"i’ll take the rapists for 500."

<---------- This is kinda how I feel lately. :)

The second school year is off to a blazin' start. Contrasted with the first year in Gainesville, it's like night and day:
1) I have furniture. 2) I have friends. 3) I have a clue what I'm doing.

And about a year late, the whole experience is finally being normalized. The next round of first-years have moved in, and they're going through more or less the same thing. Except with couches. But my suspicion was right. Moving to a new place where you don't know anyone just plain sucks for a while, and it especially sucks if you have even a hint of uncertainty whether this giant commitment, which hugely impacts the future course of your life, was the right decision.

By now I know it was the right decision. After waiting a year, I've finally put my hunch to the test and explored whether clinical work is the glovelike fit I sensed it to be. And it IS. It's so much more daunting than I ever imagined. But I'm thrilled by the challenge. People are terrifyingly complex. The ways we affect ourselves and one other are myriad and diverse.

So I get why we need years of practice. If I've learned anything so far it's that we're all very different, often in ways we can't immediately see. I can't know what's going on inside the person in front of me, or how she sees the world. Her experience isn't mine. But it's my task to help with what's going on inside. So if I want to help, I have to learn how to do it on her terms. My point of view is irrelevant if I don't know how to work from hers. And understanding is only the beginning. The real work is making constructive changes amid the complex web of each person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. And they actually hand out degrees in this? As if it's something you could ever be professional at doing?

Psychology is often criticized as a pseudoscience, but look at what people are. It's justifiably limited by its subject matter: every person is infinitely unique. Human behavior often follows trends, but there are no concrete laws, no guaranteed cause-and-effect. And although it should be the ideal toward which we strive, I'm not sure we should want psychology to be strictly governed by empiricism. Wouldn't you be horrified if human beings could be encapsulated by a set of scientific formulae? Give me free will and limited empirical control any day. It keeps things interesting.

Which is why I'm right where I belong. In all their weirdness and complication, people are fascinating. I can't see myself getting tired of trying to understand. And their strangeness and messiness and big and small hurts, one way or another, come out in the end as beauty. Lucky me to witness so much bizarre beauty for a living.

new critter!

It's August in Florida, which means a new abundance of creepy crawlies have found their way to the area. And not just UF undergrads. Check out this little cutie:



Awww. I'm already envisioning ways he too could be creatively snuffed out. (Not that I'm busting out the salt or anything - I know enough to let nature take its ever-interesting course.)

The thunderstorms brought him out. Now that I'm over the two-months-of-living-in-soup deal, I've realized Florida is a great place to live for a thunderstorm geek. Which I've been all my life - I've ruined many a conversation by completely losing track of it when the weather gets interesting. Ominous rumbles in the sky are just so COOL. And here, we get them every day during summer.

My back wall being all glass looking out on the courtyard, it's a fantastic view watching the rain pummel down through the trees, making small ponds in the lawn. I've spent the afternoon in sweatpants poking around on the guitar and watching the flood outside. These are the best kind of days - sleeping in till you couldn't sleep if you tried, buzzing around the kitchen on good coffee, belting out the Rolling Stones into a spray bottle after cleaning up cat puke. Cat puke does not factor into the best of days but you get the point. I've gotten her back by annoying her with all the attention I deprive her of during the week. It appears she does not want to hang out that much after all. However she deeply enjoys my air guitar performances. I think.

This blog obviously had very little point. Really there have just been so many great thunderstorms these days and I wanted to let you all know. And I'm not doing aaaaaaanything else of import today, so here we are.

But to amend for having wasted your time, I'll share three interesting things I discovered yesterday:

1. The Ukelin.

Otherwise called the bowed psaltery or violin zither. As you can see, it's one ass-backward looking instrument. Apparently most other folks in the early 1900's thought so too, as the door-to-door salesmen who touted it were less than successful in perpetuating its popularity through the generations, as it were. Still, it's cute in that the note is labeled for EVERY INDIVIDUAL STRING (accessible for extra-beginner musicians), open chords can be strummed at the bottom, and the peripheral strings further up can be played with a bow.



2. Ice Hotels.

But for real. Hotels made ENTIRELY out of ice. You can find them in Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and other places that can get away with such things. They're temporary, obviously, but incredible - even the beds are made of ice, slept on with reindeer hides under arctic sleeping bags. One place hired a crew of Japanese ice artists to create an exhibition of ice art in the hotel. They rebuild the entire hotel every year from scratch.



