It's been ten minutes. Am I rich yet?

I just created an investment portfolio all by myself and traded my very own stocks. I have a 401K and company stock and done CDs and all that jazz, but usually I sign up for the account, then leave the “Dollars! Be fruitful and multiply!” part to the nice man behind the Big Metaphorical Curtain. They take some dough out of my check. I get something in the mail that I may glance at before filing away, hoping that it’s all steadily growing without much of my involvement whatsoever. And when I retire—surprise!—I’ll have a lot of money all managed by Someone Who Knows What He’s Doing. Which is not me.

I am a tourist in finance land no more. I'm done with these beliefs: "I'm not a math or finance person. I don't think I could be good at it. It isn't my personality. I don't understand it. I better to ignore it and entirely trust someone else with it." crap. No more of those thoughts. I'm a beginner, yes. I read a book, and I understood most of it. I did some research on the Web. I looked up words in the dictionary. I found some Web sites. It’s really overwhelming. But: I created a new account. I have access to free advisors, which I intend to use. And with that, I am learning how to manage this myself. It is, after all, mine, and money, if cared for, can do good things.

There’s a handy thing online that asks you a bunch of questions then makes recommendations to you. So I did that and got advice. Then, I researched what’s making money out there right now, got the code for a few Big Hitters and traded some of what I had for something else. I’m starting out slowly—with a moderate amount until I’m more comfortable with it all. For now, I feel empowered and good and rather grown-up.

Clearly I'm missing something here.

I just spent two hours in a meeting about a printer. It involved two guys in suits who are responsible for the expensive hunk of uselessness that occasionally spits out the wrong number of copies out of order, neither collated, stapled or three-hole-punched. The Sales Dude said our problems are Microsoft and we should whine to Bill Gates. I pointed out that Microsoft doesn’t make Acrobat, and our problem is printing PDFs. He said, okay, then, I guess it’s the printer.

When Sales Dudes left we ate and talked about how ridiculous our office is: someone paid $200 a YARD so the fabric in our cubicles could have a embroidered spines on them, which, no matter how much I squint or how much acid a person could drop, does not resemble a spine. Further, why? Why would you want fabric embroidered with a spine? If you’re going to spend $12,000 on each cubicle (no exaggeration), shouldn't they be made of solid gold and come with their own well-oiled grape-feeding pool boy?

Earlier today, my cube-farm-neighbor, I'll call him Jackass, was frustrated with a box he was trying to open. He grabbed the nearest club-shaped object, which happened to be a fake bone-model of a human leg, and hit the box repeatedly with it, rather like a monkey with a stick trying to get inside of plastic tube containing a ripe banana. Only it was a 32 year-old man wielding a femur.

Back at my desk, I started going through the draft of a booklet I’m working on. I had given it to a Brand Manager with questions. For example, I said, “We have two conflicting sources of info for Product X. Please tell me which source is correct—source A or source B.” His response? “Yes.”

Jam and a headless chicken

It snowed a foot last night. This morning we made eggs and bacon and coffee and toast and I opened one of the jars of jam my aunt gave me for Christmas. It’s made of blackberries from the family farm in rural Indiana. My relatives, they don’t really mess around when it comes to farming.

My cousin trains and drives his own oxen. They make their own tools and build houses and grow most of their own food. When I was in high school, when all the other hoodlums got to road trip to Daytona beach to drink Miller Light until they barfed out a second story window, I was at my aunt and uncle’s farm castrating goats and gutting bluegill. I liked it. It was spring and the grass was getting tall and lots of fish biting and flipping all rainbowy and sticky and lots of little sheep and goats and kittens being born.

This last Christmas, my aunt and uncle and cousins made a package covered in a collage of roses and filled it with jams and green beans and pickled stuff and roasted garlic. I’ve been eating them slowly so they last longer. My older sister also got a beautifully decorated package from them. She has dietary restrictions, so when she saw me open my gift, she assumed she got a similar thing and put the package under the tree.

It turns out that my aunt knew about Emmy’s dietary restrictions, so instead of putting in jams and pickled things, she gave Em a butchered chicken. But no one knew there was a dead farm chicken in the package. We thought it was jelly. Auntie thought we'd open them all right away, but that was not the case, and she had gone home. The package could’ve stayed under the Christmas tree for days. Luckily, we figured out what it was before the cat did, and the headless Christmas chicken was still mostly frozen.

The jam was good. I’m glad I got jam. More than that, I'm glad I'm realated to my family. They live very sustainably, and are gentle to the Earth.

And it only takes TEN to learn brain surgery.

I was watching an episode of Gilmore Girls a couple weeks ago. They talk really, really fast on that show. Anyway, and Paris and Rory had a conversation something like this:

Paris: Are you getting all the stuff done on your list before graduation? Have you registered for the GRE and sent your application for law school and did you submit your poem to the Iowa Review’s poetry contest?

Rory: I don’t want to go to law school, and I don’t like to write poetry, get off my back.

Paris: Please, it’s just a poem. It’ll take TWENTY minutes. Just whip something out and get it done.

First of all, screw you, you... you... imaginary TV land character. Second of all, poor readers for poetry contests have to sift out about 3,000 poems written in twenty minutes by people like this. I'm not whining about how hard it is--lots of things worth doing are hard--I'm whining about people who blow off something I value that is misunderstood. In real life, not just TV land.

Any writer who can write something in twenty minutes good enough to win a respectable contest is a freak of nature. A freak of nature I envy, but still—writing isn’t finger painting, friends.

A special valentine: To the month of March

Dear March,
You are sucky and I don't like you.
I'd like to fall asleep and wake up in April.
-Cavu

I don’t know what the guy who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima was thinking...

*

...but I can imagine that a few important thoughts crossed his mind. And I bet one of them was along the lines of “How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?” and another was something like, “How is it that pressing this button (or trigger or whatever) can kill so many people?” And a third may have been, “Okay: I can press the button and kill a zillion innocent people, and maybe end the war. Or I can not press the button and not kill a zillion people, and definitely not end the war, which could end up killing three zillion people.”

I don't know if what happened next was psychological moral disengagement or justification or fear or confidence or what. Obviously, he pressed the button and had to live with himself, never knowing what would’ve happened if he didn’t. Around a year ago, I was in a much, much milder version of a similarly-structured crossroads—being in the perilous place where I somehow arranged to have power over the direction of a few lives, namely my own, and had to make some tough decisions without the benefit of a crystal ball. Let me tell you—it sucked. I didn’t want to have any control over anything, thank you, especially something that could seriously fuck some stuff up and potentially harm people.

It’s hard not to think about how it turned out now that I’m a year down the path of the fork-in-the-road I decided upon. I don’t have any clue how things would’ve turned out otherwise, but I have to say: It feels like this was a wise decision. Likely, in my situation, it would’ve somehow been manageable the other way as well, but it had more potential to make life much worse. I guess what I’m saying is that there was no winning choice—both of them came with a truckload of pain, just different trucks. In the end, I namely went by intuition. Intuition can be a scary thing to trust, but I did trust it. When I remember it, and its consequential sleepless nights and hellish nastiness, I feel quite sad. When I remember how amazing all my friends were, and the external sources of support that seemed to come from nowhere and lift me up, that feels comforting and hopeful. It’s better now, much better.

*The bow-tie nebula is composed of material cast off by a dying sun-like star as it enters a new phase of evolution.

Gobble.

(For Ellen, who said, "Every time I see you in class now all I can think is 'Wild turkeys! Wild turkeys!", and for DK who has now officially heard it all.)

Wild Turkeys

I wanted Edgecumb,
Straight to Saint Paul.
But it’s 494, not 65,
I recognized an exit at least
the road pointed north, a start.
No. No. Flustered. Fuck. Fucking
Where’s my phone
I’m late I’m late, oh wait
Turn left—maybe this—
I’m so pissed I’m going
To be so late, going sixty,
Woah, woah, dirt turns to gravel
Bumpy slow down, don’t slide,
A field? What the hell?

