rumbly in my tumbly

All I've been able to think about today has been the huge and amazingly delicious bowl of Dolsot Bibimbap I devoured at the Asian market in D.C. on Saturday. It was hearty, filling, spicy, wholesome, savory, and just plain freaking good.

Fortunately the internet abounds with recipes, but I know I won't be satisfied until I've acquired a Korean cookbook.

In other news, Facebook is possibly the most brilliant and entertaining time waster yet invented, and I filed my taxes admittedly under the wire, but on time. (Why finish something early when you save more time putting it off till the last minute? Procrastinators, I maintain, are slightly more stressed out in the moment but far more efficient in their time management. Why do something in three weeks that is easily done in three days, or three hours?) I'm also getting a wee pittance back from greedy old Caesar, which ought to help my new David Ramsey-esque financial plan to snowball my way out of debt (thanks for the tips, Hill).

Ohhh man...I can just see the steam wafting out of the sizzling hot crockery bowl. I'm hungry. (And I love eating with chopsticks. This also means I'll need one of those bowls...half the reason I love exploring new cuisines is that I get to buy authentic and strange kitchen and dining implements, which usually look really cool as well as serve the wonderful purpose of facilitating the consumption of yummy food.)

Oh, stop growling, stomach. You're not helping. Maybe Rachmaninoff's Vespers will distract you.

the wanting comes in waves

Fabulous weekend in D.C. Seeing Hill, John and Eigh Ann (I only use the Oxford comma to distinguish separate pairs in a list), three of my very dearest friends, and the three people to whom I speak the most often, brought so much relaxation, joy and happiness that I didn't want to come back. (Evil Queen Hillori strikes again. I asked her, as we drove through Old Town in Alexandria and the beauty of the architecture and the coming-alive young greenness of the gardens and trees elicited almost pained exclamations from my chest, "You're trying to get me to move here, aren't you?" Without even a trace of chagrin she said, "Yep!" John asked, "Is it working?" and I said, "Yes...")

A good part of me longs for some city life while I'm still single. D.C. is lovely and boasts so much to do. We visited an Asian market sporting an auditorium of staring fish and an excellent Korean cafe, walked around Old Town looking at the pier and the shops, and stuck our heads in every grocery store within a five mile radius (I count myself lucky to have a childhood best friend whose idea of a grand old time is looking at expensive food). The coffee shops and bars and restaurants, the people walking to and fro, the brick sidewalks, the history, the loveliness, the sleepy old charm...

Yes, I want to live there.

So, since my plan is to go to grad school for my Next Step to Wherever (I still have no idea where I'm supposed to wind up, but I know grad school is the starting point, so I'm taking a miniature Kierkegaardian leap of faith), I have as my rough sketch for the next few years application to programs within or around D.C. for the fall of 2010, and a relocation to that fair city. In the meantime I will live with the 'rents and pay off my debt.

It has been wonderful to return to Erie, to make my peace with old ghosts and old demons, to "bury my ballast" and learn to live free. But the familiar restlessness is surging up within my soul, those waters that never lie still, and I know I won't stay. I used to think of myself as a person who craved stability and security, and as far as my relationships are concerned that remains entirely true; but I hate staying in one place too long. I realized awhile ago that the reason I have refused to buy a house all these years, the reason I have taken these minimum-wage jobs for which I am entirely overqualified and which usually bore me, is that I don't want to be tied down. While I'm sorting out where I'm supposed to go and what the ultimate goal is supposed to be, I want to "keep my exits wide." At any moment's notice I could pull up stakes and leave, and that knowledge is always massively comforting to me.

And this time when I leave my birthplace I won't be running away; I'll simply be leaving, and taking myself away whole. I like that knowledge too.

Since I took yesterday off for the long drive back, today is my Monday and I'm grouchy and prone to irritability. Intense emotions good and bad always give me a headache, and my back dislikes eight hour car trips. It doesn't help my mood that I have taxes to anticipate tonight; that I'm hollow-eyed with exhaustion from my wonderful visit; and that I'm back in the land of perpetual February with not a green thing to be seen but the deadness of last year's grass. (I really didn't want to come back.) I keep up regularly by telephone with my deepest friends; but actually seeing them and being able to touch them illuminated the vast difference between telephone and real presence. Also they're the majority of the few people with whom I can share company in easy silence, which is better ignored on the telephone (and which I ignore because I hardly ever get my fill of that easy silence with anyone here, and the reminder is painful to my introverted heart). I miss them more today than I did on Thursday. (I really didn't want to come back.)

The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love, is simply amazing, and also the perfect mood piece for the melancholy bittersweet mood which stole upon me yesterday as I left the city.

various little tidbits of no particular import

Listy sort of day, mostly because I must be brief: Today is only a half-day at work and I have much to do before I take off to visit Hill and John and possibly Eigh Ann in DC!

Books I'm reading (I'm extremely ADD when it comes to reading books, or perhaps whimsical would be a better word: I like a book for each mood, and then I have the books I'm trying to read which I know I should but require more energy than I usually care to spare, and the junk books I know I shouldn't read but require no energy at all and entertain me endlessly):

1. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin (I've been halfway through this for two years and I don't know why I won't finish it, it's completely gorgeous);
2. Works of Love, Søren Kierkegaard (I've been on this one for awhile too);
3. New Moon, Stephanie Meyer (a re-read, and yes, this is one of the junk brain candy books);
4. From Dead to Worse, Charlaine Harris (pseudo-junk brain candy, but really good pseudo-junk brain candy);
5. Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, edited by Jonathan Cott;
6. John Adams, David McCullough;
7. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss (I just started this, and oh, boy, am I excited);
8. The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs (just started this one as well).

I'm sure I'm missing a couple, but at the moment, that's the list. And that's just my active, I've-actually-cracked-these-books-open queue....I have stacks and stacks awaiting my attention just in the trailer. So many books...so little time...

Oo, and I REALLY want to read (and possess) Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English by John McWhorter. I passionately adore my native language, and anything extolling its power and beauty, and examining its history and trivia, gets my motor running in a fiery way. Also the book is pretty.

Alack, the finances demand just a little more waiting. (I hate wait...)

Music to Which I'm Listening (or to Which I am about to Listen)

Hazards of Love, the Decemberists;
All-Night Vigil, Rachmaninoff;
Gloria, John Rutter.

Etc.

And that's all for now, folks. The past nine days, with their startling intensity and wide range of emotional gambits, have worn me out (but overall quite happily), and so I go to wear myself out further with travel ("There's nothing that the road cannot heal"), fellowship and fun. At Christmas I saw Hill only briefly for a few hours, and we hadn't seen each other in...oh God, at least three years; I haven't seen John in nearly two; and I haven't seen Eigh Ann in approximately two either. And these are three of my nearest and dearest with whom I speak on an extremely frequent and regular basis. (Sometimes I wonder if face-to-face relationships will grow impossible for me to maintain because I'm so accustomed to developing and maintaining my closest relationships over the phone.)

I'm looking forward to the open highway in the sunshine. A few weeks ago I finally tired of boring flat hair and hurled myself into a beauty salon with all the desperation of a thirsty man flinging himself into a stream, and came out with considerably long hair cut in random layers and tumbling about gently with loose styled curls. Immediately thereafter I purchased a bunch of hair products and a flatiron (you can curl hair with it, who knew?), and now I love breezing around with pretty hair. I never wore it down before, and now I wear it down all the time -- in fact, the days when I don't have time to fuss with it, no matter how well-dressed I am I feel like I'm walking around in sweatpants.

The point of that roundabout paragraph is that it's going to be fun to drive along with the windows cracked and my hair blowing in whatever breeze the temperature allows me to enjoy.

And underlying and infusing that happiness is the strange stark sorrow, the strange fierce joy of the paradox of the life that only comes through death, of the wait for salvation, of breath held in three hours of midday darkness, of things finished and things begun, of helplessness and propitiation, of the straining muscles, the broken skin, the blood and sweat of God soaking into temporal wood, temporal soil, of earthquakes and rent curtains, of the shock of holiness laid bare for human eyes, of the soul waiting more than watchmen wait for the morning, of the morning coming, and yet to come.

Exerpt from East Coker, in Honor of Good Friday

IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~ T. S. Eliot, from "East Coker," Four Quartets

just for fun

April Villanelle

I tried to paint my toenails salmon pink.
I blended red and cotton candy hues.
It wore right off; I don't know what to think.

I stubbed my toe so fast I couldn't blink
and viewed the gooey smudge with tight-lipped rue.
So much for painting toenails salmon pink.

I tried again. The heavily sweet stink
of acetone made breathing hard to do.
I felt a little high, and couldn't think.

While one coat dried I wandered to the sink
to fill a glass with water. Feeling blue
I thought again of toenails painted pink.

I longed for summer sun, the lake's dark ink
and sandy toenails flashing, chromed and new...
the thought wore off, in winter hard to think.

