doing. It's not new, this feeling, to me or anyone else, and the rational part of my brain nods its head at all the reasons why I am and will be okay. Unfortunately, the other part of my brain, the sensitive, fragile part, is stubborn and selfish. I thought I'd come up with some grand solution over the holiday break, put a plan in motion and beat these blues of ineptitude. Oh, if only it were that easy, right?

Instead, I've decided to just do for a while. I'm going to take a little break from seeking solutions and maybe, if I'm lucky, stumble upon something I didn't even know I wanted. To do this, I will be blogging every day for the month of January, possibly longer. There is so much to talk about really, like loaded baked potato soup, the McSweeney's Quarterly San Fransisco Panorama edition, the best novel I've read in a long time, Portland, scanners, wood rings, Christmas villages, the number of clementines one should eat in a single sitting, and why UNO is maybe the best game ever invented.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited. I'm a fan of little bits and this kind of blogging fosters the little bits. I would like to ask one favor, if I may, although with all these wimpy, whiny posts lately, I'm not sure about how much right I have for requests, but just in case... I'd like to ask you to please comment when you can. I put a counter on the blog, set up to note unique hits, and it has definitely gone beyond the five or so people I know read this page, two of which are family members obligated by blood.

Puzzling

2009-12-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

I love to puzzle. Love. to. puzzle. And when I say I love to puzzle, I mean it in every form: jigsaw, crossword, jumble, search, hours spent "puzzling" what to do with my life. I love the crunkle I feel forming on my forehead as I stare at the pieces, just knowing I know how to put them together, but not really being able to put that knowledge into practice. This winter break allowed me the indulgence of putting together twelve jigsaw puzzles. Twelve, people. I swear I am six going on eighty. There is so much joy to be found in the snuggling together of cardboard, little notches finding their mates, an image pieced together slowly over time. I love that every piece has its place, every piece has a purpose that I methodically discover, matching one curve to another. When life feels scattered and unstable, a jigsaw puzzle brings order and calm. I've got one left in the apartment, one more puzzle before classes and teaching begins again, and I'm trying to wait just a little longer before opening the box and separating the edges; building the border is the beginning of the end. For now, in the break between, I will share a very useful puzzle tip, a tip that is more useful than build the edge first, or work one corner at a time, or buoy yourself with a film in the background:

If you must puzzle, and you are so inclined to become entranced in said puzzling, and you must snack while doing so for fear that you will once again miss a meal, do not, do not, place the popcorn bowl next to the puzzle box. Handful after handful of light, airy popcorn doused with salt will not feel far from the weight of a cardboard puzzle, and you might find, as I did, that a mouth full of the latter absentmindedly placed in the mouth, is not a tasty treat. Otherwise, go forth and puzzle. It might not be fashionable, but it is most delightful.

Eye Level

2009-12-20T19:25:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last month doing a little dance with this blog, a dance you might know if I were able to show you my queue of saved and unfinished posts. It's a game of negotiation at times, deciding what to include in this space. I stare at the screen and wonder if it is better to tell the truth, better to indulge myself in the key's click of stresses and worries, of guilt and jealousy, uncertainty and sadness. I wonder in my mind, and in my heart too, if it's appropriate to come to this public space and say what I'm really feeling: that I'm worried I made all the wrong choices, that I don't belong where I am, that I have no idea what I should or want to do with this life I'm living.

I haven't got an answer to those wonders, and really, I may never, but at some point, all negotiations must rest, must holiday in the chill of winter break, must sun themselves in warmth of home, wherever that might be. Because although I am not where I thought I'd be, I am also not sure I remember where that "be" was in the first place. And this route, as misguided as it has sometimes been, has also offered up some pretty amazing gifts. So, maybe what I want to say is that while I have no interest in pretending perfection, I am thankful to have a really lovely life. Currently, it's the hourly sort, a little unsettled, a little frightening at times, but it is also so full of good smells and smiling faces, and love and hugs, and all those things made famous in the summation of after school specials, that I can't for a moment regret the tears I shed in order to balance its reality.

I am always so afraid to look myself in the eyes, pictures leave me twitchy and nervous, worried I'll see a person I don't recognize. While we were in Portland last week (more on that adventure later), I stepped into the photo booth in our hotel alone. Having already used my adorable husband as a shield in a strip, I decided to put myself on the stool and look myself in the eyes and see what's what. I didn't master the art, looking up and around, reading the notes in the booth at all the wrong times, camera snapping away as I glanced through the curtain to Andrew. Regardless, at least twice I stared straight ahead, eye level with myself, eye level with the camera, eye level with the reality of who I currently am. And I could wax on about the insides and what matters and really, chins and round cheeks, but in the end, those little squares are a pretty good representation of where I am right now, in and out. Where I am is not the black and white I seem to be craving, but a rather lovely shade of gray, the areas that blend and blur, the parts of life that resist.

We've been spending these days of our break inside, cuddled under blankets while films present and solve situations more complex than our own, comforting us, making us laugh, making us cry, distracting us in the most fantastic way. We're working our way through piles of books, chaining words together throughout the apartment as we recount favorite lines like garland strung between rooms. The count of finished jigsaw puzzles grows each day, arms pumping the air each time a final piece is placed. I've also, finally, returned to the kitchen, warming the apartment the old fashioned way - armed with butter and a handful of wooden spoons. So, I leave you, only shortly this time, with a little chant of hope, a little warmth for the holiday, a reminder that it doesn't all have to be figured out right now, but it needs to made, and tried, and acknowledged for what it is: a lovely shade of gray.

Creamy caramel frosting sandwiched between buttery chocolate wafer cookies. Roasted potatoes with olive oiled nooks and crannies. Salted caramels wrapped in squares of brown waxy paper. Crispy, salty, sweet caramel corn in glass bowls. Eggs over medium spilling their yolks over sauteed cabbage, toasty bread, potatoes snuggled with onions and peppers, and a bowl of grits cooked slowly in vegetable broth and cream. Orange Pyrex bowls encircled with patterned yellow daisies filled with soft white popcorn and course salt. Mugs shaped like robin's eggs filled to the brim with steamy coffee, emptied, and refilled. Decadent white hot chocolate infused with vanilla and lavender. Late night grilled cheese and pickles when you remember you forgot to have dinner. Soup bubbling in tall, cylindrical steel walls: broccoli cheese, red lentil and spinach, cabbage and kidney bean, kale and orzo with turkey meatballs. Crepes guided by left handed rotation, folded around brown sugar, orange marmalade, butter, and sometimes strawberry preserves. Whipped cream hills sliding off buckwheat pancakes and thinly sliced bananas. Clementine peel confetti.

A Russet Coat

2009-11-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

...break pear and quince-

leave half-trees, torn, twisted,

but showing the fight was valiant.

-H.D. from "Sheltered Garden"

Autumn is upon us, as evidenced the rain and wind currently wrapping on our windows, begging to be noticed. To be honest, I love the cold, gray weather than comes in mid-September and stays with us until the spring. I like the challenge to resist the notion of gloom associated with the weather, tuck into warm spaces, wrap myself in cardigans, quilts, and hand knit scarves. I'm interested in the beautiful battle of the seasons, nature's growth spurts that leaves us muddling around town on a bed of brassy leaves.