Chaos:

Squawking squawking, feathers,
Talons on glass, smack, screech,
They slide up the windshield,
It’s a fucking herd, a gaggle, a pod, a school
I snap to a stop, hands on the wheel and see
Wild turkeys, a sea,
In the middle of the road
On top of my hood on my roof,
My God. Okay.

I get out.
Yes, turkeys. Hand to forehead.
I am lost. I am late.
I am in the middle of some field.
I am surrounded by wild turkeys
Who are totally pissed off.
I scan the crowd for their wounded,
They stop warbling, stunned.
I feel like I have interrupted
Someone’s dinner party, driven
Into their dining room on accident.
Like I’ve just landed on Mars
And the locals, unsure what to say,
Just blink their marble eyeballs.
I haven’t killed anyone.
I move one aside with my shoe
To get back in the car.
Before I shut the door I say,
Um, pardon me. I guess. Goodbye.
And I’m off, back to the city.
Carefully, back to my own.

Nuqjatlh?*

This morning I brought a bunch of yummy leftover Clementines into work. I’d taken them to class last night for snacks. (There were no leftover potato chips. Funny how that works.) I put one on my boss’s desk and my neighbor Sue’s. My boss, QB, arrived at 9:15. “What is THAT.” Uh, a Clementine. “I won’t eat it.” QB said, and she gave it to Sue.

“I thought you like orange food.” I said. Every morning for breakfast QB has cheese puffs and Coke. She used to get the big thing of Cheetoes, but she wanted to be healthier, so she now has the little individual-sized 100 calorie packs. Which she eats, like, ten of (packs, I mean), and drinks about ten Cokes a day. I don’t mean to imply I have anything against Cheetoes and Coke. I love them, actually. I consider them PMS food. Not breakfast. But that is where we are different, QB and I. I like fruit. She snacks as though she was a glass-eater in the circus curiosities tent in a past life. Lucky for us, my company honors personality differences, reveres them, in fact.

This morning there was an e-mail in my in-box from HR saying that they’re overdue (by a year) in giving me a team-building exercise to determine my personality type. First there is the exam that goes something like this:

Rate one of the following as “Most Like” and one as “Least Like” and the rate the rest somewhere in between Most and Least Like:

1. Patient and detail oriented
2. Aggressive and organized
3. Quiet, contemplative and rarely has an opinion
4. Prefers to lead, opinionated
5. Contemplative and addicted to caffeine
6. Secretly envies those who speak Klingon*
7. Would install a hammock in her cube if she thought she could get away with it
8. Has given up on fulfilling, meaningful employment
9. Voted for Ross Perot
10. Spends staff meetings fanaticizing about slow dancing to “I can’t fight this feeling anymore” with the hot guy in Finance

They’re all some obscure combination of traits that don't go together, or aren't relevant, or are broad generalizations. Maybe I’m contemplative and like to be a leader but I’m NOT always extroverted and I like organization in some things, but I’m also creative and sometimes quiet but always have an opinion? What then?

Repeat this question about 194573249 times, slightly re-wording and re-arranging the same exact questions in different combinations, all of which oversimplify and do not describe anyone. The results are compiled by some online wizard robot thing, enabling our sweet and perky but scandalously overworked HR Gal to have a big Personality Meeting with us, where she give employees a bunch of Legos (no shit) with words printed on them like, “Be bright, be brief, be gone!” and “Make me feel involved.” Employees are to build the Legos up in the way that most describes us (at the top) to the least (at the bottom) and place them in our cube so our co-workers can get a feel for our personalities, and, I presume, change how they interact with us.

I know how my cube-mates personalities are. When I hear QB scream “What the HELL are you bothering me about NOW? Stop asking me questions you dumbshit!” (which happens 80394933 times a day), I know that perhaps she’s “Be bright, be brief, be gone” kind of girl. When I put my headphones on to block her out, we can all see that my personality type prefers to tune out obnoxiousness (she’s never talking to moi like that) and is quietly seething because my company is investing money in LEGOS instead of sound proof walls.

Okay, fine. I admit here that I actually like my job, and even my cube. It’s as homey as a cube will get—I have up three paintings I made, photographs of friends, postcards, a lovely red lamp (lighting is everything) and a few plants. The actual work—I like the writing/design part. I do not like the documentation-for-the-government part. But that’s another post. Other than QB’s Army Sergeant voice, fueled hourly by 12 ouches of aspartame, phosphoric acid, phenalanine and a cubic buttload of sugar, which I totally ignore, I’m rarely bugged. I get to come in, grab my iPod, do my thing, and leave. Eh, it’s an office. Only with Legos.

Love is...

Having someone to clutch while careening down a slippery hill at a million miles an hour.

Goodnight Moon

This is Io, one of my favorite moons, and I'll tell you why. Io was discovered by Galileo, a very brave man, indeed. Her name comes from a bright and resourceful maiden goddess loved by Zeus (Jupiter) and her lovely four lovely colors come from a sulfur/silicone, a slippery purpled marble.

There’s a volcano that’s been erupting for all of the 18 years humans have been watching it. When you look at the whole moon, the eruptions look little, yes, see that puff of smoke? Darlings, it is not so little. The eruptions stretch about 150 miles out. Not one to let its mother planet push it around, the volcanic blasts create half the force Io would need to motor herself right out of Jupiter’s orbit and into the spacey void.

Io has a solid steely core and a sloshing lava surface. She's is constantly regenerating herself, which heals impact wounds. She doesn’t let Jupiter push her around, and Io is pretty. What more could you ask of a moon?

I do not.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The South   That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.
The Inland North
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The West
North Central
Boston
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

weekend

Vroooooooom, baby.

So, my sweetheart announced that he’s going to acquire and start riding a Harley. I think he may have been expecting a reaction to this announcement wherein I dissuade him with generalizations about Harley Dudes and my lack of desire to date one, or mothered him regarding safety issues. But no. If that’s what he wants, he can go for it. One may not guess this upon meeting me, but I have a history with biker dudes, and I rather like fast, fast motorcycles.

I think it may have started when my parents took me to Deadwood for the Harley convention when I was in middle school. See, my family—two parents, 3 daughters aged 11-15—were piled in our maroon minivan headed for Yellowstone, and somewhere near Kadoka, South Dakota, the other automobiles on the road thinned out. Before long, we were the only four-wheeled trickster on the roads. As we neared Sturgis, we realized that we were the ONLY car surrounded by Harleys. A million of them. A million zillion. We were, coincidentally, headed for the Harley Convention. Most parents would’ve taken a detour to avoid the whole thing. My parents started calling ahead to find a campsite.

Parking lots sparkled as far as the eye could see, a sea of shining chrome. And let’s just say that the biker stereotype didn’t arise from nowhere. Generally, head-to-toe leather, R-rated slogans and inappropriately short skirts, tattoos. Some weren't all that concerned with political correctness, or using one’s ‘inside voice,’ or monitoring one’s cigarette and whiskey consumption or use of foul language.

My father is a Midwestern small-town hardware store owner. He wears plaid flannel shirts and shaves daily and likes to read books about the nesting habits of sea turtles. My mother, a high school teacher. She likes art and sewing and sips tea on the front porch. My family stuck out in the crowd, that’s all I’m saying.

Harley folks are kind. The whole vibe was quite social. When we walked into a place, the people were friendly and talkative. A few times, the gruffer folks noticeably straightened up into best-behavior mode around us children. The ladies called me honey and the men talked to my father about engine repair and joked us daughters in a protective-big-brother kind of way. We got lots of attention.

Years later, I dated a race car driver who had a motorcycle. Not a Harley, but something really fast that looked a bit like a bumble bee. Next, Nate the Fireman had an old retro bike with the headlight that looks like a big eyeball. The guy after that had a bike similar to Nate’s, but he took apart the engine and put it back together, and it broke.

