this morning

It's my favorite time of the day, the space before all the household is awake, the space when I have the silent house to myself. It is one of the few times in the day that I will be able to hear the clock ticking, or listen to the sound of my own typing. The feeling of the morning is very insular. I am wrapped in my house, merely an observer of the world outside.

The sky is a single, solid light gray with wisps of clouds adding texture. It is hard to tell if I am hearing the drip of rainwater from the eves and the light wind, or if it is raining in ernest. A flock of wild turkeys is in the driveway. They started in the north pasture when I was drinking my first cup of coffee. Now I'm on my second, and they are nearly in my front yard.

The goats will stay in this morning and in the afternoon, the barn will be warm and full of soft bleating and the chewing of cud and horns butting against horns. It will be a damp day, the kind of day where your clothing never dries between forays into the mist-like rain that is too heavy to be mist and too light to be rain. The kind of day where you wear wool hats and sweaters, but even though you are damp and chilled it is too warm to be in layers and long sleeves all day. It's a day of rubber boots and tea and warm leftovers for lunch. It's a soft, seductive sort of weather that doesn't really interfere with daily activities but at the same time controls everything.

The turkeys are back in the north pasture now, headed towards the tree line. Grieg is playing softly, easing me into the day, and I can hear sounds of stirring in the rest of the house. I'll need something with more energy soon, if I'm going to actually wake up this morning.

What it is

I haven't been posting much lately (just pretend you've noticed) and it's kind of stressing me out. Just a little bit, just when I think about it, but just enough. I put so much pressure on myself when I get ready to write here, all of which is unnecessary since all of (the two of) you who read this probably aren't looking for Pulitzer material. If you were, you've probably realized your error by now. Recently, I visited a friend from my Montreat days. It was a wonderful visit for a variety of reasons. Among the many (many) things we talked about, blogging happened to be one of them. "Just write what you're doing," I told her, "simple narrative stuff and the rest will come." Maybe I should follow my own advice.

This is what I have been doing today:

Writing! A good, two solid hours of work. It felt amazing to get back to Rob and Trish, and to realize how close I am to being done with this last revision. Now to actually being done with them...and entering the stormy waters of agent searching.

But writing wasn't the only thing I did today...look what else I was up to:


Painting! Finger painting! On old grain bags! Maybe I am abusing my exclamation mark privileges, but it was the perfect creative outlet for the day. I love writing, but it tends to leave me both exhausted and thirsty for more creative expression. This was about as low key as possible – no brushes, on the back porch, complete freedom, good music and beer. Big, bold, no pressure, because the 'canvas' came from the dumpster a hundred feet away. Plans for both include favorite quotes and maybe photos. Or not.

And yeah, that's what I've been up to. Good times, my friends, good times.

chill a little

Tonight, I drove half an hour - the requisite distance to just about anywhere - to the fabric store. Simply wandering in and out of the rows of fabric, I quickly learned that only two people were working that night, that someone hadn't come into work. I joined the line of people at the cutting counter, the woman flustered, customers impatient. I couldn't help thinking that if everyone just chilled out a little then none of this would really be a problem.
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Yesterday I spent the day at Minute Man National Historical Park. I watched the multimedia thing at the visitors' center, stared at maps and read excerpts of journals. I walked along the five mile path that's 'Battle Road,' stopping to photograph ruins and monuments to dead British soldiers. I found myself thinking about those dead British soldiers a lot. I found myself thinking a lot about those emotion wrought journal entries, economic and political tension, hot headed 'patriots' with a taste for freedom. I couldn't help thinking that if everyone just chilled out a little, Battle Road would never have existed.
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A few days ago I led an activity about food systems, the difference between industrialized and local food. The simplified industrialized system is 14 participants long. The local, four. During our debrief, the first thing a chaperon said was "If we got rid of the industrialized food system, then all of those people would be out of jobs." Those farmers, getting 20 cents on each dollar consumers spend on food. Those truckers, making 10 cents on the dollar. Those migrant workers, making 1 cent. I found myself thinking how easy it is to defend our lifestyles of conspicuous consumption by claiming that at least we give people jobs. I found myself thinking how easy it is to support a system that makes life so comfortable – for us. I found myself thinking that predicting the doom of the American empire, the slide into economic chaos by a change in the food system, seemed like a pretty stressful way of thinking. I couldn't help thinking that if everyone admitted that the problem is complex and the answer unknown, that things worthwhile aren't simple, and that actions always have consequences – if everyone admitted that and then just chilled out a little, then maybe we could start with whatever is in front of us.

