deracinated

Leaving town

2011-10-16T11:58:00.000-06:00

The below story is inspired by NPR's Three Minute Fiction contest. I didn't enter, but I did follow the rules: 600 words or fewer; the story must have one person enter town and one person leave it.

*********

The building blocks collapsed like a sand castle—slowly, crumbling, as though something behind or underneath were pushing to get out.

“Buh-ee,” the toddler said as she pushed the rabbit through the shell of the toy-block town that she had laboriously constructed just five minutes ago.

“What’s that bunny doing?” her mama asked as she tucked footed pajamas into a dresser. “Is he smashing the town?”

“Ton,” the little girl nodded in agreement. She swung the bunny side to side by his ears, aiming to level any two blocks that remained stacked atop one another.

The bunny’s arrival in “town” had left a few casualties—a stuffed cotton frog, a raggedy plush dog and a naked plastic baby doll, all toppled from their makeshift beds of handkerchiefs and diapers.

Mama finished putting away clothes and put her hands down atop the oak dresser, letting her head hang down. “Silly bunny,” she said tiredly.

“Buh-ee,” the little girl said sadly. She threw the toy into the wreckage on the floor and stood over it, contemplating. Finally, she turned to her mama. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Buh-ee down.”

Mama stepped over the mess on the floor and told her daughter, “I’m going to go put on some laundry. You stay here. Help bunny put the blocks in the toy box, OK?”

“’Kay,” the girl agreed, and she followed her mama out the door.

The two separated clothes and stuffed them into the washer; mama let the girl scoop the laundry detergent into the automatic dispenser and push the button to start the load.

Mama ignored her ringing phone and insistent daughter as she carried a laundry basket full of dry clothes out to fold them. The girl walked right between her mama’s legs and whined, “Ma-ma, uppy. Mommy, mommy, mommy…”

“No uppy,” Mama returned. “No uppy. You can walk. Here. Come help Mama fold the laundr-eeeeee—” She let go of the basket as her feet slid across the floor on a surfboard of wooden blocks. Her arms flailed to find purchase—or at least to push her daughter out of the way so she wouldn’t fall on her.

No such luck.

Together they landed in a pile of tangled limbs and soft toys and sharp blocks. The back of Mama’s head thudded dully against the wood floor; one jeaned leg came down on the soft sloping bridge of baby’s nose.

The little girl screamed and her mama groaned and rolled off of her. She crawled away from the decimated toy block town on her hands and knees, momentarily stunned by the numbing blow. Though she hadn’t looked at her daughter, she could tell from her gasping cry that she was more scared than hurt.

Her head pounded too much to stand upright, so she let herself lay down on the floor again. She couldn’t seem to say anything just yet to her girl; each breath was jagged and piercing. It was OK as long as she didn’t move.

She heard the answering machine click on and the girl’s skinny-voiced, skinny-chinned, skinny-hipped father start talking.

“Hey, Cheyenne?”

The toddler quieted.

“Yeah, uh, I’m not coming tonight.” He was drunk.

So surprised, Mama thought from the floor. More of the same.

“I know it’s my weekend—“

And you missed last weekend.

“Da-ee?” The girl asked.

“But… I lost my job today.”

Of course you did, she said. She swore under her breath, sending a tear of pain through her side.

“And I just had to get out of town.”

A secret: Writing exercise

2011-06-01T20:52:00.001-06:00

The boy grabbed the sumac drupes and squished them between his dirty fingers. I wanted to slap him but ‘stead I just said “no.” He’s only four and I never hit my kids before they’s five. But this one tested me, more than t’others.

He was freckled and near cross-eyed like his daddy. When he looked at me with his good eye I felt like he was looking at my mind, though he dint never say more’n “boo” to me. Dint say much to no one, really, which made mos’ ‘spec he was slow. Was hard to tell if he’s slow or just mean, and tricky. All kids is mean at four, anyway, and I was hopin’ hard he’d outgrow it. His daddy dint never.

“Carl junior quit that right now yer gettin’ yer white shirt all stained,” I hollered but ‘for I could finish Carl senior came out on the porch and asked what’s yer problem. Why you so hard on that boy?

I wanted to tell him so bad a hole burnt thru my tongue. Out loud I said that he was always gettin’ into trouble and he needed the rod. It was only good for him.

I turned my back on the boy and watched the sunset. I like to look at the sun when it caint burn my eyes. Seems wrong that something like that could blind you, something so everyday like the sun.

Carl junior’s putting worms and beetles in his pockets when I turned around. In his Sunday clothes, even. I bit my tongue. He laughed when his sister screamed to stop putting bugs in her hair. I bit so hard I could taste blood.

Half-sister, I corrected myself. Though no one knew that but me.

2011-04-21T15:41:00.000-06:00

yesterday I planted raspberries, in alpha order E to W:
Anne
Autumn Britten
Boyne
Canby
Caroline
Fall Gold

I put them in just south of the old cottonwood stump, on the edge of the yard. Farther east, I planted a mulberry, right inside the property line as well. To the west, just W of the lilac, I put in a blackberry and then, about 12 feet away, a grape. Go grape! I think it's a Mars variety but can't remember just now.

Also put a clematis on the south side of the porch, to vine up the railings.

Still need to put in the strawbs and asparagus, and the fruit trees: plum, pear, apple, cherry and apricot. More to come on that (incl varieties).

Peas in the ground, though they'll need row cover to germinate. The inside-started seeds are doing so well! Tomatoes, peppers, onions, broc and melons. Also some zinnias. :)

spring is here

2011-03-28T10:16:00.000-06:00

Planted tomatoes, peppers and onions! They're sprouting (although some of the onions didn't make it, and had to be replanted). Putting them under lights today, to help keep tomatoes from getting leggy.

Cleaned up the strawberry patch yesterday and prepared some of the beds. Most of the beds still need to be built or walled. Todd's working on terracing the hillside.

Vacuuming the floor

2011-03-16T20:31:00.001-06:00

Vacuuming the floor

Susie Sunshine was underfoot again. She kicked the doll and it let out a creepy laugh as it skittered across the floor.

Karma’s a bitch, though, and as her foot returned to her body it swept the vacuum cord along with it. Unable to set her foot down properly, she lost her balance, falling neatly onto her derriere, whacking her tailbone against the coffee table on her way down.

The vacuum fell over on top of her. She swore under her breath. Then she noticed the coffee cup.

Precariously perched on the edge of the coffee table, it had been launched into an a series of wider and wider gyrations by her bump, and it finally lost its balance, tumbling all over her and all over the cream colored area rug beneath. To make matters worse, the coffee was sweetened and left sticky brown trails everywhere it spilled, including her hair and clothes. As if I have time for a shower, she thought.

The phone rang.

You have got to be kidding… she said out loud to the empty room. She’d left the phone in Sam’s room, on the dresser, about three feet from his sleeping head. He would sleep right through the monotonous hum of the vacuum, but the irritating bleat of the phone…

Sure enough, the second ring was punctuated by his wail: Mama! Maaaaama.

She pushed the vacuum off of her and stomped off towards the boy’s room, deliberately stepping on little Susie this time, setting off her eerily chippy voice again, “Wanna play?”

The Stepdaughter

2010-12-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

Exercise:

Someone else chose the setting and characters. He established that it was a father and stepdaughter in a dining room, and the stepdaughter gets angry and lashes out. Here's my 10-minute fast writing response:

In the last two minutes, I’d gone from standing on the other side of the room to baring my teeth ten inches from her ear, growling her name like a damn German Shepherd.

But I couldn’t force her to turn her head.

She hadn’t looked at me since I got home. What had started as a simple request — “Could you take off those earphones?” — had turned into a vicious match.

Except I was the only one fighting, at least that you could tell. Jessica hadn’t opened her mouth. She hadn’t acknowledged my presence. Which had, ironically, made me much, much bigger. I was towering over her, which was easy considering that I had almost a foot on her. She was petite and obstinate, just like her mother.

“Harry,” the mother called from the next room, clearly trying to distract me from my one-sided tirade. “Should we have chicken or lasagna for dinner?”

I ignored her, as easily as her daughter was ignoring me.

I realized as I did it that I was trying to intimidate her, but I couldn’t stop myself. I leaned even closer to her dewy neck and yanked the earphones out myself.

At least that got a reaction.

She didn’t scream at me. She didn’t get histrionic. She didn’t yell for her mother’s intervention.

“Harry,” she hissed, without looking at me. “You are not my father. But it’s worse than that.”

That’s when I realized Jessica was all of her 14 years and even more than that. The day she talked to me as though I were the child and she the adult, and she made me believe it.

“You’re not my stepfather. You aren’t even a friend.” Finally, she put her eyes on mine, and I trembled.

“You’ve failed me, which means you have failed yourself.” She took the earphones from my forgotten hand, which trailed out in front of her nose and filled the small space between us.

“I don’t know how you’re going to live with that,” she said. She tucked the buds back into her ears and leaned quietly back into the dining room chair, tapping her fingers to music that I couldn’t hear.

edit practice 3

2010-11-21T19:41:00.007-07:00

Here are my edited versions -- one B&W:
And one in color:And here's the original (unedited) photo, taken by Amanda (see her website @ http://everydayelementsonline.com/blog/):

Practicing my edit 2

2010-11-15T20:39:00.003-07:00

http://everydayelementsonline.com/blog/

Using PSE

I don't remember everything I did...

cropped it (had to re-attach the copyright)

multiple levels adjustments

a green-colored texture overlay? or multiply?

a b/w gradient layer overlay

brightness/contrast layer, hard light

Considering

2010-11-12T04:21:00.004-07:00

Practicing my edit

2010-11-08T08:44:00.001-07:00

http://everydayelementsonline.com/blog/

Practicing my editing techniques with PSE.

2010-11-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

butterfly on knapweed

2010-10-07T21:05:00.002-06:00

Prompt: In a graveyard

2010-10-07T21:05:00.001-06:00

In the midafternoon, the robin’s chirp sent my mind back to London, to the park there where I left my dear Kevin kneeling, ring in hand, mouth agape, as I ran away from him. I was thankful for the red-breasted bird’s call, for the reminder of that moment, terrible as it had been at the time. Because at least, then, Kevin had been alive.

The robin must have had a nearby nest for she refused to leave and continued her complaint, perched on the headstone in front of which I now, ironically, kneeled.

Kevin Lewis Redman, 1973-2010. Beloved son and brother.

Not husband, though. Kevin had never become a husband. Thanks to me.

The dirt over his grave was soft and fresh, another reason the bold little bird wouldn’t scat, I imagined. A place ripe for worm and centipede-hunting, she had right here, but I stood at the foot of the overturned soil, just big enough and close enough to deter her. She cocked her head from atop the freshly-planted granite marker and eyed me warily.

I’d missed Kevin’s funeral. His parents hadn’t been able to find me. Not that they’d wanted to, of course. I’d been in India, on a train amidst steaming, sweating, pressing flesh, when Kevin had died. As you do, I’d desperately unearthed as much detail as possible about his passing – the day, the time, the exact place – so that I could revisit that moment in my life, to see if something supernatural had taken place. To examine that very second from every angle, to see if I had missed some important sign, a mystical shiver passing through my body, a familiar wink from a mysterious stranger, a gentle brush upon the back of my hand.

Nothing, of course. There had been nothing. Just nausea and noise and relentless, inexplicable stopping and starting as the train edged nearer the coast. Not even a sacred cow to be seen out the window.

Oh, Kevin, I thought, reaching out to touch the soil as though it were his skin, though he had never even touched this dirt. He would know that I was secretly glad to have missed the service, to have avoided his arrogant and puritanical parents. He would know that I had come here out of a sense of duty and obligation, not because I thought his “soul” lingered behind. Over the course of our six-year affair, we’d had enough late-night debates to establish, once and for all, that his Lutheran upbringing was entirely foreign to me, boring and slightly unattractive, and that I didn’t believe in the concept of a soul.

Kevin, estranged from his religious unbringing but not quite liberated from the associated guilt, held fast to the idea that we had some sort of soul, some sort of spirit that transcended the body.

The little robin hopped down onto the soil, perhaps emboldened by my immobility. It was my turn to cock my head at her. It was all I could do to keep from crying, to look at her and seek her forgiveness.

Dear Kevin, I thought. You must know that if you have a soul, you’ve forever damned yourself now. If only I’d known what you’d do when I ran from you in that park, silly boy. I may have married you just to keep you alive.

stream of consciousness

2010-07-28T20:14:00.001-06:00

The canopy of leaves above her head was gray-green.

Something had ended. It was over and it was time for her step back, to see what had happened. She stretched her long legs and pointed her toes. The space between her breasts opened painfully. It was releasing, it was stabbing. Her head fell backwards into the moon. The clouds pillowed her ribs and thighs. Her legs spread into the stars.

She was thirteen. A dove perched on her right hand. A sash of stars breached her shoulder and strapped her hip. A crown of sunrays extended to the edges of her sight.

Someone had wronged her. A crowd surrounded her. Of people? Of trees? Of beings that stood tall but still she towered over them. She tilted her head to hear better. Maybe it wasn’t to hear better, but to change her perspective.

She felt her body ascend from the tree branches and into the clouds. A stone temple arced beneath her. Or was it above her, and she was dropping into the sky? The sky opened its blue mouth and the canopy parted and she inhaled with the wind. A tiny face gazed at her from far off in the distance. Its face was frozen, or passive, or peace. She could not tell, she could only see that the path to the face veered off to the right and she was rising, or falling.

She looked down and away from the eyes. She pulled her hands away from his touch. The glass behind her filtered the sunlight into a dozen colors, they passed through the gauzy fabric of her sleeves and lit her body like a dance floor. And she was dancing, letting go of the hands and the lips that leaned into her and celebrating, releasing, undoing into a kind of wild abandon. She twirled and sighed. Her muscles stretched out of the ends of her fingers as she spun, pouring off of her body like coconut oil, like warm saliva. Viscous and connected to everything.

And then she was connected to everything. She was a spiderweb, the spaces in her body balanced and proportional but not symmetrical, not identical. She waved in the breeze and wove threads of time and crawled away from the web, eight-legged, a white spider. She crouched and birthed a thousand children, a forest of them. Her garments were drenched with afterbirth and her feet were bare. She took steps without watching where she was going. He body became a pigeon’s body; her wings carried her into the ferns. Her feet became tangled in the brush; she was trapped, upside-down hanging, stuck trying to cast spells without power, playing instruments without sound, summoning gods without soul. The dragon fell into her lap and she grabbed its scaly head and examined its innocent eyes. Her key did not fit into its lock, but while she looked, a butterfly flew out of the keyhole, hovering over the flowers at her feet before sailing against the wind as though the wind were not blowing. Though it was, very hard and steady.

onions and greens

2010-02-17T14:33:00.003-07:00

We've finally finished all of the Mars (red) onions and are into our yellow storage onions. The reds ran out about a week ago. That's pretty good! I'm guessing the yellows will last at least another 6 weeks or so, which means we almost planted enough last year to get us through the entire year.

We're hoping to start the onion seeds in the next week or two. I think last year we started them around Mar. 1, and they had a long enough season.

We've also planted some spring greens, piquants, and spinach in the cold frame. Hope they come up soon.

The temps lately have been in the 40s; lows right around freezing. I'm guessing we'll see buttercups soon enough...

fish tale

2009-12-29T10:23:00.002-07:00

She left four messages for him that day. 12:45pm: “Dad, where are you? You’re supposed to be home. Call me.”

1:02: “Daddy, pick up your pho-one.”