That brings us to my current sweetheart, who is a nurse and a professor and is inheriting his late father’s Harley and is arranging to get a motorcycle license. He sounded braced for a "Hell-no-what-are-you-crazy" out of me. Rather, I suggested that we pack up our camping gear this summer and head to the Harley convention. Then S.A. said yeah, he’d go buy some leather chaps, to walk around in at the convention sans pants. That, however, is where I draw the line. Bikers are friendly, but no one makes friends in assless chaps.

To Poets Who Overuse the Word "Thick": You can keep your worn out words

And Keep your thick crusts of bread, your thick hair
the thick rain pinging your thick tin roof. Keep
Your cliché garden pansies.
Steaming coffee. Cigarette flickin’ attitude.
I don’t want your birds or beaches,
your broken hearts, like violin strings,
like, like, like another tired metaphor, or dusk—
Sunset’s beauty is over, friend, so are your rain clouds
with their heavy hearts, your strangling pinks and peaches.

Give me the jagged edged crusts from the serrated knife,
I want the rain that flattens your hair to your throat I want
a jellied fish too long on shore, sand that grates the thermos lid.
Fingers search through soil, I want your shovel-hits-granite crack—
I want the sound of picked strings vibrating wood
that someone once steamed
into the shape of a woman.
Give me your fingers on that hip.
Give me memory, real memory, not a sunset, but the sound of crickets
as the mighty sun sinks behind your tired back.

Dear Blog,

Why, oh why can't I see you? Have you gone away? On strike? Do we need to talk?
Come back now please.
Thank you,
Cavu

American Mussorgsky

My writer friend Lola seems to always seems to have a big enough bag with her at all times for taking notes on actual full-sized notebooks which she seems to categorize by topic. She’s a serious note-taker, that Lola, and doesn’t appear to mess around with little notebooks. Jessi, however, keeps little notebooks by the toilet in order to capture thoughts that may arise from the collective unconscious upon first waking for a few moments on the Throne. Writers, they have systems for such things.

As much as I’d like to be so systematic, I’m a helpless random-scrap-of-paper person. I’ve tried keeping notebooks, but I forever leave them on the coffee table or lose them—I have about a half-dozen such notebooks lying around at any given time, never where I need them when I need them. When I hear something I want or need to write down for later use, I use whatever is around at the time, then expect to find it later and use it as a prompt to write something no-doubt brilliant. This means I have stuff scribbled on the backs of matchbooks or coasters or receipts or sometimes important things I actually need.

Once in a dark theatre I wrote down a few dirty references David Sedaris made, you know, so I could look them up later to see what they mean. It turns out the piece of paper I'd dug out of my purse to write on was a medical training exam I had to hand in for work that will forever go on my permanent employee record. That’s the thing—these moments often come at the inconvenient times. I fully admit that I do idiotic, careless things while driving, I’m not so bad with cell phone dialing or iPod messing or lip-glossing while careening down the highway. What’s probably going to kill me is writing while driving.

The reason all this comes up is the fact that a while ago I wrote down something I really wanted to find last night and I couldn't find it later to save my life. The four Buddhist truths of consciousness (or whatever—I lost it, after all), or maybe it was the four Tibetan words for the stages of the cosmological cycle? Something like that. Anyway, I wrote it on the back of a bank receipt while driving down Hiawatha Street during rush hour, and the search for it soon became more about the determination to find it than what it actually said.

At home, I dumped out my paper recycling bag and sifted around for it. I didn’t find it, but I did find a random scrap where I wrote down something from the Composer’s Datebook (MPR) that says, “Roy Harris had been described to him as an ‘American Mussorgsky,’ which probably intrigued the Russian-born conductor, and when Koussevitzky learned that Harris had been born in a log cabin in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday no less - well, perhaps he hoped the 41-year old Harris might produce music equally all-American in origin.” To which I say, What the hell? American Mussorgsky? Why, I ask you, was this so intriguing that I had to scribble it down to save it for later?

Sometimes it makes sense. In my quest last night, I came across several cool articles I’d saved, some definitions to interesting words, a few notes from Wikipedia and this lovely poem by Kim Garcia:

Eager
Above the snow, a single maple holding forth
its dying flame. Among the feats of Nature:
the wild
greening from dry bulb, sour alchemy of rot, a rusty
handprint of lichen;
the eager
space-seeking species springing up after fire,
as though they took no lesson from destruction
but to begin again, twice as joyful.

That, my friends, is beautiful. That is a writing prompt.

So, this morning as soon as I got in my car, I pretzeled my arms under and around every seat looked through cubbies and cup holders and I found it crumpled up under the driver’s seat. I at least usually stuff them in my purse, but there you go. It says:

The big crunch
World System Evolution
Emptiness
Formation
Abiding
Destruction
Eras of…
Cycle/Formation, Endures,
Destroyed, Void
[subsist, begin again].

In the end, I'm happy with my system. I don't want to force myself to keep things neat and filed away--it's not me. And don't even talk to me about getting an electronic note-taking palm pilot or any of that rediculousness. My system is creative and interesting. I find what I need when I need it. Perhaps I'm whatever an “American Mussorgsky,” is, which may be why I saved that Composer’s Datebook scrap of paper after all.

I hit my point of return.

After finals, I’m always so fried from looking at my work and trying to be creative on a deadline and to revise things that have been through so many drafts that I can’t. Look. At. It. Any. More. I want to read what I want, watch mindless TV, and decompress.

I started by trying to read books on the MLA’s top 100. I read The Great Gatsby and Lolita, both of which have a main female character hit by a car at a very convenient moment for other characters. Then I switched to science audio books stuff, which I love, but it's difficult to concentrate on string theory while I’m trying to figure out Photoshop at work. So I went to my colleague’s desk to borrow a light and brainless audiobook (not that she's brainless--she's smart and lovely), and learned, with no surprise at all, that the guy who penned this got on the NY Times Best Seller List*:

"It was in the darkest hours of the night that he most often found himself remembering his night with Lexy in the cemetery, the night he’d seen the ghostly lights he’d come down from NY to investigate. It was then that he realized for the first time how much Lexy meant to him. As they had waited in the blackness of the cemetery, Lexy told him a story about herself. She’d been orphaned as a young child… she had terrible, recurring nightmares… Lexy instantly recognized the lights in the cemetery as the ghosts of her parents. When she told him this, he wanted to hold her in his arms."

Eventually, the switch flipped. I want to write again. No, I need to write. I have ideas. I need to do my art. I want to look at old projects and shine them up to send out. I’ve been scribbling down ideas, I started reading a book on the synthesis of scientific theory and spirituality by the Dalai Lama, and I found a beautiful photo of Tempel 1 for my project. I got a documentary on string theory to watch before I attempt Bryan Greene’s book again. I have a stack of articles on the marriage of poetry and cosmology, and my little brown book that I write poems in every day is almost full. And I want to write to Deborah and have her send me my weekly prompts. It is good to be home.

*A list I find pathetically useless, and need no part of.

How I Spent My Winter Vacation

Lifts you up, sets you down.

There is something about waves. My firefighter friend said neurologically, ocean waves and fire produce the same chemical reaction in the brain that feels soothing and calming. He’s had experiences where a bunch of firefighters race to the scene of a burning field then stand there for a moment, mesmerized by the waves of fire before they spring back into action, much to the alarm of the poor farmer who is losing his crop. The calming of a camp fire and the calm of water waves are more closely related than one might think. No surprise, considering that even the tiniest atom is full of waves, that sound and light and energy travel in waves, and we’re surrounded by and comprised of waves all around us. It all really is a giant symphony. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by this news, though I haven’t researched it myself.