3. You're out of your element, Donnie.

For all you Big Lebowski fans in your robes with White Russians, I met an aficionado named Rusty who not only knows his Lebowski, he knows his bowling. He plays in the minor league and owns two pro shops here in town. And he tells me the Dude's not exactly on his game. For a movie about bowling, there are numerous inconsistencies and technical inaccuracies in the bowling scenes. The old adage, apparently, is wrong: you CAN fuck with the Jesus. Because according to Rusty, he's not even using the right ball. Take that, Pedor-ass.

the gift of good land.

I don't normally quote so extensively, but Wendell Berry wrote this brilliantly (he is always brilliant) in "The Gift of Good Land" in 1981. 1981. So it's rare to be read nowadays, but it should be.

It's about the Papago Indians in Arizona, who sustained themselves for centuries in the difficult desert climate. They succeeded because of careful agricultural practice, hunting, and harvesting at least 275 species of wild edible plants.

"In response to their meager land, the Papago developed a culture that was one of the grand human achievements. It was intricately respectful of the means of life, surpassingly careful of all the possibilities of survival. ...Giving and sharing were necessarily their first principles. The people needed each other too much for individualism and dissent.

The result was paradoxical: in these almost impossible circumstances, the Papago achieved... a 'society of abundance'. The poverty of our own 'affluent society' never existed among them."

When the white folks came along, they intervened and "taught" the Papago self-sufficiency. They were educated about modern agriculture and tractors, wells were dug, the cattle industry was introduced. Charles Bowden writes:

"A half century after the commissioners' optimistic forecast, the Papago are not respected by their white neighbors and are not self-supporting. They now have a groundwater problem, an overgrazing problem, and an economic problem. The society of abundance is gone."

Back to Berry. "There is a conflict between the operations of a cash economy and traditional, local systems of agriculture. It is easier to buy your food than to grow it. It is hard to persuade a community to grow its own food once it has become available for purchase.... It is easier to drink soft drinks and throw the containers out the window than to practice the difficult disciplines of health and frugality.

And so the society of abundance becomes dependent on a society of scarcity, consuming exhaustible resources as rapidly as possible in the conventional American Way, and leaning on the fragile props of inflated cash and government programs. And so the intricate, delicate culture so responsive to the needs of desert life is gradually replaced in the mind by modern restlessness and the desire to shop. And so the body loses its resilience and strength as its purchased diet is converted to fat."

Berry talks about a "society of abundance" I've never known. And my society - which looks far more abundant but consumes natural resources like it's going out of style - would find the Papago way completely inconvenient. Live off wild plants? Hunt my dinner? Not likely. And as a budding professional, I get that. I have the luxury of spending my life addressing the ills of human behavior. Which are very real. And which I couldn't invest in AND farm my own food. The benefits of a cash economy include greater advances in science, healthcare, and technology.

But the drawback is that it diminishes our self-sufficiency. It depletes the relationship between us and what keeps us alive. No, I can't till my own field. But I can make my own meals instead of eating out or heating up a box. I can choose nutrient-rich foods instead of obliging my penchant for sweets with calorie-free laboratory creations. I can support those who do grow their own food, and who do it with consideration for the earth they use to grow it. And I can get myself there on a bike or on my feet. It's inconvenient, yeah, and I know it's hard to choose that when we're used to life at breakneck speed where everything's on hand.

But it gives me ownership of part of my own sustenance. And it feels good to do something besides consume. To support myself, to support someone else living conscientiously. Growing up I didn't even notice how little I contributed to anything. I couldn't have imagined a half hour walk when I could do a 10-minute drive.

I'm beginning to learn what I'm losing by having everything so easy. I take everything for granted. Going slower is an annoyance, not a blessing. Well, it used to be. :) Now I wouldn't have it any other way. I want to participate in what's on my table. I want to participate in everything that gets me from A to B. It's teaching me gratitude, and patience, and wonder.

