will the circle be unbroken

Life at the end of a semester is something like I imagine Plath's bell jar was, or rather the motive for her crawling beneath the house, taking pills, and truly hoping not to be found. At any rate, try to understand the madness and the always-tingly-tightness of anxiety as a physical symptom - strung across the muscles of a lower back - and the lack of sleep and the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. That has been the last two or so weeks. Then there was my invitation for a Mother's Day weekend, which was mostly kind of okay except for the lingering anxiety and equally tingly-tightness of muscles prolonged by comparisons to my father or early afternoon drinking or the mention of a man friend. I wanted a couple of days to lavish in the freedom of my first year of grad school completed but it didn't work out that way. Tomorrow morning (earlier than I had planned for) my father, who just today compared me to my mother, is picking me up for a week long road trip to the coast of South Carolina. While a suburban is a fairly spacious vehicle, I often feel that the 250 miles between here and home is not enough area of space. If I had had the time to myself, the luxury of surfacing slowly enough to avoid the bends, I would likely not be so dreading the next 7-8 days.

It's difficult to understand what has happened over the last four months. Mom kindly pointed out that she was worried about me having spent so much time alone - a comment spawned out of one of my explanations of these new lifestyle changes. But something has changed in me. I used to be this independent before I left their house, before I had the physical escape of leaving the tumultuous energy of home. I would sit in my room and do god-knows-what for hours without being bored. I mostly recall painting in the floor, the oatmeal carpet stained multicolored with acrylic pigment, the therapy they never funded.

When the rooms here felt too silent I looked to those memories for reassurance. Then one day I was strong enough to just look forward. The unsettling part has been realizing that I have re-arrived here, that I am somehow enough and that I am content. As I was talking to a friend about this very phenomenon, she used a phrase that struck home, "false independence," as in feeling needless in the front of one's mind while holding tightly to the security that remains in him, even if he's not here. It's like her daughter - able to walk but refusing to take a step without the aid of an adult's finger gripped within her tiny fist. Maybe I've only sold myself on the hype, just like I'm supposed to, distanced myself through days upon days of the mantras, the whatever-it-takes methods of coping. In the process I have fallen in love with my little piece of the world. This house is my domain. This house that I thought I could only loathe and curse is my niche, and I kind of hate the thought of leaving my security if only for a week. Leaving means breaking all of those habits that I've built my independence on. In moments like these, on the eve of variation, I dread packing and driving away from the reliability of home. I miss him more. I feel like a traitor to the routine that keeps me from flying apart in all directions. I start to feel short of breath.

He sent a couple of pictures the other day of him Over There. His smile is still perfectly heartbreaking and his eyes and his form and his skin-just-out-of-reach, and what I first thought was how much I wanted to touch his hair. He in his uniform and my bags waiting to be packed make the earth shift underneath my steady footing. Yesterday all of this seemed so much easier, and coming full circle, it would seem that my sense of independence is completely false. I have wagered my ability to survive on the continuation of a domestic cycle of old things done in new ways and old passions reignited. I've gone back to my savior, Creation. As long as my hands are busy, as long as I can dovetail the pieces that I've made, I'm fine. You would never know how much it hurts to be apart from him - most of the time these days I don't.

it's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

For unknown reasons my body awoke at 10 after 6, and I have to confess that I was really excited by the prospect of sitting on my side porch, newly cleaned and organized, while sipping my coffee in the quiet of a Sunday not yet writhing. The big, debuting sunrise had passed and given way to wild tangerine rivers of stringy clouds that burned off quickly as the sun took its position in the daytime sky, but really, I'm so estranged to such a thing that I'll take the leftovers and be happy with them.

Somewhere far enough off that I had to focus my ears and wait for a second listen, a rooster crowing set my heart to longing. My chicken dreams have been put on hold for stronger desires to travel, and waiting to see what Uncle Sam has up his sleeve for the end of the year. There are reasons aplenty to explain why now just isn't time for chickens, yet that rooster crowing from who-knows-where thumps at the bruise. Everything works out and my life right now needs to maintain freedom - to bend, to move, to be my part of the Army plan.

