bravissimi!

2022-12-31T22:32:00.003-08:00

never ran this hard through the valley

never ate so many stars

I was carrying a dead deer
tied on to my neck and shoulders

deer legs hanging in front of me
heavy on my chest

people are not wanting
to let me in

door in the mountain
let me in

- jean valentine

hello.

in the men's room(s)

2018-09-28T22:04:00.004-07:00

When I was young, I believed in intellectual conversation:
I thought the patterns we wove in stale smoke
floated off to the heaven of ideas.
To be certified worthy of high masculine discourse
like a potato on a grater I would rub on contempt,
suck snubs, wade proudly through the brown stuff on the floor.
They were talking of integrity and existential ennui
while the women ran out for six-packs and had abortions
in the kitchen and fed the children and were auctioned off.

Eventually of course I learned how their eyes perceived me:
when I bore to them cupped in my hands a new poem to nibble,
when I brought my aerial maps of Sartre or Marx,
they said, she is trying to attract our attention,
she is offering up her breasts and thighs.
I walked on eggs, their tremulous equal:
They saw a fish peddler, hawking in the street.

Now I get coarse when the abstract nouns start flashing.
I go out to the kitchen to talk cabbages and habits.
I try hard to remember to watch what people do.
Yes, keep your eyes on the hands, let the voice go buzzing.
Economy is the bone, politics is the flesh,
watch who they beat and who they eat,
watch who they relieve themselves on, watch who they own.
The rest is decoration.

- marge piercy

2015-03-14T22:11:00.001-07:00

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
So single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

-- mary oliver, the fourth sign of the zodiac

2015-02-10T13:44:00.001-08:00

on the phone with my kid sister, who happened to answer when I called the landline at home in maryland. seventeen seems, in abstract, such a dreamy age, no longer a kid but not yet an adult; seventeen makes me think of summer and ponytails and small, delicious secrets. the truth of seventeen is more straightforward and less romantic: kids with acne who find themselves expected to make large choices about their life path only months after they even learned to drive; kids who haven't figured out how to manage their hair or their emotions.

she tells me that she's considering pulling out of the disney trip she's supposed to be taking with the orchestra. I'd have to miss track practices for weeks, she says, and none of my friends are going, and I'll miss all of spring break. but I can't get the money back. how much? I ask. four hundred, she says.

I can't make the decision for you, I say, but let me tell you: my senior year I auditioned, on a lark, for the small spring musical, a stupid ripoff of a chorus line that took place in high school instead of in a dance audition. I unexpectedly landed a role. I was dating a theater guy at the time. spring track season was about to start and I found myself having to choose. we were frustrated at our track coach and, god, I don't even know what the deciding factors were, really, but I chose the musical. I don't remember a single thing about the experience except that the character's name was Dawn and I sang two lines and they sat in a terrible place in my voice (the passagio, but I didn't know that then) so I more or less had to yell them rather than sing them. I missed my final season of running and I know now that it was the wrong decision, that I should have stuck with what I loved. I tell her that sure, she'll lose four hundred bucks, but is that really the deciding factor? or should it be?

we keep talking for awhile, until finally she walks back to find my mom. but before she passes the phone over, she says, with surprising sincerity: thank you for your opinion about spring break. nobody else will really tell me what they think I should do.

it's a glimpse, I think, of a relationship to come. it feels like something close to real sisterhood.

I injured an adductor muscle last monday (a groin muscle, for the layfolk among you) and in response my entire left hip structure has been tensed up and miserable for a week. it seems to have triggered that old physical response that I dealt with for years -- chronic hip pain -- and since I can't remember or don't know how that got better, I'm in an old familiar place. I had forgotten how intrusive it is, how frustrating to be unable to find any position that feels better. sitting makes it worse. standing makes it nominally better but is exhausting and untenable in the long term. so I just nurse it along. my relationship to running right now is manic: there are days where I run seven miles on a whim and other days where the thought of having to go run brings upon a massive sense of dread. I think maybe it's just february. everybody hates february.

edited to add: I just remembered. homeroom. the name of the stupid high school musical was homeroom. utterly forgettable in every way. I don't suggest looking it up.

day 404

2015-02-08T21:39:00.002-08:00

"A friend of mine from Santa Fe went to visit Roshi when she was up in Minnesota.

She said to him, "I'd like to study Zen."

He said, "It's no big deal. Here's a book." He lifted a book off his desk. "You can either fling it down or place it down, like this." He demonstrated placing it down. My friend said the way he placed it, the book became a real being.

"That's all," he said, and smiled.

The tricky thing about Roshi was, the things that were extraordinary about him, you couldn't copy. They came from within him. What you wanted in him had to come from within you. You could get up at four-fifteen A.M. a few times to get to the zendo by five to sit with Roshi because you wanted to be noticed by him or to be with him, but you couldn't keep it up for those reasons, especially since it didn't impress him. Finally, you had to give up all that. You had to do it because it came from inside you, because you wanted to do it, whether he was there or not. And then it even became empty of that. You just did it because you did it."

-- natalie goldberg, long quiet highway

day 404: a big breakfast, a day spent curled up watching movies and napping, and then dragging yourself out the door for one easy mile that you are not remotely feeling. and then it's a mile in and it turns out you're feeling fine so you think you'll just keep running for awhile, and the air smells like wood smoke and then pizza and then bacon and then rain, and the stars are unexpectedly out, the clouds illuminated by an unseen moon. is there lightning? it seems like maybe there is a very occasional flash of far off lightning. you decide you might as well just do your long run today after all. you don't have music, which these days is unusual, so it's you and your wondrous, surprisingly content, quiet, grateful mind. the miles are easy until they are hard, and then hard until they're over, and all of this is completely the point. you run a little past where it hurts, because that's how muscles grow: by breaking down and then mending the weak places until they're strong.

instead of one mile, you run seven. life is unpredictable that way.

fence repair

2014-12-15T21:28:00.004-08:00

What’s the matter with you today
sed John you and Jan fighting?
On no I said it’s not that
it’s a letter I got that’s bothering me.
Must be from the govament
or the insurance, I can understand that.
No, John, it’s not them this time
it’s from a friend.
Did he die or summin?
You aint sed a decent word all morning
I might as well be working by myself
and let you set on the nailkeg
unrolling barbwore

Oh dammit, John,
it’s just a letter that pissed me off,
I said. It’s from a writer who saw something I wrote
about coyotes killing sheep
and he wrote saying that never happens.
He sez what? sez John.
He said there’s no documented evidence
that a coyote ever killed a sheep
unless it was rabid, I said.
And he said my story was a lie
and should never have been written.
He’s a writer? sez John.
What does he write about?
Oh, he writes novels, I said.
Books about cowboys and Indians
and the California mountains.

