Good morning, Saturday.

UGG Kensington boots--yes, please.

Online shoe shopping, virtual trekking with Bear Grylls, and soon I'll venture to the farmers market for apples and peaches. I'm so happy the weekend is here.

I am currently at odds with this idea, this circumstance, this limbo curse. Soon, though, I'll know more about the "what I might be."

I Have Been Thinking About Snow - Ander Monson

Last night, I think it was, he spoke it into being. From his mouth the numbered days floated and mounded into actuality. We are already on the next countdown, already going over the packing list.

The time has flown by since his plane touched down in closure of a deployment and I'm sure that it will only speed up as the next departure date gets closer. The really horrible part of this, beyond separation and limited communication, is that these are the days that have our future hinged on them. Maybe I'm the only one of us who recognizes that or who shudders at the magnitude of what may come next. In something close to two months we will have the answers that once excited me and are now only terrifying. Even after my attempts to see both possibilities of our futures colliding and tearing apart, after trying to pry myself away from the marriage track, I am a wreck inside. Everything separate from his career is a variable, and even that is in its own right up in the air. By Christmas we will be some different form of us either more or less a duet.

I feel like every second holds me right on the edge of losing my composure. I feel a lot like I cannot breathe. In my world of logic, it would make sense to have a plan A & B, but in his that trumps mine, we are waiting to make rash decisions off the cuff, a perfect time for sabotage. I only hope that isn't what it comes to. I only hope we find the perfect fit for all of us and all of everything, and that all of the paralyzing fears we hold are somehow pacified.

The responsibility to appropriately represent (a) character(s)

What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right.

- Monson, Neck Deep, Appendix

I used to think that what I wanted was to be like you (or the many of you who are military wives). But really, I was an artist first and "they" say, "be true to yourself." I am a left-winged liberal. I don't believe in war. I would lend my crossed legs to a cause in need of silent protest. I try only to buy organic produce. There isn't much of me that fits the bill anyway. And there is the almost palpable barrier--a man in crisis. I don't think he reads this garbage anymore, so I am feeling a little less censored. That isn't even half of it. Maybe he thinks that The Lonely Sound was abandoned or he doesn't care anymore. In his own way, he loves me.

In my own way, I love you.

Lately I imagine the trajectory of a bullet. I imagine the spatter patterns it might cause on a wall or some other wayward surface. Brain matter, other parts. It doesn't matter. I play out the motions only in my head, and I'm only telling this because I'm tired of pussyfooting around the idea of self. I don't care if you like me. I should never have cared. And the truth, if there is such a thing, is that it may not be in the cards for me to "be" one of "you" army wives. Because life is a force to be reckoned with. It will happen according to or not at all resembling the outcome I reach for. We are born alone. We die alone. I write alone. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be alone, a man as Island.

(I am trying to disassociate myself.)

I am beginning to dream of the Anywhere I could move, the Anything I could do, all the dreams and ideals that dreamers and idealists conjure. I was, after all, an artist first, and then somehow his and somehow this.

I thought for the first time tonight that I could be okay married to creativity, the lonesome but not lonely eccentric. I thought that I could move in a couple of months for him, indulging the have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too element of whatever the fuck is going on here, but I won't. I need more satisfaction than that. I don't think I was ever meant to be the understudy, the shadow lurker. Some hours do belong solely to me.

And maybe I am the "married" type, and he is the one who isn't. Well, there isn't anything I can do to change him.

There isn't anything I can do to change him...but I was always honest. I always aimed for the LONG TERM.

Perhaps though, it's me? I always run. I'm kind of preparing to run now, peeling back the layers of happy-family-visions and the imagined faces of our unborn children, a fusion of more than individuals.

I feel like I am losing and because I don't care about winning per se (and he does), I think I am more privy to, or likely to examine the behavior of dissolution. We are fuzzy at the edges.