I wondered, next day, if I'd reached the brink
with all my efforts ravaged by tight shoes.
I tried to paint my toenails salmon pink --
It wore right off; I hate the world, I think.

with clear vision

Excellent day yesterday. Good things kept happening all over the place, despite a crazy day at the office, and I found myself continually astonished at the blessings that kept exploding all around me (exploding in a good way -- think, not backpack bomb, but one of those fast-forward minifilms of a forest moving from winter into spring: BOOM! flower! BOOM! baby birds!).

Among other excitements, the county in which I live has assembled a committee to select a poet laureate who will not only be a really great poet but help develop a program (with funding) for a greater appreciation of poetry and the arts. Applications are taken up to June 1, and I plan to have mine in as soon as they release the criteria on the county website. There's a little money in it, and talk about an amazing thing to put on a resume and on grad school applications. So it's only one county in one state of one country, but I call that an excellent start.

I also accepted a third job yesterday, grading English compositions for an online college, so I think my goal of paying off my debt in a year might actually be feasible. I get to work at my leisure, and from home or anywhere. An old, old friend referred me to the program, so I submitted my resume and a fabulous cover letter on Monday night, got an email back from the head of the department yesterday afternoon, spoke with her on the phone, and that was it. She’s sending me paperwork in the mail, I start training next week, and the week after that I should be grading.

The other tickler about this job, besides its nature and its potential as a good resume-padder (and its keepability upon such events as returning to grad school, which I plan to do in the fall of 2010) is that the online college is based out of Scranton, PA, so now I feel warmly connected to the good folks of The Office.

For the rest, I have a great decision lined up for execution as soon as possible, and I’m excited to enjoy my life for all it’s worth. Last night ended on a happy note, and I woke up in a chipper mood. Soon I will have more money in the bank, enough to pay my debts and tithe and save and still have some fun, I can live on my own again in approximately a year, and I have a direction. Opportunities are bursting open all around me, I’m intensely glad for the people in my life, I like my jobs, I’m writing again, I’m free and all my own, I am guided and loved by the true and living God, and just at the moment, all manner of thing is well.

harumph harumph

Today everyone's modus operandi appears to be to channel as perfectly as possible the spirit of Oscar the Grouch. Not that I blame us: Snow litters the ground like bird poop and won't go away, and it doesn't seem that we'll get enough to surpass the all-time heaviest annual snowfall in Erie recorded history, so I fail to see the point.

On days like these I want nothing more than to sprawl on the couch in voluminous pajamas and fuzzy slippers, watching something rubbishy on TV and picking at the keys of my laptop with a big gourd of yerba mate bubbling on the coffee table and an inscrutable sphinx of a Simon curled up beside me looking like the happiest creature on God's inexplicably white earth, because his Mommy is home and nothing else matters.

Soon...soon.

ordinary things

For the past six months I have had the luck to live in my grandmother's mobile home (one of those other things the foolish young Sarah said she would never do, and then did -- I think the words "I will never" trigger a cosmic chain reaction designed to orchestrate the patterns of the universe in an intricate and complex web of irony) in the interim period between her move to an assisted living facility and the sale of the place.

I look on it as a grace. In recuperating from the difficulties of the past year I needed “a room of my own,” a transitional period between living alone and returning temporarily to the parental nest. Being forced to my native soil, bogged down by a depression so deep I believe I would have needed hospitalization had I stayed in the Midwest any longer, and admitting what in my mind amounted to not just one, but many defeats, stung enough without yielding up my independence entirely and all at once. The trailer afforded a quiet place to curl in on myself and heal.

The time, though, has come for a new kind of grace. By the end of the month I will have once again taken up residence in the room I have called mine since the birth of my little sister when I was three. I have my trepidations, and so do my parents. Our tastes and habits tend to differ in much the same way the diets of rabbits and trees differ; my pride will suffer; conflict will occur. Fortunately we’ve all grown rather adept at conflict resolution, thanks to multitudes of hours in therapy over the past seven years, so all of it will be surmountable. And no one can deny the practical necessity of the move; monetary circumstances demand it.

Even though I have started to feel a burn in my tear ducts when I do simple things like put away the clean silverware and realize that soon I won’t use my own silverware, my own dishes, for an indeterminate length of time (oh, my God, I have worked so hard to gather my own things, and I love my own things, how can I bear to put them in storage?), I recognize the benefits implicit in the upcoming arrangement. One of my concerns, as I grow more and more settled into living alone, is that I've forgotten how to live with people. Singular singleness, as opposed to singleness with roommates, allows for an ossification of selfishness -- not in an evil kind of way, but more as the nature of the situation. As Hugh Grant says in About a Boy, "I'm not putting myself first -- there is no one else, it's just me."

As things now stand, and have stood, I don't have to consult anyone at any time for any reason. I don't have to arrange my schedule to accommodate someone else's; I don't have to take anyone's preferences into account when I listen to music or watch TV (at whatever volume I like), I can cook anything I want for dinner, I can stay up as late, or go to bed as early, as I please. I don't have to share space or possessions. Everything is mine. The freedom is certainly delicious, and I will miss it terribly; at the same time, I know I will grow in ways I couldn't if I lived alone indefinitely.

Simultaneously I have no intentions of remaining in my parents' house longer than necessary. That's not desirable for anyone. This move is to help me save money and pay off my debt; and when the next thing comes along, or when I pursue the next thing, whichever comes first (I have plans in the works, oh yes, precious), I am once again hurtling out of the nest with wings unfurled.

And it's not going to be bad. I like my folks, and I like their pets, and Simon will adjust once again (though I'm a little nervous of how he and my parents' new puppy are going to react upon introduction. She's intensely curious and he's intensely anti-dog), and I'll at least be able to sleep in my very own big grown-up bed. Mom and Dad and I are going to sit down and talk about space arrangements, and where I can keep necessities like my kitchen implements without them being horribly in the way, and all the logistics of a minor household expansion.

At least I'll have unlimited internet access for the first time in eighteen months! That's a HUGE bonus.

farewell to Greubie

In other, sadder news, my parents are putting down the family cat this afternoon. He's old and sick and getting senile, and he has earned the dignity of his rest.

A good tribute to him is due; he has been a fantastic cat. For now, though, I'm trying to put it out of my mind, because I have to work tonight, and the day is long, and I don't feel like spending it crying.

Alexander Pennington Farnsworthy. Kitty with a Thousand Nicknames. Bat-Killer. MacGreuber. Bear-boy. Parr. Keety.

I'll miss you.

Out of Egypt, Into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run

I’m tired of being cryptic. The past forty-eight hours have been amazing. A little hedging remains necessary, but the bulk of what’s going on I can freely tell.

I. Sufjan is the Glue

I haven’t been myself for a couple of months. The change happened so gradually I pretended not to notice, but the past few weeks have seen me mired down in another round of depression, and, having read somewhere to use that as a marker for a wrongness in life circumstances, I began to sort and sift reasons, restlessly, subconsciously. I still felt like shit, but underneath my consciousness of my misery – and my disgust at being here yet again, come ON already – things were processing.

The shoot of green bursting from the bulb happened on Wednesday. For many, many months I haven’t felt like listening to Sufjan; my moods and tastes tended much more toward Conor and Josh Ritter. But Wednesday I popped Ray LaMontagne’s Till the Sun Turns Black into my computer at work, and started listening. I found myself almost immobile with this existential anguish, and laughed a little at myself: Ray’s is a GREAT album for wallowing, so no wonder I felt horrible. Tired of it, I turned to blind instinct and replaced Ray with Sufjan’s Illinoise.

I should have known. Leigh Ann and I always say that Sufjan is the glue. Part of the healing in listening to him is the brilliance of the music – Illinoise in particular engages in polyphonic melodies so carefully constructed that they sound wild, a great clash of different sound energies colliding head-on like high speed trains or jets of superpowered water and then surging skyward as a huge and magnificent One. It’s complex, intricate, dazzling brain music. Parts of my mind that I had gradually shut down since the start of the New Year couldn’t help but open back up, stretch, and breathe.

The rest of the healing comes from Sufjan’s great, throbbing faith that underwrites and permeates every aspect of sound and word. It wrapped itself around my mind. It restored my soul.

So by the time the album had played through I felt volumes better, reanchored in myself.

And that was the beginning.

II. Remember Who You Are

Remember that command, intoned so magnificently by Mufasa in The Lion King? (I don’t care who laughs. I love that movie. I had it entirely memorized from opening to closing credits in seventh grade.) Every once in awhile, when I find myself hiding bits of me from the rest of the world, that command reverberates in my skull.

After the restorative session with Illinoise, I changed out of my office clothes into jeans and cutely layered T-shirts and headed to work at the bookstore. Nothing bothered me that night – I cheerfully cleaned up the whole store and assisted difficult customers with an unruffled professionalism that had them thanking me.

And then a young man approached me and apologetically asked for help finding a book on St. Paul. In the process of locating it, I joked around with him and discovered that he’s a fan of C. S. Lewis. Immediately I seized on that and asked if he’d ever read Till We Have Faces. He had not. I expounded upon its virtues, gesticulating in excitement, and sketched a few details of my undergrad thesis in which I examined that book. He picked up on “psycholinguistics” and brought up Derrida. I almost jumped up and down.

