This morning, I rolled out of bed with swollen eyes from the night before--things are a little tricky on the home front right now. I had an 8 a.m. date with a friend to scope the local farmer's market. To make the remedy that much more potent, I opened the door and was greeted with bizarre and unseasonal temperatures. I had to grab a sweater before leaving...in AUGUST.

I have been told that if you don't make the market around opening time, the offerings are a little picked over, so my friend picked me up a little after eight. We got coffee first and then walked the block-or-two it takes to get from mid-Franklin St. to the rows of simple, white tents. There was a breeze blowing slightly enough to make the warm cup in my hands enjoyable and to remind me that Autumn is up next.

Fruit was on my mind, but you have to understand how difficult it is to stay focussed once you're faced with the cartons and baskets all color filled and sensually ripe. Naturally, I couldn't help myself from scooping up some purple hull peas, and heirloom tomatoes, and local eggs (in addition to the peaches that I had anticipated taking home).

Unrelated--I'm thinking about leaving this space. So many people that I know and love have been invited here when my life made a lot more sense and while their support is appreciated, I have found that their viewing pleasure causes me to be significantly less candid than I used to be. And now it almost feels like a silent gridlock; I am afraid to open myself. I need a little corner where I can feel comfortable again, so it seems that the Lonely Sound might be coming to a close in order for other possibilities to flourish in its place. Sometimes it's necessary to trim back branches for new growth. It kind of feels like I would be abandoning two years of myself...so I'll keep you posted. No rash decisions today, just thinking.

darling, I've been so satisfied [since I met you]

How did I get here--sitting alone in his home? There was a tall, dark and handsome man, a bar and a band and a summer too hot. Do the stars actually ever align, and why does this Otis Redding song move me to cry? There was a line--too good and not good enough, and a life forged over coffee. A double latte, and for me, I think, I was on Americano's at the time. There's only so much magic in beans, though, so it must have been more. Maybe Kerouac? Maybe phones held up to hear ocean waves? Honest eyes and falling words [while the guard was down, of course]? Here we are, pantomiming partners--a glass of wine will do for now as I step and step together in circles around the room. I don't have the answers, only notions of gut and the pull of fate, and a man and cups of coffee that we'll drink in mornings that wait.

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..."

Sundays

...are our "thing." Some couples travel or participate in extreme sports together but the thing that we most love to do is wring every drop of rest and relaxation out of Sundays. I used to sleep in with him but as deployment got nearer, I started not being able to stay in bed past 8am. And since PT calls him into work really early every other day, save Saturdays, he doesn't want to budge before mid-morning and I'm okay with that. So if I get up early I do my thing until the day draws him out from under the covers, and if we both sleep in...well, you know.

We almost always make breakfast together, which is one of the most critical elements of our Sunday experience. Before he moved to The House of a Thousand Males, he would wow me with the most incredible omelets filled with whatever was left over from our week of dinners. Omelets being one of my culinary weaknesses, I am always fascinated by the taste and presentation he can produce, and yet he always thinks I'm humoring him when I tell him that he'll forever be the omelet maker of this couple. We brew up some coffee, sit leg-to-leg on the couch and find something mindlessly entertaining to watch until we're finished. My coffee is always hardly touched because I'm one of those one-task-at-a-time eaters but it will wait for me on the corner of the coffee table until later.

Later comes when we decide it's time for lunch or errands or both. I will heat up the morning's brew to take along and without fail I will spill it in his truck. There is an ill enforced ban issued on open containers in The Monster (truck). He will grab whatever is in the back - a dirty t-shirt, sweats, the occasional paper towel - to treat my havoc and he will roll his eyes and comment in a humorously exasperating tone. Then we leave down his street for an army supply store or the book store or Walgreens or the range. Maybe we'll see a movie or rent one, and eventually we find our way back [home is a relative term]. I'll make dinner, he'll tell me it's amazing, then we do homework or watch a movie or he packs for the next thing.

There isn't a thing that makes this routine special except that it taps into a kind of normal that only shows itself on rare occasions. The Army keeps life in a perpetual spin. Sundays are anchors in a constant barrage of anything-goes.

