hitting stride

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
—Joan Didion, from "Why I Write"

This week I exchanged sleep for doing things. It was great (at least, until I collapsed this weekend). But I did do many things, among them having long talks with friends in New York and the Chi, making a brief WNUR return, starting a NEW BLOG, drinking spoiled milk, riding my bike all around town, dinner partying + photo perusing, and running.

This last item has got me particularly excited, as 10+ years ago I'd given up on ever being able to run seriously. Chronic stress fractures, vomiting, general psychic distress, etc—it'd become a very unpleasant thing that I avoided as much as possible, outside of conditioning drills (high school) and running down trains/buses/planes (post-hs). And my failure at "being a runner" was made worse by the fact that running is pretty much the same as breathing for my dad's side of the family: something you do naturally, without thinking (definitely without fretting), and which you only stop doing when your body shuts down completely.

[Unofficial family motto: Steve Prefontaine's "A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts."] Christ on a cracker that's a lot to deal with.

Anyway, all of this exposition is meant to explain the shock/joy I felt on Wednesday, when I went outside to take my nightly pre-bedtime walk, and decided just to see what would happen if I ran instead.

western winds

I can't remember a fall that has blown in as dramatically as this one, weather-wise (e.g. me almost being knocked off my bike multiple times by the wind) or event-wise: an amazing trip to Glacier National Park, major projects at work cropping up, and the deaths of a best friend's remarkable grandparents. So far I seem to be coping by taking ridiculously long walks and eating a lot of flax-laced granola.

for keeps and a single day

Fell in love with Chicago this past week. I'm imagining it's in the way that you can fall in love with someone you've been married to for a bit, on an unremarkable afternoon, when you glance up from your newspaper and see them pressing a pen against their mouth, their eyes narrowed in concentration as they attempt to remember what to add to the grocery list. And there's something about the way the sunlight is slanting through the dirty window and across their face, and BAM, that's it, that's all it is and all you want for the foreseeable future.

at home

I'm in the process of moving apartments right now, and as a result I've been fairly fixated on the topic of homes—especially because for the very first time I'm going to be living alone. ALL ALONE. I believe my feelings on this prospect can be best illustrated by a very eloquent interrogative blend which I've only just coined: eek/hooray?

But disregarding the tiny erratic stabs of terror (ohmygod I'm going to live alone forever and never get married or have children or grandchildren and no one will ever love me except the 42 million cats I'll have except I'm allergic to cats and I'm too anal to have a dog and I hate all other pets so it's just going to be me and my 3 fake upside-down birds alone forever), I'm very excited about putting together a space that is as close to exactly right as I can get. I've been looking through a lot of home decorating-ish books (this one and this one are current faves), and my friend Sarah was also kind enough to lend me the Apartment Therapy "8 Step Home Cure", which I've been devouring. I'm maybe a little too obsessed, but it's full of very cogent thoughts on the connections between our physical living space and our emotional/psychological lives.

Totally fascinating stuff! At least to me, since I've learned (usually the hard way) post-leaving my parents' house that the qualities of the place I live in hold great sway over my mood, behavior, actions, etc.

sinuses & psalms

Before saying anything else, I'd like to celebrate something very special in the life of this (neglected) blog: FIRST POST EVER WRITTEN OUTDOORS!! Namely, on my back porch. With my laptop plugged into an extension cord snaking out the back door, from which I had to unplug the oven and refrigerator in order to use. Luckily, the whole rotting food thing is good motivation for finishing quickly and taking a walk....

I drove home-home this past weekend (i.e. to my parents' house) for the first time since December. Despite having a horrible sinus infection that gave me swollen glands and partygirl voice, it was a really really good trip: I got to see so many home friends, and go to one of my best friends' sister's wedding (vineyard + sparklers + pig roast!!). It was also very good for reminding me that Iowa is so beautiful in late spring, and for making me think hard about home and homecoming and all of that for the first time in a long while.

I've been interested for a very long time in the connection between people and place; most specifically, in how landscape affects and shapes American consciousness.

long time traveling

Did I think it would abide as it was forever
all that time ago the turned earth in the old garden
where I stood in spring remembering spring in another place
that had ceased to exist and the dug roots kept giving up
their black tokens their coins and bone buttons and shoe nails
made by hands and bits of plates as the thin clouds
of that season slipped past gray branches on which the early
white petals were catching their light and I thought I knew
something of age then my own age which had conveyed me
to there and the ages of the trees and the walls and houses
from before my coming and the age of the new seeds as I
set each one in the ground to begin to remember
what to become and the order in which to return
and even the other age into which I was passing
all the time while I was thinking of something different
"The Furrow," W. S. Merwin (1997)

I've been carrying around this poem in my brain-pocket (side note: a quick Googling reveals that actual brain pockets exist!!) since April 23rd, when it was featured as Knopf's "Poem-A-Day" during National Poetry Month. Spring has always been my most restless and poignant season, and my most uncomfortable-feeling season as a result. If summer is a humid half-sleep, fall a tender sooty smudge, and winter a breath so clear it burns, then spring is a gray foal on a gray day lurching to its feet, hooves ready to leap up past the pasture and into the sky.

This year spring feels especially this way, mostly I think because I've spent 13/16 days of May traveling: the first 11 days in Europe (visiting wonderful expat college friends in the UK, Berlin, and Poland), and the past 2 days in my home state of eye-oh-dubyuh-ay for my sister's college graduation.

metaphorically speaking...

*note: part of this post was written last night before I accidentally fell asleep, so plz ignore any weird time jumping

An excellent jam-packed weekend is currently coming to a close as I sit in bed awkwardly typing this, a mug of tea precariously balanced against my solar plexus and my elbow on a stack of books + catalogues. My only wish is that it were warm enough to have the window open. But still! I do believe that Spring (when it's not making me sneeze/puffing up my eyes very attractively--due to, as I found out this evening, city landscapers' overuse of highly-allergenic trees) is waking me up. AND this coming week is bringing all sorts of bestie friends to me from all over the world! Have been feeling really alive lately, overall.

Have also been on a Nabokov kick--was reading his short stories for awhile and am now halfway through Speak, Memory (his autobiography). I'd been meaning to read the latter for a really long time, having had it recommended to me by multiple teachers and friends and random acquaintances, and now I understand why: it's fucking brilliant (for a variety of reasons I won't go into now, bc really, does the internet need another amateur book review?).

So yes, I'm loving Speak, Memory because it's a universal classic. But there is also something about Nabokov's writing that has always personally clicked with me; mostly, I think it is his lyricism and use of image, through which he somehow manages to dilate the reader's mind in a very precise way--each of his best metaphors I think can be seen as very tiny, carefully-chosen apertures that, when peered through by the reader, open (paradoxically) onto a breathtakingly-wide field of view.