American life will never be like it was with the Papagos, or as it is in many parts of the world today. For all our advances and conveniences, I regret the depletion of simplicity that expansion necessarily incurs. But I hope we won't regret the expansion itself. I hope it makes us smarter, sharper, stronger. I hope that smartness leads us back to greater respect for and connection with the natural world. I hope that strength leads us back with a knowledge that helps us continue to provide for a growing world while sustaining the earth from which provisions grow.

I hope I'm not too optimistic.

yum. and ew. but yum.

Most days the bathrooms in our office area smell like cherry Kool-Aid, which comes from the things they put out to kill cockroaches (Florida you're so AWESOME in the summer). But today it smells like Thin Mint girl scout cookies! Out of nowhere! Could this be the new scent of choice in roach-killing implements?

more.

Daniel Johnston wants you to know that True Love Will Find You in the End. Count on a tortured, optimistic manic depressive to assure us of this. Or my parents.

That's unfair. My parents are awesome, and when my (ex)boyfriend announced last week he's leaving town for a 2-year bike trip and doesn't see the point in continuing even a friendship, they were right to say sorry you fell for a self-serving jerk and you'll find someone fantastic some day.

Except - the consolation in itself is frustrating. Embedded is the belief that finding someone fantastic is the point. Is it? Does it have to be? Does everyone assume we're all looking out for that special someone who won't screw us over because they just have to get out of Gainesville? Er, uh. Anyway.

Or are we all? I'd be the first to admit actual love would be a lovely thing to find. There must be few who don't like it, although I'm sure they exist. Everybody likes love. But is eventually having someone else the Point?

I'd just like to say I think there's more. Getting married is easy; you can always find someone else who craves security too. Having babies is wonderful, but that's more biology's accomplishment than ours. If everyone's only goal was to procreate, the world would come to a grinding halt. Someone has to keep the world moving. There's meaning in love and reproduction, but there's meaning all around us. Life is full of possibility. (Painfully so for a woman born after the feminist movement, who enjoys all its benefits but fought for none of them and has no idea what to do with the freedom bestowed on her.)

I could do any of myriad meaningful things with my one wild precious life. Many of which would benefit others far more than one dude would benefit from my devotion. The petty part of me whimpers this is still lonely. But we aren't lonely the first two, three decades of life we don't have a Special Friend. We don't have to be lonely now just because the world says it's time to be. There is so much more. There are so many ways to give, to more people than that one, in quite possibly more meaningful ways.

simple.

I officially renounce any intention to ever stop writing about lizards. Especially dead ones.



I'd left the terra cotta pots on the patio all winter, and this little fella was in one from the middle of the stack. No idea how he got there in the first place, let alone how I inadvertently killed him. But Sunday night, re-potting herbs... jeebus. Glad I inspected before clearing out the debris with my hand because EWWWWWW to lizard skeletons under the fingernails.

I love listening to Rosie Thomas but rarely do. The excess of feminine longing does terrible things to my brain. (Terrible things I love.) But Rosie was on when I found the mummy, and her simple nostalgic language colored the shock and the out-loud laughter that followed, bringing my attention to something beyond the discovery of yet another untimely death.

I still remember when coming to Florida was Utter Catastrophe. Gainesville felt so boring, the South so uncultured. I wailed at one point that I was afraid my soul would die; that I wouldn't know how to love weirdness anymore and be accustomed to a cookie-cutter world. I'd leave Florida a brainwashed fan of pop country in a miniskirt and halter top, punctuating the end of every sentence with GO GATORS!

(Because, seriously, people do that here. Someone will send out a memo about lunch or something and end with GO GATORS! Because gators have so much to do with the location of the sandwich trays.)

Eccentricity's still a thing to be fought for in Gainesville, but considering I work in a psychology clinic, it won't be hard to find. Actually, forget the clinic. I work in academia. IT WON'T BE HARD TO FIND.

Back to Rosie and the reptile remains. Laughter and intrigue over lizard skeletons is pretty lame, especially shared only with a cat whose simultaneous lack of surprise and deep contentment in my company is unwavering. But it brought to light - in a way I finally deeply understand - the reality that the city with all of its excitement is not necessary.

It's fun, but also sensory gluttony having hundreds of restaurants and bars to choose from, dozens of plays and concerts going on, going to games in stadiums and being surrounded by strangers whenever you step out in public. Not that I'm in any way opposed to experiential gluttony. It's just that it's not necessary...