Mexico was lovely. It is the first time since Australia I’ve relaxed in crystal clear waves. Being neck-high in warm sea water, and having a big curvy wave coming with all the power and beauty of the Ocean, and consciously choosing to relax every muscle and let it lift me off my feet and set me to rest a little closer to shore—this is heaven to me. The trip, in general, brought back many memories of Australia, and cultivating a friendship with the ocean in this way, and my dear friend Dan teaching me how to approach the ocean. On this trip in Mexico, S.A. and I played on the beach and perched on the sand and swam, rested, swam, rested, repeat, repeat, repeat. And I would ask him to float me up—put one hand on my lower back and one under my head, and I’d lie on my back and be lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered, and every time I tensed up I’d take a breath and try to relax again. This is harder than you think—trusting it and making a deliberate effort to literally go with the flow. But it feels really good.

I’ll have to remember this when shit hits the fan at work today. There are rumors, people leaving, things getting shifted around and re-organized. There’s some crap going down—that likely wont effect me very much, but will have everyone else in a tizzy—and secrets and all that stuff that surrounds corporate nonsense. You can tell the shitstorm’s coming because first they start buttering everyone up. Our department head just came over and handed me (and a bunch of other people) a check for $50 for no other reason than doing a good job. Highly suspicious. And next they’ll offer us something good—like pizza or ice cream or something—to lure us into the conference room. Then, when we’re good and trapped in there: the news. And I'm gonna glide right through it.

Top Ten Signs You're At A Lame New Year's Eve Party

10. To give it a Times Square feel, everyone is groped, fondled and pick-pocketed

9. "Party hats" look suspiciously like stolen traffic cones

8. "Ball drop" at midnight consists of a trick your Uncle Earl does when he's loaded

7. "Champagne" really apple juice mixed with Alka Seltzer

6. You notice a "Happy 1999" tag on the package of shrimp you've been eating all night

5. The host kicks everyone out at 11:58 so he can go to bed

4. The only guests are you and Richard Simmons, and guess who wants a New Year's Eve kiss?

3. The Amish can do many things well, but throwing parties ain't one of them

2. It's just you and a dozen Mullahs in a cave

1. It's held in March

Today is my little sister's birthday.

I was only 16 months old when she was born, so I don’t remember it. When she was 3 months old, she contracted meningitis and nearly died. She was in the hospital for a long time, and I’m told I cried and cried while she was gone, and my parents cried and cried and so did our older sister, Emily, who was old enough to know that everyone was crying but didn’t understand why. And about a year ago at a family dinner, her illness came up in conversation, and how hard it was on all of us, and how much we love her and how totally different life would be without her, and all of us, 28 years after the fact, cried there at the dinner table together. I am so thankful she was born, and so thankful that she survived.

She grew into a hilarious, energetic, totally hyper-active little kid who snort-laughed at the dinner table, set our pet bird free, made up nonsense words and shouted them an inappropriate times and giggled, and squirmed through every minute of church. She’s random and unpredictable. She loves Juice Newton and Beethoven. She’s got some weird thing for celebrity-sponsored cheap perfume and new tennis shoes—she absolutely loves them. She’s afraid of the dark. She’s an intuitive, amazing cook (I asked her to write down her recipe for chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and she couldn’t), and she plays the piano by ear. She loves and cares for the elderly for her job. I can't remember the last time she said something hurtful to anyone.

She struggles, though. Sometimes she struggles a lot. I worry about her. I am blessed to have her as a sister. She’s a unique bird, and brings warmth and joy to the world. I tell her that often.

Lists.

Things I like. I just do.:

Cool pens and ink
Spiral notebooks
Fuzzy socks
Rugby
Cosmology and Quantum Physics
Bacon
St. Mary’s Basilica
Making lists
Shells on the beach in Perth

Things I wish I liked but I just don’t:

Oatmeal
Knitting
Gardening in the yard
Sudoku
Surfing
Mornings

Things I intend to do:

Read a science article daily
Keep an audio book in my car all the time
Make more regular trips to the library
Write 2 new poems a day, good or bad
Send something out each month, at a minimum
Keep my exercise dates with Scott
Call my Gram once a week
Take a road trip south, Louisiana, the Smokies, the Florida Everglades, while they still exist
Visit Hanover
Paint more
Save for a new couch
Move into an apartment with a whole kitchen
Hand in my first draft of thesis this fall
Write more letters, including a love letter
Really learn to play the piano

Well, Brett Favre does have a nice booty.

Have I mentioned that I'm enjoying my liberation from homework, and have taken on intellectual endeavors like watching TV in my spare time? I jotted down a couple direct quotes from the announcers of the Packers/Vikings game for you. If you add "in bed" after them, you know, like you do with fortune cookies, they're even funnier.

"...Slipped and threw it right into the offensive lineman..."
"...He came right into the arms of Williamson..."
"...Williamson had six balls. He’s correcting himself now."
"took a hard hit to get the thing out to Chester Taylor--and it goes long and deep..."
"...Asked him about his relationship with Greg and he said, 'We’re cool.'"
"Oh, I like what my quarter back did right there, and he gives it to the 272 pound tight end."
"...The ball's wet and slippery.... We’re going to see a pair at first down."

In bed. In bed. In bed. In bed.
[Insert snort laugh.]

Why didn't someone tell me this is what I'm missing while I'm in grad school. Jeeze.

I am the star.

Of all the years I’ve had so far, this is the year I've learned the most and am happiest to move forward from. I’m thankful for it. Both the dark and light times of the past year make me I’m happier to move toward the future than I’ve ever been. Thanks, Chloe.

You are The Star Hope, expectation, Bright promises. The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future.

Faith, yes. Dreams realised, yes. Powerful change, yes. Healing, yes. Clarity, spiritual insight, unexpected help. Yes, yes, yes.

Who are you?

Bring it.

So, I’ve been working my ass off and the semester’s almost over. The first two years of grad school I worked part-time and I had my mornings to linger over a croissant and coffee and to write when I wanted to and to read a ton. I was also really, really poor and struggling. Now I work all day, come home and do homework until 11 PM. I get down about it sometimes, wishing I had more artist-time, and more free time or at least didn’t work for a corporation. The whole working-all-day-and-all-evening thing, I’m really really tired of it. But there’s a reason I do it: I am well taken care of. My job is pleasant enough and fairly flexible as far as jobs go. I have awesome insurance. I can pay my bills and save some. I have paid time off. I enjoy the people here, and feel good about what my company contributes to the world. So maybe I can’t sleep in and linger over coffee. But I can take advantage of the other stuff.

To those of you who know me, this will come as no surprise: I spent my bonus on an airline ticket. I haven’t been out of the country in over a year and my feet are starting to itch. There is something about being out of my culture and comfort zone that just cracks open the world for me. I lived for a while near the ocean—in Oregon and in the tropics for a little while. I love Minnesota, many things about it, but being landlocked and wearing layers of heavy clothes is really weird for me. I need sand and water. I need to wear a sarong and tank top all day and be barefoot and not covered in something wooly. And for a little while, before I start my thesis, I need my biggest decision in the morning to be “Should I lie in the hammock first? Or should I go for a swim first?”

So I’m going to the Yucatan Peninsula with my sweetheart. We’re likely staying in a small fishing village for a few days, then a hotel in the jungle by Mayan ruins, then we’re going to a small island where you can walk or bike anywhere. We’re staying in a huge condo that one of my graphic designers at work is renting to us for, like, nothing.

I’m going to dig my feet in the sand. I’m going to float on my back in the ocean. I’m going to sleep. I’m going to read whatever I want. I’m going to wander markets for beautiful jewelry. I’m going to see the ruins of an ancient village and old observatories made by one of the most advanced civilizations of the known world. I’m going to get to see what my gorgeous boyfriend is like when he isn’t half crazed by PhD work. I’m going to see what I’m like when I’m not half crazed by MFA work. Oh, it is going to be so very good.

NASA Plans Permanent Moon Base

“[NASA’s] deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said. ‘The door is open for international and commercial interests.’”