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.

I hate the phone [but I wish you'd call]

...or IM.

And then he did, rousing me from a Sunday morning slumber. I've never been more happily woken, except, well, there were some mornings when he was here... We christened our webcams with funny faces and smiles and then mimed along with the text. There was a problem with the sound so we made do with written words and motions, though they were lagging on a typical delay.

Now it's finally time for coffee. Oh, sweet caffeine!

And the rest of Bye Bye Birdie - Oh, sweet mid-century culture!

[One day you find out

This is what life is all about,
You need someone who
Is living just for you.
One guy,
One special guy,
One guy to live for,
To care for,
Be there for...]

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.

Presidential Debate [no. 2]

Welcome to my alma mater, Belmont University.  We may be a small, private school you haven't ever heard of, but who cares?  You know us now.

The audience begins to arrive via Gray Line tour buses. 

(This is the same building where I graduated!)

One of several viewing parties.  

We are live from Bongo Java, home of the Nun Bun.

Before our mesmerized gazes is a giant screen and all around our hungry ears is the booming volume of arguing politics.  We are pretending we aren't mere yards away from the Great Hoorah, but that we are there as well.  

Even more impressive was the crowd watching the outside screen in the 60 degree, pouring rain.  They are the true rockstars of the evening, and their numbers are many, many times those of us sheltered by the coffee house.

photo credits owed to tennessean.com

For the past month or so I've been paying homage to Utopian societies, or maybe more accurately labeled, communal living.  There are several criteria missing for this to qualify as "Utopian."  And by that I mean equal work loads and division of property.  Some days, though it would be a great exaggeration to say it, I feel like I'm living with the whole army.  I'm not complaining, just observing the very small me-ness among so much man-ness.

But this morning I'm the only one awake in what seems like miles of silent rooms.  The burning autumn early sun pours through open blinds, and even still this living room bites with the briskness of seasons turning.  Coffee brews from the other room, a warm, rich sweetness awaiting to catch between the cup of my hands.  Two appliances hum lulling mantras and we meditate.  

I am the space around me, not a guest.

I have forgotten how I need my own space every now and then, how otherwise, my layers begin to peel apart.  So this, I am rolling in, coating my skin in like dark mud.  I won't attempt to wake him, he's tired from another long week of work anyway; the others are preoccupied.  

One Year: an elaboration

Happy you're-surviving-the-unceremonious-Suck. Happy I-can't-believe-he's-really-real. Happy how-the-hell-were-you-always-this-unknowingly-strong?

It's already been a year and though there have been opportunities aplenty for a dramatic exit, I have plowed through what seems like one hundred heavy trials of will. On paper, the ratio of time apart exponentially outweighs our time together, and yet I have never been more happy and in love than this.

I wish that I were in the position to grab you by your theoretical hand and carry you off on a sickening retelling of the celebratory event. Reality, however, would so quickly snatch us back to earth and serve us the cold reminder that, "this is The Army!" So far Murphy's Law rules the land. Instead of wining and dining, tonight he is playing in sand and I am staring down this unfamiliar window of blog space. The circumstances are unfavorable but reliable and tolerable and unwavering. And the good news: it only took a year to wrap my head around these simple truths.

August 16, 2007 - He has picked the date location around my demand for coffee. I have either forgotten or disregarded his unfamiliarity with the area, and I haven't yet learned that he doesn't really entertain the fluffy coffee-house scene. The only thing I have offered is my new found disdain for a specific establishment in town that has readily decided to evolve from espresso and pastries to dinner and alcohol. My art studio sits across the street and they have recently begun refusing to cater to my late night hankering for bagels, AND they have ruthlessly covered up their laptop friendly outlets. Once a haven, this place is now on my lengthy Summer of '07 Shit List. His suggestion, Portland Brew. Why? Because he has already called to confirm the 'round the clock bagel service and ample plug access.

