456

This is the time of the school year when I do a little flutter kick, make a feeble attempt at keeping my head above water. In my high school swim team days, we used to paddle out to the deep end, hold our flat palms shoulder-height and kicked to keep afloat. This, my friends, is precisely how the last two weeks of the semester feel: today I picked up a heavy stack of research essays to grade and did a limping-along presentation on zuihitsu. Tomorrow I grade, I make phone calls for various medical procedures (I have an HSG in my future; Penelope needs to see a surgeon; Ryan even has a doctor's appointment I apparently will have to make), submit my chapbook to a few presses whose deadlines are fast approaching, consider a final paper, work on putting together a first rough draft of that vague thesis... And breathe in, and breathe out.

I signed up for autumn classes: thesis credits with Trish, thesis seminar, workshop, and a class in the Classical & Near Eastern Studies department on the classical epic in translation, which should fulfill my "related fields" requirement. It's certainly an overload, but my final semester would be incredibly smooth sailing. The coursework and teaching (intro to poetry) will be spread over the five days of the week, with only one extra-long campus day.

In honor of the zuihitsu, but in a more blog-conscious format:

On my bedside table: Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Just finishing watching: Carnivale (season 2, disc 5)
Blooming in our yard: a single red tulip, the zestar apple tree, our two crabapple trees
Listening to on my commute: The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
Which makes me want to re-read: "Leda and the Swan" (see below)

428

Two weeks ago I was all shades of blue: the great steps I thought my body was making in getting well were reversing, stress was creeping in the background from school, and then came the news of Callen's passing, which flattened me entirely.

Ryan didn't know what to do, the sweet man. He felt so urgently helpless, would tell the silliest jokes (in the car, I said something was an abomination and he looked at me with his crooked grin and said, "That's where we live! An Obama-nation!" Wah-wah), and even came home with a fistful of carnations, so serene and stayed blooming until this morning.

I think of the color white, how it represents peace, and how I need to find ways to fill my life with that sensation: to allow my body to take its time, to celebrate the positive relationships I have, to enjoy the process of things.

At a friend's suggestion, I have contacted an acupuncturist to work with some of my woes. She and I have also begun a small conversation that includes my deeply considering getting doula training. The prospect makes me shiver with nervousness and excitement; it's something that veers so far from my passion for language, but it touches on that slumbering self, the one that loves to pick things up and look close, the one that is curious about the scientific world, and, as my internship "boss" put it, I want to do something with my post-MFA time that matters. Besides writing wee poems, that is.

Edit to add: just moments after I posted this Dina gave me a call and I have my first appointment for acupuncture, which is a week from today. She's worked with folks dealing with my particular issue before, and this whole prospect makes me breathe a bit better.

415

I'm feeling a bit inside myself these days. My body has been uncooperative these days in repair, and I've wanted nothing more than to crawl inside and hibernate.

It's full thick and snowy February, and yesterday, my husband and I were snowed in. It takes a few country roads to get to my small town, and the district shut down their schools for the day. I made a go at getting to my own class at the university yesterday morning, but the combination of snow-slick roads, cars tipped into ditches, and my own stress level already being high that kept me home, reading student drafts, cleaning the sink's basin, knitting little objects.

I'm reading books less for immersion in my craft and more for escape: novels I can send my grandmother when I'm done, books that make me settle into home a bit more. I'm thinking about family and baking, about long walks and tabletops free of clutter.

Tonight I travel up to the Cities to take some photographs for the English program's website, and then head over to a cafe to meet a few new friends for a knitting group.

Tomorrow is a long day on campus and after, we head to Green Bay to celebrate Ryan's mother's birthday. It will be good for me to get out of town, to take a break from the same shape of things. I feel that winter blue inside of me, not the bright blue of clear skies, but that heavy fog, that swing low kind of sorrow that follows.

372: the end of meat

There have been a few things leading up to it: first, my body decided it. I respect and trust my body.

Second, I got a tattoo. I spent seven hours with some of my favorite vegans; when I came home, I confessed to Ryan: "Well..." And he said, "You are not becoming vegan."

Oh. Oh, no.

But: I'd been debating it by then though. Not veganism, not when I love milk-and-cheese-and-wool-and-honey, but stopping the meat again.

And there it was, a little something, a particle of something, a something that niggled and now, I'm taking that plunge, with more thought than I did for my first venture.

