Word for New Year

Remember the post about a word to describe your city?

My excellent yoga teacher was telling the class about a friend she had who chose a word for every year. She then tries to “dive in” to that word all year.

One year her word was pleasure, and she noticed pleasure in her life, or opportunity for pleasure, and dove into all the pleasure that year. I imagine it as being a year full of hot fudge cake and satin sheets. It was, my teacher told us, a happy year. Then another year her word was challenge, so she dove into all the challenges. Apparently that year turned out to be very challenging, but she grew a lot, and reported that it was a better year that the pleasure year.

I’m trying to figure out what my word for the year should be. I’m having a hard time choosing just one. Here are some of the words I am considering:

Honesty. Sometimes I feel that I am not totally honest—not that I am big liar, but that I am fragmented, or reserved, un-aggressive, that I don’t totally express myself. Synonyms to the kind of honesty I am talking about are wholeness or desire. Choosing one of the words would involve being honest with myself and others at a level I am not sure I am operating at right now.

Pleasure. A year of hot fudge cake and satin sheets—enough said. Imagine diving into every opportunity for pleasure.

Courage. Although I am making progress, I have a lot of fears: of expressing desire (see above), of traveling (although we DID drive down to NC on 95!), of dying. I would like to be a braver person.

These are the three I’ve narrowed it down to for now. While I’m at it, I’ll go ahead and list my New Year’s Resolutions. They are more like goals, things I’ve taken baby steps about lately and like to develop. I’d like to continue to do yoga on my own and continue to write in the mornings. I’d like to send my poems out to some journals too. I’d want to continue to think about building a career that involves both teaching and writing. I want to try to visit my family at least four times and stop worrying about the future (buying a house, etc).

I think any of my top three choices for words would allow me to do those things.

Snow Queen

I used to be able to describe how I first saw her-- it was in a poetry class, and I was intimidated by something she'd said, and it was probably one of those cases where I thought I didn't like her-- the first thing I usually do when I start to make a good friend is think I hate her for awhile.

I wrote a poem that had Zoloft in it, or a reference to depression. She made a comment that made me know she knew what I was going through. Why don’t I remember it more? At the time I thought I had invented depression. I felt like the only person who had even been profoundly sad.

We became friends. There is a scene I remember vividly: the balcony of her high-rise dorm, early, balmy spring, Mango Snapple in a martini glass. A few moments of calm.

She is very honest. Once I called her in a kind of panic from my job and said, does this ever go away? She said, no. She said, but you learn how to deal with it.

From her I learned about sushi and wine and good cheese and making a studying schedule. And so many great bands. Once we drank an entire jug of Carlo Rossi wine in two hours.

When I think of her I think of beautiful, hip jewelry-- her rings especially. And wedge shoes. Scarves. Coffee shops. Driving places to eat-- she always knew of some interesting cafe or restaurant, and we'd pick at things till we finished them, and talk and talk.

I haven't talked to her in what seems like a hundred years, but she just left her husband. I haven't heard the whole story, but I imagine that move took a lot of honesty, honesty to self, the most important kind. And courage. Snow Queen, you deserve a special kind of purple heart, an amethyst ring one, perhaps, or a velvet one for your patchwork quilt.

The other night I dreamed of I was going to a city in Canada. I'm not sure which. I was arriving on a train/boat kind of thing, standing on a kind of balcony. Suddenly this gorgeous city appeared, a city of ice, framed by blue mountains and glaciers in the background. Everything was sparkle and shades of sky and white.

Fear-- Dedicated to T

Today, because it's Halloween, I want to celebrate a friend who did something that I consider really scary: after the break up of a long-term relationship, she moved to a new country-- continent, actually-- to live life on her own terms for a year.

She left behind a budding relationship, as well as a steady job, her apartment, her kitties, her car, her cell phone... all the things we tend to depend on to secure us to life. She moved without knowing where she was going to live or exactly what she was going to do.

I, who as we all know am terrified of even short trips in the car, am so impressed by these actions I can hardly wrap my mind about it. Whenever I do warrior poses in yoga, I think of T and her sense of adventure, the strength it takes to let-- make-- yourself have them.

I also love this friend because she read Eat Pray Love when I did this summer, and Harry Potter. So we had a little reading club.

And, she is the best conversationalist ever. She asks the most interesting questions.

Everybody, do something scary and adventurous today! And try Warrior 3-- http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/941 --

as you stand there balanced on one leg, try to breathe peace and strength and courage, to yourself if you need it, to your friends, to the world.

Love

My friend the Junky's Wife (thejunkyswife.com) is going through a hard time right now. That's probably an understatement.

Her ability to stand by her husband despite some less than desirable circumstances amazes me.

It makes me think about love. It's one thing to think you are committed to your marriage through daily life things like, oh, cooking dinner and working long hours and rainy days. It's another to deal with something like addiction. I want to send blogger-waves of peace and hope and strength to JW.

And, all this thinking about love has made me think about the great friends I have. I think I'll make a little blog-task for myself in which I celebrate my friends. I'll begin with JW.

Here are ten-- no, eleven-- great things about her:

1. She is an excellent writer.
2. She is the first friend I ever had that knew how to wear her beauty.
3. She taught me about tofu bacon.
4. In being a vegetarian who would still eat the vegetables her momma cooked in real bacon grease, she was the role model for the fake vegetarian that I am today.
5. She made me love Sylvia Plath.
6. She sometimes let me drive her fancy car in college.
7. She is one of the most honest people I know (in the ways that matter, at least).
8. She sticks by her friends.
9. She sticks by the people she loves.
10. She made me start a blog.
11. She is some kind of Walt Whitman role model for love, love, love above all else.

Rain

Finally, it's raining here.

I was dreaming this morning that my house was on fire and I couldn't find the cat's box. As I walked (very calmly, now that I think about it) from room to room looking for it, I would pause to watch the woods around my house burn. It was kind of pretty: the flames melting through wood, a sort of cinnamon-candy red that faded to black and then to nothing, empty space. Next, in that way dreams have of jumping to another place, we were on a train, leaving the fire, and the wind was rattling the train on its tracks and pushing huge trees to the ground.

We woke up to NPR and a story about a man whose house, in San Diego County in California, had burned to the ground,
and here it's raining...

Is this one of those count your blessing days? I suppose every day is, really.

Look at me, posting on my blog

Busy day, as usual. I tried to get ahead for next week's Monday class. Monday's are always terribly hectic, with teaching AND the class with 700 pages of reading.

I yelled at my students through email, as they are late emailing drafts to me and each other, and we are having conferences. What, you mean a conference cant work if no one's read each other's papers?

I read Whitman and Alicia Ostiker and Hart Crane, and Tony Hoagland and student papers and the poems for workshop tomorrow.

I depositied a check and rescued my bike from where it was left out last night-- Metro was having problems and D picked me up in Chinatown.

Now I am going to make enchiladas.

I would like to live a life that I do not need to measure by how much I get done every day.

The Joy of Wireless and a Macbook

Yesterday, in between the horror of going to the Pentagon City mall, spending a lot of money on a computer, and coming hme and unnecessarily reinstalling the computer's hard drive (! I though those disks were something else), I fell in love with my MacBook. It has a webcam! I can take my picture right now, but I won't.

The other day I gave my students a new syllabus, for the fifth time this semester, and I told them I wanted to promise I wouldn't give them any more new syllabi, but I might break the promise. I want to make the same kind of promise to my blog. It seems like things just keep getting so busy. But I have blog friends I miss. Anyway, I know no one really cares that much-- it's just a part of my life that I really like. So I've been missing it.

