..After a word from our sponsors

These past few weeks have been quite the busy ones.. I quit my job, took the GRE, applied to grad school, found another job, baked more banana bread than Curious George could ever eat and wrote a tome of new poetry. Christmas seemed to sneak itself in there, didn't it?

A few years ago I illustrated a children's book about the nativity story. I have a small box of the beautiful, first edition hard copies left I should probably start peddling:

So here's my shameless sale pitch:

If you know children, have children, or have ever encountered a child, this is the book for you! Send me an email and we'll get down to business.

In the meantime, I have turned our little den into a tissue-paper snowflake extravaganza. Christmas cards this year are handmade, yes, though I'll have to admit that the kitsch that another person with an art degree may achieve in such an endeavor is wildly lacking in mine; this card would be at home on your refrigerator, right next to your first grade art project where you were introduced to Elmer the glue bull.

Vale la pena.

I feel politically endowed somehow, with this official badge:

Yes, I did.

Spelling it out:

This Christmas, everything I'm giving (including my holiday cards) will be completely handmade. Given the state of most of our bank accounts to daily expenses ratio, plus the fact that I know so many artists/writers/crafters/bakers/thing-makers, this seems to be the absolute best way to get into my usual holiday fervor with nothing but construction stress (and what's a few lost sleep hours to way-too-much spent cash?).

All that said, I still have an Amazon wishlist, and there are absolutely books that I desperately, hopelessly, endlessly want for my own.

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Since my last, somewhat embarrassing and manic post about all the wonderful new things I'm doing in the place of the things I should be doing, I need to appease my ego by announcing that I have successfully sent off my first-ever submission to a residency. Hurray! I am now in the full throes of GRE study, which is proven to be a slow but somewhat painful process while I'm reminding myself of math that I have never, not once, in any capacity had to employ outside of my high school classroom. My brain feels kind of like a plucked chicken.

Undergoing such a futile process can cause me to tumble into discouragement, and so I offer the following excerpt that's been the proverbial light at the end of this muddled tunnel:

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

--David Whyte

To the library!

Subterfuge

Deadlines are looming, deadly things:

True to form, I'm a mere 4 days from a travel essay contest, 5 days from a residency application, and a week and a half from the ugly GRE and guess what I am doing? Baking. I'm baking like my life depends on it, because every time I pick up a flash card (a flash card... that I made. Because I couldn't remember what a prime number is) I am filled with such dread, such angst, such discouragement, that I resort to an old trick my step-dad used to use to help ease the tension from childhood migraines:

"What color is the pain?"

"White."

"If it could fill a glass, how full would it be?"

"Overflowing."

"Would you say that it is hard or soft?"

"Soft. And dense.. and maybe creamy."

"What color is it now?"

"Still white. Like powdered sugar."

"How much would it fill in a bowl?"

"Ooh, just about halfway.. but it needs butter."

I don't know how or why my anxiety manifested into a dessert-vision, but I'm not one to ignore a good auspice. And so I began to bake. Under the delusion that it would be, ultimately, the catalyst I need to a calmer, saner, more productive state of mind. I made a cinnamon/chocolate/banana bread. A pear/raspberry/cranberry cake. Moroccan chicken with raisins and lentils. Dutch peppermint cocoa with homemade whipped cream.

I have created a recipe bookmark on my computer and am obsessed with David Lebovitz and this recipe for homemade marshmallows (WHY don't I have a standing mixer???). I'm dying to have a try at French macarons, though everything I've read indicates you need to give yourself supplies and time for at least half a dozen failed batches before success. Tomorrow, I'm making 4 different kinds of shortbread for the orphan's Thanksgiving we're attending at my dear friend Eric's house.

Have I written anything? NO. Not in almost two entire weeks. Have I even been reading? Nope. With the exception of recipes and baking blogs, I have been a pseudo-illiterate for almost a fortnight. How am I feeling about the GRE, the contests, the residency, and (sigh) the eventual applications I need to pull together for grad program deadlines? Um, I don't have time to answer. I'm a nebulous elf made entirely of cinnamon and cream.