There are thirds and fourths and fifths and so much else influencing me:

:: Food, Inc.

:: Jonathan Safran Foer's new book.

:: The considerations of No Impact Week.

:: But most of all, last night, when we went for our last visit of my grandmother in the nursing home. The four of us piled into the car, Mom and Dad up front, and my grandmother's white kitty between us (oh, and: interesting dream, if you haven't read it), Ryan and I poking our fingers through the bars, cooing, calming, and suddenly there is that metallic sound, that crunch that is car-upon-something-big, something-frighteningly-big, and it wasn't my father rear-ending someone, but instead that slam that-is-a-body. My father has bagged his third deer, each roadside creatures, and this one, leaving that gritty red-upon-red, those quill-hairs in miniature, something that looks like an organ-bit or something-fatty. I sat still for so long, my fingers pressed against my mouth, my mother fretting over the trip back home (flat tires, radiator fluid leaking, what-could-it-be?) and the cat, silent, a few mewls from her kennel. My mother confessed: "If we were in Wisconsin, that deer would be yours" after the pondering of what might happen to the body.

Fortunately for my father, just around the corner of his home is the Wildlife Sanctuary, and he can make some kind of karmic retribution.

I hate to admit this, but I'm glad, of the four of us, that it was my father who hit the deer: he has the right distance from me for me to not feel the hot shame (Ryan), he feels the right level of guilt (me: I'd spiral out of control in sorrow) balanced with the right level of nervousness at the car's ability to get its passengers to the nursing home (my mother kept repeating her hyperbolic fears--whatifwhatifwhatif!)--but my father, my poor father, who has now hit three deer in his life (this is the second from visiting his parents), who hasn't wanted to hit any--he knows how beautiful these creatures are and how good it is to contentedly drive a hanging-in-there car--

Can I now? The biggest images will haunt me: the chicken whose breasts are too-heavy to hold the bird upright, the cow whose hind legs couldn't hold it upright, the chicks separated so aggressively, and now, the sound of the thunk of bumper-on-deer.

370

I received some disappointing news at the doctor's office this week, and though it does not mean all is a failure, there are possibilities regarding the (lack of?) permanence of my affliction. Is this all veiled enough for you? In other words: a medication I've been taking isn't doing what it's supposed to do, which is scary and frustrating, but after Thanksgiving break, I go in again and they're going to examine me and raise the dosage to see if that works. I feel angry at my body for being a failure, a poor reflection on my self as a whole.

It's hard to not point out the cliche, the obvious: it's all becoming material. Foibles as fodder.

We made the first leg of our Thanksgiving journey late last night; Ryan "allowed" me to stay late on campus so I could spend time with my beloved poetry girl friends, dinner at a campus Thai restaurant, and I drove the whole journey from our corner of Minnesota to his parents' corner of Wisconsin. He slept in the back with Penelope; Zephyr kept watch in the front seat, where we spotted a doe and a few miles later, the most magnificent buck with an amazing rack, and the fog descended with a light drizzle and I sang lonesome country songs in my head.

355: yoga

Tonight, first night at yoga, which will occupy my time as the sun sets on Thursdays. I felt humbled, being a beginner amongst regulars, but this is how a small town yoga studio works--those sessions roll over into one another, little tumbling blocks. My body cooperated on most levels, which pleased me, despite my tender ankle and clumsy ways. And I left breathing much slower, wanting to raise my arms slowly over my head at each inhale, lowering them slowly at each exhale. And even though my muscles ached a little, my body mostly felt softer, more liquid afterward.

Today was beautiful, with clear blue skies, a bright and warming sun, the dogs burying their noses in the boulevard brush.

My body is changing, I know, as I make my way into more peaceful practice. It's feeling better as I consume more vegetables, as I breathe more deeply, as I get more fresh air, as I move and move and move. I may have gotten to the other side of stress; this doesn't mean anything stress-related is over or resolved, but just that I'm finding ways to do things that perhaps aren't fraught with consequences or criticisms or serious results. Instead, I knit little objects for holiday presents. I experiment with felting. I try a new recipe. I take walks, take photos, take field notes. I try yoga. Broadening, yes. But not in the bad way, of course.

