i'll let you know when i get there

christmas eve finds me in the airport.  i remember my trip home a few years ago found me frantically trying to finish homemade-heartfelt christmas letters and gifts for everyone.  i'm not that girl anymore.  last year all i wanted to do was take pictures.  this year, my camera is here, but stowed away.  no compulsive urge.  this year, i don't really know who i am or what i'm about. the airport begs for us to make snapshot judgments of others.  encounters are fleeting but revealing.  in a single visual or audio instant, i can whittle down a person's existence to a single word or defining feature.   WEALTHY.  JET-SETTER.  GAY.  MOTHER.  CHRISTIAN.  BOHEMIAN.  SOUTHERN.  BOYFRIEND.   TECHIE.  STUDENT.   the thing is, the observation game quickly kicks back and make me wonder about my own word- my own boiled down identity.  this year, i find myself lacking.  i'm a thirty somethi...

1.  robots are more and more ubiquitous.  for the record, i'd like to state that i am pro-robot.  a healthy dose of caution, but pro for certain. 2.  we did not visit this time around.  maybe there wasn't a time around.  maybe next time.  next time, i hope. 3.  all those girls quoting joni mitchell around this time of the year.  all those girls in their beautiful existential existences. 4.  a person so small and a world so alive.  a single smile stretches on and on when you've only been alive for six days.  i love that little buddy.  i'm glad about life.  potential. 5.  nervous and unsure.

Chaos in the middle and the door locked tight.  The trash is full.  The weight is over the limit.  So tangible, it may as well be real. It may as well be real. Clinton those words. A semantic slur of deceptive intent. the letter, the spirit and a troubled heart on defense. An outlaw, no doubt.

tis the season to buy yourself hair extensions online in a moment of temporary insanity.  it's the most wonderful time of the year. also:

11:13 and i'd already brushed my teeth but now i find myself eating whole pickles in bed

like a cat like a cat sudden bursts of wild energy and here's why: fear and/or joy staring at phantom walls where a mirror used to be a whole world of similar molds dangerous and close and calling calling calling attention, please and then in it -under it- back up and lean in kneading kneading some warm crawl space to disappear to when i can't see through fears and phantoms find me there, behind the clothes. find me.

oh, hello. thanksgiving break allowed me to slow down my pace a little and actually think.  i miss thinking.  sunday morning, i watched a few too many biographical documentaries about artists and i ended up feeling a little loopy.  and then there was the 9/11 doc that left me with some capital S serious questions- but that's for another time.  hopefully soon, maybe never. i'd like to articulate a brief quandary that just popped into my head JUST now.  which is no longer now.  you get it. So one one hand, there's that cliche "to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result is the definition of insanity."  It's been attributed to pretty much everyone- from ol' Benny Franklin to Einstein and probably Betty White for good measure.  It creeps up as hard evidence any time anyone wants to judge others for some sort of stagnation or stubbornness. but then there's that pesky other hand. Isn't doing the same thing over and over an...

(We just finished reading Like Water for Chocolate  and the girls do an assignment where they produce a food contribution, the recipe, and a write up that fleshes out some sort of symbolic value in the food they prepared.  Here was my contribution this year.) Caesar Salad Ingredients: 1 Vehicle or friend with a vehicle or mode of public transportation or working legs 1 Fresh & Easy Store 2 Bags of Salad 1 Bowl and Scooper Thing Directions: 1.  Go to store. 2.  Purchase 2 bags of salad. 3.  Open all the little bags in the big bags. 4.  Dump all the things together. 5.  Mix the things all around.                   When I was younger, I remember my dad telling me about the supreme intelligence and general awesomeness of Sherlock Holmes.  He’s a fan.  He told me at one point, “Sherlock Holmes says knowing e...

weeks ago debbie and i had dinner at gallagher's pub.  she ordered a cajun chicken salad that had some sort of grilled vegetable medley as a topper.  when the salad came out, the top of the salad was covered in sliced bananas. bananas. i was so thrown off i didn't even take a picture.  debbie immediately began eating all the bananas because, as she recalled later, she felt like they didn't belong there and she had to remove them as quickly as possible. nothing was said by the waitress and, oddly enough, debbie and i remained so shocked and confused by the mysterious banana suprise that we didn't even inquire.  i thought for sure that some sort of confusion had taken place in the process of taking the order, but when the receipt came it revealed no strange add-ons. just cajun salad. banana salad toppings on grilled vegetables. that really happened.