As JW commented on my last post, though, you can't be perfect. I just get really stressed out by school, especially this English class. People spout theory and comments and I just don't know all that stuff. (And a lot of times, I don't want to know). It's a cool class, though, anyway. LV, we are reading books like Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Writings to Susan Huntington Dickinson, and Leaves of Grass, and William Carlos Williams's Patterson, and Hart Crane and Alicia Ostriker.

I have to do a post to the class's Blackboard discussion board every week, and I always get grouchy because I can't write on Blackboard like I do on my blog.

In conclusion, I would like to abruptly propose that we all go on strike for a three-day weekend. Is anyone with me?

P.S. Blogsspot's spell check won't work on this new computer, and all the little buttons for italics and such are gone. Does anyone know how to fix that?

Lovely Computer

We just bought a Mac.

It's pretty.

Maybe I'll be a better blogger, now, and post more.

Ticking away, the moments that make up

Is it a dull day? Or a small day?

Anyway, time. Time time time.

I haven't had time to post. Fall is in full swing: papers to grade, homework to complete, Metros to catch.

Overall, I've been doing a good job this fall putting my writing first. I write in the mornings, so if I have other things to do I have to ignore them while I write. This had resulted in some progress with my poetry as well as my never once having done all of the homework for my Emily Dickinson class.

How do you claim time for things you love and without turning into a slacker in other aspects? Maybe it's impossible. I've been trying to embrace the idea that I can just be worst student in the Dickinson class, but really, I'm a schoolnerd-overachiever so it's hard for me.

I'm starting to worry about next year, when I might be teaching high school again. Talk about never having time.

Yesterday, I did this thing where I tried to do all of my homework first and then write. Of course I never wrote. I got all my homework done, though.

And now... I'm off to work on my poems. I have till 10:30, then I have to go teach.

Random Update

I thought I would update, although I have no interesting questions in mind. Most of my questions are currently about teaching, poetry, or keeping up in school.

Speaking of which, what do people think of the phrase "the fan like a scope of a gun"?

Anyway, so school's started and I'm finally getting into the swing of things. Yesterday was a big day-- the poet Martin Espada read and I did his introduction. That should be Martin with an accent mark over the i-- MarTEEN. I don't know how to do the accent mark on blogspot. It's a big deal; I got an email before the intro that he won't get up on stage if you say Martin instead of MarTEEN. So I got irrationally but extremely nervous before the reading that I was somehow going to accidentally say Martin. Then I would be the white girl who said Martin. But I did okay.

Also yesterday I had to give a presentation on C.K. Williams' poem "The Dog," which you can read here. http://drake.marin.k12.ca.us/staff/doherty/personpoem.htm It's got a fabulously, disgustingly elegant description of a dog going to the bathroom in it. And that went okay too.

So now two big things I had to do are over and I can just keep up with normal work, such as investigating the question "Do poems think?" for my one real English class. Hmm.

If anyone has any ideas on that one, let me know.

I've been writing a lot more, getting up, having coffee, writing in my journal, reading some poems and some "theory," then sitting at the computer for an hour or two, sometimes more. If you are trying to accomplish something, let me suggest getting into a routine where you do whatever it is first thing in the morning. It's working well for me. Of course, it's a luxury to be able to get up and not have to rush to get ready for work. I guess that's why so many poets/artists/etc get up at 4 AM to do their work.

It's fallish here, which is nice. I like the fall smell and the clear sky.

We've been watching Desperate Housewives (DVDs from blockbuster.com, a Netflixish kind of system) and it's fascinating. I love it. And the next thing we get will be The Office Season 3! We got rid of our cable for this blockbuster.com thing. It's cheaper and better; we watch interesting things. The only bad thing is, no more Jon Stewart.

I've been reading Kenneth Koch...

Poem with Exclamation Points

M tells me someone at Hollins told her (quoting someone else?)
that every writer is allowed one exclamation point in all their writing career.
One! Can you imagine?
Someone forgot to tell Walt Whitman!
Also O’Hara, Koch. What about cummings? I’m checking. Does
!
by itself on a line count? In my (used) book
someone has drawn parenthesis around Death I think is no parenthesis. (How
many parenthesis are we allowed, I wonder?) What about Herrick?
Here’s: Alas for me! I don’t see another, but
I’m not really looking carefully anymore, I’m writing this poem,
the things I’ve exclaimed in poems already! Like, O, dead spider!
and stuff like that. I should ration exclamation points, then,
be careful, they’re dear, imported. But it’s spring!
I mean it’s fall! Suki’s sitting on my poems in the springfall breeze!
(We didn’t used to have a cat but now we do!)
D’s playing June Apple in the guitar room; later he’ll go get someone out of jail!
And me: blue ink, blue ink, all day (what luck)!
(How many parenthesis did we get again?) And what about
semicolons; what about colons? What about
the question mark?

Speak

I am always so surprised and grateful when I return to my last blog post and find all these insightful comments. Thank you!



I guess I'm still on the writing about poetry kick. So I've been trying, in my poems for class, to give more info, so people will stop saying I'm not telling the whole story, and when I do that, I get all these, "this poem is too emotional" comments.



So the only thing to do then, is to write how I want, and not worry about the rest.


Why is it so scary to do that?

Calm down, Nate! Eleventh graders will suffer through your writing for years to come.

“America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash – and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Supergeek Academia Time

So...

I'm taking this class about poetry and media. One of the questions for tomorrow is to come to class ready to discuss "poetry" and "media" and what those two words "mean" and whether or not poetry can exist without media.

So trying to answer that I was thinking about poetry on the Internet, and how anyone with a computer and a poem can publish it online. There's a snobby, academic part of me that thinks that's not "real" publishing, but there's an ever-growing, blogger part of me that thinks that's wonderful, like literally wonder-full, that everyone can be a published web poet.

In college a person (who tortured my soul, but that's parenthetical here) wrote a poem called "Everybody wants to be a poet and they can't." But maybe now they can.

So, some questions:

a. Does anyone out there READ poetry at all?

b. If no, why not?

b. If yes, from where? Books? Or mostly the Internet?

c. Online publishing-- "real" or not? (I guess this kind of relates to whether self-publishing is real, in the end...)

Headache

I've had a headache since school started. It has to do with having a to-do list that I can't complete by the evening as well as having professors quote poetry at me, then look at me expectantly, and not knowing what the poem is.

The MFA "orientation" is tonight and I said I'd make a spinach lasagne. (Lasagna? Which one's the right spelling?) So I had to get up and make a lasagne. Usually I love to get up and cook but the to-do list is floating around me in an irritation, ghostly way. I should have said I'd bring something easy, since I teach Friday afternoons, but I wanted to show off my lasagne-making skills.

Also, today I am showing my classes An Inconvenient Truth, so I have to watch An Inconvenient Truth twice this afternoon which I should be reading the poetry of Martin Espada.

I thought I was going to do a better job of maintaining my peacefulsummer self.

Pie Recipe and Honesty

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted. Something about school starting and trying to remain calm has prevented me from posting, as though writing a blog entry takes hours or something. One of my goals for the semester is to try not to get obsessed with what I "don't have time" to do. When things get busy with "work"-- in this case school-- I tend to start neglecting things like keeping in touch with people I love and reading and writing for pleasure, and that's not a good life.

Anyway, thanks for your comments on the housewife entry. As requested, here's the recipe for spinach and red pepper pie:

1/2 tbsp butter

1/4 cup dry bread crumbs

1 tbsp olive oil

1 red pepper, cut into thin slices

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 med. yellow squash, quartered vertically and thinly sliced

1 10 oz. package frozen spinach, thawed and drained

3 eggs

1/4 cup milk

1/4 tsp salt

black pepper

1 and 1/2 cups cheese (cheddar, swiss, or your favorite)

Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the red pepper and cook for about 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for a minute, then add the squash. Cook until the squash is tender, about 10 minutes. Add the spinach and cook for another minute to let any water evaporate. Remove from heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Slather the butter on a pie place to coat it, then sprinkle on the bread crumbs and spread them over the butter by shaking the pie plate. This is the "crust." Put that aside and beat the eggs in a large bowl.