I am careless in my clothing selection and off-beat in the way I style my hair. I honestly don't care after a roller coaster summer of shit-for-first dates, mental masochism, and the final split of family. But what's the harm in coffee? Does it matter that my heart's not really in it or that I've already written him off for his pride in unemployment? He's a[n out of work] writer. I want to be a writer, maybe he's got something to offer in the way of quality brain picking. My roommate thinks I'm untamed, ridiculous. You can see Disapproving in her eyes, but I pull on that billowy babydoll top anyhow, and I push the unlikely headband through unnatural, brunette hair. I am meeting him for coffee at nine on 12th even if he's on welfare and writing books on scraps of grocery bags because at this point in my life, I feel like the world is sorely indebted to me.

I arrive before him to make use of free internet. I stake out a table for two away from the front door where we hug the corner a little cozy-like, an invite for conversation. It seems that I would be watching the clock, but his arrival is unanticipated. He steps around a wall to face me and I cease to breathe. He asks my name just in case I'm not who he thinks I am. The way the syllables roll from his perfect lips and his amber-chocolate eyes catching mine and the Heaven smell of roasting beans and his immaculate tall-dark-and-handsomeness are all almost too much for one body to contain. From memory, I can't quite wrangle the moment my lungs unfreeze. I never pass out so I can only assume that they do. In my head I'm moving at Mach speeds, tallying all of the outward flaws and assessing which inner ones to mask. I am like a duck, attempting Calm while beneath the surface I have surrendered to a chaos of stark, raving panic.

Shortly, he suggests that we make our way to the counter to order and dumbfounded, I follow while trying to appear effortless and cool. Somewhere between our table and the register he unloads the truth. The whole Writer bit turns out to be mostly a sham and The Army makes its debut like a sucker punch I never saw coming. I figure myself to be only a few paces from the swinging glass door, but at this juncture I am in thought overdrive and operating on obligation. I have suffered this guy enough with my bitchy antics. The least I can do is sit down, sip the coveted coffee owed by the Universe, and redeem some bloody Karma. We open with the usual niceties and still I cannot believe how struck I am by the gentleman sitting across the table. Maybe just for the duration of coffee I can discard my certainty that The Army just isn't for me. We talk about where we have come from, shallow specifics of his profession, favorite bands, then Kerouac. On the Road weaves its way into our introductions like a flawless thread. We are both strangely privy to the beatnik travels of Dean and Sal. It's somewhere among these pivotal streets and the, "yeah, man's," and the trippy meditations between an East and West coast that I begin to know defeat is near. I am already falling for this man no matter my anger with life or his pact with Uncle Sam.

At eleven, they ask us to leave. My skin is on fire. I am aware of each echoing pulse as we stand and he guides me to the door. He opens it and escorts me to my car in back of the building before asking if he can take me on a second date on Saturday. As the moment to part hangs between us like an obvious fog, he breaks it with, "good night" and a hug. His long arms wrap around me ten times and I melt and I'm giddy like school girls and Army or not, he'll be picking me up for dinner in 48 hours.

false alert

I've mangled a once perfectly cylindrical straw while slowly sipping a triple-shot-iced-americano-with-room-for-cream. I'm full of poor choices, this being tonight's most pronounced. Last night's being the 3am bedtime and the 4 hours of sleep, thus producing the need for three robust hits of concentrated caffeine.

...and so begins the self-destructive cycle of semester's end.

Because I've been projecting the funk:

10 really great things that I love/am thankful for/just make me smile...

• the care package that I assembled for The Staff Sergeant's next trip - care packaging is love.

• I have the day off, it's sunny and 65 degrees and I'm spending the afternoon in a sweet, new coffee house downtown

• 16 Military Wives - The Decemberists
  

• reading Anne Lamott's hilarious quips on life and writing

• pole dancing...and the next 6 weeks of it that await me :)

• taking down the Martha empire one cookie at a time. I heart baking.

• HAVING HIM HOME!

• um...7 weeks till graduation

• fitting once again in my "skinny" jeans

• a brief series of date nights and date night dresses [trapeze, naturally]

there is no love without compassion

Every now and then the world pauses, allowing a few sacred moments for me to reflect. Welcome to the first [in a long while] post that is not rushed by the bustle of my last-semester-almost-full-time-job-distracted-by-love life.

