a semi-comprehensive update with bolded text

At Toby's wedding in January, Adam A. pointed out to me that I am no longer a journalist and (despite how obvious this should have been seeing as *I* quit the newspaper job over four months ago and haven't been living in amnesiac confusion in the woods since September) I felt an electric shock shoot through... my liver? Not a journalist? How could I not be a journalist? The answer, of course, being that one stops being a journalist when one is no longer doing any sort of journalistic work. "Journalist" is not a personality type or a hair color or an ethnic identity. Huh.

---

Listening to: a lot of "Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars. Exquisite harmonies make me cry in public. It gets very awkward. Last night, listening to NPR on the drive to M's house, they played a segment from a female composer's voice project and it made me gasp. What I learned in the CCC music program was that we respond so strongly to stringed instruments because they remind us of the human voice. The segment NPR played had a woman's voice falling almost dissonant over very low male voices and then bleeding effortlessly into a violin solo. It was lovely.

Reading: "Beasts of No Nation" by Uzodinma Iweala. About a boy in a West African nation who is pressed into child soldiery. I don't even know how to describe it yet. I had to fall asleep for a while after reading the first couple of chapters. It's like my mind and soul couldn't handle it. It's too terrifying and rending. It probably didn't help that I was going over my old domestic violence newspaper stories to include in the writer residency application. All I could think of was pain and how right in the moment I'm reading about it, there are child soldiers out there sleeping or dying or eating or peeing or being born.

Thinking: About how the Bible says to do all things for the glory of God. I kind of wonder if God says that because he knows it's going to be consuming enough and wearying enough to find out just how to live a decent life in the short time we're given. We're not all going to be Bible scholars and most of the time we're going to be desperately trying to survive. However, if we give everything to God in the first place it kind of takes care of setting aside extra extra time to God. All time is God's, or something. We don't have to tack it on in addition to all the other stuff we need to get around to doing. Is that heretical? It made better sense in my mind.

Writing: Still working on the residency application. It needs to be finished soon. I'm sending the bulk of it off to Tiffany today for editing (THANK YOU, MY DEAR) and hopefully M. will take a look at it tonight and maybe you, Dad/Mumsy? Except, as my parents your job is to tell me it's perfect so that I can stretch like a cat and take a nap.

Oh Yeah and I Also Read: "Harriet the Spy" which I think might be my favorite book of all time (or close to it). I identify with Harriet in many ways. The constant note-taking. The story-telling. The sacredness of privacy: NOBODY BETTER TRY TO READ MY NOTEBOOKS. The sneaking around into people's lives... although I never went into houses. Clarke told me once it was cold and scientific how I would fall suddenly silent and watch people. I think I believe I'm invisible and I do love to observe.

Eating: Mostly vegan and vegetarian and feeling fantastic about it. I prepared a fully vegan dinner last week and it came out so good and now my cooking confidence has been boosted about a million points. I'm making a vegan butternut squash & tomato soup tomorrow.

Planning: A trip out of town with M. to visit friends up and down Oregon next week and hopefully seeing the fam-fam at some point. We're going to Coos Bay and then Eugene. Oh man oh man, Eugene! I haven't been back in almost a year. I can't believe it. I'm way overdue for some Kari Spohn and Diana Glasser time plus the other dozen or so people I miss so much who still live there. Plus I need to wander through the university and feel nostalgic about ye old collegiate days of scholarship and camaraderie. Or something.

musing

A coffee shop regular was telling me about how humans are the only animals that (conceivably) sit around wondering about things. He said the word "wonder" comes from a Latin word that means something like "mirror" or "reflection." I didn't check any of this but I like the idea. We wonder and that sounds kind of aimless but really wondering is an action: a self reflecting self. Self reflection is an odd concept. We use props to self-reflect: experiences, memories, other people, places. People use the ocean. They sit on rocks and stare and reflect. Music helps. Things recall other things and we aren't necessarily moving but our brain is leaping and whatever it is that is our soul is also doing something.