He sez that sed John
did he? You know
most chickens I known of
is layers and most folks
I known is liars
and most of them don’t know the different
but that don’t get in the way
of their opinions.
It was a preacher
got his first call
to come to our town back home
his first sermon that everbody
showed up to hear
was how all people is good
it aint no such of a thing
as a bad person

he wasn’t in town half a year
before Travis Newberry
knocked up his daughter in the eighth grade
and he was twenty-four by then.
He’d started preaching late
after giving up on farming
and owning a grocery store
must of been too late
he run out of words after bout a year
we had to elect him to office
to give him something to do.
First thing he voted no taxes
and no pay raises to schoolteachers
so they all known he’d be a good one
mebbe governor some day
had to move him out
of the parsonage and into a house
where he had to pay rent
like real people
so they found him a place
out on the end of town
where they could be alone
with that pregnant girl
they took out of school.
It was skunks out there
a mama and four babies
and his wife and that girl
sez oh they’re purdy
let them alone we like them
so he did
by the time she had her baby
they’d killed all their chickens
the Easter ducks and the cats
it was mice and skunks
running all over that place
they couldn’t live there no more
so he run for state office

they sent that girl
off to Christian school
we never heard of her again
and tried to raise the baby boy
but couldn’t do that neither.
He got elected
to the campaign of no taxes
and close down the schools
cause he blamed it all
on Travis Newberry hanging around
the jr-high parking lot
and moved to the state capital
to live and before
they could rent that house again
they had to set out traps
for two months and rat poison
sed they got twenty-four skunks
but nobody counted the mice
it was awful
took a year for the smells
to go off and it wasn’t no hippies
back then to rent it to
they had to wait it out

so he run for Warshington office
six years later
and put the boy in the orphanage
up for adoption
he might of been a scandal
but he didn’t get elected
they made him a judge instead
after that and he’s rich
still there and being so famous
he don’t pay no rent
the state gave him a house
and a car and a maid

but that still don’t mean he known one damn thing
about people or skunks or mice
or preaching or farming or
running a grocery store.
I seen it with my own eyes
a coyote running through
a herd of sheep and killed nine lambs
just to do it
and we set up five nights
in our pickups waiting for him
until he come back
and he killed four more
before we shot him
and that’s nothing to what
Allen Dalley out to Summit lost
that one year when they say
coyotes got half his lamb crop
that’s just a bunch of bullshit
because he done one thing
don’t mean he knows nothing
about anothern
and if he doesn’t know
what he’s talking about
you tell him to just keep his mouth closed
or run for office
that’s what it’s there for
so why don’t you forget about it
and you can forget him too for now
let’s get to work
cause all this is real
not something in a book
and has to be got done for sure
not just by thinking about it
and if you don’t get that frown put in a drawer
this is gone be a long day of work

- david lee

2014-06-03T16:43:00.001-07:00

the woods in maryland smell totally different than the woods in portland: like honeysuckle and pepper, damp from the humidity. on my first day home I run down the back roads near my mom's house and by the time I come back I have sweat dripping from the end of my braid. the sun is beating down and the air seems to be trying to stuff a wet rag down my throat.

it's pretty great. welcome home.

the dog is stiffer with age, the fat cat is fatter. my mom has saved the front fields for me to mow. I've flown in on a red eye and therefore haven't slept at all (I already can't sleep on planes and this is made worse by being stuck in the middle seat), but we still stop on our way from the airport to have lunch with my two aunts. there are birthday cupcakes.

on my birthday it's cold -- 52 -- and rainy. plans to go paddleboating in the harbor downtown are scrapped in favor of a decadent brunch at miss shirley's, where we order, in addition to our own breakfasts, an extra plate of jalapeno bacon cinnamon rolls. my mom buys me shoes and then we pick my brother up from school and head to cold stone to get a cake. "do you want something written on it?" the girl asks, and we blurt out "...happy birthday, jessica?" since none of us has even thought about it. I immediately regret not having the cake read "DANG GIRL" but short of having the text scraped off and rewritten, it's too late.

at home I fall asleep on the couch because I'm 33 now so I guess my transition to grandma is complete. it's 3:30 in the afternoon.

we drop my sister at 4H and then go with my brother to boy scouts, where it is election night. we listen to a series of adorably awkward speeches. my brother's friends are all amazed to meet me, the mythical older sister. my brother is elected senior patrol leader -- top dog. as they close the meeting, he gets the entire troop to sing me happy birthday. it's my first birthday at home in 13 years.

I go home and sleep for 10 hours. jet lag is a bitch, y'all.

the next day my mom and I drive down to fells point and walk around. we eat sandwiches on the water, peruse galleries, stick our heads into touristy shops, trip on the cobblestones. I miss my mom and I wish we could do this all the time. being away is hard.

I run my favorite trails. my calves hurt all the time (I need a travel-size foam roller but keep electing not to buy them. I don't know why) but it doesn't really matter; I strap on my oldest shoes and bounce down the archery trail to the ridge trail. I lament the loss of the sign we used to kiss at the top of the ridge. it had a deer on it. I make the same wrong turn I always make, and realize it at the same place I always realize it. I cross the stream three times and dunk my right foot twice. running in these woods always feels like a benediction somehow. there is love in every step. I am thinking of the boys in cross country, who used to tear through the woods and fell small trees; I am thinking of my best running friend, lindsay, whose braid was always bobbing along near me, who was always faster and smarter and who was always, always my favorite; I am thinking of mr. mig, our coach, who has just been diagnosed with stage 4 gastric cancer. I have his address and need to write him a letter. he used to watch me run cross country meets -- I was awful at cross country -- and he would turn to my mother and say, 'your daughter has got so much heart.' it's been 18 years since my first xc season and I still think of him, and of his faith in me, every time I race.

on the quarry trail, my sister joins me and leads the way and we talk about our running goals, about times we got in trouble, about the differences between our high school experiences. hers is much more regimented and sterile than mine was; the school is bigger, the track team is highly competitive, and everything is so busy and structured. during my track years, we'd deviate from the trail to jump in the river; we'd swim and eat mulberries from the path and get covered in mud. she just runs.

we order crabs for dinner one night. I grill chicken one night. we go out for ice cream and snowballs.

we spend one afternoon working outside, dragging downed branches from all over the yard, debris from this winter's many snowstorms. the grass is knee high in places (because the branches make it impossible to mow). we break it all up and saw it into pieces and burn it in the fire pit until we are too tired to move. the branches still outnumber us. I once again wish I could stay for two weeks, tell no one except my immediate family I'm home, and help my mom clean up the yard. it is clear how much easier it is to have a second adult in the house -- a second driver, a second wallet, a second cook. my mother is overwhelmed and exhausted. it never gets easier to leave.

2014-05-25T17:53:00.001-07:00

I've discovered something over the years, in the course of my travels: if you are a lady who can in any way be perceived as "girlish," you will come across certain people who will find your solo voyaging charming and brave. such was the case at the rental car counter in palm springs, where the sweet middle aged rental agent, after hearing my plans to wander through joshua tree and to go solo camping, lowered her voice conspiratorially and said, "you know, we have a mustang convertible. I could give you the friends and family discount -- it would cost you $11 more a day than you're spending now."

"so ...$22 more? that's it?" she nods.

and that is how I end up cruising around the california desert in a 2014 convertible, listening to 90s music on the satellite radio, with a folded up tank top wrapped around my forehead to keep my face from getting too horribly sunburned. from palm springs to joshua tree, where I turn off the radio in reverent silence, and then through box canyon, my head swiveling in every direction at the rocks all around me. down country roads dotted with arid farmland, and finally to salton sea, the sea that isn't really one.

my new friend from vancouver was horrified when I told her where I was camping. "but ... you know you can't swim in it, right?" I explained that yes, I knew that the beaches were made of dead barnacles and fish bones, casualties of the increasing salinity of a body of water with no incoming rivers or streams. I knew it was speckled with ruins of buildings from a time when there were resorts all along the coastline, and that it might smell funny and wasn't very popular. I reassured her that those things were totally my bag. she did not seen convinced. in all honesty, her reaction secretly worried me a little. was I about to camp at the cali equivalent of onondaga lake -- a toxic dump that smells, well, like a toxic dump?

but she was wrong. or maybe she was right about the sea, but wrong about the camping. it smells like the ocean -- the saline level is somewhere between the pacific ocean and the great salt lake -- and it's surrounded by coastal grasses, full of the sounds of birds. The campsite is just occupied enough to make me not feel nervous, but not busy enough to be loud. herons stand gracefully at the banks; pelicans fly overhead. a nice paved path, obviously newly built, meanders through the brush for half a mile, ending at a small quiet stretch of beach. (admittedly, a beach made of dead barnacles.) in the morning I run up and down the banks and then walk over to the tiny camp store for $1 coffee. I inquire about the kayak rental sign but decline in the end -- "I've kayaked twice. will I drown?" I ask. "I've been kayaking for 25 years and I probably wouldn't go out today." okay then.