This weekend I will find warm nooks and hot drinks to help motivate me through my own valiant fight - my Qualifying Exams. It's funny, I spent all week dreading the reality that after days of teaching, writing, and reading, I would be spending my weekend not relaxing and preparing for the following week, but instead writing two essays that will hopefully allow me to obtain my MA degree. I was dreading the work of it, the panic that always seem to come when one has limited time to complete a task that is meant in some way to symbolize what you know and how well you can use that knowledge. In an effort to keep myself calm, motivated, and productive, I've been working in shifts, allowing myself breaks to relax, gather my thoughts, remind myself of what I do know, what I can do. This morning, after a good night's sleep and a large mug of coffee, I realized it feels less like a fight and more like a gift. I get, for two days, to spend my time making something (and lord knows I whine enough that I never have time to make anything) - and that something is a subject I'm interested in, that I've offered up a chunk of my life for, that I get squinty eyes and pink cheeks and a twittery stomach when I talk about it.

So, until Monday, when I turn in these two essays, I've decided to give myself a swift kick in the pants, not tot get it done, because that always happens, but to enjoy it. Winter is coming quickly, and so too is my brief time of rest, so I think I'll be taking a card from the seasons and instead of shrinking away due to lack of sunlight, or melting under the wet weight of the rain, I might cover the ground with the brightest bursts of color I can - come modernity! and temporality!, liminality! and spatiality!

Wish me luck - not in finishing, that always seems to happen, doesn't it? But instead, wish me luck in remembering that not only do I know this, but that I love this, and loving something is one of the best ways to do well.

Again, Again

2009-10-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

What happens when your head splits open

and the bird flies out, its two notes deranged?

You got better, I got better,

wildflowers rimmed the crater

glitter glitter glitter.

-Dean Young

Last night I fought against the end of Sunday. As the weeks begin to feel longer, heavier, I feel a resistance to an end of what weekends bring: films, walks, baking, cooking together, coffee shop dates, bedroom picnics. We put on our flashiest dance this weekend, watching films in succession, pairing the lovely Ms. Billie Jean and all her Pat Benatar soundtrack glory with the documentary Objectified (highly recommended). We made meals of snacks, snuggled back into the bedroom, the kaleidoscopic array of Pyrex bowls filled with tidbits floating precariously on flannel sheets signaling Fall. The windows are rattling again, my seasonal indicator of change, but we've got quilts and potpie, warmth in multiple forms. One bus ride from now there will be discussions of drafts and grades, and the calculations of expectations will feel simultaneously restricting and redeeming. And I'm thinking about all the talk of sustainability, and the cover of the reader I've been asking my students to pillage, it's play - sustaining words - and I wonder, are these keeping us afloat, or teaching us how to buoy the text? And I think of what sustains me, and what I sustain, and Monday, again, feels a little less troubling, and a little more part of the deal.

The Neglected Discipline

2009-10-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

Toward dawn, rain explodes on the tin roof

like popcorn. The pale light is streaked by grey

and that green you see just under the surface

of water, a shimmer more than a color.

Time to dive back into sleep, as if into

happiness, that neglected discipline ....

-William Matthews

Here's to the wrapping up of Wednesday, to five more conferences down, one meeting over, and a return trip to pick up the forgotten completed in record time. Here's to the lifesaving properties of stove-top popcorn, and the salt that reinforces its beauty. Here's to talk of dessert and the planning of apple crisp, the scrunched, sleepy face of a napping spouse, diet cherry soda with ice and straw, only one assignment left, and the promise of multiple weekend viewings of The Legend of Billie Jean. Here's to wind and rain and the perfect punctuation of a midday latte. Here's to tomorrow, may it be as resourceful as today.

Margins, or This View

2009-10-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

Last week I had my students write this phrase on the tops of their papers: The text works for me. My goal was equal parts empowerment, authority, and ownership, three things so similar and yet, different. I wanted them to know that their voices matter, that what they think matters, and that all these other voices, these conversations buzzing around their heads as we read, discuss, and write, they are there as much in chorus as critique, but we never know which until we open our mouths, touch the pen to the page, choreograph our fingers on the keys.

I've been taking this lesson myself these past few weeks as I sink into the blur of student papers, maneuvering through the mountains of research telling me "what might work" and "what should work" in the classroom. I'm three weeks in, seven weeks from an uncertain finale, and I already know this - might and should are good words to boost hope and calm fears when the initial worry of 24 students hits home. I know, too, that might and should mean very little in the presence of 24 living, breathing individuals with unique identities, each one bringing something slightly, if not greatly, different to the table. What I've learned is that I cannot control these variables, and the thought of making a class fit all of them seems silly, if not impossible and unnecessary, because there is one person in that room I can control, and one thing I can offer them that is different - I can give them me.

Last year I wrote a narrative about taking life, grad school specifically, on my own terms. What I've realized recently is that leading a classroom is no different. The best and most I have to offer comes from the parts of me that are nonnegotiable and yet constantly evolving. It's amazing how much easier teaching became when I stopped trying so hard to "Teach." As it turns out, the set list for this concert is varied and winding - it pits the long, slow notes alongside the necessary bursts of bright, brilliant noise - it's messy and organic and must be questioned and reshuffled as many times as necessary to get it right, to get the crowd singing lyrics you never thought they heard. So, I bring what I know, and we laugh and we talk, and I push and they push back, and we muddle through it the best we can. My goal, if there is such a thing, is to show them how to bring themselves to the party, to stand up for their perspectives, and to back it all up as solidly as possible - their voice, their text, their thoughts. I want them to see me not as infallible, what a sad, misguided task that might be, but instead, I'd like them to see someone who's working it out, who's paying attention to the margins as much as the middle, someone who is looking through as many lenses as possible, but never forgetting the value of my own.

I'm reminding myself of this, nine papers to go, my right wrist weary from commenting, the night wearing away. It's exhausting, this business of being ourselves, but I'm thinking it's worth the work.

From Here to There

2009-09-06T18:52:00.000-07:00

It turns out you are the story of your childhood

and you're under constant revision,

like a lonely folktale whose invisible folks

are all the selves you've been, lifelong,

shadows in fog, grey glimmers at dusk.

[...]

There's no truth about your childhood,

though there's a story, yours to tend,

like a fire or garden.

-Matthew Williams, from "A Happy Childhood"

We'll start with a box from my sister full of wonderful tidbits including a mini disc. Expecting Taylor Swift to come belting out of my computer, I place the disc in the slot and slide the tray closed. I wait, I listen, and then to my surprise I see her and hear her - my sister on the screen, her small, ever present dog child jingling in the background. It's been a year since I've seen her face and heard her voice simultaneously. She gives me a tour of her apartment, introduces me to their newest puppy addition, plays the cello she's mastering daily, takes the camera to my mother's house and films renovated rooms and my mother's bandaged face after nasal passage surgery, she makes the dogs say hello, she turns the camera back to her, and just before the video cuts out, she tells me she misses me and smiles the same smile she used to exhibit after getting caught taking things from my room; I appreciate that smile more now.

