This time I'm off into the wild blue yonder...

We're leaving New York. Strangely, knowing that has helped me enjoy the craziness of this place more for the past couple of weeks.

I'm still figuring many things out. I feel like I have lost a lot in this place and in the past eight months. But, other things have been gained and some of what was lost is hopefully recoverable, reparable, renewable. In any case, I've learned a lot about gilt and guilt and how to live with both. So many of the lessons of New York are hard. I learn to push and to speak loudly when I'd rather be quiet. I learn to harden and walk away.

This place isn't the person I want to be. It doesn't offer the life I want to cultivate.

So I am glad to be moving to a small place full of green and snow and apples. We'll see what will become there. I don't have to become the next big thing by fifteen minutes from now.

I guess the best thing though is that this year has given me one really *good* lesson. I give myself permission. To write. To say no. To say yes. To email strangers on business. To ask what you really mean. To believe the impossible on a daily basis. To have opinions that aren't agreement. Bending like a reed is not the only way to be. I think this notion and its acceptance will help a lot of things in any place.

Gratitude smoothes out the grit and I am suffused with springtime anticipation of this next adventure. One that I hope won't just be a jarring interlude but a life.

I am the tiny witness

Last night I tuned out as candidates argued. I felt guilty but not engaged. On the walk home, I got wound back into the vividness of life when I learned that a dear friend of mine brought new life into this world. (Congratulations and Wow and more than I can say.)

This morning I was by turns delayed, confused, side tracked, and trapped underground on my way to work. I never even made it in time to teach my first class. Hundreds of us were interrupted this morning because of an "incident" on a particular subway line. Whispers of speculation accompanied the groans of protest all along the city. When I found my way to my quiet office, I found out what happened. A man jumped in front of a 1 train in the dark morning today. He died.

Then I taught my class and went home. But as I go about my Tuesday afternoon, I am acutely aware that things are going on that are bigger than my own concerns. Humbled, awed, and overwhelmed is the only way I can go through this life.  Perspective makes me know that I am small, but I am grateful.

How are you?

Into the labyrinth

I've not posted in far too long. Many things have happened. I'll bullet point the recap and try to remember if anyone is reading.

-I got the degree. Whoa. Ph.D.

Turns out there is an upshot to this one. My mood has been generally much better since finishing. I hadn't known how heavy it was to carry this multi-year process all the time. I also think about more things now and feel like I can change directions in my life. It is more freedom than I've ever had as an adult (fake adult really).

-Moving to NYC

I barely know what to say about this one since it still a relatively unknown phenomenon. The move happens in 6 days. I'm stoked as all get out for about 50 dozen reasons.

-Spiritual renewal and inspiration

This began on my last day of official work for the summer though it had been germinating before then. My bursts of energy towards spirituality happen periodically and most often during summers. Each time I progress a little further, but this time I'm not getting derailed by fear or anxiety. This is a huge step.

That's the background. We'll see what happens next. As for the inside of my mind right now, it is a bit too busy and a bit too naked for public consumption right now. Check back soon. I have a feeling stuff is happening.

What oughta be famous won't be

There are so many patterns that I see that I do not feel like I can ever say. What you think of as pricelessly unique has a near clone in three other states (in the US or of matter, take your pick).

I don't even know why this makes me angry tonight. It does though.

There are so many people chasing down a life: a good life, or an interesting one, or even just one that they think has a reasonable chance of some paltry amount of self-expression or stretching past the age of 60.

For every room full of beautiful people (or smart ones) there are a lot more flaming wrecks or quiet desperations than landings that stick.

I don't see much logic in it. It isn't that the most talent wins or that the character sheet with the most dots on it gets to be happy.

I hope there isn't a reason you haven't called.

Some sketches.

Taste, competence, and a brain that hits like brass knuckles, wrapped up with a glorious face and lovely figure. Struggling and hitting her potential against a brick wall with not enough talking and too much listening. I see how much more she does with less than certain household names (in our small circles). I see the same lips and cheeks and challenge, but only one of them has an eccentric empire. The only thing that I can see that my friend lacks, in this particular instance, is vanity (which has significantly derailed the lives of boatloads of other acquaintances). How is that the key?