Traveling is currently more critical anyway. As I contemplated the ramifications of literally pulling out my hair and those of quitting grad school, I also grabbed frantically at anything that would make my academic life worth living. Last semester me and my big dreams had proposed a month long road trip paired with an independent study in travel writing, which sounded great but ran into some logistical issues that made it less appealing in the end. I had dropped the idea and had conceded to the normal class schedule and my first free summer in quite a while. That was before the academic crisis occurred, which ultimately brought me back to it for modification. Dad and I have been planning a smaller scale road trip to Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC, and so the familiar thought halted me one day like a child suddenly consoled for no reason. He and I will be back before June starts up, leaving the rest of summer wide open. I stopped by my non-fiction professor's office to get the angst off my chest and to ask her about the independent study again, under different circumstances. Talking to her was helpful and she agreed to throw together this elixir of a summer course. I'm still mostly at the drawing board weighing possibilities but a drive up coastal California, from Los Angeles to the Sonoma Valley is in the lead. And not to be outdone, Mom suggested a short cruise to Mexico just yesterday. It won't be like a summer backpacking Europe or India or Vietnam or Africa (all dreams), but it will be a wealth of opportunity and a reason to write, as well as a reason not to lose my hair at the hands of stress and frustration.

The container garden takes up the same cause as the chickens would - abandonment - although I'm pretty sure there is an easy solution, some kind of garden variety life support that I just haven't yet found. I've looked at a number of "irrigation systems" and yesterday I found some Plant Nanny's at a local shop downtown. The only problem there is the requirement of wine bottles. I have eleven large pots and each of the Nanny's terra-cotta stakes requires a wine bottle filled with water. Between now and mid-May I would be hard pressed or consistently annihilated to come up with eleven empty bottles.

Save the absence-induced possibility of sun scorch, the garden still aims for success. Now that it is written pests will probably descend upon my tender sprouts like plagues of locusts. But until then, they are growing in leaps and bounds, and while I feel like The Ignorant Gardener, last night talking to Dad about my thriving promises of fruit, he commended the knowledge I have somehow found room for and managed to cram into my already over-taxed headspace. I, however, will likely continue to describe my forays into veggie cultivation as "gardening by the seat of my pants," at least until next year when I hope to be the reigning queen of tomatoes, squash and peppers.

With that and the sun securely positioned, I need to go heat up my coffee and do something relating to school today. As much as I keep hoping it will, that final paper is not going to write itself.

happy earth day!

I kind of always thought of the "Green" movement as hype, until it showed itself as Addiction and swept over me. Things I've either consciously or sub-consciously changed for the better since January (in no specific order or rank):

• purchased a reel push lawnmower against everyone's advice, which really only made me want it more. Even Baby Girl gets her eco-mow on:

• started walking to classes that don't cause me to walk home in the dark. My neighborhood is...pseudo-sketchy.
• recycling
• organic container gardening
• baking instead of buying: bread products, crackers, protein bars
• not running the heat (unless it's so cold inside my house that I cannot feel my feet)
• organic skin products (make-up, lotion, homemade toner)
• and just now as I brewed my first cup of coffee in a long time, I thought to myself, "I can do this another way..."

what IS the what?

The rain knows to fall and the earth knows to drink, and while I watch the natural course of things course on, I can't help noting my envy of the little birds, whose genus and species I cannot cite, that scuttle along the damp grass and glossy asphalt. They have very few responsibilities and very few quests to conquer. Yet I feel oddly at peace sitting here in the back doorway watching them carry on, the just-cut grass, listening to the dribbling rain fall from disjointed gutters into puddles that slowly erode the yard and driveway, and feeling the cool, heavy air enwrap my bare toes. For this contentment there are no questions only the desire for endless amounts of it, a lifetime of uninterrupted moments of stillness, and the reminder of light traffic that I am not alone.

I stopped into the office of a professor I had last semester to grasp at a last ditch effort to prevent me from quitting. I'm not happy at all with where I feel like this masters program is going. And I wanted someone to say something that wasn't practical. I wanted someone to use words like "energy" and "spirit" and "meaning." She had been trying to plan a trip to India for the summer, had done the research and found flights, but she couldn't buy the tickets. She said that something inside of her kept her fingers from closing the deal. In the end, she decided that she hadn't really wanted to go to India and wound up booking a trip to a Caribbean Isle instead. She said that sometimes you just know, and that I needed to find what it was that I wanted to gain. "What is the what?" she gently asked. I folded in on myself and wrinkled my face in a dire effort to keep from crying. Is this English program my India?

