oops.

note from cristie:

camera cord. not camera chord. this was a typo--well, spelling mistake. no intense double meaning.

wtf? i am supposed to be correcting these mistakes in freshman 101 papers, not making them!

thanks cristie. how embarrassing...

how to leave a city.

the first step is to find the places you have loved, and say goodbye.

this may include canyons, and mountain streams....

or the Virgin Mary Tree downtown....

where you've continually gone through the years, to reach out and touch something larger than yourself, even if that something is just a tree...

or, perhaps, the best (burnyourfaceoff) thai food this side of thailand.

leaving a city can mean leaving people.

well: leaving a city means leaving people.

the best way to do this is to cushion the blow with food. hallie made her famous japanese meat balls, part pork part fake meat, lots of delicious.

i made a mediterranean pasta salad. lots of tomato, feta, and vinegar.

there is no deciphering the future. there is barely deciphering the present.

but we try, and here Corey reads my cards for the journey ahead, and tells me that the lovers must keep all channels of communication open at all times, and even when they think they're talking they might not be, and that this is going to be more work to keep the love alive than just loving.

but, of course. right?

still, though, it's something to remember. so i try. we try.

he also told me i will be balancing two kinds of work for the next few years, and that this will be my biggest task. he said this without knowing i will be balancing my work as a GTA with my work as a writer, and even adding in that i'm also supposed to be a student. this, so far, has been my biggest task.

There is a sense, somehow, of urgency in all of this. perhaps there is just a sense of urgency in "youth," but i'm getting the sense it never goes away. every morning i wake up with a new fork in the road: should i have cereal or fruit? should i submit to this journal or that journal, or no journal? should i call home, or write home, or neither? should i tell him, or her, this, or that? do this homework, or that? go running or no? and there is a feeling of finality in it all.

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out...." --Synecdoche, New York

Or.

Life is never destroyed. It is just altered, becomes something else, and from whatever point we land, from whatever decision we made, we just build, rebuild, move on or stay still to breathe. it may never be what we envisioned, it probably won't be. but it's what we have, and we made it.

there's no such thing as another day like today: the idea that there are 7 repeating days is much more manageable than that we get a set number of hundreds, and none will be the same.

Or.

it's reassuring. every day is new.

friends will gather wherever there is food, warm light, music, and even alcohol.

so many of our friends we have known for what seems like forever. they have known many selves of me. others i have known for what seems like days or weeks.

our love and laughter heats the room, and we move outside to the deck. we keep eating, smoking, and talking long into the morning. at 2am we sneak away to swim and kiss.

this is what we've been waiting for.

the car is packed, and it moves heavily out of the house.

i was up before the sun today. but we moved slowly, to the sounds of She's Leaving Home by the Beatles we drank our coffee and shifted our things around.

we moved into the light to say our goodbyes, and take our pictures.

my sister and i, on the morning i left:

the three women of the house, with our morning hair, tears in our eyes, and no turning back.

my mother and i, the morning i left home, for real, for the first time:

and then it happened. before i knew it we were on the open road. here we are, moving through prong-horned wyoming. there was a pull of turning back-- like i'd forgotten something back home, or perhaps, wishing i'd forgotten something. another chance to say goodbye. but we kept driving.

i still haven't shaken that feeling all the way.

strawbeary enjoyed the view of passing semis and hills flattening into prairie.

but safety first.

we watched our own shadow move away from us.

"jesus, i trust in you!" proclaimed an eastern colorado field.

the wind stood still.

"Jesus heals and restores; pornography destroys!" Kansas warned. these signs seemed to be sprinkled between the "adult" stores. there is a market to keep both sides happy.

and still, that string that lead back to home hadn't been severed.

months later i still feel it--somedays like an anchor, and somedays like a balloon.

i have had what feels like many homes, fleeting though they've been, and now endure missing many places at once: granada, spain; cadiz, kentucky; paris, france; carbondale, illinois; and now, salt lake city, utah.

i always return to the poem, One Art: I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

i may move far, and fast, and maybe from here on out, often.

but i'm getting a sense that there will always be these ties that bind.

everything changes, everything stays the same.

but I will always know where home is.