Deadlines are magical, motivational rainbows:

I've learned how to bake! My secret ingredient is sour cream, and I'll throw cinnamon on anything (including chicken). I've been remarkably productive in thousands of other, non-academic ways that include:

• Yoga-- I'm finally learning some of those incredibly scary twisty moves that put a lot of pressure on your elbows and involve Lamaze-esque breathing.
• I made a Christmas card list and began designs for my first ever holiday card.
• I drew a fairly convincing aardvark.
• I drew a terrible fig.
• I braved the 3 week pile of laundry.
• I signed up for Netflix. Finally.
• I set up my Christmas tree.
• I began my Amazon wishlist.
• I updated and revised and constantly admire my iCalendar.
• I've painted my nails.
• Trimmed my bangs.
• Written a blog update..

There's something about looming deadlines that make me remarkably productive in areas of my life that aren't nearly as dire. But nonetheless, I am grateful to have at least discovered a penchant for baking, abilities to organize, and the willingness to undertake such challenges as the drawing of the complicated innards of a freshly cut fig. That's not so easy, you know.

Preface to an essay: myself and place.

We, the grant recipient and tag-along, first-time backpackers in a hemisphere that was not our own (that did not possess our language, our climate, our high-pressured plumbing) were mostly alone for the better part of two months. I suppose it would be drab to simply call it "American," but our tendencies were very introverted; I was often plagued by the guilty knowledge of some of my more well-traveled friends-- Carol, who went to Portugal alone and would simply find pick-up soccer games to troll for companionship; Mina, who offered the simple and stately advice over her many chicly casual Chinese polaroids that the only way to travel was to wake up early and stay out late. "Saves on rooming expenses, anyway." I could see them shaking their heads disapprovingly in my mind's eye as one might envision a particularly prim relative rolling over in their grave.

We paid the rooming expenses, nightly, and after being robbed we stayed in private, unfashionable rooms that most backpackers would have scoffed at even if they could have afforded them. I only bathed when there was the promise of more than 5 minutes of consistent hot water and we often caught movies on our cable TVs while we stayed in after dinner; David working on drawings and I under the pretense of taking extensive notes. (Incidentally, many of my notes on Religulous turned into a full-out essay grappling with some delivery similarities between Bills O'Reilly and Maher... I have a one-liner about the restaurant we ate in that night: "Pasty pasta." I'm on the yellow brick road to travel essay hell.)

In our defense, we were coming off of almost three months of total exclusivity in the Catskills from the summer, and had gotten in the habit of being each other's sole companions (a habit we are clearly still nurturing seeing as we are currently g-chatting whilst sitting a mere 15 ft away...).

Nonetheless, the characters we did briefly join as traveling companions are all the more poignant given their brevity and rarity. We were inexplicably partial to German pairs, and often, people well over retirement age. There was, in no particular order, also:

• a mid-thirties Frenchman (5 months into a solitary 2 year trip around the world, excluding Africa...) who we met in a deathcab to a vampire bat-infested cave
• a young French guy with his Polish-born, Austrian-raised, Russian/English/French educated girlfriend (who we ran into all over Southern Peru, and whose face was eaten away by a deadly milkweed found in the Colca Canyon on a hike)
• two Swedish guys who taught us how to play a card game called "Diminishing Wist" (that's a lot like Spades/Dungeons and Dragons) while discussing the cruelty of neutering dogs (note: neutering, not spaying).
• Two German students: pre-med with a ponytail and a dentist in a Dave Matthews cover band
• Keith, the previously mentioned boarder and Rottweiler-breeder from Cockney who, as it was discovered over a farewell beer and an overheard cell phone conversation, was fleeing drug charges for the past two years and was simply dealing internationally ("Nah, mail is the safest. And I've me dogs in case.)
• Behrnard and Francesca, both retirement age physical and speech therapists from Germany whose humor and aggression made our entire experience dealing with hotel staff and taxi drivers in Chiclayo very, very uncomfortable (Behrnard, who could barely say "Hola," would simply start babbling incoherently and animatedly in mock-Spanish until someone, usually David, tried to explain to the frazzled driver/tour guide/waiter that he was trying to be funny, not insulting. He was also known to pick up discarded toys or trash on the sidewalk and wave them indiscriminately at innocent passer-by, while his wife indulged in innocent chuckles.)
• Nilton, our Peruvian guide to the Colca Canyon, who opened our very first conversation with the statement that his wife "lives with another man. My life is very sad." On our last trek up the largest mountain in the canyon, he was overcome with fever and refused medication, insisting that "Inca people are very strong." He still outstripped everyone on the trail with astounding ease.
• Two Polish retirees who claimed that Peruvian cheese was delicious, their son made portraits that were spectacular, and Polish family trees allowed the woman to remain free of the title of "grandmother" until the child in question was a boy, which was stupendous.
• Karla, a boisterous dresser and, though possibly battling pneumonia, avid smoker who took us out for drinks in the desert and later in Santiago. Possibly the only "friend" we made on the entire trip.

The experience wasn't about people, a fact that I struggled to understand as the rest of my life's experiences are entirely dependent upon them. I have always described places by the people I have met there, the conversations I had. But there, amidst the Germans and card games and treks, I found vague stimulation from those interactions, and my usual intensity when meeting someone new was replaced by the adolescent response of boredom: I would find myself seeking something more interesting around me (a view, a landmark, a pastry) while David had to pick up the languished conversation hanging awkwardly between us. I didn't need to "connect" with anyone, and was more inclined to marvel at the way my thoughts naturally wandered, and marveling at these ordinary things I was seeing in an unordinary place. All the while these people still talking to me like the pigeons at our feet weren't inordinately fat, or the vendor on the corner wasn't selling gargantuan carrots that seemed almost obscene in their girth. These are my interests now.

Someone once told me that the most important power she believed in was the power of place, and I didn't understand the profundity of the term until last month. South America was about transport, sure, but also something else, something reflection on myself will reveal; something having to do with landscape, family, observation, fear and self-management. I was discovering my upbringing in restaurants (my grandmother's meat empanadas, manjar-coated desserts) and recognizing my father in every South American man (the authoritative voice, the oily skin, the thick fingers that gesture unceasingly in conversation).

And thus travel may be for me, simply, obviously, about place: a thing that puts me so outside myself that in retrospection maybe I can see myself more clearly. Maybe.

Home again home again, jiggity jig.

We arrived in Washington today at 11:00 am, raced to Baltimore where we saw back-to-back apartments, and signed a lease in the magical neighborhood of Mount Vernon by 5:00.  When I say "magical," I am primarily referring to the fact that not only are the art museums and independent bookstores within mere meters of my doorstep, but I can also freely wander the charming tree-soaked streets for almost 6 square blocks without once witnessing 

a) an armed robbery 

b) crack houses

c) poop (the human kind)

Hurrah!

Also, due to the mangled scavenging of electronic communication that was South American internet cafes, I have allowed a month of anecdotes to slip by, and have thus decided to allow a gestation period to commence.    A la Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, I will produce a small collection of essays, throughout the next few weeks, where precision will be a small sacrifice for the greater recollections of toilets, deathcabs, and canons.  Stay tuned.