349

Runner-up to my daily walk photo. This one is probably sweeter, but I know I won't always have the chance to hold up a bright amur maple leaf up to the camera! I think I've been very lucky this autumn to have these bright colors a part of my landscape for so long--the first ones appeared at Bread Loaf in Vermont, and I've been getting glimpses ever since.

I find this mindful walking is tipping into other aspects of my physical and mental health: I'm learning to not push myself so hard with needless extras, and those limitations on intake also are relating to consumption: as of yesterday morning, I no longer eat red meat, I am indeed considering returning to vegetarianism (I had been for about seven or eight years, but the last three or so, I have been eating meat, which was essentially a reaction to Ryan's treatment of leftovers and me being my father's daughter, the leftover machine), and I am reaffirming my relationship to being alcohol-free, which is necessitated by the drug regimen I am on to regulate my PCOS. Ryan is joining me on a very moderate exercise schedule, which includes embarrassment as he whips past me in push-ups and sit-ups and runs circles around me in the park. Somehow, I still don't want to push him away; it's important to me that he does as I do, even if I am snail's-pace slower. His company is always so good for me.

I hope to knead in other healthful changes as well: being more conscious of water-intake, working in plenty more fresh fruits and vegetables, switching to more organic choices, and I'd like to stop talking about it and do it--start a beginning yoga class. There's one I'm eying that starts next month, but it's on Thursday mornings, which happen to also already be my meeting time for independent study, a primary obligation. Oh, the art of balancing--our internal and external lives--oh, fresh air and sunshine.

339

I love Eireann's words, and I love that I can connect with her quietly on her blog sometimes. I wish I could pull England closer to here, a long rope across the pond. Today she posted a quote which has resonated with me, and I wanted to share a bit of it with you:

You may not have perfect taste; there is no perfect taste; but you'll have taste and it will be yours, not somebody else's, but your very own; and you may not be able to lecture on it any better than I can, but you will have a feel for the painter's art, which is a fine art.

From The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens: Volume I: A Boy on Horseback and Seeing New York First. Harcourt, Brace: 1951. p 130.

You see, I'm in the midst of a hefty independent study, which has me reading these books that could build cottages in the woods, heavy stones of books, thick and collapsing. I'm reading Emily Dickinson, and there are moments when her words shine right off the page, but there are others where I feel I'm slogging through a sing-songy mess, and what has begun to frighten me (and has always frightened me) as a reader and editor of poetry is that I might not recognize a good poem--what if I rejected one of Dickinson's poems? What if I don't understand why they are so celebrated? (I do, in some ways, and in some ways, not as much.)

And perhaps I want to be the kind of reader and editor that can celebrate a myriad of poetry, just as I want to celebrate a full life, but maybe I need to also recognize that trusting myself is important too. It's OK to vary in my aesthetic, to allow my tastes to change, and to think something is good when others don't (and vice versa). It's OK to develop my own canon.

---

I've been feeling the pressure of the semester this past week, and I'm in a place where I need to pull back, to not take on more until less is pulled off the top. What I want more than anything is to have quiet, both inside and out.

While I was on the MFA retreat, one of my cabin mates, Brian Laidlaw, would wake to yoga practice, would line his mat up to the picture window and breathe and move and breathe.

Denise, a fellow blogger and former MFA, wrote a post that begins with an image from a train in Chicago. I want to get onto a train, with nothing by way of obligation, with a small knapsack that contains: my bedroom pillow, a writing notebook (maybe a brand new one, even), a volume of poetry that requires no essays or reviews or interviews at the end of it, some knitting (preferably in earth tones, preferably natural fibers and bamboo needles), my camera with a blank card in it. I wouldn't have any medication with me or student essays or submissions to dislocate or any other literary magazine. I would have pencils to sketch with. I would have music.

I want to start a new garden.

I want to clean windows.

I want to make things with my hands. Bake oatmeal cookies in the afternoon. Celebrate the feel of autumn sun on my skin.

Breathe and breathe and steady and breathe.

Yesterday morning, when I was a bit late (the morning rain made the commute harrowing) for a meeting with the professor I'm doing my independent study with, I was so off-kilter, my body soaked from the cold rain, my car parked in an unfamiliar place, I had to steady myself, and he had to tell me to take a moment. He may not have known it, but I was on the verge of bursting into tears, nearly as embarrassing as when I did cry, unstopping, in the doctor's office several years ago, revealing what I already knew about myself (oh, anxiety disorder).