“I LOVE Derrida!” I said.

His whole face opened wide. “You know who he is?”

“Are you kidding? I cried when he died!”

So we swapped favorite points of Derrida’s theories. He declared me one of the five coolest girls he’s ever met in his life and said we should get together sometime to talk literature and theology. I scribbled down my number and handed it to him, and he walked off to purchase the book he came in for, with Till We Have Faces balanced on top.

For the rest of the night I walked around on a brain high. I didn’t, and don’t, particularly care whether he calls me or not; the point of the whole experience was the experience itself. I connected with someone on a supernerd level, and I have missed that terribly these past few months. That missingness has contributed to the bogdown as well.

So, oddly, that conversation changed everything. Things that looked murky now look crystalline. None of my circumstances changed; I changed. I underwent a sudden re-vision, my eyes can see, I know what I want and who I am, and now I can change my circumstances. Maybe I don’t know precisely where I’ll wind up, but I do know where I’m going – I’ve been taken by the shoulders and turned in the direction I should go, and I don’t know what’s coming to me in the future, it’s all a huge question mark, but for the first time in years that brings, not dread or feelings of being trapped or hopeless or directionless or confused, but a thrill of unimagined miracles infusing what I always thought was ordinary.

And above it all, the words ring:

I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Like the faith of Abraham lauded in Fear and Trembling, the certain knowledge that promises will come to their fruition in my lifetime fills me with joy. Someday these most cherished dreams of mine will come to pass, and the ones for which I am responsible I can begin to attend, knowing that these will bring me the fulfillment I’ve been looking for, and at an acceptable time the rest will come, too. And in that work to be done, in that resurgence of faith and hope, in the strength of renewed purpose rooted in divine love, I am free to shake off everything that holds me back, and look far into the distance, and run to meet what's coming.

all things new

The past twenty-four hours have seen me undergoing one of those periodical revisions of personhood.

Or perhaps a more accurate noun is refinement. Less like the burning away of dross than the peeling away of dragonskin, the painful process of being stripped of long buildups that I as the wearer came mistakenly to identify as part of myself.

In college and for the first few years afterward I had a fairly widespread reputation among my peers as a blunt axe. I called it like I saw it. I minced no words, beat around no bushes, bared many bones. A certain softening seems to be summoned by gradual maturation, but I realized today that I haven't softened as much as I've retreated. Through various circumstances and for various reasons I learned to stop speaking my mind, to let others lead, to allow my relationships with others to be determined almost entirely by them instead of in mutuality.

Which is ridiculous. I've hated it, and it's made me moody, doormatty, and then, when I can't stand it anymore, ferociously bitchy.

Last night I finally engaged in some direct communication, matter-of-fact and straightforward, and it felt so good I actually slept last night, and woke up in a fabulous mood which has lasted the entirety of the day. (My new bosses and coworkers must think I'm nuts. The stripping of the dragonskin was painful and I was listless and dull and sunken in on myself all week, like a hollow girl, and then all of a sudden today I was brisk and bouncy and inclined to sing along to Sufjan whom I played on my computer without caring whether or not other people thought he was weird, and was generally extremely productive and inquisitive.) I feel like I've gotten myself back.

So it's time I think to practice this a little more. I'm really, really liking it.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

~T.S. Eliot

Last weekend featured an attempt to watch I'm Not There. While Cate Blanchett's performance particularly impressed me (I played a couple of male roles in college theater and remember learning to walk and move like a man), and I liked the image of the young runaway, on the whole the film was spliced incomprehensibly together in an overly, self-consciously "artsy" fashion that lacked completely the tight and controlled premeditation behind the apparent randomness in Magnolia. We made it through forty minutes before shutting it off in disgust.

My irritation was increased by my own lack of knowledge of Bob Dylan -- a knowledge vital to understanding the film. I don't deal well with pretension and with the pretentious flaunting of knowledge in the face of others' ignorance, and so, cantankerously, I found myself suddenly deeply interested in learning more about Dylan.

(Yes, evidently I'm easily manipulated. I'm not unaware of the irony.)

So I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone's Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews for a couple of dollars the other night and started reading.

So far, of course, I'm loving it. It helps that the book is really nicely bound. I'm hoping some of the interviews were ones that appeared in what little of the film I saw.

I still have no interest in finishing the movie.

Lately I'm tired and completely unmotivated to write. I have a handful of posts which I've half-heartedly begun and then abandoned, and then forgotten that I've abandoned, so that I suddenly realized today that I haven't posted anything on the blog in a really long time.

Life has gone, and continues to go, extraordinarily well. There's lots to do -- hence the tired -- and I finally find myself inundated by human interaction. The miracle of the ordinary keeps blossoming around me, and my current favorite verse leaped out at me from the pages of 1 Thessalonians the other day:

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsides and so that you will not be dependent on anybody" (4:11-12).

Blah today. Not sure whether it's a hormone crash (womanhood essentially means being taken hostage by hormones most of the time and learning to deal reasonably with their insane effects), or tiredness, or what, but today I only wanted to pull the covers up over my head and stay warm and lazy in bed all day drifting into and out of sleep, hibernating.

It's probably a good thing I'm having a Girls' Night at the trailer this evening -- if I can't curl up in bed, the next best thing is company, because conscious alone time in this state of mind usually does me no good.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, though. My weekends these days are always great. And this one boasts the bonus of a visit from my sister!

I find myself thinking today how homesick I am for Meg and Phillip. Probably because it's Friday and my Fridays in the Midwest for two years almost always consisted of a trip to their house to eat good food, fight over who should order the pizza, rile up the dog, play with Josie, make fun of everything and everyone on the entire planet, watch a few episodes of some wonderful geeky TV show, and relax and be thoroughly and completely ourselves without reservation or judgment -- or, simply and more accurately put, without fear.

It's wonderful to be back in Erie. I love my native state and my native city, and I love living in closer proximity to my blood family. But I miss my chosen family, and today I'm feeling it rather sharply.

This week I allowed the slump to carry me along. Next week marks a return to discipline. I think part of my problem is that I'm simply, out of some irritating existential weariness, not doing the things I love most to do -- reading, writing, singing. Time to buckle back down, and time to reinvigorate. It's almost spring.

Oo! I just remembered: Today is my half birthday!

yum.

I felt like inventing something last night. Partly I wanted to test the assertion of a couple of conversations I'd had this week in which people stated that everything tastes better with butter and cream (which I already believe anyway); partly I felt nostalgic for the many evenings I spent at Meg and Phillip's learning to freewheel sauce recipes, the three of us crammed into their long galley kitchen chopping vegetables, stirring onions and fiddling with meat while the Michigan summer breeze brought a piney freshness through the window over the sink.

With those memories unwinding pleasantly in my head, I decided against my usual approach, which runs to the Mexican side of the cuisine spectrum, and went for something more akin to Europe. This is what I came up with:

The Chicken at the Corner of Butter and Cream

1. Prepare frozen boneless skinless chicken breast(s) in a small skillet. Heat butter and olive oil, add chicken breast(s) (they don't need to be thawed) and season with dried basil, dried thyme, dried oregano, ground red pepper and seasoned salt, to taste. Cover skillet, turn heat to low and cook 30-60 minutes until golden-brown and tender. Set aside.

For the sauce:

2. Prepare 1 packet alfredo sauce mix in a small saucepan according to packet instructions. Simmer on low heat 10-20 minutes longer than called for to thicken well. Set aside.

3. In a large skillet (I prefer cast iron), sauté 1 large red onion, chopped, and 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped, in plenty of butter and olive oil until onion is soft and translucent.

4. Add 6-8 oz. fresh button mushrooms, sliced, to the onion and red bell pepper and cook over medium heat 1-2 minutes. Reduce heat slightly, add 4-5 cloves garlic, chopped, and cook until softened. Season with dried basil, dried oregano, dried parsley, ground red pepper, seasoned salt, and dried thyme, to taste.

5. Increase heat, add 1 can cream of mushroom soup and stir until blended. Simmer one minute, then add enough white wine to thin the cream of mushroom. Add 1 can black olives, drained.

4. Add alfredo sauce mix and several oz. pesto and stir. Adjust the consistency and the balance of smoothness and sharpness in flavor by adding a combination of white wine, butter, milk and heavy whipping cream, to taste. Add a dash of white wine vinegar, if necessary.

5. Stir in a handful grated Parmesan cheese and adjust seasoning. Serve over pasta (I like bowtie). You can chop the chicken and mix it into the sauce, or serve it whole alongside the pasta and sauce.

This meal is incredibly rich -- a little goes a long way -- but oh, is it yummy. Simon wished he were human last night so that he could try some.

every now and then

This has been a really long, dragging, plodding week, the kind where time moves at a pace so slow you wonder if you stumbled upon the lip of a black hole and yet your mind races past the speed of light making time pass even more slowly. I feel like if I'd planted a sapling on Monday, I could go home after work today and find a towering giant tree all covered in moss. And when weeks like this occur, as tired as they make me I can never sleep. An ever present headache has followed me patiently around like a minion waving a palm frond and my eyes register the surrounding world through a soft-lens glaze.