There is much less to choose from here. A few unique bars, music venues, bookstores and groceries. I see the same people all the time. But the other side of boring is simple, which is beautiful. It leaves room where love can grow for the faces you see every day but don't look for. It leaves room for amusement to need no more than dead creatures in strange places and things that grow in the sun from your back window. It leaves room for the earth's beauty to spring out on you from everywhere. Look at my profile picture. I can have that any time I want, no hour-long drive out of the city. The drop of a hat.

At the drop of a hat, last Friday, I took my bike out for the afternoon. Followed a trail fringed with shade trees and flower bushes until it came out along a field, with woods further back. It was a simple view: green, blue, white, all intensified by the sun. Grass stretching with sky stretching over it but I'd say the world looked bigger than it had before. Endless. It wasn't remotely interesting - no action, no characters. But in its simplicity, it was breathtaking. It had so much room.

still life.

Just when I thought I'd posted my last lizard blog, the critters outdo themselves. This weekend we took a bike ride to Micanopy in 98-degree heat (104 with the humidity factor; p.s. I almost died). Standing around drinking water after, Lindsey noticed him in the hinge of the front door. Who knows how long his little corpse lay hidden there, or the exact moment his life snapped swiftly shut, stamped out mid-motion?



This day's evolved into something of a yearly mid-motion stamping of myself. An impression of life at this given moment, leaving behind snapshots I set side by side each year. Clearly I have too much time on my hands.

Last year's snapshot was also my first post, about ferocity and folderol. About the foolishness of passion that clings wildly to an ideal, beyond the point of no return. Beyond the point at which the heart commits itself to a fervent, hopeless path rather than accept - both disappointing and liberating - the need to change course.

What would it look like if I was pressed in a book (or a door hinge) today?

I'm less afraid of anything now than I've ever been. I'm more ready for disappointment. Not in a bleak way, but in a way that understands all life's tiny deviations from what you hoped for are not the same thing as disappointment. Having what you wanted is not victory, and changing - even letting go - is not loss. There is no such thing as The Way It Should Be. There's only The Way It Is, and however it is it's a gift. Even and sometimes especially when you hate it.

Change also loses its potency to disappoint when you stop expecting what's not yours to ask for. I'm less afraid because I'm learning to make fewer assumptions about what I'm entitled to, and considering more of what others need. My heart still makes its commitments, but it finds itself beyond fewer rubicons. It doesn't believe in easily given promises. It doesn't offer what it can't afford to forego. It offers small, solid promises that are thought out and can be counted on when given.

This may sound too controlled. But in reality it's about giving up control, about paring our needs down to what we really require and deserve, and letting go of the comforts we mislabel needs. I'm finding this posture toward the world softens the pain that comes when we don't get what we want, because we know it's only that. It's only what we want.

bonafide bad-ass.

Fine, fine, riding a motorcycle does not technically make you a bad-ass. I mean if we're really splitting hairs I'm the same little dweeb in slightly less slow motion. But it was a pretty cool feeling mastering the Big Bike. I earned my motorcycle license last weekend, taking the skills test (figure 8's, hard stopping) in what would have passed as a monsoon. And although I needed the license for a 150cc scooter, I had to learn to drive a regular motorcycle to pass. Dangerous. Because I had so much fun that now I want a Ninja of my very own.

But for now this monster scooter does the job. It's lightweight but picks right up, corners tightly, and I've taken it over 50 mph easily. It's too light to take any faster, though, and that's fine: I too operate best at lower speeds. :) And as I'm not vehicularly inclined, my friend Joe's been instrumental in getting the bike on the road, from showing me how to change the oil at 2 am (and... um... understand the battery and the buttons) to helping me get used to being out there in traffic before actually driving in it.

If you catch this Joe, you are a good friend for spending all the time and not ridiculing me when I screamed every time we turned a corner and giggled like a ten-year-old for hitting 25 mph. Someday, if there is no trash to carry, I'LL drive YOU home from work. And scream and giggle turning corners. (Sorry. Some things don't change.)

they seem to have a death wish.

I know the number of lizard stories is bordering on ridiculous at this point but seriously. It's better I get it out of my system here than call one of you up every time I find creepy crawlies in strange places.