I pack up my gear and toss it into the trunk of my MUSTANG CONVERTIBLE and I slather on sunblock, put the top down, turn on the radio, and set off. it's just before 9 am. the roads are mostly empty, as is all the surrounding land. I make my first stop 8 miles down the road, at the ruins of bombay beach, formerly a little coastal hamlet. now it's something between trailer park and ghost town, some of the houses completely gutted, others very ramshackle; the occasional one has a car parked out front, which I guess means it's still lived in. there is incredible graffiti. the beach is strewn with the beams and foundations of old buildings. the skeleton of an abandoned pier is overrun with seagulls.

then I drive for a long time, realizing in amazement (because I am hungry) that this is the longest I think I've ever driven without any sign of fast food. I get preoccupied with the joy of being in a convertible in california, driving through the desert with my ponytail and my coffee, flipping between beachy tunes on the radio. I completely forget my next stop -- like, I completely forget that I am even supposed to be aiming for a next stop -- until I'm thirty miles past it. I've stopped to eat a cheeseburger when I look at my map and realize. But it's 11 in the morning and my goal is to be in san diego at 7, and that is such a hilarious amount of time to drive the distance (not even 200 miles) that of course I turn around.

salvation mountain is a huge ... art installation? building? shrine? built by a man named leonard knight after he had a vision from god. I can't really even describe it. it's paint and adobe and bales of straw and tree limbs and old telephone poles, and everything says "god loves you" or a variant thereof. it's big and colorful and weird. art cars decorated in a similar style dot the nearby landscape. behind it is slab city, a sort of hippie commune of RVs and tents, people living off the grid. you may have read about it in jon krakauer's "into the wild." the mountain is manned by volunteers (knight himself died this past february). today's caretaker is quick to offer to take your photo on the mountain the moment he spots you with a camera. when I walk back to the car I overhear him cheerfully giving directions: "so, you get to this place where there's no rail between you and the canyon, then you drive past two or three 'no trespassing' signs, and at the end you can see the whole coachella valley."

the rest of the drive is more or less comprised of trying to figure out the prettiest and most out of the way route to my destination, and then of driving through canyons on long empty snaking roads. I listen to a lot of 90s music. I drink water out of a gallon jug because my one water bottle is dirty. I stop once at a county park and hike 3 miles in my flip flops.

when I arrive at my sister's I have been driving for 10 hours and am coated in a mixture of sweat, sunblock, road grit and dirt but she hugs me anyway because she's my sister.

2014-05-21T20:55:00.001-07:00

wake up, drink coffee on the balcony, eat eggs benedict down at the hotel restaurant, lounge at the pool, finish a book, read a magazine, order a margarita at 10:30 am, borrow one of the hotel's beach cruisers and marvel at how much fun and how different they are from road bikes, go back to the pool, drink another margarita, eat guacamole, swim, fall asleep in the sun, read another book, go for a run, eat ceviche, drink a beer, take a shower, crawl into bed at 8, watch cartoons. listen to the low trickle of the hot tub out the open balcony door.

there are so many hummingbirds. the hotel is a giant sized crayon box. the sky is impossibly blue. the palm trees and low slung houses and sand are powerful reminders of something but the memory is out of reach. it's the off-season (normally too hot for tourists), so I'm sharing the place with no more than 30 people. at night there is no one at the pool and I tiptoe back and forth between swimming and sitting in the hot tub, the pool water a long expanse of flat glass, the stars visible through palms. everything is so quiet.

I have made it to the other side.

2014-05-04T12:39:00.001-07:00

I have begun,
when I'm weary and can't decide an answer to a bewildering question

to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling -- whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy's ashes were —
it's green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy's already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I'll do.

-- marie howe, my dead friends

I'm leaving my job at the opera. my last day is may 18, the day after closing night.

books

2014-01-30T15:41:00.001-08:00

* = good
** = really freaking good

2016
1. anthony doerr: all the light you cannot see

2015
1. george saunders: tenth of december
2. james mcbride: the good lord bird **
3. chad harbach: the art of fielding *
4. ernest cline: ready player one
5. kate atkinson: life after life
6. natalie goldberg: long quiet highway
7. renata adler: speedboat
8. sarah waters: the paying guests
9. lucy grealy: autobiography of a face
10. robin sloane: mr. penumbra's 24-hour bookstore
11. eula biss: on immunity
12. nadia bolz-weber: accidental saints:
13. vendela vida: the diver's clothes lie empty
14. kate dicamillo: the miraculous journey of edward tulane
15. lawrence wright: going clear

2014
1. james dashner: the maze runner
2. susan patron: the higher power of lucky
3. jon krakauer: into the wild *
4. christopher mcdougall: born to run
5. james dashner: the scorch trials
6. margaret atwood: maddaddam
7. gillian flynn: gone girl
8. sunny haralson: beauty tips for the bereaved **
9. elizabeth gilbert: eat, pray, love
10. jeanne duprau: the prophet of yonwood
11. jeanne duprau: the diamond of darkhold
12. james dashner: the death cure [aside: this is possibly the worst book I've ever read]
13. veronica roth: divergent
14. nora ephron: heartburn
15. veronica roth: insurgent
16. jenny offill: dept. of speculation *
17. veronica roth: allegiant [second prize for worst book ever read]
18. naomi novik: his majesty's dragon
19. jhumpa lahiri: the lowland *
20. eleanor catton: the luminaries *
21. joshua ferris: then we came to the end
22. naomi novik: throne of jade
23. adam johnson: the orphan-master's son *
24. naomi novik: black powder war
25. rivka galchen: atmospheric disturbances

2013
1. lauren groff: the monsters of templeton
2. margaret atwood: the year of the flood
3. lars kepler: the hypnotist
4. patrick rothfuss: the name of the wind
5. kathryn stockett: the help
6. julian barnes: the sense of an ending
7. jeanne duprau: the city of ember
8. paula mclain: the paris wife
9. laura hillenbrand: unbroken: a world war II story of survival, resilience, and redemption **
10. jeanne duprau: the people of sparks
11. r.j. palacio: wonder
12. mary ann shaffer & annie barrows: the guernsey literary and potato peel society
13. sara gruen: water for elephants
14. gretchen rubin: the happiness project [horrible]
15. oliver sacks: the mind's eye
16. c.s. lewis: the horse and his boy
17. emma donoghue: room *
18. karen joy fowler: we are all completely beside ourselves

2012
1. george r.r. martin: a clash of kings
2. george r.r. martin: a storm of swords
3. stieg larsson: the girl who played with fire
4. john & mary gribbin: galileo in 90 minutes
5. suor maria celeste & dava sobel: letters to father: suor maria celeste to galileo, 1623-1633
6. george r.r. martin: a feast for crows
7. stieg larsson: the girl who kicked the hornet's nest
8. tea obreht: the tiger's wife
9. lauren groff: delicate edible birds *
10. piper kerman: orange is the new black: my year in a women's prison
11. rebecca skloot: the immortal life of henrietta lacks
12. abraham verghese: cutting for stone
13. ali smith: there but for the *
14. karen spears zacharias: the silence of mockingbirds
15. rudyard kipling: the jungle book
16. marilynne robinson: gilead **
17. george r.r. martin: a song of ice and fire: a dance with dragons
18. c.s. lewis: till we have faces: a myth retold *
19. cheryl strayed: tiny beautiful things: advice on love and life from dear sugar
20. madeleine l'engle: a wrinkle in time
21. madeleine l'engle: a wind in the door
22. madeleine l'engle: a swiftly tilting planet
23. madeleine l'engle: many waters
24. ursula le guin: lavinia
25. margaret atwood: oryx and crake
26. rebecca stead: when you reach me
27. cheryl strayed: torch
28. leanne shapton: swimming studies **
29. cheryl strayed: wild: from lost to found on the pacific crest trail **