 

Huanchaco via Cockney

I´m on the clock at an internet dive by the northern shoreline of Peru, in a town called Huanchaco. I´m about to make my way over to the mini mercado [re. alleyway] where I´m going to haggle in Spanish over the price of some beautiful hand crafted, hand dyed leather sandals. It should be noted that I am a terrible haggler... while I was trying them on the other night for the first time, I had the very American woman reaction that would have probably been more appropriate over a pair of Frye boots in a Nordstroms [¨Oh my gosh I loooooove them! Don´t you just looooove them aren´t they just precious!!] The Peruvian keeper smiled and her eyes gleamed as she immediately raised the price about 20 soles. David ushered me away and we practiced looking vaguely unconvinced over delicious postres and the freshest ceviche in the country.. the takeaway is that I should basically never, ever gamble.

Peru has been a pretty charming trip thus far, as we´ve lazily drifted from Lima up the coastline. We´ve seen some good ruins [basically, if it´s broken and covered in dirt, it´s a ruin...learned that lesson about guides and booked tours the hard way in Trujillo] museums, beaches, and nightlife. The food has been mostly fried [chifa is a big one here, which is fried rice with everything they have in the scrap pile mixed in] or a product of corn, but I´ve had my fair share of scary chicken parts [Mallory, you take the cake with the goat liver in Africa].

The best thing about Huanchaco so far was the luck we had with lodging. As we were lugging ourselves up a random street toward the shining oasis of a Hostal´s neon sign, a lovely young local called out to us on behalf of her middle aged, beach worn patron sitting behind a stack of fried donuts. Do you want a room overlooking the beach, hot water and a private bathroom in a large, open air beach house for only 25 soles a night- yes. Keith is a 40ish Brit ex pat who lets rooms and hammocks in his rottweiler-guarded beachhouse at the end of the strip. It´s like staying at a luxury resort in Kona-- quiet, white washed, with low hanging hand woven hammocks grazing a glossy wood panel porch with a brick layed barbecue pit in the corner. Keith has given us great tips about where to eat, buy gifts, and where to see the ´real´ Peru. We spent the day trolling the mercados for fresh fruit and chasing crabs on the beach. Before we had keys yesterday we had to wait for Keith to come to open the door while Rocky the bilingual rottweiler lost his shit on the other side of the wall, and not five minutes past the point of wondering if we were lost Keith comes speeding up in the back of a bicycle taxi clutching dog biscuits and an industrial size package of toilet paper. He speaks what he calls ´Cockney Spanish´ and is thus a little less decipherable than the most articulate Peruvian, but so far we´ve figured out the important bits-- don´t walk by the rottweilers at night, and if we need towels or want to flush paper down the toilet it´s an extra 25 soles.

A small album

Yoga at the highest peak of the Catskills.
Sitting on a very wonky dock at the top of the mountain.
I used to play Mario Cart with this guy.
Nigel enviously watching as grumpy Chaucer goes for a leashed walk.
Nigel hiding out in David's suitcase while Chaucer tries to figure out how he did it.
Nigel's favorite thing to do.
A new nook. Getting my clothes all covered with hair is a small price to pay for this cuteness.
Jasper checking out my studio.
My studio!
At the Butterfly house in Oneonta.

We're heading to the airport in a mere 6 hours to begin our journey to Lima! I'm getting more and more anxious to get there by the minute. The only tiny nag in my excitement is my kitties: we dropped them off at their foster home the other day, and Nigel was so angry to be in someone else's territory (there are two male cat roommates for them) that he just stalked around, hissing indiscriminately at table, chair, cat, carpet, looking more and more like a tiny deranged panther. Their foster mom is great and her place has plenty of space for all the kitties, but it still made me a little sad to see my super friendly guy being such a little asshole.

We're watching Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet in Spanish and they're about to get married. Somehow, Shakespeare in Spanish is really making a lot of sense to me. Adios!

So much for blogging: an open letter to my two faithful readers

I could blame it on the mountains I guess.

"There really wasn't an internet connection anywhere and when I could one it was on the library's 1998 tan, cracked Compaq... you know the kind from 7th grade computer class... and the guy who plays tetris on it stood by, picking at his stubbed, black-rimmed fingernails and sweating nervously over my shoulder until I finished checking my email and I mean, you know, could you blog under such nerve-wracking conditions??"

