What I Want for 2011

We're entering the final hour of 2010 here, and I'm listening to Chris Thile and Punch Brothers (I have his solo efforts and the band together all in one delicious shuffling iTunes playlist; I do know they're all one mighty entity...) as I do the expected and think about the year that is fading and the one that is waiting just outside the doorway waiting to come in.

2010 was, in many ways, a good year for me.  I did some things I have wanted to do for a long time. I went to Italy and saw the Colosseum. I was an AP reader.  I took the first of what I hope will be many pottery classes.  I survived.

In other ways, though, I have come to realize that I set few goals, have been living in a form of stasis.  Therefore, what I want out of 2011 is a breaking-loose of the ice inside, movement instead of stillness.  In no particular order, these are the things I'd like to have, do, or gain by the end of 2011.  I usually hesitate to make this sort of list because I usually find that when people (myself included) do, they just have to look back at the end and shake their heads at all the things they didn't get done.  However, I also have come to believe that there is a danger in having no goals at all, no ambitions or aims.  That leads to the list.  I am going to....

• Have more roses in my life. -- I don't care if they are sterling silver rings, duct tape ones from that maker on Etsy, painted ones on bone china tea cups, great felt brooches on coats and hats, embroidered ones on handkerchiefs, a few buds bought for me by me in a grocery store florist, or the hardy few grown in my front yard.  I don't care that some people will sneer at their old-fashioned-ness and call them a cliche.  They are beautiful to me.  They make me happy.  They remind me of my Nana.  I'm going to have them. 
• Seek wisdom. -- I try to do this diligently anyway, but there is particular type I am pursuing right now, the wisdom of when to let a thing go.  Additionally, I am seeking the wisdom of what to do when letting go is not allowed, not the right thing to do at all, when holding on to the living coal is what, against all odds and sanity, you're called to do.
• Accept less crap as my responsibility/fault. -- I could have also labeled this as "Not be God/Queen of the Universe," I suppose.  I had dinner with a very wise person not too long ago who sort of changed the way I looked at some of my situations.  If I am doing the very best I can, and I know that I am, then I'm going to have peace with that and not tear myself apart mentally and physically through stress and worry over aspects that I cannot control.  (Wait.  Isn't that a part of the Serenity Prayer?  I'm not systematically rewriting it here, am I?  No....probably not.  I think I'm safe in saying there are no roses in the Serenity Prayer...)
• Make sure I make time for home.  -- It is so easy for me to make home last.  Work consumes everything so easily, and I come home to a house that never quite gets tidy, to chores that never quite get done, to tasks that never quite get finished.  I've watched my mother do it for years.  Part of it is that I'm single and the house is empty except of the furries when I come home, but that is an excuse, too, in its way.  If I don't start making a life outside that building, I will wake up one day to go to my retirement, be handed a triviality, and wonder where all my time went.  I don't want that life to be mine.
• Care for myself more.  -- And that means that it does matter that there is nothing in the refrigerator sometimes but Diet Mountain Dew and yogurt.  And that means that it does matter that I need to take the time to do something "unnecessary" for myself like painting my toenails some ridiculous color nobody but me will ever see.  And that does mean that I need to find some form of regular exercise and stick with it, something that will help me vent the stress.  Yoga and I, as much as I love it, are not going to be friends.  My knee, even after the rebuild, will not bear weight with motion if I'm kneeling for extended periods of time, so anything on my knees, especially the poses that bear all my weight on one knee are painful.  With regret, I need to quit waiting for it to strengthen.  There is too much of the meniscus gone.  Back to the gym for me.... 
• Write. -- Take focused time to sit down, cut off the TV (no matter which of my smart, tempting imaginary men is on at the time), and produce.  I have three storylines stranded right now and I haven't written any good poetry in a very long time.  Writing is a discipline, and I am out of it.  Writing can be an escape, and I'm not taking it.
• Go on one fabulous trip somewhere.  -- I want to go somewhere, and it doesn't even HAVE to be out of this state if there is anywhere here I can squeeze fabulosity out of, that I can look back on and say, "Freakin' awesome."  And yes.  For me, Graceland would qualify....
• (And last, the one least likely to come true) Find someone to be sitting with next New Year's Eve. -- Because, not that I don't love you, gentle reader, but I really would like to be reflecting on what the year has wrought and looking into what the new one will bring with someone.  I would really like to be sort of semi-nervously (or, perhaps not nervously at all) waiting for midnight to come so I could press my lips to his in celebration, in relief, in defiance, in promise, in all the things that a New Year's kiss is supposed to symbolize if it's not made with some stranger you snog in a darkened corner at a party.

It's an ambitious list, to be certain.  And I'm certain that at this time next year, we can all have a hearty laugh over my lack of  completing it.  Again, though, I'm forced to say that reaching for nothing gains nothing.  Perhaps if I reach my hands out wide to grasp all these stars, a few of them might fall into my lap by accident if nothing else.

Happy New Year to you wherever you are.  May all that you want come to you in the year to come.

So Be Careful What You Read, Bebes....

Recently seen in a tweet:

"Other people will seduce you in person. An #Aquarius will seduce you via text."

It's true.  Words are and have always been weapons and tools, the sword in my hand or the hammer, but they are also jewels and delicacies, and they absolutely have the power to entice, to seduce, to snare like a thousand silken ribbons winding around the soul....  Words capture me constantly.  They move me, make me cry, make me laugh.  God knows I spend enough time with my head in a book or reading poetry online, bugging friends and acquaintances alike with a phrase that struck fire in my soul.  It seems only natural that words, then, would be a part of love, too.

I don't know that I've ever tried to use my words this way on anybody, not on purpose, anyway; I've got some poetry that might qualify, but it's not exactly written to a specific person, and it's definitely not the stuff that I read aloud when I do open mic nights. Wonder what would happen if I did take my words, rattled them around a bit, and applied them for that end, though?

Fear not, gentle reader.  You are perfectly safe.   Nothing blue coming through the interwebs to discomfit you.  I'll try to keep all the words here as innocuous and harmless as possible, okay? (laughs wickedly to self)

Why Small Towns Are Sometimes Scary

In my sojurns today, I wound up in two small towns.  One of them was just more or less an empty blank.  This was the one closest to the main roads.  The other one, the one waaaay back in the woods, was actually frightening. 

Now this comes from someone who lives in a place that cannot be found on most maps.  I think even Google Maps will ask you, "What, are you SERIOUS?" when you enter the name of my town as your destination.  That being said, I don't think my humble hometown has quite the feel to it that the one I wound up in today does.

As I cruised through looking for a gas station, the creep factor started with streets full of elaborate and immaculately kept old homes.  This would not have been eerie except for the fact that they were sort of...out there in the middle of nowhere.  It was all trees, trees, trees, then, voila!  High Victoriana. Odd.  There was no transition.  It was just...Sudden History Village emerges from the underbrush.

I could have gotten over that, too, had not the middle of town been like something out of a Stephen King novel.  Everything was very well taken care of, draped with holiday bunting, painted, trimmed, cared for.....and empty.  As I cruised through, I kept waiting for the alien zombies to come out and stare at me, the interloper, for being on their turf. 

The third big reason it was scary was the gigantic closed mill that dominates the middle of town.  It was a mishmash of modern and very old architecture, and it even has its own historic marker.  Old factories always have that spooky atmosphere, anyway, and this thing just screams Halloween Nightmare.  If I were a teenager in that town, I would deliberately route all my driving as far away as I possibly could  from that building because it looks like every edifice in every horror movie ever made.  It absolutely looms.