--New York Times, NASA Plans Permanent Moon Base, December 5, 2006

As some of you know, I’m a science nerd. In my free time, I read books about astronomy and physics and quantum mechanics for fun, and I’m in love with planets and stars and the waves of light that come from dust clouds billions of light years away.

I value studying astronomy very much.

NASA’s plan to build a base on the moon is so, so saddening.

The moon does not belong to us. It is separate and gorgeous and mysterious and pure and lovely with all its pits and shadows. We don’t have the right to exploit it. We just don’t. And to claim it and try to live on it and pursue “commercial interests”—the power we assume there, to stake a claim on it—it’s egotistical. It’s gross enough that we left a golf ball there—a golf ball! Guys got to the moon and someone thought, Hey, lets hit a golf ball! Think for a moment about the sport of golf and the target market golf often caters to, and the values thereof. Men went to the moon and we littered a golf ball.

The article said, “Commercial concerns might want to process rocket fuel and other products from water and other materials that might be found in the ground nearby.” The implied intention is to mine the moon’s resources. An article on Hubble’s Web site said, “Hubble observations suggests new patterns in the abundance of titanium and iron oxides, both of which are sources of oxygen, a key ingredient for life, and an essential ingredient for human exploration.”

If you study the images NASA and Hubble has taken of astrological phenomena, and if you read books by astronomers and physicists and cosmologists, the awe and reverence for our vast and amazing home is astounding. It’s breathtaking. It’s a privilege to be a tiny, microscopic part of it, and deserves such reverence and respect.

But this? This is a major violation. NASA has reservations about whether it will even serve to advance astronomical research goals at all. For the 17 billion dollars a year it will cost to make the moon base, we should first think about taking care of the planet we actually live on, or, say, feeding all the people on it. I am disappointed. I think I’m going to write NASA a letter.

Image: "This image shows the Moon's soil and mineral compostion. Mare Tranquillitatis - the 'Sea of Tranquility' - is the dark blue region on the right."

Actually, I'm writing about YOU. Any other questions?

I bet you other writers out there get this too: People who ask “What are you writing about?” I especially get it from family, who I most often see around holidays. I hate this question. I love that they’re interested, and I appreciate the kind intention behind the question, but it’s impossible to answer. And any answer I try to give is followed by a confused look and “But… what is it about?”

What is it about? Well, I’m working on 2 short stories, an essay and about 19 poems right now. One of my poems includes a character based on my self-destructive sister and the narrator’s relationship with her and her ongoing struggle between the care of herself versus the care of her sister, and finding balance between self and giving love, and the guilt for not being able to do more, and suffering and fear. It’s abstract, so the reader needs to read both for the layer of narrative and the multiple layers of suggested emotional turmoil—pain and healing in the universal sense. I’m trying to a villanelle, using the narrative of a woman with a black eye driving down a gravel road in a pickup truck. In the poem, I intertwine metaphors of what is infinitely small (atoms) and infinitely large (the cosmos) to cause the reader to question mortality and what existence really is about—is it about what matters to us? Should we make an effort to put our impulses and serious problems into perspective? What is a big problem anyway? So it’s also about theoretical cosmology. The history of the universe and physics and theories about how and why we exist. Would you like to hear about my other 21 projects?

I can try to give this answer, or a less painfully personal version of it, but they never know how to respond. I don’t think this is what they want. It’s like when people ask “How are you?” and you know they want to hear “Fine” because they’re asking to show light affection, not to get a real answer.

Giving a general answer doesn’t work. Saying one of my current 22 writing projects is about a girl driving a truck is like saying Animal Farm is about a pig. If Animal Farm is about a pig, then here is what I am writing about:

Nursing homes
Sex
Outer Space
Sledding
Eagles (the band)
Somalia
Grass
Breakups
Cats
Domestic Abuse
Rubber Chickens
Birds
Planets
The Spine
Boats
Ribbons

An incomplete list, but you get the idea: Giving a short answer trivializes the work. I have so many multi-dimensional projects going at once, and even I don’t know what some of them are about. “What are you writing about?” would be more accurate if stated as “Tell me about what you’re doing that’s meaningful to you right now. I know writing is important to you—tell me about that.” That is a warm, good request, especially if followed by attentive listening, an effort to understand and subsequent inquiries.

So: What to do…. Here’s a possible answer: “What I’m writing about is really complex and personal. Trying to explain it quickly wouldn’t really do the work justice, but thanks for asking. I’m working on several pieces right now about relationships and philosophy. When I get published, I’ll bring you a copy.” There—I just killed both “What are you writing about?” And “When can I read something?” with one stone. Now, for a response (be sure to look at the cartoons) to “I’m thinking about writing a book when I’m done with my next knitting project. It sounds fun.”

Rothko

I’m in a coffee shop down the street from me that feels oddly empty and quiet. It isn’t empty. Every table here has one occupant each, and I just noticed that I’m the only woman. The walls are large and bare and mostly white except for a scene painted on them in one color with no variation—a sort of tomato orange. The scene is solid and has distinct corners. Part of the mural is of an abandoned warehouse with broken windows, which takes up 1/3rd of one of the walls, and the rest of the walls are painted with a silhouette of telephone poles and connecting wires that cross and sag along the rest of the walls.

I can sort of see it—an urbanite wants to open a coffee shop, so she gets a retail space sort of in the hip neighborhood but on side streets so she can afford it. She brings in an artistic consultant. He comes into the room, puts his hand to his chin and after a moment says, “I’ve got it. I see white. I see a red—no, orange—no, red-orange. I see [dramatic pause] telephone poles. Rows and rows of telephone poles.”

I’m sitting by the wall by the cracked-up orange warehouse and my shirt, oddly, is the same red as the paint. It looks planned. Everyone is quiet here. Most of the men look like they came home from whatever work wherever, ate something and fell asleep in front of the television for 15 hard minutes, then woke up with a start and thought “I have so much shit to do. I have to get out of this apartment.” Two of them are holding up their heads by resting their chin in a hand and an elbow on the table. I kind of wish my cell phone would ring.

All the men have white coffee cups except the guy with the hair straight up and the cowgirl boots. There are large, bulbous lamps on each table that look like trees from The Lorax. I’m drinking a lemon soda called Bubble Up! And sitting in a chair covered in gold-flecked plastic. There’s definitely some sort of 50’s theme going on here.

All of us are here for company and we know it. There are five tables against each wall and behind us and behind the light from the Lorax Trees, orange telephone wires connect us at the shoulder or head, and I think about wires. Telephones with hearty coiled cords and grounded computers and the speaker in my car with a loose and unreliable wire "I'm wired," how obsolete telephone poles already are. I think of how 50’s homemakers cried the day a husband wheeled the first television into the living room because otherwise, there had very little access to the outside world, except in books and radio and imagination.

The tables are full here because our own walls are not covered in orange telephone poles and we need something that isn’t what we’re surrounded by all the time, even though we’ll stare at our screens and books like I have for over eight hours already just today. And we need people—silent is fine, just to be around more people. In the same room with them. Six Dells. Three Macs. Four Razors. Us. We probably won’t talk.

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.- Vernor Vinge

Hemmingway once wrote a really short story. It goes like this:

"For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn."

Wired Magazine asked authors to write a 6-word short story. Here are some of my favs:

Longed for him. Got him. Shit. - Margaret Atwood
Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.- William Shatner
Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?- Eileen Gunn
Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.- Joss Whedon

Then I tried some of my own:

Submerged crocodile licks lips.
“Romantic swim?”

**

Broken vows generate escape velocity.
Freedom.

**

Tequila in Minneapolis?
Breakfast in Tijuana.

**

Here he comes! Run for your—

OKAY, your turn.

Thesis? Piece of cake.

Miz Voix de Michele is handing in the first draft of her thesis today. Do go congratulate her.

Four

Shamelessly ripped off from other bloggers:

Four jobs I have had in my life:

Worm sorter. (Bait.)
Maid.
Wine Club Manager.
Medical Writer.