That's about 15% true. I'll admit to it. I'm a lazy blogger, my dear two readers, you need to know this before you jump into a blogging commitment with me. Also, I am not super keen on the length of time it takes to upload photos, so though I know this lowers my chance of you dear two readers actually reading my rare and scant blog updates by a frighteningly large percent, I must reiterate: I am a lazy blogger.

Here's where the actual update begins:
If I had been blogging all summer, I would have mostly been writing as I did in my previous post: star-struck by flora and fauna, you would have been regaled (I mean, you know, in this passive and unobtrusive way that we call blogging) with tales of beaver-sightings and bear poop and having to keep coyotes out of the sandbox where a particularly stupid rabbit built her nest of bunnies. I would have written about that rainbow, which became an almost daily sighting, and about eating a chanterelle pizza made entirely from the mushrooms found on the long hiking trail at Minekill Falls. OH and then I would get started on the food-- almost everything, from the sushi to the bluberry-lemon jam to the panini have been homemade. And delicious. Lee is an adventurous and undaunted chef, who, according to the cooking book that strikes his fancy, will go on these culinary themes for full summers. We picked a lucky summer to leech on to their kitchen-- this year is the summer of bread. Last year was pickles.

Now, we are less than a week from departing for South America. The part of me that has been climbing mountains and trekking woods and following rivers all summer is super excited and ready to be there; likewise the part of me wracked with the guilt of claiming Hispanic heritage and only a compositional (not really conversational) level of Spanish.

But then there is the part of me who had never voluntarily hiked a trail before this summer in her life (forced, family-friendly hikes fraught with frequent consultations of a tree-identification guide, sure) and whose only international travel over the age of 15 are tritely European (and exclusively in large academic groups) is a little nervous. When did I get old enough to plan and fund a trip to another continent? Itineraries always came ready-made with the check that was turned in to the school... I didn't even have to worry about keeping track of a plane ticket until we were at the security checkpoint and had counted off to 40, and nevermind holding on to hotel reservations or museum ticket stubs.. half the time I would sort of wake up as the bus stopped and groggily inquire which city we were even in.

Now, that lush kind of travel is long behind me, and I'm going to cities whose elevations reach 3600 m (when we were first hiking up the mountains here, we had mistakingly read that as feet and were patting ourselves on the back for the 3500 foot mountain we conquered here.. turns out, we're only prepared to be at a quarter of the elevation point in Bolivia) and whose guidebooks tell of phony police officers who will demand foreign fees and papers from gringos or a mugging chain whose cheif form of distraction is to spit on you.

We have to be prepared to identify real officials, money and modes of transport from their counterfeit counterparts. And, my favorite line from the guidebooks describes a city where "panthers stalk locals from trees." Now, I took all those years of Texas standardized testing and I excelled in reading comprehension in my SAT. But nowhere in this book can I determine if this is meant to caution or relieve: do the panthers strictly hunt locals? Am I in the clear? What do you think, dear two ones?

I will be blogging on my travels, from various internet cafes and hostels, as much as the availability and my dedication will allow. I therefore beseech you, my dear readers, to keep your faith in me. I will come back to you. I will deliver, queridas.

Daily things

These are from the documented slide images David took for the Rackateer piece he's showing in Philadelphia right now. It put the clothesline to final use during a rare hour of sunlight-- mostly, it's just been this sad, dropping thing, dangling tiny forgotten socks and dirty towels in the rain.

Summer has finally graced us with her presence, and next weekend we are going blueberrying (a dollar a pound!) at a nearby berry farm. We are entranced by wildberries; on a hike a few weeks ago, we discovered a handful of wee strawberries growing near a stream-- stragglers at the end of their season who, though a poisonously vivid scarlet, would grow no larger than a thumbnail. Our inexpertise reasoned that tiny did not equal edible, and we ignorantly left these perfectly ripe little jewels for some lucky squirrel or deer.