I got gas at a station right down the street from Horror Mfg., Ltd., and got the hell out of that tiny back pocket of the woods.  Some time when I am in the right frame of mind, I might go back and see if the aliens got the stores filled up so their cover story is more convincing, but I don't really want to tip them off that I noticed.

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been....

(with apologies to The Dead)

I started my day sort of enraptured with the quality of the light and feeling much better after two days of general weakness and ick.  It was a perfect day for going out with the Nikon and trying to get some pictures.  I tried to figure out a local place I could go, and I settled on a park nearby where an old-fashioned waterpowered mill has been reconstructed.  I dressed myself for climbing over rocks and rills and scuffing around in dirty unheated locations and got in the car.

Driving in photo weather is wonderful, and I needed a road trip today if for no other reason than to knock all the bits and pieces around in my head some.  Sometimes I think best in the car with the music on with the highway unfurling before me.  Today was one of those days.  I have been feeling stagnant lately, and even though I didn't wind up anywhere revolutionary today, just getting some motion helped stir things up.

When I arrived at the park, I found its gates securely locked.  Apparently, it's open Wednesday through Sunday, thank you very much.  Of course.  I sat looking at the rusty padlock a few minutes, gauging my chances of just going over the chain link and getting caught by the people who apparently are the caretakers of the property in their trailer nearby, and I decided to go somewhere else.

I drove aimlessly through a couple of nearby small towns (more on this in a separate blog) before deciding to go to Plan B.  I intended to go to West Point at some point to shoot some of the signs and so forth that I'd seen during Prairie Arts.  As I was driving away from the last of the disappointing tiny scary towns, I headed north. 

Even though it was an hour and a half drive, I enjoyed the time I spent when I got there.  I even got to do a little junkin' at a great place I've only been able to sort of peek in when I've been up there for Prairie Arts.
I worked on the photos when I got home, and of course, I wish I'd taken one or two more, gotten a different angle on this or that, but taking them was fun.  I feel refreshed.  It was worth it.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by cummings

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

by E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

This is the purest expression of love to me.  The last line is what I want inscribed on my wedding band if ever 

I find someone to marry.  As always, Cummings has taken something complex and impossible to describe and

has found a way to clothe it in images that are flawless.  Just reading this makes me feel hopeful about love, no mean task, especially just now in the midst of my winter sadness.  This, this is what I want.  This is what I'm looking for, the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.  I hope I can keep the strength up to continue believing it's possible.

Visit

We went to see my uncle today.  He wasn't well.  He was drifting, unable to stay awake for more than a few minutes.  His pupils were tiny.  I don't know what kind of or how much medicine they have him on, but based on what I saw today, I think he's getting too much of it.  Of course, since we are not his guardians, there is no way for us to do anything about it.  My father has complained, both politely and not, to the facility administrators and to his doctor numerous, numerous times, but the situation persists. 

I know his health is complicated, and maybe this is as good as it can be.  It just bothers me.  I don't like the thought of him staying so detached from everything. 

I have no way of knowing if he's that way all the time.  We are simply not there often enough to know.  I can only hope that they are doing what they are supposed to be.  It's incredibly frustrating and not nearly enough.

Christmas

Christmas was low-key this year, but good.  I got the house cleaned up, made a brunch casserole, and Mom and Dad came in.  I never, ever got ornaments on the tree or unpacked a single piece of either of my two Christmas collections this year.  Part of me wants to run to the back and grab one nativity and put it out, but I think it's probably really too late for that....

Mom and Dad were pleased with what they got.  That made me happy.  The thing I was gladdest of was one of the smallest gifts.  I had gotten my Dad a bubble light nightlight from Vermont Country Store because he and I had talked about how much he liked the old bubble lights when he was little.  Mom won't really get them for their tree at their house because she doesn't really like them.  Therefore, I got him his own "individual bubble light" that he can put in his bathroom.  He really seemed to like it.  Shopping for him is super-hard, so that I was able to get him something that he liked that much was a big deal for me.

I got mostly DVDs this year....the Doctor Who Key to Time set I've been trying to save up enough money for for about three years now, Notorious with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, and the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers 4 movie set TCM just put out.  I won't be worth much over the next week or so.

I also got a wonderful pop-up book of mythology.  It's endlessly fascinating.  The very first page is Anubis, and since he's been a figure of wonder for me since I was about 6, seeing him unfold himself to extend his hands toward me when I opened the first page was delightful.  It covers all the major pantheons with even a Hawaiian fire goddess included.  I love pop-up stuff anyway, have ever since I was a kid and I used to look at my Mom's old Jolly-Jump-Up book from when she was a child.  This one is labeled 5 and up, but the "and up" portion of the world can certainly enjoy it.

I had to laugh at one point during our "gifting."  I had gone to the back to drag Mom's little garden tractor/scoot/cart from out of hiding in my office, and she had run out to their car to bring in a little red table they'd secretly gotten me from my favorite juntique, Hwy 45 Antique Mall.  We were both coming in the door at the same time.  Nothing like stealth....

All in all, we had a good, peaceful day, and we're blessed.  Blessed to have each other and to be able to give things to each other.  I'm glad we had this kind of Christmas instead of the kind we've had in some of the years past where one or more of us were waiting on this operation or that.  Even if I never got enough Spirit up to decorate, at least we are all well and together.  Maybe next year, I'll be in a different place mentally, and the mighty festive household will resurrect itself from the ashes.

Tumblr

After a long time ignoring it or just not having time to play with it, I started an account on Tumblr.  I really like it.  I can post things there fast, the little pictures and snippets that I normally like to share on FaceBook.  I have decided to stop putting those things up on FB so much.  I feel as though I am probably bothering people with them on FB, know for a fact that some people have "unfriended" me because I am an avid sharer of the silliness and sublimity that I find in the world around me. 

It's okay.  I am...an acquired taste, I suppose.  That's probably the most polite way to say it.  Here, I can create my own bizarre little corner of the universe, and it will offend no one.  If people want to see the things I've been putting up, they can look in on my Tumblr page when it suits them.  My FB account is going to be getting much quieter, though.  I will be picking up with Twitter more, Tumblr more.  Just lately, I've come to feel very odd about FB for some reason.  Maybe I'm just going through a burnout phase with it.

Anyway, if you're one of the folks who does enjoy the random nonsense I indulge in on FB and you'd like my Tumblr address, let me know.  I'm not posting it here.  It was already on FB, and I think I tweeted it, perhaps. I will be happy to send it to you privately, as well.

Vegas Toy Story

Took this today while I was playing around with my camera after reading a LifeHacker article on controlling DSLRs more effectively. I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of some of my Nikon now. I processed the whole pic through Picnik when I was done. It's simple, integrates with Picasa, and I love the effects. Picasa and Picnik are about all I need, really. As for the Elvis Mr. Potato Head, he's a new acquisition. Isn't he wonderful?

So Be It

Epiphanies come in weird places. I had two today, one standing in my own living room and one crossing a night-cold street outside a local restaurant.  Actually, I suppose they could more rightly be called two stages of the same thing, or a proclamation and an affirmation, perhaps...  I wonder if anybody ever has them in light-bathed aisles of religious institutions or places where choruses of angels sing.  My moments of startling clarity always seem to come when I'm driving in construction traffic or while I'm pushing a cart around Wal-Mart.  I have to pause, laugh or cry, take whatever new knowledge comes, and go on.

