saguaro

The world has gotten taller in the last year. At least, I'm fairly certain it would be abnormal and not a real thing for me to have shrunk five inches. Everyone I live with and talk to seem to be taller than me. And every pair of pants I wear or try on need to be rolled up at least four inches. I feel like a child again. In two days I turn twenty three--a thing which I can't think too deeply about because my brain might explode--and I feel like child.

Sometimes childness might not be such a bad thing. The other morning I saw a children's book about cacti on the sofa. Of course I read it. I felt particularly smart for all the information I was able to glean in those twenty pages. Then I realized why I feel like I was smarter as a child. They have cool books like that for children. Why I can't seem to find something that fun for older kinds of people? My new favorite hangout: the children's library.

In light of embracing this young readers' sampler style of information, I continue.



This ^ is an amazing idea. Read more about it here.


That first year, I sometimes would hum a little to myself, "Obama makes me feel young and twenty one again." He's charming (a new thing I'm trying to embrace), he utilizes technology (I love technology and the media), and he promises transparent politics (wow). The White House Accountability website makes me swoon. I hesitated bringing this up because people seem to fixate on my crush on the Obamas therefore naturally adding drama to any of my thoughts on politics. But I'm going to say it. Why did this happen? I know I can't expect Dave (1993).


I found a new olive oil cake. J. Bottoms and I are bicycling to a little fancy market to buy spelt flour and such suches and to make it. For my birthday. Ooooooooeeeeee.


End of sampler.

image from: craftzine.com blog.

tonight...

...as I discussed profound things with a friend as I sat on a rock with my feet being splashed by lake water (and that was why my feet were so cold we had to cuddle them in foot duvets and you had to sit on them) I thought about nature.

My thought about living in nature: I've always dreamed of it.

I would like to move to Australia after I graduate. Because I can.
Then at some point live in a house boat in Greece. For a month. Or some length of time. Anytime it gets stormy I'll watch Jaws. Because I love that movie.
Then back to some place North American. In a backwoods cabin. That is between a quarter of a mile to three miles out of town (so I can bicycle in and out). Because I would be the best backwoods wife ever.

Except for I'd miss people watching from my front porch.


Well, I don't know if I really would miss that, actually.

and we're off like a herd of turtles!

I reread this a few days ago. I go through my own blog annals to remind myself where I've been and how I've changed/grown. 

It's about a woman I never really knew but I've always admired and about her fancy dresses and costume jewelry. And news programs. It struck me that I've gloried in hat boxes but never in the charm and class and home-loveliness of my own mother. I've been trying to write my feelings on this but it seems I'm full of trite dribble. Let it be known far and wide that there are worlds I'll always wonder about (Milly and her typewriter secretary-ing and fancy shoe boxes) and there is a world I aspire to (my mother's).

when i'm tired all i can think about is bed, clouds, and sugar

People are better than trains.
Reason #23: We can become derailed, go in any direction we wish, and rerail ourselves anytime we want.


I may be able to rerail myself but I cannot make myself sleep.



Chapter 42

The mechanic rose from his chair, drawn to the window by that sharp afternoon sunlight. There have been so many movies where the old man stands alone at his window surrounded by photographs and trinkets of his late wife. The mechanic thought wryly that at least those old codgers were living with ghosts. He was not a widower. He was living with no one.


PS. Becky saved us all with a rhubarb-strawberry jam-making day. Yummmmm.

my chiasmus summer plans. with baby bookends.

sister is pregnant and i am the happiest sister in the world.
here.
california.
here.
florida.
paraguay.
florida.
here.
california.
here.
sister has a baby boy and i am the happiest aunt in the world.

Dearest Baby that's about to be,
Everyone in this family is blindingly happy with anticipation. 
You're such a miracle and a joy.
Love without bounds,
M.

ritzy rhubarb

This summer calls for rhubarb.

Upper Midwest U.S. grows rhubarb without even trying. It grows better than people. It grows better than weeds. Mow over it and it grows. The beautiful ruby color branching into large ruffly green leaves. So tart it surprises you every bite. So made of summer barefoot in rich, garden earthness.

I don't live there anymore. I have to accept this.

I have hesitated every western summer to purchase rhubarb, even from the farmers' market, because I wasn't there to make sure it had the loving, glorious growing time it needed.

I will trust in local farmers' this summer. I will embrace their rhubarb and welcome all the local sweet, biting tastiness.



I wish I could weave fabric out of memories of the spring where I was nine and the snirt was piling in the gutters, the snow was melting into crusty white ice and large puddles in my back yard and it was lovely enough to play outside wearing that hoodless, oversized, green sweatshirt and those fuchsia boots.That would be the stripe next to the times I would lay in the grass and listen to the bird coo in the evenings and the back screen door swing shut. The garage door you had to slam shut with all your strength and force open by knocking it with your hip. My barefeet on the decomposing sidewalk. That rainbow that went on forever in the warm greyish sky and we all stood in the driveway looking at it. Those plastic clips with the poodles and bows my dad would let me clip into his orange hair. The mornings my mom would don her sun hat, that blue shirt with the leaf pattern; kneel on her green knee cushion and weed. I'd join her and we'd smell like bug spray together and the mosquitoes would circle us and I'd squeal and run away everytime I saw a spider and my mom would wonder what was going to become of me.
Those irises.
Chives.
Humidity.

Someday I'll live in a house and have a garden at my elbow and a healthy lawn to squish my toes in.

I would like that time to also have a husband and maybe even a family but that's a secret you'll never hear me say out loud. À haute voix.

mommers

Remember, Mother, when I spent many evenings with you at the kitchen table browsing over newspapers (or maybe silly romance novels?) as we both sipped our warm milk with creamer (because I was so sick of chamomile tea).

 -excerpt from this post.

i cheat at mini golf

I've been burning things on the stove all week.
Today I discovered that we do have a fire alarm and it works.

Been reading a Jane Hirshfield book of poetry and I'm struck by the precise order in which her poems lay. Particularly Mathematics.

You see today what I burned on the stove was pasta. The rotini kind because I feel the corkscrew whole wheat curls pocket in all the sauce or pesto or whatever I season to taste them with. And that made me think of a few summers ago when I would make that pasta with that olive oil, chopped walnuts, garlic, s & p, and parmesan and serve it up to whomever was around. And that cream colored table where J.E. and I sat one afternoon staring at each other as my dear roommate was getting in another fight with her ex. It was good to have someone with me that afternoon. Other nights I would leave and lay on the grass outside, staring at the tree branches blooming above. I'd listen to Navigator's Throwing Tongues album over and over. (I never told you that, did I?)
There's only so much you can do for people. They've got to take care of themselves.
And you know, eventually she did.
And I stabbed the book Twilight and burned it with E and her sister.
Because I'd hurt too much to see and hear all that to read that even for a laugh.

Anyway, it was a good thing I had already decided I would eat some Indian food for lunch today.

PS. I saw Babies and How to Train Your Dragon. I liked them both very much, I did.

pennies for may

Obamaweather isn't being very reassuring. It says Groundhog got into a fight with his lover and is now moping in its overly cozy burrow listening to Grouper.

Listen, Groundhog, it doesn't get better that way. Instead, why don't you take this handful of pennies for the boatsman on the river Styx. I want you to retrieve Persephone. Hades is having a bad year and in his taciturn mood he cursed us with the Orpheus Proviso. We weren't allowed to look at sweet Persephone's face as we climbed the backbreaking steps through all the rings of hell to heaven and the surface. But who could resist taking deep, heady breaths of spring? The sun was too strong to not stare directly into its rays.

So she fell.

And now we remain here 
beleaguered.