It feels like a good place to start with this post, this post that should have been completed oh, a month ago, because that's where I started, with those people, the dogs as family members, the laughs both joyful and sinister, the perfect blend of family quirk. Those two ladies in the video are the ones that cheered me on in grade school, comforted me in middle school, and worked hard to keep speaking to me in high school. Those ladies are the raw material with which I write, the basis for my courage to keep hitting the page because the stories we made together are the best beginning one could ask for when slouching toward a creative life. They were the ones that answered the countless calls last year as I made grad school decisions, listened to the teary ramblings accompanying a new town, new people, new school, new job, new life; they supported me in every way possible, and a few weeks ago, with a new opportunity at hand, they began again.

I taught my first college course last week, and as I dealt with the jumble of nerves and questions and doubts scrambling around in my mind, I couldn't help but think about my sister and me, holed up in our secret cubby hole you could only enter through her bedroom closet, playing "school" with old textbooks from garage sales, makeshift chalk boards, red pens marking swift check marks on all the homework we assigned each other. I thought about the beginning of us and all the things we wanted so clearly back then, the excitement of being someone else's teacher, even if it was just the neighbor kid that smelled a little strange. Thinking about those things, those times we begged to stay up late just to give the other a board lesson on god knows what, I felt a little more at ease with what I'm doing in the classroom. What I'm doing isn't far from what we did back then with our raised hands and calculated chalkboard script - we were excited to show someone else something, anything - we were excited that someone, even just a sister clad in Smurf pajamas, was looking to us for direction.

I'm not saying that it's been perfectly smooth, or that I haven't been caught teary eyed and frustrated as the week went on, or that I won't throw my hands up in the air with feelings of failure and ineptitude before this day is over. But tomorrow is Monday and in the middle of the day I am going to walk into a classroom with 24 sets of eyes firmly planted on me, waiting for me to speak. What I'll be saying, though most likely not in these literal terms, is the story of my life, the story of my family, of my childhood, late nights assigning questions 1-5 and 9 (we were so random), fighting over who would be the teacher and who would be the student, never knowing we would always be both anyway, and hoping that if the only thing my students take from me before the quarter ends is that I really wanted to be there, that might just be enough.

Questions, Questions

2009-08-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

I am terrible, just terrible, at responding to blog memes that are sent to me. Terrible. It's even worse than those last wedding thank you notes I still haven't mailed, ugh, I know, but really, it's worse because I responded to the email request with a date. A date! What was I thinking? I am quite possibly the world's least reliable blogger when it comes to steady posting and I'm going to promise a date for answering questions that will most likely take me months to answer, revise, answer again, decide what I wrote isn't publishable, even on a somewhat insignificant blog, revise, answer, and well, you get the point - I missed that date and the three moths after it. So, Natalie, I'm sorry it is so late, but as a peace offering, I give you the above photos (please excuse the quality as I do not have a scanner at home) which prove, once and for all, that I cannot blame my mother for any of the oddities I display as an adult simply because of my childhood, because although she did adorn my medically documented large head with a yellow and white sweatband for photos, when it came my turn to get ready for snapshots, I took scissors to bangs in what would later become a tradition of personal beauty makeovers before large life events. The point is, striped terry cloth head decor or not, I have done a pretty good job of embarrassing myself over the years without any help from others.

So, to answer your questions.....

1. Where does your blog title come from? This poem.

2. What is your favorite word? Haimish - it's Yiddish for homey, cozy, unpretentious

3. What was your best Halloween costume? For those of you who hear me babble in "real" life, you already know, my best and worst was in the 4th grade when I went as a Picasso painting. Think homemade shift dress to look like a little cubist with blocks of colored fabric, and face paint used to doodle and extra eye or nose on my cheeks. The other kids loved it too - they asked if I'd dressed up as trash. Yeah, trash.

4. What did you want to be when you grew up? According to my Lisa Frank gumball diary? An Art History Professor and a Preacher on the weekends. Of course later there was a Pediatrician, a Marine Biologist, and too many more to count.

5. What is your guilty pleasure? Trick question. I feel guilty about everything. Seriously, maybe the Slim Jims, although it's been years. My Slurpee habit could run a close second.

6. What are you listening to? The couple outside argue about who's turn it is to water the plants - one more minute of hearing them bicker and it's going to be mine. That, and Dolly Parton.

7. Fictitious character who made a lasting impression on you? Just one? Ramona Quimby.

8. Cup half empty or half full? Full, then empty, then full, then empty, then full again, but worried it might be emptied

9. Any pet peeves? Ha! Right now everyone that has spent any amount of time with me is sitting back, grabbing a cup of tea and bracing for the onslaught that is, "Things That Drive Me Nuts." Instead, I'll choose: people that say "you have to...." No, no I don't.

10. Favorite time of day? Early morning, especially if I have the day off.

11. What time did you get up this morning? 3:30, 4ish, 7:15, and finally, 7:26

An Open Letter to Andrew on His Birthday

2009-08-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Andrew:

It's Sunday and you're already out, walking up and down the hilly street behind our apartment, out to get coffee in the chilly air of the last August morning this year. I know, even before you've reached the front door, before I hear the rusty turn of the old handle, the stomping of your feet on worn wooden stairs, that you will come back to the bedroom with coffee, yes, always what you went out for, but also a bag of doughnuts tucked neatly under one arm as if they will surprise me. I know, before you even ask me to guess what else you've brought, or grin sheepishly over the spontaneous treat, that you've asked the girl behind the counter for my favorite doughnut, your favorite doughnut, and then, of course, our favorite doughnut, so that we can each have our treat and then share the last hunched together over the bag to avoid crumbs, trading bites and breaking only to smile the words "I'm so glad you love this, too."

This morning, while you're gone, I'm thinking about your birthday that just passed, four years after the first one I watched you celebrate, emotional light years after the first time I met you. I thought you were so young, so silly and immature, so I closed my eyes an hummed a little tune until you went away. And you did, for a while, go away, and I marched on, same as before, so sure of myself alone, because for the first time in years, I was going to be alone. It's a little funny now, I have to admit, to remember the sheer stubbornness I exhibited those first few weeks. It's amusing to remember how sure I was that you weren't the one, because really, I thought, what is "the one" and who, really, can be the one for someone else? As it turns out, the answer for me was you, you, you. The answer also, as it unfolds each additional year I'm lucky enough to spend with you, is that "the one," that slightly cliche and absolutely oversimplified way of saying you really fit with someone else like you've never fit before, well, it sometimes is just that simple.

What I want to tell you is that nothing, not the "surprise" doughnuts, not the numerous pieces of "free" street side furniture collecting in our apartment, not the way you message me when you get to work each night so I won't worry, not the way you play with my hair when you get home late to make sure I stay asleep, not the way you have six boxes of cereal in the pantry and will come home with one more, and not the smile on your face every time I enter the room, gets past me. I notice every bit because I notice you, and noticing you, finally, was the best decision I've made so far in this life. Because with you, it isn't just about being a couple, or being in love, or being married, or really, even liking the same doughnuts sometimes; it is because with you it's about being a team.

So I could go on, and I'm sure that I should, about all the wonderful things that make you, you, and about how this birthday you should know that you're not just my husband, you're my best friend, but really, if we're talking about cliches, that one's got to top the boat, so instead I'll just say that in the three legged race that is life, I'm glad I'm tied to you.