This is where The Staff Sergeant, in his sweetest, feigned exasperation, would sigh, "so many questions..."

At twenty-five I don't expect to have the whole of my lifetime mapped out. I don't expect to know every detail, recognize every nuance eloquently relayed, have it all figured out. But it bothers me that the further I climb, with plans of enhancing my future, the more blurry my vision becomes. I want to be a writer and I don't even know what that means anymore. I feel like grabbing it by the limp ankles and wrists and heaving it into my growing pile of lifeless, romantic ideals. I feel like cursing the stars for bestowing me with a world of passions and talents that do not provide a salary.

All that I know for certain is that it needs to mean something, my purpose here on earth, something more than watching the gray-blue clouds shuffle beyond trees like foamy waves - with direction. I could sit here with the company of deep-indigo irises and my sweet pug loyally by my side. I could sip strawberry beer and be in awe of all that rises up around me, but I believe they have names for people like that, and really my need for answers would eventually move me.

a place for everything::everything in its place

I can't believe it's already Friday. Another week down is a good thing both in deployment terms and in grad school terms. This semester has been far less magical than last and less inspiring and less motivating. I've dragged through it because I had to, much like the days that he has been gone. The day he left I lived through the coming months in big bites, overwhelming concepts that drew my stomach up into my throat and left an empty chasm where it belonged. I felt like crawling out my skin in the most desperate and panicked way. Looking back, that seems so long ago, but then again, we're already on the other side of all my enormous measurements - seasons, semesters, length of daylight. And for most of the time that I've powered recklessly through British Romance poetry and fallen asleep without his arms around me, I've been surprisingly okay.

I have found little things to occupy my mind and stories that I've gathered to color all the hours. Though one of my biggest fears was learning to live on my own, misery-free, I've come to love most of it. There are times, like yesterday when I really do wish that he was here, but not in the cry-myself-to-sleep way, more in the he-knows-how-to-shoot-big-guns way. Not that I don't...

(me topping the badass scales - Winter '07)

...but he's better.

I pulled out of my driveway en route to the post office and to the vet. I backed out, righted my direction only to see three police cars pulled haphazardly onto the curb of my street, three doors down. Lights were flashing, a few cops were coming around the corner, an obvious exit from the premise, and a stand up gentleman stood cuffed behind the trunk of the closest vehicle. This falls into the "ignorance is bliss" section of life. I felt much more settled not knowing that a criminal lived on my block. I'm making double sure that the doors are locked and that every outdoor sound is over-analzyed and that I sleep with one eye open.

In other news, the garden project continues to prosper. The back-up patio tomato (the one not grown from seeds) and the homegrown zucchini squash, along with my window box of sprouting spinach and romaine lettuce all found homes outside yesterday. They're growing up so fast! My herbs are nestled in a sunny corner of my porch and the poppies continue to explode into thread-thin stems with miniature leaves. Inside my summer squash and sweetie tomato have just this morning shown through the soil, and I'm still giving the sweet pepper and straight eight cucumber a chance to do the same.

It's safe to say that this endeavor has become far more involved than I ever expected. I awoke in the night to a mild thunderstorm and thought briefly of running out in the rain to bring their pots inside. I kept seeing visions of disrupted root systems and disturbed onion seeds, over-watered failure, etc. Luckily, for the sake of preserving some dignity, I stayed curled up in bed and let Mother Nature induct them into Her realm without me. Using a calming mantra I talked myself down from pathetic actions - they are Hers, not mine.

31 of 31: Another night of poetry

Restless

In my kitchen window
threads of green unfurl,
pushing up from loose soil.

They will be ripe when
the fruits are red, glowing
hot from the sun, and salty-scented.

I have read, that in certain places
buoyant pearls rise in flooding rain,
teeth from the deepest fields.

Then—I don’t know what happens--
The earth must dry around them,

crack open, tell about their bodies.

Intuition must be a part of it.