Still, not having had previous time to disperse these thoughts in increments, I fear that this will end up being a post full of color, but lacking cohesion.

[I'm sorry]

Again, on reading:

A few times I've mentioned this book that I am attempting to read, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. I am both intrigued and disgusted by the history I have avoided until now. Not only is my personal ignorance an intolerable realization, but also the testament that this book stands as. I feel so...let down by humanity.

Are we or are we not inherently good?

The Staff Sergeant will respond with an immediate and deliberate, "No." I dodge that answer in order to preserve my idealistic purpose, but I love that he challenges me to look at ideas from another side. Still, I can't help wanting to think that people are [usually] good by nature. All expectations aside, I have come to realize that not everyone aspires to make the world a better place.

[I should be hugging trees, right?]

I've only covered a small slice of the innumerable dilemmas now categorized as "genocide." One of the more inspiring/appalling situations to which I was enlightened was the Khmer Rouge regime that terrorized the Cambodian population throughout the mid-late 1970's. I just don't understand how this happens, how this is happening, elsewhere, right now, as I type, and we as Americans do little or nothing. A good portion of the populous doesn't even know what is happening in, say, Darfur. My mind lacks the ability to process so much apathy...

Backtracking to Cambodia: I was about half way through the chapter when, in one of those few seconds of free time, I happened across a blog post addressing the exact thing I was losing myself in every time I opened the book's pages. This Khmer Rouge phenomenon was severely disturbing to say the very least, so I dove into the depths of Micheal Yon's account, "No Darker Heart" with hopes of seeing yet another perspective. I devoured it, relished the words, fell in love with the articulation and lusted after his experience. I wanted to see the place where he stood, where the rain surfaced scraps of clothing, unearthed irrefutable truths. I wanted to be a voice like his, to be a bridge for those who don't know, to rid the world of naivety and preferrable darkness.

We can't close our eyes, lest the machine is perpetuated and grows more precise, more able, more hungry. If we don't talk about Darfur, the babies still starve, the innocent are still raped and tortured. The families are still displaced, still left with nothing but the memory of life before. We can't close our eyes, turn our gaze, cover our ears...we can't because it makes us an accomplice to unfathomable brutality and devastation. The sad reality is that most of us do, most generations have, and without knowledge, most will continue to.

On future plans:

My old roommate always acted as a great voice of reason. We think alike in many ways and work through our thoughts in similar methods. Coffee with her last night was extremely helpful in calming the currents of my over-active mind. I had constructed a shaky tower of what-if's on which to position my future direction. I really have no idea what I want to do with myself once I leave these hallowed halls of college, but I feel a pulling, a summoning that urges the core of myself toward some unknown place, some unclear purpose. Alas!, over hot tea, in a noisy, but familiar house of coffee, I was able to move from the maddening buzz of my inner thoughts to a place significantly less congested. I had a pseudo-epiphanic moment.

For once, I embraced patience.

[sweet relief.]

Mmm...delicious!

I wandered around my apartment this morning contemplating the situation plaguing last night's late hours. I poured myself a bowl of Cheerios, set my coffee to brew and relived each painfully ridiculous thought and action...







...then I baked cinnamon rolls [courtesy of Cooking Light]:

Ingredients

Dough:
1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
1/4 cup warm water (100° to 110°)
1/2 cup warm 1% low-fat milk (100° to 110°)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
Cooking spray

Filling:
3/4 cup raisins
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons 1% low-fat milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

To prepare dough, dissolve yeast in warm water in a large bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup warm milk, granulated sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, salt, and egg; stir with a wooden spoon until combined (batter will not be completely smooth).

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Add 3 cups flour to yeast mixture; stir until a soft dough forms. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic (about 8 minutes); add enough of remaining flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands (dough will feel slightly tacky).

Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray; turn to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°), free from drafts, 1 hour or until doubled in size. (Press two fingers into dough. If indentation remains, dough has risen enough.)