2011
1. betty smith: joy in the morning
2. jean thompson: who do you love
3. cory doctorow: down and out in the magic kingdom
4. p.g. wodehouse: my man jeeves
5. d.h. lawrence: the rainbow
6. david grann: the lost city of z
7. isaac bashevis singer: shosha
8. karen pryor: don't shoot the dog! the new art of teaching and training
9. jason tesar: the awakened: part one
10. laura whitcomb: a certain slant of light
11. thich nhat hanh: true love
12. george r.r. martin: a game of thrones: a song of ice and fire
13. mike foster: gracenomics
14. malcolm gladwell: what the dog saw, and other adventures [it turns out I kind of hate malcolm gladwell?]
15. suzanne collins: the hunger games
16. suzanne collins: catching fire
17. suzanne collins: mockingjay
18. stieg larsson: the girl with the dragon tattoo
19. malcolm gladwell: blink: the power of thinking without thinking

2010
1. david wroblewski: the story of edgar sawtelle
2. lydia miller: love in infant monkeys
3. judith ortiz cofer: the meaning of consuelo
4. azar nafisi: reading lolita in tehran
5. mark rashid: whole heart, whole horse
6. james crumley: the last good kiss
7. tao te ching, stephen addiss & stanley lombardo, trans.
8. anthony crossley: training the young horse
9. norman mailer: the executioner's song
10. richard brautigan: an unfortunate woman
11. madeleine l'engle: and both were young
12. neil gaiman: american gods
13. kate douglas smith wiggin: rebecca of sunnybrook farm
14. jeremy butterfield: damp squid: the english language laid bare
15. ronlyn domingue: the mercy of thin air
16. anna gavalda: I wish someone were waiting for me somewhere
17. sloane crosley: I was told there'd be cake

long overdue

2013-09-02T09:19:00.004-07:00

I went on a little adventure this weekend. I wanted to go last weekend but I ended up with a four-day headache and also I was so stressed that I spent much of at least one day feeling like I was either going to cry or hyperventilate. it was fun.

wild horses in fields, wild horses on the shoulder, wild horses in the road (!). a road that turns from city to suburb to pine trees to the mountain (oh, the mountain), then to dry grasses and shrubs, yellow earth, huge blue sky. hills and hills and hills, and rocks, and nothing else. on a bike ride -- finally, a bike ride -- I pass a few lizards and then one beautiful coyote, loping across the road in front of me. at night there is only sky, and with almost nothing lit up nearby you can see thousands upon thousands of stars. and the milky way -- the milky way! I had forgotten it was even possible to see it. a shooting star streaks past and I remember to make a wish. a good one.

waking up and having a cup of coffee, gazing out into the hills, everything quiet, nothing in particular to do except figure out whether to bike or hike or read: I need much, much more of this.

it's funny, although I live just 90 minutes from the pacific ocean, I normally don't feel at all like I live "out west." (by the way, even after eight years, I still find it jarring and weird to hear people say "out east.") so it's really gratifying to drive a couple hours and crest a hill and suddenly realize, hey, this is it! I am in the west for real now. there are tumbleweeds -- that's how you know.

I drove home yesterday feeling very relaxed and fulfilled and good, ready to tackle my life again. but 60 blocks from home or so, I was again sweaty and restless, and suddenly it was as though the mantle descended. lately there's constantly the feeling of being almost literally physically stuck inside my life. I got home and unpacked the car and here it all was again: too much to do, and the dread and anxiety around doing it. I tried to push it aside. I'm still trying.

but seriously, guys. look at this nonsense:

currently

2013-07-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

on the question of whether or not the author still lives

yes.

the quiet summer

it's funny, after awhile so much stuff has happened and you think to yourself, how do I even get started? so you just keep "write on the blog" on your to do list every day only it increases in urgency and becomes more strident in tone so it's more like WRITE ON THE BLOG FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

the sad truth

summer: work, endless work, days of waking at 5:45 and getting to work -- the barn, or the opera, or wherever -- by 6:45, then going back and forth between jobs; running errands for one job then making two hours worth of copies for another, then page-turning, etc etc. what can I say, y'all: girl's gotta eat.

I do this thing I call 'robot brain,' where robot brain = turning yourself into a productive machine and turning off the part of your brain that says I don't want to do this or mother of god, I'm tired, or it's so nice out and it's july, why are we inside right now? In order to keep chugging along I had to turn off the part of my brain that said, but this is not the summer I wanted to have, this is not a summer at all and then go back to the photocopier.

an assortment

• I killed some chickens. (not those chickens up there.) well, I didn't actually kill any this time but I did drive down to philomath to help my friend rachel eviscerate some chickens one day. it's such weirdly satisfying work. everybody's strangely cheery and we're throwing chicken guts into buckets for four hours. I still have a bunch of chicken in my freezer. I think I'd do it every time they butchered if only I had every other tuesday off work.

• I successfully survived the softball season and nobody quit and everybody seemed ok with my rosters and lineups and I found big league chew in three flavors. and I chewed it.

• I made ricotta cheese.

• I picked probably close to 30 pounds of raspberries and strawberries from my garden and I ate every pound of that right the heck up.

• I started a tiny side business doing other people's yardwork. I've been joking about it for years but now it's happening. it's perfect.

• I sat in the same airport parking lot and looked at the same small airplane hangar seemingly always.

• I met a bunch of interesting and famous chamber musicians, like phil setzer and nadja salerno-sonnenberg who are all charming and funny and almost every single one of them said, "oh man, poor you! this [picking up people at the airport] must be the worst part of the job," and then I'd reply to every single one of them, "actually it's my favorite part of the job," and that was the truth.

• I got into a car accident. in the work van. which was a rental. yes, it's on its roof. I accidentally ran a red light and I got t-boned by some 18-year-olds (not as appetizing as it sounds) and the top-heavy van went right over and skittered down the hill on its roof. I spent the entire time saying, out loud, 'you're okay, you're okay,' and then the van stopped and I tried to figure out WHAT IS THIS LIQUID THAT'S ALL OVER ME OH GOD and then I realized it was water from my water bottle because I was upside down. some people out on the road immediately started shouting at me to get out of the van because it was going to catch on fire!!! and since I couldn't see them I assumed they knew what they were talking about and I yelled WELL GIVE ME A SECOND I'M UPSIDE DOWN HERE and then I managed to disengage the seat belt, which of course meant I fell on my head, and then I crawled out the shattered driver side window. I stood on the side of the road with the teenagers, all of whom were fine, except that the driver was in complete hysterics. a nice nurse lady came out of nowhere and told me to use my sweater (white) to help stop the bleeding from my palms, which were cut from the glass when I CLIMBED OUT THE DRIVER SIDE WINDOW. I didn't really want to (they weren't that bad) but she seemed like she knew what she was doing and I was a little dazed and she was right, I guess I could buy another sweater.

later I learned that your own spit will, in fact, get your own blood out of clothing. the internet debates this point but I can tell you firsthand that my previously white, then momentarily blood-stained sweater is now again white.

I also learned that when people at work tell me that I'm graceful under pressure they are apparently right. I stood on the side of the road quietly and stared at the van and thought, in this order, "oh my god I'm okay," "oh my god, everyone else is okay," and "oh my god, that is the fucking work van." but I just stood there bleeding into my sweater and wondering why the very nice firemen hadn't offered me a band-aid (?) and as we watched the towing company try multiple times to flip the van over so it could be towed, I cracked a joke and one of the first responders said, "you know, we go to crash sites all the time and I gotta tell you, you are remarkably calm."

so apparently I'm good at being in car accidents.

if you want to know what it's like to roll a car, you should just imagine what you think it would be like to roll a car.

when jennifer came to get me -- and hold on a sec, internet, while I tell you how everybody needs a jennifer in their life who can be called with any sort of crisis and who can be relied upon to come and help you and stand with you with your bleeding hands (and dry mouth, and rapidly increasing shivering) and tell you stories about her stupid car accidents, because they are very precious and rare and I'm grateful for mine -- we stood and watched the car finally get flipped over, and then she dropped me off here and I spat all over my sweater and then I wrote an email to nadja salerno-sonnenberg telling her how to get to her rehearsal in the morning. because I told her I'd do it when I got home.

if you want to know what it's like to work in the arts, that's what it's like.

then I called my boyfriend and told him I was okay and then I hung up and realized how close I came to dying and then I burst into tears.

