On Rejection Notes & Nymphets

Ears must have been burning -- soon as I mention his name, the Rejection Man resurfaces. Looks like my poems won't be swimming in The Atlantic anytime soon. This is my second submission to the magazine and yet another leading response. Hopefully, third time will be the charm.

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Postcards also come in threes?

"Church of St. George the Great Martyr -- The Rotunda": Sophia, Bulgaria

"Edna St. Vincent Millay, portrait": Albany, New York

"Women Writers -- Anais Nin, 1971": Baltimore, Maryland

Thanks friends, for sending such wonderful mailings!

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Watching Kubrick's Lolita makes me want to reread the novel. Again.

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Today, a letter arrived addressed to "The Parents of Shara," inviting their high school daughter to participate in a study program in the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador. Apparently, "Shara will...return a child who is more confident and eager to continue learning." The trip also promises to set me "apart on college applications" How in the world did I get on this mailing list? Makes me wonder if my anxiety dreams are telling me something -- did or didn't I graduate from TUHS all those years ago?

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Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze. Perfectly annoying. Has anyone seen the version with Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert?

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My darling Bijoux is now a professional blogger for Gawker. I appoint myself his unprofessional counterpart.

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If I travel to Central America and pretend to be a teenager again, will it help increase my confidence and enthusiasm for studies in Arabic? Studied for hours and hours today when I should have been drafting.

Friday Field Notes

Purchased a 12-pack of Crayola Colored Pencils.

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Arabic c.d. & DVD programs arrived today. After practicing the ABCs for hours, I still can't wrap my mouth around certain sounds. One of the tools is a voice-recognition system. Not even the computer can make heads or tails of my sorry pronunciation!

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The Dollar Store stopped carrying puppy pads. Jabber, be good!

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Reviewed summer drafts -- I wrote 13 poems this summer, not counting the totally embarrassing nonsense that will never see life on the page. Still, if a fourth of the remaining 13 survives, I'll be in pretty great shape.

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Remembered why crop dusters frighten me, and it's not just because of what Rachel Carson writes about pesticide drift.

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Treated myself to an old-school / pack-your-lunch / mind-the-docent / buy-a-postcard field trip. The best part about such outings as an adult? You don't have to ride the big yellow school bus. The worst part about such outings? There's no one to flirt with on the big yellow school bus.

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Finished up with a free-write. Looking forward to drafting a poem in the morning.

Oh Yes, Wait a Minute Mr. Postman

In 2003, it took almost six months and 20 mailings before I placed a poem. Thanks be to the editors at Crab Orchard Review for this first credit!. Six years later, submission season is open once again, and I'm prepping work and printing SASEs. Hopefully, the Rejection Man (a.k.a. our friendly village postal carrier) won't visit the house too often in the coming months! Funny, no matter how often I move or where I go, the Rejection Man always knows where to find me. With online submissions databases, he's even invaded my computer. Remember when receiving an email from an editor was a good thing?

Today, however, I found two letters from California in my mailbox -- the first, from my my five-year-old niece, contained a drawing addressed to "Ant Shara" (I can already feel myself sprouting antennae and pinchers!). My eight-year-old nephew wrote a longer message and asked me to be his pen pal. Needless to say, no lit mag acceptance could touch the joy unsealed with these envelopes. I can't wait to head out tomorrow in search of some fun and kid-friendly epistolary supplies, and then drop off my replies at the post office.

On Earth's Furrowed Brow

"Bertha Marler shelling beans, 1983, Marshall, Madison County, NC" is part of North Carolina Museum of History's The Appalachian Farm in Photographs. The exhibit features work by photographer Tim Barnwell, who grew up among the rural farm families of Western North Carolina where "church dinners-on-the grounds, country stores and mule-drawn plows were still part of daily life in the 1950s and 1960s."

I hope to make it to NCMH before the exhibit moves elsewhere in October. Because of my maternal family's history of dirt-farming and migrant labor, I've long been drawn to images of fieldwork, especially those captured prior to the introduction of high-tech industries. In places and faces documented by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, I look for shadow figures of my grandparents as they struggled to survive the Great Depression. Such images are as close as I can get to that era. Looking forward to seeing how Barnwell's images measure against his predecessors, as well as the controversial Mr. Shelby Lee Adams.

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The most striking account of grief I've ever read (and just a damn well-written essay): Cheryl Strayed's "The Love of My Life." No coincidence that it's reprinted as part of The Best American series! Read it and weep!