on the eve of my thirty-first year freshly showered sans makeup and bra netflix garlic breath a calm night before a busy few days also present: 3 fresh cat scratches, 2 brown bananas, 1 cup of coffee- brewing. 1.  the only thing i think i'm noticing about aging is the whole weird body thing.  my weird foot bump that surfaced a few years ago seemed to foreshadow the impending doom of the body-in-decay changes that start to happen after 30.  i feel like overnight, my metabolism screeched to a halt.  i had to stop wearing skinny jeans because my calves seem to have double in size.  what's with THAT?  and i'm starting to believe that those terrible rumors are true... once you're past 30 you just don't drop weight as easily. 2.  in most other ways- i feel no age at all, really.  things seem exciting and possible most days. 2.5.  OMG- my dear select readers.  do not share this with the outside world upon penalty of something gr...

What about Brian? Whose acne ridden face stared at me across the table in Religion class, Whose incessant gum chewing did not mask his terrible, tinny breath, One of few who wore cologne, Who I always appreciated and never took seriously, Who showed up at our five year with a blonde wife on his arm Who came to visit at my dorm and sat around for an hour or more while I ignored him in favor of the Sims. Who does not have Facebook And may not even exist. What about him?

today i opted to sleep that extra 20 seconds it would have taken to put a smidgen of effort into a costume.  instead, i threw on the blue renaissance faire shawl thing and called it a holiday. walking onto campus is like walking into a Spirit Halloween store or something.  these people really go for it.  those little costumes that make you look like a little person riding an ostrich- nine piece ensembles- costumes that require very specific and strange hats... i wonder if these people have special rooms in their houses dedicated to storing these once a year outfits. and then there was me.  i was rocking the space where people could tell i had put SOME kind of effort into my costume but obviously not enough to really BE anything.  this is the kind of special space where people don't really bother to ask "what are you?" Except one.  One student asked. "I'm comfortable,"  I said. Later, M texts me.  She was working at the school when I rocke...

"Run mad as often as you choose,         but do not faint."                 -Jane Austen

Don Draper, you kill me. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/15741

the so small sphere the impossible distance from there to here an intersection of opposing lines that meet sometimes sometimes "sometimes i feel like i'll float away if Don isn't holding me down" "the hardest part is realizing you're in charge" (2:10) i can barely look at her her face is haunted by the structure of another but oh, her heart how her heart and mine could talk talk ourselves true *disclaimer- I wrote this during Season 2 or something.  I haven't quite lost my mind like she does in later seasons.

my chin is UP i am 6 feet tall i am a juggernaut of optimism and possibility i am twenty times alive and surrounded by twenty doors all wide open and aglow it is my reason my grail my gold medal my framed picture on the mantle my passion my beatrice my friday afternoon with the whole weekend ahead my focus my everything burrito and it is all right on time (to wake up and to BE alive)

it's starting. i can feel it. i'm gonna chop my hair off any day now.

Words that I really dislike: Hubby Shall Touche

i had three drinks walked three blocks home i am thirty tipsy and life is so very singular

Everyone thinks they know what they value in other people.  Questions like, "what traits to you value most in a friend" always have smushygushy answers like "authenticity" or "honesty" or "humor" or whatever.  But really, how do you even measure any of those things?  How can you analyze a person's level of authenticity?  TRULY measure honesty?  Humor is subjective.  I mean, c'mon. What we really mean is that we like people who are like us in ways that make us feel good about ourselves, or who are different from us in complimentary ways that also make us feel good about ourselves. We like people that make us feel good about being their friends. We like people we like. The end.

often, the remedy for anxiety or ennui or melancholy is as simple as a novel. a disappearing act for which there are few substitutes that thin asian man talking with earnestness and deliberation about the life-changing awakening he experienced through experimenting with psychedelic drugs.  he spans the whole chasm of topics,  talks about how unaware so many of us remain for our whole lives because we so easily buy in to what we are told or conditioned to believe.  the thing is, the guy sounds  enlightened.  like, the whole "vibe" thing, he has it.  he has the "i am operating from a different plain than most" vibe that makes me so curious. it's like the religious cloud i used to walk on, but devoid of the religiousness.  just an... awareness. that parking citation on the red car outside and those people who do not pay:  are they outlaws?  idealists? and those people who do pay:  upstanding citizens?  blind conformists? exist...

