Cheese Luminous

Really Depressing

2012-01-23T22:10:00.000-08:00

It turns out that I am desperately bored in my job. Today I finally admitted it to myself and to the world. I am so bored! I am dying of boredom!

I work eight hours a day, five days a week. Out of those eight hours, two are spent in preschool classrooms giving teachers breaks, and two are spent entertaining children in after care until their parents come to pick them up. Two plus two equals four. That's four hours.

So then what do you do with the remaining four hours of your work day, Jessica? ............. Ding ding ding!!! That's a fucking good question. You win a million dollars.

One hour of that time is spent sitting in a dark room reading a book while children sleep on the floor. One hour is spent prepping snacks for all the classrooms, and that involves standing in a kitchen putting raisins into plastic bags. And the remaining two hours are........up for grabs? Or something. What usually ends up happening is that I check my email five hundred times a day and stare at facebook and write in my journal up in the Cafe and chat with all my teacher friends about their relationship problems. And then I leave early for my lunch break. And no one cares. At all. I have been doing this for a year and a half now, this exact thing.

I feel like such a waste. And I am so bored.

This sounds really depressing, but worse things have happened. In five months, I'll be starting an intense grad program, and I am more excited about that than I've been about any major life pursuit ever. So, that's good. I am glad that is happening.

Yeah, I can't really think of a positive way to spin the end of this post except to say that in spite of the forty hours of boredom per week, my life is really quite lovely and full of blessings.

But...come on, June! Get here! Get here!

Now I Never Know What Time It Is

2012-01-15T23:42:00.000-08:00

It is a very interesting phenomenon to have a four-day weekend and a cell phone that is dead. Very interesting. Evidently, "overnight shipping" actually means, "over a series of three nights shipping," and surprisingly, being cut off from everyone who is not my mom or my sister is kind of like finding a cake on my doorstep.

I have spent the last three days enjoying my own company, reading books, studying for the ORELA test at coffee shops, writing my last grad school application essay for a school that I don't really want to go to, cleaning the house, sewing things, running fast and far, reading the various Portland newspapers in public places, and eating juicy oranges. I feel pulled in one direction and one direction only: my direction.

If no one can talk to me, then I don't have to do anything other than all the deliciously boring things that I normally feel should be given up in favor of spending quality time with people. But this weekend I don't have to feel anti-social for sequestering myself in my room on Saturday night, hanging my wool socks up to dry, and playing Bejeweled while listening to "Party in the U.S.A." on repeat. It's my phone's fault, not mine!

This weekend, I have also been able to practice what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "building a home for myself." He writes about it in a little book I just read called Fidelity; How to Create Loving Relationships That Last. Basically, what he says is that regardless of their good intentions, people do not truly have the capacity to love and care for others until they have first learned how to love and have compassion on themselves.

It's not a terribly earth-shattering idea in and of itself, but the image of building a home and coming home to yourself really struck a chord with me. He writes, "If you can't accept your body and your mind, you cannot be a home for yourself. Many young people don't accept who they are, and yet they want to be a home for someone else. But how can they be if they're not yet a home for themselves?"

I don't want to write a full-fledged reflection on the book right now. I just want to think about my home. It might look something like this:

Or like this:

What does YOUR home look like?

What a wonderful thing, to feel so welcome and happy within yourself that spending four days in relative solitude might feel like trudging through the leaves to the front door of the little orange house above, draping a blanket across your legs, and doing the crossword by the woodstove. Ahhhhh.

I'm not saying I have achieved nirvana or anything, but I feel truly moved and inspired by the Buddhist perspective on happiness right now. More to come later...

A Church for Every Good Thing

2012-01-07T17:34:00.000-08:00

What follows are some things that I feel great about. And what also follows are some pictures of churches. It is almost creepy how many little old churches are lurking around the corners of this neighborhood that I live in now. The ones below lie in between my house and my most recent coffee shop destination on N Mississippi Avenue. Decide for yourself. Creepy or not creepy?

Church #1: For Sale

Creepy. I took the PRAXIS Basic Skills Test today so that I can be a real teacher who knows things. It took me three and a half hours. I passed. It was the easiest test I have ever taken.

I have a new indexing project lined up for the month of February. It's a book about coffee roasting!

I went to the Hollywood Library today to pick up some books by Thich Nhat Hanh that I put on hold. This excites me for two reasons: because I have a new neighborhood library, and because Thich Nhat Hanh is wonderful to read. He wrote something like eighty books. He's a little old man who smiles a lot. He has beautiful things to say.

Creepy. I got excused from serving on a special jury panel for twenty days. Ideally, I would love to do this, but not when my job will cease to pay me. Thank you, Multnomah County Courthouse, for excusing me.

I filled out my FAFSA so that I can get some loans. Some huge loans. Nevertheless, it made me feel happy.

On Monday, I am donating my blood for the first time.

Yeah, creepy. We have a large claw foot bathtub that is so blissfully perfect that I can lie totally submerged in it with water up to my knees and watch two straight episodes of Parks and Recreation without wanting to get out. I have done this twice now.

This is not a church. It's a pagoda thing, but I liked it and wanted to take a picture. I've been running a lot lately. I am happy about that.

This is a hospital. It's definitely not creepy. But I am happy about several final things including the Hunger Games books, my hair, the fact that I feel wonderfully at home in my new bedroom, and the fact that I am purchasing a new set of retainers so my teeth don't get all crappy.

Crappy. Creepy. You decide.

A New Theme

2012-01-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

Last January, I gave myself one resolution for 2011. Don't be a wreck. That was it. That was my theme for the year. I was emerging from a rather lengthy period of confusion, coasting, and angst that had come along with two and a half years of post-college new experiences and my first long-term relationship. Come January, I was looking into the future and realizing that all I wanted was to reach a point of emotional and physical health and balance. And I wanted to be myself and to be happy without freaking out all the time.

I am pleased to announce that I have officially accomplished my one goal for 2011. I have emerged from 2011 not a wreck! Hurray!!!

And yet, in order to become not a wreck, most things in my life became moderately to severely wrecked in 2011. That's the most interesting thing about this year. A lot happened, happy things, overwhelming things, and very shitty things, but when all those multi-colored thing-shaped puzzle pieces squeeze together, they spell VICTORY FOR JESSICA!

First the good:
-I became a runner and lost 25 pounds.
-I experimented with online dating and learned how to stare at a stranger and gauge whether he is worth two and a half hours of small talk or not.
-I realized that I want to become a high school teacher, and I got that ball rolling.
-I received a rather unexpected job promotion and made a lot of money over the summer.
-I found some special friendships.
-I got a new boyfriend for awhile and had the happiest month of my life.
-I moved to a beautiful old house in NE Portland.
-I wore good clothes.
-I got honest with myself and wiped out my biggest insecurity/source of ongoing angst.

But there was also this:
-I was very, very lonely for the first half of the year.
-I was denied admittance to eight graduate level creative writing programs.
-I realized that neither creative writing nor romantic relationships were ever meant to be the purpose of my life, and I came to the unpleasant realization that my life had no direction and that I had no idea what my purpose was.
-I felt like a failure.
-I got really depressed.
-I realized that a lot of my life's problems have actually been caused by me and not by other people or sucky circumstances, by my insecurities and boundary problems and extreme emotions and my unhealthy reliance on others.
-I went to see a therapist.
-I got really anxious.
-I went on medication to help out the chemicals in my brain.

Yes. Those things happened. And yet, here I am emerging from 2011 as the Least Wreck-ish Version of Jessica That Has Ever Existed. And I believe that the moral of the story is: I am my own problem. I have been my own problem for a long time, and perhaps I needed to sink down into the depths of that realization in order to actually emerge out of it not a wreck. And that is why 2011 was the best year of my life.

I would like to take a moment to celebrate 2011 and bid it farewell.

Moment.

Farewell, 2011! I am very happy to watch you shift into 2012. I am excited to see what this new year will bring me.

I don't really write new year's "resolutions" in list form. I pretty much have ongoing resolutions festering in my brain at all times, and I don't need to put any of those on a throne every January. But if last year's theme was Don't Be a Wreck, this year's theme is going to be: Joy and Freedom.

I'll probably write another post later exploring what Joy and Freedom is actually supposed to mean, but it's nothing too deep. I'd just like to give myself the freedom to experience joy, to let happiness seep into the present moment. I am learning about these things. It's good.

Happy New Year, world. Happy New Year, friends. Happy New Year, self. Happy New Year, coffee shop that I am sitting at on my last day of winter break. Happy happy.

The Emergency Room

2011-12-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

At midnight last night, I drove my roommate to the emergency room because she was afraid that her new tattoo was infected. I had never been to an emergency room before. Never. I am the least sick and/or injured person I know.

Legacy Emmanuel Hospital is three blocks from our house. We could have walked there, but our neighborhood is not a place you want to be having an emergency late at night in the rain with the homeless people. So I drove her, and we walked up to the little round hole in the plexiglass window where the nice lady with the computer was sitting, and Sarah said, "I think my tattoo is infected. There's a little hole with pus coming out of it."

"Okay!" said the nice lady enthusiastically. "Can I get your name and date of birth, and we'll get your care started."

Sarah told her.

"Who brought you here tonight?" said the nice lady.

"My roommate," said Sarah. I waved, and the lady typed something into the computer.

Then I sat down in a blue chair and waited for an hour while Sarah got her tattoo inspected by first the triage nurse and then a doctor. The room was empty except for me, the lady behind the plexiglass window, and a young man listening to rap music on his headphones.

Ten minutes passed. It was well past midnight. Then a man and woman stumbled in. She was wearing a bathrobe and slippers, and she looked very unwell. From my chair fifteen feet away, I could hear the whole conversation between the man, woman, and nice lady behind the window.

"What seems to be the problem?" said the lady.

"She has a horrible migraine," said the man while the woman stumbled to the bathroom. "And nausea and vomiting and diarrhea."

The lady asked them more questions and directed them to take a seat until they could be seen by a nurse. Then two more people stumbled up to the window, a thin woman wearing a huge coat supported by an older, larger woman.