Four jobs I think would be neat:

Scuba diving instructor.
Travel writer.
Musician.
Nun. The good kind. Especially if I could fly.

Four places I’ve lived:

Rural Indiana
Oxford, England
Portland, Oregon
Perth, Western Australia

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

Cabo
New Orleans
Wyoming
Prague

Four TV shows I love to watch:

Jeopardy
Oprah
Some sitcoms from before 2003
The Universe shows on PBS

Four of my favorite foods:

Thai curry w/ tofu and veggies
Ruffles and French onion dip
Gourmet chocolate and red wine
Enchiladas

Four places I’d rather be right now

Cottesloe Beach
The Walk Café in Subiaco
Road tripping through South America
A cabin in the mountains with lots of windows.

Happy Halloween

BOO.

Anyone? Anyone? Anybody out there?

Today I took 6,395,329 pounds of books to the used book store. The idea was to sell them and walk out with more money and fewer books than I walked in with. Rather, I walked out with the same amount of books I walked in with, minus $64.

I am working on a research paper about poetry written about science. I’m learning that there isn’t much of it out there. I got a book called “Verse and Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics.” Other than that, I’m not finding much poetry about science (for adults—there are some kid’s science education books). Can any of you recommend anything? Specifically about the Universe/Space or about the opposite: Cells, microscopic stuff. They don’t need to be whole books about it—a single poem here and there will do. Anyone?


"It hit the news today: the telescopic evidence,
faint light from cosmic gas, traces of the stuff
that held everything at once--my fingernail, this pen...
my mother's hairnets, the plane that crashed in Dallas yesterday...
the cameo that vanished under my bed when I was ten, mountains
of bleashed conch shells, women washing sheets
in the Ganges... cobbled streets
of Paris, craters on the moon, spaceships not invented yet
and cameras clicking pictures of that cosmic dust
colder than the pain of loss--proving that everything came
from the same infintesimal seed
about the size, they say, of the dot at the end of this sentence."

--Dinah Berland, All Together, Nothing Lost

In which the artist bangs her head on her desk, stops to yawn, and resumes.

When I dragged myself
to my cubicle this morning
It was like I had never left. I can’t escape
To a coffee shop
Or—novel idea—the gym
Because I have to leave on time again
to go to class and I
I’m going nuts
It is 2:30. The day is young.

My rhododendron weeps for me.
The printer whines.
If my cube had iron bars
I’d drag a tin can along them.
If my cube had iron bars
I’d hold them in my fists
Shake and do something obscene,
like a monkey at the zoo who belongs
in a tree, in a forest, in a country, far, far
away from here.

Where will untellable stories be told?

“We would learn to hear the blankness / that forms the essence of our going on”
--McPherson

On the lawn at 1 a.m. they grow
closer together, strangers in robes
and party skirts and flannels they come
from watching television, making routine love
the bar, couches where they dozed, they come
from doorways and alleys
from the gun shot, the sirens, or the
rustling of voices they have come
together now, from the corners, with nothing
at all to say.
A boy is dead. They all know that
The many questions have no answers
no use asking
but there is comfort
in standing near, the drawing in like ducks on a pond,
an unlikely group, silent, as if to say I
am not alone I am not alone right now these
are my companions
in this they shift their weight cross
and uncross their arms then one girl, maybe twenty, says
It is late.
They separate, the miserable thread of the night growing long and tangled
between them.

Firstbasawassa

Coach Conrads Sit-up Camp for Shirtless Boys

I Ransacked My Landlord's Garden

You charged Joanie downstairs for heat and water
for the washer everybody, including you, uses.
You yelled at Ali for not composting eggshells.

And when I asked you to replace the backdoor eyehook
with a deadbolt
you told me that such paranoid vibes
sent forth into the world
will only serve to attract rapists to me, and
by your inaction, you declared you deemed
a lock
unnecessary.

You didn’t tell me that squirrels nest
in the vent ducts in the cold and will
break into my house and might
smash my stained glass art,
pee on my bookshelf
and claw the window sills so they look
torn, like the work
of a crowbar
which sent me screaming down
the stairs to the neighbors
There's A Man In My House
when it was just three stinking rats
with bushy tails.

Yes,
it has been a while, I know, but today,
I ransacked your garden.
All summer you have been bent
yanking and digging and sweating and I
have watched you
from my comfortable chair on the balcony,
sipping wine, grilling burgers and now,
Steve,
A half-dozen red ripe tomatoes
sit in my bowl.

Three hot peppers,
the only yellow squash,
several cucumbers (there are a thousand),
a head of lettuce, five carrots,
a most beautiful violet eggplant with
waxed-shiny skin and
a spongy core fresh
and white,
like a daisy.

I wonder, Steve, if you put some
fear-of-people-steeling-your-vegetables
paranoid vibe
into the Universe
because
I blame your vibe
for making me hack through
enough rhubarb
for twenty-seven pies.

I do have one regret.
I did not not take
the lovely lone melon.
The cord, too strong
for me to break
by myself.

Jackpot.

I picked up my new car last night. The sellers and I went to the DMV together to with our sickle’s (for the red tape), and after nearly keeling over from the amount of taxes I had to pay (there is no sales tax in Oregon, so what a surprise!) and dealing with a guy who didn’t want to accept my out-of-state check (Yes, I’ve lived here 2 years and still have Oregon checks. Sue me.), and filling stuff out and all that jazz, I have my new car. Well, it is new to me.

My old car—well, dears, my old car is very old. If my old car were a person, she’d be named something like Matilda and would be someone’s 80-year-old grandma who wears fuchsia polyester pants, smokes 3-packs of Parlaments a day, complains about her aching liver and spends far too many late nights drinking cheap gin through a straw in front of the slot machines at the casino. She’s not stylish, has a broken tape deck, coffee stickiness on the dash (no cupholders), and no cruise control. She wheezes and coughs and clunks and exudes a puff of smelliness every time I turn left. And like said granny-lady, she’s been there when I needed her—gotten me around in my underemployed days, made it through a snowdrift in rural Wisconsin, blasted through Chicago toll roads without (accidentally) paying, remained relatively rust-free, and recently survived being driven into an (almost) flash flood. Matilda, she’s a trooper when she isn’t groaning about her aching CV joints and asking for insanely heavy buckets of change to be dropped in her engine.

My new car, if she were a person, her name would be Ruby and she’d be dressed in stylish yet comfortable designer shoes she found at a consignment shop. She’d belong to MPR, vote, pluck her eyebrows and occasionally date a motorcycle. She would see Paris while she’s young, eat chocolate ice cream in her pajamas and escape to the boundary waters for the weekend. She’s pretty but not too frilly. Practical, safe, and zippy enough to be fun and free-wheelin’.

I feel like I just went from a college-age futon and milk-crate coffee table to Pottery Barn. Not Ethan Allen, but happy to have it.

Word of the day: Phhhhht.

Things that suck:

Family issues that I won’t bother going into and some other unfortunate crap.
Dreams about hurt friends and burnt love letters in the toaster (Hey, it was a dream).
Schlepping boxes and stuffing 250 marketing launch packets.
Heavy boxes.
Incompetent people who say they’re going to do something (that is ON a DEADLINE) then don’t do what they said they’ll do, and to fix it, you must make 42,000 phone calls like this: “Dial 1 for loans, 2 for contracts, 3 to wait on hold for 5000 more minutes only to be connected to someone COMPLETELY useless who will just fuck up your paperwork even MORE.”
Eating cheap take-out lunch while trying to assemble 250 shipping boxes.
Clowns. Okay, clowns have nothing to do with today, but aren’t they totally creepy?
My boss, who got in at 9 and left at 4.
Cute shoes that really hurt.
Stupid people who demand stupid unreasonable things and change their mind at the last effing second and don’t understand what you do enough to know you can’t just freaking whip out jobs in two seconds by command.
TWO presentations on poets that may or may not be due tomorrow but must be prepared anyway.
PMS.