1:22: “C’mon, dude. Seriously. This is the last time I’m calling.”

1:57: “Dad? I’ve left like a million messages for you. What is up? This SUCKS.”

The EMTs put his phone in a gallon-sized plastic bag, along with his wallet and spare change. Twelve missed calls, it read, by the time his sister Deb arrived at the hospital to identify his body.

The accident hadn’t left a mark on him.

When Aunt Deb came home from the hospital, she picked Karina up in her arms as though she were a small child. Karina’s slender, pre-pubescent body stayed rigid against her aunt’s embrace; she did not cry.

At midnight, Karina awoke with her face bathed in tears. She was confused, at first, about why she was crying. She walked halfway down the long hallway to the lighted bathroom. Her dad’s room, once her parents’ room, and now no one’s room, was at the other end of the hall. When she looked at the closed door, she remembered. She breathed in so sharply it hurt.

She began gasping for air like a beached fish, like the northern pike her dad had thrown up on the shore. She dropped to the bare wood floor, convulsing in silence, wishing she were dying, too.

~~~

The pike had been one of dozens, even hundreds, they’d caught this summer. Nothing remarkable about him; just a trash fish that folks around here believed in beaching. Certain times of the summer, the woods around the lake were so littered with northerns in various states of decay that it smelled like a sardine factory.

It had been Karina’s eleventh birthday, that day the outboard motor had died, and they’d had to find a way back to the other side of the lake.

The shallow, mucky water was warm enough to wade to shore, where the evidence of their prolific morning of fishing was in turn gasping, flopping and drying. One recent sacrifice had squirmed nearly ten feet—almost back to the lapping edge of the lake. His tail curled up into the June air and unfurled into the shallow, tepid water. His journey had left him covered with sand.

When Karina’s dad stepped ashore he picked up the pike by the tail and chucked him deeper into the woods.

“Why’d you do that?” she asked.

He looked at her and shook his head.

It isn’t fair, Karina thought, curling her upper lip.

She’d always felt guilty about killing the fish, but she’d trusted her dad and hadn’t argued. Plus, they were often with one or more of his fishing buddies, who were already skeptical of her presence: First, she was a kid, and second, she was a girl. She’d had a lot of practice at being both useful and invisible, to compensate. She unhooked her own fish, tied her own knots, and handed out beers from the cooler. She didn’t act squeamish when threading worms, minnows or leaches onto a hook, even though she knew she was sending them to their deaths.

At that moment, standing on the gritty lip of the dirty little lake, peering out across the lake, surrounded by a dozen or more dead and dying northerns, her father looked different, almost unrecognizable. He looked like Marvin or Butch or Harry, one of the guys they fished with, or like Cliff, the unshaven guy at the Cottonwood Lake Bait Shop who sold them the Styrofoam container of worms, the Dr. Pepper and potato chips. Nice enough, a little rough-hewn—but perhaps not to be trusted.

“Well, damnit,” he grunted, dialing his cell phone. She assumed he was calling Butch or Harry, both of whom had boats, to see if one of them could come retrieve them. But he wasn’t one to explain, and she’d learned not to ask. When he was like this, sometimes he lost track of what had pissed him off. It was best not to give him an object for his frustration.

She remembered the little digital camera in her dry bag, a birthday present from her mother. She’d see her mom in a week or so, and stay with her for most of the summer, but her mom always made sure Karina had a gift to open on her actual birthday. She tucked the camera into her pocket and picked her way up the shore into the cottonwoods, the namesake of the unenchanting little lake.

The fish her dad had thrown was easy to find. He had hit a tree and fallen at its feet. He was still coated with sand, though not as much. Some had been roughly dusted off when he slammed into the tree. Despite her practiced stoicism, she couldn’t bring herself to touch the fish.

He was still, and beautiful, Karina thought. He looked like a cement sculpture of a fish, scaly and gritty and brown. When the wind blew she noticed strange patterns migrating across his body, thrown by dappled sunlight. She took his picture.

The fish suddenly slapped his tail, startling Karina. She pulled away so quickly she hit herself in the face with her camera and fell backwards into the arms of a scratchy bush. How long had it been since he was pulled from the lake? she wondered. How long had he been suffocating in the open air?

He twitched again. She shot up as though she’d been pinched, and turned to return to her father. She made it halfway there when she could hear his voice carrying through the trees.

“Nothing going on today,” he was telling their potential rescuer. “Fishin’s slow.”

Except for these “trash” fish, Karina thought to herself. They’d caught at least six apiece that morning, though nothing else was biting. She changed her mind and went back to the fish in the woods.

Again he wasn’t moving. She didn’t reach down to pick him up; somehow it was different than unhooking a live fish or touching a dead “keeper” in the cooler. She rolled him over with her toe, pushing him towards the water. He didn’t respond. She rolled him again and again. He collected twigs and leaves to himself as he went, as though building a cocoon from forest floor litter. She wanted to stop to take his picture again; he looked like a mythical creature, a land-water hybrid that could grant wishes or exercise magic. But she knew she had already wasted too much time.

Once she reached the lip of the woods, she scooted the fish quickly down the sandy beach, trying not to draw her father’s attention. The fish finally rolled into the shallowest water, releasing a cloud of dirt and debris wherever the water touched him. The lake lapped him, a mother cat tonguing her nursling.

Karina willed the fish to breathe, to make a final gasp and in so doing discover that he could breathe again. She nudged him out into deeper water. She splashed him to wash him clean. He rolled under as though weighted, turning his pale yellow belly to the sun. She finally touched him and found that he was no longer slimy, as a fish should be, but instead smooth and plastic, like the underside of their crippled boat. She submerged him, holding him underwater: a parody of drowning meant to invoke resurrection.

When she let go, he turned belly-up and floated back to the surface.

“What’re you doing, Karina?”

She’d forgotten about her father. She was caught red-handed, trying to save a fish that he’d deliberately sentenced to die. He looked from her to the fish and back again. He raised his eyebrows. “Huh,” was all he said, as he pulled their little Sea Nymph to shore.

The fish floated out farther. He wasn’t even trying to swim.

She followed her father to land. The pike were drying out all around them; not one fin flipped, not one gill bellowed. She looked closely.

“Butch should be here shortly,” her dad told her.

She stepped back into the water, and took a picture of him with a dozen dead fish at his feet.

~~~

After the funeral, she spent four days in bed. Her mother had returned to the house they had all once shared, temporarily, so Karina could pack her things. She had brought her new baby, Karina’s five-month-old half-sister, Hedda.

Karina’s mom had as little to say as Karina did, so there was no one to force her to talk. It was as though the house were haunted by two spirits unaware of one another, though they were both mindful of the house’s only legitimate occupant—the man who had shoveled the now blown-over front sidewalk, whose shoes were in the front closet, whose leftover chili was going bad in the refrigerator.

Karina slept most of the day. Mostly dreamless sleep, except for the afternoon she crawled into her father’s bed.

She is standing on a pile of rocks in the middle of a big river, facing upstream. The faster, boiling currents of the river rush by on the right. A slow, calm pocket of water swirls on the left.

Her father stands in the calm pocket, fishing. It's deep; he's in water up to his chest. As she watches him, she sees a huge, vibrant fish coming towards his lure. She searches frantically for her camera, panicked that she will miss the picture.

After a few flustered moments, she realizes she’s already holding the camera. She has the dreamers' frustration of moving too slow, too slow.

The fish is big and wriggly and barely caught. Her father holds the fish high, but by the time she is ready to snap the picture, he has thrown him into air. She gets a picture of the empty space between him and the fish.

political satire

2009-10-04T07:55:00.002-06:00

So... our writing group's exercise this week was a brief experiment in political satire. Having never undertaken such a thing before, I was a little intimidated. Here's what I came up with:

President announces need for job creation, starts handing out tweezers

Detriot, MI—With communities around the country feeling the pinch from a sluggish economy, President Obama today outlined his new job-creation strategy to a crowd of former automakers.

“We’re going to create jobs whether we need them or not,” Obama said. “So what if technology has made it possible for one person to do the labor of ten? People still need to be working.”

His speech drew cheers from a generally supportive crowd. Jim Jenkins, 43, had travelled from Lansing to hear the president’s ambitious plan. “I can’t find a job and neither can my brother,” Jenkins said. “We’re both out everyday applying for every opening in the paper, along with about a hundred other people.”

Jenkins said he now spends his days playing with his 18-month old son. He’s also started a small vegetable garden in his backyard and occasionally paints landscapes or reads poetry to pass the time.

“I’m just wasting my time, when I really need to be doing something important—working.”

“It doesn’t matter what we do,” agreed Pim Patel, a 23-year old recent college graduate. “I mean, I need a job. I got to pay my bills and stuff.” Patel was hired just out of school by a telecommunications company, but the development of cutting-edge computer software made his job obsolete—along with the jobs of about 40 others. Patel claims to spend his days now taking care of his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and cooking meals from scratch. He’s also taken up the guitar.

“I used to just buy us food that someone else made on the way home from work,” Patel said. “And I paid a nurse to come sit with Mom while I was gone. But no more—all that was taken away from me when the economy took a dive.”

“Certain technological advances have made some kinds of labor more efficient, easier, and more affordable for both consumers and manufacturers,” observed University of Michigan business professor Charley Stanley. “But at what cost? People don’t have anything to do from 8am to 5pm every day. No one’s counting their hours or punching a clock.”

“All you people have is free time,” Obama said, rallying the crowd at the end of his speech. “That’s not good for anyone. That’s why I’m starting—right now—this sand-relocation program (SRP).”

Obama offered few details about his administration’s proposal. According to a source close to the president, the SRP would offer an hourly wage to one person per family. This person would receive a set of giant tweezers, with which he or she can move individual grains of sand from an already-established pile of sand to a different place, thereby creating a new pile of sand. When every grain has been moved, the worker can then begin moving the pile to a new place, and so on, for at least 40 hours a week.

“Job creation is our number-one goal,” Obama vowed. “It doesn’t matter whether the work is meaningful or necessary—it just matters that you’re working.” The president’s plan has received wide bipartisan support and an SRP bill is expected to gain easy approval in both houses of Congress before the end of the month.

a story using four phrases

2009-09-03T08:16:00.003-06:00

prompt: to write incorporating four phrases suggested by other writer's group members (italicized)

Robin rolled luxuriously across the bed, letting her long, curly hair trail across Gus’ stomach.

“What time is it?” Gus growled through a biting hangover.

Not put off by his gruffness, Robin sang: “Not too early.”

Her chipper lilt dug fingernails into Gus’ throbbing brain. He imagined he could feel the white worms of his brain matter squirming and writing. Suddenly, white pain seared through his closed eyelids. Without opening his eyes, he grunted, “Goddamnit, Robin. Close the curtains.”

She sat perched on a window seat, knees cocked, toes curled expertly over the lip of the bench. “Just wanted to let the sunshine in,” she pouted, impatient with Gus’ relentless bad mood. The hangover was no excuse; he was always an asshole in the morning.

“I thought you could do with a little sunlight, baby, after such a dark night,” she soothed.

“Don’t believe everything you think, girl,” he retorted. “It gets you into trouble.” He reached for her pillow, ready to smother himself in it to block out the light, when he finally hear what Robin had said—such a dark night.

Had it been? He couldn’t quite remember. The effort of recalling the night before—everything after the whiskey was a blur—made his head swim and stomach roil.

But something tugged at the edge of his memory. Something unpleasant pounded there.

Robin was on top of him, taking the pillow away. “Don’t you remember, Gussy? Don’t you remember what you promised?”

Gus wanted to throw Robin across the room; her lithe body on his stank of cigarettes and somehow intensified his pain. Instead, he threw his arm across his eyes, as much to keep out memories of the night before as to clock her and the blazing sunlight from view.

“Zen lent fen fen to my tent,” Gus heard. He uncovered his eyes.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Oh, Gus!” she was excited. “No glee poor man devil.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gus moved past irritation. Somehow, her nonsense was winding behind his eyeballs, too, making the headache worse. He edge nearer to fury, balling his fists and squeezing his eyes closed. “Get off of me now.”

“Baby, baby, baby,” Robin soothed. “It’s just the schlep diddy turkle.”

Gus looked at her in time to see that the corner of her mouth ooze down over her chin like a runny egg yolk. She seemed to push it back into place before he could focus. He looked away from her, his eyes roving the room for something to anchor his vision.

“Are you ready?” She asked him. “Gore match underbelly. They’re coming for us now.”

“I’m not ready. I’m not ready!” Gus begged, trying to pull himself out from under her body, which had grown immovable and suffocating. Her hair snaked down to coil around his wrists. “That hurts, Robin. What’s happening? What are you doing?”

“Sometimes life is very, very hard, Mr. Gussy. Remember when you told me that?”

“No!” Gus yelled—but then he did remember. After the whiskey, after the ecstacy, after the grinding hard dance floor, there was the strange after party, the after party of the strangers. He’d dragged Robin there, as he always did—she knew better then to let him party alone, since he’d always held her responsible for his infidelities.

Some kind of injectible drug, some kind of flickering light, some kind of pre-dawn, after-party ritual. The hosts’ face wouldn’t swim into focus, but Gus could hear an echo of his sing-song chant. “We’re coming for you tomorrow. Hesta beth sheb novis. We will find you; you are marked now.” Gus looked, stoned and wondering, at the syringe on the floor, at the ominously shining green life that still lingered inside.

waiting room shoes

2009-08-06T09:38:00.002-06:00

His left leg draped over his right knee so sinuously that the pointy leather toe kissed the well-worn Persian carpet. His narrow black loafers were polished to an impossible shine. Perfectly creased pants; perfectly parted hair. Ramrod posture.

The shoes were so expensively crafted they could have been hand-cobbled by an Italian nun.

His right heel bounced rhythmically, marring otherwise impeccable composure.

Intimidated, I tucked my flip-flopped feet under the uncomfortable wooden bunch. When I dared to sneak a glance at him I saw him looking stonily out the window, lips moving ceaselessly.

A door closed down the hall. Dr. Thornton, I guessed. I rose, ready to escape into the somehow less stifling presence of my psychiatrist.

A woman poked her head into the waiting room. “Mr. Black?” she queried, tilting her head first at me – I supposed because I was standing – and then at the lanky, neatly folded figure behind me. As he inhaled, I could hear the sounds he was making just under his breath: “One thousand four hundred sixty one,” he sucked. He exhaled: “One thousand four hundred sixty two.” He nodded briefly at her, as if to say, Just a moment.

“One thousand four hundred sixty three,” he whispered. “One thousand four hundred sixty four.”