Stir the milk, salt, pepper, and cooled veggies into the eggs. Spoon half of the mixture into the pie plate, then sprinkle on half the cheese. Spoon the other half of the mixture on the cheese, then sprinkle on the rest of the cheese.

Bake about 30-35 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the pie cool about 10-15 minutes before cutting into it.

This is delicious and goes well with mashed potatoes. It's from a great cookbook called Vegetarian Classics by Jeanne Lemlin.

So that's that.

On another topic, I wanted to write about honesty. Is anyone ever temped to lie or stretch the truth in their blogs? What about not telling the whole truth? It's be interested to know how others approach telling the "true story" of their lives to an on-line audience.

Why? Well, it's not because my blog is a bunch of lies. Actually I have an easy time with honesty on my blog. The question stems from my attempts to write poetry. In my first meeting with a professor last week, I turned in a poem, and the prof said he thought the poem did not tell the whole story, that it left something out, something important. My professor last spring said the same thing about two of my poems. And it's true.

I am not leaving stuff out on purpose, but I realized that in an attempt not to be "confessional" or "sentimental," I've been sort of tempering my writing, tying to say things in a kind of slanted, muted way. I seem to be afraid of telling personal details, which is interesting because I never used to be afraid of writing personal stuff. I also seem to be afraid of telling too much about myself in workshop, which is interesting also. I am realizing I have made up a "teacher/MFA student" self that I want to keep watch on. I am kind of worried about what people will think if I write about certain subjects.

It's odd to realize this, because like I said, it's not on purpose, not a conscious decision. In fact, realizing that I have "safe" material has made me spend the last week writing very long poems full of confession and sentiment. So we'll see how next week goes.

How do all you bloggers share so much with the world? Is it ever scary?

Housewife!

I'm leaving on the train for NC at 10:55, and I woke up with big plans of what to accomplish before I left.

I wanted to finish packing, print out some things to read on the train, get ready in general, and make a spinach and red pepper pie and pesto mashed potatoes for D to eat for dinner any myself to eat on the train. (I'll be on the train till 6:32, longer if it's delayed...)

It's 9:19, and I just took the casserole out of the oven to cool. For the past few hours, though, I've been in a hurricane of housewifery.

I came downstairs, made coffee, brushed the cat, and went back up to shower. I packed, wrote in my journal, and listened to NPR. I came back down and began to chop peppers and squash, heat oil in a pan, and put together D's lunch at the same time I threw fruit in the blender for a smoothie. At any pause in the cooking, I washed the dishes. D grated the cheese for me in a hectic moment. Once the casserole was in the oven, I chopped and boiled potatoes, then mixed them up with the pesto we made a few weeks ago.

Whew.

But I really had fun. I-- sometimes-- really enjoy that sort of kitchen flurry. It's fun to try to beat the clock.

I've had an interesting relationship with housework this summer, anyway. When D and I moved in together, he cooked and I washed dishes. End of story. We divided chores very equally. Gradually, though, I began to cook some. Flash forward to this summer, when I could not find a full time summer job and was spending a lot of time doing nothing. Two things occurred to me-- one, that cooking would be fun and take up some time, and two, that if I cooked dinner, Dean's summer could be a little more like mine-- he'd have a little more free time. So I began to cook dinner, and sometimes even wash the dishes too (I am a much faster dishwasher than D).

It's interesting how relationships evolve beyond equal division of labor. It's kind of like thinking about "our money" when one person makes a lot more money.

It's a similar situation with D's lunches. I began making his lunch for him when he worked at a big law firm and was totally miserable. He was not eating much and I put together these fancy lunches full of fruit and snacks to try to tempt him to eat. He got a better job, but I still make his lunch. To tell the truth, I just like to. It's fun to come up with something creative and tasty.

Interesting stuff for a self-proclaimed feminist... in college I would have refused to do most of this stuff on principle. Men should make their own lunches, or go hungry!... and so on. Seems more like empty principle now... It seems more about love, or the ebb and flow of give and take.

What do you think?

Namaste

The Junky's Wife (thejunkyswife.com (can anyone tell me how to do the thing to make the words themselves link to the page? I'm sure it's very easy, but I can't figure it out)) wrote about yoga, and since I like to copy her when I can, I decided to write about yoga.

I had not been to a yoga class in 14 days, and today was great. I have two yoga classes, Tuesdays with V and Thursdays with N. They are very different. (Ed. note: at first I was using full names, but then I thought, due to the fact that this is blog and all, that I should maybe not use names, so I am using initials.)

Tuesdays with V used to be Tuesdays with D, but D left our studio because she needed to devote more time to other classes/parts of her life. I miss her: first of all, she was (is) very beautiful and I liked to look at her long, long hair, but more importantly she is one of the calmest teachers/people I've ever met, and her class was pure peace. Before D, we had Tuesdays with L, but L stopped teaching when she was about 5 months pregnant. She is teaching again but only at night. Her class was great too.

Anyway I've only been to Tuesdays with V a few times, but I like it a lot so far. V is both energetic and serene at the same time, which seems like a hard balance to maintain, but she does it well. She is encouraging and very specific with descriptions when she teaches, which I find helpful. And today, she said she needed people to massage for free to help her with her massage therapy training. The universe smiles on me yet again!

Another reason I like Tuesdays is due to the group of people who often go to the Tuesday class, or in yoga words the kula (Sanskrit for "heart community"). There are a few Tuesday people I've known since I moved here, and they are fun to talk to before and after class and they make me feel like I belong in the neighborhood.

But the greatest yoga day is Thursday, with N. N is wonderful. She is an excellent, excellent teacher. You can always tell that she has put a lot of time and energy planning the class. She knows and cares about her students-- she even emailed me a great email about chakras when I was out of town. One of the things I like most about N is that she is not afraid to challenge her students. Sometimes in yoga class, you can get so into "honoring your limits" and not demanding things that are too difficult from yourself that you actually never push yourself to go as far as you might. N finds a balance between not letting people hurt themselves and encouraging people to grow and find new limits. In N's class, I have gotten (mostly) past a fear of handstands (although I still can't do one alone), and it was in N's class that my heels first touched the ground in downward dog. Now I am working on lifting my heart in cobra-- very difficult for me.

One of my favorite quotes from N is "Yoga means union, not... mat."

Another great thing about yoga is the comfy, comfy clothes. If you are lucky, on yoga days you can wear your yoga clothes all day! I am lucky lately, as it's been summer, so I don't have to change. And I'm not teaching on yoga days this fall, so I can be cozy in my cotton and lycra for months.

Sometimes when I take a train or plane trip I but The Yoga Journal. I was reading in the last one (I bought it for the CA plane rides) about starting a home practice. I am beginning to practice at home a little. It's hard without a teacher there to soothe you and boss you around, but I think it helps to do a little on your own when you can.

Okay, enough yoga randomness. Questions: any more praise for yoga? Favorite poses? Poses you hate? (I currently hate revolved triangle pose.) Things in your life that are like yoga in mine?

Here's a link to a fun yoga pose to try at home:

http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/487_1.cfm

It's Bharadvajasana, one of my favorites, although I didn't know the name till just now when I found it on the web. One teacher I had told about how gently separates your vertebrae and allows new blood to flow into your spine. I could almost hear the suctioning sound of my vertebrae separating, which is a great sound in my mind.

If you want to find your own pose, go to http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/index.cfm?ctsrc=tnav

Namaste!