Today's little revelation was liberating.  It was a little bitter, too, and maybe, just maybe a little bit of something that was still malleable inside me was finally hammered into its final shape.  Overall, though, I'm surprisingly fine, or at least I will be, I think. I'm just going to lay aside something that is useless to me, a hope I have been keeping shiny and well-hidden.  I'm not going to polish it up any more.  I think the thought of laying it down at last, of not trying to use my cuffs and hankies to keep it clean and shiny is actually a relief.  I am not made for this thing.  That's going to be okay.

It's amazing that I'm still becoming.  Every time I think I know what I am and who I am, something shifts, something changes, and I realize that I am changing, too.  And, maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be.  Maybe we should worry if we don't change, if we don't have sudden moments of unease, if the way grows to smooth and predictable.

Therefore, so be it.  This new truth isn't particularly comfortable, but then again, truth rarely promises to be.  That doesn't mean I don't need to look it in the eye, extend my hand, and give it welcome. 

An Unexpectedly Busy Day

I got up this morning feeling well-rested with no particular plans other than going to Wal-Mart to get some groceries.  Everything in the world other than groceries happened.

I got caught up in a Law and Order: CI marathon, and I found the morning melting away until I got a call from my mother saying Dad was on his way to my house with some person who was going to redo my driveway.  Before I could even get up and pull on a sweater, they were here. 

The guy climbed out of the truck, and the first thing I noticed was that he had a gold chain and bracelet on.  The second was that his fly wasn't quite zipped. (And no, I wasn't looking, but sometimes you can't help but see...) These things, especially taken in combination, do not inspire confidence in a contractor.  He had a certain slickness to him that bothered me.  I had taken Roux out on the leash so she wouldn't be freaking out inside, and she didn't seem to like him very much either.  This was not a good sign since she likes everybody except for the UPS man's truck, which, it seems she has decided is the living brown incarnation of Satan himself. 

Once he left, I came back in, got online, and started trying to look him and his business up.  I also started looking up the hallmarks of the driveway paving scam.  Lo and behold.  Dude didn't seem to exist.  And.  Everything he said and did was like he was moving down the checklist of "How to Do a Paving Scam."  I called Mom and Dad, told them about it, and they said they'd felt weird about him, too. 

The guy was supposed to come back tomorrow at some point with his crew, but he came whipping into my driveway with two dumptrucks around dusk.  I told him to go see my parents (since they were the ones who were planning to foot this bill and who he'd talked to before) before he did anything and kept an eye on his crew who looked to be getting ready to start work.  About ten minutes later, he came zooming back down the road, pulled back through my yard, had one of the trucks pull back into my yard, and when I came off the porch with Roux, finally drove off.  I don't know what they were going to do.  I'm just glad they're gone.  The equipment they had was ludicrous, their behavior was shady, and my loser alarm was going off like crazy.

After they left, it was too late to go to the store, so I started cleaning.  I got the vacuuming done, always a massive effort in a house this big, and put things away.  I put the millions of scarves and hats that seem to be everywhere away.  I did laundry,  I baked cookies.  I am slowly bringing order back to this chaos here.  I estimate that I will have it ready about the time I have to go back to school...  Sigh.

In a couple of hours, it will be time to do the last thing in this busy day.  I plan to go see the Solstice Eclipse.  I hope the clouds clear to let me see it.  It is supposed to be amazing, and since it is also a historical one, I would like to be able to enjoy it.  It would be nicer with a friend to geek out with, but even alone, if it's visible, it should still be a wonderful end to an unusual day.

The Nutcracker

I hate it when they don't do Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker right.   I hate it when they leave out characters, delete scenes, add new music, take portions away, and get "clever" with it in general.  He knew better than you.  He wrote it.  Dance the thing the way he told you to.  Not all the dances belong to Clara.  Not all the dances belong to the Prince.  COME ON.  There is actually a storyline to this ballet....

The music of The Nutcracker is some of my favorite.  I wait until the holidays to listen to it, but parts of it are in my head all year long.  I don't go see amateur versions of it put on by Mrs. So-and-So's ballet school because they pain me.  I am not a ballet snob, and although I took dance for 9 years, I do not pretend to be able to tell you what most of the moves on the stage are, so this isn't the reason I avoid grade-schoolers putting on The Nutcracker.  There's just something about a whole herd of toddlers in tutus bumping into each other that I don't find endearing, at least not in this situation. 

The best version I ever saw of it was done at IU.  It was a co-production of the School of Music and the ballet folk (I can't remember what school they fit under or if they have their own school...I think they do).  The sets and costumes were all made in-house as well by students, and so you really got to see fantastic stuff.  There was none of this holding back that I'm seeing in the version I'm currently watching that is irritating me so.  It was lovely, opulent, and everything that a ballet that is supposed to take place in a dream should be.  It followed the storyline.  There was imagination, but nobody felt the need to say, "Hey, there's this story that's a classic, but I'm going to throw it out the window, do my own thing, and just keep the name, ok? Thanks."

Don't think that I don't like variations.  One of my favorite adaptations is The Hard Nut.  It is as far from "tradition" as you can get, and yet, the story is preserved.  Here, there IS no storyline.  Anything could be happening except for the slightly scary-looking Chinese dancers.  They've lost the best thing about The Nutcracker: the rich fairy tale.  I don't like it.  Call me grumpy.  Call me narrowminded.  That's fine.  Just give me back a version that, at least in its most basic parts, follows the story!

Now.  I know you care deeply and are moved.  If you are still reading this at all, that is.  /rant

Lights

I just got back from going to see a drive-through lights display with some friends.  We loaded up in their minivan after church was over and went. I think we adults were more excited than the two children the trip was ostensibly for since the three of us chatted animatedly and the two little ones napped soundly until we actually got to the lights themselves. 

As we drove through the property, we oohed and aahed the "Vegas Nativity," at a Loch Ness monster with a Santa hat, at flashing Christmas trees in a rainbow of colors, and we pointed out things we liked.  The whole trip through took us only a fraction of the time it had taken us to drive out to the location itself, but it was worth every minute.  We laughed and talked, and everyone was smiling as we turned the vehicle homeward again.  We'd somehow taken a portion of that holiday glow away from that little property with us.  What a nice feeling.

Well, I Feel Better Now...

"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?" ~ Laurence J. Peter

Normalcy

Today, I got up and read for hours.  I filled all my birdfeeders for the first time in months.  I took my fancy Japanese pruning shears and attacked the rose bed in front of the house, cutting away a pile of debris almost knee-high.  I made a pitcher of sweet tea, the simplest of Southern beverages, something I haven't done in probably six months.  Later tonight, if I can pry myself away from books and the computer, I am going to take the last glittering remnants of old gold polish from my toenails and apply a fresh coat of something bright and colorful. 

It's time.  It's time to reclaim the little things because life is made of them.  When the little things go wanting, when I walk outside and see empty birdfeeders, gnarled and wild roses, when I open the refrigerator and there is nothing there but soda and an empty milk carton, when I look down in the shower and see those sad tatters of gilt among the suds, I feel worse about everything.  They remind me that once again, I haven't taken care of my home, the things I care for, myself.  They slap me again with the knowledge that I haven't taken even the tiny brief moments out of my hectic schedule to do those little things, have put them off "for another day" which never seems to come.

Doing them now feels good.  It feels, ironically enough, like spring coming now in the middle of winter.  It feels like waking up after a long sleep.  I cannot keep putting myself and all the little things I love last. I won't last if I do. Everybody, including my doctor, tells me this all the time.  Maybe I am starting to listen.  Maybe we all should because if a small good thing can make the large difficult things less onerous, let's all have more of them, right?