Once enlightened by our hosts, we've been all-too-eager to pounce upon the first glimpse of red, purple or blue within the bushes along the trails. Mostly, this has been succesful (early elderberries are apparently only meant to be made into jams) and yesterday we feasted on bruise-colored blueberries by the pond. This morning, we stopped mid-run to devour miniscule juicy raspberries, barely pausing to brush off the occasional insect resting on those plump little seeds.

With the better weather also comes the daily rainbow, and for the first time in my life, I have seen the full arch across the sky, as though that elusive end were really just over the hill and in the apple orchard.
For the fourth of July, Lee and Kirsten invited us to their friends' house for an annual effigy burning party. Almost all of the guests were art professors and colleagues from Bennington, Cornell, and Ithaca, and many of the effigies were cardboard representations of academic buildings or dean's offices. Lee and Jasper made a giant beaver, and David and I burned a happy earwig, whose population boom has made them so ubiquitous even our cats don't bother chasing them anymore.
This unusual summer has very chilly evenings, and I've taken to reading books curled up with a cat and a sweater, and a warm mug of tea. I've started to listen for the animals at night, and recently I've heard a small pack of coyotes, but I'm mostly listening for bobcats, whose cry is apparently indistinguishable from a woman screaming. There were half-eaten moths hobbling all over our doorstep yesterday morning, and that kind of strange carnage can only mean bats, so we're going scouting for them tonight. I've heard you can throw up breadcrumbs and they'll come swooping down gently like seagulls.

Shoestring wanderlust

Our tickets to Peru have been purchased!  We are arriving August 18th in Lima and then we will be flying out of Santiago October 7th.  I have purchased the first three levels of Rosetta Stone and all our South American shoestring travel books arrived a few days ago.  We're budgeting $10-$50 per person per day and I think we'll make it back with enough money for a security deposit on a new apartment (that we don't have yet) and some foodstuffs until we start our new jobs (that we also don't have yet).  

It seems a little reckless sometimes when I think about it, but it's also kind of ridiculous to expect to be able to find a job now that doesn't start until October.  I'm hoping that I can just show up at some inner-city early childhood program, mention that I've encountered children before and know CPR, and have a job.  My absolute last resort is nannying, though in all honesty it's probably generally more lucrative than a job in a school to begin with.

And so now I wait.  I began painting portraits of the more Germanic versions of my favorite fairy tale characters (I'm laboring over what I'm hoping will be a more sympathetic Rumplestilskin.. is it just me, or does he sort of get screwed over in that story?) and researching their origins.  The most widespread of the classic princess tale seems to be Cinderella, though across cultures and centuries, we've still been fed the most watered down, sugar-coated version possible.  From the most inane and only slightly scandalous discrepancies (in the French oral tradition, fur and glass are almost indiscernible, but they go with glass because a Prince trying to find the perfect fit of a fur slipper on every maiden in the land makes him seem somewhat less.. noble) to much more disturbing details (the wicked step-sisters hack off their toes and heels to fit in the shoe and later have their eyes pecked out by birds for their wickedness) to the absurd (in China, the fairy godmother is a giant talking fish) the most boring is the Disney version.  It seems bestiality, mutilation, and incest are hardly uncommon themes, and unlike the Scandinavian versions (which sought to frighten children into desirable behavior) most of these tales were for adult men in seedy taverns.  

My favorite so far has been Sleeping Beauty.  In an early version, she doesn't get pricked by a spindle but rather gets a piece of flax lodged under her fingernail.  When the prince finds her sleeping, he doesn't nobly awaken her with a chaste and dutiful kiss but simply is so "overcome by her beauty" that he beds her, which of course does not awaken her as the flax is still beneath her nail.  So, he leaves.  She then becomes pregnant and gives birth to his twins while comatose, who eventually suck the flax out while searching for milk.  She wakes, and presumably has a lot of questions for the prince who knocked her up, only he is in his other kingdom with his wife.  The end.