Today it was IN MY OVEN. Geesh. I open the door to check on the sandwich I'm toasting and WHAT IS THAT SLITHERING OUT?? Seeing ANYTHING come slithering out of the place where your yummy food lies defenseless is just plain disgusting. I mean, I still ate it. But. EW.

announcement of awesomeness.

(SPOILER ALERT: CHP classmates, reading may spoil your mood. Most of the time I'm the one harboring snarky bitter wishes to see that obnoxiously diligent student trip and fall on her face, but right now I'm that student. I had a good day! Please don't trip me next time we meet.)

After weeks of feeling hopelessly incompetent - scrambling to finish papers, scratching my head during exams, clueless about navigating grown-up life without showing I'm clueless - someone's thrown me a bone. Thanks Mentor. You are Awesome.

I spent ages working on this pretend grant, an assignment for class which will also double (handy!) as the first two chapters of my thesis. I sat up for hours the night before, bleary-eyed and slaving over the last bit of it which turned out to be way more work than I'd bargained for. I felt like the crappiest of crap, barely skirting in under the deadline something I thought wasn't nearly what it should be and in which my mentor - who knows the project well - would surely find a billion flaws. Auuughhh. Commence hiding under pillows and humming.

But - no! In fact he too said he'd thought he would approach it over-critically knowing all about it, but that he didn't need to: it was an excellently written work! Oooh. And told me today - I'm still glowing - that with the chapters written and most of the data collected, I'm further on my thesis than any first-year he's had. Anything that happened after that was all marshmallows and tiny lutes as far as I'm concerned. I have done things right. I FEEL SO GOOD.

I am going to keep this going as long as possible, which means never looking at my final grade for Child Assessment.

someone loved.

"What good are words?
I'm feeling that impotence which wants
a Lazarus to rise
everytime someone loved is sinking."

(Stephen Dunn, Letter About Myself to You)


The past weeks were hectic with finals and papers. By now I could write about lots of exciting things, like the motorcycle license I'm about to earn (and the phat ride I'm getting it for! Haven't taken it off any sweet jumps yet), or my brother's upcoming wedding in Michigan, or the fact that in a few weeks I'll pick up my first-ever therapy case - at a relatively early, borderline-premature point in my career. Which I'm super-excited about and will mention another time.

But I get to write about whatever stupid thing I want and tonight it's the purring critter curled on my knee. Yes, Shaniqua is just a cat. But she's been my little buddy for as long as I've lived alone, literally next to me almost every moment I'm home. Whether I like it or not.

Since we moved to Florida (again, Florida, whyyyyy) she's been ill three times, each worse than the one before. Sunday morning I found her hiding in the closet behind the vacuum, unable to walk or eat. My Amazing Friend Rae helped me bring her to the emergency vet, where they kept her alive overnight. Monday she was still "laterally recumbent": could only lay on her side glassy-eyed, and couldn't lay upright, or eat. I held her while we waited, and if I stepped away she'd cry and try to sit up and see where I went. I felt terrible leaving her at the vet again that night, but she needed care I couldn't give her.

The doctors can't tell what it is. The ER and primary vets agree (so do I) that she has some significant undiagnosed disease which is leading to chronic episodes. An IV perks her back up but it's no cure. The vet school could run diagnostics for $1000-3000 (ahem not in my budget for the next decade or so). It's obvious where that leaves us. Kitty's restored for now, but she likely won't stay that way. At this rate she'll be sick again in a couple months, and that's hardly a way for her to live, or a thing I can afford. So this last hospitalization has bought us more time, and that's all. I'm not putting her through all that next time; just bringing her in quickly to avoid more suffering.

That's sad. I will miss her (expect a rambling, tearful post which you can skip if you want). But she's not suffering now. After gorging herself on yummy prescription food and a lengthy nap in my lap, she faceplanted into my palm and rolled on her back in a fit of purring. How worthwhile, seeing a creature so happy to be alive. And you can tease her for being slow, cross-eyed and, frankly, weird, but she is always ecstatic to love and be loved. I'm glad she'll have that a little longer before she goes. In fact, until then, she can have it all she wants.

it's a high cost of living for the dollar menu-naire.

Never again, Wendy's $1 Chicken Sandwich. My roommate for this weekend's conference (which I'll write about when I'm not half-dead) and I are utterly slayed by the bacteria you surreptitiously slid down our throats at the pit stop home. I should have known when it took eight people 15 minutes to bring our meal.