And it's never, really, that far away.

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place." -- Garden State

life taking shape, part I

Lawrence, Kansas, is about a 16 hour drive from Salt Lake City, Utah. Judd and I went to sleep really late the night before we left, after packing the car, bathing and showering, and talking late into the night. My sister had instructed my mom to push play on the CD player after the morning was pretty well under way, and She's Leaving Home by The Beatles blared. I was walking down the stairs to the car to throw in a bag right when the line "she goes downstairs..." was being sung... I may always remember that.

StrawBeary stayed pretty close to me the entire drive. She was a nice little pillow for my knee against the door, and we practiced passenger safety for a lot of the long drive:

She even got to sit up and watch the view-- usually, a whole lotta beautiful nothing. Cabin fever is a funny thing.

It took awhile to notice, and it's even now still easy to forget: this place is flat, and for a long time, in all directions:

We arrived at our new home at about 1 in the afternoon (after one night spent in Colby, Kansas). Judd carried me over the threshold, opened all of the boxes with his knife, and then set to work trying to blow up the air mattress. I was a bit of a tasmanian devil unpacking everything.

And when I walked into the bedroom, Judd had the bed made up beautifully.

Move-in day, in the sunshine, in our dining room:

Our pantry door, my apron collection, depression-era swan bowl with tomatoes and lemons.

Framed picture of Hallie braiding my hair, then me braiding Hallie's hair (found in a box of photos that were deemed to have not turned out well enough to frame or put in an album!); pewter bird s&p shakers from a flea market in paducah, kentucky; owl trivet from frosty darling in SLC.

Our stove... the paper towel reads "home sweet home."

We're settling in nicely here-- it has been about a month and a half-- and are getting to know our neighborhood, town, and routine pretty well. This is Hector, our neighbors' cat. He tries to come in to our place a lot, and loves to hop all over our stairs and banister, and the furniture (what little there's been) as we move it in:

One of our favorite things to do is go to the early morning Farmer's Market. It's usually in combination with cruising garage sales, which we also love, and need. As a result of the garage sale cruising, we've managed to find a few pieces of furniture here and there to put here or there.

Here's Judd exiting our lovely front door, Farmer's Market bag in tow:

The Market on Saturday mornings can get quite hoppin. On this particular Saturday we arrived about 30 minutes before closing. This left us finding some pretty great deals. I bet we got about a pound of bright and fresh cherry tomatoes for about $4.

And, of course, this bouquet. I'm not sure what kind of flowers these are, but up close they look like tiny velvet brains. I love them, and they were some of my favorite things: dirt cheap and beautiful:

Here they are in action, along with most of our tomatoes for the day (on our farmer's table coffee table):

Our formica table is beloved, durable, practical, and pretty. It does have an uneven leg. We will, eventually, make it down to Ace for a stopper, but for now, Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Strand is going to have to bear some of the burden.

... And the same goes for our farm table coffee table (pictured with the flowers and tomatoes). I have always wanted a farm table, and envisioned one for this house. This is an antique farm table cut down to coffee table size... by an amateur. I'm not sure how it's this off, but until we make it to Ace, Extreme Fiction is holding it up.

I bought this bag in Mexico. There, it's sort of a typical grocery bag. Here, it's our produce bag! It looks great with a baguette sticking out one end... and on this closet door.

This is the table where Judd's record player will eventually go...

... with old Bobby Dylan, and a bandana from Hallie's tour...

where do you keep your Q-tips? Just asking, because we keep them in this vintage creamer from San Francisco...

And I think even the back of our toilet is lovely. We have the little bun-bun cotton ball holder from Etsy, a bright-blue candle in white porcelain (with a perched bird) from Anthropologie, and potpourri made from the roses of the gardens of my grandma, her sister, and... her mother? I forgot the specifics...

