railsea.

Yesterday I finished reading Railsea by China Mieville, and it's left me with rustling, unquiet feelings. I love Mieville, and I've been rapidly working my way through his entire canon since I first read Kraken about three years ago. Reading him is a little like trying to keep level footing while standing on an accordion. He is adept at drawing richly detailed, slickly un-right worlds. The setting and the story expand and contract beneath your feet with a speed and grace that's both wonderful and nauseating. There are a number of themes and conceits that he relies on consistently, but his main meat is hybridization. Combined words, enmeshed bodies, physical worlds that are built on a sort of bio-steampunk ethos. I've written before that every Mieville novel starts in a place that seems familiar and easy to follow, but quickly rotates the camera and lets you see that you are in fact standing on the ceiling. Railsea is true to that pattern.

The basic premise is a world in which railroads are so prevalent that they're like a body of water. There's a permanent tangled network of ties and tracks, so thick that all their terminology and lore are language we use for oceans and sailing. Insects and small burrowing creatures have evolved to staggering, predatory size and are hunted by trainsfolk for commerce and, sometimes, for glory and revenge. There's a very heavy cord of Moby Dick running throughout. Mieville's books are themselves hybridizations: tangled, looping, referential cultural markers that make use of material from dozens of other literary sources. I've never come up with a word to adequately describe this. It's not delicate enough to be called literary allusion, not is it anything so sly as to be described as theft. He just straight up uses obvious pieces of what has gone before to make his own thing. Sort of like what would happen if you could build an entirely new house using pieces from existing houses, without actually removing anything from the existing houses. Look, the foundation: that's Melville. The doorframe is the Strugatsky brothers, that paint is a color called Penelope Lively. The result is a proper Painted Lady, but it's Mieville's house, and you couldn't mistake it for anyone else's.

This particular house is full of monsters, civilizations and un-civilizations, and people who are looking for something. It's a sailing story, all pitch and roll, and the hero is trying to find his feet. He doesn't know what's true, and so he doesn't know what he wants. So he keeps pushing and pushing at the edges of what is assumed about the world, looking for what's under the wallpaper. He starts in little ways, like saving a bird from a cockfight even though he knows it will enrage his crewmates, and keeps picking at those elusive things that spur him to action until eventually he finds himself with people and a story that fire his engine and make him move.

I enjoyed Railsea less than any of the other Mieville books I've read. There was no shortage of beautiful words or memorable passages, but I never fell all the way into it. In part, I was irritated by an of-the-moment tone in several places that didn't serve the story and kind of slapped me out of it when I came across them. It had the usual rhythmic, wordy beat that all his writing does, but it seemed more carelessly executed than usual; less durable, somehow. And for the first time, the world he described was one I just couldn't cognitively accept. Tell me about a world where houses contract technological viruses through flawed spoken language and become biologically ill, and I am right with you. A city that is actually two cities existing in the same physical space and within plain view of one another, but operating as separate entities with blinders on? Absolutely. But show me a world where railroads built hundreds of years in the past are so thick on the ground that they are like water, an infrastructure so old that it's spawned the vague religions of prehistory, that is governed but not maintained by any municipality and is assumed to be repaired by angels - here you have lost me. It's choppy. This world never felt real. That explains my general dissatisfaction with the book. My specific itchy feelings about it stem from the religious element in Railsea.

Every one of Mieville's novels deals with religion, or with cultural assumptions so ingrained that they resemble religion. (He also has kind of a thing about angels, and the myriad ways he's made them is strange and wonderful.) The religious elements in his books are viewed with a very wide lens, an anthropological pin in the map of the world he's writing. There's always a wide range of established beliefs, levels of faith, and degrees of action based on that faith (or lack of it). He's very effective at using the language of religion to establish the boundaries that are about to challenge his characters (and thereby challenging the language of faith and the nature of belief in every story he tells, whether that faith is in something supernatural or in the accepted order of things). Even when religion results in very concrete actions (basically all of Kraken), the belief itself is a fluid thing. It grows and shrinks, it flows into other forms of thought, it remakes itself in insidious ways, it drains down between the cracks in the concrete and swells back up through the kitchen sink: it is alive.

The belief system of Railsea is finite and brittle. It has the language of the supernatural, it's acted upon as supernatural, but in the end it's purely mechanical. The taboos of this world are misunderstood words, the gods are machines set in motion so long ago that no one remembers what they are. The protagonist pushes further and further out against the vague chittering warnings of religious faith until it dissipates like so much fog.