Love Always,

Brandi

Tips on Cupcake Baking

2009-08-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

For Chelsea

Just in case you've seen this recipe, and you've thought to yourself, "Hmmm... that sounds good, I should try it," here are a few tips:

1. There is a lot of softened butter and cream cheese involved. Don't put one stick on the windowsill and think you're okay - you'll lose a day.

2. Don't be fooled by the many different soy/wheat/teff/bread flours you've managed to collect in your cupboard and assume you have cake flour - you'll lose a day.

3. Don't eat of half of the sliced peaches you have pre-prepped on the counter or the one finished cupcake you share with a friend will be devoid of peaches. A peach cupcake with no peaches is weird.

4. Don't ice the batch of them after a bottle of wine out with a friend or the following might happen:

-you move too quickly and make messy swirls

-you drop one only to catch it after it's smeared frosting down your black dress

-you decided to lick said frosting off your black dress because no one else is home

-you remember your kitchen has huge open windows

-you remember you have new neighbors across the way

-your new neighbors like to star gaze out their bedroom window

-their bedroom window faces your kitchen window

-your first interaction with said neighbors includes your dress pulled up to your face while you remove said frosting

5. Don't use those sustainable brown recycled cupcake liners because they always peel off slightly and when you take the cupcakes to work the next day your co-workers will think you've been into the batch.

6. Don't sprinkle what you believe to be nutmeg on one for a photo shoot only to find out the hard way that you picked up the chili powder.

Otherwise, these cupcakes are light, lovely, and the perfect way to put to use all those peaches currently in season.

An Open Letter to My New Bag

2009-08-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Bag,

I haven't named you yet because the task is entirely too daunting. You're a special one, you, and I want your name to be more than just my genetically influenced tendency to humanize the inanimate. You, dear bag, were made by my mother's hand. You can feel it, can't you? How carefully you were crafted, how lovingly you were cut, pieced and sewn. And I know, I know, you can probably still hear the curse words ringing in whatever we'll call your ears from all those times you bunched and buckled, and curled, because my mother, she doesn't mess around.

The thing is, although you are absolutely gorgeous with your bright vintage print and classic shape, it's more than that. It's more than the repurposed zipper, the perfectly placed pockets, the crisp whiteness of your piping and the mellowness of your muslin interior. The reason why you are more than just any bag, why you are so special, is that I can see, in each stitch and fold, every seam and closure, my mother's hands, her mother's hands, my hands. I can hear the buzz of the sewing machine on hot summer days when I was a child, the boom of my mother's voice to "come upstairs and try this on!" Every time I swing you over my shoulder, I think about mornings on the floor of her sewing room, sorting buttons, stashing favorites in my pockets, picking patterns, fabric, ribbon, offering suggestions, brandishing requests. Every time I look at you I remember what it was like to grow up with someone who made things; I remember what it was like to grow up with someone who made life.

So, dear bag, you inspire me beyond the warm glow of your wardrobe lifting color, beyond what you allow to carry and organize inside, past your ability to draw confidence inspiring compliments throughout the day. Bag, you inspire me to be more like my mother - to make more, to live more, to be more. And so maybe that's it, maybe you've had a name all along.

Dearest Marcia bag, you're a keeper.

My Gravity

2009-08-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

I love really good talks with friends. I know you know what I mean, or, at least, I hope you know what I mean. I hope that the very fact you read this site at all is because you think it's like sitting down with me over a cup of coffee or tea, getting out a little whine, laughing until tears roll down our cheeks, looking for a moment at another face and thinking, "Yeah, she/he gets it."

I spend so much time these days talking to people I will never meet in person. I answer the phone, listen to their trouble, offer help, try for a laugh. But most of them, I will never see face to face. I won't know what their year is like, how the rest of their days and purchases will play out - all I've got are a handful, if that, of phone calls in which to impress a feeling of being cared for, worried about, important. Because when I think about it, some of the best parts of a good talk are the times when you feel important, when what you say, feel, and think is worth it to somebody else. I can't completely solve a lot of the problems that come my way in a day. I can help, and offer a fix, but a fix is not necessarily a solve, and a solve, to many, many people, is a very important thing.

Last night was Friday and we looked for our own "solve" to a very long week with raspberry and fresh basil ice cream dripping down a waffle cone and stove top popcorn. We laughed away the heavy sighs of work days with television show that never gets old. Today we walked, winding through a busy Saturday morning in the city for a bag of tomatoes and a loaf of bread, a handshake with a kind farmer, and a shared doughnut topped with fresh strawberries and cream. Every place we've been, every transaction we've made, when someone asks how we are, and I do the same in return, I listen. I really listen when someone answers because those great talks, the ones I love so much, they don't come around every day, but people are still talking, and those voices still need to feel important.

If you were here, and if we were having coffee or tea again like we have before, I'd want to hear about what's important to you right now, because I suspect it might surprise me - people have a fantastic way of doing that at times. If you asked me, I'd tell you the pink plastic spoon I use for ice cream, the amazing bag my mother made and sent me replete with enough inside and outside pockets for everything to have it's place, the new books I'll spend my night with, the promise of most the day with Andrew tomorrow, the fact that I am always saying things without thinking and getting myself into awkward but endlessly entertaining situations including words like blow, salty, and nuts, that have nothing to do with where your mind just went, the end of the work day when the office is weary but we laugh anyway, big, hard laughs because we cannot not. If you were here, I'd tell you that the most important thing to me right now is make things more so- because we've got enough of the mundane, enough of the casual. What we need is the necessary and the important, and we need to allow them to be small and plentiful.

These Feet

2009-08-05T18:46:00.000-07:00

To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark, or a few lines.

-Georges Perec

A few years ago I wrote about some advice given to me by a professor when he told me: "You are what I call a pure English Major. It's not what you do, it's who you are. Which is why, in your own good time, you will land on your feet." I remember feeling completely validated at the time. I remember thinking, yes, of course; of course I can take my own time, my feet know the way and we'll get there eventually. In reality, as time moved forward, as I shuffled that thought around, I changed the sentiment from purpose to pressure, created boundaries and borders in my mind designed to articulate to those feet the right and wrong ways to land. It's tricky territory when one stops dreaming a dream and begins snipping away until it resembles rigid handbook unfurling with rules and regulations. It wasn't long before my thing, the pounding of the keys, the scrawling on the page - the writing - became a mental ritual of acceptable and not.

I can tell you what I think "good" writing is. Heck, if you step into my home, even if only for mere minutes, you are guaranteed to leave with a book in your hands. I can also tell you how I value my own written words, the hierarchy of what I commit to the page. It's an old game, the one we play with ourselves, mastering the role of critic better than any outside voice ever could, and I'm no different.

Lately though, and this could be lack of good rest, I've been easing up a bit, contemplating what it might be like to value you what I write, to value, if not the words, the moment they were working to capture, the furrow, as Perec pointed out, that those words were trying to nudge into the expanse not of nothing, but of everything.

I like to think I write in this space to carve out a notch on the tree, to make it known that I was here, that I lived it, walked around in it, danced in it a little. I write to retain the "of course" and "I never thought to put it that way" to bring the simple and unexplainable to the dinner table and make it so good it feels like dessert.