I am trying to read Brenda Miller's Season of the Body but it is proving difficult. Her focus is on the end of a relationship with Keith, who also makes an appearance in Blessing of the Animals in a beautiful essay called "A Different Person." It is so painful to imagine us parting ways. So unbelievably painful. I have harnessed so much in this Man, this ourness of life, a river fed by us as tributaries. And now what?

I am my own captain. (though not quoted, per request.)

I am not challenging the "who" manning the wheel. I am sure as shit my own captain.

Hold yourself together.

(punish someone else.)

Tour de Cali or Pictures Without Faces

The Grand Canyon from the plane

The Vegas Strip from the plane

Sunset at Pismo/Grover Beach

Sunrise at Pismo Beach

Mist over the ocean

MY idea of surfing at daybreak

(The Staff Sergeant is actually surfing waves)

The desert

I tell her...about the trivial things I took for proof of permanence--the coffee brought to bed in the mornings, the bicycle rides in the afternoons, the ritual games of backgammon after dinner. I tell her how we slept, his hand falling naturally on the back of my thigh, the gravity of that hand as I fell asleep, holding my body with a single touch.

-Brenda Miller, "Needlepoint," Season of the Body

There is a rotten kind of sickness in the center--deep and sunken behind the cleavage point of my ribcage. It is fear in a deadly form, untamed. These things packed tightly together into some semblance of weight have every possibility to be nothing more than "trivial things I took for proof of permanence."

I read this passage sitting in the sand when everything in the world should have felt right. It was like a punch to the gut. Somedays every minute feels that way.

I have no idea where this is going. I have no idea what the eleventh hour holds. And just six weeks ago I had never been more certain of anything...

in all my life.

I am frantic-groping for pieces that once held faith together.

This energy--the waves, the lack of Armyness, the sunrise--makes the thought of ever going home a painful one. Here, there is less urgency to be married (the root of all turmoil).

I think that I could learn to live for the moment if our Saturdays were started at dark on the beach, me huddled in towels watching his dark figure paddle out beyond the waves that crest.

But he loves his work a lot more than surfing. Why? I have no earthly idea. He's one of the black specks bobbing with the water's rise and fall, the closest you will ever get to a recognizable photo.

He told me once that standing on the beach in either Italy or Spain made him feel like getting paid for his job was unbelievable, and that other times he felt like he was earning every. red. cent. Two years later I understand that sentiment more than he may ever know. But moments with this much peace pulsing through them probably are too good to be true for longer than a few hours.

[live in the present, begin with the face value of being here right now]

But then the rain began again and we "couldn't" go walking.

The lock had broken, so we just pushed the door in.

- Mary Ann Samyn, "This Is Cage"

Maybe that's how it was (or is?), an induced constriction. Let's open the airways a little. A little more. Cultivate a joke that only we know. This may not be a solution but I'm banking on it being the key to finding one--soon-ish--to the broken lock.

The sunny side, the lemonade, is this weekend in California. Ah!, sweet breathing space.

I am not wishing to be an anchoress. I am not counting on anything. I am remembering learning to swim--no metaphor--at the Bambi Motel, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. If this is pride, then sometimes I too am amazed my soul stays in my body.

- Mary Ann Samyn, "From The Little Book of Female Mystics"

So much has happened, continues to happen, here. I had forgotten that a heart could hurt and love equally and at the same time, or maybe I just think I ever knew. And this is only proof of some personal evolution. I don't really care what it is or why it is or why it lingers here, or how much worse it might be without prayer flags and meditations. I just want it to leave, to do its work and leave us better off.

As for the things I haven't been able to say for myself, to myself, a blitz of second hand positivity may save me. Someone unexpected told me to envision the things that I want from this life, to be who I am, and also that I'm right to want this huge thing that now feels impossible--a light among darkness.

And in the meantime, I am working to loosen my grip just so the knuckles find their color again, just so my feet become mobile. I am trying not to count on anything.

boys night out

...prohibited me from keeping an eye on my peas. I wish that was my largest complaint about bar hopping with drunk boys. I don't care how many times I am corrected, "no, it's dude's night out."