When it’s time, I am assured,
my tomatoes (and the bones)
will be started and finished.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
This website and intellectual property therein is (c) 2009 by http://afloatinalonelysound.blogspot.com and registered and trademarked as copyright U.S. Copyright Office "copyright registration for online works" - all intellectual rights are hereby reserved - all legal rights are hereby reserved. This website and all of its original contents and intellectual property are copyright protected and archived as are its trademarks, logos, service marks, trade dress, slogans, screen shots, copyrighted designs and other brand features. Penalties, Legislation and Appeal Procedures can be found at 512takedown.com Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORISED UNDER LICENSE IS PROHIBITED.

24 of 31: giving (a little more than usual)

Dissension

She is on the kitchen phone.
And I am perched on her slow-rocking hips,
Too old to be lulled like this

My jaws lock up with bursts of sweet and sour—

The toppled chair on our back porch,
Heaved from the living room,
Reads clearly: Opposition.

There is an undercurrent—
red wine and disdain.

Praise Jesus! High-five!

My father by the woodpile,
Tells me to pedal and pushes my small body toward Motion.

The pink training wheels he tossed
Into tall grass shrink, and I leave them

---------------------------------------------------------------------
This website and intellectual property therein is (c) 2009 by http://afloatinalonelysound.blogspot.com and registered and trademarked as copyright U.S. Copyright Office "copyright registration for online works" - all intellectual rights are hereby reserved - all legal rights are hereby reserved. This website and all of its original contents and intellectual property are copyright protected and archived as are its trademarks, logos, service marks, trade dress, slogans, screen shots, copyrighted designs and other brand features. Penalties, Legislation and Appeal Procedures can be found at 512takedown.com Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORISED UNDER LICENSE IS PROHIBITED.

16 of 31: giving (props)

I'm happy to report that the sun and I are no longer estranged, though I hear that this time together is predicted to be short. Figures. I still feel like my body is trying to get sick but my "mother-in-law" suggested some vitamin C and zinc supplements that I quickly picked up. I really need to curb any other possible reasons for lethargy and an overall lack of motivation. I've got those short-comings manned in full effect already.

In an attempt to exert control be pro-active with Spring presumably underway I have convinced myself to integrate a few positive changes into my routine. I scheduled a...photo sitting last week for mid-April which has prompted a new campaign to trim off those few pounds that I love to curse while jumping up-and-down to get into the death-grip of my jeans. I swear by counting calories when I'm actually watching what I'm ingesting. 1500 per day is much easier than I've been telling myself and I haven't been hungry once today. I'm weening myself off coffee, drinking more water, and tonight I actually turned off the television to read for class on Wednesday. Kudos to me. Now I'm off to bed early so I can get up early to tackle all that must be done. I'm thinking St. Pat's brownies for tomorrow night's class. What's more inspiring than booze and chocolate? I mean, really.

4 of 31: giving (myself a break)

I have never in all my life been so excited about spring break.  

Never.  

I'm pretty sure we all felt the same way in class tonight with the windows open to filter in the optimism of changing weather.  There were a number of laugh-till-we-cried moments, specifically during a sloppy reenactment of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.  

Thursdays nights were marked for gut-busting episodes last Fall and sadly they don't occur nearly as much as of late.  It was refreshing, though, to feel young and loopy and to laugh and laugh without reserve...at jokes that only us English nerds find funny.

It's been a while since I've felt entitled to double over, silly with joy, glad to just be alive.  My skin and my bones are voracious with a craving for sunshine and breezes that don't make your limbs scream with pain before going numb.  

It isn't all in the air.  I'm also glad to feel grateful again for a good man and a community of army wives ready to stand-in for my backbone when I don't have the wherewithal to hold a steady posture.  I feel like this week's low spot, while it was dim, allowed me to get to know a few ladies better.  I'm grateful to be building stronger relationships with The Staff Sergeant's family, as we are all stretched by the sacrifices he has to make for his convictions.  But there is something to be said for the bleak outlook cast by dreary Winter, and the new vision that is brightened by Spring.  

And also...(pt. 2)

Grad school (particularly this paper requiring a long-winded refutation of  a critical analysis focussing on the god-forsaken British Romance Period, constructed from extensive research done by qualified scholars), go to hell.

1 of 31: giving (up)

I'm giving nablopomo[.com] a try for March.  The theme is "giving (up)," however if I stuck with it, this would be a mighty depressing month, and I can tell you that the Forever Winter we are experiencing in these parts and deployment are doing a damn fine job of setting a forlorn tone.

For the kick-off, I'll do my best to throw on my rosey glasses and grace you with a little optimism.