I cannot let myself go back to that.

314

July has been a ridiculous month for me, one that has driven me right into The Funk, a feeling where I am pretty sure I'm underwater and the rest of the world is merrily skipping by. I've spent afternoons obsessing over my newfound drive to conquer PCOS, (oh, and I tell you, what with changing my diet and joining the YMCA, my body is slowly responding): new medications have left me curled on the floor like a whimpering, ridiculous child, and my husband, chopping carrots in the kitchen, reminding me, "It won't always be this bad." Yes, my body can acclimate. And yes, my body has been tortured a bit this month of July, and I now think the pill-a-day organizer Ryan joked about before is something to invest in seriously, and I'm not even thirty yet, but I have a distinct, comforting order to the pills I take each day: the fattest one (fish oil) first down to the itty bitty prescriptions.

I know it's not the changes that have brought my emotions swinging low, but the way I obsess over them. I am at my worst when I am wasting time. And I tell you, internet, curses, curses, you suck me in! And I happily, obliviously allow for that.

That, and my days and nights are getting hopelessly mixed up.

I need structure. I once said, when Ryan and I have children, that I'd like to be a stay-at-home-mother. I admire that position--the one that dedicates self to home and the early education of offspring. (OK, and maybe half that reason was the fantasy that I could be a stay-at-home-writer.) Ryan always shrugged and said I probably should get a job. It's not because of finances entirely, we can adapt, but that he doesn't want to come home to me as a wide-eyed, stripped down self, me in desperation for adult conversation and stimulation. The job would provide an outside conversation, and given how much time I've sullied in the summer, I know it's true. I'm better when spare time is precious, not overabundant and rotting.

Now I look forward to:
- an approaching weekend trip to Austin to visit my little sister
- the two weeks in Vermont for Bread Loaf
- SCHOOL. I can't tell you how much I miss it, how ridiculously long summer is, and how my reading list has stagnated. That, my friends, is going to change. After all, there is one month left.

Also: I found this entertaining collection of workshop comments via this blog. Thanks, Margosita!

298: make peace with the moment

Found at 31experiment, via SouleMama

There are certain mantras. There are certain things we need to remind ourselves: that we are all essentially good, that we must be here now, that we should be proud of ourselves and our choices.

Sometimes that's not so easy to remember. Me, I tend to look backwards and forwards all the time--remembering first dates, the undergraduate years, times when I wasn't so unhappy with my body or with this space I take up. I look forward to being back in school, to having children. I have trouble stabilizing myself in the here-and-now.

But look at today: the temperatures are low enough that we haven't had to turn on our air conditioning in days, I have new running shoes to try out tonight, I just dropped my friend Colleen off at the Anderson Center for her two week artist residency (and gawked at the vastness of the house), I've got a good book to finish and a project on the knitting needles, tonight I will make dinner with my husband and fall asleep easily.

Life is good, I was telling my book club girlfriends last night. We were talking about running, and Emily said she was fueled when she was angry--I realized that was when my own endurance rose, both on swim team in high school, and when I used the elliptical at the Y. And I felt better. Do I need to invent reasons to be angry to make it more than a handful of blocks before huffing into a juttering walk? Do I need to bring myself back to mad? No. I have another motivator, but I'm going to keep that mum for a little while.

Making peace with the moment isn't entirely the same thing as being here now, though. Rather, it's about forgiveness and acceptance and all of those difficult things that allow you to embrace being alive and not letting things bog you down. I have some baggage I have been carrying about, and I'm choosing to let it go. There are moments when I find I need to prove that my lack of forgiveness is justified, that I am right, and how much energy does that take? Making peace with the past.

Making peace with myself: the anger I get at time wasting, the procrastination, the cluttered home and cluttered body, the bad poetry to get to the good, the impatience, the things that make me miserable when I look in the mirror. The utter lack of self confidence. These things have to go. Making peace with the journey.

Indeed, I find myself in a very lucky place in my life right now: I'm married to my favorite person in the entire world, I have girl friends who fill my heart, we have a home and a little animal family, a garden, good conversation, long walks. It's not always the case, and there is someone very dear to me who has been holding her own through an amazing string of bad luck lately. My heart is with her, and I hope this sweet illustration maybe helps. A little bit.

