Dream

I'm parked outside a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on 4th Avenue and my parents, aunts, uncles, and other extended family are in a caravan on the street. I need to run back to help my dad with something, and when I return, my car has been stolen. I panic and call the police to report it. Only the police department has adopted one of those "press 1 to report a rape; press 2 to report a break-in; press 3 to report a committed murder; press 4 to report an impending murder..." systems. I'm pressing ZERO ZERO ZERO, since that usually goes to a live person. Which is what I get. Only my live person is an outsourced police switchboard person in India somewhere and he can't understand me.

South Beach Diet™, you owe me.

I busted up my knee about a month ago, and have not been able to get around on it until now. That, combined with the fact that I tend to go out for just about every single meal with my Fellow Gourmands and Varsity Enablers, aka my friends, has led to me feeling sluggish and icky.

So today was the day. Kick Start City! Wrestle those cravings to the ground! Phase I, hear I come!

I got all ready this weekend, buying the requisite groceries, lining up my cheese sticks and whatnot, trying to convince myself that Splenda™-sweetened fudgesicles were going to be JUUUUUUUST like a glass of Tempranillo in the evening...

I made my lunch for today, and got the greens and cherry tomatoes in their little bags, the tuna mixed up with a couple of capers, some Dijon, and some inky black olives, made sure I had some parceled out almonds for a snack...oh, I was feeling so organized and motivated! I had my Last Supper, only I substituted pasta for Body and Chianti for Blood, and then it was off to bed.

Fast forward to this morning. Overslept. By a lot. Leapt out of bed, cleared the bathtub edge like a doped up hurdler, wet my hair and reached for the...D'OH. Empty shower bottle. I had meant to replace it yesterday. OK, no problem, out of the shower, new bottle, back in without slipping in the pool of water on the floor, showered without further incident, back out, dried the pool and myself and my hair in record time (of course by now I was in a lather again, but no time to remedy that), wrestled with clothes in the closet, leaving a pile of empty hangers twisted in the dark recesses of the closet floor, threw on my day's raiment and then hobbled down the stairs.

Oh, right. South Beach. No grabbing a cheddar-dill scone at the coffeehouse on my way to work. Um, OK. Now imagine this next part speeded up, with The William Tell Overture playing: a little tin of tomato juice is retrieved from the fridge and set down next to the computer. I break an egg into a bowl and beat it quickly and dump it into a skillet with some Smart Balance™ and diced Canadian-style bacon and a trace of low-fat cheddar cheese. Easy peasy! Onto a plate it goes, and I sit down to log into LL quickly as I'm eating.

I grab my tomato juice can and shake vigorously, and...

NOOOOOOOO. I had already opened it!

Tomato juice all over me, the keyboard, the pens in my pen holder, the wall, the rug under my desk chair.

I wish I could say that the scene got reeled back in, rewind-style, and that it was just as gripping* as the first part of my tale, but truth be told: it was more like a newsreel of a defeated WWII soldier trudging along in a rain-gutted road, vacant-eyed and resigned to whatever was over the horizon, as I cleaned up the mess and changed clothes.

Anyway, I finally got to work, half an hour late, and announced my entrance with a loud, dramatic "DON'T ANYONE CROSS ME TODAY, I MEAN IT" as I brandished my bag of almonds.

Tomorrow is another day.

*Editorial license

Fugue: Hot, Mild, Hot Again

I. I remarked to someone that you can take the folks out of Arkansas, but you can't take the Arkansas out of the folks. My parents, brother, and sister-in-law arrived last Wednesday, and I picked them up at the airport. They were here for four days and I learned that a) they could charm a dog off a meat truck; b) my mother had never seen a bluetooth ("What is that thing going off in that man's ear??? There's blue lights buzzing in there!!!!"); c) I am too impatient with them as they grow older; d) the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I made them go sailing. My mother, once seated, refused to move a muscle and my father hunkered down in the floor, terrified we would keel over and they would be dashed into the Puget Sound to be gobbled up by errant killer whales.

I took them to La Carta de Oaxaca and made them do a tasting flight of salsas, from mild to hot. My mom said "I'll tell you what, that's so hot, it'll melt your earwax!" but proceeded to do everything but clean the little bowls out with her finger.

We went to the locks to watch the salmon leap and flop up the salmon ladder and my dad said he wished he'd brought his pole.

My brother and I tried to act like we weren't as alike as we are and my sister-in-law assured us that, oh, yes, we were.

II. On Sunday morning, we got up at dark:thirty in order to get to the airport plenty early for their 7:30 AM flight. Since they had booked their travel, I had learned that I would need to go to a memorial service back in Minnesota, so I got a flight at 9. I got them to their gate and went on to mine. I left without incident and they sat and sat and sat, while their bum plane was repaired. They missed their connection in Atlanta and had to spend the night, but not before they called me at a diner in Edina, MN--interrupting my dinner with a friend--to frantically ask me to "get on my iPhone" and look for another flight. No luck.

III. Speaking of dinners with friends, I tried my best to soak in time with a beloved one instead of squandering it by regretting all the time I didn't spend with him when I lived in MN and had the chance. But now I'm here to say that I regret that water under the bridge. B, come visit. Door's always open for you. I live within walking distance of 40 movie screens.

IV. I drove to my old town, and past my house. The kids who bought it (BLESS THEIR HEARTS) have repaired one of the sagging retaining walls and have domesticated it entirely. Lots of hearts and geese and "welcome to our home!" signs and it is so not me and so appropriate for that town. Which may explain why I'm no longer in it. But I'm glad they're happy and I hope that I left good juju there for them.

I think about the stray hairs from my now-dead feline companion that must get sucked up into their vacuum cleaner now and again, silky black ghosts of a sweet soul who loved that house more than I did.

V. The memorial service. Let us be silent and reverent about that. A life well-lived was celebrated and a passing mourned. My shoulder was soaked with tears by someone who feels lost and alone right now. Krumkake was baked in preparation, a box of ashes was picked up at the mortuary and some flowers arranged, a Norwegian flag draped around the vase. Songs were sung and a certain woman from Seattle remembered that music resonating through her vocal chords and face is like a sacred drug, even when the way out is through passages swollen from crying. A throng of old friends was greeted. Family and friends were gathered around a table afterwards to laugh and tell stories and eat and sigh and wonder how the empty space will ever be less gaping, knowing, though, that it will.

I realized that my decision to leave them all and move to Seattle was absolutely the right one.

And yet I still stopped at a Scandinavian import store on the way out of town and bought a Krumkake iron to be sent to me.

My life is like a fugue. The one line ends, the other line picks up, but the first line weaves back in, again and again.

Don, Rest in Peace

When Don and I were in high school a few miles from each other, we both spent many summer weekends at the Buffalo River in the Arkansas Ozarks. It was an ongoing party, and everyone belonged. There was indiscretion and wild abandon and merriment, floating the river during the day and talking by multiple campfires at night.

We joked over the last few years that we had probably encountered each other back then, just by the law of averages and geography.

When we met the first time in person, we were convinced of it, though. Either that or we had been separated at birth, one of us snatched from the nursery in a hospital in Van Buren County, to be separated from the other for 45 years--never mind the couple of years in difference in age. So clear was our recognition of each other. So intense was the feeling of seeing kin in each other.

We used to end phone calls with "you're my people." I told this to his sister yesterday and she started crying and said "me and him, we're just alike. I tell that to everybody I love."

He used to comment on my blogs with "it's time for you to come home."

He knew I was a restless soul and loved crashing around in the world. But he knew, and mirrored back to me in every conversation, that I was a girl from the Ozarks before I was ever anything else, and that red dirt and sorghum molasses and sweet tea were running through my veins as surely as blood.

He delighted in pointing out the soft contours of my accent, where the South remained and couldn't be hidden.

He made me promise never to dumb myself down. God, D, no one can get away with finding my vulnerability and saying it out loud. How did you pull that off?

I've been thinking a lot about the various handwringings about how to honor him.

And I think he wouldn't want it.

He was not a fan of the grand gesture.

I think he would want us to love each other, not suffer fools, say the hard word when it needed to be said, and extend the shoulder to cry on when that was called for.

He would want us to own our own issues and work on them with no need for attention.

He would want us to laugh at ridiculous youtube videos and poke fun at excess and putting on of airs.

He would want us to live our lives with integrity and call people and text them and IM them and remind them that someone far away thought they were worth the bandwidth and time.

He would want us to drink ordinary coffee and eat lots of Petit Jean bacon and say "pfffffft" when someone turned up their nose at it.

And shop at Wal-Mart.

And get on with our lives, and give away our love and commitments wantonly.

I am proud that he thought I deserved his friendship. I will miss him terribly.

city. summer.

I. I ate lunch at an outdoor table today, since the only thing better than outdoor dining in Seattle in July is, um, well, lots of things...but it's pretty darned good. Trust me.

At the table next to me was a middle-aged man, attractive in that Dick-Clark-You'll-Take-My-Youth-Elixir-Out-Of-My-Cold-Dead-Hands kind of way. He was wearing a wedding ring and got up every few minutes to take a call from a cell phone. He always came over closer to my table, turning his back on his dining companion, and spoke in hushed tones to someone named "yes, dear"--I presumed his wife.

Remaining at the table was a very young man, Asian, petite, with delicate features, a furrowed brow, and a nervous titter. His English was passable, but clearly not his first language. He was wearing a tennis visor. He looked in the opposite direction when his companion took his calls, with his fork down and his hands in his lap.

Between interruptions, the middle-aged man fawned urgently, apologetically, over the young one. He cut his food for him, cooed, and took little morsels between two fingers and fed them to him, as if to a bird.