He grimaced. It may have been meant as a smile. He unfolded himself and stood, picking up his equally impeccable briefcase. “One thousand four hundred sixty four,” he repeated to me. His nostrils flared excitedly. “That’s one hundred twenty-two twelves. You have to end on the twelves.”

high heels

2009-07-21T10:39:00.001-06:00

on hiatus

2009-07-14T12:33:00.001-06:00

gotta take a little blogging break... summer is crazy busy... i'll be back at the one-and-one (photo + writing) next week (circa july 19).

the sun

2009-07-09T20:00:00.002-06:00

irony

2009-07-08T22:46:00.004-06:00

i am a story i cannot know the end of.

even though i'm living it. it's the greatest story in the world. it lasts forever and ever. it will never end.

as far as i know.

i am rolling on through the characterization. there is definitely conflict. i am soaring over top of the scenery; i am inhaling and eating and hearing the mountain. i am crying and shitting and puking the mountain.

i am full of ups and downs. what will happen next? i am looking for a teacher, a tool, a sign. i am facing my next big challenge. i am hoping to live up to it.

i am heroic and mundane. i am a fern leaf. i am an acorn. i am a flopping, gasping fish. i am in but i want to be out. i am out and i want to be in. i am infinity and seventy-nine. i am tickled and tortured. i am gaping and gleeful. i am unfurling; i am retracting. i am afraid and expanding. my story has just begun; my story is ending.

disinhibition

2009-07-07T18:03:00.001-06:00

worry

2009-07-07T12:23:00.002-06:00

something dark is in the air

i feel it

i feel it every minute

i feel it when i eat my cheerios

i feel it when i brush my teeth

i feel it when i fold the laundry

i feel it when i talk on the phone

something dark is in the air

"everything is fine"

"everything is okay"

"you're going to be okay"

"you're just fine"

if this is a lie, it is a loving one

but it has undermined my ability

to differentiate

when are things fine?

if everyone is going to pretend things are fine

when they aren't

then i am going to believe things are dark

when they aren't

just to be on the safe side

lightness

2009-07-05T15:25:00.004-06:00

i was born with trust. nothing would hurt me when i fell. no one would ridicule me or harm me. i could move through space trusting that i would not feel any pokes or pinches or pain.

when i discovered that this was not the case, i felt betrayed. i screamed in anger and shock. this was not the way the world was supposed to work. i expected to be protected. i cried in surprise and protest.

as i grew older, i learned not to trust the world. it was not as i had expected. i learned to develop a thicker skin, a harder shell. i learned to pull my shoulders forward and my stomach tight. i learned to be less ready to laugh, heavier and smaller.

but now i am seeing that my soul is light. my soul is connected to a long puppet-string of light; it inhabits my body with buoyancy and tentativeness. it is not my body. it cannot be harmed. when the body feels pain, i can witness it from my levitating soul. i can feel it; i can bear it. but i am not it. this soul hovers just at the top of my head, sending energy downward into the body as the body takes energy up from the earth.

imagining it this way gives me more energy. it makes me feel lighter; as though i were suspended from hooks from the sky and gravity was the only, nearly-inadequate force keeping my feet on the ground.

and it allows me to trust. i can move forward in the world again in trust. i am trying to cultivate the same unconscious conviction that i had as a child: i belong, i am okay, the world is working the way it should be working.

in order to develop it consciously, however, i have to also trust my way through the hurts, the accidents, the mistakes, the limitations. i see that not only does trust, or love, involve the safe and comfortable; it also involves the risks and the terrible. trust, or love, does not result in only connection and fulfillment but also separation and aloneness.

my spirit rides around in my body and trusts implicitly. my ego confuses my spirit with my body and thinks that what happens to my body happens to ME. OH NO.

but what is "me"? am "i" a series of chemical reactions and biofeedback loops? am "i" a wonderfully complicated brain and beautifully intricate musculo-skeletal system, born into flesh in 1977 to perish and decompose sometime in the 21st century?

for right now, i think the answer is: yes and no. depends on whether you're talking about my ego or about this light-puppet in my head (also feel it in the backs of my arms, my upper back, and the backs of my legs).

loneliness

2009-07-04T19:27:00.006-06:00

carol picks up the phone. thinks: lisa? tim?

puts the phone back down. there is no one to call.

there is nothing to say anyway. she cannot remember why she wanted to call someone. today is the same as yesterday, and the day before, and the last time she talked to either of them.

she hopes the phone rings, instead. she looks at it and wishes it to ring. sometimes when she does this it does ring, but mostly its a telemarketer which just makes it even worse. today the phone doesn't ring, even though she walks away from it very slowly.

she tries to figure out why she wants a phone call. maybe so someone will know about her day. earlier when she had thought the robin outside was talking back and forth with her, she had wanted someone to see that. she had wanted someone to share that with. but that's not something you call someone about.

her dinner is good but it doesn't matter. the dinner will be forgotten, by her, and never known by anyone else anyway. though it is early evening, the sun still out, she can't think of any reason to stay awake. she disintegrates into bed.

farmer's market

2009-07-04T12:36:00.003-06:00

whoo-hoo! though i only made $17, i am stoked to say i sold some stuff at the farmer's market this morning. todd sold about 5 flies he'd tied and we also sold lots of heads of lettuce and garlic scapes. no one bought the tomatillo seedlings so i guess i'll have to find a place for those in the garden. i'm excited to have been a part of it and can't wait to go back next week!

separation

2009-07-03T19:38:00.003-06:00

janet let her hands fall to her side. "that's fine," she relented. "we'll do it your way." there was a moment of stunned silence before hal could reply. he hadn't expected her capitulation; he had expected a fight. he had readied a dozen defenses. but she did not attack. she did not accuse. she didn't even question.

hal started to state his finest arguments, unable to let go after the hours of thought and anxiety he had sweated into them. "hal, shut up," she said tiredly. "i am not interested in this bullshit." she turned to go into the house. "have someone send me something to sign. i'd rather not see you again." with that, she closed the door to the house they'd shared for thirty years. she didn't bother to lock it.

deflated, hal looked around to see if any neighbors were watching. the discussion had begun in the car -- not exactly what hal had intended, but sometimes things take on a life of their own. it began as a familiar enough argument: hal was backing out of a social obligation, leaving janet to go alone, again. by the time they'd pulled into the driveway hal had said he wanted a divorce.

janet hadn't seen it coming. their argument grooves were so deeply worn she had just been falling forward in them, pulled by the gravity she could take for granted. when hal said "divorce", she actually had to replay the last few moments of their conversation, which she hadn't been listening to because she'd been thinking about making dinner and a meeting at work and a thank-you she'd forgotten to mail. what had she just said? oh, yeah: this is getting old, hal. maybe i should just find someone else to go with.

she'd said it a hundred times.

garden update

2009-07-03T19:29:00.003-06:00

the onion flower is about to open. and we're days from harvesting peas. some of the garlics -- the purples -- look HUGE. like garlic tree trunks going into the ground. craziness.

we're going to try to sell some stuff at the farmer's market tomorrow: garlic scapes, lettuce, flies for trout fishing, feverfew, tomatillo plants. maybe a massage or a tarot reading, too. yay!

harvesting zuccs and yellow squash; have lots of green tomatoes and a few bell peppers that aren't ripe, either. the tomatillos have lots of little flowers.

the crone: choosing

2009-07-02T18:27:00.008-06:00

[this is part 2 of the blog "choosing," begun thursday, june 18]

the old woman came to her as in a dream, though she could still see the doctor between her legs, her boyfriend at her side. she had a peaceful and terrible face. jess felt something in her heart loosen and release. she felt as though she were filled with space, and the woman looked steadily into her eyes.

then jess was in a dream: a parking lot filled with shiny cars. one brave lemon tree struggled to survive, fragrant and striving through a crack in the pavement. it had blossomed a hundred perfect flowers; it blessed the machinery and death and waste all around it. it redeemed them, somehow.

the sun flew across the sky; the tree's shadow slanted radically from side to side. days and nights passed like seconds. the infinitesimal growth of the tree became perceptible and fluid; a long, green stretch. a bee attended; a hummingbird. to where did they fly away?

the parking lot seemed to stretch forever: a hot, steel monoculture. jess saw the blossoms fade and drop, replaced by dozens of tiny green fruits.

the fruits bulged briefly, then dropped, one by one, to the dirt. the tree was not yet ready to bear fruit. it kept growing.

jess opened her eyes to see her boyfriend smiling gently at her. an old woman's long hair brushed her upturned cheek. "it is a harsh wilderness," a voice whispered. jess cried softly, awake and aware. her heart was light.

keeping your feelings to yourself

2009-07-02T12:15:00.005-06:00

the girl's pigeon-toed ballet prompted her mom to start from her chair four different times in an instinctive gesture of protection. the mother thought the little one was perilously close to tumbling, but each time, bethie would gracelessly regain her balance and continue with her twirls as though the near-fall were part of her routine.

the older sister, loralee, sat next to her mom, rolling her eyes theatrically at her best friend. they laughed behind their hands, mocking loralee's knock-kneed little sister. thankfully, bethie danced with her eyes closed, swaying to the piano music tinkling away behind her.

mother noticed the older girls exchanging glances from their seats on the back of the worn davenport. she waited until bethie's choreography spun her away, back to her audience, and mother, who was lying on the couch below the older girls' perch, lifted her leg and sharply kicked loralee in the shin, silencing her just in time for bethie's final, tiny leap into the patch of sunshine streaming through the window. bethie made a shy, pleased curtsey, as she opened her eyes to applause.

tuesday, june 30

2009-06-30T20:42:00.004-06:00

monday, june 29

2009-06-30T20:23:00.005-06:00

sunday, june 28

2009-06-30T20:18:00.003-06:00

saturday, june 27

2009-06-30T20:05:00.003-06:00

friday, june 26

2009-06-30T19:59:00.002-06:00

thursday, june 25th

2009-06-30T19:55:00.001-06:00

vacation lull

2009-06-30T19:54:00.001-06:00

well, i was out of town for a week and didn't keep my blog updated as i'd hoped. i have some pics to post for my daily shots, but i'm just going to pick up where i left off on the writing thing, and not bother to go back to do fast writings for each of the days i missed. i'll post the pics now.

manifesting

2009-06-24T17:45:00.003-06:00

Laurie tapped her foot impatiently as she waited outside her car for the Hutchinsons to show. An older couple, they were late every time--and this was the seventh house she'd shown them.

She heard a dull click and looked in time to see the door of the old brick Foursquare sweep slowly open. She looked down at the stack of MLS listings she had printed out. This one was on top: 789 Gopher Lane. The listing agent's description was meager; she'd heard throught the grapevine that he hadn't gotten much help from the sellers. Apparently they'd packed up and left the house a mess -- hadn't even taken half their furniture.

From the outside, at least, Laurie thought the asking price seemed a little low. She wondered what kind of shape the inside was in.

"Hey." Laurie was startled. A man was standing next to her car. Unshaven, in his robe -- then she noticed the gate behind him was open. A neighbor, she thought.

"Hello--"

"You looking to buy this house?" he gestured.

"No. I'm a realtor."

He grunted, unimpressed.

"Have you ever been in there?" she asked, looking back towards the house. The front door was closed again.

"Ha!" he said.

She looked back at him. "What 'ha'?"

"No one on this street would set foot in that house. Not after Chet Davies killed hisself in the shed."

"Oh my god. When did that happen?" She looked at the MLS again. Potential buyers would have to be told. No wonder this place was so cheap.

"Mmm-hmm," he nodded. "Hanged hisself from a rafter." With that news delivered, the man cocked his head to the side and looked at Laurie thoughtfully.

Then he picked up his newspaper and walked back through his front gate, leaving Laurie alone on the redbud-lined street. No one else was out; the Hutchinsons were ever later. Laurie got back into her car to wait.

After 15 minutes and two unanswered calls to the Hutchinsons, she decided to check out the house, curiosity beating out superstition because it was daytime and it was looking more and more like the Hutchinsons weren't going to show and she didn't want to have driven all the way out here for nothing.

She punched the security code into the lock box to retrieve the housekey, but the door fell open before she could finish. Apparently it hadn't been closed properly, and it actually had blown open earlier, and been blown almost closed again.

Inside the front hallway she ran into Sylvia Hutchinson, who had a look of sheer terror on her face.

"He's -- he's --"

"What?"

"He's got Hal!" she screamed and ran for the open door behind Laurie, which slammed on her fingers. She wailed in pain and Laurie tried to get it open but to no avail. She turned to find a window and saw the hallway table tremor as though in an earthquake. Suddenly, the air in front of Laurie's face seemed to solidify and shimmer.

My house, both women heard. Myyy housssse.

Laurie woke up screaming. Her cell phone beeped: one missed call. She was late for her appointment with the Hutchinsons. She played the message as she pulled out of her driveway.

"Laurie? Oh, hi. This is Sylvia Hutchins and we're at that place on Gopher. It's about 9:15. We just noticed that the door is actually open just a crack. I think it's vacant, so we're gonna just go ahead and take a peek. We'll be inside when you get here, dear!"

trust

2009-06-23T16:59:00.005-06:00

she crested the hill in the middle of the blacktop. a car coming the other way would have easily demolished her body and her red banana-seat bicycle. her mom told her so all the time.

the thought didn't even cross her mind as she soared up and over the hill, her heart levitating into her throat and her tire criss-crossing the double yellow line.

she could look down on the valley and her town at the bottom of the hill. no moving traffic for as far as her eyes could see. it was only then that she remembered her mom's warning, but she was already gaining speed as she dropped down the hill and she left it behind again.

her gap-toothed laugh bordered on a yell as she flew into town, coasting, standing on her pedals, ponytail screaming out behind her, eyes big as sunflowers. only her front break worked so she often didn't use it; instead she'd drag her sandaled feet until the friction brought her to stop. as she sailed towards the only stop sign in town she didn't even drop her feet to the street. the stop sign was a mailbox, a parked car, a broken gate: just scenery.

then it was behind her and she was on her way out of town, recovering speed as she started to pump the pedals as hard as her eight-year-old legs would go, building up momentum to climb the hill on the other side of town, bike rocking from side. she stood on the pedals and gripped the handles and aimed her tire towards the sky.

enlightenment

2009-06-22T23:47:00.003-06:00

"aha," thought stephanie as she stepped out of her house on sunday morning. "this is why i stayed home from church."

she wore a polka-dotted skirt: white spots on navy blue. it was her second-best church dress. she wore white pumps and a white belt. her hair was freshly curled.

sparrows sang and the shade stretched a long way across her front yard. she could see the neighbors across the street on their lawn, doing outside summertime things. it was 10 in the morning and they'd be serving coffee now in the church dining room, and someone would be unwrapping cellophane-covered muffins that had been donated by max's grocery.

peter had always wanted to leave right after the service. he would be on the sidewalk before the bells stopped ringing if she didn't grab his arm and say, "just one cup of coffee..." of course, he always had a fine time jawing with the cleaned-up farmers and the old men and eating the sugar cookies.

stephanie was surprised to find tears had sprung to her eyes. she hadn't cried about peter's death for going on ten years. lots of things that should have made her cry didn't anymore, she''d noticed. she wiped her soft cheeks with the back of her hand.

the jamesons had sounded surprised when she'd called this morning to say she was staying home. she may have been a little surprised herself. she was already up, already dressed; her purse sat by the door with her shoes and she'd even eaten a boiled egg despite having no appetite. the neighbor's sprinklers had awakened her at 4 in the morning and she'd been letting the t.v. play in the background while she folded and refolded the newspaper in her lap. she'd never been one for reading the paper but peter had been a paper-reader, and she'd just never gotten around to cancelling it. sometimes she worked on the sudoku puzzles; usually she read the obituaries.

this morning she'd seen a death notice for someone she'd remembered teaching a long time ago. jimmy agnew, a sad and slouching boy who'd been mediocre in school and everything else. he was 44, it said. that meant it had been over 30 years since she'd seen him, sitting in the slanting sunlight in the back of the classroom, picking his nose while the rest of the class copied notes from the board. why did she remember him? she wondered.

she suddenly did not want to go to church this morning. she couldn't remember ever having felt that way before, though she sometimes had to miss church if she was unwell or out of town. but church was the only thing she looked forward to every week, and she liked to get out of the house and see people once in awhile.

but not today. she couldn't imagine singing "it is well with my soul" and correcting the grammar mistakes in the program during the sermon. she couldn't imagine digging her five dollar bill out of her purse when the donation plate was passed. suddenly, she couldn't imagine that she had done those things already so many times, it must have been a thousand Sundays' worth of the Apostles' Creed.