To prepare filling, combine raisins, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Roll dough into a 15 x 10-inch rectangle; brush with 2 tablespoons melted butter. Sprinkle filling over dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Beginning with a long side, roll up dough jelly-roll fashion; pinch seam to seal (do not seal ends of roll). Wrap roll in plastic wrap; chill for 20 minutes.

Unwrap roll, and cut into 20 (1/2-inch) slices. Arrange slices, cut sides up, 1 inch apart on a jelly roll pan coated with cooking spray. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85°) free from drafts, 1 hour and 15 minutes or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Uncover dough. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes or until rolls are golden brown.

To prepare glaze, combine powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons milk, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, stirring well with a whisk. Drizzle glaze over warm rolls.

...and counting.

It’s dark when the alarms sound, an act that should be illegal on a Saturday. My eyes crack and flutter open and I groan and whine, some regarding the abrupt interruption of sleep, some in futile protests to his approaching departure. Unfortunately, with the Army there is no room for negotiation of time. After some thought, I reckon with this fact, and reluctantly I roll out of bed. Fumbling in his unlit bedroom, my fingers grope the oatmeal carpet until grazing a known texture. I carelessly pull on last night’s cotton dress, knot tangled hair atop my sleepy head and stumble down the hall toward the Holy, hissing pot of brewing coffee.

From the retreat of the kitchen’s solitude I hear the zip and velcro of his backpack as he feeds forgotten items into its pockets. In a separate room I stand with bare feet in the glaring fluorescent light, fixated on the linoleum below them, concentrating on each intentional dip and peak of the texture. Perhaps I think that staring intensely enough to burn holes in the synthetic tiles will somehow halt time…in my mind, I begin the silent mantras one relies on in such scenarios to discourage tears.

It could be worse. It’s only a month…be thankful. He could be: gone longer, further, to war.

But I claim this routine, this weak coffee and skim milk routine. This “good morning” routine, the tousled hair and first-thing kisses, the sunrise and groggy awakenings. These are my mornings. These are my expectations and my comforts [and my Home], and for the next 30 days, the undeserving desert will hold them hostage!? In this moment, I want to stash away pieces of him like a greedy child so they might be untouchable by The Army.

Sometimes I am truly ridiculous…and juvenile.

He gently pours black coffee into a stainless steel “reenlist” mug and hands it over the counter. My throat tightens. I turn away to open the refrigerator and remove a half-empty carton of milk. In pours my usual, generous amount and I stir until the contents of my cup reach the color of the khaki uniform t-shirts he wears most days. The tears are welling in my eyes despite all efforts to fight them away, and I curse myself for being a pitiful, flowery, feely, girl.

It’s 6:19am and time to go. He pulls the door shut behind us. It clicks in affirmation. The iron stairwell clangs with each descending step. The air is slightly warmer today, the apparent result of an unexpected front, and the morning breeze dances across my naked legs. I wish these elements would somehow distract me, but they can’t take my mind off of his leaving.

He loads his truck and I wait quietly on the curb. When he is finished, the circumference of his arms encircles me. This, he, is goodness. I wish that by some gift of fate, our morning might not end in parting. I wish that the next month might not be characterized by the deprivation of distance. I wish there was no war requiring this kind if preparation. I’m trying to be unusually together in this menial trial, and what I really wish is that tears were not slowly rolling down my cheeks. A sloppy sniffle reveals my unwilling surrender to upset. He embraces me again, asking sweetly that I not cry over this short trip. Something is whispered in reference to “the grand scheme”…his body is warm and sturdy, his t-shirt is soft on my skin…he smells like [why can’t I put my finger on it?]…in the pre-dawn darkness the earth is quiet. These are the memories that will thread together our first “good bye.” It seems that this is all a kind of training for me as well. One day he will leave for longer. He will go further. It will be war…

Welcome to the Army.

The sun rises over the hills as the exit numbers increase and I near my apartment. The day has taken shape. He presumably boards a plane westward bound, and I pull into my parking lot before eight.