Things that do not suck about today:

French Meadow’s Almond Croissants and my friend Kate.
Getting home from work.
Flannel pajamas.
Purple. I just like purple.
The 42,000-phone-calls-stupidity working out in the end.
People who help stuff 250 packets and assemble shipping boxes.
Overtime.
Fall. Fireplaces.
72 hours until I leave town for a north woods cabin.
Myself, who has good work ethic. Except for that whole personal-emails thing.
Good. Boxed. Wine.
Cheesy chick TV shows.
Quality frozen pizza.
My new car. Well, new to me. I pick it up on Thursday.
Phones with an off button.

Oh, more good things on the list than bad things. That’s good.

-Deborah Keenan

Your job is to add
To the river.
You might be
a drop of rain.

If you break down, I'll drive out and find you...

I spent my actual b-day in Indiana with my family—my whole immediate family—and that is exactly what I wanted. My older sister and I drove out to the country to our masseuse friend’s house for massages. After my massage I dozed off in a patch of tall grass next to the big red barn while I waited for my sister. There were chickens and a big green cornfield and a little pumpkin and sunflower patch and a big blue sky. It smelled like home.

I also went to see my 96 year-old granny and my aunt and uncle and cousins and parents and cousin’s babies came over, and I played with little Autumn who is 3 and when we parted she gave me a kiss and made the I-love-you sign with her hand—her mom is teaching her sign language now—and it was all very sweet. Then we barbecued in my back yard and had really yummy cake and wine on the screened in porch of our big old house and talked about our lives, and how blessed we are and how fast time goes. On our refrigerator there is a picture of my father at age 5 on his bicycle just outside that screened in porch. My family’s been in that house for almost 3 generations now, and he grew up in it too.

Back in Minnesota, Voix and Frances threw a killer party for me with all of my favorite stuff and all my favorite people. We drank champagne and had the best cake ever and red curry for dinner (fav) and went to a swanky place where we drank drinks that end with –tini. I got presents: a journal, salt and pepper shaker, litjo subscriptions, a set of golf clubs, a great ACDC t-shirt. It was classy and fun, and Voix’s cooking totally kicks ass.

I love my birthday time because the sun is high and bright and people are jamming the last bits of fun into the rest of summer and then we get to calm down, rest, harvest stuff, turn inward, get the sweaters out of the closet, turn on the fireplace, pick apples, read and write more, and the life cools down. This time of year, school starting and things ripening and everyone resting from a busy fun summer. It is good. Being 30 is good.

I am going home to Indiana today to celebrate my thirtieth birthday,

which is Sunday. Because I'm leaving work early, I needed to work extra to hit my 40 hours. Because work dinners count as hours, I decided to leave work at the regular time yesterday and go to the dinner planned for our sales reps. Usually, I skip these.

Now, I haven't worked at a company that actually has money for a long time. I've certainly never been in a position to go out to a shmancy restaurant, eat and drink well and get paid for it. My last job was at a very poor nonprofit. My other job was nannying two little boys. My job before that was a receptionist. You get the idea.

Can I just tell you that for about 15 people, we ran up a tab that was the same amount of money that I lived on for an entire semester. It's approximately enough cash to feed all the starving children in China, AND fund research to learn to make fuel out of corn cobs. I was astounded. People ordered so many shots of Patrone that eventually, when one young woman nearly slid out of her chair like a wet noodle, the waiter cut us off. I was even more astounded when one of my co-workers, the leader of the whole young, flash, hammer-fied group, tried to kiss me in front of everyone, and when I dodged him, he accidentally licked my face.*

I don't know if this is common protocol or not. Maybe it was a particularly crazy night. If I ever, ever tell you I'm dating either a sales rep or a surgeon, you have my permission--rather, you are required--to come to my house and perform a lobotomy. Not that they're ALL bad, but I'd certainly consider it a high-risk endeavor.

Now, I have to roll out of bed and go into the office, and I really, really don't want to.

*Lucky for him, I know he's a very respectful guy who was having a rare, dipshit moment.

With salt. Extra salt.

Moi. And Voix.

I am playing hookey from work.

It is 12:30 and I am home sick. Am I sick? Well, a little. I have a cold. And lots of paid sick time. So I am home, and I just left a v-mail for the Voix and I'm going to read and take a nap and watch some movies that I swiped from Kate and Tim when I went over to water their plants. They are on their honeymoon.

I am not going to stay on the computer very long. It is not okay to play hookey from work then spend all day on the computer unless you are doing mandatory homework, and I have no homework right now. I must find mischief. I don't know what kind. One can't ditch out on something unless it's to do something Ferris-Buhler's-Day-Off-esque. At least a little bit.

Now, I'm off to eat enchiladas and drink margaritas with the Voix. Suckas.

Yes. A while.

I just called my ex in Australia and he was asleep—it’s 11 p.m. or so—-so we agreed to talk later and I said Love You because we still do that even though it is a different kind of Love You than before. He didn’t say it back. Which means either his mother is present or he’s in bed with a woman, because I know he loves me to pieces and I know him well enough to know when he’s up to mischief. I shrieked at him—OMG, you totally have a girl over. I teased the shit out of him for a minute and he laughed and said he’ll talk to me tomorrow. He wasn’t dating anyone when I talked to him less than a week ago, so she’s either really new or an ex or a one-nighter. Where once I’d have found this utterly heartbreaking, now it’s just funny and whatever and no big whoop.
That is kind of weird, that this isn’t weird. Does that make sense? I used to live with this man and bought us dishes and talked about marriage and had Christmas with his parents and washed his endless pile of rugby socks. There was a time that I couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t include us together. Then, things changed. When we were heartbroken about it, it was impossible to imagine that being apart would ever feel natural or okay. We thought it would feel wrong and foreign forever. And it doesn’t feel that way—it feels like finally, after 5 years of knowing each other, our relationship is finally exactly where it is meant to be for the long haul. He’s there and I’m here and he dates and I date and we call each other to whine about who we’re dating and we send birthday presents and have a whole new meaning for the I Love Yous between us. Sometimes we can promise to love someone forever and move heaven and earth to keep them as safe and happy as possible. Sometimes you are wrong, and can’t and don’t keep that promise, and that is scary to think about, because if you can be wrong once, you can be wrong again.
I guess… that’s where we’re lucky, Dan and me, is that that part hasn’t changed at the core, it just looks different than before. I still would jump in front of a speeding train to save the guy, and he would for me. And whenever I call him crying about something, he cries with me because even though he’s a big, burly, hairy, steak-lovin’ manly man he can’t hear me cry without getting teary. But the love does not look like I expected it to—we don’t have romantic feelings for each other anymore--and there was a time that I couldn’t trust that things would ever be okay. But they are. It took a lot of time and hurt like hell, but they are okay. And I’m really lucky for that. That even though we’ve been through a train wreck and couldn’t ever imagine how it would ever get untangled, it really is all back on track. It feels good to finally be able to say that and mean it. It’s taken a while.

Grodie.

Did you know that Dairy Queen has a flavor of Blizzard called "Cheesequake?" Excuse me, but I do not want my Blizzards to evoke the image of quaking cheese. I like cheese. I like ice cream. I approve of these dairy products. Please do not mix them.

Ich lebe mein Leben in Wachsenden Ringen

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

-Rainier Maria Rilke

Some sad notes from an old notebook I used to write in when I was half asleep:

In bed
I smooth my foot along
my dry white calf.
So soft
after you were gone
from lying here
Evening.
Night.
All morning.

***

The earrings I wore tonight
glisten on the counter top

You will never understand
the depth of my sadness.

When my last lover saw me
In the picture by the waters

He said standing there
You look like you might
dive in
and swim away.

***

The tree has borne a thousand seeds
and none will ever live.
Last night, the storm
ripped a thousand branches
to the ground.

Why didn't you tell me?

She is sick
to think of it.