The end of vacation:



The crazy bathrobe-wearing man is outside yelling as I am writing. He shows up every now and then to stalk cars stopped at the light. I can never tell if he's asking for money or just yelling. Once someone gave him a cup of applesauce and he half-drank, half-scooped it into his mouth. He has a long beard, a dirty blue bathrobe, and a hospital bracelet.



I've called the non-emergency police about him a few times, but now I wonder if it does any good. He eventually just comes back. Still, I am sort of afraid he's going to get hit by a car. He sometimes does karate shop moves very close to traffic. Other times, he does a yoga-type, namaste bow to the cars as they pass.



What can you do?



What does it mean to ignore this man?

Oh I wish I was in Frisco, with a brand new pair of shoes...

I WAS!

There's a bear over there, do you want to see it?

Hi, I'm back home! It was a great trip. There's no way I can tell everything that happened, so I am just going to list a few memories that stand out after being home for about 20 hours.

1. We saw a bear! It was not scary, which was surprising. At our campground in Yosemite, I was waving to another young woman whose campsite was across the road and she walked over with a camera and said, "There's a bear over there, so you want to see it?" D and I looked at each other and said, "Yes." We walked a few feet and down the road, ambling and snuffling, was a bear! It was big. It walked to the side for awhile and then walked away into the woods. A bear!

2. We hiked up big mountains in Yosemite. We estimate that we hiked about 29 miles in all. Everything was all vistas and cliffs and views. I'll try to remember to post some pictures.

3. I swam in a freezing cold alpine lake! It was after the third day of camping and I wanted to be clean, but the showers were closed. D and I stopped to put our feet in the lake, but it was very cold. Suddenly, I decided to just get in! I dunked myself under and swam for maybe 90 seconds. For a few hours, I felt very fresh and clean. (We found showers the next day.)

4. In other mammal-siting news, a marmot charged me.

5. Blue birds and sequoias.

6. Staying in San Fransisco with D's cousin and her boyfriend was great. They are both lovely and wonderful. I can be sort of a fussy house guest, and I was always comfortable and happy. We had great dinners and conversations, too. Thanks guys!

7. San Fransisco itself was beautiful, cool and windy and not summery at all. It's a city of sudden views-- lots of hills. We walked across the Golden Gate bridge, and through all kinds of neighborhoods. We walked so much I had to buy new, comfortable shoes.

8. And I drove in California! Along crazy mountain roads, even. Fearless me!

Okay, I'm surrounded by laundry and dishes and the cat wants attention. I'll continue the CA trip update soon!

If you're going to San Fransisco (or, goin' to California with an achin' in my heart)

Be an explorer. The universe is filled with wonder and magical things. -- Flavia





I'm going to California tomorrow! Just kidding about the heartache.





I'm a little nervous, although I won't bore everyone with my "I'mafraidoftravlingonplanesandincarsanddying" lamentations. I've been pretty calm, actually, and excited, almost like a NORMAL person about to take a trip. I did wake up last night to worries that popped up like little weeds every time I dozed off, but a lot of them were about things that had nothing to do with the trip, like about what I'm teaching in the fall, and times I've let friends down, and whether or not I'll ever write enough "good" poems for my thesis. Anyway.





No matter what happens, travel gives you a story to tell. -- Jewish Proverb





It was hard to find vacation quotes that weren't cynical! Most of them are about how much work it is to go on a vacation, and how everything goes wrong.





I have a weird relationship with traveling. I like the idea of it, but when it comes down to leaving sometimes I'd secretly just stay home with my routine. Routines are like fat, pleasant dogs, always there to sit on the couch with you in contentment.





I'd like to be the kind of person who craves adventure. Probably my nature is not going to change, but I remember in college, I had a real, true longing to travel. One of my housemates was from England and every time I would go with her to the airport I would be very jealous that she got to go see so many cool places and I didn't. I longed to go somewhere on an airplane. I'd like to be more like that again.






Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.-- Gustave Flaubert





D and I are going to fly into San Fransisco tomorrow, and we're driving out to Yosemite National Park on Friday. We'll come back to San Fran (that's what the guidebook says to call it, NOT Frisco) on Tuesday to stay with D's lovely cousin. I can't wait to see the city-- I think that will be my favorite part. I'm going to be a dorky hippie and go to City Lights bookstore for sure. I'm taking my new skirt my my bought me and my real shoes-- no flip flops-- because it's going to be SIXTY DEGREES! NOT one hundred and eleven or whatever it is in DC right now.



Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes. -- Jan Myrdal

So, I might not post again until I get back... thanks again to everyone who's been reading. I can't think of a question, exactly, but it'd be cool to see people's thoughts about vacations. Okay, here, finish this phrase: "Vacations are one of life's..." You can't say greatest pleasures.

Odds and Ends

I am really touched by the nice comments on my last post. Thank you!

I made it here fine-- eight and a half hours. The worst part was hours 4-5; it seemed that Hwy 29 was never going to reach Greensboro. But eventually, I got home. I am proud, and do feel a bit better about the drive back. I agree with what MPJ said in her comment that anticipation/ dread is the worst part.

I've been trying to follow the advice of Thich Nhat Hanh: when I find myself worrying about little things in the future, I try to recognize that it's my "habit energy" to worry and it doesn't do any good. He says to say, "Hello, dear little habit energy! I recognize you!" And then I try to reestablish myself in the present moment. Which is usually a good moment.

On another topic, I wanted to apologize for the gap in posts and say I might be posting something along the lines of once or twice a week for while now. I'll be out of town a lot (trying to live in the present moment) and school starts after that; I've just realized I spent the whole summer blogging and reading Harry Potter (I'm on book 6 still, by the way, which I like better than 5; Harry is much less angsty) and I haven't worked on my syllabus for the classes I'm teaching in the fall. I'll be teaching two sections of English 101 come Aug 27, not to mention taking a poetry workshop, thesis hours, and a seminar. Also, I'd like to spend more of my Internet time reading other blog as well as writing this one, so I'm officially going to 1-2 posts a week.

Here's a totally random question. I've been shopping some lately, and I am wondering what people think about the return of the 80s in fashion.

1. Do you, or do you plan in the near future, to wear leggings with a long shirt in public?

2. Do you think those little plastic circles with the line down the middle that scrunch up the side of your t-shirt are going to come back in style? Do those things have a name?

3. Jellies: yes or no?

Facing a Fear

"Confront your fears, list them, get to know them, and only then will you be able to put them aside and move on."--Jerry Giles

"We must travel in the direction of our fear." --John Berryman

"Do what you fear most and you control fear." --Tom Hopkins

Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving the city in a CAR, and I will be DRIVING to my family's house in western NC.

So by tomorrow afternoon I should be cured of my fear of driving, right?

I'm not sure where this fear of driving and traveling come from. I was in a big car crash in college, but no one was hurt. It just seems so unsafe, to be speeding along in a little metal box, with hundreds of other speeding metal boxes hurtling past or changing lanes in front of you.

In any case, I am trying to be a normal person and not spend the day dreading tomorrow:

"Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness." --James Thurber

Poems

As you may or may not know, I am in the process of earning an MFA in poetry. Next April, I will have to submit a thesis of finished poems. Today I was going through my files trying to figure out how many of the poems were "finished." Not many are, but I thought it'd be fun to post a few of the finished ones here; I haven't shared my writing with many people outside of D and the world of school lately. I made them different colors for easy reading and made a few comments before each one.

This first poem started as an assignment to go to an art museum and write an ekphrastic poem (a poem engaging with a piece of visual art). You can see the paintings I wrote about here: http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?60908+0+0 (Still Life with Dead Game); http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?71660+0+0 (Banquet Piece with Mince Pie).