284

I'm sick again. I hadn't realized a person could get flu-ish more than once every few years; I thought there was some logbook somewhere that prevented that. Instead, it's twice in as many months, and I wish I could say May was flu-free, but Sunday night was when the fever announced itself and I went to bed shivering, despite the piles of down comforter nesting me in.

What has been particularly frustrating me is the way in which I can feel simultaneously ravenously hungry and fully repulsed by food. My stomach has been making symphonies all day, the churn of foam and rush.

I have so many little things I want to blog about, but my energy level is that of the cats in a rough slump--I will return to my patch of sofa cushions with my book (currently: Dog Years by Mark Doty, which is beautifully written) and wait patiently, as this too, will pass.

258

Yesterday I thought I was healing up well, but it seemed to be a fake out. I did manage to make it to campus to teach my two discussion sections, though I perhaps should replace the term "teach" with "witness," as my brain cells have faded--even if I weren't regressed, a prisoner in my own home, I know my mind has suffered greatly from this near-week of science fiction sick.

Good things, though:

- Loving Simply Breakfast's brief Paris return. My favorite is 4/17--both for the ranuculas (my favorite! no, peonies are my favorite! my tied favorite!) but also the way I can imagine myself sitting at a window, staring down at a busy city street, baguettes and newspapers, me writing little poems in my notebook, a feeling flush with productivity.
- These images of rooms on Wikstenmade. They remind me of the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, when my family and I traveled to Europe (England, Scotland, France). We stayed in an inn along the road in Scotland, on the way to the Highland Games, and I would call it a bed and breakfast, but the bar was rauckus that night, and the light in our room wouldn't shut off, and I had given myself these insane blisters on my feet after insisting on wearing my brand new bright blue Doc Martens around Manchester the day before.
- Uniform Studio's gossamar scarves. (I ordered one in a blue-black shade!)

- Inventing the Abbots by Sue Miller (short stories)
- The Beautiful Country (film)
- watching re-runs of The Office

I'm thinking about picnics... They've come up twice in my rapid internet perusing. Being sick, all I can do is stare out the windows, enjoy a little sun, but mostly, it's been bed-sofa-youknowwhereelse. And my body, while it has been curling in on itself, has been craving: watermelon, small berries, carrots, water. I'm loving my body wanting the right things; I'm so easily given in to rich pastas, bread, my huge cheese weakness, and a love of a good beer. Now, because of my stomach's turnings, I think of food that is wet and fresh, that my body can tingle a little bit to. Today is so windy, no picnics for me--the weather siren even went off twice this afternoon, and the only explanation the weather website gave was prime wildfire conditions. It's true: the wind is swooshing all about, our recycling bins retrieved by some kind passer-by, so I'm afraid any spread quilt would flap up in the gales. But if I stand out there, clinging to the storm door, and close my eyes, I can imagine a little picnic surrounded by little bursts of green.

257

The sounds my stomach makes are strange, nightmarish. It feels like a storm crossing, that build up and the sputtering, spidering. I've had better starts to a week.

I would feel slothful with my days, if I weren't feeling so miserable. My brain is an absolute fog; I feel awful about how I will look back on reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao because I felt so terrible.

I've felt cocooned too; all this sleep. With the fever, it was toss-on, toss-off, stacks of blankets, wool and down and sweatshirts, then waking in a film, dazed, the sun a long way off, wanting to nudge Ryan awake, beg him to get me ice water, my mouth smacking dry.

But I'm loving this: that the grass has begun to come in, little crew cut tufts, in the places where we seeded, and we've got rain, which means thunderstorms will come soon too (to compete with my stomach, no doubt). I'm loving fruit punch Gatorade because it stays for a little longer. And I'm loving sleep because it is respite just now.

Tomorrow I head to campus; I cannot cancel class again (jury duty, Palm Beach, AWP, I curse you all!) and though I don't think I'll be terribly graceful, I will be present and I will return home, back to blankets and cocooning. Back to watching the robins and storm clouds.

256

The Sunday of the prairie fire, we spotted a number of the above flowers; I learned on this blog they are called "pasque flowers" and is also known as the "Easter flower" (ah, and there we were, witnessing it on Easter).

