I could tell you what's on my mind

I could tell you what's on my mind. Or I could tell you about the night of the fireworks, when we were driving to Fair Park to see the show. I could tell you how, at the last second before joining the highway, after we turned on the service road but just before the entrance ramp, there to our right we saw the Hispanic families sitting on the embankment, bordering the highway, looking to the south.

We said, this many Mexicans can't be wrong. We changed two lanes and pulled over, found a place to sit on Bank of America's manicured lawn. An ice cream cart circled. A group of kids walked up from McDonald's holding dripping cokes. Some of them spoke Spanish. We sat with our feet to the highway, as if it were a riverbank, and debated going on to Fair Park because we doubted how the view would be from where we were. Would the fireworks be small and distant, we said, would the lights of I-30 drown them, would the trees be in the way? But when the fireworks began they filled out the blank spot in the skyline, between the overpass and the stand of trees, as if they had been matted and framed for us, with just enough black margin. They were the Fair Park lights after all. Children squealed, eighteen-wheelers roared down thirty, honking, and in the distance we could just see the crests of fireworks launched in cities miles to the south.

Halfway through the show the sprinklers sputtered up through the grass. Everyone laughed and screamed and scrambled, dragging blankets and camp chairs, while children escaped their parents and got wet. The lights grew bigger and louder, and the ice cream man turned off 'pop goes the weasel,' and the mothers clapped, and everything became faster and brighter and more patriotic each second. When it was over they all walked home through puddles of yellowed streetlight on cracked sidewalks scattered with broken glass, home to the neighborhoods bordering the interstate, happy with what could be seen without going anywhere.

Yes, I could tell you what's on my mind. It's mostly ideological. I could tell you about the research, the ideals, the frustration. We could discuss the dangers of monoculture and the need for small local farms, and I could tell you how they grow our food on irrigated strips of desert in California: even the water comes from somewhere else. I could tell you that your spinach has been across more states than you have. We could talk about towns whose squares are shuttered while the people shop online, or I could tell you how we swallow supplements full of dandelion while cursing the weeds in our own yards. I might mention how I try not to leave a 10 mile radius around my house for any errand, though this city goes on forever. I could tell you how, in the end, most of us want to be anywhere else than where we are.

I could tell you a lot of things I think about, and I would probably sound pompous and opinionated, even though I didn't mean to. You would probably want me to stop talking, and I would probably hate myself later for offending you. So instead, I'll say that when the show was over, we drove the 10 minutes back up Garland Road to our own small house in our own small, quiet neighborhood, the one that's bordered by the train track and yet another highway. I'll tell you how good it was that night to have never been on the interstate, to have watched out over it with people who had walked there. I'll tell you how I relished what I felt, sitting on the roadbank with the brown-eyed children. I'll describe how all the way home through the dark sagging neighborhoods, we heard the pop and barely saw the flicker of small illegal firecrackers, sparkling in the yards beneath the live oak trees.

there are evenings

like this, when i'm home alone cooking supper and though it seems to be silent i could never turn on music; all i want is the sounds given to me-- cicadas, crickets, the air conditioning cycling on and off, the hiss of black eyed peas boiling on the stove, a passing car, a passing train.

about us

we live in a little yellow house

with a blank wall that waits for a piano

the grass is usually a little too long, but secretly we like it that way.

we believe in color, local produce, and letting things be what they are.

we listen to james taylor, the weepies, regina spektor, bach's cello suites, and blossom dearie.

we're in and out of our local branch library all the time;

we read in bed most nights.

there's a train yard at the end of the block

and an ice cream man with a small blue pushcart.

there's a lake nearby

and a thrift store

and a rosemary plant waiting to be potted.

we make biscuits with my great-grandmother's rolling pin

we drink more tea than coffee and use more honey than sugar

we make silly faces and forget to answer our phones.

it was my 21st birthday!!!! part 1: i heart little league

My 21st birthday was exemplary! In fact, so many lovely things happened that it's going to be divvied up into separate posts. To start off the festivities, Dan and I went to Original Pancake House for a Tasty Tasty Breakfast. Then, he went to work and I went to Northpark, where I used my birthday money from Grandma and Grandpa Green to buy a super-delightful orange polka-dotted blouse.

Later, I went to Justin's game. Have I ever mentioned before how much I love going to Justin's games? They're kind of the best.

Me at the game. I basically love how light my hair color looks here. haha.

Spudling Bland, doing his swanky catcher stuff. I didn't get any pictures of him batting this game, unfortunately.

Sometimes he goes and talks to the pitcher. and sometimes he even asks the ump for a timeout to go talk to the pitcher. It's pretty fancy and official, and I find it rather impressive. (ps this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of Spud, even if I did take it-- it's so him.)