When they were finished, the older man stood up and pointed to the hotel entrance next to the patio where we were sitting, and the young man shuffled off, looking for affirmation over his shoulder.

I wanted to hope that this was all a happy scene, but I know it wasn't.

II. After my evening walk to Lake Union, I returned home by way of a little community garden. Everything is a tangle of vines, fragrance, color, and texture right now. Raspberries hang over the fence. Lilies stick out between the pickets.

I cut through the garden on a public path, stopping to admire a particularly lovely blossom, or to squeeze a bit of lavender between my fingers to smell.

Under an overgrown rosemary jungle, I saw a book, open. Holding it was a woman, laid out on a sleeping bag. Next to her were multiple shopping bags, her shoes, several recycled jugs, and some cigarettes.

She lives there.

People like to say "those who live outdoors" instead of "the homeless" here. Supposedly it bestows dignity on the outdoor dwellers. But I think it just bestows a guilt-free pass on the rest of us.

Why, it's just like urban camping, when you put it that way...

III. Next day: I walked downtown for lunch and passed three homeless people sitting in the entrance to a building. They were having a big old time, laughing and sharing a cigarette. I looked over and smiled at them as I strode past, and the woman sitting between the two men leapt to her feet.

"Will you do something for us?"

I confess to ripping through my mental rolodex of excuses for why I was not about to give them money. She held out a disposable camera.

"Will you take a picture of us? We're best friends."

My shoulders relaxed and I smiled again, this time the awkward smile of someone pinballing between relief, guilt, and admiration. I took the plastic camera and the woman ran to crouch down between her two friends. They all slung their arms over each other and put their faces together, mugging for the moment.

"One, two, three, smile!"

I returned the camera, they thanked me, and I walked away, brow furrowed...but of course it wouldn't have made any sense at all for them to have a real camera.

Where would they keep it?

I had cauliflower and thyme soup with goat cheese crostini for lunch.

Eddie, where have you been all my life?

I have to say that I came late to Eddie Izzard. Thanks to my friend Joseph, I finally put together the person I had seen in dramatic roles with Eddie the Comic. As much as I loved the first bits of the the first DVD I saw, I have come to become one of those One Drink Shy of a Stalker sorts of fans. And, I mean, I'm OLD. And have a grown-up job! And a Ph.D.! And...and...and it's unseemly, isn't it?

Still, I adore him. Not just because he's funny and darling, but because he's brilliant and HUMANE and ETHICAL and involved in the world.

In preparation for his show at the Paramount in Seattle, I sat in front of my computer when the pre-sale tickets were about to become available, password in hand. Refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and then SCORE! Front row seats. I knew I would move heaven and earth to get Joseph up here from California to go with me, because I couldn't imagine a more perfect Eddie Accomplice for the evening.

To say we loved it is a ridiculous understatement. To say I now bark orders to my co-workers in fake Latin and mimed coughs (*cough* TIGER *cough*) doesn't quite get it. To say I ask people accusingly where their quilt is when I'm missing something only makes sense to people who saw the show.

But here's the deal: this is a man who, in spite of his fame and cult following, stands for things. He puts his money where his mouth is. He advocates and gives back and pays forward. He comes out of the stage door and talks to people as if they're real, respected fellow citizens.

He wears his various passions on his sleeve unapologetically, and couldn't the world use a hell of a lot more of that? All while nursing aching faces from two hours of sustained laughing and grinning.

One could do worse on a Saturday night.

Vancouver

7/4/08

I. This train is bound for glory...
or at least Vancouver.

It's Thursday, and my window seat gives me a view of the fields. The window on the other side of the aisle, by the seat I want, the one with the Puget Sound, is covered with a curtain.

A whole family has spread itself out, like in a tent, settled in for a nap in the sun. But there is no sun, only grey mist, and my earphones dripping thick sounds of Leonard Cohen into my head.

They have Indian passports and several generations. The grandmother is my seatmate, and her purple silk sari brushes my arm whenever she moves. She burbles and gurgles in a tongue I don't understand, and her daughter is up and down from her own seat to adjust footrests, open packets of food, dispense water, and offer tissues.

When I am old, I will be the Blanche DuBois of train travel...relying on the kindness of strangers to show me how the seat reclines. No daughter will hover over me.

But for now, I am young and free and and moving north, with a train whistle heralding my approach.

II. There are two kinds of travelers. One kind knows things and has seen pictures of things and has read things about their destinations. They are going to strange places in search of the familiar.

The other kind sets out with no itinerary, no plan, no knowledge of the new place. There is a need to be estranged, to start from scratch, to think that a surprise might be around every corner, and on every unknown face.

Sometimes I'm the former. This time I'm the latter.

III. I'm sitting on a low wall at Robson Square, near the Law Courts. Gaggles of attorneys stride by in both directions, pulling rolling briefcases along. It's humid here, and warmer than the forecast had predicted. The men carry their suit jackets over their shoulders on one finger. Sweat is lightly stamped on the backs of their dress shirts, and they don't care. But the women dab constantly at their temples and pull their blouses away from their backs, as they walk fast and look up at the men and never stop smiling.

I wonder what percentage of a Canadian man's Canadian dollar a Canadian woman earns.

IV. I sit in the hotel bar alone at the end of the evening. I have walked and walked and walked, but my head is less fatigued than my body, so I look at the wine menu. I choose a tasting flight of British Columbia reds, and the little glasses are brought to me with olives and smoked almonds. It's a Thursday night, so I'm all alone, except for a couple of businessmen at the bar proper, and the musicians.

The drummer is young, white, and blonde. The guitarist is old, black, and dressed to the nines. He is decked out, from his excellent fedora to his spats, and he knows he looks fine. I'm seated right next to them, and the old man looks at me as he speaks into the microphone: "How are you, young lady?" Oh, candlelight, you lying seductress. I grin at him and tell him I am well--even better, now that I am here and about to hear him play. They do a couple of old jazz standards and forget that I'm there.

I write and sip and think that I might get a fedora before too long...

7/6/08

Rainy Saturdays and big art museums in old buildings are meant for each other. I hit the Vancouver Art Gallery as soon as they opened, because there were two shows I really wanted to see.

I spent the first part of the day on the two floors devoted to "KRAZY!"--a wonderful collection of cartoons, comics, graphic novels, animé, video, and everything in between. It was curated by Art Spiegelman of "MAUS" fame, and it was truly remarkable.

Aside from the fact that I loved it myself, I loved that the spaces were packed with young people who might not otherwise have darkened the doors of a museum...

But the second show was the one I really came for: Zhang Huan's "Altered States"--a retrospective of his work, spanning his first years in China, his move to New York, and then his return to Shanghai.

His most recent work is what caught my fascination. When he returned to China, he started observing people at Buddhist temples. They would signal their devotion by burning incense and then placing the sticks in the sand at the foot of the Buddha. Barrels and barrels of incense ash were produced on a daily basis, and Huan contracted with the temples to haul it away. He now makes large scale sculptures of human forms, using the incense ash.

As he puts it, he is sculpting out of the dreams and wishes of his countrymen, and the sculptures--full of desire and fervent devotion, but soon ashes to ashes--will disintegrate over time.

I sat on a bench and stared and stared. No one else seemed particularly drawn to these sculptures, but I could not take my eyes off of them. They made me cry and smile at the same time.

The train ride home was odd, because I was again swept into an Indian family. The northbound grandmother wore a sari; the southbound grandmother wore a sweater that smelled of mothballs.

Both of them wore brown socks that had the big toe divided from the rest of the sock.

This time I had the Puget Sound window, and beautiful scenery. I saw two bald eagles. I listened to my iPod. I wrote in my little Moleskine cahier.

I came home.

Now I am going to crawl into my very own bed and rest well. I've already got the coffee ground and in the pot for tomorrow. All I have to do is stumble down the stairs, open the door for the Sunday paper, hit "on" and greet the day...

good night, all.

Big Hand

It has to be a really dark night, still, no moon.

It has to be a red dirt country road in the South, no streetlights, no pavement, no cars.

It has to be still, no breeze, and warm and sticky.

It has to be quiet. The only sound can be junebugs and chuck-will's-widows and katydids and locusts and a distant hound. And the nervous titter of little children and the long, crunching strides of grown-up feet on dirt and rocks, with the quicker, irregular pat-pat-pats of the kids.

Way down the road is someone with a broom--the Big Hand--hiding in the brush in the ditch or behind a cedar stand on the side of the road. No one knows where the Big Hand is. No one knows.

And everyone walks, single file, ten feet or so apart, down the road in the dark in the stillness and the quiet, waiting and walking.

The grown-ups have broad smiles on their faces in the darkness, remembering what the kids are feeling right now.

The kids are about to throw up from excitement and fear--but not really, because Daddy is right behind me.

Please don't let the Big Hand get me. Please let me be the one the Big Hand gets.

At some point, unpredictably, the person with the broom LEAPS out into the road, shrieking "BIG HAND!!!!" and runs after whatever shadowy shape is closest. Everyone goes wild, screaming, laughing, running, tripping, hearts pounding out of ribcages, and the ruckus can be heard in every holler for miles.

The first person to get swatted becomes the Big Hand, and the game starts over.

Once we get back to the house, Mamaw gives us water from the well bucket and we all get on our pallets on the floor in the various rooms. She goes from kid to kid with a basin and cloths, washing first our faces and then our feet. We cover up with the sheets and giggle, still juiced up with adrenaline. We hear the muffled conversation and laughter of our parents and aunts and uncles out on the porch and finally, like a drug has taken effect, we bat our eyes more slowly, let go of our cousin's hand under the covers, and drift off to sleep.