Oblivious, I trotted to a free outdoor concert, thinking I'd get in at least 3 hours of real weekend. But you, $1 Crispy Chicken, you had other plans. I ALMOST made it till the Flaming Lips, but ended up barfing in the bushes, locked out of nearby buildings, just as they took the stage. I could have seen one of the "top 50 bands to see before you die" but instead I had to sneak into a dormitory to rinse off my sleeves and shoes, looking to any observer like a vagrant drug addict with my smelly clothes and red, watery eyes.

Let's not forget who's the real culprit here... it's not Wendy's. Billions of people eat there every day. No, the troublemaker is the same as ever, only this time more wily. Florida, I don't know how exactly you're to blame on this one but I know you're behind it so don't go thinking you're off the hook. I will find you out, and when I do it's Chicken Sandwich Time for you.

Thank goodness for Jason who took off from all the fun to drive me home while I puked out the door of his car. Brave soul. By 3 am I finally purged myself of all things Wendy's. I'm almost up for food.

i bifurcated a lizard today.

Not on purpose. He ran in as I slammed the screen door behind me and then oh dear god that's a little tail sticking out. No pictures this time as apparently that grosses some of you out. But my blog will continue to mention Floridian wildlife until a) I get used to it or b) the little critters go the fuck away. In other words you'll be hearing about them for quite some time.

It feels like time for an update: some time ago I got past the mortal agony over living in Gainesville. The reprieve from the blistering heat helped. What also helped was taking on a part-time job in a cute cafe downtown. Turns out it was bringing me down to live in a bubble of grad students, and then to have too much free time to ruminate about living in a bubble.

Problem solved! Although it's unorthodox, it was the right thing for me. I get to leave the bubble - I'm making new friends, meeting new people and blowing off steam by being physically busy and mentally occupied with anything but academia. It's lifted my spirits, so I'm more energetic and motivated in school and life's better all around.

I'm actually much more involved academically than I was when I had more time, because I'm not too depressed to care. How surprisingly counterintuitive some solutions can be. I'm working on two data collections, analyzing data and writing for my Master's, and have pioneered a secondary data analysis to keep me busy this summer. I'm also shadowing a neurologist in a memory disorders clinic, which is FUN, and recruiting patients for a study. I've applied for a fellowship in aging for next year (here's hoping for a decent salary), and submitted my first conference abstract as a grad student, using a subpart of my thesis. I feel less and less like a stranger in a foreign land. More and more at home.

I've embraced hot, humid Southern life. I learned to cook collard greens. :) Wear mostly flip flops and thin, loose clothes, and don't mind sweating all the time. I've made guy friends nice enough to tell me my hair looks better wavy and air-dried (and we all love compliments from boys), so I've abandoned the dryer and stay cool longer. I walk and bike ride everywhere. The town is lame but it's always sunny and blue-skied, and there are so many trees.

I've made a friend who's a trainer too, who's helping me tone up for Kyle's wedding in May. He says he'll make me look good naked. (Ha! I ALREADY DO!) But maybe now I will look like a porn star. A porn star on steroids. Heck, I'll be happy just to walk down the beach without jiggle-legs. Although I'm hardly holding out for that.

I'm happy. I've made peace with a difficult commitment and I'm making it work. The people and places I long for - well, I'll always long for them. But I have a life where I am and I know how to like it. I'm not asking many questions about next year or the next, because I've learned I create a pressure with them that suffocates me. Letting go of those questions has let in all the things I've missed, which I was drowning without. It's let in the passing awareness of freedom and mystery which only appears when you're not searching so hard for answers.

Can I say, bike riding is the best thing for that? An unexpected gift Florida's given me which Chicago withheld with its populous streets. As a kid I took for granted how quiet and unfettered a bike ride can be. Slow enough that you see every thing you pass, fast enough for a breeze and a feeling a little bit like flying. Unlike driving where the thing moves you. You move yourself. And you're alone. And as long as you're not lost five miles from where you need to be in ten minutes (that, let me tell you, sucks), the world is so chill. :)

so much for sleeping tonight.