I'm okay now. in the end I walked away with less bruising than I get in some races. modern automotive safety standards, I salute you.

• I ran another one of those races. it was shorter than the last one but harder, a lot of intense climbing at elevation. my constant race companion, joy, came along and we ran it together, which mostly meant she ran in front of me and tugboated me along. I hadn't run since the middle of june. it approached the outer limit of what I'm capable of with zero training.

but somehow I won my age group. I don't know either. when they called my name as the division winner, I said, "WHAT?" I think maybe I was the only 30-34 year old lady?

on late july and the things that may happen there

I have two weeks where I'm only working my part-time job (along with feeding horses. and doing yardwork), and then I spend a week on the east coast. today is day one of the two weeks. I mostly have spent today catching up on Life Things that have heretofore gone untended.

the remaining days are going to be spent in a brief but passionate summer whirlwind: bike, horse, open road, beach, sunshine, margaritas.

'you're not home, it's probably better'

2013-05-14T07:54:00.001-07:00

I am calling to wish you well. I am calling because I want to
change something I said. A year ago you asked me three questions.
I thought you were asking my birthday wishes and answered all
wrong. If you remember (if I know you you’ll pretend you don’t)
I answered:

1) No, I have always been homely.
2) Yes. I believe you have always been too lovely for anyone to bear.
3) Silk. It is not always expensive, and it is impossible to tear.

It’s my birthday again and because I am cleverer now I can answer
you with more nerve. But because I am still me I am pitiless
enough to have your number and call you with this excuse to let
you know I am still alive (I won’t push it by telling you that I am
wonderful).

1) Yes. Thank you.
2) No. I found it a most repulsive photo.
3) Same. Though I don’t think of you, still it’s a near-perfect heat.
And so dear when ruined.

-- brenda shaughnessy

though it doesn't begin for another fifteen days, I have it on good authority that this next year of my life is going to be significantly better than the last.

2013-05-09T21:15:00.001-07:00

comments from librarians which have recently made my day
"I am just now writing to tell you that we received from Schirmer the set of Galileo that you prepared last year, and it is so wonderful! Oh my gosh! I cannot begin to imagine how many weeks of work went into this project! I appreciate SO MUCH all the work that you did! So, thank you."
-- from an email from one of the librarians at cincinnati symphony orchestra

"Greetings from Mo Wedow. He just loves you!"
-- from an email from the librarian currently working with our conductor from Rinaldo

"Now I understand why Gary likes you so much."
-- from the same librarian, on the last evening of the conference

minor emergencies: Falstaff edition

I.

orchestra reading 1: our second bassoonist calls in with an emergency and we don't receive the call until just after 9 AM for a 10 AM rehearsal. I have only ever hired one bassoonist other than the two in our orchestra, and that bassoonist lives three hours away. not helpful. the principal gives me two names to call, and then I realize that we also don't have the music. the second bassoonist lives an hour away. I write a frantic 911 post on the MOLA board but the unbelievable irony is that all the librarians who might normally be able to help me are across the river at the conference. in minutes I have an email from a librarian in NYC -- the one we rented the parts from originally -- saying he has masters of all the parts and he's going to scan the bassoon book and email it to me ASAP. I begin calling the subs, pacing back and forth in the lobby of the building, our conductor hovering nearby nervously. the second person I try is jovial and agrees to come in. it is 9:30.

the bassoonist and the music arrive almost simultaneously to their spot in the orchestra at 9:58. the conductor comes over and pats me on the back. "you have tremendous grace under pressure," he says. in truth, I feel a hair's breadth away from bursting into overwhelmed tears.

II.

the baritone singing our Ford takes a wrong step off a set piece in the final room run of the opera, horribly spraining one ankle and tearing a muscle in the opposite leg. he spends the night in the emergency room. he is rendered totally immobile but still wants to sing. there is a great deal of work put into making this possible: ramps built for the stage, dressing room assignments altered, helpers recruited to wheel him back and forth, to help him move around. the whole opera is restaged during tech, which makes everyone twice as exhausted as usual.

but theater is made of people who get things done. we open tomorrow, and you can't tell that there hasn't been a wheelchair on stage all along.

III.

during halftime at the final dress, the principal trumpet -- a very affable chinese man, skinny like a beanpole, who always gives me a hug when he comes in the building -- comes over to talk. his eyes are red and he looks exhausted. he tells me that his wife and young daughter, age 2, are in china visiting family and that his daughter is in the hospital with a high fever, that she has had a few seizures, that he is out of his mind with worry. he says that a pediatrician friend of his has assured him that the seizures are probably normal, and I reassure him of the same thing; my kid brother had them too, as a young child, and though febrile seizures are terrifying, they are usually not a big deal in the long run. but of course there is no reassuring a parent whose child is on the other side of the globe in a hospital, sick and scared.

when I come into work early this morning there is a message from him: his daughter has acute meningitis. he is flying to china, effective immediately. because he is infallibly decent, he calls me and apologizes, which I scold him for. he gives me the names of a few subs, saying in particular, "so and so is the best and could really use the money."

I leave messages for the people I most want to play and then I sit and wait and wait and pace and try to work on parts for next season and mindlessly scroll through the internet. my stomach churns. at a certain point I make more calls. I get in touch with one person, who is completely unavailable but passes off more names. I write a few emails. the concertmaster and I are in nearly constant touch as she tries to get his car home, to get his music from his office, to get all the relevant items to me.

most of the morning is spent either on the phone or waiting for the phone to ring. I call the conductor and both of the other trumpet players and the personnel manager and the concertmaster and my boss. I look musicians up online to figure out who the best options are. falstaff is hard. I call one guy on the recommendation of a person whom I've already called, and the guy sort of takes a gulping breath and says that though he'd like to see the music, he thinks he can do it.

then there is a mad scramble to get the music. the concertmaster can't get out to get the actual part until later in the afternoon, because, understandably, she has her own obligations. I offer to drive down to her (two hours south), pick up the music, drive it another hour south to the sub, and then return to portland. we debate whether this is necessary and she thinks not. I write to the librarian mafia but get no bites. finally, exhausted from pacing the office, exhausted from lack of food (I intended to be at the office until just before lunch and instead am there until 3), I go home, forwarding all my calls to my cell phone. on my way home, the same librarian who helped me with the bassoon part calls. he's on his way home and he'll send me the trumpet part. by 4:30 everything is situated. I nearly fall asleep fully clothed on my bed.

I am still worried sick about the trumpet player.

and now for something completely different:
unusual candy bars -- a review (part 1)

big hunk: like if you combined the worst parts of the charleston chew and the sugar daddy with stale peanuts and then made it twice as big as a normal candy bar.

u-no: first of all, is this pronounced 'uno', like 'number one,' or 'you know'? second of all, this is basically an extremely fancy truffle-style three musketeers. this is the only candy bar I had to eat in two installments.

take 5: I laughed this one off but actually that pretzel really is a game changer.

2013-05-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

the best collective nouns
a cloud of bats
a wake of buzzards
a glaring of cats
a peep of chickens
a waddling of ducks
a bloat of hippopotamuses
a cackle of hyenas
a scold of jays
a pandemonium of parrots
a pride of peacocks
a gulp of swallows
an ambush of tigers
a zeal of zebras

this comes up because late one night during the conference, over beers, the question was posed: 'what would a group of orchestra librarians be called?' and for some reason it is driving me fucking NUTS. it is the best question and there's a really perfect answer out there somewhere. and I want to figure out what that is.

fancy pants
today I was at lush buying myself a tub of fancy face wash. (it is worth the money.) while I was there, I got a sample of $90 moisturizer. ninety dollars. nine zero. I just finished putting it on my face. results pending.