And it's a 5-1 win for the Longhorns!

this evening

Revising my short stories well into the wee sma's (as Anne would have it), basking in lamplight, and feeling awfully fond of my husband, who knew that tonight needed a cupcake with a purple flower.

Small Big Things

I've been thinking today about the Small Big things in my life. Not the Big Big things-- hearbreaks, proposals, plot twists-- but the little details or objects or moments that ever-so-quietly created a shift in my life, like a rock thrown into a small stream. I thought I'd share some.

1. A thick, green, hardback book I pulled at random off my parent's bookshelves when I was 11. Anne of Green Gables. Reading that book was one of the great epiphanies of my life-- all of a sudden I knew who I was, and I knew that I had never really known who I was until then.

2. This shirt, bought when I was 15. It was the first piece of clothing I ever bought that I would still wear now, and for years it was my benchmark-- I compared all clothes to it, and only bought them if they had the same 'feel.'

3. Discovering this blog last winter. It's inspired me to think about what kind of life I want and then make it be that way, and it's been a constant reminder to have Happy Fancy Fun, not just Boring Fun.

4. Going to my first poetry reading at school and feeling so at home.

5. A slim little book called "The Hundred Dresses," by Eleanor Estes. I read it at age 7 all in one sitting at a grown-up party my parents went to, and it rocked my world. It was the first book I ever read that made me think and care and ponder. It changed the way I read. (and, ps, every little girl needs to own this book. it's pretty exceptional; the lesson is wise and timely, and presented so gently and artfully that it feels silly to call it a 'lesson.')

6. Stumbling across my parents' old Michael Feinstein-singing-Gershwin CDs. Oh man. Such a happy day. That was when I fell in love with that kind of music.

7. The day Dr. Rodriguez chewed me out for trying to stay too in control of my voice while I sang. Yeah, it helped my voice, but it also set off a whole chain of realizations about myself that caused me to change in pretty profound ways. I've been happier ever since.

8. The day when I was 16 that I wore red lipstick to the Grace Chapel meeting. I must admit to a certain amount of pride over this-- keep in mind, this was 2005, some of us were still wearing denim skirts, and this look wasn't The Thing at all like it is now. Red lipstick didn't show up on runways for another two or three years at least. A couple of people that day said it was too bright and red, and for the first time I was able to not care and just wear the thing that felt right and made me happy. It was so liberating, and from then on I was willing to look different from other people and develop my own sense of style.

So those are some of mine. Tell me yours?

pictures

There are so many pictures in my head of things I want to do and make and be-- not all of them very solid, or with clear edges, but I love the feeling that comes from them. I wish I could stop long enough to look at them real good and figure out what they are or how to make them happen.

For instance, I just had the most incredible picture flash through my head of what I want our back deck to look like, and how I want to be and feel in that space. And if I didn't have gobs of Stuff To Do Now Or Five Hours Ago Would Have Been Better Actually, I think I'd drop everything and make it happen, while I've still got that picture clearly. But alack.

On the bright side, I'm getting dear Elwood cleaned today which will be a Great Relief to both of us. Elwood never complains, of course, but I know he feels awfully shabby and it embarrasses him.

Lovely moment: hot shower with the bathroom window open, breeze, She & Him playing, a train whistling, doves in the yard, sun.

(so in love with she & him. oh my goodness. if you haven't met them, please do now-- perfect warm-weather music)

held

Honestly. How can anybody expect me to write a short story when the air is lush and gray, the trees are like a dense green firmament above my head, and the neighbors are grilling with charcoal? My own world is too heartrendingly atmospheric; there's no containing another.

In January, the dome of the cold earth around you descends, and something inside is cramped and stoops as if in a room with low ceiling. On a cloudy April day, the dome is again low, and dense, and still, but this confinement is soothing; the smallness of each horizon is a comfort when they all are packed so densely with life.

Moo.

Sometimes, being a creative writing major makes me feel like a cow. A word cow instead of a milk cow. Moo.

Batch Two of poetry is due Friday afternoon, so I'm burning the midnight oil and drinking the midnight coffee, working. I'm experimenting with some different styles and topics right now, which is super exciting, but does make things complicated-- I keep not knowing how to edit, or whether things are working, because I'm writing outside of my comfort zone. But that's a good thing-- I definitely think it's improving my work, or will in the long run.

It cracks me up how predictable the creative-writing-assignment-emotional-cycle is. In the last hour or two I've hit the depression phase, where you feel like everything crumbles when you touch it. This pretty reliably happens a day and a half before the assignment is due, if you're operating on a normal procrastinatory timetable. Tomorrow night will be more like a high, which will continue through Friday when I turn the poems in as a somewhat beatific state of artistic fulfillment. This will then subside as I realize that I must immediately set to work on the next assignment (another short story).

Haha. I sound like some kind of wonky weatherman.