So today I truly thank God that it's Friday.

I did the grown-up thing this week and finally opened up a savings account; then I went to Borders to change a few money things around and started poking around in the bargain section -- a bad habit of mine which, for once, paid off. I discovered that most of the stuff back there had been reduced to one dollar. So I loaded up, bought $350 worth of goodies for $18, and carted it all home just to open it all up again, peel off stickers and gloat. My couch looked like Christmas and Simon paced around in distress because his self-designated spot next to me on the sofa had been overrun by books and beautiful blank cards and plastic bags.

My favorite purchases: Jamie Oliver's basic cookbook which came as a set with his "flavor shaker" (a nifty modern lazy person's mortar and pestle) (retailed at $60); David McCullough's box set of John Adams, Truman and Mornings on Horseback (retailed at $65); and Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (retailed at $25, but the point was more holy-crap-Isaac-Asimov-wrote-a-book-on-Shakespeare?! It was like discovering a weight loss program centered around the overconsumption of chocolate and wine -- the best of all possible worlds, the melding of my nerdiness and geekiness into one beautiful though formerly unimagined whole).

Those were the bright spots of my week. So bright that I still have them stacked on the sofa like Christmas, and when I think about them I smile.

Perhaps that sounds horribly materialistic. It is. I love "stuff." (Particularly booksy stuff and antiquey stuff.) I've been really, really good these past couple of years with tighter budgets and beltlines, and I'm fortunate in loving small, fairly inexpensive "stuff" which also happens to be useful (form and function); but I do love to buy things and get to know them well and find their perfect feng shui niche in the organic and eclectic makeup of my home and watch all my other "stuff" accomodate and absorb and complement my new "stuff" (much like Eliot's theory of the Western canon, where not only does the old influence the new, but the new influences the old in a timeless back-and-forth reverberation), and when I can indulge that tendency at such a good bargain that it leaves me walking out the door feeling virtuous it just utterly makes my week.

closer to Harrisburg

It's a long way to heaven
It's closer to Harrisburg
and that's still a long way from
the place where we are
and if evil exists it's a pair of train tracks
and the devil is a railroad car
~Josh Ritter

On the way back from Harrisburg yesterday I sat in the car idly watching the world go by (and nursing a hideous hangover like I haven't had in years; I earned it, though) in its monochromatic tones of sere and amber, and I noticed how many of the green highway signs direct the traveler to places whose names end in "burg."

I started ticking names off through my mind of places in PA and along the East Coast which also end in "burg," and came up with rather a lot. Then I tried to remember how many places in the Midwest ended in "burg," and only came up with a few.

So I wonder if, should this be in fact a trend and not a part of my brain sluggishly wading through toxins and negotiating badly, this stems from the dominance in the East Coast of early settlers from the UK (notably Scotland) and Germany, where lots of places end in "burg" or its phonetic variants. I also wonder if this trend does indeed dissipate as one moves west across the country. And then I wonder why. PA has little 'burgs everywhere. Lots of "villes" too. In the Midwest you have names that stand more alone, like Buchanan, or Mishawaka, or South Bend, or Detroit, or Ann Arbor, or Kalamazoo.

I think it's interesting. Any opinions?

Ash-Wednesday

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

T. S. Eliot

the open window

The office building where I work sits nestled shoulder to shoulder with the adjacent buildings in one of Erie's older neighborhoods. Here the structures consist mostly of grand old city homes built of brick in three stories with turrets, or office buildings designed to look like grand old city homes built of brick in three stories with turrets. (There's one across the street which I absolutely love. I've always wanted a round room in my house, as a study.)

In spots the neighborhood runs on the shabby side, the decayed glory of evaporated Gilded Age wealth, the spots where the houses have undergone interior partitioning to form apartments for the rougher side of Erie society. The house next door to the office is one of these. I don't find it particularly threatening on that account; after all, I lived in exactly that kind of house in a more dangerous neighborhood in South Bend; but two elements of this edifice render it rather creepy. First is the heap of lidless antique dolls staring balefully out of a first-floor window. Second is the second-story window which is always open.

The dolls would creep me out no matter where they were located. Even if they sat in polished splendor on carefully wrought little rocking chairs at miniature tables rigged with tiny china cups and pots of tea I would run screaming from the room. For only one summer of my life in my childhood I played with a doll, and that was mostly because I enjoyed designing accessories and cutting them out of heavy paper. Before and after that summer, I had nothing to do with dolls. I preferred stuffed animals, plastic horses, plastic dinosaurs and Legos. Even the tiny dolls that accompanied my dollhouse were a family of humanoid raccoons.

I find antique dolls, with their disgusting matted hair and yellowed lace collars and faded dresses and unblinking eyes, unbearably gross. They sit there like corpses, or more like the waiting undead. Unbenownst to the humans striding around in perfect oblivion, these ancient playthings, who remember the touch of hands that now grip the arms of wheelchairs in nursing home mummification or rest in the slowed decomposition of satin-lined caskets, watch in fixed calculation for their moment -- the moment they will all rise up from their moldered cushions and windowsills and cabinets and rocking chairs and kill us all.

Even less than the dolls do I understand the people that comfortably keep them around. I'd rather have a collection of shrunken heads than antique dolls. The first floor window of the house next door contains at least a dozen of these silent unchildlike minions of darkness flung carelessly into their deathly repose staring up toward the office's second floor windows. Fortunately I can't see them from the reception area. But I always know they're there, with their fake or real human hair wiring out from their skulls in wisps, watching.

But even that hasn't disturbed my mind's quiet like the open window. Cindy told me it's been open since at least last summer. Through every kind of weather, every season, the window yawns, screenless, inviting the elements to eat away at humanity's attempts at stability and permanence. The window frame has grown warped and streaked with rot, the paint has worn away, and it gives the house a look of dispossession. Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.

Worst of all are the sheer white curtains that hang there, blowing sometimes into, sometimes out of, the attic room. Seeing these scraps of fabric, which look older than the dolls, moving restlessly with the winter wind sends a sort of chill up the spine. I think it's the chill of betrayal. If the house sat empty and the entire dwelling sagged under the creeping weight of time, it would carry an overall air of old sorrows and desolation; but since only this window bears evidence of dilapidation, it's somehow insidious, a canker in the hedge, the traitor slipping off while everyone finishes dinner to lead in the troops of the oppressor. A window should make a dwelling more habitable -- let in light, let air in when necessary, keep air out when necessary. This one is the sheepdog ignoring the wolves closing in on the sheep.

My coworkers and I periodically assemble to look at that window and wonder who on earth would leave it open all winter. "Doesn't that make the house really cold? Who can afford to heat it? Isn't that wall almost destroyed inside?" As cold as this winter has been, you'd think whoever foots the heating bill would have noticed that there's a leak somewhere. But then, you'd also think that they would notice the deflated wading pool swampy with algae and the rusting remains of a swingset from approximately 1983 lurking in the backyard.

And yet, today Cindy noticed the miraculous: Now that winter is almost over, and after well over a year, the window is closed. The curtains still hang limp and scary on the other side of the streaked glass and rotten wood, and the room still breathes with hauntedness, but someone stopped the gap in the dam. The "brown horror" of humanity giving itself over in utter disinterest to the ravages of nature has dissipated.

Now if only someone would throw out those dolls.

cheeerful little whistle

Loved the Symphony. It was also an opera, and so good I got the goosebumps. (The show was Carmina burana, by Carl Orff. The first and last movements in particular are stunning.)

What a great weekend. In addition to looking fancy and hearing good music, Dustin and I hacked around in the woods climbing mini mountains and getting muddy, which is always my idea of a good time. I can't wait for camping trips in the summer.

One of the unexpected miracles of being around Dustin is a quietness of mind I don't recall ever having experienced except in my times of staring over bodies of water (lake, ocean, creeks) alone. I told him last night that my mind is like a dark room with six radios playing at once, each set to a different station. It's always busy in my brain, and while it doesn't give me any trouble focusing, it doesn't give me a break, either. But I've noticed that when I'm with him, five of the radios quietly turn off and I'm almost fully present in the here and now, and it's so relaxed I almost don't know what to do with it.

I'm dating the awesomest guy in the world. It's great to be me.

today's puzzler, which has no import on actual life whatsoever

This keeps bugging me.

If someone were to invent a transporter (as in "Beam me up, Scotty!"), not for use between earth and spaceships, but from place to place on earth -- effectively replacing car, plane and train travel, or even bicycles or walking -- would there be massive collisions of people's energy? What happens to the "beam" as it travels? Does it occupy physical space? How does it get from A to B? If another "beam" going from C to D intersects the first "beam," do both beams make it to their respective destinations intact?