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Picked up at the local library sale:

1. St. Augustine's Confessions (25 cents)
2. Doctorow's Ragtime (25 cents)
3. Austen's Sense and Sensibility (50 cents)
4. McEwan's Atonement ($3)

Appalachian Cliche?

Accused of reinforcing Appalachian stereotypes and exploiting both his subjects' naivete and poverty, Kentucky-born photographer Shelby Lee Adams isn't without controversy. Of "The Hog Killing" (see above) Adams writes, "In the Spring of 1990...I had purchased the hog in the photograph for $150. Both families and I agreed to the making of the photograph in the authentic traditional mountain manner we were all accustomed. The hog meat after the photo was made was divided between the two families providing them all with food for approximately three months. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and the photograph."

Although much of his photography takes place spontaneously, part of the criticism surrounding Adams' work is the photographer's staging of dramatic events. In the case of "The Hog Killing," one might argue that the two families were coerced by the gift of meat into posing for what Adams calls the "authentic traditional mountain manner." Does Adams pay homage to his Appalachian roots by capturing life in the back-roads subculture, or is he a master manipulator, a modern ringmaster whose orchestration of "freaks" and "hillbillies" feeds his own success and pocketbook? Such questions are addressed in the 2002 documentary film, The True Meaning of Pictures.

A month or so ago, I picked up a six-part black-and-white postcard series at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. My intention was to draft poems based on the series whose historical images of "Mountain People" include an elderly woman smoking a clay pipe and a gunsmith fitting a barrel to an unfinished stock, among others. The back of my favorite card reads: "With rod and bait in hand, Clem Enloe, 84, allowed a photographer to take her picture in exchange for a box of snuff (showing in her blouse)." There you have it: sold in a National Park gift shop, a photo that might easily be accused of stereotyping the people it intends to celebrate.

I'm very moved by much of Adams' work (I don't own his collected photographs and have only experienced selections online and in the aforementioned film), although I understand others' reservations. I grant that "The Hog Killing" feels static -- its arrangement lacks the energy of Adams' more intimate depictions of the people whose homes, churches, and lives he enters. My question is the extent to which such images propagate cliche if the subjects' living conditions are very much authentic...

Back to School Blues

Today at the dentist's office (see yesterday's entry -- yes, I survived), I overheard plenty of kids and parents bemoaning back-to-school preparations. It's true -- lots of my professor friends are lamenting this week's last-minute syllabus-building, as well as massive backups at departmental copy machines. While I've done my fair share of complaining in the past, I really miss teaching. What I wouldn't do for a university seminar room and class roster. Or, better still, the privilege of introducing enthusiasts (as well as skeptics) to a poem like Robert Hayden's

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Say AH?

Here's what I dislike about the dentist: x-rays, fillings, needles, suction hoses, drills, (wo)men in masks, needles, spit bowls, novocain, judgment.

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I brush like a madwoman, do right by my pearly whites, and still I suffer. Rumor has it genetics play a part.

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The appointment: tomorrow afternoon. The doctor: new. I'm having serious Steve-Martin-in-Little-Shop fantasies. For those of you not into musical theater or Steve Martin, this isn't good.

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My grandma wears dentures.

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My orthodontist was the worst. Two and a half years of braces between 8th and 10th grades, and my teeth all shifted back. The kids who went to Dr. Smith still have perfect choppers. Meanwhile, my parents wrote a check for two grand and I can suck a noodle through my bigs.

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In his entire life, K has never had a cavity. Jerk.

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The bathroom at my grandparents always smells like Listerine. Grandpa loved to gargle.

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Born without wisdom teeth, I've had two root canals. The latter resulted from botched work that caused permanent nerve damage that then required a bridge. Because said procedure ran several hours beyond initial expectation, the drugs wore off and I could feel everything... EVERYTHING!

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I finally tossed my retainer when I turned 30.

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An assistant once left me alone to suck on air filtered through a mask. When she didn't return, I passed out and rolled half out of the chair. Thus, my one and only experience with "happy gas" made me less than happy.

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Invisalign -- I'm just saying...

One Percent...

...of the world's landowners are women.