"You tell them why you're here," said the older woman.

"I...uh....well, I've already been in a few times this week,"

"She tried to commit suicide," interrupted the older lady.

"I slit my wrists last night," said the thin woman. "And burned myself. I was admitted to the burn unit yesterday. I am having suicidal thoughts."

"This is her fourth hospital visit this week," said the older lady.

They said some more things. A nurse invited them into an exam room. Then a man limped in holding a bloody cloth up to his ear. He had flown off his bike on the streetcar tracks.

And then a young couple came in carrying a toddler. "She's been crying," said her mom. "She wouldn't stop crying, and her temperature is really low."

"Has she been admitted to this hospital before?" said the lady behind the window.

"Yeah, she's here all the time. Pediatric Oncology."

And then Sarah came back out. Her tattoo was fine. It wasn't even infected. And then we left.

That hour that I spent sitting in a chair in the emergency room at Legacy Emmanuel Hospital was an hour well spent. It affected me, and I'm going to attempt to put it into words.

You see, we're all messed up. All of us. Me, Sarah, the little girl with cancer, the man supporting the woman who was vomiting. Sometimes it takes an hour in the emergency room to remember that I am not the only one with problems, the only one with heaviness. And we are all alone in our bodies, separated from one another by skin and clothes and hair and shoes, and none of us can be anyone else or carry anyone else's life or anyone else's hurt.

Our lives are our own, our hurt is our own, our bodies are our own, and we alone get to decide how to respond to the things that happen around us. The emergency room just made me feel joyful, I guess. Liberated? Because maybe tomorrow I will be the one flying across the streetcar tracks; I don't know, but I never want to be so caught up in my own mental cycling and backpedaling and angsting that I forget that there are a whole lot of people, normal people, who hurt more than I do, who struggle more than I do. I am not alone.

We're all in these delicate bodies, and we all struggle with finding purpose and meaning, and I'm not the only one. In fact, maybe I'm the only one who hasn't struggled with some things, who hasn't attempted suicide or gotten stitches or carried a loved one through a hospital door.

I don't know how to end this. I am just thankful for my life.

Feel Free to Make Fun of Me

2011-12-27T19:36:00.000-08:00

Having a Mac with Photobooth is going to be a very dangerous thing for me. This is how bad it's already gotten:

...yeah.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T20:04:00.000-08:00

My White Girl Problems

2011-12-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know what to write about. I am so tired of writing about myself; me me me me me me me, making lists and introspectively pondering and taking pictures of the things that I do.

The world is huge, and right now I feel small. Not sad small, not insignificant small or beaten-down small, just proportionately small in comparison to pretty much everything.

This has been a good year for me and for a lot of the people I know. A significant year. I changed a lot. And here I am sitting at a bakery in the Pearl District on Christmas Eve-Eve, and I have no idea what to write about. There are people walking by on the street, and there are cars driving across the streetcar tracks, and there are ugly little dogs wearing sweaters scurrying down the sidewalk.

Blah blah blah blah blah. Oh, blog. You invite me to celebrate my white girl problems and my powers of over-thinking and my silly narcissism. Today I just feel over it.

I am going to start donating blood. I am really excited about this. And I'm going to run a 10K this year, and I'm going to take a trip that involves getting on a plane in the spring. Hurray!!! Isn't that awesome?

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope we all get a pony. And let's celebrate the fact that some of us have basically no problems at all. Merry Christmas!

What I Do To Feel Strong

2011-12-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

1. Tidy up my room. Pick up the clutter and put it in a drawer or in the closet. Sweep the floor. Tuck in my sheets. Straighten the curtains.

2. Wear clothes that make me feel sexy. They have to match the season. They must be comfortable. Tight-fitting pants will usually be part of the ensemble.

3. Be honest with myself. It is okay to feel whatever it is that I feel. Peace emerges from honesty.

4. Look at the items currently in my purse: My journal, three pens, the second Hunger Games book, a book called It's Kind of a Funny Story, my wallet, a wad of tissues, fruity chapstick, two packs of gum, a toothbrush, my running headphones, my extra pair of underwear, deodorant, bobby pins, and my car keys. I don't know why.

5. Talk to people. My new housemates, the people I work with, the people stored in my phone. Make contact. Say something.

6. Walk with purpose. I am going somewhere.

7. Plan things that are fun. Like seeing the OMSI Bodyworlds exhibit. Like buying a new dance package. Like having a craft day with somebody else who loves making things. Like a trip to someplace as of yet undecided. Write these plans on the calendar.

8. Hang out with my mom. She loves me.

9. Write a blog post even though I've been slacking off and/or deleting most things I try to post. Reconnect with it.

10. Remember that the best thing will happen.

I Want to Be a Teacher

2011-11-29T15:46:00.001-08:00

Here it comes, my second round of grad school applications. Tonight, in approximately six hours, I am going to press a "Submit Application" button on the computer screen and be one major step closer to becoming a Lewis and Clark graduate student in seven months.

This round feels different than the first one. It feels more immanent. My essays feel as if there is something real about them, a genuine authenticity that was strangely lacking when I applied to be a graduate-level fiction writer.

Back to work. Back to my little Jewish children. And then (hopefully), back to school in June.

Pleasantries

2011-11-11T23:21:00.001-08:00

1. A washer and dryer across the hall that work very effectively.

2. New hat. See below.

3. Pictures drawn with marker and fish stickers.

4. Children with cones on their faces.

5. Large bowls of Corn Chex.

6. New coffee shops to sit at.

Self Portrait with Things in No Particular Order

2011-11-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

This is what I looked like last night at 10:30pm, lounging on my big green bed in a room in a house in Northeast Portland, the house where I live now.

The face I am making or not making in this picture is the sum of the following things in no particular order:

It is November 4th, 2011, and I am turning twenty-six in two days, and maybe moving across town into a house full of total strangers isn’t really that big of a deal, but to me at this moment in my life, it is. It means something.

I have so many books that they no longer fit onto my two allotted bookcases, but I haven’t actually read a book in over a month and a half. This doesn’t concern me. It doesn’t.

Last night I was able to run for three miles without my knee giving me any trouble at all. I haven’t been able to do that since July. It felt like freedom.

So many things are new, like the brewpub in Hillsdale called Sasquatch. Me and Megan went there last night and sat across the table from each other and ate copious amounts of cheese and drank our one beer apiece and talked at each other simultaneously about things that are making us happy. I sat there and stared at her, at this beautiful person who is my sister and I felt suddenly like I was home, home in this new brewpub called Sasquatch that I had never previously been to across from this twenty-three year-old person with long reddish hair who wears tight pants and loose-fitting green sweatshirts that say Ireland on them. And I thought, “Who even are we?” And I didn’t exactly have the answer to that question, but we were home together, and I can’t imagine anything better than that.

In the year I was twenty-five, I think I accomplished exactly the things I hoped to accomplish.

This morning, I walked into work and went into my creepy little snack-lady corner where I keep all my stuff, and my coworkers had hung streamers and left me some confetti and a birthday card that they all signed for me. It made me so happy I almost teared up.

Fall is here in full force. It is cold, and when I stand outside on the playground holding my cup of coffee in one hand and a small child in the other, I can see my breath escaping in wispy clouds up and away towards the trees. I bought three new coats this year because I shrank from a size 8 or 10 to a size 4 or 6, and I need to be warm and also stylish. One of my coats is light and leathery. One is huge and puffy. And one makes me look like an old-fashioned Russian princess.

I am not the same size I used to be. I'm not really the same age either. I don't live in the same place anymore. My Friday nights are different. I have been spending a lot of time on a sailboat. The people I know are moving and changing and growing into new shapes. My hair is getting longer.

And that up there is what I look like in early November with no makeup on after a run and a shower and a beer with my sister. And these other pictures are of the things that stare at me while I sleep.

I'm going to go to the library sometime this week to get some books, some deep ones about what smart people think about the meaning of life and the universe.

And I'm also going to enjoy these red soggy leaves, this creaky old house, these new relationships, this family of mine, all of that for all they're worth. In no particular order.

When Things Are Different

2011-10-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

If change had a smell, it would smell like one of those carved hinged boxes at a gift shop, the kind where you open the lid and place your nose inside and put down the $25 just to bring home the scent of sandalwood. It smells like old magic, like history, like something overwhelmingly there.

Change smells like polished wood. It is noticeable. It is new and old at the same time. It draws you in and makes you think. It takes you back to another place, to lots of other places, and then reminds you that you are here, now, in this place that you are.

I am ready to put my nose inside this sandalwood box and inhale. I want to. But on nights like tonight when I come up for air, the surrounding room is dark and the lamps are turned down low and there is no heat, and I sit quietly in my chair and acknowledge that not everything is easy and that some things are sad and that I am very cold and potentially unprepared for what is to come.

But that box, that box.

What I Think About Dancing and Other Things

2011-10-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

1. Watching a large group of people move collectively to music is invigorating and happy!

2. Being one of those people who moves to music next to other people who are moving to music in the SAME WAY as me makes me feel totally present in the moment, like time has frozen for the thirty seconds in which we are all step-ball-changing and booty shaking and shimmying in the same manner. Dancing makes me zone in to my body in a special way, and I love it.

3. Taking dance classes is doing dangerously good things for my ego.

4. I am much better at being burlesquey than being jazzy.

5. I spent six hours deep cleaning my house today.

6. So many things are changing in my life right now. Like, so many things. It's kind of a lot to think about.

7. If anyone would like a free TV, I have one.

8. Thor is moving to Northeast Portland with me next weekend.

9. This post isn't really about dancing. No. Dancing is just one small thing I did today, one small thing that filled up two glorious hours on this Thursday where I didn't have to work because the Jews are celebrating a holiday that I don't know how to spell.

10. This post is actually about something much bigger than dancing, something that I don't know how to write about today.