The only relatable event I can think of is a flashlight beam intersecting a ray of sunshine. They don't seem to interact, except perhaps to create slightly more intense heat at the points where they cross. So maybe Jill can get to the top of the hill without switching noses with Jack who's going across the hill. I mean, think about the possible consequences -- people could show up where they were going having all sorts of extra limbs, or many fewer limbs, or maybe just a heap of muscle and organs. Ew.

If that happens, wouldn't people have to "beam" themselves around like cell phone signals: be sent up to satellites and then to their Earth destinations, to avoid traffic congestion?

On the other hand, if they don't interact and people could send themselves directly from New York to Mexico City, doesn't energy expend itself somewhat in travel? So would people arrive at their destinations microscopically shorter?

Obviously it's been a long, long time since I took physics. I should go hunting through one of my old textbooks, but it's boxed up somewhere in the garage keeping its theoretical secrets from me.

Shall I then beg Thee for a summer's day?

More snow. It's never going to stop. I woke up yesterday morning to a world re-dressed in white, icy roads, car accidents, smears of snow that always duck under the windshield wipers and keep me from seeing; today boasted winds of hurricane-type force which attempted with single-minded determination to throw my car off the road. (Plus I finally shaved my legs last night -- yeah, yeah, TMI, but men who are horrified don't know, and women who pretend to be horrified do, that I'm not alone in setting the Bic on a shelf for most of the winter. Anyway, having eliminated a nice natural layer of body heat entrapment in honor of the Symphony tomorrow, I am now freezing and wishing for an afghan. Though I freely confess that smooth skin is nicer.)

Color me bitter. This winter has been long. Sometimes I stare at my work PC's tropical desktop in the pure longing for hot weather and sunshine.

But I get to stick it to the elements in just over a week when Dustin and I escape south to Charlotte. We keep saying how we forgot the omnipresent heavy cloud cover in Western PA, and for my part, I'm starving for a little golden light. Something that isn't gray and seething with snow.

Plus, I miss the open road.

happy

Wonderful weekend. Dustin and I lounged around watching Amadeus (excellent film -- if you haven't seen it, I recommend that you remedy that immediately), eating boeuf en daube and These Mashed Potatoes are So Creamy, hanging out, bebopping around and generally having a fantastic time.

And this week I have roses to savor (when I'm not home I have to lock them away from Simon, who has decided that his duty toward them is to eat them), a really wonderful card to read, and a mouthwatering cookbook to drool and dream and scheme over. It's the last cookbook I needed to complete my collection of most desired cuisines: Lebanese. And the recipes look so. good.

Sometime this week I must away 'ere close of day to find a pair of shoes and jewelry for the Symphonic excursion on Saturday. I can't wait. (For the excursion, that is. I don't mind shopping as much as I used to, but it's never been on my top 10 list of Things I'd Love to Do All Day.)

In other, slightly more erratic news, I keep getting sharp things under my fingernails that slice the nerve-ending-packed skin and hurt like the dickens. (What are the dickens? Why do they hurt?) Last night it was the edge of a toothbrush box that jammed itself under my middle fingernail like that was its purpose for being.

Currently I'm reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series for the first time and adoring it. I keep laughing aloud while reading. Pure quirky joy.

I have also discovered that I love the music of Death Cab for Cutie. While, sadly, I do not own any of their albums, I have the loveliness of Pandora to feed my new obsession.

Tonight is pizza at the parents', a young and rather irreverent church-related meeting, and clean sweaters.

Life is good.

misc.

As I passed an open magazine at the office this morning, I noticed the word "Calgary" in the article and thought, "That's in Alberta, right?"

I don't know the capitals for most of the states in the US. But yet I know Calgary in connection with Alberta. I also know that Saskatchewan means "river that turns back on itself," or something equivalent. I have no idea what Susquehanna means, and that meaning would be much more relevant.

Ah well.

Last night I took advantage of Linnéa's visit and made chicken tinga, a hot'n'spicy chipotle dish. In my childhood years I loathed anything that stung the tongue, but now I love it (as long as it has flavor; atomic wings, for example, don't float my boat), and attribute my increased intestinal health of the past couple of years to a diet filled with more hot peppers. (Probably it's all in my head.)

I found the dish pleasantly full of kick, whooped a couple of times, blew my nose, washed my hands and helped myself to seconds. Linnéa looked over at me and said, "Sarah, I can't feel my mouth."

a rather blustery day

The wind today is wuthering.

Actually it sounds more like a huge baby throwing a temper tantrum against the walls. On my way to work I almost skittered into the minivan I was passing when a blast of wind hooked its fingers under the body of my car and tried to throw it sideways.

Dude, someone get this kid a rattle.

At least I didn't wake up to a world recovered in snow. Everyone is dreading it. While the past few days have been so dark as to render it "evening all afternoon" (seriously, the Cullens could have done very well in Erie if something went wrong in Forks), the temperature has hovered in the mid- to high fifties, and we're all scared to relish it, and it's making the entire city grumpy. I wanted to hit just about everyone I spoke to yesterday. (Oh, and I'm grumpy too.)

PA people are funny. Give us thirty degree weather after a long stretch in the negatives, and we're ripping off our coats and running around in T-shirts. Push the temperature up to forty or fifty and we're shrugging back into our winterwear and skulking around with one eye on the sky waiting for the snow to come back.

In other news, I finally have access to Pandora Radio at work, and I'm so in love.

now

Every day I wake up happy. Every day I savor the gift of that waking, because this is a happiness I only had when I was small, opening my eyes to a newly fashioned summer day and rolling to my side to look eagerly out the window whose sill rested level with the top of my mattress so that I pretended I slept in the branches that touched the screen. Back then I lay still for a few moments to watch the leaves and listen to my parents talking in the driveway and smell the magic of freshly mown grass, quivering all over with the secret knowledge that I was awake and no one knew it yet and in that moment all of heaven and earth and time were mine in an infinite and possible now.

Lately I've been opening my eyes to the same feeling. More complex, perhaps, with adult demands and adult joys, but lighter and freer and higher and deeper than I've experienced in years, a brilliant awareness of the present, and of present blessings, the "morning moving over the hills."

squee!

Dustin and I are going to the Pittsburgh Symphony in a couple of weeks!

I love the Symphony. The last (and only) time I went was sometime around 2003 for Valentine's Day with college friends -- two of them were a couple, and the other was a single gal like me. The concert and the hall itself were stunning -- there's nothing like a live orchestra -- and it was fabulous to wear a gorgeous dress and sit in red velvet seats pretending sophistication. The only fly in my ointment that night was the couple making out in front of us. I think we threw bits of our program at them.

So I'm, as I say when speaking, as opposed to writing, "totally stoked" about this event. Mom has to buy a dress for a relative's wedding coming up soon, so she and I are going shopping after work today. I'm enjoying this chance to reverse my long desert of girlie moments and go all out squealing over fabrics and baubles.

Though Dustin informed me, in a tone of disbelief, upon checking with the hall, that there isn't a dress code, and people are known to attend the Symphony, on a Saturday evening, in jeans.

Only in Western PA.

like a little child

I just had a thought.

I was thinking about the vocal nature of domestic cats, how in their feral state they only vocalize while fighting and mating, and an article I read that suggested that domestic cats make so much noise because people do, and cats try to communicate with us by "talking" as we "talk."

That thought led to another article I read stating that domestic cats, in the company of humans, basically remain in a state of arrested kittenhood their whole lives, which is what allows them to demonstrate affection, "talk," and seek the company of others. I have often thought that God's redemption of humanity does for us what human beings do for domestic cats -- frees us to be everything we can possibly be. Adult feral cats are completely solitary, vicious, suspicious and antisocial; the same could be said of adult humans left to their own devices. But cats in a state of permanent kittenhood are joyful, relaxed, playful, demanding and unafraid to demand, loving and unafraid to love, and happy.

And today I wondered if that's what it means to "receive the kingdom of God like a little child." To live in the freedom of absolute need, absolute trust, and absolute affection. To be unworried about the disparity between the giver and the receiver. To remain, day to day, in the pure abandonment of knowing that all needs are and will be cared for, and to be free to play in the simplicity of gladness. To give the only thing there is to give to the giver, which is unrestrained love -- as when a little child runs up to the father and throws her arms around his knees, flinging her head back to look up at him and smile. I was like that, once. It never bothered me that I couldn't earn my parents' provision or love or affection or kindness; that's what they were supposed to do, and I took it completely for granted, and yet I loved them as completely as I took them for granted, and both of those things formed the bedrock of my freedom and my joy in being, which I never had to think about, because it almost always was.

The simplicity of being. Extended childhood in its best sense. Maybe that's faith like a child.

clean streak

I don't know what came over me yesterday, but I went on a crazy cleaning spree that lasted for hours. I did laundry, cleaned out and wiped down the fridge, vacuumed, mopped, reorganized closets and generally restored the first two rooms of the trailer to a shining orderliness.