Dear Florida, I hate you. During the mild winter months we were at such perfect peace, I really thought it was going to work out. But today you GAVE ME THIS:



AHHHHHHHHHH!! What is wrong with you Florida!?!?!? Did you want me to vomit up ALL MY INTERNAL ORGANS?? BECAUSE I ALMOST DID! I reach behind the chair for a dropped pen and THIS IS WHAT YOU DO TO ME??! My hands are still shaking from the shock. I don't know how I held the vacuum cleaner steady. You asshole state. I'm going to need horse tranquilizers to sleep tonight.

oh, photobooth.

It was an agonizingly long couple of weeks with no laptop. I've never felt so lost and vulnerable, not even when I was stranded in a Zurich train station with no place to sleep (probably because looking at an actual map cleared that one up pretty quick). No internet at home? No web surfing - er, note typing - in class? No electronic calendar with snazzy to-do list? Why not just cut off my arms too? What am I going to do, WATCH CABLE??

Just when I thought I was going to die of doing stats homework at school (ugh) at night (UGH), a blessing came from above. Above meaning north of here, from the Best Dad Ever, who helped me purchase a sleek new MacBook. I'm not saying he's the Best Dad Ever for giving me money. He is anyway. But I am saying my love can be bought.

It's a great machine! I'm not sure what exactly the Intel Core 2 Duo processor does, but it sounds sexy. What I do know is that the battery lasts long enough to watch two movies, the magnetic power plug means I'll never pay $400 to fix a broken one again, and that the built-in iSight has given me a whole new set of stupid things to do rather than whatever it is I'm supposed to. That, together with a billion dorky effects in PhotoBooth (thanks Justin) has occupied way too much of my time this week, but am I ever having fun. See for yourself.

Go ahead and laugh, but deep down you know you've always wondered what you'd look like making out with yourself.

woof from warp.

The rule is, if I read it eight times and still feel compelled to share it, I share it. Enjoy.

Invisible Mending

c.k. williams

Three women old as angels,

bent as ancient apple trees,

who, in a storefront window,

with magnifying glasses,

needles fine as hair, and shining

scissors, parted woof from warp

and pruned what would in

human tissue have been sick.

Abrasions, rents and frays,

slits and chars and acid

splashes, filaments that gave

way of their own accord

from the stress of spanning

tiny, trifling gaps, but which

in a wounded psyche

make a murderous maze.

Their hands as hard as horn,

their eyes as keen as steel,

the threads they worked with

must have seemed as thick

as ropes on ships, as cables

on a crane, but still their heads

would lower, their teeth bare

to nip away the raveled ends.

Only sometimes would they

lift their eyes to yours to show

how much lovelier than these twists

of silk and serge the garments

of the mind are, yet how much

more benign their implements

than mind's procedures

of forgiveness and repair.

And in your loneliness you'd notice

how really very gently they'd take

the fabric to its last, with what

solicitude gather up worn edges

to be bound, with what severe

but kind detachment wield

their amputating shears:

forgiveness, and repair.

serendipity in super slow music.

This week held one of those lucky moments listening to a song you've known for ages but suddenly hear for the first time. The doubly lucky part is hearing the words you needed right at the moment the song decides to stop letting you ignore it.

The melody moves so slowly - borderline boringly - it never held my attention. But when my ears caught "we are blessed aren't we", I waited for the rest. Amid the throes of a seemingly endless quarter-life crisis, these words are a breath of fresh air. No answers, and who would look for those? Life finds its own answers. All we need along the way, sometimes, is for someone to say so.


Hands in black mud
At the foot of the manger
She'll always be young

And free to be wrong
A black lamb licks the dirt off her feet with its tongue

We are blessed aren't we
In the shade of these large auburn leaves
Unexpectedly
We arrive where we're all meant to be

Hands in black mud
As she sits by the manger
And closes her eyes

The wind blows outside
A black car pulls the gravel and wants her to ride

We are blessed aren't we
In the shade of these large auburn leaves
Unexpectedly
We arrive where we're all meant to be

oh lovely.

It's pouring - BUCKETS - rain outside. Pounding on the roof, flooding the courtyard. I'm in soft old clothes, listening. Earlier tonight I lost five consecutive pool games really, really pathetically and watched the world look a little less confusing over hot spicy whiskey cider. Smoked good cigarettes under the awning, watching the rain pour down. Lovely night. Hope yours was too.

if you're crabby and you know it clap your hands.