MOLA
I am having a lot of trouble making myself sit down and write about last weekend's conference. it was a really special experience and while in many ways it's not difficult to explain why, for some reason it is taxing to say why. I can tell you that it went beautifully, that I survived moderating my panel (in a gala dress), that the metropolitan opera librarian attended my panel and was very kind afterward, that orchestra librarians sure can close down a bar. I met some exceedingly wonderful people. we -- the symphony librarians and I, known collectively as "the Js" (Joy, Julie, Jess) -- did not want anyone to leave. I miss people profusely. the world is big, and our profession is small, and we are very spread out. we help each other out a lot but hardly ever get to work together. we hang out for 3 or 4 days and then part. it's surprisingly hard.

I have to write at length about it for the opera blog so I guess I will have more to say about it then. for now I just want you to imagine what it was like to come back from your best friend's house after a long weekend together when you were a kid. namely: a little lonely.

overheard at the office: conference edition
how did oregon get the pretty librarians?

what ninety dollar moisturizer smells like
tamales

a sunday

2013-04-21T08:41:00.001-07:00

in my dream I look for you everywhere but cannot find you. in my dream I say to you, "I don't know how to say goodbye to you," but you aren't there. I am running barefoot in the rain to get to you. I can't go fast enough. you drive by and I know it's the last time I will ever see you; you are doing something insipid like returning a movie and you are not alone. I don't care but even so I can't find you, don't catch you. I stand there, barefoot in the mud, my clothes soaked through, bereft.

in one moment of the dream you are there with me. I know you are going, will soon be gone, and everything inside me is frantic. every time I see anything beautiful, I tell you, I think of you. everything I am made of screams: please don't go. if there is a place farther from me, I beg you do not go.

I wake and am alone, my head pounding, the hair at the nape of my neck damp and hot. there is one extremely loud bird outside. I spent much of yesterday walking around with a guy and his little hound, ellie. I spent the rest of it on my bike. now I am alone in my bed at dawn and for all that matters, it might as well all be the dream. I still don't know how to say goodbye to you. I still think of you whenever I encounter anything beautiful. I would run whatever lengths necessary, barefoot in the rain, everything on me soaked and ruined, if it would bring me to you. this is the only secret about myself I have been keeping. except from you. forgive me. I couldn't help but tell you.

wherever you are in the world, I miss you more than I can say, even in dreams. still, and, I fear, always.

2013-02-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

if you go away from writing for long enough you begin to wonder what it is you used to say.

because of my long absence I'm sure you imagine I'll tell you things are dark. wrong! they are much better. modern pharmaceuticals!

a funny side effect of the drugs I am taking for my brain is intense, focused concentration. it's frequently prescribed as an ADD drug. I am pretty sure I don't have ADD but I have definitely never been this undistractable in my life. it's incredible. in a few days I'll drop down to half the dose I've been taking, which will be my actual daily dose. I'm kind of terrified I'll turn into a space case. DON'T MAKE ME GO BACK

another funny side effect is the ringing in my ears. it's faint but consistent. and I don't even care! look at me go.

in the three(ish) weeks since I last hung around this blog, we opened and closed tosca. it went fine. I never saw it because I was in the supertext booth. it was not my best performance librarian-wise or supertext-wise (seriously, I have never stepped in so many entrances as I did in this production. sorry, singers). but that's okay. I entered it feeling as bad as I've felt in my life, so it's a miracle that anybody even got the right music, never mind that I managed to sort out all the electronic and backstage instruments. I mean, I didn't cry once in rehearsal, so let's just call it a success and move on.

I moved on to the next opera, handel's rinaldo. we're cobbling together the 1711 and 1731 versions and so it's a librarian nightmare, a pile of transpositions and inserts, a score that's cut and pasted together, a constant series of changes, plus the confusion of baroque instruments, none of which I'm terribly familiar with.

(henry the desk vacuum, a christmas present from my mom)

I get almost daily emails from the conductor that say, like, "hey, when you rewrite the trumpet parts for oboe, can you do me a favor and insert these 5 bars from the oboe part in the middle here, and then these 14 bars here, and then you can jump back to the trumpet part." but in the same breath he says things like "thank you, jessica, for this meticulous and beautiful score," so everything is okay.

and hey! I am on ADD medication. there were days when I almost literally had to be torn from my work. I worked so much and so hard on the parts for these last two weeks that my face started to hurt from looking at the music. my FACE was sore. THE HELL.

they're done, and I sent them out yesterday, and since I worked 74 hours last week I took today and tomorrow as my weekend. it's the first time I've had two uninterrupted days off in at least a month. yesterday on my way home from the office, I went and picked up my own giant vat of hot & sour soup, came home, changed into my adult one-piece camo print footed pajamas (YES), turned on trashy crime dramas, and ate the entire container of soup in one go. then I fell asleep for two hours, woke up, puttered around for an hour or so, and went to bed at 10. what's not to like?

the most exciting thing on the agenda tomorrow is my massage, long overdue, where I'm hoping to utterly horrify the massage therapist with my bone-hard, strangely lumpy left leg. you gotta have goals.

currently

2013-01-23T01:06:00.002-08:00

nature's air freshener

I have a christmas tree in the passenger seat of my car. I put it in there to drive it to the boy scouts or whoever takes old trees when you live in the city, only then I couldn't find where their collection place was and there was this tree in my car, and it was all dried up but it smelled good and there was nothing to do with it anyway but let it stay there. every time I'm walking to my car I start hysterically laughing at the idea that I have a christmas tree in the passenger seat. I kind of like it. the other day one of my coworkers and I went to happy hour and he had to sit in the back like we were driving miss daisy. when he asked for an explanation -- I think what he actually said is what is wrong with you????!!! -- I said, "well, I put the tree in the car a week and a half ago--" and then I couldn't finish the sentence because I suddenly realized the absurdity of it and I got laughing so hard I couldn't talk. I guess I'll have to pitch it into the woods behind the barn.

things that are good

• on new years day I'm running down the sidewalk, a few blocks from my house, and ahead a white suburban has its reverse lights on. I slow down to see if the driver sees me and he does, and waves me on. I turbo past and he calls "happy new year!" out the window. "you too!" I reply. it's simple, but good.

• at the barn, I finally meet the new barn manager, who moved in sometime in early december, bringing with him his seven beautiful horses -- rocky mountain horses mostly, plus a tennessee walker and a kentucky mountain horse. all of them are in good weight, mannerly when fed, well-groomed. the barn manager's name is jim; he's probably in his mid-sixties, and has the easy air of a person who's spent his whole life with horses. we shake hands and he asks me which horse is mine, and then he admires my rubber boots, which are plaid cowboy-style boots I'm wearing only because the soles of my normal ones have totally worn through. "hold my shoulder so I can see the bottom," he says, and then he picks up my foot just like you'd pick up a horse hoof and checks out my shoes. "hardly been worn," he declares, as he backs up a step. he appraises me. "look at you! you look good. those boots, and you've got a wrangler butt."

I have never heard the term 'wrangler butt' but I know instantly what he means, and I will take it.

• we have a quick & dirty lady date sunday, because I can't get out of orchestra rehearsal until just before 10 PM. j & I watch downton and polish off a bottle of white wine, which we drink ostensibly for its germ-killing qualities.

• tonight at the barn, I hang out with a one-day-old colt, who's the spitting image of his mama. after initial shyness, he comes and sniffs my hand, but runs away when I try to rub his neck.