Yeah, I was there, boys, and next time I'm choosing farmers market peas over the honky-tonks on Broadway.

So my hopeful purple hull pea experiment has gone awry. They've overcooked to a color and consistency that resembles tar and they taste a little like...dirt. I added some chicken stock, worcestershire sauce and red wine vinegar with hopes of making them some version of palatable but I won't be surprised if the situation is irreversible.

peas, please

Twice in one day! I know, I know...I just got so excited about my first foray into slow-cooker purple hull peas that I couldn't wait to share the recipe even though I don't know how they will end up tasting. I'm going on their premature aroma--delish. And they are vegan friendly because I don't believe in cooking with ham hocks no matter how Southern it may be.

Slow-Cooker Purple Hull Peas (and Okra)

Fresh peas, hulls removed...a pound or two
one onion chopped
2 cloves of garic, crushed a little but mostly whole
2 sprigs fresh tarragon
a couple of handfuls of fresh okra, ends removed, then cut in half length-wise
salt (a little less than a tsp.) and pepper (about 1/2 tsp) to taste
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp worcestershire sauce
1-2 Tbsp olive oil

Throw veggies, legumes and spices in the crockpot then cover with water (about 4 cups). Overtop, drizzle olive oil and stir everything together. Plan to remove bay leaves, tarragon sprigs, and cloves of garlic.

I can't say much for time because I just covered my pot and walked away, but the farmers market guy said about 3 hours and my mom suggested setting the crock on "high" because, "you can always turn it down later."

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.

It's needless to explain that I haven't been much for blogging...for a while. Since The Staff Sergeant returned, I have fallen more deeply in love with cooking for the 567,436th time in my adult life, and that has taken up more of my creative time than I would like to admit. It's probably my truest north but like everything else that I love deeply, my passion for it ebbs and flows like the tide. Since my sudden infatuation for growing fresh veggies in the spring, my interest in seasonal and organic cooking has grown exponentially. Here are a few of my latest cookbook recommendations. Despite a large library of others, these have found homes all over my house in easy to reach stacks. Their luscious photos are like food porn--really.

No taste for words

I chose the kitchen because I was hoping that its inspiration would caress something more thought provoking than the itch to bake peach muffins. They have now been made the reward for writing the story I must write today regardless of how dry my well of creativity may be, and it's dry--buckling, cracking-earth dry.

I don't ever feel like writing anymore, save the grocery lists that are composed according the the tastes that I wake up craving. There is ample inspiration fueling the homemaker in me but I can't earn a grade in a creative writing independent study based on the texture of tonight's ginger chicken with baked potatoes and fried green tomato towers (with feta and pesto sandwiched between slices, all stacked amid a mote of marinara sauce). And so it has recently occurred to me that maybe what I want to write about is food, or maybe it has occurred to me that what I want to do is make [food] and write...sometimes.

Every now and then I tell someone that I would love to open a bakery, only half believing the words myself. Yesterday morning the sun nudged us awake and hung over and head-cold-y I dreamed of bright-flavored berry muffins with lemoniness of an unknown origin. And as the day went on and I read of chocolatiers and couldn't get that Cake Love citrus bunt cake recipe out of my head for yet another consecutive day running, I didn't need to speak them. A vision appeared out of the dusty cyclone that is my future plan at the moment--turquoise walls and sunny yellow accents, muffins and homemade artisan loaves clustered on shelves and in pastry cases, vintage plates and tea pots and old tables salvaged from the roughs of flea markets. It makes a lot more sense to me than trying to write this paper right now, and it's all that I can do to stay planted in this kitchen chair as the peaches call to me from their crate, rotting by the second, desperate to be saved by the miracle of muffins. But still, I have to compose some pages on how I am different from a time before, or how a time changed me.

Who wouldn't have something to say to that prompt? I've lived 25 years and when I ponder the right tale, the right season of growth, I remain empty and flat. This writers block is the season at hand and if I knew how to send it elsewhere, I absolutely would.

things afoot in these parts

His banner, complements of Etsy

His homemade, chocolate-with-strawberries cake

And a mad canning phenomenon

(banana nut bread, balsamic pickled peaches, and classic dill pickled cucumbers)

All's well that ends well.