Rumplestilskin is hardly a disappointment as well-- the little man throws his tantrum as we've all learned, only he either rips himself in half or lodges himself in the Queen's vagina, depending on the translation. 

Beaver fever

I am currently at a coffee shop outside Albany, a good 60 miles away from the house in the mountains.  I would be a liar if I said we came for the coffee and not for the wifi.. to our credit, this WAS the closest Bank of America and we had $2000 in checks we needed to deposit (and neither one of us trusts the whole mail-in system...) But I'll be honest: once we connected to the high speed internet we both sort of did this sigh/shudder combination so intense that it resembled a drug-addled Watutsi dance. 

The house is unbelievable: built in the late 1800's and the product of a quirky series of renovations by the decade since, it hosts chartreuse cabinetry, wood burning stoves, exposed birch support beams and large, wrap-around glass porches.  The property is also in the throes of being reclaimed by nature: there are foxes living in the storage barn, blackbirds in the studio attic, chipmunks burrowing through the stone steps and bright yellow finches that erupt around you in the grass like butterflies.  

Outside our window, a mother hummingbird has nested above the porch light, and she has mistakenly seen my poor cats through the screen as potential threats.  She spends hours taunting them-- these slow, lazy and completely unobservant indoor cats who never would've known she or her babies existed if she hadn't started dive bombing them through the window.  Nigel almost threw himself through the glass in frustration and I've had to barricade them from view with my luggage.

One of the artists we are living with is an amateur chef and in the mornings he whips up home made scones and frittata.  Last night we had a smorgasbord of fish tacos, sweet corn, lemon-broccoli and fresh guacamole.  

My studio overlooks the pathway to the garden, and beyond that there is a pond swarming with beavers: every morning, someone has to go down and break up the dam they rebuild each night in front of the tiny stream that runs through and down into a ravine, catching frogs and small fish in the mud.  The beavers wait outside and slap their massive flat tails against the water, and you have to be careful not to slip and fall on the thousands of beaver-made stakes surrounding the shore.

Pre-Columbian Mountaineer

This cake is from the crafty Miss Hall, baked for my pre-going away going away party held at the beginning of May due to scheduling conflicts.  Now, the beginning of June, I have taken flight and with nary a backward glance; adios Houston!

Every now and then I allow myself a book that I call "in-flight reading," namely, "something I found in the airport bookshop 5 minutes before boarding and it looks like it may keep my from falling asleep on the person next to me for the next few hours." High lit is not necessary: page-flipping fluff is the general objective.   I have sought and received in-flight insurance against drooling on strangers most recently with the following: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie.  

The results?  Shoddy on the whole.  Gruen's was by far my favorite, if not only for my penchant for elephants and Depression-era circus trains (elephants love alcohol!  And lemonade!).  As for Silverberg and Niffenegger?  I tried.. I tried to get into the fun (is that why they do it?) of telepathy and time-travel but in the end find the whole bag so fraught with gimmicks and problems I can't help but roll my eyes.  Also, each author had sex ticks that really got under my skin; Silverberg is a breast man, and he will never be able to convince me of an equally as vested interest in a single other subject on planet earth, and Niffenegger couldn't quite pull away from a lilting dependence on Nora Roberts-esque lovemaking scenes.  Even if they happened across time, across worlds,  the presence of a tuxedo and white opera gloves whilst swiping a V-card does not equal romance.

And Rushdie: I cannot get that image of him from Bridget Jones out of my head.  Not even long enough to marvel at the breadth of languages necessary to catch those pithy name puns.  Jerk.

Anyway, the in-flight pleasure of my move to Baltimore was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  This is not one of those obnoxious-looking Sweet Potato Queen books, but rather a collection of correspondence taking place directly following WWII.  Even though the chief recommender on the book's cover was that Eat, Love, Pray Operah-nite, I was fortunately undeterred and am very charmed by the thing.  I may even take up real, carpal tunnel-inducing correspondence once finished.  