And it felt good. Probably part of it stems from the fewer hours I'm working at my second job, since it's the slow season there, and I've grown accustomed to fifteen hours of constant motion. Yesterday when I arrived home, I made dinner (yummy leftovers of this Mexican-style dish I threw together from my steady old starter of a diced onion, cubed beef/chicken, a can of cream of mushroom soup and a can of French onion soup -- with those four ingredients as a baseline, anything is possible) and then found myself sitting on the couch staring at my cell phone and thinking, "It's only 6:30? I'm bored."

So I popped in a couple of feel-good movies (Hairspray and The Mask of Zorro) and went about in a whirlwind of delighted domesticity.

The reward? A sparkling living space, an absurdly happy cat, satisfaction with my mental health (since I can't remember the last time I actually wanted to clean, and took joy from the cleaning -- I think it was sometime back in '05), good smells in the home, and the rediscovery of my long-lost cheesecloth which I've been wanting in order to strain my homemade yogurt to thicken it properly, India-style. (Yes, I've once again begun making my own yogurt. I also have a recipe in my newest Indian cookbook for a simple homemade cheese that I'm itching to try. If I had my way in life, I would do very few things but write and stay in the house all day making weird food from scratch. My dream house is mostly a kitchen with slate floors and a state-of-the-art stereo system and many different kinds of ovens and a vast fireplace and lots and lots of windows and high ceilings and bare rafters from which to hang dried herbs and peppers and garlic and pots and pans and meat and hanging plants, and a huge basement/cellar with separate rooms for the aging cheese and the home-canned goods and the preserved lemons and the homemade sauerkraut, and a garden just outside on one side of the back lawn and an enormous bricked and walled patio on the other with the kinds of ovens and grills a person can't keep indoors -- a clay oven, a tandoor, a large brick oven, an industrial-style grill. And then of course there's all the traveling I'd have to do both as fuel for writing and to eat new foods to come back and learn how to make. Cue If I Had a Million Dollars.)

After an evening of busy be-bopping around the house, I couldn't get tired, and finally closed my eyes on midnight smiling.

Tonight I can't wait to tackle the national disaster commonly known as my car, and then roll up my sleeves to go after the bathroom and bedroom.

free association tidbits

I say "free association" because in the technical sense, the following sprawling thoughts aren't actually random. I don't think anything is random; what might appear as randomness to the listening subject actually has a linkage in the mind of the speaking subject.

[which reminds me of Kristeva, which reminds me of reading, which reminds me...]

I miss my books. Today my fingers itched to turn through the pages of A. S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories, but scratching that itch would require a long frigid hunt through piles of boxes in my parents' garage.

I might do it anyway. I've been reading some very entertaining pulp fiction, but it's like subsisting on candy when you really want a sandwich. And I really want a sandwich.

[which reminds me of the McDonald's bag still in my car that I have to throw away, which reminds me of my car, which reminds me...]

In other news, I'm once again able to drive my Henrietta! Having a CD stereo back in my car changes the face of driving entirely.

[and now my stomach just growled, which reminds me that I couldn't eat breakfast this morning which reminds me...]

After pulling down the loaf of bread I've been keeping at the office for peanut butter toast in the mornings and finding it riddled with mold, I decided that if I could have a superpower it would be reversing entropy. Not only would my food never go bad again, but I could bring back Pompeii and potentially destroy the world by resurrecting it. Which is kind of cooler than flying.

And if I couldn't reverse entropy, my second chosen superpower would be controlling water, like in The Abyss. That's basically as close to omnipotence as one can get on planet Earth. And I could deep sea dive and never, ever drown.

[which reminds me that I'm thirsty, and tired, and should get up and get more coffee to put cream and sugar in for some calories which necessitates the ending of this post, which reminds me...]

with, regrettably, no ceremony whatsoever...

I announce the arrival of Wm. Had a Headache Day Eve!

I've told the story several times over the past years, and rather than repeat myself, I will link to the archives, for your convenience (since it's the end of the month, they're all at the top of the page; this computer won't let me view individual posts with their own links):

http://prettypuddleglum.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_archive.html

http://prettypuddleglum.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html

http://prettypuddleglum.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

Now that you're up on your holiday history and obligations, I charge you to go and get drunk. Please. I will be spending the evening with a group of Baptists, and I must know that someone, somewhere out there, is celebrating the holiday in the solemnity of its due reverence. A great man 207 years ago had a bad night's sleep and a headache, and we owe it to all of humanity and great literature to keep his vigil and mock him for it.

latest music obsession

A few years ago, I received a music recommendation from MP, who'd received it from the inestimable Kelly: Funnel Cloud, by Hem. I purchased the album on one of my summer music sprees (I know this is a world of downloading, but call me old-fashioned: I like to be able to hold the things I own. I like tangibility) and loved it, and subsequently bought two of their previous albums, Rabbit Songs and Eveningland.

But I never got around to seriously listening to those other two albums, until now. And I can't get enough of Rabbit Songs.

This album in particular sports a gorgeous Aaron Copeland influence, full of open chords and fifth intervals and stringed instruments that carry your mind somewhere else. So I love it for that. Lyrically it's gorgeous, and Sally Ellyson's voice is peerless. The other attribute of this work that makes me love it even harder is its authenticity: There is absolutely zero digital screwing around. It's all recorded and produced full-bodied and present, with real orchestral instruments which one of the head members sold most of his possessions to obtain because he believes so strongly in actual, as opposed to digital, music.

Fabulous stuff. Very Americana, delicate and lovely, with a hard bedrock of real life in the lyrics and a longing in the chords. Incredible.

the land I love

On my way home from work the other week, stopped at the intersection of State and the Bayfront Parkway, I was arrested by a revelation that drove itself like Judith's tent peg into my skull. I was lucky the light was a long one.

The typically gray winter day had caught my attention a few minutes previously because of the clouds. Erie clouds are like nowhere else. In my high school days my best friend Hillori and I would spend hours staring up at the clouds and wishing that we could make a living simply painting the daily sky. Each day provided a new panorama of collected particulates and water that did something to set the heart at ease.

That day was no exception. As I left the office I had noticed the heavy cumulus formations hanging low over the city. They stood just far enough apart, like the narrow houses below them, to let the watery winter sunshine slide through the cracks and leak a little daylight on the buildings. What really snagged my attention was how obviously they were lake clouds. You can't see the lake from 12th Street, where I was hunting down the post office, but just looking at the sky, you knew there was a body of water, a big one, somewhere close. The clouds had a saturated shimmer about them that reflected the shallow light like they never do inland.

As I pulled up to the end of State, where the road runs into the dock and the dock drops into the Bay, and waited for the light, I stared at the clouds some more. You could soak in a little sunlight, but you couldn't see any blue. Not from the naked sky, that is. I felt my lungs stop working and barely noticed as I drank in a sight I haven't seen in years, one I once took completely for granted. The underbellies of the clouds were blue.

They were reflecting, in a paler, smokier simulacrum, the water. I thought how the water was supposed to reflect the sky, not the other way around, and blinked back the swift lancing of tears: It was beautiful. In a "perfect circle for infinity," the clouds reflected the water reflecting the clouds, and you couldn't quite tell which one came first. The sky and water go together like a lovers' gaze, absorbed, unending, inseparate.

The light changed, and I shifted gears and turned the car east toward home. Every few seconds I craned my neck to the left to stare at the sky some more, allowing myself for the first time in five years to bask in the sudden sun of joy that swelled up from the pit of my stomach. I love my home. I have always loved my home, and when I ran away from it almost five years ago I abjured that love, having determined never to return. I thought to love the beauty of other places; instead, I stopped noticing beauty. What bowled me over that day, watching the clouds in my rear and side view mirrors, was the realization, dizzying like a breath of free air after sitting for hours in a stuffy closet, that this was the first time in five years I had actually seen something. In hardening my heart against my love of homeland, I stopped seeing. I made myself look, every once in awhile, but I didn't see.

I flashed back to a conversation that Hillori and I frequently shared in our girlhood days, as we awoke to our fierce but particular patriotism and spun theories that explained human history and ruminated on the Civil War. We often said that even if we might not die for America, we would die for Pennsylvania. We would give everything for the soil on which we were born.

In South Bend Meg and I had a friend named Jess who hails from Philadelphia. Jess and I would talk for hours about the awesomeness of Pennsylvania, and Meg often told me, shaking her head, “You Pennsylvania people. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anyone in the world who love their state as much as Pennsylvanians do.”

I hadn’t thought of it as a state-wide phenomenon until then, but I started to take notice after that, and it always seemed to me that Meg was right: We’re crazy in love with our home state, even if we never plan to live there again. We get so excited to run into other Pennsylvanians that we can hardly contain ourselves within our own skin.

It’s weird.

Dustin corroborates, though. He’s the only other person I know who left PA never planning to come back and then came back, and we spent awhile swapping stories and comparing notes. He told me that there’s a Steelers bar in just about every town in the South, and that all of the friends he made in his time there happened to originate in PA. We grinned and patted our people on the back for taking over the world, and sheepishly admitted how happy we are to be back in Western PA.

There’s no explanation for it. Pennsylvania is crumbling, old, and economically depressed. There are no jobs and no money. And yet we come back, and we come back, and we come back; and when we don’t, it seems that we wish we could. As Dustin put it, “If there were jobs here for people with degrees, I don’t think anyone would ever leave. They would just stay here forever.”