11. There are times when the pace of my life feels irritatingly slow, when I have journal entries chronicling literally everything I have thought about every day because there is so much space for reflection and so few surprises between breakfast and dinner. And then there are times when I feel like I am in a pillow/heavy book/wooden sword fight with my brother, when miscellaneous objects are flying into my head from the right and left and fingers are poking into my face and there are lots of strange noises, and I don't know if I am laughing or shrieking or whether I am out to kill or just maim. In those moments, there are too many things flying at me for me to stop and ponder whether Harry Potter 7 would be a better weapon than a cardboard box; I just have to let my strange self do that rapid ear punching thing, and my heart will stop pounding later.

12. I am in the latter of those two pace scenarios.

13. I am happy.

Hello October.

2011-10-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Oh, hi! How are you doing?

I'm doing well, thanks. When did you get here?

Last week. Didn't you notice? And now I've made the world all rainy and cold.

I noticed, but I haven't had very much time to sit and think about you, dear October, because you've been blowing a lot of things in my direction all at the same time, and I've been forgetting to eat.

Eat, Jessica, eat!

Yes, thank you, I'm working on that. I have been forcing myself to eat greasy cheeseburgers and french fries as much as possible this week because none of my pants fit me anymore, and I am too poor to buy more pants.

Have you been running?

Hardly, because the back of my left knee/upper calf has started to hurt me a lot when I run for more than 25 minutes, and I am trying to listen to my body. I have been taking long walks through my neighborhood and dancing and swimming sometimes instead. And last night I took a long, long bath in the dark. It was nice.

Have you found a place to live yet?

No, not yet. But I have some possibilities floating in the air, and I feel remarkably calm and peaceful about that situation. Something is going to work out at the right time.

Have you applied to grad school yet?

No. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! The stress.

You better get on that.

I know! I am trying.

Well, Jessica, all I will say is good luck. You've got this.

Thanks October. I like you.

Buoys

2011-09-25T22:39:00.001-07:00

I am picturing a body of water, broad as the earth and choppy in places, dotted with little red and white buoys bobbing along the surface of the water. If you zoom out, there are thousands of buoys, millions of buoys secured to nothing, set free in the open water. There might even be billions of buoys, and they are clumsily moving about, creeping towards each other and then whacking heads like a herd of jostled bobble-head dolls.

The water churns and rears up and then lays quiet. And the buoys continue to bob and bob and bob, changing direction with the currents, grouping together for a while and then separating out across the endless expanse of water, water, water.

It’s stressful, this thing I’m picturing. The thought of all those frantic little buoys makes me a little nauseous. And yet, here we are.

I am thinking of the people around me, the lady at the Arco station with the feathered hair who emphatically tells me not to swipe my card until exactly the right moment, the twenty-somethings at the Craigslist house I interviewed at yesterday with their greased hair and hipster shirts, the people of my writers’ group who choose the right words like apples at the grocery store. My preschoolers and their indestructible little bodies, their perfect skin and daily goodness. My women, those ones who choose to stick it out with me, who believe that we are worth it.

We are all just bobbing and bobbing along, moving towards each other and away, knocking into each other and being thrown off balance, regaining that balance, moving in different directions.

How completely fantastic and heartbreaking, these people, these buoys, the ones we can and cannot always have next to us, the ones whose heads crash against ours, who bob alongside us around the cusp of the earth.

I want so many things with so many people and yet can’t always find it, can’t always grasp the soul of every person in the midst of this chaotic movement of time and events. But we’re all still bobbing along, and there are so many people out here! So many glorious people who leap out from behind the curtains holding a beautiful yellow cake with names in the frosting, people wearing crowns and giving great hugs, people who are so ridiculously different, who don’t realize which jokes they should and shouldn’t make, people who chew their french fries loudly in a silent room.

I am picturing all the people I know, all the ones I haven’t met yet and the ones who are slowly bobbing away to where the water is warmer or colder. I am thinking of them all and feeling still, like I want to be still for a moment while everyone else continues to make themselves dizzy. And then I’ll start up bobbing again on my own zig-zaggy path here and there around the buoys, banging and clanging and getting soaked.

I think sometimes it feels nice to just sit for a second and zoom out, to look at the widescreen version of all this. There’s no reason to cry. Just keep bobbing along.

A Little Chill, a Little Change

2011-09-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

This is what is happening.

1. We are moving out of our house at the end of next month. We are all three on to new endeavors in new places! The change fairy is fluttering her wings.

2. I am applying to the Lewis and Clark graduate school of Education in the next two months. Hello, Master of Arts in Teaching! I am excited about this.

3. I am going to sit in and observe some high school English classrooms later this month because I want to be the best high school English teacher there ever was, and I've got to start somewhere.

4. Yesterday at work, I got a little boy's poop smeared on my hand. It was a first. Call me a baby, but it was nasty. Next time I shall wear gloves.

5. Today it is chilly. All of our windows are closed. I am wearing the color orange and a scarf. In honor of this change of the seasons, I have been buying myself an unusually large amount of clothes. But it's okay. I have decided that I deserve it.

That is what is happening. It feels like big things. Good things.

Ruby Galanti

2011-09-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

I bought a new accordion. It was time. I have been craving music in my life, lusting after it even, and frankly, sitting at the piano plunking out songs to myself just hasn't been cutting it lately. I want to be doing more, getting better, playing with people, messing around, having fun and laughing.

Laughing! Oh man, I miss playing music with people and laughing and smiling and feeling all caught up in the sound and the drums and the mesh of everything. I miss that so much.

And so, in an effort to conquer a new instrument, to actually become proficient at an instrument other than the piano which everyone and their mom plays, I bought a red accordion off craigslist that isn't too bulky and fits my body and doesn't make my arms feel like they are holding a small farm animal.

Here she is.

I don't name every musical instrument I've ever owned, but this little lady felt like she needed to be named Ruby Galanti. She's from Italy, evidently.

Some of her notes are a little out of tune, but overall she works quite smashingly, and she makes me smile. Goal: to get really good at playing this thing. It would be nice to be able to look at something other than my right hand while playing it.

This is technically the fourth accordion I've owned. The first one cost $30 at Goodwill, but it broke when I took it to camp and decided to try playing it on horseback. My second one was a little tiny practice accordion that works so well! And my third was an enormous black Hohner that used to be Zack's in Connecticut. Some of the keys stick on that one, and it's HUGE. It's almost painful to play.

And so, welcome, Ruby. I sense great things in your future.

Photographs

2011-09-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of investing in a new camera, a good one that takes photos of a size bigger than 5.1 mega pixels. I love to photograph things, mostly small, normal things, images of life around my house. The cat. Me on my good days. Things that are growing in the yard. People I love. Silly little things like my jeggings and my xylophone and my yellow cartoon character sunglasses.

Anything can be interesting if you just look at it closely enough! And so, here are some things from today.

Tomatoes grown in the backyard sitting on the windowsill.

Karli absorbing the sunshine on our exquisitely well-groomed lawn.

Penney hiding from the heat in the living room.

Me and Thor wasting away the labor day weekend hours.

Laundry! Why use a dryer when it is ninety degrees outside?

Our little home. So happy.

This morning, I was eating breakfast on Belmont and a house burst into flames across the street. I was eating hash browns and watching smoke and flames pour out of the roof of a house at the same time. Within minutes, ten firetrucks showed up, put out the flames, and everything was fine. It was the strangest thing.

I am glad our house was not the one to catch fire. I am glad of all the silly little things around me that are lovely enough to be photographed. I am glad of this heat that makes every thought slow down and hang there up in the air.

I am glad of change and of transitions and of soul-searching that might never completely come to rest. I don't have photographs of the above three things, but I've got photographs of the rest of it because sometimes it's nice to be able to look back on old things and remember those moments that were so wonderful even when at the time, you didn't quite realize how wonderful they actually were because you were antsy and a little bit down.

That's why I like photographs. And maybe it is a bit silly to take photos of every half-grown vegetable that emerges from the ground, but it makes me happy. It really does. Just be glad that I didn't include a photo of all my lacy underwear and granny panties hanging up to dry.

On Weddings

2011-08-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

I love attending weddings. I love the colors and the dresses, the acknowledgment of community, the celebration of a significant decision, the joining together of two minds, two bodies, two beings in a way that is beautifully mysterious and complicated. I love being invited to participate in a celebration of something so deeply personal and spiritual.

Even when some of the true meaning of marriage gets glossed over by stress, by tradition and expectations, by gender roles and social constructs, I still love weddings. I love what they say about people and what they don’t say. I love seeing people happy. I love sitting there and thinking about my own life and about other people’s lives and looking around at families and pondering how different everyone is from everyone else and how my own life and my own wedding will inevitably be different from everything I have seen thus far and yet somehow still the same, and how all the people who eventually will attend my hypothetical wedding will sit there and probably think about those same kinds of things.

Josh and Ali’s wedding was beautiful. It was eighty-five degrees outside, and there was shade and green hills and pastures of horses and lots of hard dirt with holes that snag your high heels. There were some people I knew and lots of people I did not know, and there was my brother standing up there claiming a woman as his wife, telling her he can’t wait to get old and crotchety with her.

There was a whole lot of food and a whole lot of beverages and a whole lot of people who might have had too much to drink. And there was dancing.

I danced! I did. I danced! For maybe the first time in my life, I got up there and danced until my feet were too sweaty to stay inside my shoes. And I had such FUN! I swung my arms and swooshed my hair and stomped my feet down on the dusty barn floor with my brother’s quirky friends and did the floppy hand dance and the floppy feet dance and the floppy arms dance while the photographer took lots and lots of pictures of me because I looked so ridiculous and was having such a great time.

And then we all went home. After a long day of wedding, it was done. And now life is just life, and they are officially married to each other, and they are on their way to Disneyland, and everyone is back to wearing normal clothes without boning and zippers and sashes, and I am sitting at my usual haunt, typing away and indexing a book about heirloom veggies and trying to place myself down somewhere in time for this new season to begin.

September is nearly here, and the school year begins again next week, and no matter how old I get, I will probably still love to eat bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches in the morning while I drink my coffee and think about how everyone and everything is the same and not the same, how we are all moving forward and sideways at the same time, how everyone’s path looks different from everyone else’s, but not really.