Now.. packing, storing, and trekking off to the mountains in a week.  

Unpaid plug

So I am one week until take off and I'm finding myself becoming a little nostalgic about Houston.  More specifically, I'm feeling nostalgic about the Houston I've experienced as an adult, not necessarily the Houston I was exposed to as a child. By the time we were in high school, we were all ready for adventure in some exotic out-of-state location that wasn't humid, polluted, boring, humid, crowded, humid Houston.  We found ourselves in Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio.  We figured anything in these rural, cold towns just HAD to be better than some tired Texas city with the climate of a mouth.  

Returning as an adult, I found Houston to be busy, diverse, quirky, romantic, cheap and yes, still very humid.  But all of a sudden there were places to go, delicious food to eat, cheap drinks and long happy hours, and many, many venues for music, dancing, art, and sports.  And here go my unpaid plugs:

U of H has poetry readings at Poison Girl every month, and each Wednesday at 10 Agora faithfully provides belly dancing.  There's sangria and margaritas in Rice Village, ethnic and vegetarian fare in Montrose, karaoke and dancing in midtown.  Rothko Chapel has poetry/music happenings, and the art scene can be as formal as an MFAH members' only reception to the very casual house-parties at the Joanna by St. Thomas, complete with Christmas-tree bonfires in homage to Heath Ledger.  You can go hang on the President's busts at the David Addicks studio and watch the sunset over the downtown skyline.  You can have brunch picnics on the Menil lawn.  You can buy Mexican dresses for $20 at the supermarket.  Adulthood has even offered insight into this humidity issue: Houstonians may have terrible hair, but we have fabulous, ageless skin.  

How did I miss all of this when I was growing up?

Fiesta!  Where you can buy limes and avocados and jalepenos by the barrel...

..and then you can go around the corner and pick up a new pair of boots.  

Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin

Cafe Adobe: happy hour from 11am--7pm, everyday.
The Big Show!
MFAH
MFAH

Montrose; I've seen this delightful friend stopped at many a street light, banjo at the ready.

Kool Aid man at Poison Girl

Armadillo Palace

Procrastination station

I guess I was under the misguided assumption that procrastination ends outside of the academic realm.  I thought I would never have to pull a single additional all-nighter for the rest of my days, save the possibility of a 13 hour baby delivery or maybe trying to move out of an apartment before the 5 a.m. lease expiration.  Sure, I expect to stay awake all night for various reasons, but they tend to be enjoyable, music-filled, wine-flowing, kind of evenings with bonfires and sunrises.  I could not have prepared myself for this sudden return to the stranger nocturnal side of college: tenth cup of coffee in hand (I've done the legwork on that coffee-inducing-hallucination theory), staring wild-eyed in the blue glow of an overheated computer monitor, the pulsing cursor on the word document nothing short of Chinese water torture.    

FREE LANCE GIGS ARE A CROCK.  Or, I should say, GHOSTWRITING gigs are a crock. Of poo poo.

As is life, so are cats.

This is what Nigel likes: big empty laundry baskets.  

So is it a little lame that my first post is a heavily-edited, bleak, somewhat defensive photo of my cat?  I haven't "blogged" since my all-too-sincere livejournal days, and I'm feeling a little like the new kid on the playground; how do I make new friends around here?  Maybe that's not how blogspot works; maybe that's a Myspace thing.  So I will channel the cat and write with cool, aloof poise that indicates my empty comment space goes unnoticed. 

Though I am clearly here of my own accord and hardly forced to participate, this is the only time I will admit to a reluctance to name this thing I am adding to my lifestyle (Today: wash clothes, buy groceries, eat veggies, blog).  Oh well.  The convenience and seduction of casual messaging media is great (re: powerful, large, imposing) and I am not immune.  

But consider this my solemn vow: I may blog, but I will NOT "tweet."