Another soul. He rebuilding himself because he doesn't actually want to die of bad choices at the guttering end of youth. Still, he knows his business from ant to ant farm to the factory that builds ant farms and the strange little man who thought it all up. I know a newcomer to the same world who fell into it sideways (smelling like a bad diner and tragedy) whose reputation has a certain hot air balloon quality. This house of cards has money (or maybe it is debt) and trust and chances that the skillful not-quite-anti-hero will never have. He has dried beans.

I don't know. The woman I know with the best luck in terms of resources: social skills, code switching, raw IQ, amazing will power, and make-a-sucker-walk-off-a-sheer-cliff good looks, is miserable. All. of. the. time. Stalled and treading water in a field that is probably collapsing with terrible taste in men. So many people have significantly terrible taste in men.

Eh. I probably shouldn't be writing any of these things. People might recognize themselves or be sad that they don't. I know plenty of floundering individuals that keep their cross-hairs aimed at their own two left feet. Yeah. I think it.

Anyhow. Uncertainty has shaken me up this week, but so has inertia. I have opinions about it all, but mostly I won't tell.

On some days I am still five years old, but, at least now, I have better coordination.

So, I live for Saturday mornings. At least when life is good, I do. Today felt like a bit of a challenge because I wanted an adventure but had some real limitations to work around.

1. I am broke. Yesterday my health savings account did not have enough funds to pay for a routine maintenance visit. I had to say an unexpected goodbye to $140. Today is not the day for random Halloween shopping.

2. It is still hot here. I kept hoping that since the daily highs are no longer above ninety degrees Farenheit that it will actually be pleasant to be outside more of the day. When I attempted stepping out in the eight-eight degree day, it felt Very Bad ™: not a good time to take a random photography ramble.

3. Solo adventuring is harder. My dearest love has to write a book. The deadlines are looming. This has a recurring limitation since the book's inception. The thing about a book project is that the author has to research, write, and edit every single page. I am learning a lot about entertaining myself (and I thought I was good before).

After failing to enjoy even thirty seconds of the great outdoors I returned home to my craft closet. Fall is a good time for crafting and I usually want to do about forty more craft projects a month than I have time to do. A quick rummage revealed two things. 1. My craft closet is a total disastermess. 2. Ooh, I have lots of cool stuff to play with!

What inspired me first was a random rescue from my hometown. When my dad bought a ramshackle house next door to his (for a price that is so low I would probably be assassinated by the cheapness Black Ops team for revealing it on the Internets) it was not entirely devoid of random junk. I found kinda neat looking beat up and very dirty old box. When I picked it up, I had the idea that I would send it to my artist friend up [http://brokenumbrella.com] in Pennsylvania so she could cannibalize it into a shadow box or who knows what. I am probably a bad friend for not yet sending it, but when it is still being squished between needle felting supplies and a box of my grandma's vintage wrapping papers, it is time to be re-rescued and finally crafted.

The box looked grim. At once point it had been a lovely stationary or jewelry box made of heavy cardboard but covered in a thin embossed leather-like paper in darkened mint and gold. Many types and colors of dirt, dust, and crust were clinging to it. I saw one scraped area and one set of small punctures right on top of the liftable lid. I had to see what would come off through a few rounds of gentle cleaning with some canned air, one wet cloth and one dry cloth.

Here's where it stands at this point. A lot cleaner, but still with some tricky repair issues.



I'm stopping temporarily at this point. After doing a bit of research on how people have fixed and re-lined various jewelry boxes in the past, it becomes clear that I have too many jobs and too many options to plunge ahead with no plan. Here's what I have to decide.

1. How do I fix the loosening of the paper on the back of the box? This paper layer holds the lid on and is currently tucked in too beautifully at the bottom to simply cut and re-affix entirely. I need to glue what is loose without taking apart to much of what isn't broken.



2. How much of the lid damage do I want to hide? I can either simply add on a new beautiful complete layer to the top and hide the punctures and abrasions but also the pretty patina of color and embossing, or I can go for a more collage look.