"I believe in the Father Almighty," she whispered as she walked out onto the grass. "Creator of Heaven and Earth." Her heels sunk slightly in the damp grass, and she stumbled and laughed. the neighbors across the street laughed too, but at something else. something she couldn't see.

"what is your faith?" pastor roland had asked her, the day after peter had died.

"well, lutheran--"

"no, no. i mean," he groped for words. "i mean... what is your faith to you? how is it to you?"

she shook her head. "it's... it's the way i'm surviving this thing. is that what you mean? it's how i'm not going crazy right now, with peter dead and we're supposed to leave tomorrow for vacation."

"yes, that's what i mean," he'd sounded relieved. and during the eulogy, he'd quoted her word for word, and tied it somehow to Isaiah, and she hadn't been comforted.

"what is my faith to me?" she wondered aloud. she fell over but hardly noticed her falling; the sun was piercing through the spaces between leaves. the ground was dirty and cool. "the ressurection and the body. the life everlasting?"

it had never been a question. but now her body felt as light as a balloon; her heart young in a way she would not had recognized if she hadn't lived to be so old. now she did not want life everlasting. she did not want peter and angels and heaven.

"lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight," she hummed, her eyes blinded by the sun. "the clouds be rolled back as a scroll." and the tree branches parted. and the sky came down to the earth.

[...] embraced the light though it was not god, and it was not jesus, and it was not peter with a harp, and left stephanie behind on the grass.

harvesting

2009-06-22T17:51:00.003-06:00

picked our first strawberries today! probably got 15 big superred ones. YUM

we also picked a small zucchini last week for a stir fry and some yellow squash. i took about a dozen heads of lettuce down to the bar last weekend to give away (along with some leftover marigold and cucumber seedlings).

and: last year's onion is going to seed. lovely little white flower, just starting to open:

and it's supposed to be 37 tonight THIRTY SEVEN. craziness. i hope the warm-up they're predicting this week finally comes...

getting perspective

2009-06-22T10:09:00.005-06:00

[catching up: sunday]

his face curled into a sneer, the teenager flexed his bicep and drew another cigarette from the softpack. his buddies kicked the dust with their boots and shoved each other, talking nervously without saying anything. challenge, bluff, retreat.

a whistle sounded long and low over the sleepy town. a couple of the boys peeled off the pack, made excuses, headed for home. the remaining four watched a sixth-grader take aim with his BB gun at something in the maple tree across the street.

another whistle sounded. the firehouse's evening ritual: 6pm and 6:01.

"let's go campin'," one of the boys suggested.

"fuck you, dwayne," another replied.

a woman old enough to be their mother came out onto the street where they stood, killing time in front of her hardware store.

"watch your mouth, todd," she said. "you boys better find something else to do." this was another evening ritual. yolanda would let them loiter for an hour or two at a stretch before she came out to shoo them away. sometimes she'd give them free sodas but usually she gave only sharp words that they had learned not to take personally.

"and martin, your mama called..." but before she could finish her sentence martin had turned and high-tailed it down the street towards home.

dwayne, todd and chris stood still for another minute or two, inviting yolanda's glare before they started to walk aimlessly down the street, looking for trouble.

"stupid bitch," they said, as they said everyday. todd's jaw clenched and unclenched; his hand pumped into a fist over and over again. he was a dropout, a year older than the other boys and a year closer to... what? chris imagined todd in ten years, angrier and deeper in the bottle than he was at 18.

dwayne threw his arm around chris' shoulder; they walked a step behind todd, who would have called them fags if he'd seen it. "hey. can you camp out tonight?" dwayne never wanted to go home. chris had known him his whole life and had never set foot inside his home. he'd only seen dwayne's mom maybe twice.

"uh, i don't know," chris stalled. he'd been hoping kris littleton, the girl next door, would climb through his window again tonight. but he wouldn't tell dwayne that. because dwayne would tell todd, and then chris would have to say something demeaning about her, about sex, about love. give up some tawdry detail to satisfy the boys that he wasn't vulnerable to her sweet voice or gentle fingers. prove that he was in control.

"awww, c'mon, fucker. i've got a six-pack--"

"holding out on me, fag?" todd interrupted.

"just saving it for tonight," dwayne responded. "let's go camping."

"what the hell," todd decided. "it's not like we've got something better to do." and with that, the decision was made for all of them. chris seethed, but couldn't tell if he was angry at todd or dwayne -- or himself, for not just saying he had to go home.

later, at the campfire, the beer gone, the boys passed around what was left of todd's dad's whiskey. dwayne was using his pocketknife to turn a stick into what he claimed was a bear, but what looked more like a melting snowman. chris could barely keep his eyes open and he poked halfheartedly at the fire.

just one more year in this town, he thought.

he got up, stretched, noticed todd was gone. their sleeping bags circled the fire too closely and would probably have even more holes in them tomorrow. he kicked at the bags and thought about kris, who might have been at his window at that very moment, tapping softly. he hated todd at tha tmoment more than he'd hated anyone.

chris heard a ripping snore from near the fire and saw that dwayne had passed out with his knife in his hand and his boot in the fire. he kicked dwayne's leg, which didn't wake him but kept him from burning, at least.

chris felt a drop on his face and realized that it was starting to rain. he walked out into the woods to take a piss. he found bright moonlight silvering the plants once he escaped the burning light thrown by the fire.

"jesus christ," someone whispered. "you scared me." it was todd, sitting barechested in the rain in a small clearning about a hundred yards from the campsite.

"what the hell are you doing?"

todd was silent. in the moonlight, chris saw todd's hair was wet and plastered against his skull.

"just thinking," he finally said.

chris sat down next to him. "about what?"

todd looked up at the moon, which lit up the front edge of the approaching thunderheads. soon it would be completely dark.

"full moon tonight," todd said.

"that's what you were thinking about?"

"sure," todd said. his words were slurred and softer than usual. "it's fucking beautiful."

"uh-huh," chris responded, surprised. he waited for the joke. when none came, he ventured: "you can practically see the man in the moon's face."

"that ain't no fucking man," todd shook his head violently. "that ain't no fucking man."

chris waited. he'd never seen todd so close to this edge. he was both scarier and more beautiful than he'd ever been. todd turned his face up to the moon. thin wisps of cloud were beginning to roll across it.

"can't hide it," todd said.

"what's that?"

"the moon." he pointed at the sky with the hand that held the whisky bottle. "it always comes out eventually."

he swigged from the bottle and dropped it on the ground. "that's all i got," he said, holding both arms wide to the sky. "fuckin' hope that everything's like that. like the sun, the moon, and the truth. fuckin' can't hide it forever."

"it's impossible," chris whispered.

"fuckin'-A," todd agreed. "it'll come out. it always will." gratitude swept todd's young face; a look chris had never seen. "that's what i'm counting on."

cooperation

2009-06-21T21:26:00.005-06:00

[catching up: saturday]

the tiny handbag sitting in the stroller actually sort of looked like a baby's head. it was peach-colored leather, supple and fuzzy. other things in the stroller included about a dozen empty cans (mostly beer, but one sprite and one dr. pepper), a green-covered spiral notebook that looked like it had been soaked in water and dried again, and a ratty yellow towel.

the stroller itself was only slightly dirty, with one wobbly wheel that hadn't bothered the owner of the stroller one bit, since she was bent over from rheumatoid arthritis and limped along slowly anyway.

her name had been mary, and she had left behind these things. the other folks in her camp respectfully left them alone today, since she had just passed away during the night, but tomorrow morning they would take what they could from the stroller. the only other woman in the camp, darlene, had gently removed layer after layer of clothing from mary's body, somberly doling it out to whomever stood in line. she left on only the bottom layer: black tights under long green shorts; a button-down satin shirt with polka dots, stained to a uniform gray.

the two women had not gotten along in life, but darlene was the first to step forward when someone had discovered mary's unmoving body this morning. she had taken control, asking lars to find someone to call the authorities, asking fred to clean mary's campsite and move her things away, so that they wouldn't be confiscated when they came for her body.

about eight people stood around mary, now that she was in her burial clothes and darlene was combing her peppered, matted hair. not much could be done with the hair; she arranged it as neatly as possible around mary's face. gregory stepped forward with bottled water for darlene to wash mary's face and neck and hands. peter, the only one in the camp who had talked to mary very regularly, because she had a tendency towards unpredictable violence, offered a child's barette, red plastic. darlene clipped mary's hair back over her left ear, exposing the long scar down that side of her face.

she did not return mary to her shoes, which were well-worn tennies. they had no holes and two good shoelaces, and they were stashed at the bottom of darlene's sleeping bag.

as the sirens rose in the distance, the group finished their preparations. theo, a gaunt black man who often preached at gantry park and who was blind in both eyes, pulled a small new testament from his pocket and read:

"But someone may ask, How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?

"How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body...

"So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory."

feeling trapped

2009-06-21T10:48:00.004-06:00

(catching up: friday)

kimberly wandered up and down the aisles of books. the shelves reached the ceilings, which were twenty feet high. she seemed to be in the history section: wars, politics, religion, art. she found the end of the row and turned to the left, searching for poetry.

suddenly, she spotted it. a slim chapbook with a flimsy olive green cover. his name on its narrow spine: "tank ginnis."

her father's book of poetry -- "a nickel and five senses." the dedication page evoked kimberly's mother, joanna.

kimberly tucked the book under her arm and turned to find the cash register. the bookshelves crowded behind her, blocking her way. she walked down the next aisle, listening for voices or sounds of commerce, but hearing only papery silence. she was surrounded by cheap paperbacks. stephen king novels stacked on the floor nearly tripped her. she caught herself from falling; she picked up her pace.

each aisle opened into another wall of books; every path between bookshelves was empty of other people.

she felt slightly panicked and almost called out when another book caught her eye. "the generic storm," her dad's last book. dedicated to rita, a woman who, as far as kimberly knew, did not exist. the alzheimer's had begun to take hold then. his poetry was achingly beautiful and uninterpretable. it had won multiple prizes for tank ginnis, posthumously.

she hesitated. did she want this one, too? she had promised herself she would never read it; the pain of those last few years too deep. she untucked "the generic storm" from its misplace between two koontz books. she opened it at random:

"the used bookstore," she read. she looked around herself, at the store she had never been in before, in a town she was just passing through. she remembered her father's smell: aramis and tobacco. it was as though he were standing next to her.

volumes line these labyrinth aisles

awake? asleep? fingers

breaking to draw sharpened nails

across the tissue of my mind

a dusty pulpy smell

too many memories

gasping for air, trapped

beneath the weight of years and atmosphere

barefoot i climb the walls

i climb the shelves

as though gravity were pulling

perpendicular i step on the backs

of millions and millions of words

long humming neon lights

(she looked up; there were neon lights)

buzzing behind my eyes

i reach out to touch one

(i am on the ceiling)

(she looked up, fearful he would be there)

(like a spider, like a crouching monkey)

(all limbs of a decade-rotted corpse)

in the burning light i collapse into

choosing

2009-06-18T20:15:00.004-06:00

when jess found out she was pregnant, she felt sheer terror. her body trembled with emptiness. she did not know herself as mother. she did not see herself as mother. she saw mother as a trap, as a dress sewn so tight the body couldn't move.

she felt repulsion at the unasked-for. she felt anger; she felt taken over. the body, betrayed and out of control.

jess dreamed about being late for her appointment at the clinic. she kept looking at the clock. it was 8:05. it was 8:10. it was 8:15. she was running through a town full of parking garages, looking for the clinic. it was already too late, she dreamed. she had missed her 8 o'clock appointment. they would not see her now. she would have no choice.

at the clinic, at 8 o'clock, she talked to the doctor. she sobbed and apologized for sobbing. "i don't know why i am crying. i don't want you think that i have any doubt." he smiled kindly. he did not seem to expect her to have either doubt or conviction. he patted her hand, which made her cry harder. "i don't know why i'm crying," she repeated.

"we can give you something that might make you forget about this when it's over," he offered. "it's up to you. it's an injection that will help you feel better, but it might make your memory fuzzy."

"yes," she said. she wanted to forget, she thought. she knew that she wanted to forget. jess seemed to be moving forward but did not know how. she felt separate from her own body, as if in a dream; she knew what she wanted, but she didn't know why.

riding the crest of a wave

2009-06-17T15:55:00.004-06:00

i am not thinking. i am not breathing. i am only falling forward, forever, in love with gravity because there is nothing to fall on. there is only the perpetual freefall.

i am unafraid. i am soaring. i am without restraint. i am liberated.

exuberance. overflowing. upwelling. climaxing.

oh to bear forever that soft spiraling upward climb. to hold on to the very crest. to be flayed open.

oh to be fearless in pursuit of sheer joy. to be relentless in the climb into fulfillment.

and what when the wave breaks on shore? we are spent; we are grounded again. we are dissolved.

stripping bare

2009-06-16T17:49:00.004-06:00

Peeling off the purple coat, I walked uphill after the goat, which had disappeared over the crest. It was unusually hot for October at this elevation, and I was winded and perspiring from the climb.

I dropped the coat on the vertical trail; it luckily hooked on a scrawny branch instead of tumbling down and over the cliff into the lake.

I leaned forward onto my hands again, not cooler without the coat but thankful to be rid of its weight. The steepness required me to use all fours, to pull on the roots of the bushes above me, to grab handfulls of long, well-rooted grass to keep myself from falling backwards. I found rock and root footholds for my feet. I crept up the mountain like a slow and trembling monkey.

I could smell the mountain goat. Hair and straw. Some hormone, too, that was like protein in my nose. Umami. I was salivating. Just before I summitted the peak, my shoes got tangled beneath a warped tree and fell. I could hear them tumbling for a moment, but I did not turn to watch. I was too close; they had met their fate.

I crawled on my belly over the ledge and onto a broad, flat rock that marked the highest point of the mountain. My cheeks and stomach were scratched and bleeding. My arms shook with exhaustion.

I could not see the goat, and I could see everything. In all directions I could see like an eagle. The burrowing red ant on a mountain in the next range. The dying yellow needle on a tall pine in the ravine. The wind stirring the feathers on the wing of a waiting owl.

The ground beneath my feet shook and split. My legs disappeared into the mountain. I was a woman's head with a mountain body. I gave life to forests of trees. I pumped veins of water. Iwitnessed millennia. My hair dissolved into spongy, fruiting moss. My neck opened into a granite fissure. My eyes dropped as smooth pebbles, bouncing and tumbling down the mountain. My teeth grew into a fuzzy caterpillar, scrunching its way hastily across the bare rock.

My ears grew into orchids, and I listened.

cleansing

2009-06-15T18:11:00.004-06:00

immersed in a shallow lake i can look up through the glassy ceiling of water into the undulating sky and softly folding mountaintops. sinking into the muddy bottom i feel tree trunks buried beneath years' accumulation of sediment and ash. the wood is soft and firm, fleshlike against my limbs. the lakebottom is gritty and yielding.

my eyes are pierced, like the surface of the lake, by midday sunlight. despite its ubiquitousness, the light does not obscure the blueness of the sky, the billowy grace of the clouds. i am struggling and squirming. i am filled with terror. i am so afraid i must let go. i cannot continue to struggle. i am exhausted.

i inhale.

i feel my body wriggling. i feel other small, silken bodies next to mine. i am a fish. we are fish. we are swimming away.

power

2009-06-15T11:05:00.006-06:00

When she opened her mouth, all oil and flush and darkness spewed out. The sounds she made split men's eardrums and boiled the blood in their veins. Though she collapsed upon herself she drew their souls into herself, leaving behind heaving sheaths of body, thin paper exoskeletons to be swept into eternal orbit. Like pink snakeskins, dry and brittle and crumbling.