It's a good game.

bran muffin

One of my great pleasures in Seattle is strolling through the Pike Place Market early in the morning, just as the vendors are setting up.

No tourists yet, just old Asian women arranging flowers and strapping lads raking ice into place for the fish.

USUALLY.

Today, a gaggle of tottering oldsters, all bedecked with tour company baseball caps, cameras, fanny packs, and brand new Rockport shoes had been disgorged by a bus, and they were shuffling hither and yon. My friends and I were trying to get through the line at Lowell's, so we could order our eggs and find a table by the window. There were any number of container barges and cruise ships and ferries to be monitored as we drank our coffee, and we were eager to get seated and start the stirring, sipping, and reflecting.

But no, the universe had other things in mind. A snarky cashier needed to be brought together with said oldsters, all of whom were hard of hearing. The cashier had a litany, and these congregants had not realized they were slacking in their half of the call and response:

"I want eggs."

"How do you want them?"

"And a bran muffin."

"THE EGGS, how do you want them?"

"And a cup of coffee."

"How do you want the EGGS?"

This was bad enough, but then disaster struck when a blueberry muffin was produced instead of a bran muffin. The wife of the man ordering had already walked off with the muffin, as he was trying to exchange it for a bran. Between the wife not understanding that she had the wrong muffin, the man not understanding that he had to return the blueberry if he wanted to get a bran, and the cashier not understanding that no amount of shouting and tattoo-wielding and piercing-clinking was going to intimidate the old man and his wife into understanding the dilemma, the line had snaked out the door and into the produce stand next door.

S. and I tried to ask the universe "how can we help you give the man his bran muffin so that he will get the !&@! out of the line?" (we really took the zen movie to heart), and eventually the universe caved in and spoke to the cashier: "Look, Chica, forget about the math. Two out, money for one in, it's all good."

All this time, "Disco Inferno" was playing. I thought about inviting the whole assembled congregation to forget about the muffins and join me in a little liturgical dance, but I refrained.

It was an oddly satisfying, if cognitively dissonant, soundtrack to the morning.

Zen. Not.

I. How to Cook Your Life is a lovely documentary about Zen Chef Edward Espe Brown. I watched it with my guest/collaborator over the course of our evenings, as a peaceful reward to our hard work during the days. S. was able to flow effortlessly into the film. She is more focused and obedient than I. When EEB said to the people in the film to breathe deeply, S. breathed deeply, too. When he said to BE the package of cheese you can't get open--to ASK the cheese package how you can help it get open--S. nodded solemnly in affirmation.

By this time, of course, I had hauled my laptop over into my lap and was checking the weather, answering e-mail, reading blogs, and wondering how the Garage Band application works.

II. I had noticed earlier in the day that my tires were dangerously low. Let me quickly gloss over the embarrassing fact that I've never put air in my own tires. Oh, right, I can't gloss over that, damn it, since the fact is central to this story. OK, so sue me, I've never done it. I've always been a religious "every 3 months" oil changer, and the tires were always serviced then, and somehow I've just made it coasting through luck on Good Air Juju. But sure enough, I knew that I had to take the plunge, so S. and I set out to find a gas station.

I'll skip over the 20 minutes of us standing in front of the air machine, reading and re-reading the instructions. I'll delete the section about the panhandlers trying to get money from us. Finally, S. went in and confessed our shame to the assembled masses in the convenience store area, and returned with some guy wearing a solicitous smirk, who showed us how to do it.

It looked so easy. The first one was done, he stood up and handed me the hose, and sauntered (I swear the grin reached all the way around the back of his head) away.

I grasped the hose like I was holding on to the head of a deadly snake and went to my knees.

I took the cap off the, uh, air thingie, and promptly dropped it into the wheel well (or so I thought). I scrambled and patted the concrete, reamed out the inside of the wheel well with my blind, fumbling hand, and S. said the thought she saw something on the ground.

I'll skip the part about S. crawling under the car, looking for the cap and getting stuck in bubblegum, and me shouting to the tire "TELL ME HOW I CAN HELP YOU FILL YOURSELF, YOU @!$#!! TIRE!!!"

By this time, we were both weeping with laughter, and had pretty much tied the entire car up in a huge bow made of the air hose. But the tires are all plumped out at roughly 30...um, some measurement.

III. I don't see myself joining a Zen monastery anytime soon. I'm pretty sure I would be kicked out in the first 10 minutes.

Compline

However befuddled I am as they begin, they are just that: a beginning. I should never doubt Mondays. I fidgeted my way through the entire day at work, so I could come home and have no meeting, no plan, no social engagement, no responsibility to be the boss of me.

Work shoes off, walking shoes on, and I was out the door. I meandered up and down the streets of my new neighborhood, discovering things I've never seen while in my car. A tiny park with a group of people playing, of all things, kickball.

Oooh, Danny Dixon, wherever you are, you are still frozen in my mind as the hottest sixth-grader ever. The sound that reddish ball makes when it's kicked, hard, across the field brings you right into sweet focus in my mind's eye. My now transported pre-pubescent heart flutters at your memory...but my grown-up heart re-boots and suspects you're lying on a couch in a wife-beater, somewhere in rural Arkansas, drinking a Pabst right about now.

Down at Lake Union, I step between goose turds and pigeons hoping for a bit of bread from the boys eating hot dogs gotten from who knows where. The sun is behind clouds and there's a hole in the wooden boat moored at the landing.

I head back up the hill and step into a taco stand for dinner. There are 6 people in there and we are each alone. We are divided evenly between those of us staring straight into our food and those of us with eyes darting from person to person, looking at the space above each person's head, conscious of how we display our chewing, our swallowing.

I e-mail an iPhone picture and drop a glop of guacamole onto my pant leg.

I don't care.

It's the end of the day and one needn't worry about messes. 7:35 PM and I am blessedly unfettered.

I might just take a bath.

With bubbles.

Now begins The Great Silence.

SIFF and meat loaf

Soooo...

I leave my office at noon, since the showers have blown through and the sun is coming out. I need to pick up my tickets for the Seattle International Film Festival downtown, and think this will a) take care of an errand; b) give me a reason for a noontime walk.

Two blocks away, and I remember that I have left the confirmation sheets lying in my printer, so I dash back home, race upstairs, grab the documents, and am off again.

By the time I screech into the SIFF booth at Pacific Place, I'm deep into my lunch hour, and am starting to realize how silly it is to try to pack all of this into 60 minutes. But I figure "breathless, and wearing sunglasses" is a good persona for someone buying SIFF tickets, no?

The boi working the desk is quite ultra-deluxe, in that all dressed in black, tragically hip kind of way, but he's got nothing on me. I'm wearing black and charcoal. Ha.

I saunter up, grin, lean forward, and triumphantly (but not TOO triumphantly, because that would be so NOT cool) slap my sheets of paper down in front of him.

He's all business and grabs the sheets up, scanning the sheets for meaning.

Can he not find the confirmation code?
Has the printer garbled something up?
Did it spit out blank paper?

None of the above.

He looks up at me with the blank stare of someone being addressed in a completely foreign tongue.

What I have handed him is an unsolicited but dutifully printed out e-mail from my mother, giving step-by-step instructions for how to prepare her MEAT LOAF.

CLUNK.

That is the sound of my pride hitting the concrete floor.

linen

I wore linen for the first time this season.

I retrieved it from the back of the closet last night and washed it, just so I could hang it up to dry and be all fragrant and fresh when I pulled it over my head this morning.

I opened the window in my office this morning so the breeze could ripple the fabric and my bangs.

I smiled a lot.

I looked down at my painted toes in my sandals and wiggled them. The polish is a bit chipped. My socks didn't care this winter, but the sun pays attention to these things.

one (wo)man's trash is another (wo)man's treasure

This is part travelblogue, part journal, part connection to far-flung friends, part tap-tap-tapping of fingers on touchstone keys.

I'm drunk on lack of sleep and overstimulation--too woozy to offer up anything coherent, too wired to let it go and slip under the covers.

I've been to the other side of the country and back, I helped a friend say goodbye to her mother, I kissed men in subways and women on the street next to steam pipes. I broke bread with people I see too infrequently. I learned to drink single-malt scotch. I took iPhone pictures and fired them, little moments in time, deployed across space to the other coast and into a friend's eyes. Sometimes the images were refracted back to me through his wry comments.

I took in all manner of art and believed that it's the only thing that will save us in the end. I told this to people standing next to me and they agreed.

I saw a dress made of discarded teabags. It was part of a rite of passage. I was humbled to stand next to it and its creator.

I thought it high time to start singing again. I wonder if I will.

I was greeted like a soldier returning from war at my favorite restaurant, even though I was there last week…I realized that I was a "regular" someplace. Me of the restless soul.

I relinquished my competence and control and softened into a willingness to be pampered. A good night's sleep and I'll be back to my usual armored self, but with a chink.

I made someone shush and listen to geeky choral music. He didn't mind.

I taught a friend a word I love that doesn't exist in English.

It's "Lebenskünstler" and it means an artist whose medium is life itself.

I think my life of dabbling in every experience I could wrestle to the ground has always been an attempt to be one of those. Singing and taking pictures and painting and weaving and throwing pots and acting and writing have all just been a foil, a legitimation of my gluttonous desire to do, see, hear, taste, feel, and know everything in my range.

I unpacked my bag, washed its contents, and folded it all right back into the bag.