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A Gift of Goats Breaks through Social Prejudice: Heifer International

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Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn will be published next month by Alfred A. Knopf. Check out this excerpted essay, adapted for The New York Times:

In a slum outside the grand old city of Lahore, a woman named Saima Muhammad used to dissolve into tears every evening. A round-faced woman with thick black hair tucked into a head scarf, Saima had barely a rupee, and her deadbeat husband was unemployed and not particularly employable. He was frustrated and angry, and he coped by beating Saima each afternoon. Their house was falling apart, and Saima had to send her young daughter to live with an aunt, because there wasn’t enough food to go around.

“My sister-in-law made fun of me, saying, ‘You can’t even feed your children,’ ” recalled Saima when Nick met her two years ago on a trip to Pakistan. “My husband beat me up. My brother-in-law beat me up. I had an awful life.” Saima’s husband accumulated a debt of more than $3,000, and it seemed that these loans would hang over the family for generations...

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Helping Women Survivors of War Rebuild Their Lives: Women for Women International

Live Long & Prosper

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer featured poet Albert Goldbarth on Monday. He visited Madison during my time at UW and gave a spirited reading -- especially impressive given his cast (arm sling?) and reliance on pain meds, thanks to a recent slip-and-fall on the sidewalk's black ice. Ah, mid-western winter!

A fellow fellow/friend and I had lunch with Goldbarth at a Mediterranean cafe the afternoon following his reading and reception. Within two minutes of walking toward the restaurant, I found him smart, funny, and a great conversationalist. We spoke a little about his 1950s-era outer space memorabilia and toy collection (featured on PBS). Here's one of the selections he read in Wisconsin and also on Lehrer:

SHAWL

Eight hours by bus, and night
was on them. He could see himself now
in the window, see his head there with the country
running through it like a long thought made of steel and wheat.
Darkness outside; darkness in the bus—as if the sea
were dark and the belly of the whale were dark to match it.
He was twenty: of course his eyes returned, repeatedly,
to the knee of the woman two rows up: positioned so
occasional headlights struck it into life.
But more reliable was the book; he was discovering himself
to be among the tribe that reads. Now his, the only
overhead turned on. Now nothing else existed:
only him, and the book, and the light thrown over his shoulders
as luxuriously as a cashmere shawl.

A Not-So-Dismal Undertaking

Drafted a new poem this morning. Several images and phrases came to me late last night as I was chasing (once again) some form of sleep. I expected to wake and free-write, recording with ease the lines I'd composed in the dark. Unfortunately, I lost most of what I'd "written" internally. Note to self: post-midnight compositions must be recorded on the page. Why can't I ever seem to learn this lesson?

I'm reading the new issue of Ploughshares, a nonfiction exclusive edited by Kathryn Harrison. Hoping the various essays will provide instruction and guidance as I start to work in prose. Haven't yet made it down the table of contents to Thomas Lynch's "Correspondences," but I do recommend his collection The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade.

"Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople," writes Lynch, "Another two or three dozen I take to the crematory to be burned ...I sell caskets, burial vaults, and urns for the ashes ... I am the only undertaker in this town." There are many poet-doctors, even poet-businessmen. However, I know of no other living poet-undertaker. Frontline dedicates an episode to the services and funeral rituals offered by Mr. Lynch at Lynch & Sons, a Michigan business run by the family for three generations. Curious about what goes on behind-the-scenes in an embalming room? Click on over.

Help!

Fact: I have more time on my hands than I know how to spend. Fact: truth be told, I'd rather be in the opposite position -- overwhelmed, over-committed, pushed to my limits. I'm a person who needs pressure and structure. Who'd a thunk it!

Fact: sleep (too much or too little) is often a problem. A doctor once tried to prescribe drugs for my insomnia. More terrified of those little white pills than lying awake for hours in the dark, I never showed up at the pharmacist.

Last night I was up past three a.m. following my mind's wanderings, brainstorming about possible projects and unwritten drafts. While fantasizing about writing is terrific, I need to put a plan into action.

Here's the deal. I need a deadline. Drafting poems isn't a problem. Having recently finished a series of book review assignments, I'm ready to take on something new. I'd love your opinion. Here are the options:

1. Craft essay: women poets writing science (evolution through feminist movement)

2. Travel essay: creation museum and Christian entertainment center in Arkansas

3. Personal essay: sourcing my complicated feelings about fire arms

Do any of these sound interesting? If so, let me know! I'd really appreciate it!

Whose Woods These Are...