My work space is in the dining room. Judd's will be in the living room... we're waiting for the perfect desk. This bookshelf is in the dining room, and on it are poetry books and my school books. On top of it: a music box from china town in San Fran, a little mini treasure chest, a photo/letter from Jonathan Safran Foer (I wrote to him pretty soon after the release of his first book), and a rocking horse bank (this used to belong to my best friend Greg, and I begged him to save it for me instead of getting rid of it-- their housekeeper got rid of it, and I came upon it in a second-hand store).

This is the bookshelf in the living room. On it: a photo of Judd's grandfather fishing, a photo of my maternal grandparents on their wedding day, and a photo of my maternal grandfather's mother with all of her quilts.

Someday we will own a couch. Or, at least, enough chairs to host a party. And someday our art will arrive from SLC...

And, the bedroom.

We bought this vanity at a garage sale, and the man was nice enough to deliver it to our house, AND carry it in. What a deal!

This part is mostly mine...

So.. mostly my jewelry... though Judd does put his necklaces and wallet on here...

These necklaces get a lot of wear: real butterfly encased in plastic, real leaf in gold, and a cloisonne necklace with a peacock....

And here, a bird pin I bought in Venice, and a bird pin my mother bought when she was about my age, and living in St. Louis.

Framed is a Christmas card Judd gave me last year. In front of it are two swans from my maternal grandmother's swan collection. Below the gold lotus candle holder are vintage hankies.

And my piggy bank! Mostly coins right now, and it hasn't been fed in awhile. Postcards from the used book store are accumulating on top of the dresser, especially as I fall more and more in love with.... the dresser is from a yard sale. We got two bookcases free with its purchase, and once we cleaned the bugs out, I thought it was quite beautiful...

Ah, the air mattress. We slept on it this entire time we've been here, up until a week ago. The seaming gradually began to pop out, making it impossible for our sheets to fit over it. It became more life-raft shaped than air mattress, and we eventually slept in the middle with the sheets piled there. It endured two holes and countless repairs. But it wasn't, actually, half bad. (note the moving-box side tables?)

Well, our bed has arrived. And it is made, and made well, and very comfortable.

I think we'll survive that transition.

.... to be continued...

no one gets out alive, but maybe we can stay forever.

many things have been occupying my time and my space lately. many of these things seem to not relate at all to each other, but that's often when the greatest synthesis seems to start to develop. in this case, perhaps not. i have been encountered with, and encountering: kansas wildlife, certain poets, true crime, mummies. these ideas seem to have been constantly bouncing off of each other in my head for days now, to the point where one thing reminds me of the other, even though they've nothing really at all to do with the other.

so, if you think this entry is disjointed, try living like this.

it's been raining a lot in kansas. i didn't take this photo, as i am not yet used to the midwestern rain enough to be out in it... and, though the camera chord has been located (in a basement in SLC), it is only just now on its way. original photography will resume here and on tomatosugar once it arrives. until now, a patchwork of borroweds.

i taught in jeans one day, and a fellow teacher friend of mine looked me up and down after and said "wow, jeans, bold, i can't do that yet." needless to say, i haven't done it again. well, maybe once, but always with an anthropologie top, blazer, and stern expression. the next day (post-jeans-encounter) i wore a pencil skirt, tshirt, and cardigan, and flats, but looked VERY teacher-y. it poured my entire walk to school. the same way it doesn't rain in the west like it does here, you don't get rained ON like you do here-- umbrellas somehow don't work. it's strange. so... i dressed up, and you coulda wrung me out. such a sad story...

i've managed to persuade judd to take me on an evening walk almost every night of the week since we arrived (weather permitting). on weekends we often go in the bright sunshine. this labor day weekend we set out for a used bookstore, and not moments from our door we encountered this:

a giant wasp. the female one (far right). it was fighting, and winning, and killing, a cicada. i struggled to find my cell phone to send a picture to hallie, all the while stepping gently near it, and suddenly it charged (never dropping the cicada, mind you) toward me. fast. it chased us away. we scampered off toward our bookstore.