The Dutch Cabinet Gallery

If corpses can gaze, these portraits’
faces gaze at us like corpses.
I move quickly to the still lifes—

no people, but full of life,
overflowing with fruit and flowers,
with light streaming in from all sides—

and find among gleaming tulips
and peeled oranges and limes
Still Life with Dead Game:

a plush dead rabbit and three dead birds.
They’re tied at the feet in a weird bouquet,
blood pooling at nose tip and beak tips

and dripping onto the marble floor.
This kill is fresh; the rabbit’s eyes still shine;
its inner ear’s pink’s fading, but still pink.

And what to make of this one,
Banquet Piece with Mince Pie, this aftermath of a banquet,
a crumpled, bone colored tablecloth

hanging as if half-yanked off the table,
glass like a photograph of glass, some of it shattered,
a dented silver pitcher, a candle snuffed out,

soiled forks and knives, food scattered
all over, olives, oyster shells, the crust of the mince pie
crumbled. The one thing whole

in this arranged disarray is a piece of bread
in the middle, unbroken. Bread’s the body of Christ,
the pamphlet explains. The banquet’s over,

the bread untasted. The candle snuffed out.
The artist’s studio’s unlit, the fur, the silk and fruit
he loves to paint invisible now. It’s late.

Outside, October afternoon:
the low sun’s dim beams
slant in at sharp angles,

autumnal.
Night’s not the kind of darkness
anyone’s worried about, really.

As the title indicates, the next poem came from a visit to the 7/11 one Friday night in Charleston, WV. D had just come home from a week of court and I was happy to have him back.

7-11,
Friday Night

People congregate
on the sidewalk,
talking of feasting,
for Friday
is a little holiday.
Look how the lights
inside illuminate
the bags of chips,
the candy bars,
the slick plastic wrappers’
sheen: Cheesy!
Spicy! Salty!
Chewy! Filled
with caramel and peanuts,
peanut butter and nougat!
Dark chocolate! Milk chocolate
and white!
And the beer cans,
gold and silver splendor,
promising, however brief, oblivion…
What shall we buy?
And how shall we pay?
Ah, Friday,
little paycheck
of the week.
Nothing is expensive;
the night sparkles
with plenty.

A poem about an encounter with a homeless man:

Poem with descent and the opposite

This one’s wheelchaired
on the corner of 1st and East Capitol,
legs lopped off at the knee,

clean shaven, camouflaged and crew cut,
clear eyes that I, headphoned and sunglassed-in,
don’t have to meet. Like me,

the business-casualed populace strides by,
elsewhere-bound. I glance up from my slow sinking
underground to see

a black-coated man extend a folded bill
in his gloved hand, and think
he’s somehow saved the rest of us, this morning.

This one fulfilled an assignment for open quatrains in syllabics, and one for a poem that was all one sentence. It ended up being one I really liked.

Addressee Not Known

Future tragedies
are like packages
that are going to
arrive in the mail

but you don’t know when
or what to expect
when you break the seal
which of course you must—

unless it arrives
untaped, whatever
it is bursting from
ragged cardboard ed-

ges: accident can-
cer crash flame funer-
al et cetera,
or something else un-

thought of despite the
long careful hours
you’ve spent in the dark,
anticipating

how it might appear,
the ways you might hide
your mailbox, how you’ll
try to send it back…

This last one is an ottava rima, which means 8-line stanzas that have an abababcc rhyme scheme. Another fun poem about living in WV.

On the West Side

Loud music comes to Hazelwood with spring,
and gaudy flowers bloom among the trash.
I, like my neighbors, settle on my porch swing
and watch the children playing tag and catch
in the street. A girl, round-bellied, her mouth ringed
with something pink and moist, climbs up my porch
and thrusts at me a brownish plastic cup.
I’m selling this, she says. It’s Cheerios and 7-Up.

It’s all we have to sell—it’s for the poorless—
(a poorless man was going through our trash).
Teacherly, I correct her: you mean the homeless.
She shakes her head and smiles. Do you have cash?
I decline her wares but give her two dollars,
watch her climb porch after porch, smile and sashay,
for sale, for sale! Across the street she leaves
the gate ajar. A second girl appears,

a taller, thinner girl with clearer eyes.
You didn’t shut the gate, she says, shuts it,
and takes her sister by the hand and sighs.
Ah! This girl has what it takes to shut a gate;
she’ll surely escape this street of grimy
vinyl siding, sloped yards, and dim kitchens,
I think. I watch the sisters, hand in hand,
walk down the hill to home—or to the store for candy.

Meanwhile on Hazelwood huge roses bloom
amidst our recent winter’s rusty trash.
The crows and bluebirds shriek and dart and zoom
down for seeds and worms, or whatever they can catch.
Somewhere close by the poorless shuffle, hum
to themselves, daydream of cash and porches.
Each afternoon I wander through warm spring.

Sometimes I hear the sisters fight, or sing.

Summer Teeth

It's feast or famine with my posts lately, but I have to be at the DENTIST OFFICE in one and one half hours.

The dentist is probably going to yell at me for not going to a dentist for the last 4 years, and then tell me I have nine cavities.

Which is why I avoid the dentist.

Okay, I have to get ready so I am not late.

ruff ruff

A quick note--

As there is a dog-sized hole in my soul, I just emailed my landlord asking if we could get a dog-- any positive dog-thoughts you can send out toward Chicago and D.C. would be appreciated!

Thank You India

The Junky's Wife (http://www.thejunkyswife.com/2007/07/gratitude.html) wrote about being grateful this morning, and it inspired me to make this list of 11 things I'm grateful for.

1. Coffee!

2. The cat, who is taking a break from reading to sleep on her side beside the computer.

3. The day in front of me, which will be full of salsa-making and garden-watering and poetry- organizing.

4. The patch of sunlight on the floor, which the cat will move to when I get up from the computer.

5. A refrigerator full of lasagna and tofurkey and cantaloupe (and 5a: the spell checker for knowing how to spell "cantaloupe").

6. The comfy gray chair I spend 3 hours a day reading Harry Potter in (still on book 5-- it's LONG).

7. The sound of D playing the guitar every morning as I write.

8. Yoga today!!!

9. The fun day I had working yesterday-- my boss and I chatted more than we worked and we stopped at 2 to go swimming in one of those secret pools people have behind their rowhouses in the city.

10. My sister, who calls me just to talk.

11. My supportive, patient friends who still like me even though I am bad at talking on the phone.

Question Game!

You know those emails you get once in awhile with a long list of questions to answer? Like "what color socks are you wearing?" or "what's your favorite kind of hamburger"? You answer the questions and then forward it to your friends, who answer the same questions and send it back to you. In that way, you get to know all kinds of random things about your friends. It's especially fun if you haven't seen or talked to the friends in awhile.

I want to play that game. Let's make one up.

Think of a something random you'd like to know about your friends and post it as a question in a comment. I'll later repost them all in one piece (and add to the list so it's more than a few questions).

Small steps

I thought I was going to add two separate posts today, but I realized when I typed in a title for this post that the two issues are related.

First, I am proud to say that I drove across D.C. again today, a new route this time. I went up to Tenleytown to the Whole Foods and Best Buy. This probably seems mundane, but if you know me at all, you might remember one year ago and my terror, and I am talking about real, one hundred percent TERROR, of driving in this city.

D and I moved to D.C. on July 18 of last year. We were doing fine on the drive in until there was a mix-up between 395N and 395S. We missed an exit-- or D, who was driving, passed the exit because I told him it was the wrong one.

It was the right one.

The next hour was not happy.

In D.C., and probably in other big cities, you can't often just turn around and go back the right way. It took awhile for us to figure out where we were supposed to go. It seems less traumatic now, but it was not a good introduction to driving here. Other issues compounded my driving-phobia. D.C. has this thing about signs-- for example, the sign for your exit is often AFTER the exit. And sometimes, lanes appear and disappear with no warning. Then there are the traffic circles.