I grew up in a very religious home, but have spent the better part of my adult life pushing against the lore and the language and the assumptions of that faith. This was not a go-to-church-on-Sunday-and-make-the-best-of-it thing; it was an all or nothing thing. As an adult, I see a lot of things in that life that were unwell, and I've fought to get away from them. But I can't ever shake my belief in God entirely, and I'm not sure I want to. What I do want is to know if what belief I have is real or just a habit that's so old it's in my cells. I'm forever taking that rusty habit out and examining it in the light to see how sound it is, but I never have an answer to that question. I'm never going to have an answer to that question. Living with that kind of complex uncertainty about what makes us ourselves is just part of being human. What made me uncomfortable about Railsea was imagining a world where it was possible to push on the last door of belief and see it evaporate. Where you could know for certain that your deities were mechanical creations with concrete financial goals, and your holy texts were simply misunderstood place names. Hoping for that kind of certainty, fearing that kind of certainty.

I don't think think it's necessarily a bad thing to feel my uncomfortable places so acutely, but I wish the book that did it had been better.

national poetry month, day 11.

I've never wanted to have children. I love children - and there are several I count among my good friends - but I've never experienced that particular yearning or intent. Every once in a while, though, something gives me a twinge. It passes almost as soon as I notice it, because at my core it's still true that I don't want kids. But I'm grateful for the fleeting twinge, that thread that connects me to something that usually eludes me.

Egg
by C.G. Hanzlicek

I'm scrambling an egg for my daughter.
"Why are you always whistling?" she asks.
"Because I'm happy."
And it's true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn't
Have seen it as my future.
It's partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I've come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we're told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn't confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here's your egg.

soulmate job.

I got the best job I've ever had because I had a pack of cigarettes on the front seat of my car.

When I moved to Nantucket in the fall of 1998, I knew no one and had a part-time job working in the office of the Episcopal church. I worked with a wonderful woman named Joan who shared a house with a former teacher. They ran a heavy-duty book group that met once every couple of weeks, spending several weeks on a single book. This was long before I started making jewelry, and I was shy and had a hard time meeting people. I spent that first winter going to work, hiding in my room reading, and cursing the buffeting wind that howled off the harbor round the clock. A book group seemed like a really good idea - particularly in a cozy house in town, on a sheltered street, a mile inland. When I joined, they were just starting Robert Pinsky's translation of Inferno. I hadn't read Inferno since my first year of college, and really loved the new edition. Several weeks into the group, they invited the owner of the local bookstore to come to the group and read to us. Mimi was fluent in Italian, and she read several passages from the original in that beautiful language, sounding rich and liquid and as if flames were licking around the words.

After the group, I offered her a ride back to the store on Main Street. She plucked a pack of cigarettes off my passenger seat, sat down, and fished one of her own out of her massive linen pockets. She said, "Well, you read and you smoke. Would you like to come and work for me?"

Oh yes, I would. Very much. Mitchell's Book Corner was a legend in Nantucket. For its size, it's the best-curated bookstore I've ever seen, touching on every subject with an eye to both classics and new books. Mimi had a sterling reputation for selling exactly the right book to the right reader, whether she'd known them all her life or they'd just walked into the store five minutes earlier. A local business heavyweight nicknamed her the Maven of Main Street. She'd read everything, averaging more than a book a day for most of her life. She had excellent business sense, a steel trap memory, a fierce temper and her own way of doing things. Mitchell's didn't use a computerized inventory system (in fact, they didn't own a computer when I started there, and did all their buying by phone from publishers and with the aid of monthly microfiche updates from distributors). Mimi knew the stock of the store inside out from memory, and she expected her booksellers to do the same. 

I'd worked in several bookstores before, but this was a whole new level of fun and challenge. Knowing the full inventory of a bookstore by memory means you absorb the life of books into your body. Stocking and straightening shelves, climbing through the dusty basement shelves doing inventory, I pulled the knowledge of books into myself through my fingertips. There is nothing more satisfying than taking a list of books from a customer and, without looking anything up, pulling Don't Stop the Carnival, Nightbirds on Nantucket, Snow Crash, Motherless Brooklyn, How to Cook Everything, Vile Bodies, A Coney Island of the Mind, The Tipping Point and A People's History of the United States off the shelves. (That's an actual list someone gave me once.) I adored it, and I was good at it. For three and a half years, I lived in that bookstore like it was a second skin. One of the most contented moments of my life was leaning in the door on a late evening before locking up, watching the rain, smelling that paper-in-humidity smell and being aware that I was in my exact right place.

Nantucket, as it turned out, was not my exact right place and I went back to Chicago in the autumn of 2002. Mimi had retired half a year earlier, and although I still loved Mitchell's, it didn't feel the same without her. I've had good jobs and bad jobs and jobs that were just a job, but there was never another one like that. I was talking to my brother last weekend about my current job hunt, and said that I'd like to go back to bookselling. He said, "Really? You still want to do that?"