3. What will be the new destiny of this box? What purpose? What aesthetic?

Time for lunch and thinking and work. The next installment will hopefully answer some of these questions.

for the artists, freaks, workaholics, poets, academics, bums or dreamers

So, I've had a few really interesting conversations lately that spark some questions in my mind. I'm curious about what is happening with all of the smart, artistic, awesome people I know in terms of their careers. But that's not enough, I also want to know what's happening with my field, my generation, and all sorts of people that are living right now.



I have some thoughts as well as questions, but I don't want to put my ideas in your head right before asking you some questions.



Since I want to know some pretty personal stuff without having to attach names to answers, I made a survey.



Here's the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7FRQXBR



Maybe I'm not the only person who wants to know.

I enjoyed an art fair in Minneapolis. Here are a few pictures by Jay Long whose art pleased me greatly at this above average art fair.



This art fair had a booth selling deep fried cheese curd. Obviously, I ate the deliciousness. No regrets. None.

I offended an artist accidentally when I mentioned that I thought his style of art would lend itself well to the creation of a tarot deck. Ah well. Learning. Sometimes I forget that many things that are pleasant, dear, or interesting to me can be a bit scary or offputting to folks.

Outdoor celebrations of art and looking and being delight me. Seeing people's dogs, tattoos, children, facial expressions, and choices good and bad take my brain to a good place.

really using the second person

A warning: True is tinsel and lies that bad men say. Similarly, true is also the base of a tree as it holds or the breeze of the perfect day (in a car in England racing through old roads near Glastonbury, holding a blue stone).

I am about to quote someone else's words. The writer uses true as he means it. Perhaps not as you or I do. As with reality, artist, normal, rebel, magic, and other kaleidescopic ideas.

Rebellion is not a single act, or a pose, a phase that you go through where you listen to slightly louder music and dress in colors that clash slightly more than normal. Rebellion is a path. It demands that you question everything-how you've been educated, the social structures around you, the government, the media, gender relations, what's expected of you by others, what you've expected of yourself, how you spend your time, what you consume, where you've been, and most of all, where you're going. For me, rebellion that is content only with political radicalism is missing a large part of the picture. Any true radicalism has to extend itself to the way that reality itself is constructed. Rebellion has to take itself all the way to the scheme of manifestation itself, to the writing on the walls of eternity. Anything else is missing the forest for the trees.

A true rebel has to be an artist, somebody who can not only point out the weak points and contradictions in the system, but can also propose something better, and then guard its passage into manifestation That, to me, means magic. -- Christian Sedman

Caught in a massive thunderstorm in a sculpture park. A house lifted by art and strings. Warm wooden spheres in a boat. Melted car. Also, the shelter of good food from the warm rains and a boat upside down to the ceiling.

For me, this is a reminder. I want to be and do, rather than whine. None of it (the expectations) matters. All of it (the possibilities) matters.

I do not want to be the scarecrow/Cassandra (I'd rather start a book club)

I do have opinions. I'm only sharing some of them, but who knows if I share the right ones with the right people. Which hard things get said? Which easy ones?

When I am reaching out to untie a string, I do not strive.

My town is shaped like a chain of figure eights. They overlap predictably/constantly. Hipster. Tattoo. Drunk mess. Interesting haircut. False revelation. Fucking. Occasionally listenable soundtrack. This is not my life, but I see it all the time.

My life: Teach. Judge. Give up on humanity. Grade. Escape. Bad wrists. Good talks. Judge. Hope. Write. Withold. Procrastinate. Cuddle. Sleep.

It is hard to begin something new (with my whole being) after so many false starts. Changing my life is hard because I know it is mine, and that is weighty.

Nonetheless.

I want to grow and be more. Learn to still and relax more fully. Share with new people. Put tiny paper futures and possibilities out in the world (that ignored them last year). Create new and different possibilities that are more empowered. Most of all I want to finish and defend. I want my life to be more mine once the degree has been earned; it feels wrong to do any sort of change at all that could delay or endanger those magical three letters (that I do not actually believe are magic).