Her eyes flashed and hair frothed around her head; a violent thunderstorm. Her body was stillness. Her face was the event horizon: to look upon her was never to look away.

Her arms reached so far to either side that her hands disappeared into space. She enveloped the universe. She contracted all the matter around her into a pebble, into a grain of sand, into an atom. She expanded her body into everything.

loss

2009-06-14T17:37:00.005-06:00

[gotta do two to catch up, so this one + one (writing + photo) counts for saturday...]

Harold wondered if he was having a heart attack as he spun his car around the corner and floored the gas pedal, barely beating the red light. He jolted out into the middle lane, screaming past the cars in the two adjacent lanes, his little car revving until it sounded like it might explode.

Just like my heart, he thought. He held the wheel with one hand and felt for his pulse with the other. Did I just miss a beat? he wondered. Was there a hesitation? He had difficulty keeping accurate time as he counted the seconds and beats, flying through the green at the airport intersection as confidently as if he'd programmed the stoplights himself.

The lanes peeled away on either side for "Short term parking" and "Terminal A" and he took his foot off the gas but didn't even tap the brakes, taking the curve well above the posted sign suggesting 35 MPH. He careened into Terminal C with abandon, checking the car radio clock that blinked unhelpfully at 12:00. Impossibly, he crammed the car between a waiting limo and an SUV with next to no space between his bumpers and theirs, but he slid over the hood of his car as if he'd done it every day of his life and ran through the revolving door without locking anything behind him.

He still held his fingers to his jugular, and he counted with his breath, sure he was skipping beats, sure the tightness in his chest was going to keep squeezing and squeezing until his heart exploded.

I'm late I'm late I'm never going to be able to fix this this will never be okay.

He scanned the walls for a clock and, amazingly, found none; glanced at his watch -- at his bare arm. There was no watch. He looked at the floor, ran back through the spinning door, frantic. "Where's my watch?" he asked total strangers. "Where's my watch? Did you see it?" He ran back to the car, where a security person was leaving a ticket under his window.

"Is this your car?"

"Did you see a watch?"

"Sir, is this your car? It's going to be towed."

"It's got to be here. I just had it.

"I think I'm having a heart attack. I have to find my watch."

Over the intercom a nasally woman announced the arrival of the bags from the flight from Ft. Lauderdale. She would be standing at the carousel now, scanning the crowd for him.

"Oh my god where the fuck is it?"

"Sir, calm down. Calm down. Do you need me to call an ambulance?"

"I have to find my watch." He sat down against the car. His left arm felt numb. The watch was missing. She would be here any minute. She would see him dying on an airport sidewalk. He laid his head on the concrete curb; he could see the revolving door sideways. He waited for her unmistakeable legs.

garden is rockin'

2009-06-14T16:42:00.002-06:00

we had a close call earlier this week with lows in the mid-30s... we were worried about our tomatoes and peppers and squash and cukes, but everything soldier through unharmed.

the slugs this season are worse than they've ever been, though...

we've got a couple of summer squash ready to harvest today, and the peas are about waist-high. the onions are as thick as pencils and significantly taller. the brocs and caulis looks great, and the garlic must be close to finishing! i mean it is just so tall and green. todd planted corn at kerens on friday, too.

the penstemon is flowering beautifully!

mind

2009-06-12T15:56:00.003-06:00

radio humming. mower growling. sprinkler clucking. robins warning. can i hear the silence between these sounds? these sounds too will fade but this space is here. this space fruits and dies and births and wanes and orgasms and decomposes.

music tinkles. a harp? a xylophone? the mower sighs into soundlessness. the world is beyond comprehension.

thoughts stab into the things around. questions penetrate. insights climb like ants in a pile, suffocating one another in a struggle for supremacy. for knighthood. here, this one is special, this one should be plucked from the pile and examined in the light. the ant squirms under scrutiny. it is so puny and irrelevant. it is overwhelmed in the open space. it is better left to the anthill, part of a wilderness but not above it.

pleased voices weave a painting. mower erupts again. body melts.

surrender

2009-06-11T14:02:00.004-06:00

The struggle to be conscious. It is a struggle. It is a fight, right? It is vigilance. It is unrelenting attention. Fighting every moment to see the right path.

Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is not such a struggle. Maybe it is soft yielding. An acknowledgement of how very small and unimportant I am. Of how very little I know or can know. Of how the forces that affect my life are so much larger than I am, and so unfathomable.

Maybe, instead of struggle, forgiveness is the path. Maybe stringing together moment after moment of tenderness and compassion. What if consciousness is not a struggle but a release? The moment of utter humility, when I say: I do not have control. I cannot come out on top of this struggle. I am an ant and you are a thunderstorm. I can only hope to be lucky enough to ride a stable leaf downstream. I can only hope to be conscious enough to forgive myself for drowning.

one writing and one photo

2009-06-11T13:30:00.002-06:00

have this idea about posting one photo per day that i've actually taken that day. and maybe one fast-writing exercise, too. as in: five minutes to write whatever i'm inspired to write about a randomly-chosen word/phrase.

here goes nothing.

sotomayor breaks her ankle...

2009-06-08T13:39:00.002-06:00

and no one mentions what kind of shoes she's wearing.

i mean, probably heels, right? would she have broken her ankle in loafers?

of course, i could be wrong, but it gives me a chance to point out that professional women's footwear is freakin' terrifying. did the women's lib movement mean any practical difference in women's lives?

for more on related topics:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/bias-by-digby-so-problem-with-female.html

planting day

2009-05-23T20:28:00.002-06:00

this evening todd planted the beans and a chokecherry bush next to the gorinw pea beds. behind him are some pretty purple flowers, irises and tulips and something else the name of which i can't remember. there's also a valerian there, tarragon, and lavender.

we also planted the tomato garden and some hot and sweet peppers... and i sewed some chamomile seeds (behind the fence) with the onions and cucumbers. i guess they're supposed to like each other.

and todd and i were beat at the end of the day. here's a pic of us under the lilac, sore-muscled and all done planting except the watering. we did a cursory water before bed and then got lucky and it rained last night! i have a lovely farmer's tan now -- am just lucky i didn't burn.

more natives

2009-05-23T14:33:00.003-06:00

got two arnica plants and two bee balm today and am planting them next to the tarragon, i think.

i'm going to plant a clematis and three coneflowers up in the native plant circle. i am also going to plant the bergamot there.

going to plant the vetch in front, below the mock orange -- maybe to help shore up that side of the driveway.

will plant the pussyfoot somewhere sunny and dry, and the coreopsis and butterfly bush at the back of the native circle.

veggies to report too...

cold night

2009-05-21T13:40:00.003-06:00

last night got below freezing -- 28 degrees! there was a white frost on the grass in the shade when i looked out at the garden at 8am. we let most stuff weather it -- mostly we've got only early, cold-tolerant things like onions, brocs and caulis, peas and greens. but we did plant squash on friday the 15th, and cucumbers on sunday or monday. so we covered the squash (pumpkin, zuke, butternut, yellow) with plastic overnight, and we covered each cuke seedling with a yogurt container. so far today, they look like they survived. predicted 32 degrees tonight, so we'll have to do it again.

generally, though, it's getting warmer. the lilacs buds should open next week; the blueberry is budding; the hummers humming and tweeting. and butterflies everywhere! apple trees blanketed in pink-white blossoms. we did the apple grafts around may 9th...? maybe a little late...? prairie sky, golden del, gala, macoun, liberty... and one other one i can't remember right now. don't know if any of those took.

native plants

2009-05-09T19:09:00.003-06:00

went in to the farmer's market this morning for a couple of things. left, as always, with a LOT. but managed to keep it under $40, somehow...

we happened onto helen atthowe's booth of native plants and that's where i got the most exciting things -- but the things i hadn't planned for, of course. i got:

a hollyhock, black-eyed susan, perinneal sunflower, two kinds of pestemon (rocky mt and small-flowered), and a flax bush, all of which i planted together in a circle xeriscape spot near the blueberries.

also got some catmint from helen, which we planted in the herb garden, and some alum root, jacob's ladder, and seedum, which i planted in the front (west-facing) yard. these are supposed to be okay with part shade, but they'll get the shade in the morning, which is not what they prefer. i hope they'll like it up there anyway. oh -- and i put a mock orange up there, too. same story. nothing really likes that hot, late-day sun! i hope they'll appreciate 'dappled light' because that's what they're getting...

at the other booths, i found an oregano (one of the three plants on my list) and a rhubarb, both of which i planted near the herb beds.

growin' some carrots and radishes

2009-05-09T09:00:00.002-06:00

planted a row of little fingers yesterday, betwixt two onion rows. also sewed a row of red chanteray. some radishes in our greens/beets/radishes bed and a few spinaches and lettuces in the peas. also repotted a ton of house plants, which felt good. taking care of green things.

herbs and things

2009-05-04T20:23:00.002-06:00

today i planted some ornamental grasses in the front window box. i hope they grow tall and wide and when they blow it looks like the windows are facing a field of grass instead of the street.

also planted a second tarragon (next to the one i planted last year) and a lavender. also planted two lupine and three kinds of thyme -- red creeping, english, and lemon. moved around a lot of lettuces (donated a few to neighbors because we have so many tiny lettuce starts!) also donated a couple of feverfew to people who have migraines; i don't need four of them!

planted nine asparagus, too! exciting evening in the garden.

onion seedlings in the ground

2009-05-03T15:34:00.014-06:00

so i realized i needed photo illustrations of things. here we go.

yesterday i planted the cauliflower and broccoli seedlings into the garden. we're supposed to get rain for the foreseeable future, so we thought they and the onion seedlings would like to be out in it. here's a photo of a young cruciferous; they're probably almost two inches tall -- some of them seemed to have grown since i planted them yesterday!

and here are the onions in their biodegradable containers. we've been hardening them off for a week or more, so we figured it was time to move them from the portable desk into the ground. i replanted all of these today -- copra onions (long-storing -- should be good next spring, if we have any left); mars red onions (medium-storing); and bianca di maggio (short-storing flat 'cioppino' onions). we planted at least 300 onion seedlings, 3" apart, in rows 1-2 feet apart. we'll start harvesting them for spring onions in just a month or two.

the lettuces in the stump last year scattered their seeds so we have a bunch of tiny lettuces coming up in there. todd also moved two of our arugulas to the stump from the cold frame a couple of weeks ago, and they are taking the transplant well. in the background there's also the window from our cold frame and what's left of our woodpile for the year!

some of the greens we planted in the cold frame are tall enough to harvest. the cold frame also has radishes coming up in it.

our garlics are getting pretty tall! lots of greens have reseeded in here and we're going to have to thin them. the cilantro has also started coming up in here.

what else...? oh! of course there are the peas... just about an inch tall and coming up so strongly and greenly. yay peas!

finally, the little buds: blueberry buds and lil

ac buds. the lilac buds are only about an inch tall; this pic is a super close-up. also; johnny jump-ups everywhere. tasty and purty.

pea emergence

2009-04-25T17:06:00.004-06:00

we had peas come up! i planted the following things inside today:

lemon cucumbers

armenian cucumbers

non-edible marigolds

plum tomatoes

tomatillos

butternut, delicata and yellow crookneck squash

broccoli, cauliflower, magda squash

eggplant

thyme

chives

peppers

edible marigolds

anise hyssop

more peppers

in the garden, we planted cilantro, beets, radishes, greens, sage. i planted more carrots.

some radishes are ready to eat now. two beets have emerged. the lovage is way up and so is the sorrel. spinaches are up, garlics are 8" or bigger. some greens are up but not big; greens up in the stump.

oh, i started basil, too, inside. need to plant dill yet.

the onions are very thin; about 5" tall.

pea time!

2009-04-12T18:25:00.002-06:00

high today of 61 and todd is out getting peas in the ground. he's planted three rows so far, and he's putting up fencing between the rows for the peas to vine on. it's going to get cool this week; two days with lows below 30 predicted. the peas should be up in 10-20 days, depending on the soil temps.

he planted the peas in last year's garlic beds, and some of the garlics that didn't get harvested last year had started to sprout into garlic plants of their own. each garlic bulb was making about eight plants apiece. todd dug them up and gave them to our neighbor, in the hopes that she can replant them and harvest garlics this fall.

carrots and radishes

2009-04-06T18:41:00.001-06:00

planted some carrots in between the garlics -- red chanteray and little fingers -- and some radishes and beets in the cold frame yesterday. must be almost time for peas?

little bat

2009-03-18T16:02:00.003-06:00

i just read an article about this little bat. he was holding on to the fuel tank of the space shuttle discovery when it launched on sunday.

they said he turned around a few times but held tightly through the launch and after the shuttle cleared the tower... and then they don't know what happened to him. did he fall off? fly away? freeze in the ozone? see the earth from outer space?

they said he may have had an injured wing, which prevented him from flying away during takeoff preparation and ignition. i just imagine him, grimly holding on, afraid, afraid, afraid. maybe he wasn't afraid. maybe he was curious or excited or detached. but i imagine him feeling panic and helplessness, and it makes me feel so sad. and angry. i could be angry at nasa--and i am, a little bit--but mostly i'm angry at god or the universe or karma or fate or whatever damn thing makes things like this happen. was he hoping for divine intervention? was he looking for a way to escape?

i can't tell you how often i feel like a bat clinging to a space shuttle.

what makes it better? what makes it okay? what makes it make sense?

onion emergence!