What I am trying to say is that weddings are lovely, but they don’t change anything except on paper and in photographs and in people’s minds. The real change already happened. With Josh and Ali, it happened over two years ago, three weeks after they started dating. Things happen to people, and then life goes on maybe in a different direction than it did before, but it still goes on. A wedding doesn’t stop life or alter the course of a life, it just celebrates something that has already been happening for a while, something that is deeply happy and exciting, something that changes a person’s life over the course of months and years and lifetimes.

My life has been changing too, and I feel very aware of that this morning. And I feel happy for my brother and for my family; happy for myself too, even when events are uncertain, even when my circumstances seem to lack a sense of permanence. That’s okay. Things change. Things happen.

And even without weddings, life is still worth celebrating. People are worth celebrating whether or not they have found their true love, whether or not they have lost fifty pounds or finished a marathon or moved away to a foreign country or survived a horrible car accident.

Sometimes it is just good to be happy and to celebrate, no matter the reason. If it just happens to be a wedding, great! Let’s celebrate this gorgeous day and these people we love so dearly and the hope we see all around us in the world. Because tomorrow, life will just be life again, and nothing will be different. But we’re all growing and changing and becoming stronger and more beautiful. All of us.

That’s what I think about weddings. That’s how I feel about them today. Thank you, Josh and Ali, for letting me participate in yours!

Harvest, Harvest, Harvest!

2011-08-28T18:43:00.001-07:00

Look what I just brought in from the backyard.

OMG. I am ridiculously excited about this!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

A Porter Wedding

2011-08-28T16:08:00.001-07:00

My brother got married last night. I don't have any wedding pictures yet, but they are going to be beautiful. I will post them later.

What I would like to say right now is that I couldn't be happier for them, for Josh and Ali. They care for each other in a way that makes me jealous, in a way that makes me wish everyone in the world could respect their significant other to the degree that Josh and Ali do. They are so happy. They make me feel hopeful.

Here they are:

Here they are again:

And one more:

There is now one more person in the world with the last name of Porter, and that is a very strange and wonderful thing.

Welcome to the family, Ali! I love you.

A Long Overdue Reflection on the Morning

2011-08-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on our porch in a blue camping chair, feet stretched out with my computer on my lap, typing about my morning and how perfect it is, how full of quiet noises. The moon is floating in the flawless summer sky like a pale little torn cotton ball, and there is a white butterfly moving back and forth from house to house, three birds talking to each other on the rock wall by our driveway, bees flitting about in the dandelions. I can hear dogs barking and the mellow swoosh of cars and an occasional airplane.

It is enough to just sit here in this chair on this porch on our little neighborhood hill in Southeast Portland on our sun-blessed side of the world where people drive around in cars and do strange things like wear bikinis in public and wax their backs and say things like, “These shoes only cost $85.” Today, it is enough to just breathe in the breeze and watch the butterflies and the other small things that live and move all around me. It is enough to be alive and to be a part of this little slice of community, this piece of the world.

I am happy to have made it through 9/10ths of this ragged and jagged summer, happy to be emerging from a period of unexpected intensity that did NOT deplete me, did not shake me to the core. I am happy.

I am also happy that I do not have lice like the six children whose heads I dug through with a popsicle stick last week. I am happy to be taking dance classes and realizing more and more what my body can do if I just let go a little and keep pushing myself. I am happy when I think about being a teacher.

Sometimes it pays to just sit. To sit and take stock of where I am, the noises and the smells and sounds, and to let all the goodness and happiness and feelings of relief and pride wash over me on a Saturday morning. Because I will never know the exact moment when things are going to speed up again, when I will be too busy, too swept along in the chafing tide of circumstances to sit and be and feel my days, freeze them in time and smell them like the shirt of somebody I love.

In ten minutes, I am going to get up and put on some fancier clothes and get in the car to drive away and buy a baby shower gift. But for right now, I am going to finish smelling my morning.

The Faces of Flowers

2011-08-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

I love the flowers that grow in my garden. I love them because they remind me of life and of growth and beauty. Some of them need me to take care of them, others don't, like these black-eyed Susans.

They grow pretty well even while I ignore them. But these zinnias are rather water-needy creatures:

And then there are my sunflowers. Oh, how I love them!

These poppies are self-seeding. I pull them out and they spring back up out of nothingness.

Red zinnias! One thing that I especially love about flowers is the fact that they are enormous, colorful sex organs. What a fantastic thing to be!

Celosia in a pot on the porch.

There they are, my flowers. Signs of life and regeneration in the midst of this ever-depressing, bland summer.

Thank you, little flowers, for existing!

Things That Come to Mind

2011-08-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

My sister. And plantains.

And the fact that we go out to breakfast every single Sunday.

Root beer that comes in bottles.

Running.

I don't have a picture for that right now, but I am so, so thankful for it.

New friends.

Don't have a picture for them either. But they are very attractive people and I wish I could show you.

Hope.

Yard Day

2011-07-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

It feels like summer today. I am home, and all our windows are open, and my parents just left from helping me excavate my vegetables out from underneath the jungle of weeds that had overtaken our backyard. It was ugly back there. And dangerous.

Here they are, my parents:

Here is our happy porch looking all Better Homes and Gardenesque.

Here they are digging and sitting:

Here are some of the beautiful things we found growing in the garden, miraculously healthy even after being abandoned for two straight months, even after being attacked by a furious army of clematis.

Red leaf lettuce.

Romaine lettuce.

Bush beans.

Little baby lemon cucumbers.

Ah, garden. Ah, house. Ah, warm Saturday.

I don't have much else to say other than I love you.

Boss Lady

2011-07-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

This summer has not turned out to be what I expected. I was living my life, haunting my happy places, writing and running and thinking a lot about big pictures and what “it” all means and where I am going,

and then the seasons changed. Voila! A new season, BAM!

Not a real season with weather and atmospheric pressure. Just one of those “things will change” kind of seasons.

Two weeks ago, I had no idea that this was going to happen, but I am now the Acting Camp Director of a day camp. Like, the director. The actual camp director. I have hundreds of children whose safety and well-being ultimately rests on my shoulders, thirty-five staff members underneath me, and lots and lots of programming to take care of.

I genuinely did not see this one coming.

Things are different around here now. I am sleeping less. I am working a whole lot more. I have dark circles under my eyes, but this is a wonderful learning experience for me. This is a hugely affirming and entirely new change in my life. And thankfully, it will only last until the end of August. I think.

I answer now to “Boss Lady” and “Her Highness the Camp Director.” It’s weird.

It’s a new season with a whole different pace, a whole different definition of normal, and with an underlying message that life is so much bigger than me, so much broader than I can plan for and richer than I sometimes expect.

My routine is totally shaken up. Hence the lack of blogging. We’ll see how this goes.

On Mapping, Sailing, Note-Taking, and Fence-Building

2011-07-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

It would be nice if there was a giant map hanging on the ceiling over my bed, a blue and green and gold chart with arrows and numbers and longitudinal lines and names of people and places and events scrawled like cities and mountain ranges across my life. I would wake up, look at the ceiling, find the flashing, “You are here,” arrow, and begin my day.

I understand that it doesn’t work that way, it being life in general, our continuous cycle of days and nights, the rhythmic waking and sleeping and walking we all do, the effort we put into moving forward. It is not necessarily two-dimensional, not map-able, uncharted territory.

But at the same time, I find it rather hard to recognize the difference between north and south when I haven’t quite got my bearings, when I feel rocked and a little confused, when the summer hits me, BAM, like a bicycle rider running a red light. And when I flip through the pages of my calendar, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May...and have no idea what to feel.

No answer, no map, just blankness.

There are many uncertainties, and there is no map above my bed, no arrow, no magical all-knowing hand giving me a pat on the back. And I have no idea if I am making progress or if I am back-sliding, if I am moving forward or sideways or around in a circle. Any or all of those.

But I am still me, and I am still here, and I think I am learning how to find my bearings in a new kind of way. Not so much by pointing myself in a grand direction and sailing riotously into the sunset, knowing that if I am moving towards there, I am on the right track; but rather by taking really good notes on the days that are given to me. And from those notes (figurative ones, I guess), the landscape starts to look recognizable again.

And I’m telling all the grumpy little people in my head to shut up, the people who drew the map to the country of “There” in the first place and lodged it up my nose. I am telling them that the only difference between here and there is one measly little letter, one little letter that may or may not even exist.

I am trying to tend my modest patch of land, my own life, my little acre of days, with care and attention because this weather we’re having is a little unpredictable. And I’m working on building a nice happy fence, a friendly one with climbing vines and lawn gnomes to keep the bad out and to keep me from straying too far from home, and with a wooden “You are here” sign to point the way when I’ve inevitably lost my bearings again.

Building a fence and taking notes. That's what I've been up to. We'll see if it takes me somewhere.

Swim

2011-07-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

Swim like you are a fish, a frog, another creature. Push at the blue, blue water, the underneath thing. It sparkles at you at first like a shiny plastic Barbie pool filled with tap water, it welcomes you with a refreshing slurp and then sucks you under and pets you over and over and over with every movement you make from your eye sockets down across your stomach, around your legs to your bare toes.

You are inside it.

You are an alien now. This is different from the world of chairs and streets, floorboards and dirty shoes. It is quiet here, so quiet that you can think about being a fish. You are a fish now. But it is also loud. So loud, this splashing and sucking of air and kicking and pounding and echoing of the hollow room.

Swim. Stretch your froggy limbs as far as they will reach, squeeze and slide through the water like an eel. You feel different here in the pool. You like it. You stay for quite a while, moving back and forth in a straight line as if you think you are actually going somewhere. Do you realize that you are, in fact, going nowhere at all?

Rise out of the water. Feel the dripping weight of your body, of your feet on the pool deck. Trudge to the locker room and climb into the enormous jacuzzi where the jets pound away at your back and you think about all the reasons why an empty locker room makes you feel like a celebrity.

What a new and interesting thing.

Things I Have Purchased

2011-06-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Because nothing makes life feel more hopeful than a white plastic egg filled with shakey things.

Or a piece of metal folded into the shape of a triangle!

A blue tambourine.

A tin whistle.