Hemlock House

I stood on my porch, hanging my laundry out to dry. Off in the woods to my left, I could hear a fellow volunteer leading a tour:

"What do you guys think we might be growing here?"

"Alligators!" A little boy's excited voice shouted.

I imagine he was disappointed to learn that the correct answer is mushrooms. The tour moved off towards the gardens. Kids from last night's global gateway program were playing basketball in parking area and I could hear goats bleating in the south pasture. All of my five housemates were working or gone and the house was oddly quiet, other than my music.

There are a lot of us in the house, but so far, things work out pretty well. We listen to a lot of Iron and Wine, Dar Williams, and The Decemberists. We keep a list of our goals for the summer on the fridge: Learn to make yogurt, do yoga, make time to play guitar, learn to make amazing pizza, bring back the spork, practice tai chi, knit mittens, write a song about food that people will take seriously, chill out. We had a meeting and talked about making a chore chart and having some sort of system, but mostly we just do what needs to be done. We come home in the evenings worn out, but after showers and jostling elbows around the stove and fridge and table and eating dinner things start to pick up. On a tame night, we might put in a movie or play a game or wander off to read and write and play guitar. But more often hilarity ensues, and we end up making infomercials for sporks and playing madlibs to create a house horoscope. We hang out in the kitchen or on the porch and the living room is sadly neglected. We talk about what we did that day, things happening on the farm, food we want to cook, spirituality and religion, our families and lives. We plan theme dinners and write them on the calendar and then forget the dates. When volunteers from the other house come over, they say our house seems like a fun - and clean - place. We agree about the fun. The clean part comes and goes.

There are 23 full time volunteers here at the farm, the farm being Overlook Farm. It's part of Heifer International and serves as an education center, about Heifer's mission (to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth) and about sustainability and about other cultures. I'm an education volunteer: think a mixture of camp counselor, tour guide and outdoor ed facilitator and then throw in some sheep herding and goat milking and pig slopping to round things out. I've had two weeks of training but only one week of work, so I'll tell you more about that later.

For now, it's good to be done with college, not have classes and books looming up in the fall, to come home in the evening and not have to work on homework. To spend my days off baking black bean brownies and going hiking and making yogurt and working on my novel. To read Shakespeare just because I feel like it.

Dog Backwash = Gross

My dog and I are sharing crackers and soymilk in the room that I used to share with my sisters but is now a storage room about to be restored to it's original status as master bedroom. Actually, I am the only one drinking the soymilk. Sharing beverages with dogs is gross.

Did I mention that I am also sleeping in this storage room/not quite parents' room? I am. I have to climb over a box or two and my older sister's piles of notebooks she left behind and also a pile of bedding and hangers to get to the ladder to reach the bunk bed. But then I'm in bed, and who really cares what sort of chaos surrounds you? As long as it's not moving and not turning on lights and keeping quiet, then I'm cool with that.

Turning on lights is the whole reason I am not sharing my younger sister's bedroom. (Which used to be my parents bedroom, after it housed my sister and I, which was previous to being my older sister's room, back when I had the room my brother now has after moving out of the room the three youngest boys sleep in. Yes, my friends, I hold the distinct honor of having occupied all four bedrooms in my parents' house. Next time I come visit, I'm hoping I score the sunroom futon!) That was a long parenthetical comment. Allow me to reiterate: Turning on lights is the whole reason I am not sharing my younger sister's bedroom.