So, it was literally about 5 months after we moved here that I drove to the grocery store in our neighborhood. I got used to that and felt a tiny bit braver. Next, in December, they were predicting an ice storm and I made an emergency trip to the SW to buy a trunkfull of wood so we wouldn't freeze to death. Last spring, I drove all the way to Georgetown-- not a huge feat since it basically involves one street. I've done that twice now. Today, I drove to Tenleytown, which is not that hard but did involve going through Dupont Circle as well as several other traffic circles, one of which had no clearly marked lanes.

All of this seems silly, almost, but it's important to me because I really was afraid of driving here only a year ago. Now I am truly not afraid. I can just do it-- I can think on the spot about the circles, I can quickchange lanes to get around buses, and if I can't turn left when I need to I can find an alternate street. It gives me hope that maybe I can get over other fears I have too. It's a small step.

Small steps relate to the other issue I wanted to post about. I wanted to follow up on Troy Davis, the man I wrote about last week. He was granted a 90 day stay of execution so that new evidence in his case can be reviewed.

If you'd like to take a small step to take action in this issue, visit http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=8894. There, you can read more about what's going on and, if you like, send a pre-typed email asking that Davis' death sentence be commuted.

It sometimes seems futile to me to do things like send emails to a state I don't live in asking leaders there to help one man. I go down the path of "why bother." Why bother, when there's so much going on in the world that I can't change; why bother, when it's just one email; why bother, since we're all going to die anyway.

It's a dark path.

Why bother? Well, what else are we supposed to do? There's that overtold story about the boy throwing starfish back into the ocean-- a man sees the boy at the shoreline, surrounded by starfish, throwing them one at a time back into the sea. He tells the boy he'll never make a difference because there are so many starfish. They boy throws in another starfish and says, I made a difference to that one.

The story, corny as it may be, is overtold because it's true. On my drive today, I saw a man wearing a "Save Darfur" sandwich board. After thinking, "how much is that going to really help?" I thought, you know, maybe it's just all he can think of to do. And maybe it will get a few of us to do something about that situation.

So, today is riddled with questions: why bother?

And what small steps are you taking in your life?

Feel free as well to alert us to other issues about which we might take small steps.

Award Winning Blog

The Junky's Wife (http://www.thejunkyswife.com/) has awarded me a Thoughtful Blogger Award!

Here's what she says:

"My dear friend Question Air will receive the Thoughtful Blogger Award for her brand new blog. It's a thoughtful blog, I think, for various reasons:

1. She has a political conscience (stupid hippy!).

2. She is asking questions and interacting with her audience and respecting her audience's opinions.

3. She started the blog because I was bothering her because I think everyone of my writer friends should have a blog now that I do. That's a thoughtful thing to do, obeying my mandates."

Thanks, JW-- very sweet. I do know how you enjoy having your mandates obeyed.

And thanks to everyone who's read and commented-- your thoughts and answers and questions are wonderful.

Balance

The phone rang today, and I pulled myself out of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to see who was calling. It was a friend I have not talked to in too long, so I actually CLOSED the book and answered. As I chatted, I looked around and realized I was in Harry Potter Squalor.

Harry Potter Squalor, for those who don't know, is when your house is dark, dusty, messy, and cluttered because you have done nothing but read Harry Potter books for 4 days, and your life and your mind are in the same shape as your house. This is first time I have experienced Harry Potter Squalor, but I've been through plenty of other kinds of Squalor: Too Busy Teaching Squalor, or Fall Depression Squalor...

So, while I talked on the phone I made pancakes and started some laundry, and then I vacuumed and made myself work on my journal-organizing project I started before I got the bright idea to try to read all the Harry Potter books before the new one came out. It's not going to happen, folks-- the new one's out Saturday, and I am going camping this weekend, and I still have 1/4 of the 4th book to finish. I could cheat and see the movie for 5, but I'd still be behind.

So please, no one tell me how book 7 ends.

The interesting thing is that before I started with the Harry Potter books, I was throwing myself into a spiritual journey in which I was going to become enlightened ASAP, by reading lots of books, going to yoga and praying with my rose beads every day, and beginning to meditate twice a week. But I woke up on the first day I was going to the meditation place, and I thought, I am not ready to do this. I don't want to sit still for 30 minutes in the yoga studio and be trapped with my thoughts.

It was kind of like noticing the Harry Potter Squalor today: Although the two things are obviously different issues, they are both about balance.

I can't SUDDENLY become the peaced-out, fearless hippy I wish to be in one week. Apparently, I can't read all the Harry Potter books in a week either. But that's okay, because I can work on a lot of things at once. I can get up tomorrow, and do yoga, and write, and then read for an hour, and be a normal person. I can try to have balance.

There is no direct connection, but all of this reminds me of my yoga class today (yes, I pulled myself out of HP-land to go), and more specifically my yoga teacher, who is a wonderful goddess of laughter and wonderfulness. She was talking today about the right we have to feel, to experience emotion and desire and love and happiness. But fear can stamp all that out. I think the connection between that and balance is that sometimes drowning yourself in something (Harry Potter, other types of drugs, work, another person, etc, etc) is another way fear can manifest itself, as odd as that sounds. If you are lost in something or someone, you are not really there in the present, and if you are not in the present, then you are not really alive to feel, are you?

Hmm.

So I am allotting myself 4 HP hours a day; 2 if I actually get to work next week.

(Please, no one tell my how the last one ends...)

How do you keep balance in your life?

(P.S. Look! My first successful picture! Thanks, JW!)

Yea magic! Yea owls!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071500502.html?tid=informbox

Crunk

Check out

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/a-ginormous-change-for-dictionary/20070711084809990001#cmntbgn

about the new words added to the dictionary this year.

My first year of teaching HS, I had a terrible second block class who constantly said everything was crunk. Their definition of crunk differed from the one they put in the dictionary, "a style of Southern rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms," and from the one offered my someone who commented, "being drunk and on crack at the same time."

Thoughts?

I also like the part where you can vote for the words, "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."

Harry Potter books are drugs.

I decided last week to read all the Harry Potter books before the new one came out.

I saw that it was my last chance to participate in this particular cultural phenomenon.

I read the first one Sunday and yesterday in between worrying, and the second and third ones today.

Yes, all day. I read like 800 pages of Harry Potter. So, 3 to go, but they get successively longer.

Tomorrow, I have to practice moderation, because I had planned to do other things today, but all I did was read and occasionally get up to eat or pee.

I think I'm turning into my cat, who sleeps on her side like a horse all day. At least I didn't spend any money!

I'm too brain dead to think of a good question, so here are too bad ones:

1. I've heard the 4th Harry Potter book is no good and can be skipped. Comments?

2. I want to believe in magic now-- the kind that means owls deliver letters and cars can fly and such. Is magic real?

P.S.

They granted Davis a 90 day stay.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/07/16/davis_0716.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab

what in the world to do

This morning I was reading the Washington Post online as I waited for my gardening boss to email me about work.

I came across the story of Troy Davis, a man from Georgia who has been on death row in Georgia for something like 16 years. Recently, many witnesses in the case have come forward to "recant or contradict" their testimony. Some of them, including one man who was 16 at the time, says the police coerced them into testifying against Davis. You can read about the situation at http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/07/16/davis_0716.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab

Davis is scheduled to be executed tomorrow, and due to various rules and procedures about appeals, the courts have so far denied him the chance to have the new evidence/testimony reviewed. I am far from an expert on these rules/procedures. The Post article gives more info on them: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501250.html?referrer=email

In other words, this man seems likely innocent, but due to rules and procedures, he may still be executed. There is a hearing in session right now in which the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles will decide whether or not to grant clemency to allow time to review the new info.