The U.S. National Park System is offering fee-free admission to more than two hundred sites August 15-16. Wright Brothers National Memorial (Kill Devil Hills) is among the picks for beach goers headed to N.C.'s Outer Banks. If you're in the Washington D.C. area, Harper's Ferry National Historical Park makes a great day trip. For something unusual, I also love Minnesota's Pipestone National Monument, South Dakota's Badlands, and Montezuma's Castle in Arizona.

Earlier this summer while on our annual father-daughter road-trip, my dad and I discovered (with great surprise) that entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park is always free! We certainly made the most of our stay. Recommended: the eight-mile roundtrip hike to Charlies Bunion, a rock out-crop with a 365 degree view of what appears to be at least a 1000-foot drop-off. Not recommended for those with a fear of heights!

It's storming again and I'm going back to my book. Just started Anna Karenina and can't seem to put it down!

Happy trails,
s.

The Tar Heel State

Almost a decade ago, I packed my car to capacity and left California. With the exception of San Francisco, no much-missed West coast city calls to me. Unlike the steady seasons of my San Joaquin Valley childhood, in North Carolina weather marks revolt: damage from floods, hurricanes, tidal erosion, etc., shows up in historical photographs and correspondence. While many homes in our small town remain manicured in the historical district, decay shows itself throughout the side streets and countryside. At the edge of Albemarle Sound sits a lighthouse propped on a mobile wooden platform waiting for repair. The tourist center is a refurbished funeral parlor. Never have I resided in a place where the dialogue between preservation and corrosion is so pronounced.

Now living and locating poems in North Carolina, I wonder about the extent to which I can claim the state's geographical, historical, and psychological terrain. In other words, at what point will my surroundings belong to me? Is two years enough? The local trolley tour spotlights a home that's been in the same family since the 1800s. A hot topic among writers is the (mis)appropriation of others' suffering, culture, identity, etc. Do I have any rights to this landscape simply because I possess a state-issued driver's license and pay taxes? Simply stated, at what point can this outsider claim point of entry?

Bread Loaf

Today, poets and writers are unpacking their flasks and pens at a mountain campus in Vermont for 10 or so days of lectures, readings, workshop, conversation, slide shows, and -- oh yeah -- hay rides and barn dances. Let Bread Loaf begin! While saddened not to make it to this year's Frost Picnic, I'm happy for first-time attendees, as well as the repeat offenders back for another round. As director Michael Collier advises, "Pace yourself!!"

Curious about the conference? Check out recordings here. (In 2008, I particularly enjoyed Carl Phillips' discussion "On Restlessness." See New England Review for published version.)

On learning of Ted Hughes' pending first book publication, Sylvia Plath writes "...his acceptances rejoice me more than mine." I feel the same way about my friends' successes. In fact, my favorite Bread Loaf memory is, without question, the afternoon Robin Ekiss accepted an invitation to become part of the VQR Poetry Series. Word came at the perfect time -- cocktail hour! Tough to believe it's been a year since we toasted Ms. Ekiss on the porch at Treman. Thankfully, The Mansion of Happiness will be out soon...

In honor of Robin and Bread Loaf, here's a recipe:

Marbled-Chocolate Banana Bread

Yield: 1 loaf, 16 slices (serving size: 1 slice)

Ingredients
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)
• 1/2 cup egg substitute
• 1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Cooking spray

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute). Add banana, egg substitute, and yogurt; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist.

Place chocolate chips in a medium microwave-safe bowl, and microwave at HIGH 1 minute or until almost melted, stirring until smooth. Cool slightly. Add 1 cup batter to chocolate, stirring until well combined. Spoon chocolate batter alternately with plain batter into an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Swirl batters together using a knife. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

My Candle Burns at Both Ends

A dear friend is in residency this month at The Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York. He's spending nights and working days in the Steepletop Barn, built in the 20s from a Sears & Roebuck kit. Years back, I introduced him to a recording of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Recuerdo," a poem we both memorized and would recite together, always imitating (and exaggerating) Millay's quirky performance style.

A quick search pulled up this utterly bizarre animated movie. I dedicate it to B -- may your work be haunted and haunting.

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Currently reading:

1. Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell
2. Ultima Thule (Davis McCombs)
3. Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East (Benjamin Orbach)
4. Ill Nature (Joy Williams)

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Thanks to R for turning me on to this article / book excerpt (follow link):

Things were different once. In Linnaeus’s day, it was a matter of aristocratic pride to have a wonderful and wonderfully curated collection of wild organisms, both dead and alive. Darwin (who gained fame first as the world’s foremost barnacle taxonomist) might have expected any dinner-party conversation to turn taxonomic, after an afternoon of beetle-hunting or wildflower study. Most of us claim and enjoy no such expertise.