I've got some big things in the works, some projects that took their time to peer out from the dark and remind my feet that in order to land, they need leap.

Couleurs

2009-08-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

for ZB

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing

song of all the things you make

me think of, here is oblique

praise for the height and depth

of you and the width too.

Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

-Marge Piercy

There is a certain shade of yellow, somewhere in between school bus and traffic sign that makes my heart fill with possibility. There are also shades of orange, blue, and green that bring on similar emotions, each slightly different, each changing with the subtleties of shade and saturation. Sometimes, just the sight of my perfect red pencil, once belonging to one Mr. Bill Allen, is enough to calm all the nervous jitters with which I occupy an obscene amount of my time. There is also the avocado green of our well-loved Tupperware, the snowy white of our coverlet, that certain carrot colored crayon orange on the handle of a pair of scissors, the heavily faded navy of my grandmother's pajamas that I still wear to bed.

What I'm trying to get at, I think, is something beyond color, beyond a list of numbers and calculations on a chart that combine just the right levels of this and that to create what we can then name elaborately to be: daffodil, pumpernickel, or sage. What I'm talking about when I say yellow, is the nostalgia of the perfect over medium egg not appreciated until one is much, much older, the scratched paint on an old metal lamp a thoughtful husband installs after work, the familiar dotting on the road taking you home. This kind of color, historical, personal, color, is at the center of almost everything I do. I like to think, although it's typed in the technical black, I write in color. I like to think that the possibility of that new old box of crayons I rescued from the bottom of the bin at the thrift store comes through every time I touch my pencil or pen to the page; I like to think I power this keyboard with the click-clack of energy that comes from the perfectly pea green plastic file case that holds my bits of found paper and the scraps of my jottings.

What I've noticed lately about all the bits and bobbles I collect and bring home to arrange and rearrange, is that each item is bursting with color, and each color does more than just compliment the one next to it; one color converses with another. And if these colors are more than just the pigments my eyes and mind recognize, if they are tiny histories packaged in the tomato red spine of a classic book or the grainy brown wood of family built furniture, the pieces I choose to surround myself with are telling a constantly evolving story of which I am a part.

It's that story I want most to articulate on the page, to offer to a friend, to perpetuate beyond these walls. Because that story, those histories, the nostalgia found on a box of waxy, paper bound sticks, it's the most accurate way I know to say - 'Here. This is what you mean to me' because orange is never just orange, it is the morning juice, salad topper, traffic cone, no red popsicles left, Elmer's glue topped example of a life lived. It is what I cannot always say in words, but will always try, and it is the most hopeful display of purpose that I know.

Balance

2009-07-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

So, that balance I was talking about...I thought it might be time to offer up a little visual reminder to myself, mostly, of the good bits that put those pouty moments into perspective.

An interesting and lovely silver chain purchased for $1 when we stopped into the antique down the street at the end of a sunny walk.

The way the light comes in the kitchen window as the sun begins to set in the evening.

Our basil plant still alive and kicking.

The recipe for banana bread tacked up on the fridge, followed gracefully by a pretty fantastic husband.

This little lady we picked up a few weeks ago in a little town nearby - she reminds big me of little me.

A fantastic Danish modern desk chair for $1.50 (it was marked $3, but the lady at the register gave us 50% off - we love her) at the Goodwill to replace my IKEA one that ended its life by splitting on each side just enough to pinch my tooshie in its red plastic grips of death.

Lost in It

2009-07-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

I need to let you in on a little secret: I've been a little pouty this summer. Andrew, if you're reading this, I know, I know, a lot pouty. I've tried to be good, I have. I've tried to be the adult my driver's license promises me to be, but honestly, it's been a little touch and go around this apartment at times. My kind of pouty is a moody pouty - a "I feel like this, no I don't, yes I do, everything is poop" kind of pouty. I like a good stomp now and then, a couple of good foot/floor smacks and a little bit of furrowed brow thrown in for good measure. There have also been, it's painful to admit, a few teary quips about fairness. I know, I know, I'm still wrestling with fairness at the age and time? But the reality is that life isn't always rational and reasonable, and so, at times, it's almost comforting to join in the pure silliness of it all with a good old fashioned mood encrusted, irrationally bedazzled pout. Friends, I have mastered that art.

I try not to show it past the front door, although to be honest, it's mostly work & home these days, but I've been feeling it creep out a bit, the stomping lurching around in my legs when we're running errands, trying desperately to connect my foot to the floor in a child-like thump. Who am I to judge those cart wrangled children in the grocery store tossing boxes of Ritz to the floor? A part of me gets just what they're saying: "I thought I wanted this when I grabbed for it, but now I just want someone else to notice that I am not happy with the choice" and BAM! cracker confetti in aisle 3. Really, it's the symptom of a lack of time off, an intense schedule, basic life stresses, a constant flurry of vacation stories from friends, a little jealousy, and a healthy pinch of wanderlust. To put it simply, there's nothing too terribly dramatic about this summer except my behavior.

It's better I think, when times become tainted by moodiness and pouty, not to hide them away, but to fess up to the truth, to the reality that good behavior is sometimes relative, and that a good stomp now and then never hurt anyone, as long as you can keep it in check (or have a fantastic husband who can help out with that task).

So, there haven't been any vacations, and the breaks we were hoping for will have to wait, but I've been taking every chance I get to lose myself in books, to keep the one summer tradition I've had since childhood - stacks and stacks of summer reading. I've been reading new books and rereading favorites, indulging in one author's correspondence and remembering some of my own as I pick up classics I haven't visited since I was young enough to still dot my i's with little scribbled stars. I've got a list of amazing new Young Adult books to recommend if you'd like to spend a few hours remembering how much fun it was to read at that age, and another list of books more adult in their content, but no less inspiring to the little kid we keep tucked away inside us.

I'm hoping that by coming clean about my summertime pout, it will abate, at least slightly, as the season chugs along. I'm hoping that getting it out there will give me more time in my mind for these mental vacations allowed and inspired by the page. In the end, I'm hoping that I never grow up completely, but instead find the best possible way to balance all the pieces I've collected along the way.

You Keep Going

2009-07-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Getting off the bus this morning I thought about someone's statement about the hours we work, the pace of it all. I don't pretend to deny it, it does feel quite heavy some days, our schedules split in two, one of us coming when the other one's going, but it's reminded me of this: you keep on. That's the secret - the one you might miss at first - you keep going, getting up, riding the bus, tying the ties, packing the lunches. And soon, it becomes a little beautiful, the habit of it all, the habit of being, and soon the knotting of silk becomes almost as lovely in its ritual ceremony as the church bells in an old city square. Soon, the pace of the walk to and fro, the hellos and goodbyes to others in their own routines are just as joyful as the laughs that punctuate the day. The laughs get us through, no doubt about that, but the rhythms, oh, the rhythms move us forward.

Life/Cherries...A Big Bowl of Both

2009-07-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Trying to cool the heat inside the small towns

of their bodies,

for which they have no words;

obedient to the voice inside which tells them,

"Now. Steal Pleasure."

