Threshold

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon/evening putting finishing touches on the subsequent projects that come from re-doing floors (shoe molding, thresholds, etc) and it is such a gift to see projects at their completion (and having an excuse to use a compound miter saw is pretty sweet). It was a beautiful day for it too.
Then I came back to the house where I am housesitting and baked a pecan pie. Last year was the debacle of the wiener dog jumping in my pumpkin pie and thus this year I've guarded my creation closely. I even tried my hand at making my own crust and it looks good at least. I'll find out later how it tastes...
After cleaning up the pie mess I took a long bath in a clawfoot tub. I love super hot water that makes cuts and sore muscles sting a little bit but in those stings lies the relief. I dried off and sat by the fire I built in the woodstove and scratched the bellies of two warm, full, sleepy dogs and drank tea.
Truly, there is much for which I am thankful.
I love my family. I love my friends. I love much, but nights like this are so enjoyable and full and quiet that I wouldn't have wanted it differently even if offered an option.

Truths

• No matter where I am or what I am doing, I automatically feel like I'm drunk and it's 3am whenever I hear "Rock Lobster".
  
• One of my favorite things about Asheville: we get snow-capped mountains. I can look out my window at work and see them.
  
• Creepy Emo guy and Jessica Simpson's #1 Hanger-on had their baby. His middle name is Mowgli. I'm guessing Bagheera and Baloo will be named co-godfathers. They aren't leaving that kid with much of more than the "Bear Necessities" are they? Now I think I'm done with the "Jungle Book" jokes. For now.
  
• I sometimes forget that TV characters are not real people. I get confused because characters like Pamela Anderson are actually real. Well, that's up for discussion.
  
• The latin name for the Pileated Woodpecker is dryocopus pileatus. That was for Leslie.

Without Time to Rise

I had to go back through some old posts to make sure I'm not re-writing one. Blog is now 6 years old, so happy birthday blog. You should be in first grade now. Here's a hat. And a pink plastic pony. And a new composition book.

The other night one of my oldest friends called and after lamenting the Redskins loss we got to talking about more personal things. Once again I'm reminded how much we need witnesses to our lives, eyes to see the truths and beauties where we don't see them. My friend points them out as if they are these glaringly obvious notions, which of course to me they aren't. Maybe it's just that I don't see them and need to be reminded that others do. It changes my days.

I'm a tinkerer. I love projects. I love woodworking, renovations, baking, writing, projects. I tinker partly because it has such a clear conclusion: finish. Make the creation become created. Make the parts into something whole. Feel like I did something. I made bread the other day and while I was working the dough all its metaphors came out. Sometimes I need to knead. To work out those wrinkles, to sum up the parts better, to allow whatever is growing the time to grow, to become warm from the yeast and expand as it should. I don't want my creations to look like communion bread, baked without time to rise, baked with fleeing in mind. I want a living loaf.

"We're the Dancers...."

Video of the mornin' to ya!
Saw this skit from SNL on Saturday and it's nice to know they can still do some funny things. Helps having Justin Timberlake around, that guy really is hilarious.


It wasn't on NBC so I had to find it on youtube (which is where I watched it).

Furrow

I love the word furrow.
It has an imagery that I adore, the lines that make up time and etch across skins and skies. To me it has a monochromatic feel to it, it sounds like a field in winter, rows of wind planted on frozen plain. A hopelessness that comes from farming frozen ground. I get cold thinking about furrow.
(I'll stop before Emilie mocks me again for too many adjectives)
As a young child my sister used to tease me about my brow; apparently I had an "unhappy" look and it bothered her. She said I looked stern and unkind. I'd furrow my brow unconsciously; it was(and is) my thinking face. It wasn't that I was unhappy or unkind, it was that I was in a different place in my head and my face didn't travel with me.
With time a line has formed regardless of expression. A small one--less than half an inch long--but a crease nonetheless, right between my eyebrows. Now it travels with me wherever I go, visible evidence of a life lived elsewhere. I like it.

Moments of Static and Jazz

I've been distracted lately and terrible at writing down thoughts.
They switch quickly, those thoughts. Often my head feels like a radio constantly seeking through stations, moments of static and jazz, loud car commercials and top 40. Call letters calling out just enough to stay blurry.
I am one who carries great intentions.
I have ideas to do much, intentions to do much, but rarely act.
I am perpetually distracted.
Sleep is like liquor: once you know what bad sleep feels like it's easy to see why one should invest in the good stuff. Bad sleep comes off feeling like a waste of time. I don't sleep well most nights. I wake more tired than before.