Still fully unwell, though I am proud to say I have been able to maintain a Gatorade for the past forty minutes. You see, I cannot drink Gatorade when I am well as I always associate it with this kind of illness, only as a child. And I was finally able to gather enough pathetic strength to take a shower, and if you know me at all, you know not taking a shower for that long is a true indication of being unwell. When we camp, I have a hard time not-showering, and usually, we book sites with showers. This does not bode well if we ever want to tackle the Boundary Waters.

I am now going to attempt a banana, which I discovered is supposed to be good for an upset stomach while doing a google search. I have to tell you, there were more websites on a dog's upset stomach than a human's...

255

Photo: Ryan on his camera phone, Memorial Bluff

I can't remember what year it was, but it was the one when Alina came to stay with my parents (Moldovan exchange student) and we spent (Christmas?) at my grandparents' house--this was when my grandfather was still alive--I don't know what happened, but I was sick. As in keep-nothing-down-for-days. I was to return to our corner of the Midwest with my mother, sister, and Alina, but was too sick to travel, and thus, my father, who was already going to stay an extra few days, took me home instead. It was miserable--lots of sweaty moaning, though I was pretty much left alone in the big bed, which was nice. Usually the kids were relegated to the smaller twins scattered throughout the house.

I'm that way again now, however many years later. Last night I went to bed, shivering, thinking it was the open window and the rain making me so violently cold. But when I piled on the comforter, changed into a sweatshirt and wool socks, I realized something was up. And at five in the morning, my body expelled dinner and I found my temperature at 102. Sick, officially.

And I cannot tell you how grateful I am that it came on the weekend, because I cannot miss any more school, and we're so close to being done. There's no way I can easily make it from the first floor to the second of our house in this condition, let alone make it to campus, and I have Monday off, so I am hoping, hoping, hoping to be better by Tuesday morning.

There's something about being unwell that makes a person feel desperate for being looked after. Ryan is usually pretty good at that, and he stopped at the grocery store (I was craving watermelon, hoping it had a better chance--though who was I kidding when plain water didn't even work?) and he brought home five kinds of soup, Gatorade, Sprite--all the remedies of childhood. My stomach is cross and is having none of it, and I spend a lot of time moaning and sweating/shivering/sweating, but I've been lucky so far and escaped colds and whatnot all winter. Perhaps one big wallop is how it will go this year.

132: 29

This is the last year I am in my twenties. I used to be jealous of my high school seniors who were facing their undergraduate degree, but now that I'm in the MFA program, I know I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be at this point in my life. I never thought I'd be able to say that: "Now that I'm in the MFA program." On election day, I was doubly happy: I was also accepted into an advanced workshop at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in January. I'll be working with Kimiko Hahn, who I met in 2002, I believe, when she came to the University of Minnesota for a once annual (intentions were good) poetry festival. I went to the PBPF last January, but it was an intermediate workshop; this year I'll be working with one of the headlining poets. If I could continually splurge, it would be on travel. If I could travel anywhere, it would probably be to Ireland, though I have a long, long list of places I'd like to go before I die.Despite this, I am fairly happy we settled into Minnesota. Even though I love the coasts, I love them in my imagination; I don't know what it would be like to live there. My favorite spots in Minnesota are Red Wing and especially the north shore. I would move to Duluth if we could; Ryan was lucky enough to live there as an undergraduate. My new favorite vegetable is brussels sprouts. We attempted to grow them this year and yielded a tupperware full of tiny buds; they're good raw in salads as well as cooked. I am one who loves vegetables and doesn't eat enough of them. I'm not sure what kind of laziness that is. I was twelve when we moved from Tennessee to Wisconsin. I was nineteen when I moved to Minnesota to go to college. And while Wisconsin has some nice spots, like Door County, I would not move back; I am not fond of Green Bay. But of course, I would never take that move back: Green Bay brought me together with my husband and my dearest friend Kelly, among many of my girl friends that mean the world to me, like Chris, Nikki, Mandy, Kim, and Jen. It's true that most places I look back on with unpleasant memories have also brought me together with some of the best people in my life. Case in point: Old High School brought me together with Emily, who has proven crucial to my sanity and is a blessing. I'm lucky like that. The people in my life are good. I'm spending Thanksgiving in Michigan again this year; I started that up a decade ago when I realized we hadn't been visiting our parents' parents often enough--I wanted to attempt Michigan for Thanksgiving and Chattanooga for Christmas, but it was too expensive to fly on that sort of regularity. That lake in Michigan plays a significant role in the work that I've been doing. I might not get a chance to work on that chapbook manuscript as hard as I've wanted this winter break. The local bookstore called me and asked if I wanted a holiday job. I haven't turned in an application, but I did mention in passing that I missed working in a bookstore, which is true. I've secretly always wanted to work there. Temporary is best though, given how crazy my schedule can be during the semester. When I first moved to the Midwest, I couldn't handle the cold. I practically lived in my long underwear. Now, it's been years since I've worn any. I consider myself a Minnesotan now, though people in my program have suggested a "Tennesotan," after MDB's "Anglosotan." I must say, looking back on these journeys, these years landing me here, this is how I feel: Lucky, indeed.

