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December 29th, 2009

lunali

11:58 am - A little time to follow that unbroken line Wake up. Go back to sleep. Wake up. Lie in bed in a nest of warm blankets and soft pillows, listening to the quiet world. Get up. Home alone. Start laundry. Do yoga and sit-ups in the sunny living room. Throw "The Hazards of Love" into the cd player. Arrange a pine bough in the windowsill, remember Ryan carrying it to me in his teeth when we stopped at Rocky Arbor State Park yesterday. Start the water boiling. Clean the french press. Put dishes away. Cut a slice of fruitcake. Email, chat with Patrick, sing, eat, drink coffee, put clothes in dryer. When the album finishes, take a shower. Watch the temperature inch from three degrees to eight degrees. Think about running errands in the cold. Think about cleaning the house. Think about planning lessons. Comb hair. Put in a Lucinda Williams cd, sing along, enjoy how sad it is. Eat a slice of two-year old cheddar. Run tongue over what might be cavity, wonder what a cavity feels like, try to remember last visit to dentist. Take pictures of coffee cup and cobwebs and morning sun. Update journal. Noon. Get to work. Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Lucinda Williams

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December 27th, 2009

lunali

07:06 pm - you're a criminal as long as you're mine Ridiculously glittery snow. A light dusting above a frozen shelf that my feet break through every few steps. A tiny shrew cavorts in the dim sunlight, leaving a tiny trail around its burrow. I am atrophied and stiff, full of wine and pie and baked eggplant. I avoid caffeine so to sleep easier and escape boredom. My sister and I planned our lessons in a coffee shop where I ran in to two of my best high school friends, one of whom is leaving for a five-month Southeast Asia trip today, the other who I haven't seen in probably two years but said she had just found a picture of us on her sixteenth birthday. We were on the beach in April, looking overly windswept and impossibly young. ( A Year in First Lines, and 2009 Books )

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December 25th, 2009

lunali

07:46 pm - The world is alive now, in and outside our home Its a dingy rainy Christmas this year, but I don't much mind being snowed/slushed/frozen in here. My siblings are home, and my sister brought her pug puppy, who has provided hours of entertainment and conversation for a family that tends to be lacking in both. Last night Ryan stole me away and took me to his grandmother's house, where I expected to go sledding but instead found myself introduced to a huge portion of his extended family. We guzzled shrimp and wine and laughed and teased each other. Everyone opened presents and watched a slide-show of family photos that his grandfather, who died last week, had taken at previous Christmases. It was a warm, joyful, and utterly normal Midwestern affair even as the wind howled and shook the windows. I leaned on to his shoulder and told him I loved being in a room with so many people being happy. My family sits quietly and reads. Our celebrations are brief and small, and barely any of our old traditions continue now. To his many uncles and aunts and cousins Ryan introduced me as his best friend, or his very good friend, or his roommate. All of which probably intoned girlfriend, but no matter, I was truly touched because I love him profusely and was so glad he had taken me as his best friend to meet all his family. In the dark on the slippery drive home he held my hand between his. It is hard to get over how different things are now than they were a year ago. I'm traveled, worn, experienced. I feel old sometimes, more often than I ever have before. I feel like a handkerchief made thin by being carried so far; I am soft with patience but still not torn or threadbare or unwilling to continue on. Of course there are things to look forward to, but after a period of such intense change (traveling, new house, new full-time job, relationships settling or resettling in to their comfortable niches) it is difficult to imagine more changes. It is difficult to see that there are more surprises ahead. But there are! There must be! Wow! Current Music: Fleet Foxes