The car picks me up at 0530 tomorrow, and off I go again.

yin-yang

+ I love my iPhone and the ability to take reasonably decent pictures and send them to my friends on the spot. This one is so green and pink and red and fresh and lush and spring. I know spring isn't an adjective. Sue me. ; )

- I hate living in a condo I love, only to have the owner try to sell it out from under me. From his perspective, I've been paying his mortgage while he speculates and invests. Now that he has a little cash flow issue, on the market it goes. "Can we go month to month when your lease expires at the end of this month?" he asks. "Sure we can" I answer. After two weeks of disrupting showings, I have given notice and paid a deposit on a new loft. He's horrified! He has cash flow issues! What about the rent I've been paying? Karma, dude. I feel not one speck of guilt. OK, maybe one tiny specklet, but only because I'm a nice person.

+ I love procrastinating about going to the gym, finally going at the last possible moment in the evening, and coming home to feel great AND virtuous.

- I hate suspecting that someone called me yesterday under the guise of wanting to chat, and spent half an hour to get around to what he really wanted: to know if a mutual friend is "available" for a romantic relationship. Just call and ask that. We're not in junior high. Don't waste my time.

+ I love that I am curious.

- I hate that I have a great recipe for taramosalata and a jar of tarama and no one around to appreciate it.

+ I love that I get to go get my hair cut tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I have such short hair so that I can go really often, and I'm equally sure that I'm more interested in the shampoo and head massage ritual than the cut.

- I hate that I don't have any particular flourish of an ending to this blog.

+ I love that my friends won't care and others won't read it in the first place.

who I am

"Rinsk" is a made-up name, given to me by my dad.  Sometimes he embellishes it, and then it's "Rinsky-dinsky"--I don't know where it came from, but he's the only one who calls me that.  It's not his serious name for me, when the conversation involves money or death or pain or disease or war.  It's a "come home soon" name.  A "you are smart and funny and you're my daughter" name.

I am so going to blog about you (or: my 50th birthday)

I am so going to blog about you.

Actually, I'm not.

I'm going to blog about strawberries, and how giant, red, sweet, perfect, succulent ones should be in abundant supply at all times.

And I'm also going to blog about good beds and vacation house kitchens that are well-stocked and porcelain bathtubs in spacious, wood-floored bathrooms.

And people who open up their home with gracious hospitality and an attitude of "well, why wouldn't we?"--even though they had never met me.

And old, weathered men who burst with excitement to show me the nesting peregrines with a spotting scope and go on and on about "breathing" season.

And seagulls that let me walk right up to them.

And friends who make long drives, bearing healing balm and laughter.

And other friends who take off work early to buy me dinner and presents and make me wish I lived closer.

And old movie houses with seats that are beaten down by decades of use.

And tractor pulls and purple flowers that are everywhere but no one knows what they're called and windchimes and competitive joke-telling and handmade birthday cards.

And having perfect company and a supportive witness as I gingerly stepped from one decade into the next.

And feeling, therefore, so rich.

patronage

I was the first patron of a young artist yesterday.

I had seen a student show and remarked on one of the pieces. I got a call from the studio and was told that the young man was there packing up everything, if I wanted to come down. He had been told that there was someone interested in his work, so he had a heads up.

He was so nervous! He feverishly laid everything out for me, including other things in his portfolio, things he pulled out of binders...I half expected him to empty his pockets onto the table. He talked very earnestly about the series of prints, and put things into the "I'm happy with this" pile or the "this one's not very strong" pile.

I asked him how he was going to price everything and he looked like a deer in the headlights. He asked how much I would pay, and I said he would have to just get right over that. He was going to have to step up and name a price, as awkward as I know that felt to him.

He gulped and said a number. I said I would take #4 of the series. He grinned and looked over at his instructor and SHE grinned. I took his e-mail address and asked him to set the piece aside for me.

As I left, I heard the unmistakable sound of a "high five" being exchanged, and before the door closed behind me, he was babbling and giggling like mad.

It almost doesn't even matter if I get the piece now, although it's intended as a gift. Watching that kid go from "one day I want to be an artist" to "I'm an artist and I just sold my first piece" in the course of a half hour was worth what I paid and more.

Easter weekend '08

Friday afternoon, 6 PM, work is done for the week and it's still light out. It's that long shadow kind of day, and I walk in and out of patches of sunlight where they fall between downtown buildings. It's a familiar straight shot to the water from my place, up and down hills, and I take it fast...long strides distancing me from the stress of the last few days. When I crest 2nd Avenue, I get my first glimpse of Elliott Bay, and I grin every single time. This is the perfect end to the week, and it's become a (good weather) ritual: down to the water, snapping iPhone photos as I go, along the market, back up Pike Street, the dive-y Vietnamese noodle shop, and home.

There's a blind man with a guitar in front of the piroshky shop, singing "you are all I need…I lay all of me at your feet." At his feet is an empty coffee can that plinks when coins hit it. At the next corner is a blind man sitting cross-legged with a blind dog. And walking along Pike, a blind man with his stick in front of him and a group of ne'er-do-well hecklers following along behind. I feel guilty for my sight, and for wanting to photograph all of them, for reasons that are unclear to me.

Crossing 3rd is an old woman dressed in white from head to toe, carrying a 24-pack of white toilet paper.

Saturday is a blur of tax documents, photocopying, organizing, and cursing.

Today brings a 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia at the Cinerama, which will clock in at closer to four hours than three…I'm thinking aisle seat…followed by tapas and the theater with friends.

I can find no parallel to resurrection in my weekend. I have risen, indeed, but only from my bed on an Easter morning in March in Seattle.

waste not, want not

My great-grandmother fried two chickens every Sunday. She parceled out all the pieces to everyone around the big oblong table, and took the fried chicken backs for herself. She claimed they were her favorite. She had hair down past her hips, and every night she removed the hairpins, unloosed the bun, and brushed her hair. She then pulled the hair out of the hairbrush and put it in a bag. When the bag was full, she stuffed the hair into homemade pincushions that she fashioned out of fabric scraps and sewed them up.

She made all my childhood clothes.

Spring has sprung for the time being in Seattle. It may rain tomorrow or the next day, so I walked and walked and walked in the sunshine today. I was greedy and demanding as I pulled down the rays to my upturned face, and I took no notice of whether or not I was getting more than my fair share.

I don't feel the least bit guilty.

just melting sand

I spent yesterday watching glassblowers in a timbered shelter in the middle of old growth forest north of Seattle.

Every turn from I-5 got progressively more remote. The trees got taller and thicker, the lichens greener and hardier. Small signs warned “no visitors”, but we had an invitation (would I have been less excited if everyone could wander in? I fear I would have been…). We were a bit early, so we parked the car and stood in silence near the pond.

Silence is not golden, it’s green and lush and slick with the remnants of a rain shower.

At the appointed time, we walked in single file up the path to the hot-glass shop, where 2 teams of artists were working. It was cold out, so the closer we got to the kilns, the more delicious it felt. We didn’t want to be in the way (or maybe it felt too sacred up close…like walking right up to an altar or standing on a grave), so we stood back a bit, where cold outside air and hot fire air played tug of war. The whole space glowed orange, and all the artists’ faces seemed to beam. Maybe it was just the sweat, but surely giving birth to such incredible shapes helped. Globs of molten glass were pulled out of the oven on poles, cajoled and prodded into swirls and orbs with torches and metal paddles. How utterly improbable.

I was transfixed.

I want to do that.

I want to throw my coat off, reach toward the fire, birth beauty, and sweat and beam.

One artist looked up at me and knew me. “It’s your first time.” He grinned at my speechlessness.

“We’re just melting some sand, baby. Just melting sand.”

grown up and cool

One of the things I love about living downtown is that I can leave work, shake the dust of the office off my shoes, and then head into the traffic and lights and humanity at "Feierabend"--a not very translatable German word that is both the end of the work day and the greeting you give to people to acknowledge that transition from professional to personal.

This evening I walked down to the Pike Place Market and bought a loaf of 8-grain bread at a bakery. The guy was horrified that he didn't have the 12-grain that I wanted, and he gave me his card and told me to call ahead and that he would hold a loaf for me next time...and then he gave me the 8-grain for half price.

A homeless woman shouted out to me "I love your earrings!!! It's the first thing I noticed when you walked by! Those are GREAT!" And she grinned a big, lopsided grin and ducked, waving, into an alleyway.

Another woman fell out of her wheelchair and hit her head on the street at the corner of 6th and Pine and 15 people swooped down to tend to her, while another 5 directed traffic away from and her and 10 more called 911 on their cellphones. I was useless, except to hold her hand and talk to her. She said she was afraid, and to please keep talking to her until help came. Once the firetruck with the first responders arrived, about the same time as the woman's son got there, everyone dispersed silently. We'll never see each other again, so we can't test the bond that formed in a second around the woman on the ground.

I stopped in a little risotteria and had a glass of barbera and a plate of tomato-y rice by candlelight, all by myself. I felt more grown up than alone. The waiter talked to me as if he found it more cool than pathetic to serve a single woman with a loaf of bread and cheeks flushed from a walk and a streetside drama, surreptitiously taking iPhone pictures at passersby on the other side of the window.

Dean Martin crooned.

It was good.

living the questions

What a gorgeous morning. What began as a series of curses, a smashing of the alarm clock with a hammer, a stumbling into clothes and to the gym--I forgot it was a holiday and made an appointment with my trainer for dark:thirty, stupidstupidstupid, but ah, well, now it's done--has turned into a bright expanse of day ahead of me.

I may take a leisurely bath with salts and unguents instead of a utilitarian shower.

I may walk down to the Sculpture Park and turn my face toward the sun instead of ticking off a life maintenance errand from my list.

And I may ponder questions instead of tilting at the windmills of my life, my career, my relationships, my age, money, unrequited loves, unredeemed dreams...there's time enough for that tomorrow and tomorrow.

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

In Praise of the Humble Saltine

I don't quite remember when it happened. First there were Ritz crackers, then Wheat Thins and Triscuit. Then "water biscuits" and pita chips and lavosh and rosemary-scented crispbreads of every stripe.