-Tony Hoagland, from "Summer in a Small Town"

It's funny, I think, to begin with the concept of pleasure when even the very word feels foreign to me as I describe our summer: weeks and weeks of overtime and seemingly endless work stress, hours apart, the sudden loss of a job and income, piles of to-dos before the coming of Fall. But, and there always is a but, isn't there? There have been moments of pure goodness, times forgotten under the weight of the work week, the heavy burden of employment searches and the re-budgeting of a budget - there have been cherries. I know, I know, I'm about to slap you silly with that cloyingly sweet image of life being a bowl of cherries, and yes, I know, you're already expecting me to unroll some trite notion about it's sweetness despite the pits, but bear with me, please, because it's more than that.

The summer cherries, so enticing at the farm or market, they're a leap of faith, those fruits. Sure, you're agreeing to take the good with the bad, the sweetness with the seed, but it's more than just good and bad. Each time we've taken home a basket of cherries this summer, which to be honest, has been quite often, we've taken them home with the good faith that the cherries will be sweet and delicious. Sure, we've sampled a few before purchase, but that's hardly a guarantee, right? Unless we try the whole basket before payment, how can we know that the good will outweigh the bad? How can we be certain that they will be sweet enough to make all that seed/pit wrangling worth it?

I worry sometimes that this past year, the entire life of this blog, has been nothing but the whiny ramblings of a girl who is trying to justify her own dramatic tendencies towards a challenging year. In fact, I'm not sure that exact thought isn't haunting these lines as I type, but what I do know is that each time I sit to catch up on the screen, reach out to an unseen audience, I'm making another leap of faith. Each time I pour a cup of coffee, upload a photo, putter through the clack of the keys in order to find some semblance of what life's been like, I'm putting faith into the idea that it will get better, that these words are an act, just as strong as the walk to the bus each morning, the punch of the time clock, the making of dinner. Each time I jumble together and then unfold the heaps of thoughts that spend their time dancing about in my mind (square dancing, if you're wondering), I am making something, and nothing cures the worries of nothingness like the act of making something new.

So, those cherries I've been exploiting for metaphoric sake? They've been pretty darn sweet, and the seeds? We've been managing just fine, because even when you feel too tired to take another step, there are clean sheets and favorite films, cold apple juice in tiny jars, stove top popcorn and word games, rainy bike rides and piles of pictures of the sky, cups of coffee, and good friends who will smile and laugh and tell you what a good idea you've come up with, and really, that all feels like enough.

This summer will not go down as the easiest, but it isn't without it's pleasure. This year, the pleasure is in the looking, in the finding of new ways to make; the pleasure is in finding new ways to make life.

Oh, Saturday...

2009-06-20T21:06:00.000-07:00

I wrote out a long narrative about how important Saturdays are in our house, with a lengthy description of all the fantastic bits we encountered yesterday, but it just didn't feel right, so I scratched it. Instead, I offer you a list, a Saturday list, and a handful of photographs to show you what made it for me, and for Andrew too, an amazing day.

short, but beautiful, drives out of town
thrifting a few new treasures in a different city
spending time talking about reading & recommendations with a 12yr old girl at a used bookshop
taking the scenic route back home
stopping at a roadside farm stand for fresh strawberries, Rainier cherries, & shelling peas
sharing one of their homemade strawberry shakes
snacking on the bag of cherries shared between
stopping the in next small town for picnic provisions
a loaf of farmer bread from the bread shop
aged gruyere, salumi flavored with lemongrass, and rhubarb soda from the delicatessen
an impromptu picnic on a large flat-topped rock with a look out over the water
a blanket we keep in the car for emergency picnic stops
taking photographs with the Land Camera of the amazing view
swarms of bumblebees hovering over the wild blackberry vines below
listening to the newest Grizzly Bear album during our time in the car
making a big pot of strawberry jam with our findings
dinner consisting of cinnamon toast eaten while watching a film
prepping the ingredients for scones the next morning

Out of Habit

2009-05-31T19:29:00.000-07:00

"What’s really going on, what we’re experiencing, the rest, all the rest, where is it? How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs everyday: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?

To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is no longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?

How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are." -G. Perec

I don't take pictures of people, or vacations, holidays, or unofficial gatherings. I'm not very good with the "big picture" - the scope of an event, slowing instead to putter among the moments, the way the window frame glows when the sun comes up, the flop of a book fallen from the couch to the floor, the clean lines of folded laundry. I am more interested in the the ornament than the tree; the uneven brick over the expansive building. I'm thinking of this because I sometimes worry I confuse my love of the parts of things with a love for the whole of them. I'm thinking about this now, specifically, because tomorrow will begin the last week of my first year of grad school.

In my most doubtful moments of being here, knee deep in bouts of sadness and confusion of this decision I made, that move, this work and dedication, I can often be found saying that I confused my love of literature with a desire to make literature my profession. Off and on, I believe this statement. I muse about how the passion over the movement of a line of poetry, the experience of simultaneous chills and ease over a passage of text is not necessarily the same as an ambition for academic publishing, conferences, and tenure tracks. Off and on, I believe these distinctions.

Some days, even with my acknowledgement of the beauty of balance, it's nice simply to indulge in what Perec called the "infra-ordinary" - some days it's nice to champion the habitual parts of the day, the way morning smells, a scent particular to its city, the graffiti flower on the building next door that looks cheery even in its destruction, the small spoon I use only for yogurt, the mug with the crack running down its side that always makes me picture a map of the Mississippi River and, ultimately, spell out the state's name as I was taught in grade school: M-I-crooked letter, crooked letter -I -crooked letter, crooked letter - I -humpback, humpback -I. I took the camera round with me on our travels around our city this weekend and captured the most basic, most lovely parts of my everyday. The poppies outside our door like a hundred tiny suns, the street corner I stand on each day heading in or out, the darkness of the floor speckled with bits of fallen paper like constellations, the view of the sky just out our back steps.

I'm not sure I'm ready to find a way for the large and the small to balance for me in school just yet; I'm not ready for the compromise. I admit they can and often do for many, many people, and I admit that if I tried I would most likely be able to find and practice that same balance. I also admit that my constant questioning of the life I'm leading slows me down, makes it harder, asks of me constant observation in the search for an answer (oh, what would we do if there really was one answer?). As difficult as these aspects might be, I know their value, too; I stand behind Socrates and his thoughts on a life unexamined. There are times when it feels positively necessary to stand at the doorway to the expanse of the future and look instead at the tiny cracks in the wooden frame, to lag behind to search for four leaf clovers in the patches of green, to be giddy over each new morning with the small silver spoon and a cup of strawberry yogurt. For a little while longer, at least, I think I'll remain unabashedly in love with the way Mrs. Dalloway makes my heart thump through each line, each lengthy line simultaneously lumpy and smooth, rich with descriptions that feel both blissfully intrinsic and utterly exotic. I think for a little while, I'll continue to resist what should be done to mend the gap between my vision of a life in literature and the more practical processes, not because I think they cannot co-exist, but because for a while, I think I'd like to love my habits the way they are, and see maybe, if that isn't enough.