I got a headache as soon as I read the story this morning and still have it. All day I have been thinking what to do-- I surfed the net looking for more about Davis, and Amnesty International has postcards to send to the board, but it's too late for that... I got the phone number for the Georgia governor, but since they are having the hearing it's too early for that, I guess.

I keep wondering why I didn't find out about this story sooner. Probably because I avoid reading the news, to avoid SEEING stories like this.

Also, sometimes when I think about all the injustice in the world, I feel like I am drowning in it. Like all the injustice and sorrow and desperation is a big pile of quicksand and there is nothing you can do; there's just too much.

And furthermore, THIS is why the death penalty should be abolished. All other arguments for or against the death penalty aside, if we can execute a man who was convicted based on NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE--

when according to Amnesty International, "all witnesses, but two, have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Of the remaining two, one has been implicated as the actual murderer by nine people and the other could only recall the shooter's clothes"--

then we are not living in a just society.


After I ranted like this in my head for awhile, I decided to pray. I am not a pray-er, really. I am not sure what to pray TO, and I have been suspicious of prayer in the past for any number of reasons. But today (and yes, this is inspired in part by Eat Pray Love) I just did it. I lit a candle and sat outside with my rose-scented rosary beads I got in Spain years ago, beads that until today I only used to sniff their rose scent and remember Spain. I sat on my porch, and for each bead in the rosary, I prayed a prayer for Davis: that he would be granted clemency, that the people on the Board of Pardons and Paroles would have the courage in their hearts to allow this man to have a fair trail...

I don't know what else to do.

Any ideas?

Any thoughts on the death penalty?

Or thoughts on the power of prayer?

If you pray, consider praying for Davis, or sending prayers of courage and wisdom to the people who have the power to make our system of justice work fairly.

One seed can start a garden

We have people visiting, but they had to go hang out with family today and see the Washington Monument, so my husband and I worked in our garden all day.

When we moved into this house a year ago, the backyard was a horrible mess of weeds and trash. And not just sort of tame, suburban weeds and trash, but huge, thorny, stinky, sharp-edged, toxic, city weeds and trash. And bones. Still, bones resurface every now and then.

Anyway, my husband and my brother-in-law, who visited us right after we moved (I still get a kick of writing about my "husband" and my "brother-in-law" even though I've been married 2 years-- and from now on my husband is D so I can stop writing "my husband") cleaned up the yard in the 109 degree D.C. summer heat. Eventually, we planted things and more things. We put in a little pathway, and now we have a birdhouse out there...

So today, we were sitting outside drinking coffee and looking at this one corner of the garden where everything was thriving, but it was also like a plant war: a huge oregano plant taking over everything, and phlox fighting for supremacy with the oregano, and basil that exploded, and under all that were these snapdragons and dianthus that were practically smothered. We decided to spend the day moving things and replanting. We moved a lot of plants, and bought some superbells and some zinnias and some petunias and potted those. So now there are lots of new plants out there with the tomatoes and things.

I love the yard and the deck with their plants and flowers. There are bees all over the phlox, which is good because I have been worried about bees.

The thing is, I spent a lot of my life thinking that I was not good at gardening. I killed a few plants in my youth. But then, I had a best friend who is the garden queen, and from her I learned that planting things is fun. Then later one day in my Chapel Hill life, D and I planted our first garden-- I extracted a lot of promises that I was not in charge of it before I agreed, but I found that I love to get my hands dirty. It's great. And actually there's a study that says that dirt is some kind of anti-depressant.

And it turns out I am a fine gardener. Most things I plants live. And I realized that even the best gardeners, like the woman I work for, have plants who die in their charge. There's this one yard, for example, in which everything keeps dying. Who knows why.

Outside right now, everything is doing fine except the lavender, which is all white-brown. D says it looks like a ghost.

So it is. If anyone knows how to fix lavender, let me know. We already tried putting white rocks under it, because it does not like humidity and white rocks are supposed to help.

You'll find a picture of the garden at the bottom of the posts (if I can get it up. I need a tutorial in posting pictures).

The question, again, is not a question:

Go plant something. Buy a pot and a cheap plant and put it in your office or your bedroom. Or plant your whole backyard with whatever likes hot summertime. Or if you have a garden, plant something new you've never planted before.

(If it dies, plant something else.)

Yesterday...

I spent yesterday finishing Eat Pray Love. If you have not read it, you should. It is one of the best books on spirituality and how to live life that I've ever read. In fact, it might be one of the best books I've ever read, period. Very funny and insightful. (The first sentence of the book annoyed me, because it made me thought the book was going to be about romance, but once I got into the first paragraph I was hooked.)

I read it in three days and then went into a slight depression that it was over. Now I am inspired to go on a spiritual journey. I also want to get my palm read.

Yesterday after I finished the book I began a project I've been meaning to start all summer: going though my journals. I have journals from about 1999 through last month stacked up in my closet, and I've been wanting to read them and put them in chronological order. I got through 2004 yesterday. (2005, though, is the year I started writing every day, so I am only about 1/3 of the way through.)

Rereading, I realized how much I worry! I worry about traveling, as most of you already know, but I also worry about all these small, insignificant things. Furthermore, I feel too much guilt. Guilt and worry are really kinds of fear, I think. I'd like to purge my life of all types of fear.

Yesterday I even felt guilty about watching Top Chef. When I thought about it, I realized that it was because I was afraid that I should be doing something else.

This brings me to the subject of guilty pleasures. Why are they guilty pleasures? Can't they just be pleasures? I'm not talking about something like, oh, cheating on a partner or stealing, but just something you do that doesn't hurt anyone, and brings you pleasure, but for some reason also brings you guilt.

My guilty pleasures are things like watching TV during the day, and eating Doritos for lunch. At least those are the ones from yesterday.

So the question is a task-- engage in a guilty pleasure today, but do it without the guilt.

Word Up

Do I need to apologize for my corny post titles?

Anyway, I've been reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It's an excellent book so far, and fits in well with my theme of question asking.

In the part I just read, the author is living in Rome, and realizes that even though she loves the city, it does not feel like home to her. She does not think she could spend the rest of her life there. One of her Roman friends says that's probably because her "word" does not match the city's "word."

He has this idea that the majority of people in any given place are thinking similar thoughts, which can be summed up in or categorized by one word. If your personal word matches the place's word, you belong in that place. If not, you don't.

According to him, Rome's word is SEX. (The author has decided to be celibate for a year, so that's that for her and Rome.) She thinks New York's word might be ACHIEVE and L.A.'s SUCCEED. (I am capitalizing these because that's how they are in the book, even though it looks funny and feels like shouting.)

It's interesting to think about the word for your place. I live in D.C. I think D.C.'s word could be STRIDE, which is how everyone walks around and is also a joke from a Dave Barry book. D.C's word could also be the similar STRIVE. Maybe POWER... but POWER does not seem quite right for D.C., despite the fact that it's the nation's capitol.

I grew up in a place whose word is STAGNANT, or, less negatively, QUIESCENT. (I used my thesaurus.) I lived in Chapel Hill, NC, for awhile. Chapel Hill was very different from where I grew up. Its word might be TRANSFORM. Charleston, WV is probably something like SURVIVE or ENDURE.

My own word is more difficult. It's not STRIVE, though. I like CREATE, but I don't think it's really my word. Maybe THINK or LISTEN.

I'm not sure.

The questions, obviously, are

what's your place's word? And what's yours?

I choo-choo CHOOSE you!

I took the train back from CT yesterday-- it was a fiasco.

The train chugged pretty steadily until it stopped about 30 minutes from Trenton, NJ. Where it sat.

And sat.

They made an announcement I couldn't hear. From the murmurs of passengers with better hearing, I gathered that there was something wrong with the engine. Or the brakes. Also, the air conditioning was broken on one of the cars.