A glockenspiel.

And a pair of jeggings.

Feel the jeggings! Feel them hug you in all the right places. Feel their elastic waist band squeeze you delicately as you eat your luncheon sandwich!

My next post will be entitled, "How I Have Learned to Play the Organ Whilst Shaking the Egg Shaker and then Putting it Down Quickly to Beat Out a Song on the Glockenspiel, Leaving Room After the Chorus to Toot my New Tin Whistle and Whack my Triangle Whilst Wearing my Jeggings. Oh, Whilst Rapping my Foot Against my Tambourine on the Floor." It will be a good post.

Embers

2011-06-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

Begin by putting on your shoes. Yes, just put them on and then step outside where half the sky is grey and sinking inwards like a heavy dose of rage and the other half is rather clear and blue. Kind of like you.

Then start walking. Put on your headphones and later take them off, listen to the songs of the birds, the breathing of the trees, the man playing his harmonica on the bench.

Talk to yourself in the second person because you’ve had a fucking hard week and you’re having trouble finding the right words.

Look out at the sunset and let it look back at you, pink and coral, melancholy. There is a man and there is a woman, and they are sitting on a bench holding hands, and her head is leaning on his shoulder, and they are looking at the same sunset as you, and they are probably thinking about the sunset and lots of other things. Look at them and think about what they might be thinking about.

Pray for the embers deep down, down, down there in your person, those quiet longings of your heart that lie in dormancy at the moment. Pray for them as you walk past the man playing his harmonica. Give the embers a voice for a few minutes and then let them lie where they are, small and warm and round inside you.

Listen to the voices of the people at the park, the man with the walking stick and the shirt made out of hemp. He is talking to a young woman wearing a hat, talking about breadcrumbs and how she followed his trail of breadcrumbs. Listen as he says, “You know Rumi said, ‘As the thirsty seek the water, so the water seeks the thirsty.’” Follow that man and his lady friend down the stairs, assure them that you are not lurking behind them intentionally, and then go home. Take off your shoes.

Let Rumi’s words be true. Please, let them be true.

Just Is

2011-05-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

This is the place where I run now.

This is the first Porch House backyard fire of 2011.

This is the worst picture of me I have seen in a long time.

This is me in 2006 with a horse and a very good sense of style.

This is my mom.

This is my sausage hand. And by that, I mean that my hand looks like a sausage, just to clarify. But actually, it looks a lot less like a sausage than it used to.

This is a rainbow I saw at the end of my run yesterday.

It was probably the worst run in the history of me. I was tired and cranky, and when I got to the reservoir there were hordes of gnats flying into my nose and sticking to the sweat on my face. So I got angry and frustrated and stopped to walk out of rebellion and ended up taking a picture of the reservoir on my phone, and that's when I realized that the reservoir was beautiful.

And then it started pouring down rain (another reason it was the worst run in the history of me), and then I saw that rainbow. It was actually a double rainbow. I don't know if you can tell from the picture. And then I laughed at myself and gave myself a break and went home and got into the bathtub and laid there with every single piece of my body submerged under the water except my nostrils. And then I opened my eyes under the water and stared up at the blurry bathroom ceiling and took deep nostril breaths and listened to the fast pounding of my heart for several minutes in complete silence.

And then I sat up and put on a dress and went out to be social and have a wonderful evening.

If we can't laugh at ourselves, if we can't enjoy and embrace the slightly ridiculous things that we do and say, the outrageous ways that we react to perfectly normal situations, how are we supposed to live?

If we can't simmer down and say, "Yes, I am a little bit crazy," how will we ever learn to get over ourselves?

This has everything and nothing to do with these pictures.

The Land of Smiles

2011-05-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

On the twelfth of April, I wrote a post about how I dreamed I was pregnant. I wrote about how I felt that something was stirring in the buried recesses of my life, that perhaps the dream represented a stirring up of my soul, a path toward change that has been developing in a frustrating state of slowness, undeniable and irreversible in the back of my mind for some time now.

Well. Have you ever had that feeling? Where you're sitting in front of your computer, clicking on things and reading about inner city programs for college graduates in Chicago, looking up employment opportunities on cruise ships, researching potential MA programs, browsing. Waiting for...something. To sound good. To sound right. Feeling discouraged to the point of giving up.

And then the feeling happens. It gathers in a rush behind the nose and is released in a deep breath of exhalation through the lips. It pushes its way up through the chest, behind the eyes, and maybe (if you're lucky) causes a gentle release of tears. It's like crying.

It's the feeling of right-ness. Of essentiality. I just made that word up. Maybe it's God. It's the feeling of knowing or being called, of feeling moved toward a frightening thing that may or may not be the most risky thing you've ever done, that may or may not be what all this frustrated waiting has been about.

I had the feeling yesterday. And I freaked out about it and ran on it and talked to my parents about it and wrote my boss an email about it. And I still have the feeling today. And it's very new, and it's very huge, and it's too unproven to publish concretely in the blogosphere right away, but it's here.

I want to teach English abroad next year. In a place that may or may not look like this:

I have some specific plans developing. They are possibly the best plans ever known in the history of humankind, but these plans are still in the works, so I'm not about to broadcast them as if everything is already decided and settled.

But the fact of the matter is...I have yet to come up with one good reason why I shouldn't do this. And when I think about it, I want to cry. In a good way.

So, that's what's happening. Ask me about it. I'll talk your ear off for an hour.

The Reason I Have No Social Life Right Now

2011-05-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

is because I am indexing a 900-page encyclopedia of trees and shrubs. Observe the pageproofs below.

There they are, 900 pages of information about trees and shrubs in all their 11" by 17" heaviness, in all their black-and-white inky glory. I read/scan every word and highlight Latin plant names in green, common plant names in pink. I scribble down page numbers for every highlighted word. I listen to music and sing along mindlessly, making up creative harmonies to songs I've heard hundreds of times.

I think about how wonderful I will feel when my check comes in the mail. I think about how I do feel proud to take part (even if my work is barely noticeable) in the book-publishing process. I think about all the free books I've gotten in the mail because I had a hand in scribbling them into existence.

It's kind of fun.

This project is huge, and I am tired of working on it. But in four days, I will be done and will be able to have a social life again.

I wrote this post because I needed to do something slightly creative, and this is what's on my plate right now. This is what's covering the entirety of our dining room table.

Wish me luck!

Things That are Factual

2011-05-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

1. I just got back from my third trip to Spokane in the past seven months. It was thunderstormy, sunny, too warm, windy, rainy, and horribly cold all in the course of three days.

2. I loved the movie "Bridesmaids" and cried in it three times. These are both facts and not to be debated.

3. I am about to inherit a perfectly wonderful sister-in-law.

4. My family has evolved into a happy state of adulthood, and I love this about us.

5. Three hours is far too long to sit at anyone's graduation.

6. Going for a run forty-five minutes after eating a lot of sushi is a terrible thing to do to oneself.

7. Growing up into a real adult person is a lot longer of a process than people make it out to be. It's also a lot more complicated and lonely. Not the sad kind of lonely, just the kind where you're all by yourself.

8. I felt nostalgic when I watched my old English professors lead the procession of graduates into the Spokane Arena. They were the single greatest part of my college experience. I hope they know their affect on my life.

9. Being a runner is a continuous choice that I continue to make.

10. In one year, I am going to move away to a new city.

11. I have one pair of shoes with duct tape on the sole, and one pair with two little holes by the ankle. I need a new pair of shoes.

12. Tomorrow is Tuesday and I will be getting up and going to work, and I am honestly pleased about that.

Those are some things that are factual.

Me and My Legs

2011-05-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

Ever since I started running I have wanted to get out of my neighborhood, out of my comfortably familiar four-and-a-half mile route that peaks up by St. Ignatius, stretches out past the rhododendron nursery overlooking the forested hills of OHSU, and then pushes me swiftly downward back toward my happily predictable mile-long loop of houses with baseball-throwing dads outside on the sidewalk, bearded gentlemen playing the banjo on porches, and dog-walking elderly couples who smile at me in that, “Here you are again, this is the second time we’ve seen you tonight, good for you for running while you’re still young,” sort of way.

It’s a lovely route, and I’ve run it enough times to be able to gauge myself against it, to know exactly how my lungs normally feel after I’ve scaled the steep sidewalk by the dead-end corner on 49th and Tibbetts, and to then decide whether to pick up the pace or slow down, relax and let go. It is comforting to have created a small journey for myself, to have carved a slightly insignificant but meaningful routine out of my surroundings and claim it for myself.

But today I decided I was in the mood to attempt to run up Mt. Tabor. I know I’ve mentioned Mt. Tabor a number of times on this blog, but in case you are unfamiliar, it is evidently a volcanic cinder cone (I don’t actually know what that means, exactly) and one of the most beautiful parks in Portland. It looks like this:

From the top, there are scenic views of downtown Portland and Mt. Hood, and after I had had a beer this afternoon, I decided I wanted to run around this place in the semi-rain. It’s only a mile from my front door, after all.

And so I did. I didn’t run all the way to the top, but I circled around three of the reservoirs, smiled at the dad jogging with a stroller and the woman with her grey dog and some poop in a bag, and I slowed to a near crawl in order to pull myself up and around the steepest curves of the mountain.

The rain stopped after ten minutes, and then it was just me and the quiet people and the open expanse of trails and views and gravel and rippling water, and I was thinking about nothing and everything in the same controlled breath. In through my nose, out through my lips. Eyes on the trail, eyes on the people, eyes on the trees.

I don’t know if it was the beer or the weather or the fact that it’s Saturday, but that hour spent weaving my way up to the park, around curvy, foreign paths and then back again made me feel peacefully powerful in a way I haven’t felt for a long time. It wasn’t me versus the mountain. It was just me and the mountain. And I felt freer from thought and pain than I’ve felt in a long while.

I ran there on my own two legs. Just me on my legs. And then I ran home on my legs and sat down and wrote these paragraphs before the feeling of belonging so powerfully to a physical place trickled away.