[clears throat]

I wish that I had something profound and gracious to write.  And while I know that all the good outweighs the sacrifices (or I wouldn't be doing this) it's hard to be quiet enough to hear the meek, whispering reminders of choice.  The Staff Sergeant told me he was in the Army after luring me to coffee.  I considered walking out the door, giving him my best wishes and telling him to be safe but never to call.  However (entranced by his good looks and good shoes), I took my coffee from the counter and followed him back to our table.  He talked about literature and family and his smile, so perfectly perfect was hypnotizing.  By closing time my bones had dissolved and my limbs were tingly and beyond my body's physical acknowledgment that something was different, I couldn't stop what would happen in the months and months to follow.  

I was living the urban-dreamer life.  I had dibs on a loft in downtown Nashville, hopes to study sociology at Vanderbilt or to earn an MFA in writing, plans that snaked ten-times around the earth's circumference that did, in no way include or tolerate the Army.  Needless to say, I'm not in the loft of my dreams nor am I in a masters program at Vanderbilt, but I can say without a shadow of doubt that I am better for the altered plans (think space and money).  A year and a half ago I couldn't have told you that I'd be living it up in army-ville, working may way through a deployment.  In fact, I might have told you that a deployment was impossible.

I remember sobbing over the scene in The Interpreter when an African terrorist blows up the bus.  I thought to myself, I can't do this.  I thought that phrase a hundred times before looking around and realizing that I am doing it, regardless of how hard and heavy some days are.  At some point the thought became a question of how to be not whether or not I was strong enough.  

I hesitate to categorize any choices that I've made or changes to choices as "things I have given up", rather my perspective has changed and what I want out of life has taken a detour once again.  What I have [temporarily] given up is time and proximity.  He's not the first thing I see in the mornings or the last that I see before bed.  I've given up kisses and running inside jokes and dinner for two and the luxury of speed dial and an answer.  I've given up a lot of control that I probably never had anyway but let myself believe that I did.  

As I tell him almost daily, in emails that I'm not sure he really has time to read: I wouldn't change anything about where I live, who I love, and what that means about the person I have to be.  I don't like this leg of it but it will make the time that he's home so much better and so much more appreciated.

What was I thinking?

Tomorrow morning I have to teach two English 1020 classes before noon.  Tomorrow morning may be a two-cup coffee day.  Come to think of it, tomorrow morning may be ripe for a number of out of character activities, such as: vomiting in my new purse, actually forgetting my name, crying in front of two classes of college freshman/sophomores, getting drunk before 9am, actually forgetting coherent language, totally forgetting the way that "Young Goodman Brown," "Boys and Girls," "The Lost World," "Araby," and Erdrich's character, Lipsha all share the commonality of innocence lost to experience.  

I'm just a teensy bit nervous about this endeavor.  I keep imagining myself walking into the classroom and through some supernatural occurrence, they all know that I am horrifically under-qualified even to be supervising them for a period of 55 minutes.  It's a little like the dream where you're naked in pubic.  While I will surely remember to dress myself, what if they know I have no business being their temporary authority on American Literature?  This is only my second semester and I wasn't an English major.  I am the epitome of "fish out of water."  My second dreaded scenario is that they all have I.Q.'s infinitely higher than mine so that when they ask me questions, I have no. idea. how. to. answer.

Back to the lesson plan.

Because I'm required to write [creatively]...edited

One down, five to go for the final portfolio.  Writing poetry feels extremely awkward.  We'll see what everyone else has to say maybe not in tonight's class but soon enough...  [Soon enough was tonight.]

On the Freezer Door

We are staring back against
A gloss-pane, beyond camera’s eye,
Wrapped in Georgia heat,
And a moment’s brief paragon.

Held up with words like together, like entwined.

A boy, olive faced, squinting eyes,
A girl, blushing-hot, striped with noon-light,
Her white, white dress against July skin,
His strange complexion of small squares,
Collecting in desert boots.