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December 23rd, 2009

lunali

07:58 pm - a clean dance floor gives the best room to explore Bags are a really important aspect of life, I don't have many but I'm sentimental about the ones I use. That totebag carried my school books in Australia and smuggled my liquor in Yellowstone, I had to stitch it up numerous times. That purse was a gift after a long trip and has carried all my notebooks. This backpack has been a constant companion since high-school, taking me through dozens of sleepovers, weekends home, and road-trips. My new thrift-store messenger bag did not budge as I biked this fall, and carries my new school books, my shoes, my thermos. Most bags we throw away almost instantly, but we carry ourselves inside them. Do you have physical reactions to bad news? My face and chest blush when I feel it coming, my heart thuds a distant panic. I don't think I quite believe it, because I am driven to comprehend, to react appropriately, to hide my emotions. Even when I can be honest, ask the right questions, its an odd sensation to feel that up-swell inside my body. No, we can't kiss anymore. No, we should not dig holes in the prairie. I am sad for having lost something, but I feel jittery with newness. Sometimes bad news is good news because through it we become free.

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December 21st, 2009

lunali

03:56 pm - thanks for poignancy, nature Often I scoff at writing that describes characters with lightning flashing from their eyes, who tremble upon meeting, who shiver at one anothers words or glances. That's not for real! Have you ever met someone who has produced such an effect on you? Last night I was standing in front of a person, rather close, and when they spoke I felt a feeling spread over my back and neck, as if the voice was physically touching my skin. It felt like a blush or a sudden bloom of goosebumps, and also a cellular movement, as of plants toward light. What to think about that? What, or how often. Anyway, the morning’s musings. Ginger cake is baking, the smell of coffee lingers. The cutting board has traces of beet juice, scraps of white onion and yellow ginger peel. Candied walnuts and clementines loll sweetly on the kitchen table. Outside, on this shortest day, the sun does not shine through a pearl haze, as it did yesterday. The snow has settled like peeling lead paint, footprints and bike tracks and the hop-skip tracks of squirrels lie ever so slightly scuffed. I too lie here, barefoot, tender as dawnlight. Watching the thin sky as winter slouches past. Waiting for the mail. Enjoying slow waking – becoming aware of one’s own body first, the collection of limbs, clothes bunched up on sleep-squashy skin, drying films of fluid around eyes and mouth, the full bladder, the filling lungs. Then the sensation of mattress and blankets, of warmth, comfort. Then, in ever increasing rings of awareness, feeling the presence of others in the room, or house. The walls and rooms of the house. The upstairs neighbors, the next-door neighbors, the city. Only then do the affairs of the rest of the world tiptoe onto my pillowcase, and by then they cannot bother me. Every other morning of the week, the world tromps in through the door of consciousness, shaking its coat, demanding its papers be put in order and a hundred other things, and I am working immediately upon waking. Current Music: Roy Orbison, then Patti Smith

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December 17th, 2009

lunali

03:41 pm - hung in lazy underhand manner Living in a continual state of change makes me feel most like myself. It puts me in touch with the part of me that is continual wonder, gladness, openness, and the necessary calmness. I take my commutes with open eyes, my walks with open strides. This year I have ranged far and been all over, I have been down and out, been down, been lucky, been closed off and exhausted. Something is always changing, always tugging on my sleeve and giving me a gentle shove. The thrill of the chill of winter has, strangely, put me on an even keel. Blizzards mean camaraderie. Busses come without any regard for schedules, meaning they simply come "eventually" if at all. The bus stops are crowded with regulars anticipating their missed connections and others, choosing not to drive. Everyone crowds in and tries to shuffle off the cold, watching as cars slide past and bikes plow through the streets loud with the crunch of snow. The first snowfall is always soundless, a hush nearly deafening. The next day is a sloppy hum of a hundred late commuters, alone in their cars, clenching their jaws. Today steam rose from the choppy top of Lake Calhoun. Chimneys breathed pink smoke, steam silhoutted in rose and violet as it spiralled up against the December sunrise. Frost and dry snow flashed in the below-zero light. A few nights ago, upon the first snow-fall, I announced my intentions to take a nighttime snow walk. "Careful!" Ryan cautioned, "People might think you like it here!" Current Music: Fleet Foxes

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