2009-03-12T17:37:00.002-06:00

we've got some tiny little onion heads poking up. we noticed them yesterday... a dozen or so, perhaps. and there are a few fennels getting started, too. tiny green arms reaching up. the celery has yet to make an appearance, but it's supposed to be slow to germinate. the meyers lemon topiary arrived earlier this week, and it hasn't lost many leaves or flowers in the transplanting. we're giving it supplemental lighting, too.

todd tried starting the artichoke and chinese lanterns in wet paper towels over the weekend.

i haven't been checking the cold frame lately because we've got lows in the single digits. i'm hopeful the ground under there isn't getting too cold, and that the beets and radishes and greens will germinate okay as the lows get warmer over the next few nights. the cold frame needs water, too.

in the garden: March

2009-03-01T12:09:00.004-07:00

well, after a nearly fishless ice fishing day yesterday -- but nice red sunburns from the blinding white landscape of the reservoir -- todd and i are turning our attentions to the garden. it's past time to start onions, so we're looking around for flats to get the onion seed going. we've got copra, biana di maggio, and mars varieties.

other plants we're going to start in flats today include conquistador celery and florence fennel. todd's already started broccolis, maybe a little too early. it will be interesting to see how we keep them alive and growing for another 2 1/2 months. in the cold frame, we're going to start the first batch of radishes (cherry belle) and beets (red ace), and we'll add some more greens to the cold frame as well.

we made some gobi parathas today for breakfast and i'm on my third cup of tea. time to get out my pjs and into the garden! the sun's out and the highs are in the low 40s.

albertonwriters

2009-01-15T18:56:00.002-07:00

folks in and around alberton, montana (i.e. nine mile, petty creek, fish creek, even superior), who are interested in forming a writers' group... come join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/albertonwriters/ and we'll talk about it. or email me at albertonwriters@live.com

public transportation

2008-03-13T11:28:00.002-06:00

last night we were driving to butte, listening to the oldies station. heard a good old vanity fair song, 'hitchin' a ride.' as i heard it, i thought about my uncles, who hitched all over the country when they were long-haired hippies growing up in the 60s. and my friend lynette who hitched all over honduras while she was in the peace corps; it was the standard mode of transportation.

and i wished people hitchhiked. i sat in the car and sang along
('a thumb goes up, a car goes by.
oh, won't somebody stop and help a guy...
hitchin' a ri-ide, hitchin' a ride.')
and thought about how nice it would be to just step out onto the road and put my thumb out whenever i needed to get to missoula. to just wait for a ride, to get there when i got there. to pick up strangers and meet new and interesting travelers whenever i was on a road-trip. to feel like that was a safe, sane thing to do. makes me feel summery and drowsy and like laughing. like a soul song sung on a porch.

the very next song was 'bus stop,' by the hollies.
('bus stop, wet day,
she's there, I say,
please share my umbrella.')
and i wondered to myself whether the dj had some sort of subversive political agenda, because here were two back-to-back songs about a dying way of meeting people -- in public places, in interdependent situations, etc.

what are public places, anymore? (there's a private *bar* in missoula, for god's sake.) i mean, if you don't belong to a church or if you're not a regular at the bar (i consider myself one of the latter, by default), where is your community? some of us have workplaces and colleagues, which can provide varying levels of community, but usually can't fulfill that need with much satisfaction.

we all have our own cars and our own tvs and our own individualized shrinkwrap. we travel in little bubbles of anonymity and imagined self-reliance. these two songs were about a way of communing, of being around other people, that's fading away. hitching is *illegal,* fuhgoawdssakes. and lots of politicos don't even think about public transportation -- trains or buses -- as a useful tool in our efforts to reduce environmetnal degradation. i mean, they can talk about cars getting better mpg, but if you bring up the possibility of preferring public transportation -- maybe not everyone *needs* a car -- you might as well be espousing socialism. it's sacrilege in this country to even suggest it.

fishing on bible lane

2007-11-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

todd and i have decided to fish the river through town at least three days a week. fish to the conditions, try to observe what's happening, what changes. seems like an opportunity for a real relationship to a place.

that place just happens to be right off of bible lane. yippee! bible-y!

we'll be meditating on the river and attending to its changes. already it has swollen and receeded; the banks are occassionally mucky mush after a rain. and this is only over a couple of weeks. imagine what cjanges happen over a few seasons; runoff and irrigation and drought. imagine changes over centuries; the face of the mountain across from town, shorn sheer by, we speculate, the force of glacial lake missoula's undamming 15000 years ago.

another, more modern undamming is underway in missoula now -- the removal of the milltown dam, at the confluence of the blackfoot and clark fork rivers. sediment and toxins built up over a century come tumbling downstream, as well. we've seen a fish cage near our fishing spot -- a place the fwp keeps some small tester fish. they monitor the fish, to see if the sediment or toxins get very high, and kill them. i admit to an impulse to release them, so they can run up some nearby tributary and escape the influx of badthingies. they are the canaries in the mine; their presence may help save other, wild fishies in the river. i don't free them. but i do acknowledge them when i go by, and feel gratitude.

anyway, our in-town fishing jaunts, complete with nearby roaring interstate (note headlights reflected in river) and woodfire smoke bank, may seem a little too peopled to be a very fulfilling wilderness experience. weirdly, though, we've actually had all kinds of interesting encounters, even beyond the trout we're almost single-mindedly seeking...

for instance, while i was scanning the water for signs of rising fish, i saw a romp of otter twirl past. (other collective nouns for otters: bevy of otter, raft of otter.) they are so great! they are constantly, curiously swooping over and under one another like a pile of puppies. i got a not-so-great shot of them as they wriggled past: i waded out as deep as my leaky-in-the-ass waders would allow, and i talked to them. "where are you going? will you come here?" they were moving with but faster-than the current, and they actually slowed and moved towards me just a little. not enough to get any close-ups, of course, but i felt a moment of contact.

we also fished near a beaver dam. the beaver swam far out in the current and thwopp-ed his tail onto the water to express himself:

after i sat still for awhile, he came back to his dam...

and we left him to his fishing, which was clearly superior to ours.

where have i been?

2007-11-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

in my new hometown.

and what a town! like some sort of fairy tale. i mean a *real* fairy tale. complete with both romantic, noble characters and bizarre, hidden, frightening mystery. being a new resident, i obviously don't know the intricacies of the town's stories. just tantalizing tidbits, tossed to me at the local bar. people are responsive to my questions, but every answer just generates more and more questions. the tales people spin here are almost unbelievable, except that the next person at the bar will pick up the thread and continue unphased, lending credibility to the stories. i mean, if many people tell you the same crazy things, again and again, but with new and more complex detail, you just have to believe it.

so, we love it here. as todd said, "we'll have to work pretty hard to get in trouble in this town."

there are pet cats and dogs roaming widely in town. they love attention and expect it. they are denizens of this town as surely as are the people living in the house-shaped contraptions that line the streets.

and everybody waves, except for the tourists passing through. people offer their help, if they know your pipes burst or your car won't start or your water heater's broken. they offer their expertise, if they have it, or their spare keys or other support, if they don't. the local car hosts two friendly poker games, tuesday and friday nights. there's a movie night wednesday and a "customer of the week," who wins happy hour prices all week. there's freshly-popped popcorn and dogs are welcome at the bar, too, so there's doggie biscuits from the bartender and a water bowl by the door.

you can walk from one end of the town to the other in about 20 minutes. no stoplights; no stop signs on main street. besides the main drag, the other streets in town last for a block or two before they disppear into the mountain side. like our street -- you just drive up the steep hill past one house and an alley, then our house and our neighbors, and then the street ends at someone else's house, or you can turn right. the street that turns right runs for a block, hosts two houses, and then turns back downhill to meet the main street. it's as though the streets are too exhausted to climb the mountain, too, and they inevitably run downhill, like streams.

todd's gotten most of our meat for the year within a half mile of the house. deer stubble the wooded mountain behind our home. we've also collected most of our firewood there, and have been heating the house with local ponderosas. the woodburning stove is so efficient we're proud; burning logs in there releases less CO2 than if the trees were decomposing in the woods. and we've only cut down three trees, already dead, which will provide over a month's worth of heat. we planted 150 garlics and have a bed of greens thriving in the cold fall weather. fresh salads every night!

so... we've been busy, and healthy, and learning. i'll be posting more often, now, as the days grow shorter and we retract, turn inwards, and lean towards hibernation.

2007-07-10T14:31:00.000-06:00

i have a niece! i would like to welcome camila grace into the world. what will she see? who will she know? what will she learn?

so far, she likes to eat. and she doesn't talk very much; she seems to be a listener. and a sleeper.

a new home?

2007-06-21T10:49:00.000-06:00

yesterday todd and i signed a contract for a house! we are pretty excited about it. it's a great old farmhousey-like house, built in 1910. raspberries and strawberries and huge cottonwood trees. a woodburning stove and high ceilings and an old horse barn out back. just a regular-sized yard but plenty of space for a big garden.

we close on july 27th... keeping our fingers crossed for everything to go smoothlyish....

memorial day weekend

2007-05-31T23:07:00.000-06:00

so... we spent the whole day in the garden on friday and got everything in the ground. (well, almost everything...) anne came over for the weekend and we had a great fishing trip in teh rain on sunday. took her to our secret spot and she actually caught a fish. it's tough, technical fishing, so even though it was only an 8-incher it was something to be proud of.

we ate lots of good food all weekend, and we went morel hunting on monday and had great luck. five pounds -- alhtough we dehydrated a third and sauteed and froze the rest and suddenly it didn't look like sucha bounty. mushrooms really cook down. it was the first mushroom hunt i've ever done and it was *so* much fun. who knew? we hiked into a burned area from last fire season because morels go crazy after a fire, they say. the trail was up a creek with two huge waterfalls, and the creeks' in full runoff so it was really intense.

a vision question

2007-05-31T09:00:00.000-06:00

i had an aborted attempt at a vision quest a few weekends ago....

i fasted all day friday with the intention of hiking into the wilderness and spending two nights, meditating, etc. i left here friday afternoon and hiked in. todd hiked with me, and we were designating a communication point where i could leave a stone to signify to him that i was okay, and he could ride his bike up (it was only 3 miles in) to check on my rock on sat and sun morning, so he'd know i was okay. after we parted, he rode his bike further into the wilderness to do some scouting for elk hunting this fall, and i wandered around and tried to find a good, isolated spot for my camp. the trails were well-traveled, and i saw a guy with his dog, but i found a beautiful campsite under some trees next to the stream, and i started to set up camp. lo and behold, my tent's poles were missing. after struggling with what to do for a moment, i decided to lay down my tarp and my tent and put my sleeping bag on top and just sleep under the stars, at least for that night, and hike out in the morning. so i set up my makeshift camp, changed into flipflops and comfy camp clothes, and headed down to the water. i hadn't walked 50 yrds when i saw some other guy's tent, set up near mine but hidden back in the woods. not what i was looking for. so i packed up and walked back to the trail. i figured i could catch todd on his way down and go home. it was just not unfolding as planned. on my hike out, i saw a moose. she was huge and frightening and lovely. about halfway out, todd caught up with me on his bike. we walked out together. i was disappointed but not totally disheartened. i'd had a good day, a full 24-hr fast, and a six mile hike with a full backpack to boot. it felt like i'd accomplished something, at least, and i thought my reasons for coming out were meaningful. i decided to just got for an overnight camping trip by myself on saturday. drive-to campsite, no fast, but at least me and a tent and a fire. something small, less ambitious, but still something. i left around 6pm and drove to a nearby river we love, and tried to find a good campground (read: empty). no such luck. i found one with a guy i could see from every site, so i drove on. i went up to a place called grizzly campground, which i liked a lot. there was a weird metal-grill looking thing in the first campsite, so i drove around a little. at the next set of sties there was an rv. i decided alone-ness was not in the cards for me, so i went back down to the first set of sites and set up camp. the rv was about 200 yds away, and at least i couldn't see it. i set up my tent, etc. chewy was with me. a truck drove past down on the road (which was about 40 yds from my camp), and i tried to hide behind my tent, so they couldn't see i was a woman alone. i built but didn't light a small fire, and then chewy and i went to the nearby trailhead. it was probably 730, so we didn't have much light left. we hiked up. it was a great hike, relaxing and thoughtful and so, so quiet. we heard grouse drumming. on the way out, i left the trail to walk towards a small creek and scared a grouse from his spot. he scared the shit out of me, too. when i got back to camp, i lit a fire and drank a beer and smoked a little. it was blue twilight. my camp was at the bottom of a talus slope and someone had come and set up in the next campsite, but after a while i felt less resentment about the company and more welcoming. he was alone, too, and set up his tent about 40 yards from me. i didn't see him very well, and i never talked to him, but there was a quiet camaraderie on our end of the campground. he set up in the site between my site and the one that had the weird metal grill thing. it was like a steel cage. in fact, it was a cage. about ten mins after i got back to my site, a woman drove by. chewy ran out to see her (i think she was hoping it was todd) and the woman hollered into my site: "did you hear about the bear?" "no...?" i yelled. i got out my tent, where i had been sitting and looking at the fire, and went to meet her on the road. she said she was a caretaker for a house about a mile away, and they had a nuisance bear. it wasn't afraid of dogs, was habituated to people, etc. they were trying to trap it -- so the metal grill thingy was a *bear trap*. she said she couldnt' believe i'd camped right near it. i said i had no idea that's what it was. she told me it was a sow, and i shoudl be careful, and left. a few minutes later, the rv people strolled down to check us out. they wanted to warn me about the bear, too. they asked if i had a clean campsite. i had no food, but i had three beers, one of which chewy spilled. they said i should worry, but i could move my tent up by them if i felt more comfortable. they said some people that had set up down here on friday had moved up by them for the safety in numbers factor. i was tired. i didn't want to move my tent. they alternately reassured me i would be fine and scared me with bear-encounter stories of their own. (one of the stories involved a bear getting into a cooler that had only beer and soda in it. they then tried to tell me that my spilled beer was not a problem. they also said that chewy would bark and scare away a bear, but tha tthis bear wasn't afraid of dogs. chewy would have gone right after the bear if she'd seen it, so that was worrisome.) they were nice, and he was holding a beer. they were funny married-for-a-long-time people who finished each other's sentences in a way that implied they'd told this same story many times before. in unison, and with the exact same words. i went back to my tent. i cleaned up the spilled beer by spilling some water and wiped down the inside of my tent and put the full and ampty beers back in my car. it was probably near 10 and almost entirely dark. i threw some hugs logs on the fire in hopes it would burn all night and keep bear away. chewy and i peed and then tried to go to sleep. for about two hours, i tossed and turned. i told myself i would be fine. i held my little pocket knife in my hand, and in my pocket, and laid it by my pillow, as i imagined various escape scenarios. i felt very tired, though, and pretty relaxed overall, and i finally managed to doze off, only to be awakened by the rv people's dogs barking like crazy at the head of the campground. they'd said "our dogs will warn you if she passes through." then i remembered the first woman saying "well, if your dogs starts barking, i'd hightail it back to your car." and i remembered her saying "they'll just try to relocate her. unless, of course, she hurts someone at the campground." then i remembered the book _night of the grizzly_, and how everyone knew the bears were habituated and knew they came to feed and still stayed in their paths. and died. and i thought about how close i was to the bear trap and how silly that was, and all of these thoughts circled and circled until sleep was an impossibility. and i was _so_ _freekin_ _tired_. so i got together my bag with hat and camera and anything important (knife, glasses, warm hat), and i picked up my pillow and sleeping bag and flashlight and struck out for the car. it may have been midnight. it was a nearly new moon, no light whatsoever. my flashlight didn't really reach the car, so i headed in the direction i thought the car was. i ended up at the nearby, empty campsite. it was scary how dark and directionless it was. at least the campsite gave me bearings to know about where my car was, so i turned back and tried again. i was, of course, swinging the light around everywhere looking for scary bear eyes in teh dark, too. i couldn't get the car open fast enough. i loaded up my stuff and clibmed in to get some sleep. my tent still sat by the fire, abandoned. i woke up a few times in the night. it wasn't as comfortable as my tent had been. at the first light, around 530 or 6, chewy and i both woke up. we were rearranging ourselves when chewy started growling. i knew she saw the bear. i grabbed my glassees and my camera (not enough light for pictures, but i didn't care) and looked out. the bear was walking at the bottom of the talus, towards my tent. just before she reached the tent, she headed up the talus. i rolled down the window to try to take some pictures. chewy, of course, growled and barked out the window. it turned at looked at us, and continued up slope. i silently cheered it for avoiding the bear trap. when it got high enough up the slope, chewy and i ran to the campsite and i tried to get some pictures of it a the top of the slope. chewy kept barking. it dissapeared behind the trees. i laughed and congratulated chewy and packe dup my empty tent and put out my fire and left.

i'm a godmother!