 It seemed like the Michigan State campus was always full of chanting groups of people holding signs.  There were sorority shenanigans and whatnot- people with petitions to sign- and there was almost ALWAYS a group of people with signs protesting outside of the GAP. On one particular morning was one of those particular moments when you are able to step outside of your current moment and view present self as a speck among many past and future specks.  On that particular morning, I remember feeling really young- like my whole life was ahead of me- life my mind was a just-opened jar of play-do that hadn't dried out from being left out or been mixed with other colors.  Just... fresh .  And on that freshest of mornings with my freshie fresh mind at work, I passed that group of protesters or supporters or what-have-you and I wondered to myself what MY cause would be.  It seemed like everyone at some point gravitated to a cause that they felt driven to center th...

let's live suddenly without thinking e e cummings

"I think people misunderstand, sometimes, the difference between “empathy” and “sympathy”, and this is getting us in trouble. Sympathy is closer to pity. Empathy, which is essential for being human, means that you can imagine yourself in some else’s situation, good or bad. And feeling *real* empathy, even empathy with “the enemy”, with the bottom of the barrel of humanity, with the suicide bombers, with the child molesters, with the Hitlers and the Osamas, is necessary. If you, as a human being, can’t stop and try to imagine what sort of pain and agony and darkness must have descended upon these people to twist them up so badly, you have no roadmap to untwist the circumstances under which they were created. There can be no limit to empathy. If you can’t go the final mile, you’re not there yet." -Amanda Palmer

this week was a strange mesh of old and new discomforts a familiar fall heaviness old and new growth hurts in unexpected places from unexpected sources but at the end of it on a sunday night, i have a fancy cat by my feet & m&ms in the freezer so it can't be all that bad, right? (right.)

listen, colors up the back of sheep- we all know who's the belle of the ball i was thinking of you in england i was barely there at all staring out the window at hours of green a pastoral haze of physical ache for an absent limb. phantom. willed forgetting. back in america and i find myself elsewhere, still in some past.  some depth.  some nowhere. the way we speak to each other and are spoken to i started listening and all my words changed an excess of darkness before some fall back and i meant to write to you months ago. sometimes it's hard to contain these screams in little boxes the windows are open and everyone hears they used to sit together and coo like birds- there is no natural state this is all just the firing of synapses subconscious lunges at those magic hormones that tell us we are happy chase that connection call it out by any other name (the slight sagging around the earlobes. before you can detect it in the voice, there'...

after years of remaining completely off my radar, the song "Head Over Feet" by alanis morrisette made its way into my consciousness today.  i found myself humming, at first, and then singing it loudly (and with uncanny resemblance AM herself) on my drive home.  even when i had finished, one line stayed with me. "you asked how my day was." and then, to emphasize the profundity, a repeated, "you asked how my day was." it's as though the idea that a person who asked with genuine interest about her day was such an anomaly in her life that she had no choice but to fall head over feet in love with this virtuoso in human connection. at first i found the whole thing pathetic.  who are you, desperate 90's woman, who is so lonely in your angsty broken world that basic gestures of kind human interaction constitute reason to become utterly smitten?  do you think you deserve so little?  are you that dumbfounded that someone cares about your day that y...

miserable people are miserable. they eat little meals of misery and they talk misery blah blah blah and in between meals they have little snacks of misery and if you sit too near them, the crunch will drive you nuts.

the morning announcements contained this long reflection about 9/11 and how Jesus was there every step of the way.  It was about how Jesus was there with the man on the 86th floor calling his wife to say he won't make it... and how he's also there with the wife at home with the kids yaddy yaddy.  It kept repeating "I was there," and the reflection included the statement, "You may not know why, but I do." A familiar rant: WTF IS THAT?  HOW IS "GOD'S PRESENCE"  DURING A TRAGEDY LIKE THAT SUPPOSED TO BRING COMFORT?  HE WAS  THERE ?  WHY DIDN'T HE  DO  SOMETHING?  HE  KNOWS  WHY?  WHY DOES YOU KEEP IT FROM PEOPLE WHO COULD REALLY EXPERIENCE HEALING AND CLOSURE?" there is no goddamn why.  cruel to suggest. I don't know how on earth people find comfort in such evident bullshit. all bullshit. all.