I’ll probably just run my normal route tomorrow because that’s what I do. That’s how I regulate and get stronger. But if I want to, I can turn the corner at 50th and run up a mountain. How wonderful is that? Just me and my legs.

In Lieu of Facebook

2011-05-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so...99% of the time, I am extremely happy that I don't have facebook. I don't miss the news feed or the status updates or the picture tagging or the note writing or the video posting or the profile photo albums. I kind of hate all that stuff. It had a lot of ridiculous power over me at one point. But! I've been facebook-free for about a year now, and I love it.

But sometimes, SOMETIMES I wish I could share something slightly silly with people on the interwebs. So...today I am pretending that I have facebook, and I am posting this picture just for funsies:

Yes, it's me reading a book to eight small children on a playground. Kind of adorable.

Victory!

2011-05-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Needed: One Street Band

2011-04-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

This morning, I partook of the Portland Saturday Market and absorbed the long-lost Oregon sunshine like a tentative iguana emerging out of someone's luggage after a trip to Alaska. I was a little nervous about going coatless, but I didn't regret it. Oh, the glories!

I meandered with Stephanie through booths of jewelry made from recycled bike tires, looked at purses made from board games and wallpaper and road maps, and dresses made out of someone's old t-shirts. I inhaled the pleasant smell of various body odors and unwashed nether regions as they danced a merry jig of Saturday Market merriment around us.

And I stopped for twenty minutes to take in a most glorious street band. Oh, Portland, how I love you! You are so unashamedly yourself! You and your street bands with their ripped-up shoes, their waxed mustaches and multiple pairs of socks. Your hula hoopers and jugglers and dread locked street youth with their dogs and bare feet and huge smiles. Your enthusiasm!

This band had two accordions, two trumpets, a trombone, a xylophone, a bass, a drum set, a tiny ukelele, a mind-boggling stringless guitar/keyboard futuristic musical oddity, a cello, a moog synthesizer, and a mystery wood pipe/percussion instrument. And then they started playing their ska/folk/indie/rock/strange music, and I burst into a twenty minute smile and wanted to hug everyone.

Here they are:

Why am I not a part of this band? The whole time I stood there listening, that's all I could think about. I want to play music with people like this. I want to get out my accordions and my keyboard and my slightly untrained but eager singing voice, and I want to dance around and shout, "Hey, hey, hey!" in rhythmic unison every twelve beats with people like this on the cobblestone streets of Old Town, or even just in someone's garage (that would be fine) on the weekends. I want to make slightly-less-than-flawless music and feel inexplicably happy!

And I want my own personal hula hoopers.

So where do I begin? How do these people find each other and agree to play Beirut's "The Gulag Orkestrar" all together with lots of shouting and head bobbing and trumpet battles? I just don't know.

I am a big fan of Portland. And I am a big fan of Saturday Market and street bands of all kinds. And I need a music project. Badly.

Helplessness Blues

2011-04-21T21:19:00.001-07:00

By Fleet Foxes

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see.
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.

But I don't, I don't know what that will be.
I'll get back to you, someday, soon you will see.

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do.
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you,
Or bow down and be grateful and say, "Sure, take all that you see,"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me.

And I don't, I don't know who to believe.
I'll get back to you, someday, soon you will see.

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak.
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself.
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf.
I'll come back to you someday soon, myself.

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw,
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore,
And you would wait tables and soon run the store.

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn,
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore,
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore,
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen.

What to Do When It is Sixty Degrees and Not Raining

2011-04-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

1. Work at a Jewish school so you can have a whole week off for Passover. Then, when it is sixty degrees and not raining, you can feel as free as a delicate spring fairy hip hopping along in the woods.

2. Soak up the city. In this case, the city of Portland, often viewed from the top of Mt. Tabor. Look at Mountain Hood!

3. Find delightful things chained to the sidewalk.

4. Go geocaching. Hunt around in the woods for treasure. Climb up steep embankments. Look in the nooks of trees. Reach into holes in between bricks. Move stones around. Get a little muddy. Get a little sweaty. Get really excited when you find some treasure!

5. Leave things behind. Like an old pocket watch and a little fat statue.

6. Tell all your friends to go geocaching because it is the best thing ever.

7. Do some regular things too, like your laundry.

Recipe for a Perfectly Adequate Day

2011-04-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

Ingredients:

1 night in which you sleep for nine and a half hours.
1 whole day without rain.
2 hours spent reading the Willamette Week astrology page, doing the crossword, drinking coffee, and eating a delicious sandwich dripping in egg yolk.
1 coffee table purchased for $26.
1 happy new housemate who moved in yesterday.
2 chickens found wandering in the backyard. See below.

Orange chicken.

Brown chicken.

30 minutes spent dusting the living room. Dusting. Does that ever happen? It does on a perfectly adequate day.

1 best haircut EVER from Bishops Barbershop in which the hair cutting woman spent far more time on your hair than was necessary because she was "having so much fun with it" and found your hair, "absolutely adorable." See below.

1 cat who will lie contentedly on your lap when the oil tank buried in your yard is empty and therefore you cannot heat your house.

1 evening in which you are about to go for a run which better be good and not terrible like every other run you've had this week.

Mix all of the above ingredients together in whichever order you choose with whatever kind of stirring utensil is closest to where you happen to be at the moment. This might be a shovel or a pencil or a finger or a drum stick or someone else's elbow. Add some quietness here and there. Let it all sit in the bowl and don't cook it or bake it. Just let it sit there.

Don't eat it. Enjoy it.

Dreams

2011-04-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

I rarely remember my dreams. Hardly ever, like, maybe once every few months. But last night I dreamed I was pregnant, and I remember almost the entire thing. Vividly.

I have had pregnancy dreams more often than any other type of dream I can remember, except maybe for the ones where I get shot by terrorists or the dream where a giant death missile plunges slow-motion into the earth right in front of me. I've had those kinds of dreams periodically over and over since childhood. I don't know what that says about me, but I think it says something. I know it.

So last night, I was pregnant. It was a horribly upsetting dream, just like it always is. I'm not going to go into all the details because this is a blog that anyone can read, but the one thing that especially stands out to me about this dream was the way I felt. It was like there was this thing inside me, and it wasn't supposed to be there. Every ounce of my being felt like it did not belong there, that what was happening to me was not right. But there was nothing I could do about it. It was too late, and this thing was already growing.

I was terribly upset and impatient, but in my dream, there were no options except to accept what was happening to me and let the natural course of events pan out.

This sounds a little melodramatic, but I know this dream was not about actual, literal pregnancy. I mean, I'm not exactly afraid of pregnancy in my future, but I'm not really excited about it either. In the literal sense, I feel completely neutral about potential pregnancy at any point in my life.

So I typed the words "pregnancy dream interpretation" into Google. What a fantastic idea! And lots of dream interpretation sites popped up, and they all said basically the same thing:

To dream that you are pregnant symbolizes an aspect of yourself or some aspect of your personal life that is growing and developing. You may not be ready to talk about it or act on it. Being pregnant in your dream may also represent the birth of a new idea, direction, project or goal. You feel anxiety about being alone, or about being crowded and responsible for others. You feel stuck and impatient, waiting for something to happen. You are focusing on what’s original about yourself, what you want to create, and what ideas are becoming interesting to you.

This feels completely applicable. But I have no further words on this subject because I don't honestly know what aspect of my personal life is growing and developing, although I have an inkling. I'll let you know after my baby has grown a bit.

Building a Nest

2011-04-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been building a nest. A comfy, memory foam, vintage sort of nest, the kind with bits of paper and fabric tucked in between the twigs.

My nest is a lot like this:

I sink down into it and take a deep, soul-filled breath. It fits me like two squished-together couch cushions.

My nest is also a lot like this:

Ta da! It's our bathroom. And the nest is my house. And I've been scouring thrift stores on the weekends, and it's had a wonderfully uplifting affect on my soul.

Look at our new horse lamp!

And here's our living room. Imagine a lovely and ever-so-elegant chair underneath the three paintings. Mmm...

I know it's just stuff. It's just frames and tables and rugs and light bulbs. But my heart has been nesting here in this little blue house with our fluffy cat, raggedy porch, and broken windows.

And right now, RIGHT NOW as I write this, I am planted in the center of our warm brown living room floor with black scratches scrawled across the boards like angry foot graffiti. And ten minutes ago, TEN MINUTES AGO, I lay in the bathtub cleansing myself and watching a cartoon at the same time. It was just that peaceful.

And yesterday I weeded our front garden bed where all the lovely miniature tulips were waving their heads around in the quiet rain. And then the sun came out. And then I took some pictures.

Doesn't this make you want to take a deep breath of spring and then a long nap?

The flowers out front and the peace within our house make me want to come home from work instantly every day and then never leave. And then tell everyone I know to come over and drink black IPAs with me in the middle of the floor.

So, this is where my heart has been. At home. Lying squished in between the cushions of the $25 couch I bought at the House of Vintage. Or in bed. Or in the flower beds.

And right now, RIGHT NOW, I am going to go to bed early and sleep for a long time. In my nest.

News on Grad School, Thoughts About What's Next

2011-04-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't get into grad school. As of two days ago, I have officially been rejected by all eight MFA programs I applied to.

The first rejection hurt the worst. Up until that point, the year 2011 had been a fuzzy blob floating up in my head. I had been entertaining thoughts about driving across the country, uprooting and replanting in a new city, learning and growing and becoming someone suddenly important. And then Ohio State rejected me.

And then I cried and felt really sad for an hour. And then I sat on the couch in silence and let all the what-ifs wash in and tap me quietly on the shoulder. What if I end up getting rejected by all eight schools? How embarrassing will that be? And in that case, what if I had to stay in Portland another year? What if I had to hang onto my wonderful job, my house, my friendships for another year and a half? What if I could save up some actual money before heading off on this adventure? What if I could actually put together a worthwhile writing sample and try again? What if I could actually get something published before I go?

And then seven more schools rejected me. And now here I am! And I feel utterly peaceful about the fact that I am not going to grad school in the fall.

The University of Michigan told me in their letter that they received 1,005 applications and accepted 6 people. Other schools told me similar stories. My friend Alex also applied to ten MFA programs this year and was rejected by all ten. This is his fourth year applying.