My last grandparent passed away this year at the start of summer. Staying in and sifting through her room (and other rooms) showed her freshly to me. I learned such incomplete things, but funny vibrant interesting things that she had not been able to share herself for many many years. Her mental deterioration in old age took so many years away from the person she was. I still want to know her (and so many of my family that are far away, unreachable, or no longer living). Here are a few of the bright spots of her life that make me curious and happy.

wet green brown and purple

The rains of spring have arrived, and with them have come bursts of color and inspiration and memory inside my brain. A good friend posted several photographs from college yesterday on a fairly public website; I've been enjoying them and thinking of those times since. Those pictures have stories; those stories have smells and textures and strange little jests. I do not want to forget these things. They must not disappear behind the cloudy eyes of days not yet born.

It makes me think of my parents telling me stories from their college days. They both maintain that the happiest days of their lives (at least until parenthood) were those in college. I remember a few of these stories, but not enough. My stories and memories matter to me, and so do the stories of my parents and family. We're not famous; I very much doubt any biographers are going to pieces together our miniature sagas in decades of the future. So, I want to save some snippets. I do not know where this will go.

-A sideshow performer hailed from the region of my mother's birth, and he still spent his time off the circuit in the area. The Knots of Knott County had small growths all over his face. They projected, dripped, bumped and stuck out from every part of his face; his specialty consisted of using his eyebrows to wiggle a long one that hung out over his eye. He did this to scare and amuse children. When he did this in my mother's direction, she was terrified and indignant.

-When asked, my grandma would always say that she choose to marry my grandpa, a salesman eight years her senior, because he was the best dancer.

-When I was a very little girl I spent lots of time outdoors. One day my grandmother came with me to spend time near my tree in the apple orchard. We brought my little round basket filled with play jewelry and decorated the early tree with these sparkling baubles. Plastic hearts, rhinestones, and all my assorted treasure made my already special tree otherworldly in the bright sunshine. Somehow we even managed to gather most of the jewelry back into the basket though, if I recall correctly, that was much harder.

More to come.

Tonight I watched two episodes of television on my computer: episodes of Dark Shadows and Big Cat Diary. These are new shows to me and I know already that they will become favourites. Though on the surface they seem to have nothing in common in terms of narrative, genre, or aesthetics, they are appropriate for this winter. This is a dark winter, perhaps the darkest I've known. In different ways, these little bits of moving light on my eyes process that darkness with me and for me. It helps to see nature and the struggle for survival along with its beauties and stalemates when I see death, disease, and pain (moving slowly and quickly) on the edges. I love the black tear marks and yellow teeth of the cheetah when I cannot open my own mouth without pain. It is like the memory of this summer's stinging nettles or the urge to revisit a sort again and again before healing has taken place. It helps also to see the melodrama, and fun of sustained risk and danger. I can feel good getting lost in a story that can go on and on and develop without end in crazy limping circles vaguely inspired by literature. This helps with the uncertainty, fragility, and blindness with which our steps are followed. I hear the night rain outside and know I could be anywhere or nowhere in six months or a year.

New Year's Eve and New Year's day are not my sort of holidays at the best of times; the command to be merry makes me maudlin, but this year I worry that their spectacular ordinariness was positively dangerous. I fell ill on the last day of the calendar year and knew I was too catching to be around people. I stayed in and heard fireworks and heard of adventures and read about resolutions without having any. I didn't watch the border between 2010 and 2011 closely enough, and so far I've not yet had a good day in 2011. My lack of vigilance allowed the real year, the shining one, be replaced with a crying wooden doll. This year has proved a changeling thus far and it does not have the vitality necessary for twelve months and thirteen moons. Tomorrow, hopefully closer still to health, I board a plane to travel backwards. As I go back in time, I plan to toss this mannekin year to the sky and land to find the real 2011, Or, if I have to, make a new one.