I think it has to do with the land itself. There’s something in the soil here that fills you. I find myself looking around as I drive, drawing a deep breath when I lift up mine eyes to the hills, and relaxing into a surge of the peace that only comes from being home. The land grabs you, here. When I agreed with Hillori, long ago, that I would die for my native soil, I meant that in the most literal possible sense. I’d rather hold a handful of Pennsylvania dirt than own an acre of land anywhere else.

Maybe I ate too much of it as a kid. But it’s in the bone, and coming home has brought it out in the blood. When I moved back in October, I thought, panicky, that I wouldn’t stay for long. I didn’t want to be trapped here. I wanted broader horizons and more dramatic vistas. But instead of prison I found freedom, and while I’m still open to living elsewhere in the world, I find myself happier and happier to be here, and minding less and less the thought of a long-term stay. Bigger horizons and broader vistas are just a plane or a road trip away, and I can’t wait to indulge my wanderlust. But the best part of wandering is knowing that at the end, you get to come home. Home is what keeps the wanderer from getting lost.

I don't remember ever being this happy. I love the land, I love my faith, I have two good churches, I have friends, I like my jobs, I'm poor as dirt but scraping by, I'm settling more and more into myself and learning that I don't have anything to prove. I had to leave for awhile, and I had to suffer those growing pains that form the lines around a person's mouth and eyes and are called experience...and I had to come back home. It was the best decision I ever made. I love my life, and I can't wait to see what it brings me next.

* * *

I am holding half an acre
torn from the map of michigan
and folded in this scrap of paper
is the land i grew in

think of every town you've lived in
every room you lay your head
and what is it that you remember

do you carry every sadness with you
every hour your heart was broken
every night the fear and darkness
lay down with you

a man is walking on the highway
a woman stares out at the sea
and light is only now just breaking

so we carry every sadness with us
every hour our hearts were broken
every night the fear and darkness
lay down with us

but i am holding half an acre
torn from the map of michigan
i am carrying this scrap of paper

that can crack the darkest sky wide open
every burden taken from me
every night my heart unfolding
my home

~Hem, "Half Acre"

outrage

The other day my father informed me, his mouth barely suppressing a sadistic glee, that they're making a live-action movie of one of my all-time favorite shows, Cowboy Bebop.

"Really?" I said, trying to decide if I were more skeptical than excited. (I have vaguely formulated opinions that unless Frank Miller is in charge of the project, anime or graphic novel series, in the interest of philanthropy and respect for the arts, are to be left strictly alone.)

"Yeah." The glee began to push its way out the corners of his mouth. "And guess who they're casting as Spike?"

I eyed the evil shining from his eyes. My stomach told me something bad was coming. "Who?"

The glee erupted from his mouth and ranged all over his face like a swarm of beetles. "Keanu Reeves."

I don't really remember the next couple of minutes. In a hazy mental montage, I remember anguish, and screaming, and pulling my hair, and my dad's evil laughter flinging my littls sobs of pain in splatters all over the interior of the car.

Whichever casting director is in charge of that one should do jail time. Casting Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel is like spitting on the Mona Lisa, and someone needs to pay.

Meanwhile there's a special campfire built somewhere for mean people like my dad.

it's the little things

I think I'm allergic to my sweater.

It's like my skin is erupting with fury, a torturous itch, and I get all absentminded and scratch, and then my skin (absurdly sensitive) blossoms into all these truly horrific welts that look like someone beat the tar out of me.

The tag SAYS it's acrylic and wool (I know, I know, acrylic sucks; I don't usually opt for it, but this sweater was pretty and really on sale), and since neither of those usually bothers me, I'm wondering if the wool is angora...I hate angora...

Bah. It's a red sweater, too, which is one of my favorite colors, and now it nicely matches my pink welty complexion.

And I didn't bring a change of clothes to work, of course.

Oh well. Time to haul my itchy ass off to lunch. (Speaking of lunch -- which is leftover chicken and biscuits -- the trick to reheating biscuits is to pop them in the toaster or toaster oven. It's quick and keeps them crisp and flaky instead of turning them all spongy and gross like the microwave does to them.)

I really, really like my new job.

at long, long last...

Sunday, in a quest for ingredients for chicken and biscuits, I prowled through the poultry section of the local grocery store (the better ones were too far away to make driving in the bad weather worth the trouble) looking for a whole cut-up chicken.

But they only carried whole fryers.

I considered, selected a big fat bird, and took it home almost quivering with anticipation.

Yes, ladies and gentleman. The meat cleaver works. I hacked apart a whole chicken with a great big wicked knife, sustaining no damage to either the knife or the cutting board, but plenty of clean, even, desired damage to the chicken, and it was the pure, visceral poetry of a hunter-gatherer's ancestral idea of a grand old time.

memo

The whole city naps under heavy eyelids of snow. The past few days have seen nearly constant snowfall, reminding me of why I love winter. Roads clogged with snow and salt, churning tires, negotiating streetlights (mostly whether or not to run red lights) represent a challenge, and over everything a silence has settled like a hush in a cathedral, but what I love most, this past week, is how winter, more than any other temperate season, throws man's helplessness in the face of nature into stark relief against the blankness of snow. It's nothing drastic. It's ordinary, the everyday necessity of shoveling or plowing out a driveway, leaving earlier to drive to work, maintaining windshield wiper blades, gauging the depth of snow on the road at intersections and turns to anticipate the slide factor and adjust angle and speed accordingly.

When I see the houses drooping under their frozen weight and people trudging up and down the street in coats and trees holding armfuls of snow like piled laundry, I think it could be any decade from the early twentieth century to the present. Our machines may have grown a little more sophisticated over the past century, but not that much. We can't stop the snowfall. We can't stop the wind blowing. We can't stop the cold. In our struggle to keep roads clear and houses warm, we engage with one of the oldest struggles in the northern climes of human history. Winter is timeless.

This morning after my rush to get to work on time (this new earlier-bird schedule is not settling in well; my circadian rhythm is undergoing indigestion) I reached into the backseat and realized I'd forgotten my shoes. Yesterday evening during a fit of housecleaning I'd tossed them in the coat closet, and proven the "out of sight, out of mind" adage in the fullness of its truth. So today I'm keeping my feet under the desk to hide my fashion crime of wearing brown sneakery lace-ups with black dress pants. Fortunately there isn't a lot of client traffic in the office today, and I work mostly with men.

Speaking of circadian indigestion, my eyes have reached that stage of tiredness where I'm seeing through a film. It's like I'm not wearing glasses, wearing glasses. Also I think that I've drunk so much coffee in the past week that one day when they do my autopsy, they'll find a hole in my stomach like the bottom of a rusted-out can, and coffee sloshing in my veins instead of blood.

I don't expect to get a tremendous amount of rest this week -- I close at Borders three nights, and the other two are booked up with social fun. John said the other day that he's glad I'm out and about so much, because I used to be at home all the time in Michigan. Now I hardly ever see the inside of the trailer -- which saves on the heating bill. I come from a tight-fisted family of penguins. We never turn the heat up, instead relying on old-fashioned methods like sweaters, multiple layers, afghans and electric blankets. (Thank God for the electric blanket Mom gave me -- that bedroom is as cold as the proverbial witch's ear and Simon doesn't generate an appreciable amount of body heat.)

So yes, life is full and busy, and I am tired but happy. (It doesn't help that even after working for fifteen hours I have to take a little down time before falling asleep, which usually involves reading. But necessity is the mother of discipline, so I'm not worried.) I would only like a little time to take down the Christmas tree...it's out of season, and too dried up to plug in without burning down the trailer.

Almost everything is going splendidly. I would categorize life right now as "good."

Weirdly, I don't feel much like blogging. I've spent a lot of time catching up for real and more or less in person (or on the phone) with friends.

I'm enjoying this.

But still -- I have a lot of friends in the blogosphere, so here's to you, faithful readers! Forgive my temporary silence as I stretch my soul a little bit and begin to notice things like the way the clouds reflect the lake even on overcast days.

Winter is beautiful, and I am fairly content.

today's blinding revelation

It's very simple. I don't know why it didn't occur to me in such simple terms before.

I was talking with the office paralegal this morning, who, like me, is a book enthusiast and an emotional barometer for the immediate environment. (Most of my life struggles can be summed up in adapting to, and managing, deep and hyper sensitivity.) She said this great thing:

"It all boils down to two things. I know this is simplistic, but here it is: It all boils down to love and fear."

Evidently East of Eden expouds greatly upon this theme, so now I must pull it out of the garage and read it. (And by "now" I mean "sooner than my retirement"; that queue never gets shorter.)

So I've been going through the part of my mind that remains active and busy even when the rest of it is engaged in other tasks, sorting out the goods and evils I know or have read about, and it can all be categorized under love or fear. Because those are truly opposite. Which is why the Bible says, "Perfect love drives out all fear." The two can coexist, but love in its perfection knows no fear. Fear is the opposite of love. Not hate; hate is equal parts love and fear. Even the seemingly neutral concept of indifference relates to fear.