Anyway. I'm working on my application for the writer residency in Nevada and reflecting on how events come in threes: A cop was shot last night at a motel just down from M's house and, this morning, a man was hit by a car downtown and died. Across the river, several days ago, M. was saying, a man picked up a hatchet and slaughtered his sons.

Tiffany and I talked last night about how discouraging a writing career can be. Most of the time we sit around wondering if we're crazy. Turns out writing means you just have to keep writing no matter how much time it feels like you're wasting. Stephen King said you write and write and sometimes you accomplish something but you don't always realize it and if you do realize it, you probably have no idea how you did it. So every day is starting over anew, maybe.

Now I'm going to work.

grumpy bad mood face plant

When I'm in a bad mood my first thought is always about how much I don't want to go to work.

Followed quickly by a snap judgment of someone I don't know. For example: a woman who clomped by me a minute ago wearing high heels. She is walking like she's wearing high heels (spine at a balancing angle, sending bottom skyward and arms forward to dangle like vines without a wall to climb). No chin and her face looks like it hurts... kind of like how portraits of George Washington's face make it seem like his face should hurt just because it's his face.

So I'm sitting behind my computer thinking: Women should practice wearing shoes at home before they try to hike around town in them. Yeah, that's right, boo and etc.

Completely pointless to sit and think this. Who cares? Why do I care? Why all the sudden hostility (which I just tried to spell as "histility" which just goes to show you... something or other). I also have suddenly realized my earbuds are in my ears and I'm not listening to anything. Probably I should be judging myself.

So anywayzzzz.

I'm tempted to take up Nina on her offer to cover my Friday shift. I feel brainless and behind. There are about a million people I need to call back but haven't because of my bizarre work schedule this week and I've forgotten to recharge my phone. There's so much writing I've been holding back and the Alcohol Server test I need to take sometime before the end of tomorrow and an apartment to clean and an application for GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK to fill out.

Yesterday, on my coffeehouse shift, I poured coffee into a cup for Stephen-from-the-County and I told him about Great Basin National Park (now: GBNP, for convenience and laziness) and he was like, "Oh yeah, Lehman Caves, bam, this mountain that's there, bam, off that highway, bam, BAM!" So yeah, he knows of it apparently. First person so far.

It's in Nevada. In the wilderness. I'm trying to live there for a month this year. I looked at the past recipients of this arts residency I'm applying for and they were all people in their latter days who paint mountains in garish colors and do things with stained glass so I think I'll be a novelty: young, writer, female. Also, I want to make my time there really work for the park, bring in the journalism a bit, give them all sorts of free marketing labor. I'm crafting an IDEA and I think it's awesome. Hopefully they do too otherwise I need a new plan.

One of my favorite songs is playing: "Down in the Valley" by... wait it'll come to me... The Head and The Heart. It makes me think of last spring/summer... mostly of a trip Spencer, M., Sasha and I took down to Newport and I discovered the Good Parts of Newport, about two streets worth: the Irish public house (at which real Irish people work) and the progressive bakery with amazing breakfast sandwiches and people who look like they spend a lot of time thinking about moving to places like Portland.

Ok. I have to go to work soon. Some quick thoughts to jolt me into positive thinking so I don't age prematurely (I've been worried about this recently. Ridiculous. Or is it?):

- baking tomorrow morning! (I love my bake shifts with all my heart heart heart)
- maybe going to Portland on Saturday (brothers! parents! friends! SOPHIE!!!!)
- maybe staying here on Saturday but going hiking with M (exercise! outdoors! vistas! beer!)
- Sunday (God! piano playing! naps!)
- Martha comes home tomorrow (home-making! Marta hugs! Marta kisses!)
- tonight (movie night with Spencer! "Fivel Goes West"! We've already watched "The Prince of Egypt" and "Milo & Otis" and we usually sip on whiskey and relive our childhoods and it's amazing)

in brief

It's hard to figure out right now where my recent encounter with food poisoning begins and where an even more recent move to vegetarianism coupled with not enough sleep begins in terms of how my tummy and head have been feeling the past couple weeks. At least I haven't gone full vegan, like M., and can still eat yogurt. That usually sorts me out. Or maybe I'm fighting a bug. I don't know. It's all very irritating. Anyway, I want it to go away because the weather is beautiful and I want to be out in it. All weekend I was out in it with a friend's dog and M.'s backpacking pack. Glorious. For a minute there, on the beach, after a climb up a sand dune, I was sweating. Sweat! I can't even remember the last time that happened outside of a sauna. I can't remember the last time that happened OUTSIDE.