Oh yes, I would. Very much.

day 30.

I had a different post half-written and planned for today, but it doesn't seem to fit at the moment so I'll leave it for another time. I've had an uneven couple of days. Yesterday I worked myself into a mood and ended up spiky and unhappy (hence, no blog post, as nothing got past my filter). I slept badly and woke up achy and puffy-eyed in the same mood this morning. To kick my way out of it, I set myself a project. I spent most of today in front of a pile of my most irritating and problematic beads, the ones that are the wrong size or the wrong shape or have holes that are too big or the color doesn't work with anything, ever. They fought with me and I fought with them and eventually I made something that I love, using nothing but things that were difficult. Making things is a faithful healer; it did the trick and I've had a good day. I didn't want to let the last day of the month go by without posting, but the longer and more structured post I had planned felt dishonest as a report for the last 24 hours. This feels like a small note to end on, but an honest one. This is what I made:

status report.

I feel as though I've stalled out on this personal narrative project to some extent. I've only missed a few days, and I don't think I've missed two in a row at any point. Still, I'm finding fewer things to write than I was at the beginning of the month. That doesn't mean I have fewer things to say. I've been surprised at my impulse to write about a lot of things. However, most of them, particularly in the last week, have not made it past my public vs. private filter. So I've done a number of shorter and less narrative posts, which feel a bit like cheating.


When I started this project, I expected to struggle with thinking of topics. I was really surprised to find that as soon as I started talking about things, I had a flood of other things that I wanted to talk about. I felt like my filter disappeared, and I had to rebuild it with some new parameters. That probably wasn't reflected at all in what actually appeared here, but it was a strange experience for me. Usually I don't even feel the initial impulse to share things, let alone actually share them. I've found that there are a couple of additional questions I want to ask myself (to add to the ones I talked about in my first post this month) when I'm thinking about writing something for public consumption. These were the questions I started with:

• What do I give away (either in the sense of revealing, or in the sense of a gift) when I say something, and to whom am I giving it? 
• What things do I share because they might help someone else? 
• What things am I willing to trade away to any taker because I want to be known? 
• What things do I save for the people I choose? 
• What do I hear that someone chose me for?

I'm adding these:

• What things are strictly self-serving or attention-seeking?
• What things should really just be said to one person? (For me, this is mainly a bravery question. Am I inclined to write something here because it's easier than saying it to the person I really want to hear it? But it's also a good guard against passive-aggressive posting. I've had the impulse to write private things publicly for both reasons.)
• Am I willing to say things about myself that might upset my family? [Yes.]
• Am I willing to say things about my family that might upset my family? [No.] (These last two questions are a fine line apart, and I'm sure I've gotten it wrong more than once, and probably will do again.)

I think partly this impulse to talk about everything all at once is because I put the project in a short time package. If I were another kind of person, I'd have decided that I wanted to do this and just worked it in slowly, instead of deciding to conquer my fear and reluctance in 30 days. That's not to say that it's gone badly: I feel more confident and less reluctant, and I'm glad that I've done this. I would have felt less raw and unfiltered if I'd done it slowly, but I think it's possible that I also wouldn't have learned as much as I have. I've learned that I feel better writing and posting something that's weighing on my mind. The point for me has been to process it this way and let it go. I'm very grateful to everyone who has responded to what I've written, either here or personally, and for the stories that I've gotten to hear in return.


Three more days to go. I'm curious to see what I'll have to say. 

bereft.

The big bookshelf is nearly packed. Just half a shelf left to catalogue and pack, and a largish pile to either sell or give away. My books are the soul and shape of my home. Despite how crowded this small space is, it feels utterly empty without them.

shorthand.

This is Leslie. That thing on her face is Archy. He's her poodle, and he's named for a cockroach. Leslie's been my best friend since college, when we met at a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Long-suffering king says to poncey singing prince, "Son, someday all this will be yours." Poncey singing prince says, "What, the curtains?" She and I were the only people who laughed. You can all just shut right up: it's the best line. After that, we bonded over a shared love of Southern Gothic literature, and became fast friends when we both went on a summer study program to Oxford.

Since then, except for the four years I lived in Nantucket, we've been either neighbors or roommates. She became a high school English teacher, and I became a jewelry designer by night who works by day in the same school where she teaches. For the last nine years, we've lived across the street from each other. She left yesterday to return to Oxford for two weeks with a group of students from school, so I've been thinking about how we met and how long we've known each other. (I was driving her car when I had the accident last week, and she still left me the keys for the next two weeks. That's a true friend.)