116

Linguistics of the MFA program:
- I am going to [eat, usually] the [shit/fuck/hell] out of this [foodstuff, usually].
- [This book, music, whathaveyou] is going to rock [or blow, I think I've heard that too] your face off. [yeeouch]

I am learning to not be that prim high school teacher I once was; sometimes, you can find me swearing, openly, in the classroom, hyped up in expressing how much I loved/hated a particular technique in a story/poem/etc. It's not often, but it might slip, if you watch closely enough.

I've been thinking a lot about how I censored myself as a high school teacher, especially after reading Michelle's very vocal post about gay rights and marriage. That part of me, the one who fell in love with a woman at the end of high school / beginning of college has been secreted away for so long. And I know this blog is completely google-able, that people from high school who might have suspected, or my former students who might now cringe at the thought of their former teacher being very comfortable with saying this, and I think I just have to recognize that it's a part of me that needs to exist, alongside my brazen announcements of deterioration of my body (oh, little breast mouse), and there it is. And I know that I also grapple with the fact of my life being easier since the past nine years have been spent loving a man. And this is just how it happened to be; I could have just as easily fallen in love with another woman once my year plus relationship with Jen came crashing down in a most melodramatic way. (Hey, we were nineteen; this is what happens in that angsty part of your life.) There is a certain privilege that I have been allowed because of the way Ryan and my organs happen to be, and I don't think there is fairness in that. And sometimes I try to avoid the topic altogether because I get so violently upset (and also hugely distanced due to my so-called unique position). Sometimes logic doesn't seem to win out in this country's decision making.

I must tell you other things, things that won't get me all tangled up inside, thinks that spark, but in a lovely way instead of the frustrated way.

- I am now The Carol Connolly Reading Series intern at Intermedia Arts, which means I attempt to juggle a great deal of information and put it into the correct slot. I got the position about two weeks ago, and I don't think I mentioned applying or the interview, but here I am, done with my first week, and it has been going well. It's nice to feel connected to the literary community in this way, and I think it fills a need of mine to be useful to other artists as opposed to selfishly pursuing my own. It's a great opportunity, and I'm really excited to be a part of Intermedia.

- I am now a part of the Line Machine blog. It's put together by Josh Wallaert, whose Webster's Daily blog (finding poetics in the dictionary) I have long admired, and Line Machine is doing something similar to what I had been doing in Collectanea, which I failed to keep up with. Anyway, I believe my first post is going up tomorrow, which is fun. A little Wanderlust. I love the idea of community reading--a choral reading, a sharing of what is on the page, a celebration of the art of language.

- My photo from last summer was put on the Shutter Sisters daily click a while back, and a few weeks ago the collective invited it to be a part of a book they are publishing. It's odd to think of a photograph of mine being in a book, but there you are. Granted, it's a blurb book, but nonetheless, the Shutter Sisters are a talented bunch with a solid following. I'm pretty pleased.

This weekend will be spent quietly: Kleenex, some potpourri boiling on the stove (I had forgotten how good cloves and cinnamon smell!), a good book propped in our laps. Cold season is descending; autumn is in full bloom here. Stout carrots are coming out of the garden and raspberries are awaiting transformation with instructional jam recipes.

98: The Lonely Panic Attack

It's all about the movement of the chest: the tightening, the wonky breathing. It's about waking up in an empty bed, the sheets tangled around your legs, the hands desperately searching for some comfort. It's about the terrible dreams that trail after you in the morning (Kelly sat across from me in a restaurant, told me about how she thought Ryan wasn't good for me, that we weren't good for each other, and I searched for this quote about language and walking barefoot in the grass, and I woke Ryan, who was being driven to the airport by my mother at four in the morning, though I don't know where he was going, and I needed to ask him how he thought we were doing and if "good" were a content relationship and "bad" were a relationship that should divorce, where were we? and I woke just as he was about to answer).