Saturday night I was at the shop with Margarita and Jonathan, lounging around the woodstove, thankful for its heat. Seems so far from the hazy summer nights with the bay doors wide open, sitting out on the roof watching fireworks and life. These are days of woodsmoke and wool. Jonathan said something that had me thinking about the difference between talking and conversing; they are hardly synonymous. Very often the intention to converse exists but the ability to do it is missing. And thus I talk with no direction.
Like roving between the static.

For the Better

I remember sitting on the floor in the office of Environmental Studies my junior year of college, watching the planes hit and re-hit the towers and thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same after this. This is history at its worst."
Last night I sat on a couch in my friend's living room, wearing blue Mardi Gras beads, drinking some strange concoction out of an orange bendy straw, watching CNN's headline "BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT" pop up on the screen and thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same after this. This is our country's history at its best."
We toasted with cheap champagne in white Dixie Cups.We screamed, we clapped, we hugged, we stared. We got emotional.
We literally danced in the street.
As the senate and house results came in, one young guy said almost to himself, "Democrats in the White House!? And Congress!? I might have health insurance in two years!!!" The very first thing he thought of when confronted with such a change was his health. That was and is his biggest fear: to be hurt and not get care, to have something small happen that would bankrupt him for life. How telling. Politics has an intimacy we gloss over.

Just as I did on 9/12, I woke up today not knowing what the day would look like, only that yesterday I witnessed a watershed moment in our nation's history and that from here on out the rules have changed.
This time, for the better.

Declarations of Desire

It's the Puritans' fault we have a set election day.
Blame them for the 20+ months of campaigning and advertisements, the robocalls, the countless countdowns, the feeling of Election Day being a sort of New Years Day for the civic minded.
Thank you, Puritans.
I live in a state that sponsors early voting and many of my friends have gone out and done so. Good for them, any vote at any time is worthwhile!
I consciously chose to vote today because I believe so strongly in the day itself, the feeling of waiting in line for such a purpose; standing in a queue with fellow citizens all keen to exercise their right to do so. I walked into my polling place with no one in front of me; I got there in a lull and took my ballot to my booth and filled in the little circles that I prayed would mean something. I placed my sticker over my heart and walked out into the fall.

I remember the first time I consciously went into the voting booth with my mother. It was the 1988 election and she was one of the last to vote in the tiny fire station five miles from our house. I remember looking up at the levers, my mom explaining what they do and why we do it. I got chills watching her pull that handle to seal her votes and open our curtain to the rest of the world. She did something important.

We women have only had the right to vote for 88 years. That means we weren't allowed to vote for Teddy Roosevelt or Taft or Wilson; we voted after they had come and gone. In North Carolina the 19th amendment was only officially ratified by the state in 1971. We aren't a state that thought it was a good idea to give women the vote 88 years ago. I am blessed to have that privilege now.

Sarah Vowell, whom I'm currently obsessed with quoting, has a lovely statement in her essay, "Dear Dead Congressmen" talking about suffrage.

"...look up the word suffrage in the dictionary. In mine, after noting the main meanings--the privilege of voting, the "exercise of such a right," the third interpretation of suffrage is this: "A short intercessory prayer." Isn't that beautiful? And true? For what is voting if not a kind of prayer,, and what are prayers if not declarations of hope and desire?"

Fancy Free

It seems like every time I speak to my mother some new revelation pops up. Last week I was catching her up on trips, etc when she asked me quizzically and in all sincerity, "What exactly do you DO with your time?"
I realized that my mom doesn't really know anyone my age who isn't/wasn't married and/or has children.
At my age she had three children.
Me? I have Cranium tear-away calendar.
Just a somewhat hilarious revelation.
How does she relate to me? I worry about money and where I should go get dinner and what I'm doing with my life just like most people but that marriage/children thing is quite the chasm.
I told her, "Well, I go out to dinner a lot, hang out with friends a lot, go on spontaneous adventures fairly often, sleep in as late as I want on my weekends, I'm terrible at cooking full meals for one person, I read, I waste time online, I'm not good at getting back to my leftovers...that's about it."
And she told me I was footloose and fancy-free.
Trust me, nothing fancy I own was free. That shit expensive.


Photo of the week: Mike and Natalie and Mike's new smartcar. He's been drooling over one for almost two years and finally got off the waiting list and got his own! He's about 6'2" and says it's roomy. Natalie is my dear mentor and friend and all good things. This photo made my day.