All decadents need cats

"Seraphita was of a dreamy and contemplative disposition. She would remain for hours on a cushion, wide-awake and following with her eyes, with intensest attention, sights invisible to ordinary mortals. She liked to be petted, but returned caresses in a very reserved way, and only in the case of persons whom she honoured with her approbation, a most difficult thing to obtain. She was fond of luxury, and we were always sure to find her curled up in the newest arm-chair or on the piece of stuff that best set off her swan's-down coat. She spent endless time at her toilet; every morning she carefully smoothed out her fur. She used her paws to wash herself, and every single hair of her fur, having been brushed out with her rosy tongue, shone like brand-new silver. If any one touched her, she at once removed the traces of the touch, for she could not bear to be rumpled. Her elegance and stylishness suggested that she was an aristocrat, and among her own kind she must have been a duchess at the very least. She delighted in perfumes, stuck her little nose into bouquets, and bit with little spasms of pleasure at handkerchiefs on which scent had been put; she walked upon the dressing-table among the scent-bottles, smelling the stoppers, and if she had been allowed to do so would no doubt have used powder. Such was Seraphita, and never did a cat bear a poetic name more worthily."

Theophile Gautier

not yet restored

some queer thoughts

So, lately queerness has come up a lot in the media and in my experience of social media. Coming Out day was recently and lots of my friends were very gung ho about coming out... as allies. At first, I felt really proud and happy. I am glad to have so many allies and that they are proud. But eventually when I saw about 4 times as many allies and many ambiguous messages by the folks I know who are queer things started to look a bit different.

Coming out is complicated and has consequences.

I'm not fully out of the closet in all situations. I'm sure out in my current town and in my work place and with my friends. I even came out super awkwardly to my mom after my sister outed me herself and lied about it. But, that's a story for another time and the bad poetry involved will never see the light of day. But, I am not explicitly out to my father (he totally knows though) or my husband's parents or to everyone I ever met back in super rural Kentucky. I'd like to be, but Its complicated (I'm working on it).

So, when I didn't feel fully comfortable shouting out my queerness on Facebook, I started to feel alienated by all of the happy cheerful straight people enjoying their participation in queer visibility. Though there can be complication for allies, coming out as supportive of homosexuality doesn't strike me as the same level of magnitude as truly publicly coming out as gay, or queer, or bi, or trans, or asexual, or gender queer, or any number of the mindblowingly diverse flavors that sexuality holds.

Allies, I appreciate your participation in queer activism. I really do.

So, I questioned this emotional response. I do not want to take away any support of queer issues, and I don't want to quash anyone's self-expression of sexuality or activism or visibility. I stand by this, but I do think my questioning led me to something a bit more complicated. What got me there was this. A very smart male straight pastor, for whom I have the deepest respect, posted to his FB wall a neat article by a queer female pastor. The gist of the article was a very rousing challenge for victims of bullying and other forms of oppression to do the Christian thing and bless their enemies and also to learn from them. It was very smart and thought provoking. I did find it uncomfortable to see this explicit challenge being shown to me by straight person. I didn't want to reject such a smart good thing, but I also don't want someone in a position of privilege (even the nicest, coolest, most open-minded person-in-a-position-of-privilege ever) to be telling queers how to deal with our bullies or oppressors. So, I went back to thinking.

Queer people are confronted with their identity in almost every space in culture at almost every moment. This is not our choice. As a result, there are parts of queerness that even the most intelligent, empathetic straight people may only catch a glimpse of, and because our allies are more numerous than we are, I think some of these perspectives and experiences risk being drowned out in the happy noise of the newly expanded pride parade.

I do not want to silence or censor folks. I especially don't want to do that to people fighting a good fight and showing their love. But I am totally willing to advocate for a bit of self-awareness. For everyone. I hope I can take my own medicine; I certainly try. I benefit from privilege, and I try not to forget that. So here's where I'm going with this.

Think about other people. Think about them when you advocate for their rights, or your own rights (for your rights will always affect others). Take time to put yourself in the position of people different from yourself and look at your own actions from the outside. Think about how other people feel. Think about people who have been thinking about this and working on this for longer than you've been alive. Think about people who have multiple minority statuses, all of which complicate each other. Think about the differences of opinion and desire and politics within the spectrum of queerness. Think about the very young and very old who don't necessarily have the freedoms many others enjoy. Think about the fact that not everyone defines queer in anything like the same way. Be a conscientious activist.

Hopefully the parade has room for everyone who wants to participate. I think it does. We just need to be sure that our participation doesn't overshadow or displace anyone else's.

------

Since writing this two amazing blog posts have come to my attention. Both deal with this same issue in different ways and I think they do an amazing job of sensitively but honestly addressing allies.