This is Certainty--

She smiles to the right and he laughs,
At something she can’t remember.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
This website and intellectual property therein is (c) 2009 by http://afloatinalonelysound.blogspot.com and registered and trademarked as copyright U.S. Copyright Office "copyright registration for online works" - all intellectual rights are hereby reserved - all legal rights are hereby reserved. This website and all of its original contents and intellectual property are copyright protected and archived as are its trademarks, logos, service marks, trade dress, slogans, screen shots, copyrighted designs and other brand features. Penalties, Legislation and Appeal Procedures can be found at 512takedown.com Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) EU Copyright Directive (EUCD) Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORISED UNDER LICENSE IS PROHIBITED.

Now I picture things

He called today and my fingers startled.  I was in class in the midst of a heated discussion of Wordworth's "Prelude."  I was feigning some level of interest with my mind and my hands wrapped around a phone clasped beneath the table, not the epic, not the story.  

It had been five days (which maybe isn't that long considering deployment) but it was long enough to make an anxious woman out of me.  Last week was more challenging than the ones before.  Late at night I ached for him, I still ache for him - just to make faces at me from the other side of the sofa or grab me in the kitchen for an exaggerated dip, the crown of my head nearly brushing the floor, or the word trying to glide from his lips, "sweetheart."  

I've gotten used to feeling nothing, but it isn't me.   Even though I wear it, it feels funny on.  Then on the phone he thanked me for this silly card I sent a month ago, sprayed with my scent and covered in lipstick kisses.  He said that it made his day and despite his delayed gratitude he wanted me to know.  There is so little of us in this condition.  We are maintaining what exists when he's home and so the blips of thoughtfulness have a fracturing effect.  This painful equilibrium crumbles so that I can hear him again in my thoughts.  

He says, "That wet towel on the bed will mildew."   

He says, "Half a jar of Nutella will spoil dinner."

And, "Sweet dreams.  I love you."

Friday

I finally started working.  I didn't really mean to but it happened anyway.  I have a few starter tasks before I can do any organizing in the English department.  One of those is a newsletter for the new semester, and while I really only intended to look at some possible templates, I somehow got sucked into the project and spent almost all day piecing together articles and important dates and a pretty, Spring-ish layout.  At 2pm I had to stop, take a shower and get dressed - I was needed in the Languages and Lit. office to sign some paperwork.  

Now I'm swiftly wrapping up some baking for my first army-sponsored event (lacking The Staff Sergeant) - a cookie swap.  I've got 8 minutes left on the last batch of Kitchen Sink Cookies and then I'm off.  They smell de-lish!  After meeting some of the wives and of course, swapping cookies, I'll be headed to Nashville to continue the birthday celebrations.  

I could get used to classwork and working from home.  It's doing little to discourage me from being a lifer.  It's been a wonderfully relaxing Friday.  Here's to a good weekend for everyone else!

lost and insecure [you found me]

I don't know what I'm hoping to get out of life, much less this blog.  Like others, I'm torn between living and recording the motions.  There's a time and place for sharing and sometimes life's momentum just gets to whirring and buzzing and humming all at once and you're swept along in the swiftness of it.  This has mostly been attributed to the end of the semester.  In a few words, grad school is a hell of a lot more than I ever expected.  It not only engulfed me in its currents, but it held me under turbulent waves for much of the latter half of 16 weeks.  There are a dozen other trials that have kept my stress levels at maximum capacity, but it's probably better not to air it all right now for reasons of op-sec and patience.  

Though the blog halted, life goes on.  I'm waiting on my grades and anticipating A's.  I surprised myself and a handful of professors.  I made a new family of fellow english grad students and made a homey little nest out of our one, lone conference room.  I know Louise Erdrich better than she may know herself.  I know the Cult of True Womanhood to degrees of nauseam.  I fell in love with the ideals of the Expressivist movement led by Elbow and Murray.  I wrote my first short story and again surprised myself.  I did a number of seemingly unconquerable tasks and crushed them beneath my tiny feet.  

I keep thinking about that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."  I believe that idea alone sums up the year.  I finally graduated college.  I survived months and months of army induced separation and survived.  I somehow defied all notions of feasibility by getting into this masters program on such short notice, and beyond that, I have excelled.  Those are the hills that I've climbed, leaving the horizon speckled with far-off flags bearing my crest -- pink and flowery, for sure.  The mountains, however, await, standing rugged, impossibly tall and taunting. 