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An update: K and I won't find out anything about our overseas trip (dates, etc.) until 2010 at the earliest. My initial August guesstimate was just that -- a guess. Hope to update in January.

Diving In

I've taken several days to wade through the Arabic alphabet. Never a strong swimmer, I'm worried I may drown in water that (for the time being) barely covers my ankles. And just so we're clear, by "wade," I mean gaze with equal parts wonder and confusion.

The letters themselves are beautiful. One book suggests that because Islam forbids representation of the human form, language plays a significant role in the Arab visual arts. I can see why. Although K insists otherwise, I feel like I need a calligraphy pen to approximate the fluidity of the letters' tails, loops, and ligatures.

As frustrating as it is from a student's standpoint, I love that Arabic letters transform according to their positions (initial / medial / final) within individual words. I can now make out alif, baa', taa', thaa', siin, and zaay in their various written forms. Still, with 28 letters -- each with multiple versions -- and script that reads from right to left, I have a very long way to go.

Fragmented

Hearing about our move, someone gifted us with a basket of Dead Sea Treasures, a Jordanian skin care line. The soap is divine. Digging the scrub. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with the "Fad-out Creme," a.k.a. "skin whitener."

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A friend of mine has a theory about a person's preference for the following:

1. Dogs / Cats
2. Chocolate / Vanilla (or was it Coffee / Tea)
3. Pie / Cake

I'm allergic to cats, have a puppy, loathe coffee and usually skip dessert. In other words, I'm not too sure I understand what this is supposed to reveal. (R, are you there?)

Here's what Patricia Hampl has to say about our furry friends in "Memory and Imagination":

"I think of the reader as a cat, endlessly fastidious, capable by turns of mordant indifference and riveted attention, luxurious, recumbent, ever poised. Whereas the writer is absolutely a dog, panting and moping, too eager for an affectionate scratch behind the ears, lunging frantically after any old stick thrown in the distance."

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Between the skin bleach and great-dog-vs.-cats debate, I'm having a bit of an identity crisis. Hope to work it out this weekend.

Happy Friday! Enjoy!

P.S.: Thanks for all the warm wishes. They mean the world!

ABCs

I scoured the Web for the most common textbooks and accessories used on college campuses for beginning courses in Arabic. The texts should arrive in a few days. We're also going to order a Rosetta Stone program. Just received:

1. Read & Speak Arabic for Beginners
2. Your First 100 Words in Arabic
3. The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It

I thumbed through the above exercise books. Result = intimidation, cha cha cha! Goodness. I wish we were in proximity to a campus with appropriate offerings, but it's just not in the cards. I am armed with a deck of pictures in translation, along with sentence-builders, and common adjectives / nouns. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it!

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*GHAZAL
Agha Shahid Ali


The only language of loss left in the world is Arabic.
These words were said to me in a language not Arabic.

Ancestors, you've left me a plot in the family graveyard --
Why must I look, in your eyes, for prayers in Arabic?

Majnoon, his clothes ripped, still weeps for Laila.
O, this is the madness of the desert, his crazy Arabic.

Who listens to Ishmael? Even now he cries out:
Abraham, throw away your knives, recite a psalm in Arabic.

From exile Mahmoud Darwish writes to the world:
You'll all pass between the fleeting words of Arabic.

The sky is stunned, it's become a ceiling of stone.
I tell you it must weep. So kneel, pray for rain in Arabic.

At an exhibition of Mughal miniatures, such delicate calligraphy:
Kashmiri paisleys ties into the golden hair of Arabic!

The Koran prophesied a fire of men and stones.
Well, it's all now come true, as it was said in the Arabic.

When Lorca died, they left the balconies open and saw:
On the sea his qasidas stitched seamless in Arabic.

Where there were homes in Deir Yassein, you will see dense forests --
That village was razed. There is no address in Arabic.

I too, O Amichai, saw everything just like you did --
In death. In Hebrew. And (Please let me stress) in Arabic.

Listen, listen: They ask me to tell them what Shahid means --
It means "The Beloved" in Persian, "witness" in Arabic.

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*Ali published several versions of this "Ghazal." The above comes from Ravishing Disunities.