2007-03-21T12:14:00.000-06:00

here's a picture of the new baby in my life:

her name is matilda! and i love her!

beautiful concentration

2007-03-20T10:30:00.000-06:00

we were heading out for a walk yesterday. i (of course) was running around the house looking for my camera, and todd wandered off into the yard to wait for me. when i came out, he was in the lower garden, walking the perimeter of the fence. a beautiful, meditative concentration on his face as he listened to the warble of his turkey caller. it's a weird little plastic device with a plastic tube running through it that you pull back and forth. it works like, and sounds like, a straw being pulled in and out of the hole in the top of your fountain pop. it's meant to mimic the sounds of horny hens. like a buddhist singing bowl, however, you have to move the "straw" part at just the right speed and pressure in order to elicit the proper pitch and frequency of the yelp. (yes, the sounds that horny hens make is really called a "yelp.")

so, todd, meditating on the yelp in the garden, pacing to the speed of his caller. a faraway look on his face. completely in tune with the vibrations of this plastic singing bowl.

********************

then last night we watched the end of a japanese anime movie we'd rented. _princess mononoke_. totally righteous. awesome animation. (i'm not an anime buff by any measure.) it was the story of environmental degradation told with an intense mythological structure. then, for an interesting juxtaposition, we watched the documentary _jesus camp_, about the evangelical movement's recruitment of god's army of footsoldiers (children). the kids were clearly convinced of their deep and unforgivable sinfulness. i cried with them. it was terrifying to see their utter indoctrination. to wonder at my own.

there were multiple scenes of children agonizing, looking heavenward, tears rolling down babysoft cheeks. i pondered the image. some people may think children should not be so sad and despairing. while i disagree with the impetus (the sinful, repentant), i did feel awe at these children's ability to feel something so deeply. while it was an orchestrated feeling, manipulated and abused out of them, the fact of their profound consideration of their places in the world made me think about how few children actually experience such genuflection. although, undoubtedly, these kids weren't really considering much, but rather being dictated to, lied to, indoctrinated. but i do think that children could benefit from some truth about the not-knowing. some genuine reflection, awe, humility, as they look up into the night sky and see infinity. know that they are part of, they belong, but they are still infinitesimally small and irrelevant, and that that is the truth of life. not-knowing.

an otter encounter

2007-03-19T10:43:00.000-06:00

saturday was too sunshiney. that kind of sunshiney that just exposes every dark corner, cuts the depth of field to zero, so everything looks flat and new. brings those deep valleys up into the light... they begin to look not so deep and despairing...

and you think: was i crazy? what made me think that was so damn important that it made me feel like dying? DYING? sadness? those feelings become almost unreal in the white blanket of the spring sun.

a long drive that day, to arrive at a little river in the mountains, to fish for springtime fish. they are beginning to develop their spawning colors. so vibrant, they define life.

we drove up to the tippy-top of the river, hoping to outdrive any other fisherpeople who hd chosen our river. and for a few hours, we lived in the happy delusion of solitude, hading flies back and forth, repairing tangles, tying on tippet, waiting for the wind to inhale so that we could make the perfect cast.

a few fishies, some fearless geese. the sound of an owl hooting, even at 1pm in the sunlight. it was too bright even for him to sleep. the raptor -- an eagle -- unseen but heard through the trees: her ripping screech. tiny emerging mayflies, as big as my pinky fingernail, drifting at the current's mercy, fighting to break through the surface tension of the water. something i don't even register as i dip my fingers through it. but for them, like being born, like pushing into a birth canal and out into air. a struggle.

we drove downstream about 7 miles and fished again. i imagined that we fished the same water twice, that we passed it on the highway and caught it again and it knew us. it remembered us, as it passed by, and was amazed.

at the second spot we spied an otter. he was contorted into a stick pose, all sharp angles like brown driftwood moving downstream. but sometimes our hearts recognize things our eyes miss, and i looked again at the wood and deciphered its otter-ness. i couldn't reach my camera in time to photograph him, which was too bad. otters are a too-rare sight here. it was only our second contact with one. we see bears and elk and moose more often. he cruised up onto an inaccessible island in the stream (that is what we are... no one in between... how can we be wrong?.. sail away with me...) and disappeared. we couldn't cross the river to reach it. we'd been trying even before we saw the otter: the fishy-looking water was along the opposite bank. but the river was high and strong, fed by melting melting. and an insane, translucent turquoise. like the ocean.

2007-03-16T13:38:00.000-06:00

Rattlesnake Creek, last night around 730pm

This is an undoctored photograph of the creek behind our house. It's amazing how it turned out -- like a painting. And there's another one I really liked... I love how you can see the rocks under the water...

2007-03-16T13:35:00.000-06:00

a new job, but no steelhead

2007-01-31T09:18:00.000-07:00

todd and i had an excursion to walla walla last weekend, where i travelled for a job interview. the job is an online writing job, which i have since been offered and will accept.

walla walla is a pretty cool little town. some great food and local wineries. we really enjoyed it; we got put up in the fanciest hotel in town, and that was vacation-y. we drank some local cabernet and syrah and table red and bought the cheapest bottle at the tasting place :)
we also went to an small art exhibit at one of the local campuses. whitman college, it's called. has some pics of global warming's effects. we parked and walked across the entire campus, and it was very cool for a campus. lots of interesting art everywhere and young hippie-types playing frisbee in the freezing fog.

then we walked around town a little more, hit up an old-fashioned candy store and bought chocolate and smooth-and-melties. no one knows what those are except me, i guess, but they are one of my favorite candies. stopped in a restaurant and chatted with the bartended over a beer about walla walla. she was wearing a sideways leather hat and mismatched shirts and a skirt and looked super chic.

we went out for a fantastic dinner at a place called creekside. we were both really hungry but it took us a long time to settle on something from the menu; it all looked so good. kind've an early birthday treat, i guess.

we drove back on highway 12, over lolo pass. that meant going thru the twin towns at the id-wa border of lewiston and clarkton. cute. i tried to upload a pic of lewiston but blogger seems to be having trouble with pics. i'll post in soon. anyway, there was a massive industrial great-falls-style menace on the banks of this huge, beautiful river. pollution pouring out. and it smells bad, too. poor river, poor noses.

on the drive back, we stopped in orofino at the north fork, right below the dvorshak dam. people everywhere. we talked to a couple of people -- they said they'd seen very few fish caught. these are steelhead -- rainbows running all the way up from the ocean to span. these fish swim hundreds of miles! hundreds! we tried anyway... me with my little 6 weight fly rod. you should have seen people's rigs! they had massive slip bobbers and let their stuff drift 50 yards downstream. you wouldn't even know there was a guy upstream from you until you saw this huge flourescent thing roll through your spot, then get dragged back through. it was weird. we only fished it for a few hrs. we were going to stay there overnight, but the combination of too many people and few fish caught sent us looking for better water.

the clearwater was mostly frozen over upstream, but it had opened up again by the time we got the the south fork at kooskia. on the way there, we saw a rescue effort (by then, must have been a recovery effort) for a boat that had hit a patch of ice that stretch across the river. there were a bunch of cars and people had used rocks and sticks to try to break the ice. it was scary and sobering.

we fished the south fork for about an hour at dusk. met another couple, montana-type hippies like us, from bozeman. they'd fished all day and were planning to camp that night, too. they hadn't seen any steelies -- guess we beat them there -- but had caught one whitefish. we decided just to head the rest of the way home, since it was about 3 hrs away at it was only 5 o'clock or so. just above kooskia, the river became an ice river again, and the lochsa was completely locked in as far as we could tell by the moonlight. we thought about stopping at the hot springs, but there were plenty of cars at both of them. so we heraldo's-ed on the way home for some burritos and slept in our own bed sat night.

2007-01-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

2006-10-04T12:12:00.000-06:00

and sometimes i wish i were drunk and sometimes i wish i were a cat and sometimes i wish i were a bird, a songbird, nondescript but with an enchanting song.
describe me by my song.
sometimes i wonder if i make any decisions. i live out the energy the world has destined for me? i transform or trascend that energy? that energy has myriad possibilities and somehow i choose?
what is my choice?
me now:
i teach. i read. i sit. i take pictures. i read. i email. i cook. i eat. i drink tea. i take walks. i fish. i read. i eat. i sit. i fuck. i talk on the phone. i water plants. i eat. i garden. i drink more tea. i have a hard time falling asleep from all the tea i drink.
is this my life?

the home search

2006-09-14T08:13:00.000-06:00

last night brought windy raininess to missoula. finally. the smoke in the valley had gotten so thick that we were all suffering sore throats and earaches. i can't help but imagine that these are the first inklings of the future we have created for ourselves: longer, longer, hotter summers. with more fires, less rain. later fall, shorter spring. lower and lower river flows. a tiny orange disc of a sun burning in a strangely smoky sky, a la oryx and crake.

our peppers and tomatoes could use more hot weather, warmer nights, but we will artifically create these conditions with the hothouse, etc. we hope.

snow in the mountains this weekend, they're predicting. lows approaching freezing. the parsnips and carrots will love it. the potatoes and pumpkins. the flowers on my porch will be brought in and temporarily housed here, although i imagine it will rebound into a warm stretch for a little while again.

****

2006-09-08T08:20:00.000-06:00

gray fog and grayling

2006-08-26T11:04:00.000-06:00

i quit my job yesterday, and in celebration, todd and i did a crazy hike.

not too tough - just about 5 miles round-trip, and it wasn't painfully steep or anything. the craziness was the weather. it was rainy all morning. we arrived at the trailhead around 2, when the clouds were still low and threatening. it was just misty, though, and we hiked in our rainjackets.

by the time we got to the lake it wasn't rainy but there was an incredibly thick fog. we couldn't see more than about twenty feet onto the lake. we'd never been there before, so we couldn't tell how big it was or what it looked like at all.

fish were rising along the bank, though, so we just started fishing. it was pretty chilly -- probably in the 50s -- and there was a cold breeze sweeping across the lake. we needed gloves.

despite that, we fished for about two hours before hiking back to the car. the fog lifted about a hundred feet above the lake by the end, so we could see across it better. it was about 10 acres and had steep rock walls around half of it. big rock slides. it was really beautiful. i took pics, but they will no doubt inaccurately represent. not enough light to really see the amazing colors. neon-green mossy trees, bright orange grasses growing on the mountainside. it'll all be pretty low-contrast with the heavy cloud cover, but i tried.

we were flyfishing for grayling, cold-water fish that are related to trout. they are so beautiful! they look like mythical fish, like something from a fairytale. they have this tall dorsal fin with amazing colors and stripes. at first glace, they're deceptively gray with black spots, but iridescent, too. if you turn them the right way, they come alive with pinks and greens. their dorsal fins are so tall that when they turn in the water, it looks like a trailing scarf, like little fairies dancing underwater.

divination skills needed

2006-07-30T10:31:00.001-06:00

divinators, line up.

whew. never have i felt so in need of guidance from the universe. and that's saying a lot. my new job as a reporter is going well. busy, busy. writing everyday, which is good for me. good practice, good exercise.

fast-paced workplace, where i don't feel like i'm just killing time, waiting for the clock. that's good.

and now we have new landlords. the people who have been our neighbors and rent-receivers for the last two years just sold their house, which means they sold our house, too, and the land our gardens are built on, and everything. the new people are bumping up rent.

we said, hey, we can't afford that. we may have to move. or get a roommate.

we're kinda sorta looking for a place now, though thinking we won't move until october. this home has been such a gift to us, such a beautiful place where so much change and wonder and experience has taken place. we're so close to nature, the creek and the ponderosas. we can hear it at night, instead of traffic. we can hear the birds and the wind and the crickets. fawns and bears and turkeys wander through the yard.

what will come next? how will it compare? i am anxious; i don't want to leave here and never again love another home as much. i'm not trying to be melodramatic or pessimistic, but it is a possiblity. this place is incredibly special. or was. now i don't know what it is.

or what to look for. or where. should we move down towards my new job, which is a 50-mile commute one-way? and leave missoula, a community to which we feel, in some ways, like we belong? in exchange for a smaller montana town, with a lot of character but an overwhelming (unbearable?) devotion to conservative values, where an overheard conversation can make you feel sad and sick and homesick and hopeless about the direction of this country and the human race.

okay, maybe that seems melodramatic. but it's true! i heard some people in the street talking about how democrats criticizing bush should be arrested for treason! they said "at least bush makes a decision and goes with it, right or not!"

WHAT?!?! this is an admirable quality?!?

then they pulled out the old standby: these (critical-of-gov't) kinds of ideas during wartime are so destructive that had we employed them during WWII (i shit you not), "we would all be speaking german."

they all nodded. they actually believe this bullshit! i felt heartbroken.

not that all montanans outside of missoula share these opinions, but...
do i want to live in a place where i'm a often-alone voice? a place that reminds me of my hometown?

if not, do i want to live in missoula and commute 100 miles a day? and if so, where do i want to live? what can we afford? what should we prioritize (a garden? low rent? cool landlords (haha)? southside (nearer to my highway)? livability? neighborhood?)

so, if any of you have some way of tapping into the universal flow, getting a sense of the direction of the wind, please let me know. i am deeply sad about leaving this house, and desire a sense of purpose, or direction, or guidance. a sense that moving away from this place is also a moving towards...

something...

up early...

2006-07-19T07:11:00.000-06:00

life is changing rapidly. a new job, undertaken this week, sudden has me up at dawn everyday, and busy until evening, like most people.

i don't know how i feel about that.

i like the work. writing, everyday. working with words. but i'm learning to negotiate the expectations and obligations and my own sense of personal autonomy. of doing what i want to do when i want to do it.

the cool part is, so far, i like doing my job. i don't feel like there's something i'd rather be doing; i don't clock-watch. it's helpful that when my work is done, my day is over. i dont' have to find busywork. writing, though, certainly fills a full time day. and i agonize over the reception of my little creations. did i remember to include so-and-so's title? is the story clear? will people call me to tell me how terrible the story is?

the blinking light on my phone on my desk is intimidating. i'm never quite sure if i want to check my messages.

yesterday i took two plants to work. my office is actually pretty cool. it's in a very old building -- over a hundred years old! it looks like one of the old storefronts in story city, iowa (where i went to high school). quaint, hometowny. the second story is where our cubicles are. six of them. and, even though i'm the new hire, i love my desk location -- right under the skylight. no one else wants it: the sun falls directly on the computer screen, making it partially illegible. i squint, i shade, but i'm so very glad. three hanging plants dangle beneath the skylight. i brought a potted plant to put on my filing cabinet and a viney plant that's growing hydroponically out of a rattlesnake creek wine bottle (organic pinot noir -- my favorite wine on the planet). i brought a picture, too, unframed. todd and i at a phish show. alpine valley. it had recently rained and dark clouds are piled up behind us and we look so very happy. it seems like a good reminder as i attempt this integration into the institutions of our society. ongoing examination: how to participate, how to integrate, how to contribute and how to learn while maintaining selfhood, integrity, independence. meaningfulness.

the long commute (two hours a day) affords me time for reflection. so far, it isn't too painful. though i wish it could be done on a bike or on my feet. meditative driving seems like an oxymoron. gassing up will become more painful. the highway is a busy and dangerous one. i get to spend less time with my little family and in my Home.

learning, learning....

what we will become

2006-07-03T10:32:00.000-06:00

you know, i don't post here very much. mostly because i'm afraid it's just a masturbatory exercise. i try to write about interesting things, things that strike me, that are things i'd like to share. i mean, i think of a million boring or intimate things every minute, so i try not to record thsoe anywhere public. but sometimes something occurs to me that i want to bring to a community, offer, and partake in discussion of. but usually i feel like i'm just writing these blogs out into oblivion, written to gradually decay, like some radioactive element. what is my halflife?