You Can Let Go Now...

A friend of mine I rarely see anymore sent a word of greeting through another mutual friend the other day.  This friend is familiar with a certain very challenging situation I find myself in, and so she sent me a message.  She told our other friend to tell me that she'd said hello and "you can let go now." 

It struck me forcefully.  That's the kind of thing whispered into the ear of someone critically ill, clinging to life in the face of agony because of some obligation unmet, some last purpose unfulfilled, to let that person know s/he doesn't have to keep enduring.  They're words of release.

Is that what I've become?  And if so, why can't I feel some clear sense of being released?  Of being allowed to go?  What is the reason I can't let it go?  I have prayed for guidance on this, but each time I've seriously considered some other choice, I have had the strongest sense that the time was not right. 

So is she right now?  Can I let go now?  Should I?  I wish I knew. 

Even a Sick Dragon...

When I was in Japan, I went to an artists' show in Nara.  A painter there, Sakaguchi-san, did these tremendous paintings of ogres (oni) and dragons.  The first year I went, she had one that had a thin, sickly looking dragon, a rather short, non-threatening oni, and a dead koi, the expensive ornamental carp that is prized for its fighting spirit and beauty.  The calligraphy around the three figures said, "Even a dead koi is still a koi.  Even a small oni is still an oni.  Even a sick dragon is still a dragon."  The colors were primary, a stark contrast with the bold black lettering.  It was gorgeous.

I wanted desperately to buy that painting, because it struck me so powerfully. I wanted it to remind me of something important.  I was then, and am frequently now, a sick dragon.  Migraines attack; my body betrays me with weakness; I have to deal with situations that make my heart and soul revolt. The painting reminded me that I am however, always and ever, even at my most deeply wounded and in my darkest day, still a dragon.

My Chinese zodiac sign is the dragon, the fire dragon to be specific, and I've always felt an affinity to the creature.  I think I'm probably a fairly typical dragon: full of both luck and arrogance, holding both creativity and a non-conformist nature, with a tendency to be tactless at times, having both temper and passion.   Sometimes, though, especially with everything that's been going on lately, I feel so horribly run-down.  At the end of long days full of disappointments, frustrations, and questions I cannot answer, that perhaps have NO answer, I find myself unable to do more than just sit and stare at my desktop, idly tracing my fingertips over the little doodads I keep there.

One of my favorites is this little green pottery dragon.  I call him Phinneas.  He sits just behind my mousepad.  He's one of Sam Clark's little dragons and one of the only pieces of my pottery collection I have at school.  When I'm stretched past the point of snap-back, when I'm waiting for the Maxalt to catch the pain, when I've  once again received an email that discomfits me, I look down and see this diminutive creature and his clever grin and I feel better.  I'm reminded of who I am at my core even though I'm not currently at my best.  I'm reminded to pick myself up, AGAIN, dust off my battered scales and rekindle my inner fires for another round.  

Even a sick dragon is still a dragon.  That's got to be worth something.

When They Grow Up

One of mine came to see me yesterday in his uniform.  He had completed basic training the summer before his senior year, and so he was already all about the Army when I had him.  He always had a curiously old-fashioned nature to him.  I would almost have called it chivalry if such things existed any more or can. He's bright, logical, and driven.  Yesterday, he told me he's done with all his training and that he's volunteered for deployment as soon as his orders can be cut.

That, of course, means Afghanistan.  He's got the patch on his sleeve already.  He's military police, and so they can put him with any unit, anywhere.  That, of course, means that this bright, chivalrous, logical, driven young man who wants to serve his country is now going to be in with all the rabid dogs and that he might come home in a flag-draped box.  Praying that he doesn't, whatever he is now will be substantially altered after three years in a place where hell has very much been dragged up and given free rein on earth. 

I know they're not really mine when they sit in those desks.  I know they will grow up and go on to destinies that will sometimes involve danger.  Some of them will end up draped in glory, some in chains.  There are hints of those futures in them when they are with me.  Even though I know in my head that they are only on loan to me, it doesn't stop my heart from worrying, from wanting to wrap them all in happiness and keep them safe.  I know it's not realistic or possible, or even, ultimately right since every person needs to experience both the good and the bad of the world to find his own way, but when I think about how very bad some of the bad is....

He was proud and tall in his desert camo, his baton on his hip.  As he left, I told him not to get any holes poked in him.  He laughed and said he would do his best not to, or at least to make sure he poked holes in the other guy first.  And so another one grows up, goes to his place in the broader world, and I worry.....

No Patience

I need a holiday.  Another one, I guess I should say, since I just got done with Thanksgiving.  I have no patience left for the foibles of mankind.  Today I just wanted to smack people around.

I had to wait on this that or the other, it seemed, all day today.  I need a vacation so I can have that grand luxury again:  total independence.  So my schedule doesn't have to jive, mesh, or gel with any-freakin'-body else's.  So I can stay up until 3, sleep until 11, and feel no guilt at all.  So I can stroll through the dollar store for an hour, or dash through Wal-Mart in 5-minute super-shopper-all-other-humans-avoidance mode.  So I can throw my camera and my adventure-girl hat in my car and get out of this town for a day, go study other things through the lens until the cramp in my soul loosens up a little bit and I can roll my shoulders and sigh again in relief.

I get this way every year about this time.  To be honest, last year, I was probably more actively stressed, more frantic.  I suspect this year, I am worse off, though.  I am actually starting to hit a point of hopelessness with my level of "behindness."  I just sort of think of being caught up as a totally unreachable goal now.  The more motion I make, the less progress I see.  It's terribly frustrating. 

I try very hard to keep my philosophies for living appropriately in front of me, and thereby keep my mouth shut whenever the savage mood takes me.  I know I don't have the right to take out this vitriol on anybody else; it's not their fault I have no patience left.  If I can just make it two more weeks, I can restore my supply and be more like the person I want to be again.

Well, Sometimes....

"Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting." ~ John Russell

Feasting

I went to the Chimneyville Crafts Festival yesterday, my annual indulgence in handmade wonder, with my best friend.  I think this was my fifth or sixth year to go now.  I never cease to be amazed at what people can do with their hands. 

There is something for everyone there, really, something at every possible price point.  All of it, though, is so incredibly well-crafted.  And I need that beauty to feed my soul.  Going there is like a giant feast for me, edibles for the eyes, the hands, the heart.  Even though I actually buy very little since the great and mighty state of Mississippi has decreed that I am going to live a life of genteel poverty if I continue to teach here, I can look, touch, and marvel, run my fingertips over glazes, finishes, fabrics and be fiercly glad that someone, somewhere can create these things.

Every year, I bring home one big piece.  This year, I was torn between two:  a Sam Clark dragon that caught my heart or one of the Peter Rose crows that I collect.  Both potters are favorites of mine, wonderful artists who make distinctive pieces with character and skill.  I've been trying to work up to three of the Peter Rose ravens/crows for a long time now, collecting one every other show or so.  Last year, as you may remember if you read here very often, after a couple of years of casting longing looks at Sam Clark's dragons, I got my first piece by him. 

The tough thing about loving good pottery and being a teacher is this:  good pottery is expensive.  As it totally should be.  That is not a complaint about the price of the pieces.  God knows that every one of those dragons Sam Clark makes has enough detail on it to more than justify what he charges.  They absolutely fascinate me.....  I can sit and look at them for days.  When you consider that Peter Rose is firing his pieces in a noburigama, or well, at least a wood-fired kiln anyway since I'm not sure he actually has a stepping kiln, and that he usually has tremendous loss to get those fantastic glaze colors, his prices are exceptionally reasonable.  It's just that I get paid so very, very, frustratingly little...