Flashback: The Writers' Colony, 2007

July 25

There, in an old gas-station-turned-warehouse off the two-lane highway, another found museum: [x?] thousand square feet of music machines -- hand-made, wood-carved, some with pewter pipes, brass strings, stained glass that dances colorful shadows across the ivory keys dating back to the 18th Century. I don't have language for such instruments...

Not unlocked boxes sending plastic dancers spinning, but mechanical showcases! An organ whose twin went down with the Titanic, an H-frame sold off at auction during Whitman's D.C. stay. The mathematical precision! The gusto of such parts! Silence. The room sits in silence. The Mills String Quartet awaits restoration. A DeLuxe Violano-Virtuoso is ready to be shipped. To Davenport, Iowa; to Ramstein, Germany. Imagine the cacophony of the boxes' unloosed -- masses of notes hurled between doors and windows, rattling the concrete and glass.

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The above notebook excerpt (an unedited free-write) was written during a month-long stay at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow a few summers back. Goes to show, you never know what you'll find along the way -- hundreds of antique automatic musical instruments off the side of a road in remote Arkansas?

Looks like the Writers' Colony has undergone some changes. Can't say I'm a fan of the new web site, although the place itself is wonderful. I was the Moondancer Fellow in Outdoor and Nature Writing (eco-poetry, anyone?). However, it looks like the majority of former fellowships have been cut in favor of new offerings. Dairy Hollow is a former bed-and-breakfast with a main residence, as well as three additional rooms in a "farmhouse" a quarter mile down the road. The photo above shows my little nook in the woods. The time was well-spent and extremely productive. Simply stated, if you need time to write: apply, apply!

The Source: Marianne Moore

SILENCE

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn."
Inns are not residences.

...Why Not, Buy a Goddamn Big Car

Last night, K and I picked up the new (for me) jeep we will ship overseas next spring. Goodbye little white Jetta that served so well for more than eleven years. With just over 100,000 miles, you made several cross-country moves packed to the hilt. You survived Midwestern blizzards and Lake Effect snow, as well as rust-causing fog and sea spray. You parked outside my many homes: California's Irvine, Newport Beach, San Francisco, Pacifica; Washington D.C. and Arlington / Alexandria / Dumfries, Virginia; Baltimore; Hamilton, New York; Madison, Wisconsin. Your end? A few miles from our house in North Carolina: deer-struck.

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Weirdly enough, the Jetta is part of what brings me to "Inns." Although I've moved many times throughout the last decade (see partial list above), I've always found myself in some sort of community, mostly on university campuses. This year, I've settled in a very small town with a population of 5,000. The geographic isolation has proved challenging; however, I do have the luxuries of familiarity -- language, money, transportation, postal services, a grocery store (while limited) with products whose names I recognize. All this will change in less than a year...

I hear myself thinking and typing, listening to the puppy -- Jabberwocky Chewbacca (Jabber, or Monkey for short) -- play in the background. She's almost nine months. I swore I'd never get a dog. I also never would've guessed I'd post this note. K suggested I start this record as a means of connecting and keeping in touch with friends and family while we're on the road. I'm starting now in order to get into the routine. Tough to believe I've unpacked my virtual suitcase in Blogsville. We'll see. All my moving has taught me to travel light. If this starts to feel too strange, I'll simply gather up my things and head elsewhere.

On a more exciting note: Congrats to the ever-so-fabulous Danielle Deulen and Katy Didden for writing their way into Best New Poets 2009! Excellent editorial taste, Ms. Addonizio!

The World in a Grain of Sand

Correction: format "565" (see banner) should read -- 365.242199, i.e. approximate number of days left in residence at the North Carolinian homestead.

Spent last night with K's co-worker and wife who shared their experiences abroad and offered advice for our pending overseas move. To sum things up: good wine, sweet pork medallions, and plenty of talk about the desert. (Yes, that's "desert" not "dessert," which reminds me of a knockdown fight I experienced as a copy editor years ago...Hello! You can't substitute "dessert" for "desert" just because you think it looks "prettier"!) So, travel to Egypt, yes, and Syria; border crossings into Israel. A definite plus: plenty of outings to the Dead and Red Sea(s). Drum-roll, please ... we're moving to Jordan.

Already researching the country. Hope to start Arabic this month and continue to study at the university or by private tutor once we reach Amman, if it's affordable. We're clearing out clothes and clutter. I'll be on edge until the numbers come through concerning weight restrictions. I mean, let's get down to the most important question: how many boxes of books will I be allowed to take with me?