It's not just bad dreams that have made me a bit distracted, a bit trembly this morning. It's the realization that summer is now over. Today is my official last day of "vacation," which, of course, my husband chided me about as it's been several months now. I am a creature of habit, and it has been ingrained in me to dread autumn a bit, to brace myself for the sheer work of lesson planning and grading. Please don't get me wrong, though I do grump about teaching high school a great deal, part of it is some nasty experiences I had that are very specific, and this kind of sour experience has bled into other, very good experiences.

And tomorrow begins this new journey. Orientation and graduate instructor training. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

70: Shake Loose the Sugar

Yesterday and today: it's as if I cannot complete a thought. I start emails, find myself confused and lost in the middle of them, the sugar still floating around a little bit, the heat drawing me down.

My father emailed me a draft of my M.Ed thesis all marked up in red, his comments and suggestions increasing the page count by five. I used to email my literature analysis papers to him all the time as an undergraduate, the shuffle between our computers constant, his corrections and suggestions always in red, between my awkward black phrasings, my stumbling syntax. So now I face this vastness, this fifty three page monster, and I hope to have it completed, to send it off to my adviser, mow the lawn, clean the fridge.

Summers for teachers are so strange. For nine, ten months of the year, we are propelled through our days, weighed down by student essays and planning the next few days, spinning like a top. There's a strange lack of peripheral awareness during the school year, where certain obligations are thrust onto the empty spaces of the calendar: NEA weekend, holiday breaks. And then summer arrives, with a sort of smack into the wall momentum. We've made these lists, in the margins of our planning books or in our minds, turning them over, ranking by importance, and there is a bit of befuddlement. The alarm clock no longer rules the morning, we can read for pleasure, and our partners are somehow, strangely, still leaving for work in the mornings.

Sadly, I'm much better at getting things done when I have only small pockets of time as opposed to these long expanses. I'm not advocating for me to actually have some sort of occupation over the summer; some day, I keep hoping, I will be more productive in this free time. And I'm enjoying the near-book a day pattern I have going, the methodical pull of weeds, slowly discovering what's beneath the piles of paper in the second bedroom. But now, I look out the window at four o'clock, and I know the lawn is growing shaggier and there is still another month left before summer vacation is over, and I hope there is something at the other end that I have to show for it.

On to the thesis. Do you think I'll really, truly submit it tonight? Oh, I hope so.

28: Miracles

Bits, phrases and whatnot, collected from a long ago reading of Special Topics in Calamity Physics: "a mashed potato way of looking at you ◦ the year my childhood unstitched like a snagged sweater ◦ smoke squirmed around the rearview mirror ◦ the screen door spank[ed] the door frame ◦ wobbly mind"

I found these phrases on a scrap of paper beneath my bed as I was cleaning. When I read Tim Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume, I kept record of all the words he used I didn't know. I loved the way they lined up, their multisyllabic selves curling along the slip of paper.


I have remained home for the time being, my eyelids lowering in the heat of our house, Kelly's home full with her parents and her husband, helping her, so I have decided to remain here at home, wedged up against my husband, waiting until it's time for me to return. In between the pounding on her roof (hail damage), breastfeeding, and other chaotic moments, she is beginning a blog for her son Christian, and I've begun a photoset, so you can also see photographs of him as he grows up, becomes a boy, forms a sense of self.


While I've felt those 48 hours in the hospital were surreal, were a dream, it has also made me realize just how much every moment is a miracle.

My hands wet from spinach at the CSA. Ryan comes home, late, his hands behind his back: a book, he hoped I didn't have just yet, an incredibly sweet gift. Thunderstorms rolling through, just as our grass begins to pathetically yellow. The intricate pattern of queen anne's lace. The curl of a baby's hand around your finger. The fading scent of peonies. The way Penelope leans against me at my feet. The way Libby curls against me when I read a book in bed. Baking a cake with my husband, flour on the tips of our fingers, smudged on our pants. Every moment, the way it too curls against your heart, unfurling at just the right moment.