back to school night reminds me of why i love teaching every year.  what i do matters. remind me in february- i love teaching and i'm damn good at it. emails like this help too:    Hi Ms. Ingram! I hope this new school year is treating you well :) I just wanted to thank you for the random vocab dances you made us do. Today in my English 111 class my professor asked what "poignant" meant. Immediately I remembered the move and the definition from sophomore year. Other students threw out descriptions and gave example but the professor then asked for a straight definition. I raised my hand and said "emotional; deeply moving". He was so impressed with the accurate definition he gave me extra credit! I miss you're class but clearly it's still with me. So I just wanted to give you reassurance that you are a fabulous teacher :) Best wishes, Sarah  Class of 2013

be still my heart some ancient yearning be still my heart a cruel need, a cruel beat be still my heart to a definitive halt to a definite stop a delay with no hope an end be still my heart some backtracking and the way it feels to hug a new body for the first time the way you feel new in your own skin too (i barely remember-                  the distance i barely remember-                 the intimacy). bare too bare to bare to bear something always known some thing to let go when the instinct is to grasp the habit says to hold the early morning light says merrily we dream but night brings dark & a slow beating heart we cling -how cruel- we cling

walls walls walls & motions:  going through them the incubation time for nonononononono virus is hours and hours and hours and you will be contaminated forever without knowing you will be infectious forever silently and unintentionally impacting just about anyone wallswallswallswalls wake up with that sour presence and absence at once it is not so dramatic it is mostly calm it is mostly hungry for regular food but not ready to process it yet.

at an art show with my mom and she is looking at picnic baskets for sale and i am taking a picture of the flowered sunglasses she's holding in her hands when a man finds his way into conversation- attractive, older man who clearly has kept himself up- looks like a chiropractor or the kind of dentist that would be featured in advertisements with a teeth baring smile. he talks, at first, about this neat photography exhibit that he and his wife (a bulldog face woman he keeps calling "honey" who is also looking at baskets) had seen in LA. he even includes her in the conversation, asking what museum it had been.  my mom and his wife step a little further away and then he is making sure to include that this exhibit was very sexual and risque- open legs- scandalous without being showy- and his words had this excitable, desperate sort of tone that confused me.  i thought we were talking about photography.  at some point i realize that he isn't really talking about photograp...

Yesterday I brought the cats over to the new place.  Both were traumatized by the car ride.  Holly wailed non-stop the entire time.  Sherman sat down and was silent in the strange way that causes more concern than all the wailing in the world.  When I opened the door to the carrier, Holly bounded out - all confidence and curiosity.  She was purring within the hour.   Sherman, however, did not fare so well.  He pressed himself as far back into the carrier as he could and did not emerge for three hours.  it's a terrible feeling to watch a helpless creature suffer and to have no way to comfort it.  even though he was just laying there, i could see his heart pounding so quickly and his eyes were the saddest saucers i've ever seen.  there's just no way to explain change.  my heart broke and then broke some more.   At one point, Sherman felt brave enough to try to step out. But the feel of th...

The 5 Stages of Loss and Grief By  JULIE AXELROD  1. Denial and Isolation                                                                X  (& several circles back)  The first reaction to learning of terminal illness or death of a cherished loved one is to deny the reality of the situation. It is a normal reaction to rationalize overwhelming emotions. It is a defense mechanism that buffers the immediate shock. We block out the words and hide from the facts. This is a temporary response that carries us through the first wave of pain.  2. Anger                                                                        ...

we are scripted species our little lives circling around the same talking points- maybe altered slightly, depending on the mood. revolutions sans evolution (no one really listens to each other very well.) it does not matter what IS real, reality is created in the repetition and the dramatization of the repeated drama memory is a fickle thing (be careful!  she is not to be trusted!  she can be welcome company, but she tends to overstay her welcome.) the powerful play goes on! and on! and on! for weeks. the center of some drama the spotlight wavering and shadows near the curtains that do not quite exit remain indiscernible for lack of illumination. and once in a generous while- a revelation (but be careful!  they can cripple!  they can turn the world over!)

A little over a year ago (July 20), a few weeks after having purchased and fallen in love my first fancy camera, I posed these questions to my future self.  Here's the verdict- Dear awesome and interesting and stable and overall contented future self: 1.  will i become more adept in focus and flash? yep.  definitely with focus.  still need to dust off the expensive flash i bought and start experimenting, but yes. 2.  will i go semi-pro in the next year?  will i make some dollars to support this love?  $10?  $100?  $1,000?  YES, and hope to further it even more this year.  i tried totaling it in my head the other day and came up with somewhere around $7,500.  A lot of that went toward equipment this year, but still.  i wouldn't have anticipated this for myself last year.  let's do that again... and then some. 3.  if i do move in the direction of for profit, will photography lose it's charm?  NOOOOOOOOOO...