I decided to do something a little different this year.  I started talking to Sam Clark, and I think he might make me a baku.  I am extremely excited about this.  I've been turning that idea over in my head since I bought my dragon from him last year, but I never emailed him about it because...well....I don't know why exactly....  I just didn't.  It felt presumptuous to ask in an email, I suppose.  But yesterday, I was an inch away from buying that wonderful,big blue dragon he had, the one reading the book, and devil-take-the-hindmost (and OH, I shouldn't have done....it would have broken the credit card and the bank and my budget for the next two months, but it would have be gorgeous...for that kind of piece, I need to save and plan), and I just found the question sort of tumbling out of my mouth about the baku. 

It may be summer or later before he has a chance to think about it, but I hope he's going to do it.  I got to see some of his sketches for other things, and they were gorgeous.  I love his style, so I can't imagine not loving his baku, too.  He's a very interesting person to talk to, as well, so I think working with him will be easy.

Of course, that's one of the best things about Chimneyville or Prairie Arts to me, really.  You get to talk to the people who make the pieces.  Almost everyone is always so kind, so friendly, always so ready to tell you about their art.  I love talking to the potters, especially now that I'm starting to learn a little something about their craft.  I can look at some pieces now and understand how basic things were done, and it makes me appreciate those pieces even more.  (How it makes me feel about my own work we'll just leave alone....)  I love that the gentleman who made the wooden rocking animals for little kids actually got on one to show me that adults could ride them, too, when I told him they were a little small for me.  I love that the lady who had the hand-dyed wool flowers gave away one that wasn't perfect to a lady who was buying two others just because she knew it would make her happy.   I love that the whole atmosphere is that of something community, and not slick, glossy, and big-business.

And then, of course, there's the staggering loveliness of it.  I saw things yesterday that fed my little beauty-loving soul, will keep it going for a long time.  My best friend had finally had to guide me away, babbling stupidly, from a $12,000 carving of a deer taller than I, made from one giant trunk of black walnut.  The lines of it, the detail of it, everything was elegant and graceful, and if I'd had $12,000 about me, it would have gone to that artisan just for the pleasure of having that sculpture in my home. 

My best friend cut through the haze as we were walking away, dragging my feet back down to earth.  "Uh-huh.  A $12,000 scratching-post."  I laughed.  She was absolutely right.  I'd wake up in the middle of some night to the sound of Yoda being exceptionally grateful for that sculpture.  Some pieces belong in my house.  Some pieces don't.  Nevertheless, I am grateful for all the beauty I saw, for the break from my regular, sometimes crushing routine, and for getting a little art to feast on for awhile with the promise of a special treat to look forward to down the road.

I Know It's Silly, But....

....I cry at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Every time.  When Darth Vader picks up the Emperor and throws him down that endless shaft, and then in the scene afterwards between Luke and his father where the two of them make their final peace, I tear up every single time.  I think this probably qualifies me for a special kind of geek award somewhere.

I am thinking about this because I wound up watching the first two and a half movies of the "new" trilogy today.  They were on TV, and I sort of got sucked in.  I am not such a big fan of those prequels.  To me, while they did a beautiful job of filling in the backstory that was always hinted at and imagined, they lacked something of the power the originals did.  I don't know why.  Some people have said that it's because of the actor that played Anakin in the prequels. As I rewatched today, I revised my opinion of him.  When I first saw those films, I disliked him because I thought he was hollow, an actor with something missing.  Now, though, I think he was reflecting (or at least I hope he was reflecting) that thing inside Anakin/Vader that was uncertain, hollow and missing that leads him to the darkness that eventually destroys him.  All in all, I am much more comfortable with that performance than I used to be.

After seeing those, however, I had a great desire to see the entire saga end, so after I did other things, I broke out the set I do have on DVD, the original trilogy, and popped Return of the Jedi in.  I was startled by how many plot lines end there.  The entire series is so tightly woven together.  The universe and mythos is so well-developed.

Also well-developed to me are two messages:  it is always possible to change, and family, while both vital and undeniable, does not define your future.  I won't wax overly philosophical here.  I think it's pretty easy to see how these two things are developed in the film, and certainly other things exist there.  I'm sure some enterprising soul has at some point pitched a Master's thesis on the trilogy (oh, to have been a fly on that wall...), but whether you consider the series high art or roll your eyes every time someone mentions "the Force," I don't think the quality of the storyline can be argued with.  It is, after all, basically lifted from classical mythology....

Maybe that's why it has the power to move me so much at the end.  Maybe its ties to those great stories at the base of our culture are what allow it to resonate so deeply with so many.  Somebody somewhere wiser than I will have to work out the psychology of it.  All I know is that when Luke can stand up at the end, deny the trap laid for him by the Emperor, and say, "I am a Jedi...like my father before me," I feel those bright proud tears start welling up.  And you can call me whatever you want to.  That's just fine.

Silly Hats and Other Necessities

I went shopping with a old friend yesterday, a girls' day out.  We rarely get to do this.  Our lives are too frantic, too overscheduled with the obligations of family, career, and all the other things that pile up in addition.  Yesterday, though, she found a sitter, and we both were off for the holiday, so we took a chance to go out to a Japanese restaurant we both like and catch up. 

After we ate, we went junkin'.  For those of you not familiar with that ancient Southern tradition, junkin' involves going into a large building full of all kinds of stuff, some of it valuable, some of valuable only to you.  This is known as a "Flea Market."   These can be easily identified by the presence outside of clawfoot tubs, metal wagonwheels, iron bedsteads, and racks and racks of bottles.  You should not, of course, expect to see fleas at the flea market once you arrive.  If you do, you should probably leave post-haste...  Once you are there, you amuse yourself by marveling at the grand diversity of what people have kept in their homes over the past seventy years or so and by pouncing on whatever of those items, be it milk glass, NASCAR memorabilia, blue bottles, real and faux McCoy, costume jewelry, or repainted furniture that catches your own particular fancy.  Then begins the delicate and polite haggling of the South....

I love junkin'.  I love to see all the stuff.  Like almost everybody else I know, I collect a few things.  Well, okay, more than a few things.  Well, okay.  American Pickers would have an absolute freakin' field day, need to bring two vans and a back-up team to load stuff at my house.(If I chose to sell those darling boys anything, that is...)  I have grown up in a family of collectors, and I live in an ancient house full of those collections.  I use everything I collect, all the little planters become desk supply holders, sorter bins.  All the hankies are actually cleaned and put back into use.  If I buy a dish, it's used.  As for the forties and fifties luncheonette tablecloths I so rarely find, they are the glorious crowning touch to my holiday tables.  It makes me happy to see these old things brought back to purpose, makes me feel connected to the past, to history when I use these things.

Yesterday, as we went in, in the very first stall I saw a hat... 

Now, I am a hat fan.  A person either loves hats or hates them.  People are not indifferent towards hats.  I have several, but I don't always wear them because until I got my hair cut recently, they would flatten it out.  Now, with my hair cut so short, my hair is much sleeker, so it's not a problem.  Enter the hat.

This hat is the end-all, be-all of hats.  My friend described it as "Mrs. Napoleon on Her Way to Church."  It is black and white with a huge bow, dangly crystals, the whole nine-yards.  I fell hopelessly in love.  I grabbed it and stuck it on my head.  My friend burst into laughter and grabbed her iPhone.  The resulting pictures are now my FB and Twitter pics, the first time on Twitter that my actual face has ever been seen there, ending all those comments from the obnoxious asses who still think it's funny to do the whole, "Will the real you PLEASE STAND UP..." tweet. 