The economy is bad. Everyone wants to go to school. And MFA programs are fickle. They want something different from their applicants every year. And a writing sample is such an arbitrary thing. And maybe I'm too middle class, too white, too tall, or too religious. I could be right or wrong in an infinite amount of ways.

It doesn't feel particularly wonderful to be denied a higher education because my creative abilities are not quite up to par, but I'm going to try again next year. I'm going to do a better job. I really, really want this degree, and if it's going to take me five years to get accepted into an MFA program somewhere, then okay.

So here's what's next: I am staying in Portland for the time being! Yay. Right now, I feel excellent about this, but we'll see how I feel when the fall rolls around. I'll probably be antsy again.

And until I've got an acceptance letter in my hand, I am going to write like hell. I am going to send some things away to quarterlies, literary journals, magazines, writing contests, whatever. That's my goal right now. If I want to go to grad school, I need to start by putting myself out there.

There you go. There's my future. I'm just going to keep trying, and I'm confident that I am going to come out of this process a better writer with a clearer vision of who I am and what I want, whether that means I have to get rejected twelve more times or not.

It should be good.

To the Month of March

2011-03-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

There's a phrase that me and a friend repeat to each other now and then. You might call it a mantra. It's meant to be said in the moments when some of the pieces of life's giant floor puzzle fit uncomfortably. When "things" are not terrible, but maybe you wish they were different. When you sit on a rooftop gazing impatiently off into the future, and the rolling hills of life's less-than-ideal circumstances seem to continue on and on and on into the distance and around the curve of the earth.

Things will change.

That's it. That's the mantra. It's a much better mantra than "Things will work out," or "It will all make sense in the end," or other phrases that make life sound like a series of neatly trimmed hedgerows leading the way to the birdbath of happiness.

Because things might not work out in the end. They might not make sense. There is no guarantee that either of those things will ever happen. But something will change. It is impossible for things not to change. Maybe you'll get a new dog. Maybe you'll win a wooden Santa door prize. Or you'll get the perfect job out of the blue. Maybe you'll kiss someone new, and it will feel like coming home for the first time. Maybe you'll realize that you are really good at paddling a canoe.

And without warning or adjustment, your life will be different. When you sit on that old rooftop, you will look off in a different direction.

And in that sudden, quiet way, things will have changed. Spring will have come. Look, it's already happened! And even though you haven't noticed, and even though the rain will continue to fall, the tulips are already pulling themselves out of the dirt.

Welcome, change.

Control

2011-03-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

I cannot control everything in my life. In fact, if I were to take a large step back, I would realize that I don't have control over most things including the weather, the shiftings of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the mindsets of people around me, and whether or not Thor decides to kill a bird and leave its feathers on our doorstep.

I can't control most of the things that will happen to me, whether or not I will ever get accepted to grad school, whether or not the people I love will live to be 99 and a half, whether or not I will find a good person to spend my life with. Whether or not my ovaries will continue to function normally until I am fifty. Whether I will get to keep my job for as long as I need it.

But I can choose to go running. I can choose to write every day. I can choose to let go, acknowledging that I really don't have it all together, and that's a GOOD thing because frankly, having it all together is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE, and the sooner I let that fact sink in, the sooner I release my desire for control, the sooner I begin to experience full immersion in the present. The here and now. This wooden table I am sitting at. The black ink scribbled on the back of my hand.

There's a great quote from Leonard Cohen that says, "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."

Well, right now I would just like to say that my life doesn't burn very well when I hold onto my future with a tight, anxious fist. When I think I can figure it all out and make it all happen and make everyone love me in the process. I just can't do that. And when I try, I burn out.

So here I am today, relinquishing control. I think this is the greatest thing.

Self Portraits with Sweat

2011-03-12T18:37:00.001-08:00

Because I ran 5 miles today. And I can say with complete confidence that I have never been this sweaty in my entire life.

Maybe this is a little self-indulgent, this whole self portrait business, but I've started doing it every two months, and this month, today, I ran 5 miles. Five. Miles.

Observe my glorious armpit sweat!

My run was 70 minutes long. An hour and ten minutes. I honestly wasn't planning on running that long. It just kind of... happened. And by minute 45, I started feeling like I was having some sort of religious out-of-body experience.

At what point did I become capable of doing this? I'm not exactly sure.

People do this all the time. People run ten miles, fifteen miles, marathons, but for me this is extremely significant and special.

I didn't think I was made for this. And I'm not, really. I mean, I don't have a runner's body. I run a 14 minute mile. But I can do it, and my body loves it, and it's helping me thrive.

Next goal: seven miles.

Observations on Children

2011-03-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, one of my favorite friends made a very interesting observation. His name is Ronan, and he is three years old, and he said to me, “God lives in the air, right?” and I wrote his poetic statement down on my hand in pen because I didn’t want to forget it the next time I went running. It puts a whole new spin on the concept of breathing, doesn’t it?

Today, I played “owl babies” with seven of my absolute favorite little people: Amelia, Paisley, Sophia, Noah, India, Theo, and Hannah. First we were playing “turn your friends into animals and ballerinas with magical fairy wands!” and then I was transformed into an owl, and then all seven of my little friends wanted to be my owl babies, and I flew around the room hoo-ing while they laid on the blue rug in the fetal position waiting to hatch. And then, spring came, and they blossomed forth from their eggs while I fed them worms. And then Sophia sat in my lap while I read her a science book about bears.

Kids are just special. They teach me things. I spend hours and hours every day helping them solve their problems, coaching them through the emotional trauma that goes along with getting hit with a sandbox shovel, falling off the slide, or having their plastic leaf of lettuce taken away before they were done eating a picnic lunch with it.

I say to them things like, “I need you to listen to what Catherine has to say to you. She looks very sad. Do you have any idea why she is so sad?”

Or, “How do you think it made Isaac feel when you took his car away without asking? Would you like it if someone did that to you?”

Or, “Leo, please use your words to tell me what you need. I can’t help you until you put your tears away, and I can’t understand you when you are screaming so loudly in my ear.”

They are such simple things, but sometimes, somehow these basic principles of healthy human interaction are missed in my adult life. Why is no one there coaching me? Why aren’t my most difficult relationships moderated by a gigantically tall, ever-present, seemingly unbiased god creature with snacks?

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that we coach them and teach them and yet somehow still manage to screw it up with each other as “mature adults.” It’s also not fair that some of these parents completely suck and should never have been entrusted with the life of a tender child.

Maybe, if I remain a preschool teacher forever, I’ll somehow figure it all out. Because human beings are really not that complex, and it’s really not that confusing to learn how to listen, to learn how to stop screaming, to learn how to share.

To learn how to ask.

Ask Me

2011-03-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

Behold the Lower Half of My Body!

2011-02-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

Herein, you will find photographic evidence that I have a completely wonderful set of legs. They just might be the best legs EVER. These babies are taking shape and taking names.

Here they are wearing jeans and boots.

Here they are wearing rolled-up pants in glorious white splendor.

Here they are wearing no pants.

And here they are in pajamas, relaxing.

You might ask, Now Jessica, why are your legs relaxing in such a luxurious manner? And I will tell you this:

Because they ran 3.07 miles today, suckers! Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it.

And it only took them 41 minutes! Bam. That's even faster than walking!

From his green padded jail cell, Thor looks upon my legs with awe and lets out a lustful cry.

"Rrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrr."

He is going to get up early tomorrow and peek under the door so he can watch me change.

I don't blame him. My legs are fucking awesome.

Bike Bowling

2011-02-20T17:46:00.000-08:00

Today I was walking up on Mt. Tabor in my ungainly hiking shoes that I only wear when I am camping or going on an intentional excursion. It was a perfectly windy Portland day, and people were walking their dogs up and around the mountain, and I stopped twice to pet two of these said dogs, one of which was named Abby and one named Max, both extremely fluffy.

I was at the top of the hill, at the place where there are benches and you can look out over the city and see Burnside stretching away towards the river. And then I heard a commotion.

"Whatever can that be?" I said to myself. And I turned and looked and saw a large crowd of people gathered in the center of the grassy knoll that is The Top of Mt. Tabor. They were bike people. Portland bike people, to be specific. In case you are not familiar with what Portland bike people look like, they come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them wear mid-calf-length cut-off trousers with scuffy boots and jackets with large patches like advertisements safety pinned to their backs. Some of them have long black dreadlocks, some of them have short brown frizzy dreadlocks, some of them are skinny hipsters with Newsie caps or chubby teddy bears wearing black spandex. Some of them are rather old and have scraggly beards.

Some of them ride fixed gear bikes. Some have tiny baby bicycles that confuse me. Some have fancy road bikes or bikes with elaborate homemade baskets and trailers attached. Some of them ride double decker tall bikes that lie tipped over like drunken giraffes in the grass.

Anyway. These people were playing a game of human bowling via bicycle in the middle of the grassy knoll that is The Top of Mt. Tabor. Picture this if you will. Ten of these...

...barrel things were set up in a V like bowling pins, and people were riding their bikes as fast as possible across the grassy knoll and then throwing their bodies off their bikes into the bowling pins in an effort to knock down as many barrels as possible.

Everyone was laughing and shouting with glee, and no one was keeping score, and people were videotaping on their camera phones, and a random stranger stopped beside me to chuckle about it and say, "It's so much better than sitting on the couch playing video games, right? I mean, at least they're getting exercise."

"Absolutely," I said.

I just love my city. I cannot properly express the amount of love I have for the city of Portland right now except to say that it constantly surprises and challenges me. Just when I think I am going to have nothing more than a windy day hike up a mountain (which is lovely in and of itself), I find myself in the middle of a game of human bowling, laughing my ass off at all the silly people smashing their faces into the grass for the sake of Portland bike love and old fashioned fun.

And then when I was driving home, all the bike people came riding past me in a giant bike parade, smiling like they were leaving Disneyland. Ah. Portland.

What did I ever do to deserve you?

A Declaration

2011-02-14T14:45:00.000-08:00

Can I just say (here on my own blog, of all places) that sometimes I really just kind of really sort of just can't help but ... like myself?