oh, and when i say big:

i mean, rather quite f.ing large. this thing was huge. i looked it up, and they are called cicada killing wasps, or cicada killer wasps, or something of the sort (damn internet). the females sting and stun (often killing, but not always?) cicadas, then fly off with them to their nests (burrowed in dry grasses), and slice into them, and lay eggs in their abdomen so that when they hatch they have something to eat. charming.

action shot!

oh the terrors the midwest can bring.

or, as gertrude stein might say:

"There is no Mid. This west will not hold. Fold the center. Forget the fountain. Asparagus trees. Burn the temporary doors."

i actually have no idea what she would say, but i've been reading and rereading Tender Buttons and am growing a little obsessed with her...

and when i'm not reading Stein... or criticism on Stein (one of my classes = Modernist Women Poets)... and when I'm not making lesson plans....

to be honest, i've grown a bit obsessed with this whole garrido-dugard case. i mean... there is a pretty intense crime. not only is it horrific in all the ways a kidnapping/rape/manipulation/brainwashing/etc could possibly be, it also goes against the standard "rules" for almost every crime the case committed. First of all, the biggest one, was that the child wasn't found within the first 48 hours-- or, 48 days-- and was found. the next was that it was a stranger abduction, and the victim wasn't killed. the other thing i know i'm going to be watching for as this case progresses is the treatment of the wife: she sought out p.garrido while he was in prison for kidnapping/sexual assault. if i could make a prediction (what's the word for prediction for something that already happened-- like a reverse prediction?) it would be that he enlisted her to commit this crime, or a similar one, very early on in their relationship, and my second prediction (an actual prediction) is that she's going to play the gender/victim card to get out of any sort of conviction or accountability, or to get both drastically reduced. we seem to let that happen a lot-- women seem to not be so much convicted of crimes that they've committed so much of the time (look @ sexual assault of minor cases). but, lest we forget gertrude baniszewski, and her crime (for which she was convicted, but i'm using her to illustrate female capability of horrific acts). actually, i want to forget her. but anyway... that's been taking up a lot of my time...

what else.

ah yes, mummies.

this may require a brief explanation. i took a class as an undergrad pursuing my bachelors degree in anthropology called DEATH RITUALS AND MUMMIFICATION. it is probably my favorite class. while judd and i were on a road trip through utah i started talking about mummies, and realized that if i were to get a masters or phd in anthropology (which, at one point, i thought was possible), my focus would probably be on mummies. now that i'm getting a masters in poetry, i'm not sure i still can't focus that much less on mummies... time will tell though, what ends up happening with that.

so, at said bookstore (the evil wasps sped us along), i found 2 books. i can't really afford to buy anything except food right now, but these were pretty cool... the first book is called FACES OF THE PHARAOHS, and it outlines each major (and some very minor-- fetus, for example) mummies found in egypt, and shows not only details of the mummy, but also of the many sarcophagi associated with them, and a write up on who they were/may have been, and what was found with them, where they were found, their dates, etc. very lovely.

but ancient egypt, contrary to popular belief, is not where it is at with mummies. i really like the bog people of denmark. these people somehow ended up in peat bogs-- whether through accident, human sacrifice, or execution. when they first started turning up they were so well-preserved people began reporting murders to the proper authorities... but these bodies were thousands of years old... i bought a book on them too.

now, for some reason, i am very very drawn to the SIBERIAN ICE MAIDEN. this is a discovery from the pazyryk mountains, and i really like her because she was found in an elaborate warriors coffin designed with elk and other emblems, and buried with her bow and arrow. as you can see from this famous photo, she is covered in tattoos. women warriors in this tribe would cut off a breast to better draw back the arrow.

mummies can be found, whether naturally or artificially, or a combination, on almost every continent. the mummies of guanajuato, mexico, and the chinchorro mummies of south america are also worth obsessing over. for years.

just about now i would give anything for my DEATH RITUALS text book... but alas, to no avail. they were notes copied by my professor, and apparently it cannot be located by anyone in the department, and i don't have them anymore, and no one else in the history of the world who took the class seems to have them anymore.

in conclusion... i'm not sure if i should be worried about how things are colliding in my head, or excited, but... it's exhausting. i've also been narrating my own life to judd in high-pitched song.