Some days the weather throws you a bone and acts the way you feel. Thanks, Gainesville. For once we're on the same page. Your dark gray torrential downpour lifted my heart, kind of, in at least not being contradictorily sunny when I'm in a foul mood.

Ugh, what a day. With no warning signs, my laptop's begun flaking out in a bad way. Nothing - almost nothing - is more stressful than an expensive piece of technology you depend on practically all day, every day, threatening to up and choke. Except when you've been waiting with baited breath on student loans that should have been disbursed 2 weeks ago while the rent looms heavy on the horizon and you're using credit cards to buy milk and eggs.

Not that there would be any surplus in these loans for a laptop, should Sparky McFlakealot give out on me. Worse comes to worse, the prostitutes on SW 13th seem to be doing okay. And they don't have to sit in lectures learning that the tests they'll use throughout their career appear to measure nothing significant. Oh dear, I just read that paragraph over. Has it really come to this?

But I'll balance out the angst-fest: I had the best weekend ever. It started surreptitiously enough with Trivial Pursuit at Maude's over jasmine tea. Power Team #1 (Lisa & Shannon) scored the most wedges, no thanks to my discriminating knowledge of dead rappers.

Saturday I didn't even want a beer at my favorite bar, because there was GUITAR HERO on the big screen. Power team #2 (Shannon and Eli, a ten year old kid in a hoodie) rocked it out on cooperative mode... over and over... and over.

Sunday night finished off with a fantastic (and cheap!) group dinner at Tapas 12 West. Perfect cap to a perfect weekend: collapsing just this side of a coma, full of scallops, empanadas, sangria and chocolate souffle. Mmmm. Why was I crabby again?

once again, taking a close look at things proves to be remarkably worthwhile.

I FIXED MY BIKE!

Or in more specific terms, I figured out what's wrong with it and am avoiding using the broken part. Close enough! I have mastered you, mechanical enigma! Bow down before me, puny gears! Let's go for a ride on the Hawthorne trail... I promise I will most likely not grind you hideously against one another. Assuming the front wheel has now decided to always turn in the same direction as the handlebars, I should be fine.

Someone please buy me a car.

I'd be even better at fixing that than a bike.

in your face, northern America!

And not because our Gators just kicked your Northern asses. You know deep down I love you Yankeeland. And - you know I'm not a football fan. I only know we won because if you're anywhere in Gainesville during a Gator victory, you don't even need to open the window. I can hear what literally sounds like a screaming stadium through my back door, and there's no stadium anywhere nearby. The game wasn't even HERE. One of the great mysteries of Gainesville I have yet to figure out.

Anyway, I get to say in your face to you, Great North, because finally my weather kicks your weather's ass (all about ass-kicking tonight, it seems). It is beautiful here. Paradisiacal. And if you're going to deprive me of my much-loved snow, paradise is an acceptable consolation.

I said to a friend last week: "Sunshine doesn't do it for me! Not what snow and dead trees does!" But I eat my words. Returning to Florida air was a reminder of every camping trip my parents ever took me on. It smells like life here. Like wet, fresh, growing things. And if you step away from the four-lane highway packed with gas stations and Walgreens, it's quiet and wild and sweet, laden with bright little flowers, crawling vines, tree branches heavy with Spanish moss.

So that's what I did. I stepped away. Some of you back home know I routinely walked the 6 or so miles home from work, even in the rain. I never thought anything could replace those long chilly city walks. Well. Nothing has. But I've found a new pleasure here, unique. Only here could I slip on a thin cardigan in January twilight, loose skirt, flip flops, wet hair tied up, and walk for miles hearing only the birds and my feet on the ground.

I can see different neighborhoods than you see up north, different than in the city. Clusters of small brightly-painted houses up on cinder blocks, buried under ferns and low-hanging trees. Little houses falling apart. I love buildings falling apart. Little kids powering their Big Wheels around a pond, crushing pine needles while tired-looking moms and dogs look on.

Florida, this is a provisional love. You will probably kill it soon with a sweltering heat wave. But for now, you have your charm and I'll like you for that. You're still kind of lame, but we both know I've never had a problem loving lame. Just stop ruining my apartment and stealing my stuff and we might get along.