It's been a long time. We have a superb embedded shorthand, consisting of inside jokes, back history, shared experience and books, books, books. We hardly ever have to finish an entire sentence when we're talking to each other. I was trying to think of a story to use here, and realized that our favorite thing to do is drink sparkling wine of some kind, talk about whatever we're reading, and end up pacing the room with a glass in one hand and a book in the other, jumping up and down and shouting about it. It's my idea of a really great time, but it doesn't make a very good narrative. So I asked her what she thought I should write, and she reminded me about snow days.

We are best friends who live across the street from each other and work at the same high school, so we have the extraordinary good fortune to occasionally have a snow day. The very first snow day we shared was a huge blizzard, and it was still snowing in the morning when they canceled school. Leslie put on snow boots and a winter coat over her pajamas, and came over to my apartment with juice and club soda. I provided vodka and some other stuff I've forgotten (she has the recipe, but I forgot to ask her for it before she left yesterday), and we invented the Snow Day. In our pajamas. Grown women, with a serendipitous day off school. We've had at least two more snow days since then that I can remember. We're lucky. I'll miss her while she's away, and I'll miss her even more when I move.

punk self.

I recolored the streak of bright cherry red in my hair a couple of days ago. Sometimes when I do that, I remember the first time I put crazy color in my hair. 


My friend Kathy died in October of 2008. My friend Kathy committed suicide in October of 2008. (No matter how many times I say that, it never gets any easier.) Grief manifests in unexpected ways, and one of mine was an overwhelming urge for blue hair. I went to my usual salon and got my hair cut and told Sam that I wanted random chunks of blue. She wrinkled her nose and said, "Really? That doesn't seem like you. And it's so bad for your hair." It didn't seem like me, but that was the point. I didn't want to feel like me. Still, I let her talk me out of it, and she did blonde under highlights instead. They were very pretty, and they made me sad. And then over the next few days, they made me angrier and angrier. I let someone else - someone of no personal importance to me, even - tell me who I was and define how I felt about the way I look. My feelings about the way I look are something I struggle with anyway, and having those feelings tied up with my anger and grief was overwhelming. So I bought bleach and blue dye and rubber gloves and the little spatula thingy and Shana, who loves me, spent three hours deciding where to put the blue and then bleaching and coloring my hair for me. I wore my blue hair like a badge of courage and was surprised to find that I'd never felt more like myself, in a really good way.


I never went back to Sam. She gave great haircuts, but bad advice. I switched to Shana's salon, where everyone has brightly colored hair and lots of tattoos and a dirty mouth and utter acceptance for whatever anyone wants, whether it's punk or conservative. I'm comfortable there. It's been almost four years, and since then (except for a period of about six months last year) I've had either streaks or all-over color. The blue carried me through my grief, a year of all-over pinky purple gave me confidence (and a lot of entertaining interactions with small kids), and my streak of fierce red is the closest thing to soulmate hair that I've had yet. It's taken me a long time to like how I look. There's a lot more to that complicated issue than hair, but for me that first choice for defiance - the choice to be obvious, to be actually unavoidably visible - was really important. These days, I'm beginning to feel beautiful, and I love that.

just don't look at it.

This is what my kitchen table looks like at the exact moment I'm writing this. Chaos. Things that are currently happening in this space: printing shipping labels, taking photographs of new products, printing color palettes for new designs, writing two postcards and one letter, paying bills (which should all be automated, but two things mysteriously showed up on paper this month - I will need to investigate), and packing the bookshelf. And writing this blog post. And half a glass of iced green tea. It looks like beer, but it's not, more's the pity.

I hate chaos. My impulse is to clean this up and empty the tabletop, but honestly, there's nowhere to put it. If I move this chaos, I will create another chaos a couple of feet away. My living/working space is small and hard to manage under normal circumstances, and it's in full-blown activity and transition mode just now. I find it hard to relax or be at all productive in chaos, but the last few months have been so hectic and uncertain that I've been working on learning a new skill. Instead of managing the chaos, much of which is out of my control, I am trying to manage my awareness of/response to the chaos. It's really hard to do. At least, it's really hard for me to do. Working out helps. Retreating to bed, which is the only non-chaotic space in my apartment, with my computer or my book helps.

I started to feel like a lot of things in my life were out of my control in January, so I've had nearly six months to work on this skill. I've gotten much better at it, but nothing really succeeds in taking that background anxiety all the way away. I think it's going to be some time before things feel calm again, so I'm continuing to look for ways to just leave the constant mill of thought and planning and wondering that is the inside of my head.