But somewhere along the line, the humble saltine cracker was tossed aside as old school, as passé, as soooo last century.

The saltine was the go-to snack of childhood camping trips and interminable car rides to visit relatives in the southern part of the state. The package held up well, and served as deferential companion to cans of Armour potted meat, vienna sausages, and sardines, along with a little bottle of Louisiana hot sauce: a long, rectangular, waxed paper bridesmaid.

My dad would pull the Rambler over to a roadside picnic table, and we would all peel our sweaty skin from the car seats and race over to get spots on the end. My brother was terribly fair-skinned, so my mom would secure a cloth diaper around his little shoulders with a diaper pin to prevent "blistering"--it was never just a sunburn, always the apocalyptic-sounding blistering.

The saltine tin came out, then the cans (the potted meat can was wrapped in white paper), the bottle of hot sauce, and then--finally--the metal ice chest with bottles of Nehi grape soda and Big Red. If we were lucky, there would be a bag of orange slices or marshmallow circus peanuts to round out the repast.

My stomach churns to think about most of those things today. It's a wonder we survived.

But saltines, I feel, got a bad rap. Tossed aside for no reason other than fashion, they did yeoman's work for years and years as vehicle for peanut butter and pimiento cheese, as binder for salmon croquettes, and as the lunchtime accompaniment to chili or tomato soup (the night time upgrade was cornbread for chili and grilled cheese for the soup).

I, too, passed them by for more glamorous starch, until I got sick in December. I was eating lots of soup, and, well, being sick just calls for comfort any way you can get it. No mom here, no grandmother to dab at my fevered brow, no dad with a brand new coloring book and crayons from Woolworth's...

...so I reprised the saltine, out of sheer nostalgia and desire for something that hearkened back to home.

And now, by God, I'm leaving Oz and its fancy crispbread, and returning, unapologetically, to the saltines of my youth.

There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

chosen families

Since I was flying out of Arkansas at dark:thirty on Sunday morning, I decided to spend the night with my friends J and J, who live in Little Rock, as opposed to on a dirt road an hour and a half north.

After a too-short visit and too much wine, I crawled into "my" bed, which is always made up for me as if I am the Queen of Sheba, and forced myself into a few hours of fitful sleep before 0500 reveille. They got up with me and made me cappuccino while I showered, stood in their robes on the porch in the dark, and waved and blew kisses as I drove away. What sweet boys.

Uneventful flights to NYC.

First revelation on the ground: the iPhone's sensitive "touch" pad is way too sensitive for keyboarding in a speeding and lurching New York yellow cab. My "I landed safely" e-mail to my parents and J and J ended up being something like "A banjo ate me." Imagine their horror. I'm sure my mother believed that her worst fears about NYC had been confirmed.

I raced to meet Tara for a late brunch. We picked up right where we left off (only I come to lament that we live on opposite coasts more and more, each time we hang out). This time we had a lively conversation about things that are usually shared in privacy. The fact that conversation pretty much stopped between the two guys to my left tells me that we had an audience, who got an earful. They also got to witness two grown women fall on a basket of gougeres with passionate abandon.

Because we were so focused on our conversation, we didn't notice at first that everyone in our area had left, the waitstaff had removed all the tables but ours, and the water had been withheld for hours. Passive-aggressive bastards. By the time we looked up, we resembled a table for two in the middle of a vast, empty dance floor.

We relocated to a Korean Tea House, where T had good tea and I had something that smelled and tasted like squash baby food. But the Asian plinky-plinky (T's term) musical rendition of "Hey, Jude" wafting through the air made us giggly, and we continued on until dusk and "look at the time"--since we both had other plans for the evening.

I can't say too much about the transcendent meal I had at Bouley that evening, because it would be sinful to lord it over the blogosphere. It.Was.To.Die.For. I got back to the hotel 5 minutes before the end of the Super Bowl, just in time to figure out that all the subsequent hullabaloo outside was happy cheering and not Cloverfield screaming.

Meeting the next day. Blahblah.

Got to Newark for my 6:45 PM flight at 4:30. That would have been fine, except for the fact that my flight didn't actually leave until 9:45. The plane had been a victim of a bird strike, which meant lots of cleaning, checking, and maintenance men coming out with tales of carnage afterwards. The pilot warned us not to be alarmed if we smelled a Thanksgiving turkey sort of odor as he fired up the engines. TMI. Let us live in ignorant bliss, please.

After 6 hours of flying (and sleeping a bit, thanks to the Not Full Flight Gods, the incantation of a helpful friend, and a row to myself), I got home. Thankful to have spent time with my family, both blood and chosen, thankful to have friends in all corners of the world, and thankful to have a wonderful Tempur-pedic mattress to come home to.

I'm not particularly thankful that the Giants won the Super Bowl. I had about as much investment in that game as in, um, some other thing in which I have little investment.

This is so (not) about me.

My aunt will die within the next few hours.

I started a webpage for our family on a non-profit site that allows loved ones to communicate with each other, sign a guestbook, leave loving, thoughtful, supportive words to each other as we all wait these last days.

I did this freely.

I adore my family. At our core, we are very similar and share the same values. But I express mine very differently.

The guestbook is already filled with deeply felt sentiments that have the common thread of the Lord's loving arms, making the final journey to a heavenly home, trusting in the comfort of Jesus.

This is so not about me.

This is about a faith life that my aunt has led and that has been shared by her family and friends--all reflected in these comments.

This is so not about me.

I want to write in the guestbook in big bold letters that this is sad and she is dying and we should all be wailing and there is no heavenly home and this is sad and she is dying and going away and she has suffered and she will have rest and we will miss her and this is sad this is sad this is sad.

I am sad and I don't feel embraced at all by the Lord right now.

This is so not about me.
This is about the life she has led and how she and her family choose to understand this part of her journey.

I want to be selfless.

I want to be gracious.

I want to understand grace.

Lamp

My dad and one of his younger brothers, 77 and 75, have spent the last few years trying to piece together the family history. Working off the margin scribblings and tucked in scraps of notes in the family Bible, they've chased a number of metaphorical rabbits down holes, over hills, through hollers, and back again.

Many dead ends.

My great-great grandmother and great-great grandfather, it seems, were married in the home of her parents in Lamp, Arkansas. Trouble is, Lamp no longer exists.

But they got lucky last week, when a distant cousin sent them a collection of old, old maps of the region. And there was Lamp, about 5 miles from our property and on the other side of the churchyard where all the family is buried.

My dad and his brother got up early this morning, loaded up two metal thermoses of coffee and some leftover biscuit and sausage sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, called all the dogs--who leapt into the bed of the truck, howling and dancing--and took off in search of the town that no longer is.

They pulled the truck over onto the shoulder about where they thought the center of town would have been, and lowered the gate on the back of the truck. They spread out the maps on the truck bed and weighted the corners with stones.

There they sat, drinking their coffee, eating their snack, and talking about the kinds of things that brothers can say with few words. The dogs sniffed around in the field next to the truck, and after a while, another truck pulled up behind them. After all, why would two old men choose to have an early-morning picnic in the dead of winter on the side of the road in the foothills of the Ozarks? Were they OK?

Turns out, the couple in the truck knew all about Lamp, since their family had lived on this road for generations. There had been a school, a store, and even a post office at one time, see? right here on this spot on the map...and they knew our family name.

After an exchange of phone numbers, the couple left and Dad and my uncle folded up the maps, gathered up the dogs, and took off, too.

Dad was so excited when he recounted this to me on the phone just now. A ride in an old truck, some simple food, the steam off a metal cup, a beloved brother, a wide place in the road where a part of his life still pulsed, and some new friends...

May I have such Saturday mornings when I'm 77.

Ladies Who Lunch

Tomato Roma Soup with a parmesan toast at the Seattle downtown Nordstrom café is the coda to my monthly Saturday haircut. My appointment ends around lunchtime, and I stroll over to the store, wander about through various departments trying to avoid the shoes--I failed today, and have a new pair and a dinged up budget--avail myself of the Women's Lounge, and then round out the ritual with soup.

I love it. It's a perfect match for my knockabout clothes and battered Saucony shoes and no make-up, topped with a killer new coiffure. Soup drives right down the middle between comfy and coiffed.

This particular café features a long leatherette banquette with six two-top tables in the middle of the room. It's a high traffic area, and the only people ever seated there are solo women, who always sit on the banquette side, with their shopping bags serving as mute companions on the facing chairs.

I've never seen a man in this area. It's the Ladies Who Lunch section, period, and the types are the same. There's often one elderly woman who has a paperback book, reading glasses, and wears her knitted cap throughout lunch. This type orders a sandwich and a large cookie with black coffee, and she packs up half of each to take home.

There's the Overdone Type. She will have too much make-up on, have too big hair, too much jewelry, too ostentatious clothes, too much food, and be too demanding of the waitstaff.

My favorite is the Proper Lady type. She's in her 80s, and lives alone, since her husband died many years ago. She still keeps house, still goes to church on Sunday morning with her offering envelope filled out in spidery script, and comes to Nordstrom on Saturday with her pocketbook, her outmoded but well-maintained skirt suit, her pearls, her pumps and nylons, and her handkerchief.

She has a salad, tea, and a fruit tartlet, and she savors every bite. She is the one who engages me in conversation and murmurs "oh, my!" as I answer each of her questions, as if I'm the most interesting and exotic person she has ever encountered in her long life.

I was seated next to a Proper Lady today. She had never seen an iPhone and was completely puzzled and fascinated that I would photograph my soup and then send the picture to a friend.