• in the span of just a few days, I receive two care packages from two of my finest lady friends and both of them make me choke up in profound gratitude, because somehow my life is full of extraordinary people who are willing to come hold my hand and lead me out of my darkest places.

rachel's package is an utter novelty, mailed in a bottle, the stamps hand-canceled. inside there's candy and coffee and a few wonderful little trinkets, a pair of fuzzy socks, the sweetest letter. I drink the coffee a few days later, in the car on my way to mt. hood, and it makes me really, really happy.

katie's package is a sizable box that appears at my door, stuffed under my doormat by the mailman, who understands my neighborhood. in it is everything she's picked up for me in the last four years, none of which she's ever gotten around to sending. each thing is labeled with a sticky note. on the tiny "Pimp Your Pumpkin" decorating kit she writes, happy halloween 2010!. she sends a book along, saying, I read this a few years ago and loved it so much I had to send it to you immediately.
I laugh for ten minutes straight.

inside is a card that says

the sex & the city movie was on tv last night and I watched some of it. there's a scene where carrie is in bed and too depressed to get up. samantha brings her breakfast and carrie doesn't want to eat. samantha feeds carrie while she sits up a little. while I was watching it, I thought THAT is what jess and I would do for each other. I could have used it in the fall, and you could use it now. just know that in spirit, I am sitting at your bedside and feeding you breakfast. maybe even bacon.

I think maybe this is why I'm single. these people are what boys are up against. frankly, they don't stand a chance.

fucking with your chemical components

last thursday I shuffled into the east interstate kaiser permanente campus in a hooded sweatshirt and a wrinkled pair of jeans, my hair unwashed, to talk to my doctor about how sometimes I'm so sad it takes me an hour and a half to get out of bed. (also, I had to get a pap smear. neither one of these two things is something you want to do first thing in the morning before work). she was, as always, very efficient and kind and fifteen minutes later I walked out with a wellbutrin prescription, which was filled at the pharmacy counter by an alarmingly good-looking pharmacist. why is it when you don't wash your hair there is always a good-looking unmarried pharmacist, seriously.

I think most of us have this idea that our essential nature is something greater than the sum of the chemicals in our brains. we can understand logically that what for lack of a better word produces us is the firing of neurons and the mixing of chemicals and the strange mysteries of the body. I think most of us, though, in our secret heart of hearts, believe that our essential personhood is a thing that transcends all of that somehow.

taking a pill that fucks with your dopamine receptors in order to revert you back into a functional human is a reminder that your essential personhood is largely out of your hands.

the (surprising) sisterhood of the brokenhearted

although the sting of it has more or less subsided, I still think very often of last year's relationship that almost was. if the right sequence of songs come through my headphones I still shed a tear or two. the residual sadness I feel is probably a weight I will bear forever: a tiny knot made of regret, loss, and disappointment. in short, I frequently wonder after and miss my friend. I think (and accept) that maybe I always will.

but sometimes I think that what growth looks like is this: I occasionally think of his ~~girlfriend~~ fiancée as a kind of sister, rather than as a rival. I mean, if human beings were logical and if the world made sense, she and I would have banded together against the thing which so deeply wounded us both; we'd have stood tall, a pair of mighty ladies, and said, "well, we both got fucked," and we'd have dusted our hands off and given each other a consoling hug and gotten the hell out of dodge. sometimes in my quiet desolation I have imagined that rather than hating me, she wonders after me instead. after all, this shit happened to both of us. in slowly trudging down the path of healing, I sometimes imagine giving her a hug. I'm so sorry, I think to myself. we both got so hurt, and what for? I wonder about the two of us girls, playing tug of war over somebody who set all three of us up to be broken. and now they are to be married. it will always be a puzzle to me.

life is full of contradictions. he will always be my short-lived but nevertheless dear old friend, a kindred spirit, a person who woke me up. no matter what time passes or the hurts I have sustained, the truth is that even now, I would be a safe haven for him in a storm. that is -- dopamine receptors be damned -- my essential personhood. but sometimes I am grown up enough to wish her the best in that life they have, despite everything, chosen to have together. when I look back and wonder what it all means, the tiny part of me that's healed hopes that whatever he learned from me is something good she gets to hold on to. the sisterhood is precious to me. I wish I had never broken it.

2012-11-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

a recent middle of the night meal
a bowl of trader joe's o's
two pieces of deli cheddar cheese
marshmallows

some tasks I have run for our giovanni
hot and sour soup delivery
hot and sour soup delivery
drive to and from spray tan
hot and sour soup delivery

things I fantasize about when I consider taking the whole week off at thanksgiving
staying in bed
watching korean tv
pajamas
hot chocolate
sleep
knitting
no human contact

what I will probably actually be doing the week of thanksgiving
running projections for a disney show with the symphony and trying to look professional while I sing along under my breath

a decent metaphor for my heart
two and a half years ago I was knocked down as I was trying to maneuver several hundred pounds of hay. on my right thigh I have a scar from being forcefully slammed into the lip of the little truck I was driving. it's a visible dent, the width of maybe two fingers. it's fully healed, just dented. if I push on it, it produces a very dull ache.

I believe this is how this thing with g will always be: a thing that will heal with time but will somehow, also, always hurt.

recent google searches
how to build a balloon arch
balloon arch tape
red chuck taylors
fraggle rock theme song
piriformis spasm
bob woodruff hairpiece
peter dinklage

single word said recently to the opera timpanist which subsequently made him crack up
frankenberry

top 5 favorite candies, as requested by the timpanist
cadbury cream eggs
laffy taffy (strawberry or cherry only, none of that banana-flavored shit)
charleston chew
valomilk
gummi sour apple rings

bottom 5, as requested by no one
peeps
candy corn
jelly beans
red vines
necco wafers

backstage noises I have been asked to make in the past seven years, onomotopoeia style
boom
rumble
ding
crank
bang bang bang

the general consensus
still sad

a probably true thing
I'm going to have to write my way out of this.

high hopes

2012-10-22T19:54:00.001-07:00

It wasn’t that they were so
high, exactly,
they were more
low-down,
close-to-the-ground,
I could rub them
the way you touch a cat
that rubs against your ankles
even if he isn’t yours.

So yes I feel lonely without them.
Now that I know the truth,
that I only dreamed someone liked me,
the cat has curled up in a bed of leaves
against the house and I still have to do
everything I had to do before
without a secret hum
inside.

-- naomi shihab nye

bravely forward, I said. I meant it, though the sentiment comes in flashes of motivation. in between, there are long slow blank spaces. I crawl between moments of conviction. the rain pours.

I really, really miss my friend.

7

2012-10-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

seven years ago today, my mom called me at sunrise to tell me that my stepdad had died overnight, in the hospice wing of the hospital, his brain hopelessly speckled with inoperable tumors. I can still remember his ridiculous, raucous laugh; the way we always teased him about his hair thinning; the grease always on his hands and under his nails from all the cars he worked on during the day; the sound of his voice as it carried from the full mechanic's garage we'd built next to the house, mingled with the sounds of the lift and the air compressor; his exuberant smile; his ridiculously short shorts; the smell of motor oil on his coat, cold from being outside.

I'll never forget the way I drove through the back roads of my hometown in early fall, a beautiful day, all the colors changing, and thought, 'I recognize there is beauty here, but it is not for me.'

nor will I ever forget the days following the funeral, absurdly nice outside, when one afternoon my mom, my siblings, and I drove to the hanover playground and played the longest and most intense game of freeze tag of my life. we played for over an hour, running like crazy through that most amazing of playgrounds, laughing and squealing. they were eight years old. afterwards we sat on the bank of the susquehanna river, in the sun. all of that impossibly incongruous, but real.

seven years. it gets easier, but also, it doesn't. we miss you, stevie.

up, down

2012-09-10T22:06:00.001-07:00

me and three of my dudes climbed st. helens this weekend.

2 miles of the hike is just a steep hike; everything above treeline is a scramble. you can't walk more than a few steps before you have to climb a rock.