My friend scrufflibrarian and I have been emailing back and forth about video games for a while: what makes them appealing, how they're different from other types of entertainment (I'm not sure the word entertainment is even the right one, but I'm neatly sidestepping that rabbit hole for now), how they test you, how they're designed, what different people look for from play, what types of play interest people, what ideas are embedded in them, etc. It's fascinating. He's described several of his favorite games to me, and the more I learned the more appealing it sounded. After the car accident last weekend, I just wanted something to step into that wasn't related to work or moving, and that would take my concentration and attention. Scruff suggested Kingdom of Loathing, an online RPG of visual simplicity, magical silliness and thorny, embedded complexity. It was the perfect suggestion. First off, it's soothingly simple to look at. See? No chaos:

It's also reassuringly simple to play. Basically, it's read text, assess options, click to complete action. But there's a ton of information and options and places to explore and complex goals for playing (for which my friend is kindly providing me tutorials and hints so I don't waste all my game time mindlessly hitting things). So while it doesn't feel overwhelming at all, there's plenty to keep my mind occupied. It's also incredibly clever and funny. Basically, it's perfect. I've only been playing for three whole days, but so far it's doing a nice job of keeping my eyes and my anxiety off the things I can't control. Thank you, Scruff.

sunny.

I've had a couple of really great days. I'm being productive and feeling happy (these things are almost always related). There's basically no narrative to this, but in the spirit of my June project I wanted to post about what I'm currently doing.

• I've worked on and completed a client project that I enjoyed immensely.
• I found out that urban legend will be featured in a magazine I love in a couple of months.
• I successfully took photographs of my bead collection for said magazine (always an iffy venture for me).
• I started something fun that has nothing to do with work or moving, and plenty of welcome potential for distraction.
• I recolored the streak of red in my hair and am having a really cute, bed-heady hair day.
• I dyed a bunch of beads, and now I have two colors that I have a hard time finding. THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL TO ME.
• I've made several new things, and photographed them. There will be a shop update at urban legend later today.
• I've packed most of my bookshelf and recorded the contents of each box in Goodreads so I know what I'm looking for when I unpack months from now.
• I've had an idea for something entirely new to make. It will be some time before I can actually start working on it, but I'm thrilled to have a completely new idea.
• I'm reading Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which is full of sprawling, dirty life and big, beautiful ideas about sprawling, dirty life.
• Shana and I watched Thor by phone and made things, which is one of my favorite things to do.
• Later tonight, I'll go out with friends for dinner and a movie.
• I'm feeling really happy. Did I say that already?

things unsaid.

Yesterday I had a debate with myself whether or not to call my grandfather and wish him a happy Father's Day. In the end, I decided not to. He doesn't hear phone conversations very well, and he probably wouldn't understand who I was. I opted to ask my parents to say hello and give him my love when they visited yesterday afternoon. Every time I make the to-call-or-not-to-call decision, it takes me back to the last time I saw him, in November, and a conversation I wish I could do over.

When I visited for Thanksgiving, he was beginning to have some weakness and apprehension about his health, but it was before he fell, before his long stint in physical therapy, and before his dementia had really begun to manifest. I went over to the house with my mother, and sat and talked with both my grandparents. He sat next to me on the couch, leaning his weight against my shoulder and holding my hand, and after the usual small talk he suddenly said "Don't go back so soon. I might not see you again." I did not want to hear that. I couldn't hear that. Before the visit, I'd known that it might be the last one, and I'd thought about what I might want to say to him. I'd planned to ask for some time alone with him so we could talk. But when the moment came I was afraid. I thought, he doesn't really mean it. He doesn't seem so weak. He's always been so healthy. He's uncomfortable talking about feelings. He's just saying what he thinks I expect to hear. All the bullshit excuses to avoid having a conversation I'd been thinking about for weeks before visiting. And so again, again, I let fear take something from me.

I'd meant to tell him that I loved him, that he is so familiar to me that I would know him as my people even if we weren't related. That the beautiful things he has built and created his whole life have made me proud my whole life. I planned to tell him some things that made me angry. I planned to say that I hoped it wasn't goodbye, but if it was, these are the things I wanted to say. I planned to ask him if there was anything he wanted to say to me.

I didn't say any of those things, except that I love him. I say that every time I see him or talk to him. It's the only really important thing, but it wasn't everything I wanted to say and the moment still feels unfinished to me. Worse, it feels as though I let him down by not acknowledging his fear. If I get to see him in the next few months, I may still get a lucid moment when I can say some of those things, but the harder and more complex ones are beyond his grasp now and I know I won't get that chance again.

I have a hard time not playing my mistakes over and over again in my head. After talking it out with a friend several times, I stopped agonizing over it constantly, but it still comes back to me when I think about trying to visit. I'm hoping that writing it here will help me to let it go, and to not waste whatever time I might still get with him. Happy Father's Day, Grandad.

happy father's day.