I liked her. Of the three types, she's the one I want to be when I grow up, although I have nothing in common with her. I don't have a husband, so I can't be a widow. I don't tithe, so my spidery script will have to fill out something besides an offering envelope. And God knows I would sooner stand on my head and spit nickels than willingly don nylons.

But she was curious. She was out in the world, she was her version of All Dolled Up, she was looking around, she was registering and observing, and she was brazen enough to chat up a perfect stranger.

Well done.

She's my hero today.

the smell of Prell

I'm making a gift for my aunt, and spent part of the afternoon at an art supply store. I adore art supply stores, and have to restrain myself from stocking up on random things that catch my fancy. Like today: origami paper in all manner of styles. I've never made origami, but if I did, I would want to make that dinosaur they discovered recently, skin and organs intact, and send it to a friend.

But I digress: this particular store didn't carry fabrics or threads, and part of this project calls for linen and gold embroidery thread. So after I got my foam core cut to size and had flirted with the foam core cutting boy for a while, I went in search of a fabric store.

This served three purposes, besides the procuring of my supplies: 1) I got to use my iPhone to search "fabric" in Seattle, locate a place, and get driving directions to the place--all while engaging in public iPhone gloating; 2) I got to cruise all over Seattle, tunes a-blaring, and into Ballard on a sunny Saturday to find it; 3) I re-lived part of my childhood.

My great-grandmother made all my clothes when I was a child. All of them. From pajamas to winter coats, and everything in between. And for each outfit she made me, she made a miniature matching one for my Barbie (one of my great regrets in life is that I traded all those Barbie clothes for some Monkees albums--at the time, it seemed like a good deal).

Most Saturdays, I went with her (my great-grandmother, not Barbie), my grandmother, and my mother to the Hancock Fabric Store in downtown Little Rock. We perused the Simplicity and Butterick patterns, bought remnants for dirt cheap, loaded up on clearance cards of buttons.

I'm struck by how little the stores have changed. I opened the door and was carried away by the scent of sizing; the thump-thump-thump of the flat fabric spools being turned over on the cutting table; the garish fluorescent light; the little girls begging their mothers to please let them have store-bought clothes instead...

But these little girls don't get to go afterwards to the lunch counter at Walgreen's on Center Street and have a patty melt, and they don't get to go to Nanny's sewing room in the back of the house and sit in the recliner next to the grocery sacks of scraps and the snuff can and chat and chat and chat to the rhythm of the Singer treadle machine. They don't get to lie stretched out on the kitchen counter while Nanny washes their long hair in the summertime with that green, bejeweled Prell shampoo in the glass bottle shaped like a lady's figure.

There's no good way to end this blog post. The Prell leads to the warmth of the porcelained iron tub after a bath, and that to the omnipresent bowl of stewed apricots in the icebox with a plate on top, because who wasted aluminum foil in those days?

And the attic fan and the Carol Burnett show and Nanny's high-pitched giggle.

And so many other things that don't represent a flourish of an ending in a next-century blog.

So many other things.

Minnesota Hot

I ordered Thai delivery last night.

As I was on the phone placing my order, I was asked the question "how hot?" and I replied "medium."

Now in Minnesota, where I lived until a few months ago, that would have gotten me a dish that had a little bit of kick. For my native MN friends, however, "medium" would have required a trip to the emergency room for a tastebud transplant and emergency hose-down.

Ah, but I live in SEATTLE now. There are actually tons of real live Thai people here, and so the audience is quite different.

"Medium" involved a capsaicin nasal lavage.
"Medium" meant melted ear wax.
"Medium" caused weeping and sweating and steam rising off my head in clouds.
"Medium" meant I actually drank a glass of milk. Eeeew.

I should have remembered the knowing question asked of me in my favorite Thai restaurant in St. Paul years ago.

"How hot?"
My reply: "Pretty hot."

pause...

"Hot hot or Minnesota Hot?"

Just so we're clear, Minnesota hot is about equal to a year-old diner shaker of black pepper, sparingly applied.

Anyway, I survived the larb gai last night, and made it through, ahem, this morning unscathed.

What I want to know, though, is what on earth "extra spicy" means to a Thai person.

Travelblogue, Thanksgiving edition

Here I sit, having just taken a sick day--my first ever at my new job--because I was finally beset with a bug. I just counted it up and, since I moved here in June, I've been in eight airports full of people and on twenty different packed airplanes.

The law of averages...

It was bound to happen.

This trip featured the usual long waits at security; the customary seat mate--either too loud, too familiar, or too unsavory; the expected delays due to something mechanical or climatic.

Even some interesting things to see on the tarmac: for example, have you ever noticed that de-icers look kind of like giant scorpions ready to strike? Did I mention I was sick and feverish?

So no surprises so far. What DID take me back a bit on this last flight, though, was the fact that the row in front of me was occupied by a mother, her two daughters, and a pet carrier containing a puppy. Oh, a PUPPY!!! How sweeeeeeeet!!! Yes?

No.

The poor puppy, upon take-off, started to cry. I could have handled that, even though it made me sad, and I wanted to fix it (you know, the crying problem, not FIX it--the puppy--a la Bob Barker).

Turns out the little pup was crying not from fear, but from, well, gastrointestinal distress. Which manifested itself through repeated and pungent diarrhetic episodes. Which were met by horror and crying and a cycle of "you deal with it, no you, no you" admonitions from the mom and the two daughters.

We finally reached cruising altitude and the mother took the carrier to one of the lavatories and was gone a VERY long time. When she returned, I craned my neck to locate the puppy in the carrier, because, well, you know, she was gone a LONG time, and you just never know with some people. I didn't want to learn later that some oblivious bystander on a street corner in Fargo had been, um, torpedoed by a diarrhetic airborne puppy.

But the puppy was fine, and settled down for the rest of the flight.

My own feverish state allowed me to break through my normal inability to sleep while upright, so that and iTunes sent me to my happy place. Or at least to my unconscious place.

Now I'm home, and I've thoroughly enjoyed my day off. I was too puny to go in; not too puny to do some household organizing, make some soup, catch up on some phone calls, and read a bit in front of the fireplace. All while in my flannel jammies!

Oh, and the trip itself? I visited some friends, which was lovely, but mostly I hung out with my bestest friend from home and his elderly mother. So it was turkey, putting up the Christmas tree, and singing along at the top of my lungs to LOTS of Eddy Arnold and Patsy Cline. Partly because my elderly friend can't hear. Partly because I didn't want to have the conversation about why I didn't stay put in Minnesota. And partly because I dig Patsy.

Lucky for me I've got range.

Hi. I'm Jenifer and I'm a Penaholic.

It's true.

I covet pens.

I even have people score particularly desirable ones--those with .038mm tips--in foreign countries to satisfy my habit (thanks, JOY!).

I have them everywhere, and the vessels that hold them are always jammed full. They stick out of the jars at odd angles, unruly, like Dennis the Menace's head of hair.

And there's a secondary addiction, as well (please don't judge me), Clairefontaine notebooks and Moleskine tiny cahiers. It's not just that the former is sleek paper, or that the cahiers fit perfectly into my little purse, allowing me to capture random blog fodder at a moment's notice...

but they take the .038mm ink so nicely. They're grilled cheese and tomato soup, convertible and Pacific Coast Highway, fireplace and bearskin rug, Sunday night and Simpsons.

A great pen and an Office Depot yellow legal pad?

You might as well ask me to wear opera length gloves to a NASCAR event.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Home again, home again.

I. I got to the San Antonio airport with plenty of time to spare, which jinxed the entire journey. OF COURSE there would be a maintenance issue on our plane, getting us into Minneapolis late. I arrived on the D concourse at 9:20 PM and was scheduled to depart from F14 at 9:36. So I leapt out of the jetway and hailed one of those carts, screaming "F14!!!!" Saleem felt the adrenaline and cracked the whip. We raced through the terminal (people, MUST you walk in the very middle???), and it was just like a scene from Ben Hur. Granted, Saleem wasn't a Roman, and he wasn't standing up in the front of the chariot, but otherwise it was just like that. I got to the gate just as they were closing the door. Thanks, Charlton, er, Saleem.

II. How far away do you have to get from cheese to still be considered cheese?

Since I barely made the connection in Minneapolis, where I had planned to have some dinner, I resorted to the NWA "snack box" to hold body and soul together on the Minneapolis-Seattle flight.

First of all, raisins are overrated. I'd just like to put that out there and move on to the protein in my box.

The label said "Pasteurized Process Cheese Food, Gouda-Style Flavor"--which, to me, falls into the category of protesting too much. I mean, really, if you have to CLAIM you are food, you probably aren't. By the way, the first ingredient was cheddar cheese. Not gouda.

III. I wasn't fondled on this flight, but my seatmate, who was about 6'4" or so, reported that he might snore. He'd been hunting, after all. Really? Does hunting lead to snoring?

He then said that if I were taller, he would lean against me to sleep. Really? Is that the only thing stopping you? How about the fact that I'm a total stranger who is glaring sternly over the tops of her bookish glasses at you???

IV. I get to do this again on Thursday. Oh, joy.

San Antonio

I. The towncar service is always punctual, and is cheaper than parking my car at the airport. And still, I always feel just a TEENSY bit Leona Helmsley when I walk to it and am greeted formally...

Today's driver was in a bad way. "It's hibernation time, Dr. J...it's the graveyard time of year." What do I say to that? He looks back at me in the rearview mirror, so I know he wants me to respond. "Look at those birds on the powerline, Dr. J. Just sittin' there starin' at us drive by. Wonder what they think of us, messin' every little thing up like we do."

I am almost frantic, trying to move my otherwise sharp and quick tongue into action. But I'm tongue-tied.