We walked around the flea market, and my friend and I made plans surrounding the hat.  We were going to find her one, match these elaborate chapeaus with something gown-like (I have a black spaghetti-strap floor-length velvet gown that would work with mine, I think), and since we both play on Sunday nights, we were just going to show up right before it was time to play, walk in and sit down at the organ and the piano with the utmost dignity and begin and see if anybody noticed. The reaction would have been priceless, especially since we almost always play in jeans.....

Can I wear this hat out shopping to Wal-Mart? (pauses to consider....still thinking about it....)  Well....no.  Probably not.  Well, I mean, I could, but.... No.  Okay.  NO. I won't.  It would be fun, and I would enjoy it tremendously, but I won't do that.  But by the same token, could I leave that marvelous confection of imagination and wonder there hanging so forlorn in that flea market stall?  No.  It was like something from Carnival, regal in its way, and it made me laugh.  That's enough for me.

Hand Made

As I write this, I am fighting the urge to go back to the kitchen and go get another piece of sourdough.  This is a battle that I will almost certainly lose...

For last week, I had to make something to take to a school "bake off."  I was not especially thrilled; I don't cook much.  It's not that I don't like to cook.  It's more that the trouble is too much to go to just for me.  I begrudgingly broke out the KitchenAid and set to making my go-to cake recipe, a sour cream pound cake in which I can proudly tell you there is not one thing that is healthy.  I think that's when this current trend started.

Saturday, I woke up with the urge to keep making stuff.  I decided to focus all that energy on a small project, one I could actually get to since my larger craft stuff is mostly covered in clutter in my office/craft space.  I embroidered a hankie with my initial and a crown, using some satin stitches to do it all.  I thought of my Nana the whole time I was doing it, of her teaching me how to do satin stitches, leaf stitches, french knots.  I thought of my Granny who taught me to hem by hand, who first started me making handkerchiefs, who cut these very squares of good strong white cotton I'm working now.  There was great satisfaction in both the work and the connection.

I also decided to start another batch of sourdough starter Friday when I made the cake.  I haven't had any sourdough starter in my house in over a year, maybe closer to two now.  I used to make bread every single week.  Suddenly, I just came to a place where I didn't want to do it anymore.  I let the starter die.  I've often thought of getting more going, but I haven't taken the time to do it.  I don't know if it was the "domestic glow" of using the KitchenAid or what, but Friday just seemed like the day for it.  I mixed it and let it start fermenting.  Now, I have three (well, more like two and half now, really) lovely golden loaves of bread again.  It's wonderful.

Today, I went early to my pottery class to have a whole day of work.  I had a couple of pieces in my head, and I managed to make them today.  I made a dish shaped like a giant leaf, and the piece I'm proudest of, a rather cheerful giraffe with wings.  I also threw on the wheel today, which went about like you'd expect for my second first time on it (bad), and managed to get one bowl that didn't suck too badly off it.  I need LOTS more work there.

I'm enjoying making things with my hands.  It's satisfying to get to the end, to look at the results and say, "I did that.  It's the fruit of my labor."  For so long, I haven't been doing anything but surviving.  Lately, I have had some kind of weather change, though.  I have decided that I am going to have things I love and do things I enjoy.  Life is too short for me to work myself into an even earlier grave in misery and woe.  I am going to find a way to enjoy doing these things again.  I have a few more projects that I plan to do here in the next few days.  It's good to use these hands again for something other than grading.

Can't Save Them All

I drove over the last big bridge on the way home last night in tears.  It was already dark if not very late.  It had taken me a long time to shut down my classroom for the holidays.  A week away is almost as hard to prepare for as a sub day.  Plants have to be watered thoroughly, all the electronics have to be unplugged, the minifridge has to be opened and a pan placed in to catch the run-off as the tiny freezer space defrosts.  Papers have to be gathered so they can sit in the big bag in the corner and be a source of guilt all week long.  Stuff has to be locked away in case somebody breaks in.  I finished it up about 5:30, packed myself up like a shuffling beast of burden, and made my way through the darkened and echoing halls to my car for that drive.

The day itself was what days before holidays always are, limited exercises in futility.  Schedules changed, emergencies arose, absenteeism was moderate.  None of that was what kept haunting me, eating at me.  The thing that kept driving steel talons into my soul was that one student in the middle of my day, the one who begged me with eyes so serious, so tired, and so adult not to make him write that day.  He promised to do it when we got back, but he'd taken his vocabulary quiz, and he was at the end of what he could do that day.

He struggles.  He does the very best for me he can, but he struggles with everything we do.  He breaks my heart.  I work with him, but sometimes I feel like I'm tracing my finger in a running stream, writing words in the water.  What can I do for him that will last? 

How can I give him something that will keep the world from grinding him into dust beneath its brutal, uncaring wheels?  What protection is there for the gentle ones, the ones who struggle, like him?

I have so many who can do it so well.  It comes completely naturally to them, so easily that they never think about it, never even think about valuing it or being grateful for the fact that they were born with this native gift, never push themselves to develop it because they can get by on what they have just fine.  The path of least resistance is plenty for them, will take them into the land of riches and comfort one day.

Then I have my precious little ones who strive and strive until they are just tired with so very little to show for it.   They will be the ones who have to fight for survival, if survival is permitted, and I wish, I wish I knew how to give them something, anything that could help them.  It seems that everything I have is not enough, that nothing could ever be, and it makes me grieve. 

Two Faces

I hate it when people say one thing to one group of people and turn around and say another to me.  I know that such posturing and politico-schmoozing is the grease that keeps the wheels of industry, etc. turning, but it enrages me when someone pretends to be an ally or a friend and turns around and goes on the attack. 

Do they think these things don't come out?  Do they think people don't eventually compare notes and discover the discrepancies?  Maybe they just don't care.

More respect is gained if somebody will just be their honest self.  I mean, come on, love me, hate me, but don't pretend.  I hate that crap.  There's nothing genuine in all that.

I do understand the need for politesse and diplomacy.  However, as far as I'm concerned, diplomacy does not involve saying things that are totally opposite just because you happen to be with somebody else.  I guess I'm never going to understand this phenomenon, and I should probably just file it in my "to ignore" basket, but it's wearing on me greatly right now.

Who I Am

A bulleted list of randomness I'm working into a poem:


I am that woman who
carries her pen like a sword
to cut down the monsters
she cannot fight on any other field
who believes in the power
of the well-chosen word
to slay the enemy
with never a drop of blood shed.

I'm the one who drowns in
the blue of his eyes
and welcomes the rush and burn
of that azure even as it destroys me
who is always a Romantic
even though she has to be classified
as a hopeless one

I'm the one who carries
an antique pocket handkerchief
a brand-new Kindle
and prescription migraine medicine
everywhere she goes
like a sack full of religious talismans
to ward off all potential ills

The one who
stands in the bookstore
and chooses the forty-dollar collection
of works by the poet laureates
instead of mircowaveable lunches
for the next two weeks

I'm the one who
isn't afraid to
walk alone in the dark
in Rome
or Bangkok
or Nagoya
or San Jose
but who wishes
in the deepest places of my heart
that she didn't always have to sometimes

The one who hates
willful ignorace
more than any other thing
and truly believes that knowledge
can save the world
can save your soul
if it's the right kind

I'm the one who
gets up in the morning
and puts a bandaid on
wounds that need sutures
puts the mask of Comedy
over the tracks of tears
and goes out onto stage
with all the bells of my cap ajingle
and my motley
hiding the worst of the damage

I'm the one who
can turn away no soul in need
except for myself
Can see beauty in everything
except for the glass in the bathroom
Can forgive almost anything
except my own transgressions

It's a work in progress.  I don't know if I'll do anything with it.  I may just leave it here.  It's still a random collection of thoughts.  I might take a couple of these and develop them or just abandon the whole shebang.