When I was growing up, all I wanted to be was an astronomer. Vermont is a pitch black state when night falls, so it was a good place to be obsessed with the sky. I could name all the constellations and the major stars, and I had books of star maps and paper charts on little wheels to show which constellations belonged to which hemisphere, according to season. When my brother got to hear an astronomer give a talk at Dartmouth about red dwarfs and white dwarfs, I begged him for weeks to give me his signed book. 


When Halley's Comet was due to be visible in 1986, I read up on it for days ahead of time and studied all the pictures I could find. This was before the internet and very cool pictures of everything in space. I spent some time at the library looking through a dramatically illustrated history of the comet, and my dad helped by bringing me information he could get from Dartmouth College. On comet night, he woke me and my little brother up in the small hours of the morning, hung binoculars on both of us, and we walked across the field and up the hill to get a good vantage point over the trees. When we picked Halley's Comet out, it didn't look anything like the wildly streaking ball of fire pictured in the book I'd read. It looked like a kind of tiny muddy-lighted star, moving slowly. I knew my star charts, though, and it was definitely something different that wasn't usually in that spot. We stood out in the pitch black cold and watched it for a while, and I thought about how old it was and where it had been and wondered if I would still be alive when it came back again. If I am, you can bet I'll be outside on a hill looking for it and thinking about my father. 


Thanks, Dad! I love you. I still love constellations, too. Orion is my favorite,


Kateri

bright side girl.

I have a habit of ending almost every complaint or statement of feeling bad with a "but [silver lining or other mitigating statement]." It's a holdover from growing up in a house that had a "don't let it run your life/things could be worse" policy. It's a good policy, and mostly it serves me well. Sometimes, though, I think I use that to lessen the impact of saying what I feel, either on me or the person to whom I'm talking. "Here's what I'm feeling, but maybe I shouldn't be feeling it" or "Here's what I'm feeling but if that makes you uncomfortable or asks too much of you, here's something nicer to look at." I'd like to be able to edit Bright Side Girl better - still let her see the good things, but not use her for hiding.

Today seems like a good day to practice, because it hasn't been a good day in general. I was in a car accident this morning. I've been in a hit and run that crumpled a fender before, but this was my first experience of one car hitting another and having to exchange information and go file a police report. Just so nobody reading this is worried, I'll leave the Bright Side Girl part in, but put it first: Nobody was hurt, and the car seems undamaged. But what I'm left with today is feeling anxious and sad and lonely.

missed connection.

Button by Bean Forest on Etsy

I should really have this tattooed on my forehead, to save time. In my archiving odyssey, I came across a missive that I have realized many years too late was, in fact, a love letter. Quite a nice one. It goes in the "keep" pile. Only now I'm wondering what other social cues I botched at the time, and since. Cringe.

Confidential to my long-gone correspondent: I'm sorry about that. I liked you, too. Next time, maybe just kiss me. It's hard to misinterpret that.

onward.

June is my month for seeing doctors. For the last six years, I've seen a lot of doctors because of a thyroid imbalance. It just happened to work out that all my annual check-ins got scheduled for June one year, and there they've stayed ever since. So this month can feel like running the gauntlet: it's a lot of travel and sometimes a lot of trauma. What I'm using to hearing from doctors is this:

• We need more blood tests
• I'd like to do a [insert a bunch of medical test initials here]
• I need to change your dosage, come back in 8 weeks
• You need to lose weight
• I'm going to refer you to a specialist

I've had two of my annual four appointments in the last week, and they both went like this:

• You look great
• You seem happy
• Your tests are all normal
• You don't need this medication any more
• You're doing all the right things
• Call if you need me, but I think you're good

That feels amazing. I'm crossing my fingers that the next two appointments go just as well. The way I feel today, I can't see any reason why they wouldn't. Wish me luck.

archives, not cheating and the floatie.

I'm going through boxes of letters and photo albums to see if there's anything I can get rid of while I'm packing. It's a bit of an ambush-type project, as I have no idea what's in these boxes; I'm doing it slowly, in between other packing. Sometimes what I find is hilarious, sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's wonderfully happy. Sometimes I don't even remember what it is I'm looking at. 


Particularly with scrapbooks and photo albums, I'm experiencing an impulse to edit them. Keep the photographs, but oh God, get rid of the gruesomely affected scrapbooks elements! That's not how archiving works, though, so I leave them alone. Just because I wish I'd been cooler doesn't mean the record is inaccurate. I was a very cool kid, I think - dorky and a bit elderly and shy, but interested in everything. If my thorough records of my teen years are to be believed, however, I was kind of a dull teenager. Who kept everything.