Holiday Blur

2009-05-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

Even through the blur, this is a pretty accurate picture of what our holiday weekend was like. We set the goal high - aiming for a clean apartment that people might assume humans live in. We got there, eventually, but my apron and I got quite a hefty workout. Our apartment now smells of jasmine and fresh cut grass (the windows are open), and we're not in a constant game of Twister, climbing and contorting over piles to reach what we need. There was more than just cleaning, just in case you worry we spent three days in a lemon-scented work prison. There was a huge salad with grilled shrimp and asparagus, homemade croutons, and goat cheese, icy glasses full of pear cider, long walks through town, a thrifted wok, a bike ride, the best breakfast sandwich ever (think fresh baked bread, eggs scrambled with fresh herbs, and Emmental cheese). The weekend also brought movies, old and new, a night out with friends, lentil sloppy joes, and a trip to the library next door for the book sale. It was so full that by the time I stopped to try to capture this image, there was only the blur of successful exhaustion. Oh, that and this one in which I forgot to press the timer button:

Proofing

2009-05-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

At night, I set the croissants on a tray to proof, allowing them the extended hours, the dark warmth of the stove top to sit and rise. I'm patient with them, gentle even, placing them, setting them aside from other activities like film viewing in bed and late night trips for water, and in this time they perform the beautiful task of rising, that tight dough growing into large puffed pastries looking gloriously hopeful. They bake as the coffee is made, and once out of the oven we shatter their thin buttery layers, pressing every wayward crumb between our fingertips and the plate, leaving no remnants unattended. I'd like to think these croissants are that good because I give them time to do their own thing.

I'd also like to think I'm smart enough, and really, observant enough, to take my own advice. It's funny how blind we can sometimes be to our own practices. I've been thinking a lot lately about the act of proofing, of allowing something, usually dough, the time to rise, to come into its own, to prepare itself, if you will, for what it will become. I like the idea that you can work to create something, put together all these small pieces, compiling, shaping, mixing things around, and then, just when you think you're done, that you're home free, you stop - you wait.

I'm not sure of specifics, but I can say with all certainty that I don't offer this same culinary kindness to myself. My expectations for who I'll be and what I'll do almost always outweigh the concept of taking time, of being patient with the pause of growth. Some days, I want it all right. this. minute. I want the classroom, the published works, the writing cottage, the knowledge that I'm doing what I'm meant to do. It's lofty, I know, that concept of "meant to," and I harbor no false pretenses that my search is more original than any that have come before me; I do not believe I am the first to wish myself patience. Still, regardless of rationalizations and reassurances, I'd like to know why I extend more care at times to the frozen dough on a Saturday night.

Sometimes, it's not about the answer. Sometimes, it's about noticing the small, caramel colored breakfast bits and feeling so much joy for them and their process that sitting there on a handmade quilt filled with wonky, persistent stitches, you remember to feel a little more thankful of your own. For now, I'm working on this proofing business, the rising of all these layers of myself that I've not yet allowed the patience and time to come forth. I'm betting, with some pretty good genetic odds, that there's something in there that's worth the wait.

What We Keep

2009-04-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

Growing up, my family and I were dog people. We were snotty nose spot on your pants, dog hair on everything, scrunch to share the bed, stub your toes on forgotten bones dog people. We still are, really, though some of us do not currently have a dog. Okay, so that last one, that's just me, dog less at the moment, with Bugsy, my stubborn, sweet Tibetan Spaniel living with the two people he loves most in this world, my mother and her boyfriend Irby. Until a little over a week ago he also lived with my sister's childhood dog Josie, another Grandma Marcy adoption.

I intended to come to this space ready with funny, sappy memories of the years I spent with Josie, a regal, golden dog, aware of her own grandeur, just enough Chow to keep her coat full and her demeanor dominating. But what I need to admit to you is that she really did not care for me at all. I could call her name from two feet away with a piece of steak in one hand and a bone in the other and she would turn her head to me as if to say, "Look, that's fine and all, but unless you're making your way over here, I'll wait for someone else to bring me food." She was patient and steady because she could be, because she was so beautiful that even as I'd snarl and stomp at her lack of interest in me, I'd walk anything she wanted right across the room just for the chance to pet her and pretend for the moment she was interested in me.

In reality, she didn't need to be interested in me. She had the rest of my family, all of whom she adored fiercely. My sister, her first mother of sorts, cannot be denied, as Josie would sit and lean into them with a force that was nothing short of intense and unyielding love. It was my mother, I have to say, who remained until the end her best friend and champion. They shared cups of tea like two women who'd known each other for years, raised children together, survived loss, moved and reinvented their lives, all together. I'd like to think that at the end of such a long life she thought of those two women and felt proud of what they'd seen together. I imagine that Josie remembered all the men they'd jointly loved, all the ups and downs they weathered as a team and knew, beyond the boundaries of human and pet, that she'd been part of a family.

Knowing the loss of a pet, I won't say I can't imagine how my mother and sister must feel, how Irby, used to sitting through his work days with Josie at his feet, must feel. The space left empty where someone used to be is not limited by biological differences, age, or naming constraints. A loss is a loss. What I will say is that it is comforting at times like these to know one can love that much, that one is able to convey that, both in words and actions, to another in such a way that when a life ends, it is possible to feel certain love was shared; a life was bettered and made full. There is no doubt in my mind that Josie knew how many people loved her, that being a "pet" didn't keep her from being a like a child, a grandchild, a friend.

I cannot regret now that she didn't always have time or interest for me, because really, her dance card was full with some pretty amazing people, and I completely understand her position.

Marriage

2009-04-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

It often strikes me that I got married, married, and kind of just glossed over it in this space, as if everyone meets an amazing person and makes a life changing decision every day, and me? Well, I just joined the crowd. But really, it was so much more than that - so much more.

Our one year anniversary was almost a month ago and I really thought I'd sit down then, finish my thank you cards, write out this post, declare some kind of sappy, undying love for my newish husband to the internet, but instead, life went on full steam ahead and only about half of that happened. I was putting together a slide show of images from a day last week when it really hit me just how much better my life has been since meeting Andrew. I don't mean that it was dreadful before - far from it, but there is definitely something to be said for sharing, both the good and bad.

In the morning when Andrew leaves for work he places a mug and a carafe of coffee on my bedside table. He whispers sweet words into the dark and he leaves for his first job of the day and he never complains. He comes home and showers and rests and eats and leaves again and never complains. I thought about telling you how lovely our wedding day was, about the water and the breeze, friends and family lining the slope to the dock, tables of the food I worked hard on and believed in, tiny white twinkling lights against the night's darkened trees. I thought that all those things might be the best way to tell you how amazing this marriage has been, but I was wrong, because although that night was absolutely perfect, the most beautiful moments in my marriage so far have been at 2 am when a very tired, worn husband crawls into bed from his last job of the day and instead of lamenting those hours, this life, puts his arms around me, curls in tight, and tells me he loves me.

It feels good to build a life with someone that you like as much as you love. I like to say that marriage is like a sleepover where you play Uno late at night and laugh about silly stories from the day. I don't mean to say that there aren't hard times and budgeting and moments of stress induced bickering, but the balance we've struck is one that privileges popcorn and cards in bed as much as the ironing out of who we think each other should be. I am constantly in awe of who Andrew is, how this guy I barely knew turned into the person I know the best - the person who knows me the best.

Tonight I'm packing his lunch for work tomorrow, and tomorrow night he'll get off work and we'll have those hours to ourselves, a hole in the work schedule that will be welcomed by a collaborative dinner effort (I cook, he cleans) and most likely a movie interrupted by all the things we didn't get a chance to say over the weekend.