Jenga!

When did I become the person people lean on?  And, man oh man, but don't they know how dangerous that is?  I mean, I am practically the human equivalent of a Jenga game.  At any given time, my own base of stability may be questionable.  My bottom bricks may have been gently (or not so gently) removed by probing fingers experimenting with "redesign" of this, that, or the other, and my entire being may be trying to cope with the grand balancing act that results from it.  I may be actually wobbling back and forth with each gentle touch of the hand of Fate, waiting for the careless gesture that's going to send all my little building blocks into a tumbled heap needing patient reconstruction.

Maybe this doesn't show.  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one.  Whichever it is, I do find it to be patently amazing.  I figured I had a big red flashing sign over my head saying "Disaster Area."  Apparently, though, I do not.  I get asked all kinds of questions, told all kinds of secrets.  I have no wisdom to give people.  I'm quiet a lot, or at least I try to be.  Maybe that quiet is deceptive?  Maybe the wisest thing you can do sometimes is just shut up and let people talk?  Maybe that's what you're doing right now?

....

Um... Yeah....

Wow.

Didn't my washer just quit?  Better go move that laundry from point A to point B, probably....

Jumble Box

Foolishness is missing things I can't have and that were never really mine anyway.  Foolishness is yearning for feathers to fly away, worse yet, for that little tilt of his lips that meant things were about to get interesting. Foolishness is sitting still when every instinct is screaming at me to run, to move, to do something, anything, else.....

I'm lost in the maze of memory, lost in those pieces of the past I rarely pull out anymore.  They don't have the sharp edges that they used to; my heart doesn't bleed to look at them now.  There are so many things I wish I'd done though....

I wish I'd never settled for his friendship.  I wish I'd never said that would be enough because, really, it never was.  I wish I'd just cut my losses and moved on since he never felt the same way about me.  Even though it would have cost me all those days, all those nights, all those memories, all those car rides, all those songs, all those hugs, I think I also missed some important things along the way while I was waiting for something I knew was never going to happen.  I wish, one late night when he came over to the apartment to sit too close on the couch and stare too long, I'd just told him that I couldn't do it anymore. 

I wish I'd had the skill to gut the other one with my shinai. I wish we'd come from sonkyo to face each other, and once, just once, I'd tagged his men hard enough to snap his head back, brutality and lack of control in the strike or no.  I wish I'd walked away from him that night I sat on the stairs after practice like some latter-day Juliet while he stood below and we talked.  No matter what connection sizzled when I first saw him.  I know what it is to be a fool; I earned every bell on my jingling hat with him.  I like to think I learned something from all of that, learned not to trust that sudden rush of the heart.  It's wonderful for poetry, but absolute hell on the soul.

There are other things, chances I didn't take, conversations I almost had.  Mostly, I feel as though somehow all the chances are gone, that all the sand has fallen into the bottom of my hourglass without my realizing that it was passing.  I wish that I could look up tomorrow and feel that stir of emotions, of hope and hopefulness again, of potential.  It's hard here.  I know I make it harder on myself.  I don't trust easily, am suspicious and look for the hidden knife when probably there is none, and my interests are not compatible with most people's apparently.

It would just be nice to have some bright good thing to put in this box instead of these shadowy broken-cornered regrets.  I think it's going to take someone very, very determined and patient to help me get out of this, and I don't know if that person even exists.  It may be too much to ask of anyone.

Drifting Thoughts

Today was a crazy day for me.  Last week and this one have centered around this afternoon at 4:30.  I had an appointment that was important to me, so important that nobody even knew I was going to it except for my Mom and my Dad since they tend to know everything about my life.  I was supposed to have had it last Friday, but it got canceled and rescheduled.

I have a tendency not to tell anybody about things that really matter.  It's almost a superstitious thing, as though talking about it too much might tempt the Fates to intervene and destroy it.  I've been that way about one other thing before.  It was a brief moment of happiness, a meal with a friend that I didn't want to have to answer a bunch of questions about or have to endure too many needlessly hopeful glances from all those people who still expect me to "bag a husband" any day now. 

The thing worked out sort of so-so, and is in a bit of a holding pattern, but I feel better for having done it. I think having done it is the valuable thing.  No matter which side the coin finally lands on, heads or tails, at least I was brave enough to take the action.

Stream of (un)Consciousness

Stress hit me 6th period in the form of an email, and with it, the vise grip of a migraine.  I delayed taking a pill too long, waiting until after school to get to the Maxalt, and by that time, the pain had dug in tenacious talons.  It literally felt as though someone was sliding a burning hot instrument into my brain, very quickly, over and over.  I put my head on my desk and screamed.  No masks, no pretenses of higher functioning were possible.  I just laid there and cried. 

Mom came and got me.  I don't know what I'd do without her.  The Maxalt eventually got ahead of the pain, but I'm weak, loopy, saying stupid things.  I remember saying something as I left the building about the sky in the view out the big window on the stairs looking like El Greco's View of Toledo.  And, well, yeah, it did, but who the hell says stuff like that?  Me on Maxalt, apparently...  Apparently, all my inner monologue comes falling right out of my mouth in this situation as if it isn't already bad enough to have to have somebody come help me get home like an invalid.

I'm wiped out.  I'm just waiting now for them to get my vehicle back here, then I'm going to bed.  God grant tomorrow is better.

Want....

This....this is a thing of beauty.  This is a Pelikan Duo 205 Demonstrator that has been made into a Highlighter.  Yum.  I didn't know such a creature existed, but leave it to Levenger to have such a gorgeous, tempting delicacy.  I must have this.  I like highlighters, but I always need to write notes, so I rarely use them when I annotate.  This neatly solves the problem, and it's so....pretty.  I just want to pick up and turn it over and over in my fingers.  Doesn't it tempt you?

Fountain pens are a particular weakness of mine, elegant tools of the written word that they are.  I always say that even the crappiest paperwork becomes more tolerable if you can do it with something lovely in your hand.  Being the veteran of many a pile of horrid and obligatory paperwork, you can trust me on this....  There are times when ballpoint pens are necessary or even preferable - triplicate forms being the perfect example, perhaps.  However, for the rest, it's nice to take out something that is not disposable, not transient, unscrew its cap, feel its weight in your hand, and get started.  A fountain pen in the hand is a weapon, a small sword to carve one's way through the daily grind.

I will eventually add this one to my arsenal.  I'll probably need to save a month or so first.  The price is not exorbitant, but I am on teacher wages.  It might be a part of my Christmas list.  Sooner or later, though I look forward to using it.  As much of this kind of writing as I do, it should make all that time much more pleasant.

Witch-Wife by Millay

I love this poem.  It may well wind up on the wall next to the Graves one. Witch-Wife
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
She is neither pink nor pale,     And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,     And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs;     In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads,     Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can,     And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man,     And she never will be all mine.

Soule Live Steam Festival

(Photograph by me.  I just wanted you to know that.  Be impressed.  Be very impressed.  Ha.....)