So I'm not making changes to the record, but there are a lot of things I'm just getting rid of entirely. A separate scrapbook from my year at boarding school that doesn't really add any additional information to the photo album I'm keeping. A pile of letters from people I traveled with years ago. I found the packet, I recognized what it was, but I had no interest in reading the letters again. This is the move when these things finally go, after getting carted around for the last 6 relocations.


Yesterday I found my photo album from a trip to England the summer I turned 15. I traveled with a group of about 20 other teenagers and we spent most of the summer living on canal boats and traveling through the middle of the country. The cramped quarters and constant ducking into low doorways and never having access to clean laundry would probably make me cry now, but it was hugely fun at 15. We piloted and refueled the boats and operated the locks ourselves; once upon a time, that was a skill I could claim, although I'm sure I wouldn't remember how to do it now.

I think this was probably the first time I was ever in a photobooth. 

I had bangs!

When you're moving around a canal boat, you mainly use the gunwales (the narrow bit around the edge of the boat that Roxanne is standing on in this picture). They're slippery, and it's easy to lose your footing. That summer, I distinguished myself by falling into the canal twice. That's twice more than most people did, and once more than everyone else did. I earned the nickname Floatie. I am here to tell you that an English canal is no place to go for a swim. They may look pretty, but they're filthy. We once saw a whole dead pig swirling around in the lock water near Birmingham. If you fall in, even in the cleaner midstream water, you need a shower. It's also really hard to get back on a boat from the water, once you're off it. The second time I fell in, I lost my glasses. We were about 8 days from coming home and I said I'd just do without them, but a boy named Andy went in after them and actually kept diving in the muddy water until he found them. It was a spectacle miracle. He was kind of an obnoxious jerk and by the end of the summer we'd mostly ostracized him. I remember being profoundly touched that he would take the trouble. I don't remember your last name anymore, Andy, but thanks for finding my glasses. I'm sorry I was mean to you.

happiness.

I slept late and woke up to a beautiful summer day with warm air like a kiss. I went to breakfast with a friend I love. I repaired her broken necklace at the restaurant table with a pair of pliers from my bag, because I am the necklace ninja. She gave me a charming tiny painting she made. We drank coffee and ate pancakes and watched people and lusted after the tote bags that a street vendor was selling outside the window. I walked through my beautiful city and stopped at one of my favorite shops, where I bought piles of cards and thought about all the people to whom I will send them. I came home and finished a book and wrote a long email. I've poured myself a glass of Dogfishhead Sahtea and when it's gone I will probably pour another. I will read another book, and choose necklaces for Necklace of the Month Club customers. I will stand at my window and watch the neighborhood go by, and I will go to sleep on a beautiful summer night with warm air like a kiss.

the last last day.

Today was the last day of school at Anytown High. This was my tenth last day of school, and the last one I will ever have at this job. Usually, by this point in the year I'm aching so hard for this day that every minute of it feels significant. This year, my mind is so taken up with other things that I didn't even remember it was the last week of school until I was on my way in on Monday morning. Today felt almost like any other day (apart from the deafening volume of teenagers who can't wait to get out).


It was a busy day, and as sometimes happens with significant moments, it went by mostly without thought. I did have a twinge while I was cleaning out old student files for shredding and remembering relationships with students who have been important to me. That happens every year, but it felt especially poignant this year because I won't see any of them again. Usually graduates will come back and say hello when they visit on holidays, but I'll be gone by that time next year. My final goodbyes to graduating students I've loved this year were offhand and quick - have a wonderful summer, good luck at college, let us know how you're doing.


My usual routine is to work 3-5 extra days after school gets out, tying up loose ends and doing whatever projects I haven't had time for during the year. I always do this immediately to get it over with so I can forget about social work and tears and anxiety and stress and spend the following nine weeks immersed in my business and personal life. This year, my boss is experiencing some separation anxiety because he knows I'm leaving at the end of September. He asked me to come in one day a week for the next few weeks instead of doing it all at once, and I agreed without even thinking about it. The stress of the job has lifted, knowing that it's almost over. I won't mind going in over the summer, and they won't be full days. Plus, that means I'll work next Monday on a project of my own and then I'll be free already on Tuesday.