I think what I'm trying to say is that when people ask me why I decided to get married, the answer seems so simple and so obvious, and really, so undeterred by my own liberal tendencies: a really amazing guy asked me and I said yes. Yes can be a really great word.

Projects

2009-04-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a few projects right now - school and life related. And, I know, I know, I just asked for your help and here I am begging again, but really, it's all for a good cause (right now Andrew might call this my sanity).

So, there are two things you might do if you are so inclined:

1. send me any "topics" you might like to see something written on - for example: metal chairs, the color magenta, or children

2. send me a little blurb on what your sense of place in the world means to the way you live - consider the regionality of your life and tell me if being from the south, north, etc. changes your view point and how- do you identify with this region?- can you imagine being from somewhere else? would you want to? how do you define "home"?

Many, many thanks in advance.

The Waking

2009-04-09T08:43:00.001-07:00

Some days, it's so tempting to stay here, to sip the coffee brought in by the husband on his way to work, to read the books on the bedside table, to listen to the conversations below the open window, to watch the sun peek in and out. Some days, it takes a little more effort to rise and join those conversations outside. Today, I'll do it- tomorrow too. Maybe Saturday we'll stay here a little longer, together.

Thank You and a List

2009-04-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

I really cannot imagine where to begin, thus my silence over the past week. How to say thank you for so many comments and emails, so many extensions of comfort and hope. I felt a little silly at first, posting a request that felt a little audacious in a way. I felt a little guilty for needing it, all the reassurement, but in the end, after reading all the responses and crying (yes, crying) at most of them, I realized I did, in fact, need them. I needed to hear all those things that I knew, but couldn't accept on my own. I needed to be reminded that this isn't the end- not even close.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly I forget that things will be hard, and better, and worse, and infinitely amazing; I forget about the ebb and flow of it all when I'm in the thick of it. This year has been so full that I often forget to breathe and process it all, to take it in one bit at a time. Last year scientists did a study revealing that butterflies remember their lives as caterpillars. I can't tell you how much I love the thought of that - the transformation without the complete rejection of the past. I love the importance of refusing to forget how we get where we are - wherever that is.

I am certain that there will be a handful of times in the next year, heck, in the rest of my life, that I will need to go back to those words you all sent, to remind myself of the most fundamental elements of what it means to live a life. I am also certain that every time I read them I will wonder why it feels so hard to tell myself these things, and how amazing it is that I have others around me to bring it back into view.

Lastly, a list: things one might take time for in order to push up over the hump that is a bad day in order to make a good one:

long walks around a city as it welcomes spring, a trip to the Saturday market for local veggies, cheese, and bread, roast chicken and potatoes, small glasses filled with daffodils in every window, open windows and cool breezes, napping in said windows when the sun is up, trips to local thrift stores and the perfect find (in my case a very old glassbake mug in yellow with an orange design of farm animals - advertising for the NW WA fair in Lynden, WA), an hour lost in the maze of a used bookstore, card games in bed with popcorn and movies, coffee dates with good friends, a day spent cleaning and reorganizing, and the surprise of miniature croissants and strawberry jam as breakfast in bed.

Wanted: Pep Talk

2009-04-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

* poem by Chas Hoppe

It's been one of those days. One of those days. I know you know what I mean. So, instead of wallowing all night, I've decided to be proactive and ask a favor. Can you ask favors on a blog? I hope so, because many of you are not close enough for me to ask in person. I need a pep talk. I need a "you can do this, this is what I like about you, this is what I think you can do" kind of talk. It seems silly to ask, but it also seems silly not to- to try and make it through the muck all on my own when I'm surrounded by such fantastic people. You don't have to comment here if you don't want to - you can email me : brandi dot kincaid at gmail dot com. Please add in appropriate punctuation to save me the spam. Thank you in advance - it really does mean a great deal to me. And hey- feel free to tell me if you should need the same. No need to pretend we're islands in this.

Also, the above photo has been waiting for a proper post for too long (it was an amazing birthday gift from an amazing friend who happens to be a very talented poet). I thought this post would be perfect, because in the glum of this evening, it made me smile.

More Yellow

2009-03-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Constellations

2009-03-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. -Anaïs Nin

According to Webster, neglect means "to leave undone or unattended to especially through carelessness," and though I hate to admit it, nothing seems more fitting for this blog these days. I read a rule once, that when you return from spotty posting to a blog, you should never mention it; returns to things to should go unspoken, as if it were demeaning to condescend to the truth behind inattention. I can't bear that though, so I'm pushing that rule aside to tell you this: things have been shifting around here - changing. I don't mean just the end of a school quarter, although, thank goodness that one's through, or the celebration of one year of marriage, again, nothing to shrug at, instead- instead, I mean big inside changes.

I can't speak for the rest of my classmates, but for me, grad school feels like living on another planet a few days a week. The language shifts, conversation changes, people, normal people (whatever that means) look different, sound different. It often feels like some advance version of the future is running up behind like children on the playground trying its best to scare the crap out of you while you're not looking - big, shocking, frightening reminders that you've chosen this other world, and you, it asks coyly, what are you going to do with it?

I have no good way to answer that question, not yet at least, but I do have a better way of hearing it, and that's where the change comes in - I'm beginning to listen more accurately to what's not being said. There's so much talk of where we'll go and how we'll get there- how to be professionals, how to market ourselves, how to market our interests, that sometimes, sometimes it is hard to remember what those interests were to begin with. And so, in an effort to hear the cries of all those things I can't often process above the future's strong siren song, I've been focusing more on the little whispers of poetry and short fiction, postmodern fables and rhetorical devices (I'm just gaga for those). It is so easy to get lost in the push forward, forward, forward, that I lose myself in the trip, forgetting to branch out, water my roots, and, though it is more cliche than I would like, remember where I came from.

I'm such a believer in signs, symbolic reminders that I'm on, if not the right track, a pretty good one, and one of the best signs I have, I've had for years. The Sun magazine, which I've mentioned on every blog I've owned over the years, has a section at the back titled, "Sunbeams" - it's full of quotations appropriate to the content of the issue. Like clockwork, for, oh, six years or so, these quotations have fit mysteriously, perfectly, into my life at that moment. When Andrew first told me he loved me, that same day the issue of the magazine revolved around love (not necessarily a common theme for them). The same can be said for each issue, and to be honest, it's made me feel a little, for lack of a better term, weirded out at times. This month, I chose that quote by Anais Nin weeks ago, thinking it perfect for this post, but questioning quoting her, considering that you see snippets of her work posted so often. Then, last night at the bookstore I picked up the new issue of the magazine and flipped to the back. There, third from the top, was the quote you see above. I might as well stick with the sappy trend of this post and say it - it felt like it was meant to be.

I really love what Nin is saying though, about the very complex nature of who we are, of all the mingling layers that keep us whole. I've been working at respecting my layers lately, feeling grateful to have them, responsible for their definition.

The Next Day

2009-03-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

"I do everything I do because I love to do it, even when I worry or am confused or slightly in despair. Those feelings usually pass. And then the next day is there. Always a good thing. The next day." - Maira Kalman