Completely unrelated aside: On Monday I started drinking a green smoothie for breakfast or lunch every day, and today, only two days later, I was craving that instead of sweets. I love how quickly our bodies respond when we do what's right for them.

And now, for your reading pleasure, we have yet another monstrously long and self-indulgent post in which the author rambles hither and yon.

The Bradford Pears bloomed overnight! Yesterday they Weren't, and today they Are-- a lovely surprise this morning, driving to school with my windows down. It reminded me of the year my family went to Scotland. We were gone for three weeks, from mid-March till early April. Spring was late that year, and sudden apparently, because when we left it was winter, and when we returned spring was well underway. I remember driving home from the airport and realizing that the row of Bradfords outside my parents' neighborhood had already bloomed and gone, that I'd missed that week or two when the world's at the tipping point, when winter melts. That's where we are this week here in Dallas, and I'm so glad I'm here to watch. It's like a happy secret that's just become known, and you can see in people's faces that they know and they're wondering if you do too.

I've settled on a theme song for my junior year: 'wake me up when it's over,' Norah Jones. Though, having said that, I will also say that my acute Junioritis is actually more under control lately. Of course, spring break being on the horizon doesn't hurt any. The past four weeks have been one scholastic emergency after another, largely owing to two major creative writing assignments due the same week and then catching the flu and getting behind in everything else. After today things calm down substantially, so I'm going to clean my house and start feeding us again. I'm not sure what Dan and I have been living on, seeing how long it's been since I cooked a good meal. I keep trying to apologize for being a horrible wife, but Dan seems to still think I'm a good one. Because he's just like that. (I like him.)

In related news, I'm happy (and rather surprised/relieved) to report that my first portfolio of poetry for this semester got really good reviews and that my first short story ever was also met with a pleasant balance of praise and criticism. As in, my teacher had as many criticisms as with my peers' stories, but had a surprising amount of praise as well. Dr. Bondurant is a very frank critic-- a little intimidatingly so, actually. I was nervous about my table reading and review, but he actually seemed pretty pleased with my work, in as much as he ever seems pleased.

Oh dear. I don't mean to make him sound like an ogre. He's just very. . . to the point. If you see what I mean. Doesn't hem and haw much, or squiffle about the bush. He goes straight for it with the pruning shears.

Actually, technically speaking, it wasn't my first story. I wrote several as a child, and a couple as an adolescent. They were unfortunate. My last was written at fourteen. It was entitled "Bella," and it chronicled a young girl's Self-Absorbed Attitude and Subsequent Awakening of the Soul to New Depths of Tenderness and Love and Awareness of Beauty. As I recall, the catalyst for this transformation was a tumble off a garden wall whilst Bella was walking by the light of the full moon, which resulted in a broken ankle, weeks in bed, and much Time for Reflection. I was monstrously proud of this piece, which Claire and I subsequently staged, with myself in the title role. Being a very subtle, internal-monologue type story, it was impossible to reproduce without a narrator, so I recorded all the necessary bits of exposition onto a tape recorder, which was artfully concealed on the set. We choreographed it so that one of us would be near the recorder any time it was called for so's to turn it on discretely. It was all very artsy. We were most impressed with ourselves for how artsy it was.

And that's quite enough rambling. I should go to bed. I hope to dream of Edie, our newest friend, and a delightful friend she promises to be. Goodnight, all.

And just in case you were wondering

Today was, without doubt, the first day of spring here in North Texas. Yes, I know, it is really cold, and will likely remain so for a while. But couldn't you see, and feel? The air and the light were completely different, no longer wintery but with the smell of life. That's how it goes, you know-- the beginning of one thing hides deep in the middle of the thing before.

Spring!

a Moment

Tonight I went to a concert at school; it is well below freezing here, but attendance was required for Voice. Afterwards I stumbled in to the most wonderful moment:

I left the building and discovered that it had snowed a touch during the concert-- everything wore a thin, shimmery layer of frost and the cars were feathered with snow. I walked out into the night, into the frost, into the plumes of steam rising from open places in the sidewalk (blocked off with orange barricades and traffic cones) where they're working on the pipes, walking farther and farther out to the edge of the voices of people leaving the concert and into the road noises far off in the dark, walking, carrying my writing notebook, wearing a coat and scarf and shoes that clicked, the wind biting my hands and face. It was just like scenes from movies set in New York, with the young, solitary heroine walking home in the cold after dark. And for a moment that's who I was.

in which we bring home a yuletide friend

These pictures are from December 7th, when Dan and I braved a Blustery Snowstorm (of sorts. . . well, really of the imaginary sort)and wended our careful way to the friendly local Home Despot, where we searched high and low for The Perfect Christmas Tree, which we found. We are convinced there's nary a goodlier tree in All The Land.