The Day After That

The Do's and Don'ts of Being a Good Ally

Leave a difference at all

I feel trapped sometimes, and weirdly enough I think it is partly the color of the light around me that affects this feeling. I hate yellow light. It is the part of fall and winter that holds no love or fascination.

Golden light I love; every photographer needs their golden hours of the day. That gentle gilded glow adds so much to any subject. No, what I cannot handle is harsh yellow light. Summer afternoons radiate with it and winter evenings do in the hours just after the sun has gone. Through most artificial light in these evenings, everything becomes stale, too warm, and itchy and yet toes stay slightly too cold. Escape and change become my inner chant at these times.

I want to run in the dark, tell secrets, and laugh airlessly with my friends far away and do it by the strange shadows of summer nights or the white brightness of winter mornings.

Fall gives birth to many urges and experiences, but sadly one of them has left me in these years living too far south for true seasons. Back in Ohio when fall turned cold and brown and deep after its earlier kaleidoscopes I would get what I called "land urges". It felt like longing and loyalty and fierceness all at once. I wanted to stand on a hill with a stick in my hand surrounded by wind and earth and belonging. This feeling rooted me to my place and told me of future connections that could grow even deeper. This cannot happen here; I feel nothing for this shifting sanddirt it isn't the earth and clay that I love. It holds biting ants and spiky strange growths. Lovely and wild yes, but never ever mine.

I wonder how connected everything is sometimes. If I exercise again today will I feel like I can live here longer without losing something precious? Does applying for lifetime jobs all over the country attune me to my gypsy self? Does growing older inspire rebellion? These answers elude me solidly.

My hands want to grasp and my eyes to scan. My location cannot change now, and my work requires me to be grounded for months and months yet. Sometimes it is all I can do to transubstantiate my desires into the realm of the possible. But then in the realm of reality, as always, I trip into conflict, compromise, contention.

Monday, I walk into the house of law. Interviewers will try to find out about me and make guesses like those addicted to horse races. Strangers and I might become a jury together and put on blindfolds so as to be many faces of justice. Sunday, my escapes appear like clockwork. Saturday, I could hunt and watch the gavel fall many times. But what about tonight? I do not know what I can do.

The venn diagram of myth and reality

A couple of weeks ago I went home too see my folks and my homeplace and the pets before my year swept me up for the next two and half months. What I found there, in addition to the comfort and inspiration I so often find, was the season of butterflies. They greeted me on the road; I saw flashes of color rip over my head, and rush beyond me. Every step out of the door brought me to the butterflies. They rested, played, fed, and bloomed as riotously as any flowers.




Beyond the immediate joy of seeing these paper thin splashes of color and flight, I felt like I'd come home to an overwhelming symbol. Butterflies can mean change and this sight of them in the last weeks of summer also spoke to me of bravado and panache in the face of fragility. There will be change. We will all be vulnerable to it, but we can leap into that, not only face change but run to it as our best selves and forget any thought of useless clinging. This felt apt to me the moment I learned it, and that rightness continues. Sometimes it feels like very many iterations of the same lesson occur all at once or that many go through the same experience together and apart but with unwitting synchronicity.

Last fall, I saw rupture and loss; it echoed through the harsher winter and the slow spring. It stayed apart from me, but I watched it like a cubist painting from many angles simultaneously and in or out of sync. Now I feel like the tumblers in our locks are moving again, but this time with me. It is not loss, this season, but movement into the unknown. We are the butterflies at the very end of summer, but we are also the coming fall.

For me this means putting forth my name and ideas for jobs. Each of them becomes a nucleus for a host of potential futures and most of them will be ended in a barely read stack of papers in a stale busy office. But I have to send these chances out; they are bright winged possibilities that range from the tiny and unknown to the deeply familiar or dauntingly celebrated. I am sending myself out on at least eighteen quests.