***

What I remember most about you
is orange skies
in Minnesota winters.
I was amazed
that it never got
truly dark.

Sponge-Tim No-Pants

My friends Tim and Kate got married yesterday at 5:30 in the morning. They rented a giant camping space in the boonies that was private and pretty. A bunch of people camped and the grandparents and aunties and such stayed at a hotel nearby. Camping Friday night. Wedding at 5:30 Saturday morning. Brunch. Free time for swimming, golfing, canoeing, etc. Reception at 3. Camping again Saturday night.

It was approximately 1005968493 degrees yesterday, so the 5:30 a.m. nuptials outdoors turned out to be a good idea, a cool 83 degrees with a nice breeze. The bride dragged me out of my tent at 4 a.m. We woke up the bride’s sister and a friend or two. We went to the bridal tent (tall enough to stand up in) where we strapped Kate into a bra that looked much like a torture device, Lauren clipped on jewelry and I put on a headlamp, the kind you use for spelunking, to do the bride’s makeup. It was still totally dark out.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel (the groom loves his bride’s hardcore outdoorsyness, but wanted AC and, you know, a shower before his own wedding), the groom and his best friend were dressing. Tim put on his shirt, his tie, his jacket. Then he felt a cool breeze and realized something was missing: he had no pants. There were no pants on the hangar, none in the bag, none under the bed. The groom, he had no pants.

Tim made the 40 minute drive back to Minneapolis in SEVENTEEN minutes wearing a dress shirt, tie, and his boxer shorts.

At 5:30 a.m., all the friends were caked in bug spray and sweat and bed-head and had breath that could kill an elephant. There was no running water, you see, and pit toilets. But Kate—not Kate. Kate was born with mutant naturally-gorgeous genes. She rolled out of her tent with flowing hair soft as cornsilk, as fresh as a spring daisy. She was dazzling. When she walked across the field with her father to marry her groom, she was glowing, Tim was glowing, and he had on pants. It was all as it should be. We would’ve cried if we hadn’t been so dehydrated that it was impossible to produce tears. The ceremony was meaningful and the J.O.P. said relevant and touching things. Tim’s father sang a very appropriate and lovely song he wrote for the couple. His sister sang “All you need is love.”

Then we ate brunch. And instead of canoeing and golfing and swimming, per The Plan, everyone went home or to various hotel rooms to shower and shave their teeth and take a 2 or 3 hour nap. Then we went to the reception where we visited and hugged lots of people and ate barbecue food and really good cheesecake. I skipped the second night of camping and drove home and slept in my own bed for 10 whole hours. It was happy, and I am glad they are married and I am glad to be clean and in air conditioning.

Tonight I rowed on the Mississippi

...in a double with a young woman named Erika. It was a skinny double--not much wider than my hips--and very sensitive to every movement. Sleek and white on the outside, and all wood on the inside. An old boat.

Erika bowed, so she sat behind me and called out instructions every once in a while to steer, but mostly we just rowed. It was cloudy, so it wasn’t too hot, and the water was totally calm. Because she was bowing, I didn’t have to look back or think about what direction we were headed or if we’d hit anything. All I had to do was my job, a rhythmic motion, and look straight out ahead at the rippling V we sliced through the water, at the three ducks by the shore, at the one white cloud atop gray ones the shape of a crumpled quilt, at the airplane just taking off at the horizon, at the arc and pedicles of the Lake Street Bridge and the lone biker crossing from one city to the next. Arms away, slow up the slide, click, plunk, exhale and power through the drive, handle heights even around the corner at the finish and click to feather the oars for the recovery.

The first thing I bought with my first paycheck...

...was a pair of Levi 501 button fly jeans. They were boys’, so they sat lower on the hips and were relaxed. It was the early 90’s. Baggy enough to be grunge, fitting enough to still look like a girl. I loved them. I wore them to school. To make out with my boyfriend in his parent’s basement. I took them to college. They traveled across the country with me when I graduated. I hiked up volcanoes in them. I hiked in caves. I sat in them on the floor of my first one-room studio apartment, which had no furniture, cross legged, the hems at the feet all frayed, and cried to my sister twelve states away about not being able to find a job. Eventually, I wore them to my job.

First they got a hole at the knee, then the butt started to wear thin on account of my bony ass. Eventually, they were ratty as hell. I had to do something. Drastic? Yes: I cut them into jean shorts. The button holes on the fly were so worn they’d come undone of their own accord, so I sewed them smaller. I ironed patches beneath the back pockets where you could see the sun shine through. I wore them more. Then: it was time.

I retired the first pair of jeans I bought with my first paycheck when I moved to Australia. It was sad, but they were dead. Gone. Practically just a series of patches and thread. It was time.

After I got home from Australia, I flew to New York and Becky and I shopped at a discount store in New Jersey. I spotted them across the room. This is the part where we would have locked eyes (you know, if jeans had eyes) and cheesy love music would have played over the loud speaker. I made my way to the clearance rack. I snatched them up, tried them on in the dressing room, and Becky exclaimed, “Yeah, I like ‘em. They’re cool.” We’ve been together ever since. They came with me to Japan, another move to Portland. Road trips. Dates. They were aptly named “the nice-ass jeans” by my ex-boyfriend. The hems around the feet are just the right length in my favorite pair of shoes.

I regret to inform you that the Lucky nice-ass jeans are dying. They’ve got a hole on the top of the left thigh, which I can live with. But around Christmas, they started getting the same worn-thin transparency around the sit-bones that the Levis had. Damn my bony ass. I asked my mother to perform some serious surgery, patches and stitching here and there. It worked for a while. Now, it’s no use. It’s time to retire them. Before I’m entirely forced to turn them into strictly around-the-house jeans, I’m trying one more set of ass-patches. But they won’t feel the same. It won’t be long now. The patches will feel stiff and weird. I won’t wear them as often. Today, at the mall, I shopped for a new favorite pair of jeans.

I also regret to inform you that, much to my dismay, the jeans with zippers on the side at the ankle, the kind that burn your leg when you put them on straight out of the dryer, the kind we wore in the SEVENTH GRADE, are back. I tried on maybe 10 pair (not the ones with the zippers—I’m SO not going back to seventh grade). I tried on the “boyfriend cut” jeans, which do not fit like boyfriend’s jeans at all. I tried on the ones that are pre-bleached to look like they’re worn and wrinkled, which The Voix said made me look like I’d gotten fat, washed them a bunch, then lost weight. Bleachy stretch-marks. No thank you. I found a pair that I liked—they’re cute and make my legs look long—so I bought them. But they’re trendy. They’re good for a fling, but not the real thing. Now that I’m on the market for some new Most Favorite Jeans, it looks like what’s out there since last time has changed. Maybe I’ll never fall in love with a pair of jeans again, but I’ll keep trying them on, and who knows. It could happened when I least expect it.

Fun with online dating

My latest love letter from a total stranger. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried:



Hello [Cavu],
I hope you are doing ok.
Have you ever danced untill you felt that you were like an eagle flying graciously across the blue sky?
You look and sound so genuin and sweet. When I first saw your pic I had this feelings in my heart that I have been unable to shake since then. I have not felt like this in a very long time.
Me--I will start off by letting you know that I am a very honest man and expect the same from others. I am not a Denzel Washington but I have this feeling that we could be great friends. I am a down to earth and caring person and I do not play games. I felt an urge to write to you bacause I was overcome with feelings looking at your pic.
Tell me-Do you believe in "Love at first sight?"
Even though we've never met, something about your looks and profile got my equilibrium disturbed.My mind raced as waves of passion flushed over my dark skin, causing me to gaze upon visions of impossible romantic possibilities.I felt like a pathetic man who anticipates the true rhythm of love, with a woman he might never hold. My imagined discourse of thoughts left me suffering, as my lips quivered with the words I might never speak
"I have loved you more than anybody in this world."

I am looking foward to hearing from you. A pic will follow your responce.
Take care for now.
Regards,
-Rico