I went to the Cafe Car and bought a Corona. The line in the Cafe Car became very long, as people got bored and frustrated and decided to drown their sorrows in a beer, or a bottle of cranberry juice (the Cafe ran out of water) or a microwaved ham and cheese sandwich.

I sat there watching the people. Eventually someone announced that yes, there was something wrong with the engine. Either someone would come fix it, or they would send another train to get us.

We sat. Eventually, another train pulled up beside us. It sat there a long time.

Suddenly a conductor burst into the Cafe Car. He told everyone, in a brisk tone, to exit to the left onto the new train.

How many people in the Cafe Car do you think had all of their luggage with them? The conductor was very unhappy with us.

So, after informing the conductor that we wouldn't have been sitting in the Cafe Car, luggage-less, if we had known what was going on, the people who were in the Cafe Car, myself included, began to snake our way back against 400 people and their various bags, computers, and mean looks to our seats. I got glared at a lot yesterday.

I was in the last car, so I had to go alone for a bit. I finally got my suitcase, and a nice man let me back in the line in front of him. I was almost out when I remembered the birdhouse.

My dad's uncle makes birdhouses. I bought a small one, which according to my mother "tickled him (the uncle) pink." The birdhouse was still above my original seat.

So, I put down my suitcase and forced my way (for the second time) against the line of people trying to get off of the broken train.

I was one of the last people off the train.

Interestingly, as I had passed through the many, many cars on the way to get my suitcase, I kept hearing the conductors tell people not to touch both trains at the same time, in case the power came back on. By the time I switched trains, they were no longer saying that. I think the Amtrak workers hate the passengers.

I was still careful not to touch both trains.

The icing on the cake was when we were all on the new train, they made us get out our ticket receipts and they checked them all. As though a few of us, who happened to be strolling along the train tracks in The Middle of Nowhere, New Jersey, had thought-- Hey, a train! I'll get on it and get a ride to Trenton!

I got back to DC at 10:08, only 2 hours and 43 minutes later than scheduled.

Before we got there, though, I got in a LONG line for another drink in the new Cafe Car. (I literally stood in line from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware.) I was talking to the woman behind me who had been to visit her father, who had just been diagnosed with what she called "a terminal disease."

This fact reminded me of the thought that had floated through my mind earlier, when I was being glared at, that if this was the worst thing that happened to me all day (all week? all year?) I was in really good shape.

Right?

Summer Reading

I wanted to recommend a book to the blog world.

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately, in sort of marathon sessions. In a lot of the blogs, the authors mention that for them blogging is a kind of artistic expression, as well as a way to just write. This makes a lot sense to me.

I thought people might like the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It's a book that outlines 12 weeks of reclaiming your artist self. There are two main rules: one, that every morning you write "morning pages," which is not meant to be real "writing" but just three pages of whatever comes out of you that morning; and two, that every week you take an "artist date," which is a fun thing you want to do that you go do by yourself. So you do these things, and you read the book, and it's fun and enlightening and etc. A few friends who I tried to make read it thought it was too cheesy, but I love it. It's helped me make a lot of good changes in my life-- a kind of blossoming into creative richness is the best way I can describe it.

Here's the amazon.com link if you want to check it out.

http://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-Julia-Cameron/dp/1585421472

There's also an official website: http://www.theartistsway.com/.

Summer Breeze

It's only going to be 80 degrees in DC today, which is wonderful, as I am working for a gardener this summer and, obviously, we work outside. Today we will probably only work half a day, so I can go buy my mom a birthday present. My family is in Old Lyme, CT, and I am taking the train to join them there on Thursday.

I like traveling on the train because it is one of the few ways of traveling that does not make me think I am going to die. I am pretty sure I am going to die in a car crash every time I travel in a car, and in a plane crash every time I travel in a plane. But I feel good about the train. It will be very ironic if I die in a train wreck.

My husband and I just planned a summer trip to San Fransisco. I have always wanted to go there because I have a vision that it is a hippie paradise and Jack Kerouac lives there in a bookstore. We are also going to see the Sierra Nevada mountains. I am excited about the trip, and I am excited about two other, smaller, trips I am going to take, but I know that the whole time before I leave, I'll be anxious about the part where I have to get on the plane, and the part where I have to drive the car. I will imagine various fiery crashes.

I don't know if this is travel phobia or fear of death.

I am also worried about terrorism tomorrow. I don't want to get on the Metro.

Do other people worry about dying this much?

TGIF?

For the past two years, I have hated Friday afternoons. I like Friday morning and Friday night, and I like the weekend, but I never feel like doing anything on Friday afternoon.

People are coming for dinner and the house is dirty. I have three new library books to read. I have several projects I want to start, but I don't want to do any of them. I didn't really want to post this either, but now that I've gotten my computer to work I am glad to be here in blog land.

Here's the first question for today: do all you bloggers or readers of blogs see the blogging as more of an escape from the rest of life and society, or as a way to take part in "life" and "society"? Explain. (Can you tell I'm a teacher? What an essay question. Feel free to ignore this or any other question.)

Question 2: Define "blog."

I like my new blog, even though I can't figure out how to put pictures on it OR put google ads on it. But I am trying to figure out what it-- the blog-- is. I feel like it's secret from everyone in my "real" life, even though it's not full of secrets. Maybe I'll send out an email about it to everyone I know so I don't feel like I am starting a second life no one knows about.

I feel like I need a third question.

But I don't have one, so again, only two.

Thursday afternoon...

It's the slow time between afternoon and evening, a time I never know how to fill. No one I want to talk to can talk on the phone yet-- everyone else is still at work or decompressing from work or eating dinner or something else.

Today I went to the library and spent the afternoon reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. I worry about death a lot so I though I should make myself read it. I actually enjoyed it. I feel like I know Joan Didion now, although I think she would scoff if she knew that I thought that. I also found myself wishing I could live the life she led-- sort of ironic. Not the part where her husband dies unexpectedly and her daughter battles illness, but all the travel and eating in restaurants.

The whole thing makes me wonder what tragedy will eventually befall me...

So my day inspires three questions:

1. What's the emptiest hour of your day? How do you fill it?

2. What's the last memorable book you've read?

3. Hmmm. I don't know the third question. To be continued. Only two questions.

I have a blog.

According to Newsweek, there will be 100 million bloggers by the end of 2007. I'm doing my part to help the world reach that number.

I have named my blog "Question Air." I thought of it and it made me laugh.

My blog name is "Question." What a cool name. One could name a child Question. It can be a male or a female name! It can also be a command, or an alert that you are about to ask a question, like Dwight on The Office.


I do not know a lot about blogging. I am partly creating this blog because I started reading a friend's blog and I like it. Apparently I want Internet friends.


I don't have any particular slant or purpose for the blog yet. I am a teacher/writer/gardener/wife/catowner/sister/???. Mostly I thought it would be fun to use my blog to ask questions, offer an answer, and see what answers other people add.



Questions are very important in my life lately. I have been pausing to ask myself what I want. I started making a list.


Here's what was on it:


1. a radio in the bathroom


2. a thesaurus


3. to carry around granola bars for the homeless people who ask me for money



4. to make a mix CD for yoga



5. to think about my food before I eat it (kind of like praying, but not. Like thinking, "okay, the people involved in this veggie burger were: the farmers who grew the ingredients, the Morningstar factory workers, the truck driver who took it to the store, the store clerk, my husband who cooked it...)



6. to keep making the list






So far I have the radio in the bathroom and the thesaurus. I sometimes remember to carry the granola bars, but I have yet to give them away. I sometimes remember to think about my food.


I am still making the list, but lots of times I don't write things down. It's a list in my head, or a guide to the day.





So here's my first question for the blog world:

What do you want?