Noel, May

My pen pal of two years now, Noel, was nannying in California earlier in the year, so she came to visit me and San Francisco for a couple nights. She took pictures too. We drank much tea, visited the Botanical Gardens, and candied our own ginger. She tried Indian food for the first time and quoted books all over the place. (I can't wait to see her again later this fall.)

I always say that meeting a blogger friend in person is like gaining a second transparency to layer on top of a first one. They often seem different from how they write, but that doesn't mean that who they are on their blog is disingenuous — both representations of themselves are usually true, and truer when you synthesize them. When people I know first in person later start reading my blog, I certainly feel that they suddenly know me much better. (And I know you my fellow introverts know what it is to have sides of yourself that don't come out in the average verbal interaction.)

Anyway, meeting Noel was a perfect example of that: I already knew that she was very thoughtful and smart and literary and cultured, and then I found out that she is not ALL classics and theology, but has a lighthearted and playful side to her too.

Personal projects for my last half-semester of undergrad

1) Sustainable bedtimes. Like, between midnight and one. That would be great.

2) Do my part to strengthen the feminist presence/visibility on this campus  by a) calling attention to misogyny and male entitlement where I encounter them, and b) offering feminist analyses of the stuff that comes up in our studies and in our lives.* These are my last classes here, ever, so I can be as outspoken as I like without a thought for the consequences of gaining a reputation as "strident" or a "feminazi."

3) Make it to at least one céilí. Anyone in the Chicago area interested in coming with?

*issues other than the ordination of women and gender roles in marriage, because those have been abundantly treated

Two roses

You see?

Happiness and gratitudes

• spending my first night back in Wheaton happy and in the company of old friends.

• thrifted man-comfy. think sweatpants or wool sweaters, big enough to just sit inside unselfconsciously and slouch around the house in on a rainy day.

• chapbook and zine inspiration at City Lights, and fresh determination to make the eternally-someday poetry chapbook HAPPEN.

• a much-needed brain-cleansing ritual to lay to rest some regrets and anxieties.

• the prospect of hanging out with an old amiga from a dorm Bible study group. and on campus, there aren't too many friends left who haven't graduated, but running into the ones who are still here is so lovely after these months away.

• this little desk overlooking the backyard.

• a letter from Noel in my new mailbox.

• coping just fine with isolated days of depression.

• a queen-sized bed which is also oh-so warm.

• a visit with my big sister and her family before I left California. a cooking and baking day with her and some good music, and her baby (almost one year old!) crawling around our feet.

• a morning with wonderful Sui.

• CocoRosie

• the woman I'm renting this room from put some silverware and dishes in it and is letting me use her kitchen and spices. things I don't have to buy = hurrah!

• the rain motif in Li-Young Lee's Rose.

Watchful of the shifting days

I've never had a desk in front of a window before. I do now, for the next eight weeks, and it's where I'm sitting now, looking out over the backyard. Some trees are still full-green, but the lawn has a good cover of dry fallen leaves. It makes me remember the storm that was supposed to be Hurricane Irene — my Boston friend's lawn littered afterwards as if with a sudden green autumn.

I'm back at college for my very last six credits. Anthropology of global Christianity, a German independent study on expatriate memoirs, and public speaking. It's a little lonely right now, but I'm glad to be here. Challah and microwave tea and waiting for my classes to start (tomorrow).

There is less bitter in my bittersweet this autumn. Less dread. I will be able to savor the interval that straddles late fall/early winter, a tremendously evocative time, but with the knowledge that I am free to depart to coastal California before the deep, teethy part of winter descends. It's a bit cheating, to want the moods of October and November and December without the expectation of the full length and dark of winter, without the prospect of digging in and waiting until the cold lifts of its own (grudgingly, gray-and-muddily). But the Chicago winters have taken enough from me; we can call it even.

I know it's traditionally polite and superficial to talk about the weather, but I would do it for the pleasure and interest of it. For all that modern houses and cars and supermarkets insulate us from what seasons and weather have meant to most of humanity for most of our history,  it's still impossible not to notice or be affected by them (we are still human animals). They anchor me in the present — through my senses, for better or worse/lighter or darker — even while my thoughts swim in and out of reflection and memories. And keep reminding me that time is more spiral than linear — directional, but cyclical, to paraphrase a Madeleine L'Engle character. Every autumn I am swinging back around past every other autumn I've had, close enough to reach out and graze them with my fingers.