I begin counting the days until November.

a variation of the norm

I write from a Starbucks in Clarksville. An unusual scenario, but less so currently. I never thought there would be reason for any kind of familiarity with this place, but as it turns out, life is full of surprises. The best are those that totally catch you off guard, the ones that slap you across the face with the breakdown of misconceptions, the ones that then hurl you into the most incredible and happy direction your life has taken in a long, long while. So I write from a Starbucks in Clarksville...because I'm waiting out rush-hour, and there is an exam for which I'm supposed to be studying.

I'm still full of words to pour forth, quality words, and as soon as I get a free second I'll lay down something worthwhile.

::sigh::

Outside it rains and I have sad eyes, or maybe tired. Perhaps it's just a rainy mood inspired by gray clouds. I'm heavy, my eyes are anyway, and the music wafts lazily over and through and below the murmur of the others. I know the voice of this singer but can't retrieve his name from the tip of my tongue. His identity doesn't much matter, and this song fits oddly with the melancholy nature of the late afternoon shower. Peppermint tea rolls steam from its surface before me and dribbles carelessly down one side - syphoned by the the steeping bag.

The aroma of coffee permeates the air. [and peppermint too, of course.]

I have no idea what has gotten beneath my skin, nonetheless this unnamed agitation is bothersome. Maybe it is the rain, and the sad slush of tires through puddles on the asphalt. Maybe it's the Hornby novel I read, likening marriage to the impulse to drink bleach. Maybe it's [this] or [that]...maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe it's the woeful plight of voices around me, those who might actually be planning to toast the Universe with a brimming pour of Clorox.

Could the goal really be unachievable...?

Cinnamon, spice, and everything nice.

Noon o'clock on this dreary Saturday finds V, The Roommate, and myself at a table for four in the Nashville renowned Pancake Pantry. It doesn't seem all that disorienting to be ordering breakfast as the rest of the city pores over lunch menus, we've all had long nights and are in need of satiating that lazy-day delight of stacked flap-jacks. Around the table we each echo half orders of cinnamon-spice cakes and coffee or OJ.

Heaven.

The conversation quickly shifts to the question of my academic productivity, and my response prompts disappointing looks from them both. I think it's a combination of several catalysts...

It is suggested that I be single until May. Respectfully, no. It is suggested that I map out a study plan in my planner, but I've already done that. I have perfected the ability to ignore the schedule so helpfully printed between the lines of each day. We reduce the largest distraction down to my internet addiction. No, it's not Facebook. I hate Facebook. No, it isn't Myspace (anymore).

The culprit: BLOGGER.

The verdict: CANCEL DOMESTIC INTERNET SERVICE.

::gasp::

Life without internet:Me::Kryptonite:Superman.

The Roommate offers to hold me down when the withdrawal induced shakes set in. It isn't that I'm giving it up all together, but we're looking into a T-Mobile subscription that would take the internet out of the house and open up such establishments as Starbucks and Borders for service - more places to go outside + less distractions on the home front = fewer nights spent playing and more hours sleeping AND fewer idle hours wasting away on my iBook, affording more hours dedicated to worthwhile tasks.

I rue the day that I can't lay in bed and introspectively blog about life, but I value a timely graduation more. Goodbye Bellsouth DSL, and hours and hours wastefully sacrificed to the Internet Gods. It seems that I'll be seein' you only in coffee shops and bookstores.

A passage penned on a coffee-stained napkin...

I haven't written anything in a day or two and I'm baffled...it certainly hasn't been the result of a lack of material, for anyone who knows this compulsive blogger can attest that there is never a dull moment. I scratched this out last night while trying desperately to study - and then gave it life via text and sent it out in the world. It's the closest thing to creative thought that I've given time (it's been slightly edited):

Somewhere in Nashville a lonesome girl sits in sight of a table for two, in a coffeehouse fully equipped with outlets and bagels. Its nestled up to a wall with two empty chairs turned carelessly askew, but she isn't thinking of their position in the room rather, her thoughts linger in their meaning and what began in those forgotten wooden seats. She grins and regretfully turns back to her studies, yet the crooked chairs and table tempt her thoughts mercilessly with the echo of nervous laughter and introductions.