(there is no space for a trail so the poles are your only markers. this one had lost the will to live)

micah, who led the way most of the time, found this treasure about 3/4 of the way through the hike:

it was an actual barbell. you know, the kind that weigh, like, 40 pounds. how anybody got it up there is a real mystery. we were amused.

(apparently I had my camera on the "dark and shitty" setting)

the way the cloud cover formed made it seem like we were very, very high.

I climbed that mountain once too.

we found wall-e along the way.

also, it was really effing windy. I didn't do my hair like that on purpose.

we got to the top. it looks like this inside the cauldron.

Nub got there too. it was too windy to put him down.
(also, teeny tiny mt hood!)

I'm still not sure mountain climbing is really my bag. but I'm glad I went.

otherwise, things are pretty hard, internet. it's a herculean effort just to get out of bed in the mornings. and that's all there is to say about the rest of my life.

!

2012-08-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

yesterday me and my bike set out in the early morning cold -- I could see my breath! -- and went on a bike adventure to salem. the cloudy weather they had predicted never materialized, which I was grateful for; those first 8 or 10 miles before the sun came up were cold, particularly without the benefit of bike gloves. but the sun came up and the temperature was perfect, and everything I needed was stuffed into the pockets of my jersey. I opted for the scenic route, ten miles longer than the more direct way, cutting west for awhile to travel along the willamette valley scenic bikeway: back roads littered with orchards and vineyards and two tractors tilling the earth, dirt clouds I rode through happily, glad to be able to smell the land. 66 miles from portland to salem, where I was greeted with beers and ice cream and a couple of happy dogs.

this is the last week of my summer. this week I've processed chickens at my friends' farm, I've skipped stones on the willamette, I've eaten candy, I've ridden my bike, I've cleaned stalls at the barn. I've read my book. I've hung out with my favorite person (twice). I've woken before dawn (twice). it's easy to spin everything as lovely, but in truth I've also been restive and bored and lonely, itchy and yearning in ways that I find difficult to articulate, even to myself. they are feelings that I suspect I should probably sit with, listen to, but I find myself avoiding them instead. one recent morning I lay in bed thinking, I wish I could travel more, I wish I could just up and go away for the weekend, I wish I led that kind of life, and then I got mad at myself, because if there's anything I've learned in the last year, it's that you're never stuck. you're only as stuck as you think you are.

although I let it pass without mentioning it to anyone, a year ago yesterday this happened. it took me months to pick up the pieces. I wasn't sure I wanted to acknowledge it at all, because JESUS, I've talked about it enough. I don't want to give the mistaken impression that I have any lingering regrets or pain or sadness. I don't. that ship sailed long ago, and good riddance. but this morning, I was standing in the sun-soaked barn, cleaning a stall, thinking of my one-year-ago self, and feeling a great deal of compassion for her. she thought she was stuck; she thought nothing would ever get better.

she came such a long way to get here. here, there might be transient boredom and worry, but there is also so much sunshine, adventure, playfulness, humor, resilience, courage, gratitude, love.

homestead

2012-07-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

maryland, summer, nighttime: silent but for the sound of the crickets -- endless crickets. the windows open, the house warm and sticky and still.

the yard is populated primarily by weeds, which must always have been the case. there's an enormous amount of wild strawberry. the backyard is overgrown, or rather, overgrowing, but in a sweet, homey, unkempt way. the front yard, flat and easy to mow, is tame. business in the front, party in the back.

the smells are all different. I can't put my finger on how, exactly. when I was a kid growing up in that house, I used to think of the smell of the front yard (as I spent hours mowing it) as "buttery." now, better accustomed to it, I can recognize it as a kind of hay smell, though buttery still comes to mind: warm, yellow. as a teen on the mower in late summer, grasshoppers would shoot in all directions from the dried stalks of grass as I passed up and down the yard. six acres. it took a long time.

my brother is taller than me -- taller than me!! this was a great novelty to both of us -- but still the kid I know, just surrounded by a new, slightly surlier teenage exterior. we play frisbee in the yard. we're both pretty bad at it but we have a good time. one night while my mom and sister are at 4-H camp, we watch a bunch of episodes of "deadliest warrior" on spike TV. we eat pizza, which he heats in the oven and brings out for us. he's finally hooked on doctor who (I've been telling him for years) and we watch something like 15 episodes while I'm home.

the cornfields are everywhere. the houses are old, with older barns, the silos crumbling into the earth. in general, everything feels older on the east coast. I might just be imagining it.

I eat snowballs. I actually declared to my mom when I landed at BWI that I wanted a snowball at least every other day, since it's such a regional food that there's no chance in hell of ever having one here. I didn't get my first one for four days, which continues to feel like a great travesty. then, instead of getting a bunch of kiddie cups of every flavor I like (fireball, spearmint, chocolate, egg custard, birthday cake, sour cherry), I got chocolate every time. I did get crazy and ask for a chocolate/fireball combo for my last one, the day before I left. it was delicious.

actually, I ordered chocolate cherry a few times. with marshmallow. so probably you shouldn't pay attention to my complaining.

my sister showed two lambs at the 4-H county fair. do you know how you trim a lamb's hooves? it's hilarious.

they flip the lambs over (an athletic maneuver in itself) and plop them on their butts. for whatever reason the lambs go totally docile the minute they're put like that. I don't know whether there's something akin to twitching a horse in it (where maybe the position releases some sort of calming endorphin?) but more likely the lamb is like, "fuck it. I'm stuck." I took like a hundred pictures of this because I could not get over how hilarious it was. also my sister clipped those hooves like a boss. I'm glad I don't have to do this to Cookie.

(practice-showing her southdown)

I showed my sheep earlier in the week.

that's ethel. lucy was in the other room. in the background you can see my brother racing out the door. this is because my sister was about to recite, apparently for the 900th time, the FFA creed. I was holding the lamb as a tribute.

we drove to the beach. I already told you about that. on the drive, I told my sister wicked stories about my troublemaking as a kid. I didn't think I was a particularly bad kid but in comparison to her, I was. she was pretty horrified. I hope I didn't give her any ideas, or blackmail fodder.

my mom and I visited my brother at his internship at the national aquarium. they still have the bubble columns from when I was a kid. I was pretty nervous about them because they used to be right at the entrance and they weren't there when we walked in, but it turns out that's because they built a whole other wing that you have to walk through to get to the old entrance. I was so happy about the columns that I hugged them.

yeah, I don't know either. that's a shark fin on my head, in case you're wondering. my brother was, sadly, not embarrassed. he's pretty used to these shenanigans by now.

also at the aquarium there is the best sign ever. EVER.

I really wanted to.

this fucker is beautiful but he starts crowing at, I don't know, 4 AM? party foul, buddy.

his name is jimbob. that's not a joke.

we go to an O's game. not-quite-nosebleed seats that turn out to be pretty good, and in the foul zone, but no luck on catching any. we do get there in time for FREE JERSEY NIGHT which I am irrationally stoked about.

fuck yeah, natty boh.

yeah, nobody can ever see the family resemblance.

one day travis and I run one of my favorite old trails, whose turnaround point is a spot on the gunpowder where my track buddies used to sometimes jump from a bridge into the river. the water was too shallow to make the leap but I did wade in from the shore. it was utterly frigid. of course we skipped stones, because anybody who's ever been with me near a body of water knows I can't not skip stones. the trail was just as I had remembered it. but harder.

I unearthed some treasures from the basement, in the midst of searching for my yearbooks. all my old track ribbons, two pairs of track spikes, my powderpuff jersey, my kindergarten gym uniform (private school). my uniforms from the years I spent as a competitive jumproper. they still fit. sort of.

jacket model, jumprope model

a great deal of nostalgia, in general, but when it was time to go, there was none of the homesickness of last year. in truth, part of me was glad to be coming back here. the country doesn't get any smaller, and it doesn't get any easier to be so far from them, but in oregon, there's more to look forward to these days. which I am grateful for.