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.