 Next year is coming all too strong and quickly, like a train whose force makes the earth tremble long before arriving.  This is my life now.  There is no turning back.  It's ironic how badly I want it and also how fiercely I dread it.  I have to keep looking back on the achievements, on the things I never thought I could actually pull off until I landed on the other side of Trying and the ride was over and I was still intact.  Love and wanting are tangled in some powerful magic, and perhaps I am a little stronger than I thought.  But I won't admit it often, for it isn't often that I feel it might be true.

Reciprocity

I worked out an entire beginning.  Comments/criticism is really, very badly wanted.

It was not the rotten sweetness of three-day old trash that startled her entrance nor was it the thin cloud of fruit flies having descended on the scrapings of her morning dishes. It was neither of these things that left her breathless in the doorway, paralyzed and disgusted by the static nature of tasks undone. “Take out the garbage,” was in fact scratched low on her traveling list of must-dos, and the dishes, and the laundry -- her laundry, defrosting the freezer and sweeping the floors. It was, rather, coming home to her own voiceless echoes – the cold jingle of house keys dropped on pink Formica, the snap of cabinets opened and shut, the airy and almost inaudible buzz of warming television tubes, and her erratic breathing, proof that she may never grow accustomed to this kind of loneliness.

A strict and icy breeze crept through the open doorway, wrapping around her stockinged legs. She was suddenly roused enough to set down her brown bag groceries, snatch the stinking bags of trash and step outside once more to deposit them into the dented metal garbage can, where they would later be claimed. She couldn't help being envious that even the refuse of her solitary life had an explicit belonging to some one and some place. And then she went inside where at least the warmth made it bearable to remember the expectations of making dinner for two and a nightcap before bed with the body of a husband.

Behind her the door sighed shut. She pried off her scuffed mary-janes and thought to put away the eggs and butter before they went bad. She thought also to scrub the dirty dishes in her kitchen sink before considering the bugs a presence she was not ready to part with just yet.

Fiction

I have my first fiction assignment due in a week: a 4-6 page short story, which doesn't sound hard until I started trying to pull a story line from pretty much anywhere I could reach.  "They" say write what you know, yet when what you know and what you write about is tangled up in a cultural adjustment, and when suddenly everyone else is also tangled up in it, I imagine those words and ideas become mighty cliched.  I'm trying to use true influences, since I simply cannot scrap my foundation to write something foreign on this first try.  This is my blind stab at a developing story.  Please leave feedback!  I would much rather read it here than to be bombarded with it in the classroom workshop!

           It was not the rotten sweetness of three-day old trash that startled her entrance or the thin cloud of fruit flies having descended on the scrapings of her morning dishes. It was neither of these things that left her breathless in the doorway, paralyzed and disgusted by the static nature of tasks undone. “Take out the garbage,” was in fact scratched low on her traveling list of must-dos, and the dishes, and the laundry -- her laundry, defrosting the freezer and sweeping the floors. It was, rather, coming home to her own voiceless echoes – the cold jingle of house keys on pink Formica countertops, the snap of cabinets opened and shut, the airy and almost inaudible buzz of warming television tubes, and her erratic breathing, proof that she may never grow accustomed to this kind of loneliness.

Casual Friday

I'm clearly paying for something, although I cannot imagine what offense has warranted an entire four days of bad Karma.  So today, with it rainy and gray and cold-looking, and as it is my last day off this week, and because I have a big presentation on Monday, I am going to keep well off the radar.  I may even stay in my sweats all day or at least until I have Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories and Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall thoroughly devoured and digested.  And I may keep the Food Network on for inspiration and company.  And a pot of coffee hot.

6030

A new day and a workless week! It would only be a better Monday if I were caught up on my reading, which is why I cashed in a couple days of remaining paid vacation.  Now I'm trying to make myself move on the active need to love hundred-year-old literature.  I've got my pomegranate enviga close and my Damien Rice love song, but I really have no interest in writing a response to Harper's Iola Leroy no matter how I might try to manipulate my indifference with creature comforts.  

What I would really rather be doing, and what I have had to pry myself away from, is grocery shopping Plumgood's website and thinking over little details for next summer's travel writing road trip.  It doesn't take much to distract me especially when I want nothing more than to be completely distracted.  But at the end of a few hours of procrastination there is defeat and panic and pull-my-hair-out-stress.  So even though I cannot stand another dose of 19th century literature, I must push onward.  Life is unfair and I'm pretty sure that most things are meant to be trying.