That doesn't really sound momentous, but it's a huge difference from past years for me. It means I'm already gone in spirit, and the toll that this work takes has started to lift. This job has been good for me, and I'm very good at doing it. I took it because it was offered and I needed work, but it's been a good fit and I've learned a lot. It's taken a massive toll on me as well. I work inside a concrete box, with no windows and no fresh air unless I go out for a walk (which I try to do at least once a day if I can). That's contrary to everything in me. I need light. I need air. I need to know what the weather is doing. I've heard more terrible stories than I can possibly enumerate, both first hand from students and second-hand from therapists who needed to unload them. I am stop number one for therapists who need to unload what they hear. In the past ten years, I've lived through student suicides, accidental deaths, one appalling murder, overdoses, family violence, stories of incest and abuse, the deaths and professional downfalls of colleagues, and the suicide of a friend and member of my department. I'm fucking tired.


It felt strange to arrive at the end of the work day without some kind of fanfare, but it was a good day. A normal day, which seems like a fitting way, after all, to mark the occasion. I backed up my files. I pulled all the materials that need to be shredded. I answered email and voicemail and made a list of what needs to happen on Monday, and what needs to happen in August when I come back to the office. I hugged my coworkers and wished them a good summer. I walked out the door and went home to what I think of as my real life, the one that's moving on to something new.

earliest memory.

While I'm packing, I've been going through boxes of photo albums and letters. I came across this picture, and it made me think about a very early memory. I have a memory earlier than this one, but it's so nebulous that it's barely even an image. This one has some structure to it, at least. In the way of memories, it may not have happened exactly like this, but this is how it lives in my head.

I'm about two years old (a little younger than in this picture, I think). I'm on the riding mower with one of my parents, cutting the grass in the enormous yard of the house where we lived until I was four. It's very bright and sunny, but we're going along the edge of the yard where there are trees and there's that kind of dappling light effect. The mower is loud, and I can smell cut grass and gasoline and that sharp smell of hot stone from pebbles that kick up and hit the blades. Whichever parent is driving the mower has one hand on the wheel and one arm around my middle with a hand on my belly. The yard is uneven, and it's bouncy. We come up towards a tree with a low-hanging branch and it's coming right toward my face. The hand around my waist comes up and underneath the branch and sweeps it up so that it passes over our heads, and then the arm goes back around my waist.

when the runner walks.

I’m feeling anxious scared about my move to Portland. 

I used to be a really good mover; every few years, I'd pick up and go. It's been a long time since my last one, though, and I'm out of practice. There's so much practical work to be done just to make it happen, and it's expensive, and I'll need to find a new job. In the meantime, the sense of living half in one place and half in another makes me feel like I'm always away from home, and that's exhausting. 

What really scares me is this time, I'm not running. My last two moves, I was running in one way or another. When I moved to Nantucket, I was running from a man I loved who was marrying someone else. I wanted to be as removed as possible, so I moved to an island. In the winter. Never say I can't work the symbolism for maximum effect. When I moved back to Chicago four years later, I was leaving a dead end life that felt toxic. I could have gone anywhere, but Chicago had the lure of the familiar, so I came back. That was running, too, of a different kind.

This time, I'm not running from. I'm not running to. I chose. I'm leaving a comfortable life that isn't the right life. I knew more than two years ago that Chicago wasn't home anymore, and I started looking at new places that might be home. I worked through a list of possibilities based on specific things I wanted and ended up with Portland. By the time I made that decision, Shana and Shawn were already packing for their move to Portland. My brother and his family are also moving there next month, and it will be amazing to be able to see him. That gave Portland an extra layer of appeal, but I'm looking for a place that can become home either with or without people I already know. Portland might be that. It might not. I'm not going to know until I've been there a while, and that scares me.

Here's the thing about running: it's easy. It doesn't leave you any room to doubt yourself. When you run, you think everything will be better someplace else. By the time the doubt comes, you're already in the thing and doing it. The not running hurts. There's so much time to think about my decisions and wonder if they're the right ones. This time, I'm not trying to outrun myself; every fault and uncertainty and bad habit is going right along with me in the full light of day. That's actually amazing personal growth for me, but I still catch myself trying to do yet a third kind of running: sprinting ahead to the next decision. If I get there and this wasn't the right decision, what's the next plan? That's a bad way to think. So I keep having to turn around and go back a short distance to the place where I've made a decision, and learn to live in the uncertainty. 

I don't mean to suggest that I'm not excited about moving, or that I'm thinking of changing my mind. I know this is the right thing to do right now, and I can't wait to get there and meet all the wonderful people I've already begun to know online. I'm so grateful to have chosen a place that seems to welcome me before I even arrive.

Over the past several months, I've transferred my energy for emotional running into physical running. I've never been an exerciser; I am a curler-up-in-chairs-with-books. But lately I'm almost addicted to working out, and I think I'm doing my running on the elliptical so I can stand still and breathe in other parts of my life. When I work out, I can see out the window to the pool at the park, which has stenciled signs all over the concrete apron: WALK, Do Not Run. I'm working on it.