The long of it is logged in days and months and thousands of miles, and the short of it can be summed up in a mere two words:

he's home!

Deployment concluded.

universal truth

Sometimes I feel the great weight of this whole thing--being apart, knowing it isn't the last time, and knowing I still have to perform, [all] at once.

Mine is an act of blind compulsion. At 7am the squealing pulse of my cell phone goes off. I have nowhere to be, most likely, but anything later than that hour feels wasteful and lazy. I sit up in bed bed, fumbling for my glasses and make my way to the bathroom. Everything following this routine is the result of the necessity to hurl myself toward darkness, another day's end. If I don't think about the "great weight" or if I simply move forward faster than I think it can keep up, or if I tell myself that the inconvenience is almost over, not a pattern in the cycle that will soon form our life together, then the hours feel normal, like my friends', like the lives of conventional people.

No one spells out the phases of separation. No one has so kindly written What to Expect When You're Expecting Him to Return. Maybe I wouldn't have liked knowing that the last weeks would split my personality into multiples, none of which perform independently. Instead they vie for the spotlight hungrily, without reservation. I am angry and broken hearted and giddy with excitement, and overflowing-happy, while tears pool in dark spots on my clothes and vainly shouted curses ricochet from wall to wall, unheard. I have embraced the control that lies in day-long check lists and home projects and rendezvous with friends that have become my family. There are time-spots left open for washing dishes and ceremonies put into play for scrubbing sinks and the tub. This autonomy makes sense, this is what had to happen.

Now I am asked to hang in waiting for a coded word, then the next one and the next until he finally steps from the magic vessel that will bring him home. I'm no good for these terms, and what about after, when my lists are disrupted and my support group is pushed into second place, and the Army has control again of more than just an arrival date. How does the switch flip smoothly? How is it possibly fair to be expected to bounce from one existence to the other without suffering an inevitable and utter breakdown?

the full significance of a character

It's the second of two acts: World War II era, South Pacific. "Peggy the pin-up" takes the USO stage in a sequined red dress. The sparkle of scarlet in contrast with her platinum wig and the soft spotlight and the quintessential period microphone set the scene. We are the "soldiers," the audience. This song is dedicated by the Marilyn Monroe look-alike to us, to them. She wraps her delicate fingers around the microphone's base and as the piano cues, her sultry lips part to shape the words that I can almost entirely sing along to.

I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places...

She slowly swings her hips into the lounge-like performance, maintaining her persona of deliberate sensuality. Peggy croons through the second verse, the third, and in the fourth she unexpectedly falls out of character. Her bright lips fight against the stage smile that she so diligently attempts to hold against the weight of reality. Stepping back from her microphone, she turns away from the audience. It takes longer than a moment for her to regain composure, long enough that the accompanist glances up from her music, concerned and confused, long enough for those of us in the audience to realize that this is not scripted. Her grief ripples through the dark theatre--contagious. I see the silhouettes of other women subtly wiping tears from their cheeks, just as I stretch the sleeve of my cardigan over the inside of my wrist. Pressing it to my face, trying to stifle my own sadness, I blot at tears more slowly than they fall dripping down the front of my dress. The actress uncoils a couple of times, fans her face in efforts to reestablish the order of necessary existence, and eventually turns again to face us smiling. She finishes the song breathy and with a wink. She finishes not as the Army wife we catch a glimpse of, but as "Peggy Jones", starlet, pin-up, community theatre actress-in-role.

I don't have the patience or the focus to write. It certainly isn't that I don't have material. Turn on the news--I have LOTS of commentary. I have traveled to both ends of America this summer. And now that my personal life is slowly settling down, while the world is keeping it's usual, tumultuous pace, I just can't find the desire to express myself in words. The Middle East has temporarily made me a reader instead of a"writer."