Just then, the Christian radio station he's listening to cues up a song he likes. And he starts singing "born again, I'm born again." I don't use that as a way out of the graveyard imagery, but it's tempting...

II. Plane change in Minneapolis. Walking by the pan-Asian restaurant, an old man with a southern accent is ordering General Tso's Chicken and a Thai coffee, paying with dollars, and handing it to the Somali cashier.

III. My seatmate in 4C is Everyman. Courteous, taught to help a lady put her rollaboard in the overhead bin, eager to engage everyone in conversation. A little boy is shuffling down the aisle in front of his mother, and the foot traffic stops as people try to get seated. He turns and looks at my seatmate in that completely guileless way that kids do. "I caught a lizard," he says. "Where did you catch him?"--my seatmate is delighted. "Around the middle." "Son, bless your heart, I'm so proud of you."

I know I'm back below the Mason-Dixon line.

IV. Turns out 4C is also a fan of the "free wine" in First Class (yeah, I fly a lot and get upgraded). A happy drunk, he tells me all about the doors he sells and blesses my heart at every turn, too. He then falls into a medicated, snoring sleep, and has to be awakened by the flight attendant as we approach the airfield. Did I say happy drunk? What I meant to say was AMOROUS drunk. In his journey from sleep to waking, he took a wrong turn at Fondle Street. He was quite sheepish when I spoke sharply at him, and excused himself with "the wife and I tend to start most days with a little romp."

V. There's a crescent moon over San Antonio tonight. My hotel bed is beautiful.

the studio

I work with visual and performing artists.

Yesterday I got to sit in on a final rehearsal for a dance production. It was alternately moving, playful, urgent, languid, powerful, and painful.

It was in the rehearsal studio, intimate, and I was in the thick of it.

I had to pull my legs back repeatedly, so as not to trip someone.
Necklaces of sweat lashed me from more than one dancer.
I smelled heat, shampoo, laundry detergent, determination.
I heard the squeak of bare feet on the floor, the music, the counting, the grunts of effort, the propelling breaths.
I saw focus and grace and I was jealous.

I turned to my colleague, who had choreographed one of the pieces, and whispered to him: "I can barely keep from weeping, this is so beautiful."

I meant it.

Salt Lake City, layover, mid-afternoon musings:

1. Most hairdos that require lots of hairspray in airport bathrooms are hairdos that shouldn't really be lacquered into permanence.

2. Well-behaved babies and toddlers and their reasonable parents are always seated at the opposite end of the plane from me. Their screaming, kicking, whining counterparts (and sorry excuses for parents) are always seated as close to me as possible.

3. Wireless hotspots are an obscene exploitation of consumer gullibility. They're charging me for AIR and I'm paying (and before anyone makes the "upkeep of the servers, etc." argument, if I just ONCE got on without having to call Mr. Boingo--I'm sure it's a man--I might have more sympathy).

4. There are 4 electrical outlets in any given airport. They are always hogged by a pimply-faced adolescent boy with a computer game and a 'tude.

5. ATMs are always from the other bank.

On a good note, the person in 12B didn't show up, and so 12A and I had an expansive time of it, lifting up the armrests and using the middle seat for our shared coffeetable/magazine holder.

And I'm going home, after a good trip, to sleep in my own bed.

: )

Seasons

I grew up where the Mississippi Delta meets the Ozark foothills, where summer was long, hot, still, hazy, and humid.

The first days of autumn always brought a promise of movement and clarity and relief: life began to speed up and the sluggishness of mind and body started to abate.

Autumn is when we loved each other; summer was surly.

By the same token, there was a sense of impending doom after the first few days of springtime: soon the white hot sun would shrivel up those lovely, but ephemeral, blossoms--we knew this. We aimed to s-l-o-w down, talk less, lounge more.

Then I moved to Minnesota, and the game changed. Just as I started to wind up for the relief of autumn, others set their jaws and braced themselves for the first freeze and the one after that, freeze after freeze, endlessly lining up to play Winter. And in the springtime, when everyone else was giddy, my body's rhythm would tell me to throttle back.

Now I'm in Seattle, and I have no embodied sense of what is about to happen. The beginning of autumn is a tabula rasa, and I find it unsettling. Am I supposed to be girding my loins? Throwing caution to the wind? Revving? Idling?

I've bought a hooded raincoat, just in case, and have laid in a supply of coffee.

Robert's Rules

I was facilitating a meeting today at my new job, and someone suggested that we dispense with Robert's Rules of Order. Too formal, they said. All that "move" and "second" and "point of order" and "call the question" stuff.

And I countered with "well, WHICH Robert? Sure, we could use the old standard, but why? Why not come up with rules of order to structure conversation or shut people up based on OTHER Roberts?"

Robert Duvall's Rules of Order: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
Robert DeNiro's Rules of Order: "You talkin' to me???"
Robert Redford's Rules of Order: "Naturally blabby, I guess."



Ummmm, yeah. They didn't buy it. Not only that, there was an awkward silence as they all turned to me, in slow motion, no blinking, just blank puzzlement.

Unravelogue

The movers came, the movers went. They got started 5 hours after their scheduled arrival time.

Casualties: one whole side of an antique glass china cabinet; the top of an antique end table; sections of hardwood floor; sections of hallway into my condo; my nerves.

Things that stunned me: they didn't have boxcutters. Our only tool was the knifelet on my corkscrew. They brought in boxes willy-nilly, and THEN wanted to try to fit furniture in, in spite of my voiced concerns that there was going to be big trouble. Ultimately, they had to take boxes back out into the hallway to get the furniture in. They brought a leather recliner and dining table and chairs in that didn't belong to me, and then seemed mad that I wanted them to take them back out.

I have no idea how to deal with the china cabinet, still filled with glass.

I live in fear of starting to open the boxes marked "fragile."

And I want a big old prize for not indulging in felonious behavior when one of the guys, upon leaving, leaned on a stack of boxes, grinned, and said he was going to come back in a few days so I could play the piano for him.

But at least it's all here, and my king Tempur-pedic is made up and ready to welcome me, after a week of sleeping on a twin air mattress--which I can only liken to trying to relax and sleep on a Pilates stability ball.

So I'm crawling towards the finish line to my new, my real, home.

; )

Travelblogue, Final Day

The morning began early. I had slept well, having rid myself of yesterday's headache and having upgraded to a Snob Level hotel. After a quick shower and cup of coffee, I hit the road.

Montana was lovely, but I must confess my delight when I rounded a bend and a huge sign declaring "Welcome to Idaho" turned out to be the opening act for a series of beautiful postcard-worthy scenes clear to Coeur d'Alene. Unfortunately, road construction (and the winding nature of the roads even at their best) made it hard to capture any postcards of my own.

Once in Washington, I passed through Spokane. Uh-huh. A mall. A hospital. An Applebee's. 100 car dealerships. Done and done.

On the other side of Spokane, however, I started to worry that I had some sort of fatigue-induced dementia. What had been lush, green pine and spruce forests in the mountains turned abruptly into something that looked like a mars-scape. Really, I fully expected that little satellite/robot/ATV thingie (what was its name) to appear over one of the craters on this brown, arid desert. Flat. Did I say flat? It was, except for occasional rock blemishes on its otherwise FLAT complexion. I saw a cow. I have no idea what it was eating. There was nothing but dirt and rocks and some scrubby flora that couldn't possibly have been edible.

Finally, there were some irrigated fields in with the dirt plots, and on the horizon I saw what I thought was smoke billowing from a series of smokestacks. As I got closer, though, I saw that they were not smokestacks at all, but dirt devils. A whole troupe of them, cavorting and whirling on their dusty dancefloor. Stunning.

Sign, but not my favorite: Leaving Apple Maggot Quarantine Area (I didn't know I was in one. And what is an apple maggot?).

Once I approached Ellensburg, the Cascades were ahead of me, and then the adrenaline kicked in. I was only 100ish miles from Seattle, and I was ready to be done. I raced up and down mountain passes, taking a few random shots from my camera held up (I have some lovely studies of my dashboard, the empty water bottle--a few mountains, too).

I didn't even stop to go to the bathroom, which I had needed to do for the last couple of hours. That was a mistake, seeing as how I could NOT get to the entrance to my parking garage from the freeway exit. Oh, I knew how to get there--I was within spitting distance 6 or 7 times. I saw it from a number of angles. But between the construction of the light rail line by my apartment and the relentless NO TURNS and ONE WAY signs, I was granted no mercy by the Arrival Gods.

I finally made it, although I'm convinced it was via Vancouver.

And here I am. Everything is out of my car, and I'm sitting on the floor of my apartment on the 10th floor. My furniture won't arrive for a week, but I bought a corkscrew and a bottle of Ursa wine (a local Baer Winery red that I love), I'm tapping into someone's unsecured wireless network, I've christened my shower (oh, that was transcendent), and my inflatable bed is inflated and ready for me.

I am home.

Favorite sign: City of Seattle

Travelblogue, Day 4

I had an uneventful departure from Sheridan, WY, after a night in a motel room that confirms what I already feared: I am a snob. Well, it's not so much that I'm a snob--which I'll own--as that I don't like paying snob level prices for crappy accommodations. Are you buying it? ; )

The scenery was lovely, very Brokeback Mountain. In fact, I actually saw two cowboy-hatted guys on horses, perched on the ridge of a mountain, with cattle spread out on the hill below them. I had a visual, but I made it go away when I almost ran off the road.

First stop was Bozeman, Montana, where I had a passable lunch in a passable chain restaurant, and drank passable iced tea and copious amounts of water.