then, everyonceinawhile, someone mentions something from my blog, and i'm surprised to learn that someone out in the world actually read it. it makes me feel connected again, reminds me of the silent support structure that exists in my life. so, to anyone who actually has returned to this blog after the long silence: thanks for being someone in my existence. thanks for reinforcing the truth that -- even when i'm by myself, i'm never, ever going it alone.

this is something i've been thinking about lately... the profound bond we all share that is based on the mere fact of existence. how we are all creating our own myths, facing our own seemingly insurmountable odds, making brief connections, seeing flashes of meaning, and otherwise muddling along confused and uncertain and trying. this summer has been a summer of fairly deep considerations for many people in my life: so many friends and family members and acquaintences seem to be facing significant decisions, meaningful to our lives and our identities. this summer has seemed a crucible for our collective change... into what? there seems to be something in the air -- some catalyst, some scent -- that sinks into our bones and waits there. something like the caterpillars' innate wings, hidden deep in his skin, latent flight. this is the summer of our cocooning.

a hot house

2006-05-16T19:18:00.000-06:00

todd and i spent the afternoon taking apart a hothouse in frenchtown.
what the hell does that mean, you ask?
our landlord, rita, emailed me this morning with the news that someone was giving away a free hothouse. it's like a greenhouse, without fans or heaters or anything. the missoulian (our newspaper) has a "to give away" section in the classifieds, where people will list things they have in their driveway for pickup (old tvs, couches, junked cars, lamps... you name it) or a phone number you can call to come see the free thing -- kittens, stoves, pots and pans -- anything. on the phone call ones, you have to walk the delicate line between calling too early and waking up the person with the listing and waiting too long and not being the first to call. with free things, you know, it is always first come, first serve. rita's very good at finding these deals and being the first on the list, and she secured the hothouse for us -- her resident gardening freaks -- if we wanted it.
so we drove over to the house where the unwanted hothouse sat, unused, in the yard. after an hour of unscrewing, extracting nails and cramming things into the jeep, we managed to dismember the hothouse and get it packed up. it's about 8' by 16', 4' tall with a hinged door and plastic cover all around. perfect for tomatoes and peppers in montana's cold nights. even more exciting -- we can start seedlings in february, hopefully thwarting the too-short growing season with a little space heater and some good insulation. we may have to bring in some soil because there's no room in our two gardens for this behemoth. the lower garden has eight raised beds and some herbs and potatoes and no room left for more planting: the upper garden has raspberries, strawberries, cherry and peach trees, four raised beds, more potatoes and more herbs, lettuces and greens, and a cold frame (like a hot house, but smaller) with squash and cucumbers and melons vining inside. so, no room in the upper garden, either. we have to determine a new space for the hothouse, a sunny space with good energy. i'll have to ask the land tomorrow where she would like the hothouse to be. it's a tattoo on her already-marred skin, and she should certainly tell us how she feels.

we haven't yet unloaded the structure, let alone reassemble it into a building. right now it's a stack of wood and plastic sleeping in the jeep, adjusting to its new home.

work and fishing

2006-05-12T07:06:00.000-06:00

sorry it's been so long...
i wrote a long post last week (about our hike with anne and amit to the waterfall you see here) and when i hit "publish" i got an error message and LOST EVERY DAMN WORD.
well, needless to say, i was so frustrated i just shut off the computer and haven't been anywhere near blogger for awhile. i actually had to count to ten so i would say anything abusive when i came back, but -- look -- i already swore. oops.

um... i've been having dreams lately about my new job. as a women's studies professor! ah, yes, it's only a silly adjunct job, one whole class, crappy pay, no benefits, etc. etc. but i'm so excited! when i'm drifting off to sleep or not focused on a specific task, my wandering mind starts planning that class. what to read, what to watch, what to talk about. i'm so excited to explore these issues. the class is almost completely full already -- 20 of 25 spots have been filled. hurrah! i'm going to try to keep those few boys who do enroll, but i hear that's a challenge. the funny thing is... when i was an undergrad, taking women's studies classes, i *loved* it when all the guys dropped out. i really looked forward to the class with all women -- it felt different, empowering, supportive. like people were nodding, no one was feeling defensive or aggressive. this obviously reinforces some of those gender stereotypes, but it was true that many women felt the class was a safe place to vent and many of the men felt (whether true or not) they were under attack, and responded thusly. when they were taken out of the equation, the class seemed more cohesive.
so... now, as a teacher, i'm going to try to thwart the possiblity of some young undergrad having the same nurturing experience as i did! well, not exactly, but i can't help thinking that i'm planning on working to retain the few male members of my class when there might be some women in the class (as i was lo those many years ago) only all too happy to see them go. but my view of gender studies issues has certainly evolved since 1996, and i certainly feel that, when it comes to issues of gender, sex, and sexuality, we are ALL in some serious need of a supportive environment to explore, investigate, reflect, subvert, and unlearn. men and women and everyone else.
so... accepting this teaching post means i probably won't be able to complete my MEd and get my certification in english, which is what i've been doing for the last year. negate the last year of work? why not? i mean, that whole law school thing was just a blip on the radar screen, wasn't it? not really, of course -- it probably made me a more viable candidate for this teaching job, and may make it possible for me to be a professor for real someday in the future (it is a doctorate, after all, i tell myself and anyone who would be willing to interview me for a prof. job). and i might actually do some law-related work this summer to extra dough, but visions of lawyer-ness are no longer dancing in my head. it took about five months of 1st-year law school for that demon to be exorcised.

last week was a wonderful, but all-too-brief vacation from, well, whatever it is i do. an overnighter at teller wildlife refuge! it's only an hour away, easy driving distance from missoula, but fishing that's inaccessible unless you're a guest at TWR. we got to be guests because i bid on the trip at a silent auction for montana water trust. for just $160 we got the $350 package -- a stay at the awesome chaffin cabin (sleeps 6, if you want to pitch in next time) and fishing in the irrigation ditch from flyfishing heaven. the creeks across the property were closed, but they led us to a little creek down the road that was just a diverted part of the bitterroot river. the 'root was in runoff, raging past just a half mile away, but the channel we fishes was just slightly high, a little off-color, and loaded with big, hungry brown trout.

the ditch was a two-mile drive from our cabin, and on the way down the gravel road we drove past a horse ranch moments after a tiny colt had been born. he was just gaining his legs as we went past, his mom's head low to the ground beside him as though she were willing him to stand. he swayed and staggered, drunk with the new world of air and sunshine...

he was so beautiful!

keller is sweller

2006-05-01T17:02:00.000-06:00

the weekend:
thursday -- an interview for a job. i'm excited about the job. then amit arrived, on a plane filled with texan rugby players destined for the um campus. very drunk and somewhat entertaining. they did not get amit drunk. he arrived sober.
we ate.
todd and i gardened while amit took a nap.
anne arrived in time for dinner preparations. pizza and salad and wine. conor came over. we chanted 'om' while being a plant. we laughed.
friday -- a slow, sunshine-y morning. a walk to campus, a fruitless search for our will-call tickets. new sunglasses for brooke, new flipflops for todd. fast fries at the old post before we parted ways. anne and amit: coffee and wandering. brooke and todd: scholarship banquet. yay todd. proud we were, but still we snuck out early to meet our friends for the keller williams concert.
dancing. dancing. dancing. good vibes, good energy, good exercise. leftovers late at night.
saturday -- awoke to another blue, blue sky. gathered essential foodstuffs for a hike, including chocolate eclairs. wandered deep into the bitterroot mountains, where we spotted a raging waterfall that only exists a month out of the year. bushwhacked uphill steeply to bask in the misty blowings. ate lunch, checked for ticks (four!), examined bleached bones, looked out over the steep ravine. tried not to slip. it was slippery.
the hike out. the enchiladas and fajitas and bean dip on the drive home. sunset after nine. late night of monopoly, cards, general merriment. dreams and dreams.
yesterday -- jill's poetry reading. lovely, visceral, thoughtful. an afternoon nap in the sun. dinner with friends, late into the night, long conversations. more dreams, another life under the surface.

interview today

2006-03-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

today i'll have an interview for a teaching position at ronan high school, on the flathead indian reservation. i'm excited about it -- this is the position i want more than any of the other apps i've sent out. a high school english teacher! what a job! it's so funny... we all have ideas of who these people are, these english teachers, because of our experiences and teachers growing up. what if i become one of them? how do i compare? how will i compare? is this the right archtype for me, or only a placeholder until i find another self?

i'm in a better mood as the day waxes. last night i went to sleep with a terrible monster curled in my belly. a self-hating monster, an ugly beast interested only in shaming me and gouging my eyes. i was so, so sad. its a feeling i have after almost any social interaction -- i feel drained, worthless, embarassed of myself. i awoke with it, too, but don't remember much of the intervening dreams. one where anne and amit and i were preparing some special rice, served on a huge pillowy, quilted carpet that was unrolled over a vast concrete walkway. ceremonial. i was up at 4am, working on some work (how i pay the bills) that i'd forgotten to do the night before. i went back to sleep at 5. the morning has grown out of the ugly crinkled awaking into something more soothing, a clarity, an unfolding. perhaps adrenalin for the interview? perhaps the beautiful, sunshiney day. i went out into it in my satin pajamas (they look like something cary grant would've worn in an old movie -- maroon with gold pinstripes and piping -- and soooo silky soft and sheeny) and my socks, which got wet, so then my bare feet. too cold for that yet but not *way* too cold. high in the 50s today, and the sun warms the earth superficially. if you stand in one place for too long, the frosty cold still seeps up through the mud, but it's okay. it's almost as though my standing there and sucking it out you are removing poison from the earth, encouraging it to warm sooner, conducting the winter frost through your body, into your calves, your ass, your teeth, and out of the top of your head into the universe. almost.

superpowers

2006-03-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

i have a headache, slight, but that might be because i am going to get my period soon. it might also be because i haven't had a cup of tea today, and my body is used to at least two by now. it might be because the wind is blowing like crazy, seeping through all of the creeks and cracks in the house. i think it's a steady 19 mph now -- one of those days where the actual temp is 35, but it feels like 20. it's okay, though, because today is the vernal equinox. did you know that? will you do anything to mark this day? i feel like i should, but haven't come up with anything very good yet. send me a suggestion. i feel tired even though i slept nine hours. i had a terribly scary dream last night, though. these zombie-like people were everywhere -- they were diseased, and part of the disease attacked the brain, making them attack and eat people. i was hiding with my brother. i had been scratched, which meant i was in big trouble. that was all it took to begin the disease process, rotting flesh, etc. after hiding for awhile, we decided to turn on the lights to collect things and try to make a run for it. when we did, i saw that the scratch on my arm had actually healed into a long scar, overnight. no one was known to have come in contact with this disease and not contracted it. i felt sort of like someone with a superpower. magical blood.

two of wands -- personal power/dominion

2006-03-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

today i spent waaaaay too much money at the grocery store, but i'm glad. still -- $300!! but i got lotsa stuff on and off my list, includign some kindey support stuff i've been wanting to try. we got milk thistle and some cal-mag supplements i've really been needing, too. i bought a bunch of incense, patchouli and frankincense and jasmine and, of course, my old standby: nag champa (sandalwood). they put this little sample package in there they call "superhit" (hee hee), which has a yummy smell and is supposed to "increase the positive and decrease the negative energy for all birth signs." well who can say no to that? i really like it, but i've *never* seen it for sale on its own. if i did, i'd buy it.

we also got a little venus flytrap, a plant todd is fascinated with. they're very hard to keep alive but we're going to make every effort. we get little bug infestations in the house from time to time (aphids, ants, fruitflies, etc.) and i think it should definitely be able to survive on those pickins. todd's wanting to start a little fly farm for the vft, but i think that's going overboard... at least for now. they like humidity, so we've set it in a little bowl of water (on rocks). it's surrounded by lotsa other plants, some hydroponic, so it should definitely get the air-water its looking for. any ideas for names?

the vft and a bunch of other plants have found a new home in the erstwhile fly-tying room. since todd never actually tied flies there (instead leaving feathers and deer hair and hooks all over the REST of the house), and since it has some of the best light in the house, which is otherwise never appreciated/used, i designated it as my new space. i set up a little desk there with my laptop for some writing projects. i put up some of my favorite pictures, and a little frame for a picture i want to change regularly with new pictures that strike me. the first to grace the featured frame is one i took during my last visit to great falls. on a walk along the frozen missouri i snapped a picture of a smelter that has a little eternal flame, burning, i assume, gas emissions of some sort. geese were coming to land on the ice in front of the plant, with the olympic-like fire blowing in the background. weird.

<---- this is sorta like that picture, but i couldn't scan in the one with the geese in in because it's in the frame in my room.

i also stacked my tarot studies books and my decks there, with a place to burn sage and incense and candles while i do my daily readings. today i got the two of wands, a card that indicates charisma and personal power, self-confidence and self-assuredness. hmmm...

other than that, i failed to take advantage of the lovely weather today. it was 50! but pretty windy -- too windy to go fishing. so instead we waited for the predicted rain to come and justify our indoors-ness, but it never came. still hasn't. in fact, what am i doing...? i'm going for a walk.

woods gulch

2006-02-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

todd and i just got back from a long hike. it was about 75 minutes straight upa hill (whew!) and then 25 minutes down. most of the hike was along this gulch,and a tiny stream trickles through it - mostly frozen. at the top of the gulch,the mountain has a flat-ish spot where it levels out. not quite as steep there,but suddenly there was a foot and a half of snow because there weren't any treesthere, either. that was tough. at the top of the mountain runs an old loggingroad, where you can walk across the mountainand loop back down onto the trail.when we hit the road, it was relatively flat, of course, but we were walkingsouthwest straight into the wind. it was COLD. i pulled my hat down but itdidn't attach to my face so it was more like a tunnel, or a sail, collecting thewind by my ears. i kept my head down (after i took a few pictures) and justmarched over to the place where the trail started back down hill -- and backinto the trees. the hike down was fast and quiet.

now we're home. doing dishes, making tortillas.

according to merriam-webster unabridged:
gulch : : "a deep or precipitous cleft in a hillside : a ravine or gully; especially : one that is short, steep-sided, and occasionally occupied by a torrent."

2006-02-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

According to astro.com, my horoscope today is as follows: "Today your thoughts are on light topics, and you find it difficult to take things seriously. Your good mood will affect every encounter today, making conversations agreeable, sociable and friendly, punctuated with humor. You are not likely to have any patience with serious or heavy topics, although you are willing to discuss relationships and matters pertaining to love and affection. You will find it very easy to express love and affection for others today, even if you are usually tongue-tied. If you want to say something to make a favorable impression on someone, you will succeed today. You can win people over by what you say and how you say it. This influence also favors commercial transactions and negotiations, particularly in the entertainment field." (This describes the transit: Venus conjunction Mercury.)

I don't think I have ever, ever felt that way in my life, i.e. impatient with serious topics, spending the day with my "thoughts... on light topics." Have you? What is that like? I find myself usually occupied with the raw and brutal, the why, the meaning the meaning the meaning. What are light topics? Weather? Gossip?

Today the snow is thicklying piley. It's good to see snow, which has been staying away for the past two months. It's supposed to be 13 degrees on Friday... soooo much colder than it has been. globally warming. my parents got two feet of snow in d.c. and lost their power for 20 hours. mom said she was going to cry it was so cold. she was joking, but something like that's gotta getcha thinking...

what will you do when the revolution comes? when the electricity isn't running? when your water comes from the nearest stream to your house? where is that? do you know? what is its status, is it polluted, filled with fertilizer run off? livestock shit? how long do you think we can get away with this?