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?