Next stop was Butte, where I burst into a Perkins with a bursting bladder and a raging headache. Dehydration? Altitude (I was on the Continental Divide, after all)? Lack of caffeine? To cover all bases, and after visiting the facilities, I drank more water and a cup of coffee. I had a waitress who was MAYBE 20. Heavily made up and world-weary, she asked how the coffee was, HON. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was twice her age and that I should be calling HER "hon" and not vice versa. 20 is too young to trot out the "rode hard and put up wet" schtick, but I figured she was moonlighting at Perkins while trying to break into acting. She was probably just working on a 1940s diner waitress character.

The approach to Butte was fascinating. Huge mountain faces covered with round and oval, smooth, somewhat elongated boulders. They looked like they had just been stuck on the side as decoration: geological gumdrops on the side of a mountain cake. I also got my first whiff of evergreen. Followed quickly by Eau de Skunk.

By this time I was starting to realize that several days on the road were starting to wear on me. Sure, the vistas were beautiful. Of course, it was humbling to see nature's rich pageant. But people, I'm an extrovert! I was starting to talk to my steering wheel, shout laments to deer carcasses as I whizzed past them on the side of the road. This scared me.

I decided to call it a day in Missoula, Montana. I splurged on a somewhat nicer room than last night, where I plan to take a bath in a real bathtub, order up a glass of wine, and look forward to the last day of driving. Tomorrow I should be fresh for the views across Idaho and into Washington, and then...finally...will roll into my new hometown before rush hour.

Favorite sign today: TESTICLE FESTIVAL, outside of Missoula. I missed the dates, because I was so taken aback by the cartoon bull, eyes wide, mouth agape, standing upright and using his two front hooves to protect his naughty bits.

Travelblogue, Day 3

Away, I'm bound away...across the wide Missouri...

It started with the Corn Palace and ended with me leaving my suitcase outside my car in front of my motel room. Happily, the sandwich delivery guy in Sheridan, WY noticed it and brought it in with my sandwich. Even more happily, the populace in Sheridan, WY is honest and let it sit out there for over an hour.

But along the way, it was all about songs. As I rounded a bend in Chamberlain, SD and gasped at the flat landscape now descending into a valley, and beheld what I thought was a lake--but was, in fact, the Missouri River--I broke into Shenandoah. Then, in the Badlands, I saw the buffalo. Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play... And finally, sitting in the Badlands Bar in Wall, SD, in a leatherette booth with a cheeseburger and iced tea, looking up the length of the dark bar and back to the pool tables, all packed with tourists and locals, and considering the image of Jenifer in her solitary booth with her bookish glasses, solemnly squirting bright yellow mustard onto her sesame seed bun, I burst into one of these things is not like the other... OK, well, that one I sang in my head, not wishing to have the Harley guys swagger over for a confrontation.

I can safely say that the Corn Palace and Wall Drug gave me my fix of Americana for the year. Holy moly. Now I know why we're in Iraq, because the number of RVs I saw today alone necessitates all kinds of oil. It was enough to make me want to turn around and head back to the Corn Palace, to beg them to convert that thing into ethanol, and fast.

Beautiful, dramatic thunderstorms as I crossed into Wyoming, and the 7,340 bugs that met their end on my windshield as I crossed the prairie were washed away.

Favorite sign of the day:

SAFE HAVEN SMALL ANIMAL HOSPITAL. HUNTERS WELCOME.

Tomorrow, the BIG mountains.

Travelblogue, Day 2

Up early, greeted the day with a goodbye to friends over breakfast at our local dive--the kind with old men, regulars, who drink coffee and play checkers every morning of the year.

Mid-pancakes, I get the cell phone call I hoped I wouldn't receive THIS time, even though I believed, in my cynical heart of hearts, that I would: the driver slated to pick up my worldly possessions "filled his truck" elsewhere and wouldn't be coming. My moving "consultant" (give me a break) suggested we just leave the packed goods in my house and load them when the next available truck was coming through. I pointed out to him that I had hotel reservations tonight, had someone scheduled to help me with the final cleaning, and was due in Seattle mid-week.

He pointed out to me that the only option would be to bring a local truck, load my stuff, take it back to their warehouse, offload for the weekend, and then re-load when they got a westbound truck. Such a lot of toting and lifting! I pointed out to him that I sort of considered that HIS PROBLEM AND NOT MINE. He started to point out to me that...STOP RIGHT THERE...I pointed out to him that he had best STFU and get moving. OK, I didn't really utter THAT, but let's just say that he knew from the steel edge in my voice to drop the phone and run, not walk, to gather his strapping lads and burn rubber.

[goodbye to my breakfast friends...my 90 year old friend brought the little figurine I gave her to remember me by, and set it on the table during the meal.]

So they came, they loaded. In the meantime, 3 more friends showed up to hold vigil over me and my fury. We were standing around out in the garage, and one guy brought out a bookcase from my study. The one next to the couch, where my cat had slept for many years of his 19-year old life, just ended in January. When the breeze hit the bookcase, the bottom shelf released tufts of his hair. They lifted up, floated in the sunlight, and then drifted away on the breeze. My friends became reverent, silent. I felt all the emotion from the past weeks of packing, of saying goodbye, of deciding to leave, of letting my feline companion go, of my whole life, of the life of all humanity...it all broke open and I sat down on the garage floor and wept. And wept and wept and wept.

After the movers left, my cleaning lady came over and helped me do the final run-through. Wiping out refrigerators, vacuuming, mopping...every pass of the rag an incantation: please let this house sell, please let this house sell soon.

Lunch with more friends. Standing outside the cafe, each one of us saying how we don't do goodbyes. So we didn't. Quick hugs all around, "see you during the holidays"--and we all turned on our heels and dispersed. Quickly.

Back to the house, the final walk-through. My best friend came, finally, to retrieve his vacuum cleaner. No words. Just tears and embraces.

The drive out of Minnesota and into South Dakota was marked by a timely phone call, great billboards, thunderstorms dancing all around me, Prairie Home Companion on the radio, and a bizarre sculpture of a longhorn bull rising up over the prairie.

I'm in Mitchell, SD. Tomorrow morning: the Corn Palace.

I am untethered.

It's OK.

Travelblogue, Day 1

So my house is all packed up.

After weeks of sorting, donating, discarding, procrastinating, sorting, and donating some more, the Professional Movers were to show up this morning bright and early to pack my dishes and such.

Now in the advertisements, these PMs are always crisply attired young women, with ponytails and sunny smiles, bearing pristine sheets of packing paper and tape guns.

What did I get? Cartman and Butthead, in sweat-stained baseball caps.

Highlight: my half-filled garbage bag on the kitchen counter, containing sandwich bits, cherry pits, the contents of the refrigerator crisper, and bacon grease (yes, I'm originally from the South, and we always have a jar of bacon grease in the refrigerator for seasoning greens) disappeared midway through the proceedings. Of course, Butthead packed it. He was incensed when I made him open up boxes to find it, and acted like it was MY fault for not identifying it with the rest of the "do not pack" items. EXCUSE ME? Do I really have to NAME a bag of trash as a "do not pack" item???

Now I'm in my room at the Americinn, where I will shower, then have The Last Supper With My Friends.

Back to the NoLongerMyHome house tomorrow morning to oversee the loading of my worldly possesions, then westward, ho!

She's leaving home. Bye-bye.

I have been in my current profession for 27 years, starting as a teaching assistant in graduate school. I've kept papers, class notes I took, books, and then later scholarly papers, syllabi for classes I taught, more books, files from committee meetings, student grades, student papers that were never picked up, research files...not to mention funny toys and notes and photographs given to me by students over the years.

Today was the day I left denial and went to my office to start clearing out and packing up.

I've procrastinated and procrastinated, because I knew how it would be.

I knew I couldn't toss stuff without looking at it.

I had a stomach-ache all morning and found every conceivable thing to do at home before I finally went to campus. But I went, and it was just as devastatingly tender as I had dreaded.

I barely made a dent in 5 hours, but I just had to leave it for a while. Too intense. I swung wildly from tossing whole drawers without looking, to sitting cross-legged on the floor re-reading a student paper from 1997 in its entirety, and back again.

This is what is known as liminal space. I'm between my old life and my new life, I'm residing in transition. It's raw here, and both exhilarating and terrifying.

So I cling to fixed points in my landscape one second and in the next one I long to get in my car and drive away, leaving absolutely everything behind.

I usually curse the fact that my friends are spread to the four winds, but today I take strange comfort in the knowledge that at least some of "my people" are not fixed geographically in the place I'm leaving.

Miss Eliza Jane Wilder

I just had my every-six-months exercise in humility and vulnerability. That's right, the teeth-cleaning. Maybe it's that I make my living with language, but being struck dumb because a latex-gloved hand and a sonic de-scaler are crammed into my mouth is just about the most powerless I ever feel.

On the upside, there was a re-run of Little House on the Prairie on the overhead TV, and Miss Eliza Jane Wilder, the spinster prairie schoolteacher, was featured in today's episode. And I kept thinking "OK, I'm a spinster prairie teacher, too, but I'm a ROCKSTAR compared to her and plus, I'm leaving and going to the west coast."

My new complimentary toothbrush is blue with a hot pink racing stripe and my complimentary floss is minty.

leaving on that midnight train to Georgia

Well, not really leaving. And not at midnight. And not on a train. And not to Georgia.



GOING. To a new job. A major step in my career trajectory.

IN JUNE. Or as soon as I can manage it in advance of a July 15 start date.

IN MY CAR. Just me. And my iMac. I'll trust everything else to movers.

TO SEATTLE. Be nice to me, people. I'm leaving folks I love behind.




...God, I hope this decision wasn't the result of a midlife crisis. That would suck, especially since it would have just been easier to take up skydiving or get a sports car or a 28-year old boyfriend or something.

; )