I read once in The Blue Castle (possibly my favorite book of all time, ever, period) that "fear is the original sin." I disagreed for a long time, but, upon reflection, it's not far off. The temptation presented to Eve in the garden was the enticement of knowledge, and she responded in fear of ignorance rather than love of God -- perhaps the suspicion that God was holding out, the nagging feeling that being like God would be better than simply living in the perfection of His love.

(The Shack posits that independence was the original sin, and I concur with that. But fear, in many cases -- and I'm not talking the healthy kind of independence where kids grow up and leave home, or a country refuses to bow to a monarchy; independence is a convoluted concept -- is the root of the desire for independence.)

Today my life philosophy is this:

Everything boils down to love and fear. There is nothing else.

I've been pondering a lot lately on how much I live in fear, mostly the fear of offending others or the fear of driving them away, the fear of doing something wrong in how I relate to others and winding up alone forever. I've been getting tired of it, and realizing that over the past few years my coming-of-age experiences have helped in paring away a lot of my other fears. It's kind of neat to see the progress over time -- usually I'm more adept at focusing on the failures. It heartens me in preparing to lay siege to these particularly stubborn holdouts.

We'll see what love and stubborn choice can do.

(Re)Tales

Every time I sit down to blog lately I get ridiculously tired.

I had forgotten how completely retail takes over a person's life. Anytime I'm not working I'm sleeping, or preparing to sleep. My favorite time of day happens when I come home, usually at an ungodly hour of the evening, to brew a cup of herbal tea and curl up in bed with the electric blanket cooking the sheets and the headboard smothered in pillows to read for an hour or so before surrendering to unconsciousness.

Christmas doesn't mark the end of the holiday shopping season; it generally lasts well into January, and this year has seen a lot more traffic than even my managers expected. On New Year's Day I dragged myself to work before the store opened at 11:00 a.m. and through a bleary fog I saw people sitting in their cars, waiting. Shouldn't you people be in bed with a hangover? I thought with as much incredulity as my tiredness allowed me to muster. In the few minutes before we unlocked the doors people started lining up, pressing their faces to the glass and staring at us, and in those minutes I objectively hated all of humanity. They looked about to chew their way through the doors just to get inside...and when we let them in (cracking jokes about getting trampled and killed), they bought things like...WWF books. As one of my coworkers said, after our first customer left with his wrestling book safely in hand, "...Really? You had to get out of bed on New Year's Day and make this emergency purchase and it's a WWF book? Really?"

My karma took a stand against me this past week: Anytime I found myself behind the registers, helping cash people out, I got all the evil customers. The company changed its return policy a few months ago, eliminating all returns except those with receipts. This only makes sense to me. In a big store, with tons of media retailers all over the place, people have plenty of opportunities simply to rip something off the shelves and return it (hello, Garden State), or buy a used book or CD and bring it back to our store to make money. Sure, this might not always be the case, but the policy is certainly understandable -- and not uncommon.

But the company might as well have announced that returns must be accompanied by ritual child sacrifice for as reasonably as my customers took it. I seriously watched them devolve a few links in the chain when I patiently explained that they couldn't return merchandise without a receipt. Their faces collapsed into simian snarls and all their words ran together: WhaddayameanIcan'treturnthis? [Breath] ThiswasaGIFThowcouldIhaveaRECEIPT? [Breath] ItwaspurchasedHEREaWEEKagoIcan'tBELIEVEthiscan'tyouCHECK? [Breath] And then, invariably, my favorite: DoyouhaveanyideahowmuchmoneyISPENDhere?

Unfortunately I'm not exactly allowed to respond with things like, "Do you have any idea how much I don't care?" Or, "I am a leeetle cog in a biiiiig machine. I can't do anything for you."

So of course I always delivered the policy politely and professionally, and for good PR I called up the managers and let them handle it when people got really upset. Since just about everyone got really upset -- these people seemed to wait to come to my register, and mine alone: I, the high priestess presiding over the altar of the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey -- after a few hours of this I stalked out from behind the registers and growled at one of my managers, "I need a drink. Of something strong."

"Like...coffee?" she asked.

"No. Like 80 proof."

I can't quite figure it, but the pre- and immediately post-Christmas shoppers render the idea of peace on earth fairly incongruous, while the New Year's crowd so far has bounced in cheerily like children released to the playground. Admittedly tired from the long hours, I nonetheless enjoy this spirit of shopping, as ridiculous as I find all the traffic (don't these people have jobs? And if they don't, why are they buying books?). A certain jocularity pervades the atmosphere -- for the most part. Do people really like New Year's so much? I don't doubt that everyone is glad to bid 2008 farewell (or maybe not farewell, exactly), but this strikes me as odd. New Year's generally doesn't affect me all that much. Once I decided to stop living in guilt, I didn't really care about New Year's one way or the other, except for Mom's amazing pork and sauerkraut dinner which appears to be traditional among German or Polish Americans. But other people seem to revel in the fresh start, the optimism, the buoyant hope that someone invented at some point in history, that a new year means better things.

It's not that I don't believe any of that myself; it's that I don't know where this hope received its particular foundation. I find it enjoyable, certainly, and I too love the start of the new, the finish of the old, the shaking out of the yearly cycle like a slightly tired tablecloth snapped free of its crumbs and settled back in freshness over the table. I just find it peculiar. Human beings seem generally given to hope, whether or not there's any reason for it. I like this. I still find it strange.

In any event, I also rediscovered the disarming power of kindness. Mean, nasty, grumpy, rude people I can handle -- I usually brace myself for it before walking in the door. I might get thin-lipped, tight-jawed, rigid with anger and stress (Look, I didn't make the policy, okay? Would you mind not yelling at me? Thank you so much), but I take it pretty much in stride. What can you do? As Pete says in The Muppets Take Manhattan, "Peoples is peoples." Which usually means that peoples is jerks. No surprise there. So you deal. All in a day's work.

But kindness? It comes completely out of left field and launches a javelin in the tear ducts. The other day as I rang people up at the registers, a man in his thirties came up and requested a DVD pack being held for him there (our box sets are kept locked in glass cases to which only staff have keys. Customers are not permitted to carry the box sets around the store with them. So when I remove a box set for someone and they reach for it, I always smile and say, "I'll be happy to put that up at the register for you. What name shall I put on it?" This isn't hard to interpret, right? But some people don't, so then, still smiling, I say, "No, actually, I have to put this up at the register for you. What name would you like me to put on it?" This is received more graciously than I would ordinarily expect). As I retrieved it and started to ring it up, I noticed that it had an old, old sale price sticker on it -- twenty dollars less than the list price -- which shouldn't have been there, and, even though the DVDs have been on sale, the new sale price is more than the old one.

Shit, I thought; I dragged the preparation for rudeness up from my gut and radioed a manager before the guy could cause any fuss. The answer I got didn't surprise me -- the usual, Try to explain the policy first. I raised my eyes to him and started to say, with palpable despair, "Sir, this sale price is an old one that shouldn't have been left here..."

And he waved his hand, sympathy all over his face. "Don't worry about it," he said softly -- I must really have looked upset -- "I didn't think that was right. I'll just take it for what it's ringing up as now."

Right there, for the first time since I started that job, I felt, to my overwhelming horror, tears begin a sudden swim in my eyes. I blinked hard and focused intensely on the box set as I deactivated the security tag. "Thank you," I said.

"No problem," he said.

For some reason, the rest of the day was great. Not smooth, necessarily, but peaceful. You don't expect people to be nice. It catches you totally off guard. Most of the time people seem to think we retail workers live at the store -- maybe we sleep curled up in our lockers in the back room, but surely we don't have lives. We are the omniscient automatons personally responsible for all the store's doings. And yet, after New Year's, I've experienced a lot of jocularity, understanding, sympathy and good manners.

Maybe everyone's just glad Christmas is over.

So the new job starts Monday, I'm enjoying this job, have managed to keep myself out of trollery, and look forward to a return to a more normal schedule. I keep praying about the specifics of my future and keep getting Wait as a response, so I'm casting about for ways to enjoy, and make good use of, what I'm doing now. There's a certain relief to being absurdly busy. Also to listening to music again. Simon's not a fan -- the house usually isn't this loud -- but he'll live. He's a remarkably adaptable feline. And I find myself quite grateful for my surviving houseplants who have stuck stubbornly by me through all the winters -- and springs, and summers, and autumns -- of my discontent. Unsurprisingly, they're all desert plants.

To my delight, I noticed the other day that one of my jades, which I bought at Aldi three and a half years ago -- eight little cutlets sprouting in a circle in a tiny pot -- has, in addition to growing tall, begun to sport woody stems. And, though the watering hasn't been frequent in the past year, it looks happy.

I like green and growing things. I miss pottering around in dirt. Well. Once I get my financial feet back under me, we'll see about restarting my indoor garden. A house full of plants has richer air and brighter light.