#255: there's many a man has more hair than wit

I was a banged child and I hated it. Childhood is only nice and pleasant and tender for a brief time and then it tends to turn oily, pimpled and full of despair. One minute you're a raging, jubilant five year old tearing around the yard and pretending you're God, or something, then you hit 12 and if you're a girl life starts to go horribly wrong. It doesn't always begin with the monthly cycle. At least not for me. There was a point where I became aware of myself as inhabiting a distinct body and instead of this realization carrying wonder and joy (as it should have), it brought only confusion, discontent and fear. Bangs -- and a weird cow-lick that flipped these bangs up and out at an awkward angle -- didn't help.

I very distinctly remember an afternoon at church camp, my dad looking down at me and my face likely a picture of anguish. It was a scene straight from "A Christmas Story" when the boy comes downstairs wearing pink rabbit pajamas his aunt made for him and which his mother has commanded him to try on.

"Do you like having bangs?" my dad asked slowly.

I shook my head.

"Do you want to pull your bangs back and grow them out?"

I nodded emphatically, not daring to look my mom in the eyes. She was the one who cut the bangs after all and I didn't know where her loyalties might fall.

I don't remember any other details of that day or why my dad even noticed my bangs, but I do know that not until I cut them myself several years later did I ever have to have bangs again.

This is all to say that two days ago, I cut some bangs. Mistake. My hair is curlier now and if bangs didn't work when I was a child, why should they work now? I look like Cher from "Moonstruck" but without the cheekbones and the big eyes -- squinty Wilson/Blake eyes forever! Fortunately, I'm mature now and don't care about my looks or compare myself with other, better-looking women. Right? Right.

coffee, that evil desert berry

Oh coffee coffee, you good friend to me. I'm going to make resolutions for the year this week. Giving up coffee or lessening my intake of coffee will not be on that list and reading an NPR article about coffee which was reposted by the lovely Tiffany S. has bolstered me up in my decision. After all, coffee makes me happy, makes me write, makes me sit still then spring into action (rubber-band style). Coffee quickens my senses and shortens the amount of breathing I need to do between talking. Coffee makes me think about all the good things about Communism.

That's right.

You can't deny it: Communism brought people together -- yes, a lot of bloodthirsty, over-thinking, hyperbole-dealing young geeks, but still, people. Doris Lessing!

So anyway. The coffee article quotes Stewart Allen, author of The Devil's Cup: Coffee, the Driving Force in History, and talks about how coffee has, historically, been trouble, been banned, and been at the center of political action. The dark little coffee shop seething with intellectuals? Not made up.

Saith the article:

"According to one story, an Ottoman Grand Vizier secretly visited a coffeehouse in Istanbul.

'He observed that the people drinking alcohol would just get drunk and sing and be jolly, whereas the people drinking coffee remained sober and plotted against the government,' says Allen."

Yay for thinkers and talkers and the young revolutionaries. Later we can boo them when they destroy countries and wipe out people groups. But, as I drink an Americano and observe a small child walking through the door wearing animal print feetie pajamas with brown cowboy boots, I will toast those who are not yet stagnant, who will not suffer corruption, injustice or stupidity to remain. So maybe not Communism, but you get what I'm saying, right? Maybe? Mostly, I just want more people to read the coffee article.

snow day

This happened today. It also happened last year. Kind of. There was less snow then. Same amount of cold, though. Actually this didn't happen at all last year. This is ridiculous and beautiful and unique to 2012.