Aaaanyyway...

I went to the 2010 Soule Live Steam Festival today.  I've been meaning to go for the past two years, but I have always forgotten about it or something else has been going on, and I've missed it.  It's really something to see.  The festival is held in the Soule Steam Feed works, a factory that made steam engines and other parts for generations before it shut down.  Now it houses the Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum, and every November, the doors roll open, the boilers are relit, and the belts spin across the ceiling again.  People from all over the country come down with their restored steam engines, both large and small, to show them off.

When I arrived, the entire grassy area outside Soule was covered with various large engines that looked like something out of a steampunk or Dickens novel.  It was fantastic.  They were all kicking clouds of vapor into the cool morning air.  Whistles were sounding at various intervals, gears were turning, and a pleasant smell of mingled wood smoke and lubricating oil permeated everything. There was a man with a gas-powered portable saw-mill slowly planing a cedar log, showing how the old saw mills worked.  He was giving away cedar chips. 

The crowd was a curious mixture of very old and very young at first.  It seemed that the grandparents had all brought their grandkids out for a day with the big machines.  I liked that idea very much.  It was the sort of thing my own grandparents would have done. They used to load us up and take us places like the Ag Museum and Williamsville.  I remember those as wonderful trips.  As time went on, more couples and younger people began to show up. The older people seemed to know exactly what they were looking at, and I had the feeling that many of them had worked on or with these impressive things in the past.  Most of the younger people were like me, curious and learning.  I hope the organizers had a big day of it.  They were asking people to sign in, saying something about getting a government grant.  

The machines themselves are beautiful and awesome in the sense of the word that means inspiring respect and wonder.  Most of them had been beautifully restored and brightly painted.  They hulk, they tower, they gleam, they stutter, sputter, puff, whir, purr, and grumble.  Since I like to take photos of details of things, they were perfect for that.  I loved their precision and their relentless motion.  I loved that they were "old tech," yet they were perfectly content, continuing to split logs, saw timber, run whistles, power factories, provide electricity.  They didn't know they'd been replaced.  There was something admirable about those steam engines, something somehow independent and noble about them as they issued their streamers of white into the perfect November morning.

As is always the case at these small festivals, everyone there was happy to be there.  I love that.  People come out because they have a genuine love of the craft, the item, the culture surrounding it.  Even though I don't really know anything more about the steam engine than what I read off the placards today, I want to know more now thanks to those people, and of course, any day I can take a bunch of photos and find something to be curious about qualifies as a good day.

I walked and looked at everything; I bought the requisite t-shirt, as much to support the festival as out of a need of another one; I strolled through the food stands outside and resisted the urge to consume.  Around the corner, I stood and listened to the sweet sound of something I'd been thinking of, oddly enough, only this morning, a massive steam-driven calliope.  I left with a smile on my face, a scarf I picked up in the craft fair outside around my neck, and that calliope's song in my heart.  Not bad for a Saturday powered by live steam.

New

I've been reinventing everything this week.  I hit one of those points where I looked around and was sick of everything, my house, myself, everything.  It all had to go.

I got all my hair cut off, back to a haircut that skims my chin, one I wore in Bloomington, one that makes my mother sort of wince, and I love it.  I can style it in five minutes and I don't have to pull it up to get it out of my face.  It's never in my face unless I want it to be, and then it's in my face in a way that I like, not in a way that's irritating.

My bedroom also got a makeover.  I started that a couple of weeks ago with a new dark green comforter.  The sheets I had needed to be replaced, so I went to Tuesday Morning to see what they had.  They had GIRAFFE.  PRINT.  SHEETS.  400 hundred thread count, no less. I dithered.  I picked them up and put them down.  I walked away.  I considered a sober solid brown sateen.  I looked at them out of the corner of my eye.  And I said to myself, "What the hell?  Nobody ever sees them but you.  You'll smile like an idiot every time you get in that bed, make it up, or even walk past it.  Get the freakin' sheets."  I scooped them into my arms and proceeded with all due speed to the checkout.  I was right, too.  I grin every time I see those sheet....

My payday splurge was a pair of red Chucks.  They, too, make me exceptionally happy.  I have always wanted a pair of red Converse sneakers, but I never could find them anywhere.  Enter the beauty of the Internet.  I just went to the Converse website and ordered them straight from the factory.  They fit like a dream, shine more beautifully than anything Dorothy ever clicked together three times on her heels, and allow me to scurry all over my huge campus with ease.  Good deal, I think.

These little reinventions make me feel good.  Ultimately, I think it's not the Devil that is in the details; it's life.  Right now, anyway, it's survival.  At least, it's that way for me.....

Cleaning

I slept for almost twelve hours last night.  I didn't intend to sleep that long, but my body more or less shut me down as I was watching a movie (one day soon, I WILL see all of Rebecca again...), and I got up about 1 am and made it to bed.  I felt worlds better for it today. 

Mom, Dad, and I went to eat at our favorite local Chinese buffet after they got out of morning church, and I coerced them into a trip to Wal-Mart on the way home.  While I was there, I picked up one of the Libman FreedomSpray mops I've seen advertised lately, microfiber reusable cloth, mix your own cleaning solution.  It's fan-freaking-tastic.  I am no Happy Homemaker, but once I started using this thing, I actually caught myself thinking, "And where have YOU been all my life?"  I have reached that point in my life where I can be made happy by a high-tech mop I can fill with Mr. Clean Lavender fragrance cleaning solution.  As my kids would text, "smh...."

I had a burst of energy that I harnessed to clean things up when I got home.  I just couldn't stand it anymore.  When I got home, and there was literally nowhere to put the groceries down except the floor, I realized how bad the house had gotten.  I've been coming in and laying stuff down, coming in and dropping off a coat, a jacket, a scarf, and every surface was covered with outerwear, mail that needed to be processed, and tote bags, the endless, endless sea of tote bags.  I put away the groceries, cranked up my favorite get crap done playlist on iTunes, and dove in. 

Three hours later, I finished mopping and put a load of clothes in the washer.  I can see my kitchen countertop.  All of them.  Even the little table that holds my microwave.  I can even see the entire cushion on the bench beside my door.  And there aren't four hundred and eighty seven pairs of shoes piled up under it.  It's a miracle.

My house is by no means completely clean.  It is, though, much better off than it was earlier today.  I don't have to walk in to dirt and chaos, into things that irritate me subtly, into things that harass me because they're in the wrong place or I can't find them, into situations that are going to create messes and spill because things are untidy.  I'm glad I had the energy to do this.  If I can get the energy for one more marathon of it, the house should be in good shape.

Beautiful by MercyMe (Lyrics)

I was on my way to school this morning flipping through radio stations as is my habit when I came across this song by MercyMe.  I'd never heard it before, but it absolutely brought tears to my eyes. So many of their songs do that.  They have a powerful gift for putting the right lyrics together. 

If you've read here lately or much, you know I've been floundering, struggling even more than usual with who I am, with what I'm worth, issues I always deal with.  This song spoke right to that.  I have no trouble seeing the beauty in people around me.  They, for the most part, sort of astound me.  They are always so much more capable and wonderful than they realize.  My students are perfect illustrations of this.  They absolutely shine. 

I never see myself this way, though.  This song nailed me.  It made me realize that the way I see my students is the way God sees me.  He sees potential.  He sees good.  He sees beauty and promise.  He sees worth.  I needed that reminded right now, maybe more than I've ever needed it before.  It was a lovely gift.  It made me feel beautiful, and that was nothing short of a miracle.