This merging of the archetypal, mythic, or fairy tale with what can be readily experienced jolted me this morning and prodded me to write. In Banff, somewhere in the wilds of Canada, there are these mysterious geological formations called the Inkpots. They are round greeny-clear pools of water in a mountain clearing, and they stay at the same very cold (but not freezing) temperature all the year round. We don't know much about them, save that their water comes up from below. It bubbles through their quicksand floor instead coming on the surface. How could anyone hear about such places without thinking of the story of King Turnip Counter or the many myths of being lured into magically beautiful water only to be paralyzed and drowned. These Inkpots sound more than real, and they remind that the world is wilder and bigger than our minds can hold in an everyday way. With all of this possibility, who can say what will happen?

Thunder on a sunny day

I've been realizing that I need to walk, to walk long distance, step after step out in the world till I have seen wonders and my body grows tired. The urge has struck me in many places both home and just as often away.
My first days of college – orientation really- I needed long nighttime walks across campus, through deep sleeping professorial neighborhoods into the more restlessly drowsing main street. Traversing again and again between the two poles of this tiny town I found my transition and so my days were social and engaged.
Later, I took small sweet snacks out into the creeping English spring around lanes and lakes alone in a medieval city. Watching the Brits congenially escorting their dogs helped me feel, if not properly kinship, then at least friendliness within a lonely time.
My steel town and truly large city walks functioned as constant exploration. I saw the architectural ghosts of Europe (some a bit more ragged than others) and the tarnished marvels that neighbors even three streets down had never seen. The largest city, one I've never fully understood nor yet determined my relationship with, crawled with life on my walks. Life outcrowded life and brutalized life and surrounded and buried and nurtured life. Trees reached up before lots could even be called abandoned, and the wildlife rivals any I've seen since in fecundity and ferocity.
Beyond these small specifics, walking performs enough miracles that to describe them would doom me to the trite and overused words of a snake oil salesman or smooth tongued contractor. But, I look for it, the change, the loss, the mindless working through with my deep reptile brain, and at the same time the breathtaking cabaret dazzles my waking eyes and inspires the stories of my sleeping hours. Tuesday, I walked, despite the heat, and I saw green hearts yearning in a not-quite-solid wave of particles making my shred of sidewalk into something of motionless surfboard. I saw ants taking a dead snake back into the earth while leaving its maize and garnet colors spread across the path. Warmth bathed me and smothered the air from my face, but tiny scents and wasteful sprinkles of water sustained me.
I didn't carry food for thought with me this time, but since I stopped walking cares and concerns enough have found me to make me long to walk again. I need to walk with them, not deny them or even wear down the exclusions, unwanted changes, and witnessed sadness. That night, talk and touch and dance under cheap confetti lights kept me, but I've walked since and needed it.

red and white/spots and stripes

I saw my scars today as I wandered deep in an old tale's retelling. My dear one calls them inverse freckles: little and tiny, more or less round, dots of pale in my summer hued skin. They are not like my others; they do not each have a unique origin and memory. They are subtle and must be read together. In two summers, many miles and years away from my present, a plant took me over. Poison Ivy stole weeks from me in those awkward summers, and left behind these speckles that can hold no pigment. I love my scars like I love my tattoo. They allow me to physically carry symbols and knowledge and more than myself. These scars are the season, they are transformation, they are survival and forgetfulness and growing will.

Next week they will come out more as I play in the space where ocean and land come together: geographic doorways and wind, sun, salt. Every breath will be a ritual and welcome some new knowing.

There are so many Englands.

Many of us create these Englands ourselves. We imagine it whole cloth, or bend the wood of its ancient trees, or embroider the land and its culture whether we mean to or not. I fully admit this, and have lived with the consequences.

This past trip to England ended a week ago, and I miss any sort of England that exists (be it real or no) and my own England. Each day puts my experiences more and more in the land of my own invention, my England, and less in one that might be visible to anyone else. This loss is one of melancholies of coming home. For me, this is compounded by my sleepy thoughtless loss of my travel notebook. Faithfully, for two weeks, I kept detailed thorough entries about my days only to lose it on the last leg of my very long day of travel.

But to speak of my trip itself improves things, as does posting my photographs, or thinking quietly to myself of living in some part of England again. I cannot recall everything; my photographs sadly do not contain scent (lavender and wet stone on the breeze so rich I do not even have to dip my head to find it); memories do not carry me back there. Still, we can enjoy these imperfect impressions and not hope that they are more than tiny views from moving windows.