"She has the trundle bed, you can sleep on that," my mom said, after I filled up a corner of their living room with all my worldly possessions.

I was super tired already, from a weekend hanging out with friends, from carrying the interior of my apartment down three flights of steps and into my car, from the drive to my parents'. I was also pretty certain that I was suffering from post traumatic stress after my 24 credit semester. Any bed sounded great. Even curling up on the tile floor held its charms.

"Oh, you might want to check the light levels before you go to sleep," my dad suggested after dinner. My little sister requires both a night light and the hall light in order to sleep. My previous sojourn at the family homestead left her traumatized when I, horror of horrors, shut the door.

I trooped upstairs, turned on the night light. Shakespeare could have written Hamlet by the light. Even if I could bully my sister into leaving the door shut the light would feel like a saintly visitation, but I doubted I'd be penning any noncommittal Danes.

I made up the bunk bed above the sea of chaos.

And then I nearly cried myself to sleep, because I was exhausted and worn out and missed my apartment and realized that I no longer had a home and might not again for a while – home as in the place where you know where everything is, where you aren't living out of a suitcase, where you have your own space, where you belong and know how everything works.

And then I nearly laughed, because I was lying in my old bedroom in my parents' house and feeling homesick.

Final Finals (Finally)

Today, I took the final to end all finals and am finally done with college. So far, I have celebrated by taking a nap, meeting a friend for ice cream and terrorizing small animals. Now I'm reading through loan repayment paperwork. I'm trying to find the "I don't friggin' know how much I'll be making and I might be living in a cardboard box" option, but it doesn't seem to be listed. Speaking of cardboard boxes, I need to start packing...

I spent the whole last week of classes counting down the minutes and days and barely able to contain my excitement. Now that the day is here, I'm not particularly excited. I'm just worn out. It was a rough semester.

I thought I would come up with something to put here. Looks like I was wrong. Here's a picture I drew for a friend in class one day...like I said, it was a rough semester.

Respite

It's a windy, gray morning with whispers of rain, and staring out my window in my silent, the backyards and small road deserted, it's easy to feel like only the birds and I are awake. But every now and then a cyclist goes past on the road, disappearing and reappearing behind trees and houses, and sometimes a solitary figure walks down the alleyway. Even less often, a car drives past, loud in the silence. There's a pensive feel, the trees and clouds waiting for the rain. Before a storm, it is always the small trees that make more noise, their leaves anxiously rattling against each other. I never know if they are nervous or excited, but I have always felt it is a mixture of both. It is easy to imagine trees loving a storm, particularly the sedated, suburban trees. Perhaps I am projecting too much of myself onto the trees. 

***

Last night I sat at this same desk, rain outside turning the road to a darker shade a gray, wind slipping in through the screens and suggesting wilder places than the town that surrounds me. Vivaldi played in the background and I read article after article on the role of Edgar in King Lear and on the performance of self and the importance of disguise. Today, I will spend in the same manner. I have been anticipating this paper all semester, flipping through my planner and staring in despair at the swathes of yellow highlighter outlining my life. ENGL 444 paper, I say to myself, that will be fun. And it is. It is a respite and a relief, almost as good as slipping away to the wilderness. I sometimes think I could live, breathe and eat literature. I sometimes think I could subsist on Shakespeare alone. But I have thought the same of Hemmingway and of Tennyson, of T. S. Eliot and Chaucer. 

***

It is nearly the end of May. Soon, this will all be over and I will leave this town and school behind. A friend asked if I was getting nostalgic. I am not. I think about packing, and I am excited. Last weekend, three girls stopped me on the street and asked if there was a Thai restaurant nearby. I told them there was and where it was. I gave them directions to another store. It's time to move on.