It's true. I have been sitting here at The Service Station for a long, long time now, doing a little of this and that, playing mahjong on my computer, typing the names of people I know into Google, writing, and waiting for 4:00 o'clock to arrive, when I will accompany Megan to Women's Choir rehearsal. Oh, but the point of the above sentence was also to say that since I've been sitting here so long, I've been reading through my blog entries all the way back to 2009, and I just have to say this: Sometimes I am funny! Like here or here and not really here, but I still like this post.

I mean, I just like myself. I like the way I look. I like the way I dress. I like the way I see and interpret the world. I like the people who like me. Also, I like this book:

I read it to my preschoolers. If I had my way, I would actually add this little book to the end of the Bible, to be read after Revelation, because it holds the meaning of life. And because if you believe people are created in the image of God, then this is the most spiritual book you might ever read. No, really.

It’s about a curly-haired, dark-skinned little girl who really, really likes herself. She likes herself SO much that she frolics across all the pages in an adorable little dress with a huge smile on her face shouting “I’m me!” with the utmost self-esteem and confidence. Later, she says, and I quote, “No matter if they stop and stare, no person ever anywhere can make me feel that what they see is all there really is to me.”

She goes on to sing and dance and play next to people with strange ears and huge noses, people in wheelchairs, people with rainbow-colored hair and seeing eye dogs. She is the happiest, spunkiest heroine I have ever seen. And she’s probably four years old.

She also says, "Even when I look a mess, I still don't like me any less, 'cause nothing in this world, you know, can change what's deep inside, and so..."

I love this book. It inspires me.

Really, though, I think this issue of truly liking ourselves is the issue a lot of people struggle with their entire lives. I am fatter than that other woman over there. I am not smart. I am single, and no one will ever love me. I have hair all over the place. I’m not good at flirting. I have cellulite.

Is it okay for me to announce right now that I like myself? I think it is. And I haven't always felt as comfortable in my own skin as I do right now, even though senior year of high school, I gave a speech to the entire school about how it's "just okay to be weird." But really, I had no idea what I was talking about. And deep down, I totally wasn't really okay with being weird.

I don't even feel weird anymore. I just feel like me. And I like myself!

Notes From a Different State

2011-02-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

I am in Spokane visiting these people:

My seester Megan. And my friend Delynn! You will find her below.

I have come to the conclusion that the following activities fill me with the utmost amount of joy.

1. Going out to breakfast with anyone, anywhere. I love, love, love going out to breakfast, and any day in which I get to go out to breakfast is guaranteed to be an excellent day.

2. Driving for 5.25 hours in the car by myself on a sunny day, singing loudly to music.

3. Trying on a lovely soon-to-be-bridesmaid's dress in a classy store and having the complementary fitting room ladies bring me sexy black peep-toe high heels, and putting them on and standing in front of the enormous mirror and realizing that I do, indeed, look incredibly attractive.

4. Using my Oregon driver's license to waive away $16.00 of Washington sales tax. Get behind me, sales tax!

5. Sleeping in my sleeping bag.

It is the middle of February, and I am in Spokane for a few days, and it amazes me that this transitory month is already halfway over and that my hair is already growing past the point of being called "short" and that the brown boots I bought in December are already getting worn down by two months of trudging.

I have put my pen to paper and written something literally every single day since mid December, but even still, I am beginning to feel like life is flying past me faster than I can catch it and staple it back down into my journal.

This is a healthy, happy thing, I do believe.

There is No Excuse For You

2011-02-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

Scene: Jessica’s favorite coffee shop, her home away from home, on Sunday afternoon at 12:30pm.

Jessica stands at the bar, pouring herself a cup of french-pressed coffee. She puts in two sugars. She peacefully pours in some cream. She stirs thoughtfully.

Woman sitting at the counter: (to the barista) I hope I didn’t just see you drop that cup on the floor and put it back up on the shelf

Barista: Yes, I did, but it’s not going to be used.

Woman: What do you mean it’s not going to be used? You put it back up on top of the espresso machine. Why wouldn’t you just put it in the sanitizer?

Barista: I did put it back up. But I assure you, it’s not going to be used.

Woman: Well, I have a huge problem with that. That is a serious health issue. I hope to God you are going to take it down right away. That is wrong in every sense of the word. That is a severe health violation.

Barista: Uh huh. (He leans over and changes the music on his iPod)

Woman: I am a nurse, and that is a violation. You could make somebody horribly sick.

Woman’s Friend: (who is old and has bleached blonde hair and is wearing hideously red lipstick) I cannot BELIEVE I am witnessing this. You put it back up on the espresso machine.

Barista: (in a calm voice) Hey, why don’t you just let me do my job?

Woman: Let you do your job? You are not doing your job! You are putting people at risk. I can’t believe I spent money at this establishment. What if I talk to your manager?

Woman’s Friend: Yeah! Where’s your manager?

Barista: I am. I’m the manager.

Woman: You’re the boss of this place?

Barista: Yes.

Woman: YOU are the actual manager of this store?

Barista: Yes.

Woman: (gathering up her belongings to leave) This is the most pathetic coffee shop I have ever seen. You should not be in operation.

Woman’s Friend: I am so offended by you and by the sanitation in this place. You are serving people contaminated substances.

Barista: Well then, why don’t you leave? You should leave.

Woman: (leaving) I should call the police!

Woman’s Friend: (halfway out the door, yelling) I am calling the police! You and your pathetic coffee shop should NOT be poisoning people like this!

Woman: This is WRONG!

And then there was more yelling, and then they stormed away.

End of Scene

Yes. That really just happened, but it was longer and louder in real life. I hope that nurse lady and her ugly friend trip over a crack in the sidewalk and their faces scrape the ground and become unsanitary. Where do people like that come from?

One time, a lady yelled at me at Starbucks because she said I made her drink so hot that her tongue was horribly burned. I didn’t, and it wasn’t. But she told me (very loudly) that she was going to call her lawyer and sue the hell out of us. Then my manager had to come out and mollify her, and then she was taken away by an old man.

I just don’t understand. And I don’t exactly want to, either, because I feel pretty comfortable judging those people as freakish assholes. Yes. Feel free to picture a freakish asshole if you want, and you’ll have an accurate mental image of those ladies.

I’m just not uptight and easily angered by things like that. There is a lot more injustice at work in the world than a cup falling on the floor at a hip coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and being put back up on the shelf. I would personally rather get upset over poverty or child abuse or the situation in Darfur. And when is it ever okay to be rude to service people? It’s just not okay.

If you’re really that bothered, write a well-worded letter to a person with sway. Or tell your friends about your negative experience. But shout at a barista and threaten to call the police? I’m sorry. Get a life.

Voices

2011-01-29T16:36:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading this book...

...and I haven’t been able to move on yet. I am left sitting here with a number of things on my mind. Here are my thoughts in the order they occurred to me:

1. That was a masterpiece of a book. Um, Dave Eggers is a good writer. No, good is not the right adjective at all. How about... sublime? Deft? Compassionate. Zesty. Untiring.

What is the What is a glorious mix of fiction/autobiography that tells a real-life story in the most compassionate and careful fictional way. It is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who joined a group of 200 “Lost Boys” fleeing their country in the midst of a horrific civil war. Their journey from Sudan to temporary safety in Ethiopia and then to a refugee camp in Kenya is filled with sickness, bullets and bombings, alligators, lions, and starvation. The book jumps back and forth from past to present, from the United States to Sudan, to Kenya, to Ethiopia, chronicling one boy’s survival, displacement, and coming of age set against a backdrop that beautifully walks the line between difficult-to-read and whimsical.

To be honest, this is not normally the type of book I pick up at Powell’s. I’m not much of a biography lover, and this is probably the reason it took me such an ungodly length of time to fully immerse myself in this book. But. This book is so much more than a biography. It is a novel. And when I got to the conclusion, I was like...

2. Holy shit, good writing has the power to change the world. Yes, that is what I have been pondering for three days now. This man’s experiences are powerful in and of themselves, yes, but in the hands of as masterful a writer as Dave Eggers, Valentino’s story becomes a profound voice in the darkness, impossible to ignore.

To me, this book is proof that good writing can be a form of social justice, that art can provide illumination in the quietest gutters of the marginalized. In this case, it was done so perfectly, which brings me to my next thought:

3. I have never wanted to be a so-called “writer” more than I do right now. If this is what writing can be about, then I want to write. And I want to do it well, if for no other reason than to provide a voice in a murmuring room or a song that might resonate in someone’s head. And maybe, just maybe, that voice or that song might change something. I don’t really know.

Yeah, so those are my thoughts on What is the What. I am sitting here with my laptop now, trying to think of something to write about. Because if grad school doesn’t take me, I better get started on something so I can be accepted next year. Or rather, I just need to write. Something. Anything.

The Conclusion of the Matter

2011-01-24T21:44:00.000-08:00

What happens when you are surprised by goodness, when the denouement of a journey is more grace-filled and perfect than the journey itself?

You let it sink in and quietly validate those moments that trickled through the past three years of your life like a slow tear continuously welling and falling. You accept the presence of God in the way things have changed.

You are surprised. You cry in a good way. You acknowledge the fact that people are not always right when they give relationship advice, when they warn you not to give too widely or too deeply because it might hurt in the end, because it might rob you of something later. You realize that those people are sometimes wrong, that loving and losing just might turn out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.

You store away all these thoughts in a box wrapped in pretty paper.

If you ever have a daughter, you will tell her about this.

In Sickness, In Health, In the Bath

2011-01-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

My body is not well, and it has been having quite a hard time for seven days now. Two days ago, I went to the doctor. This was a very unusual thing for me to do. I was expecting them to tell me that I had strep throat, but they actually told me I had Tonsillitis.

Ah, Tonsillitis, infection of the tonsils. Pus on the tonsils. Blech. They put me on antibiotics and gave me a jar of Tylenol with Codeine so I could swallow and talk without wanting to die. The Tylenol sounded like a grand idea until I actually took it, and then I got nauseous and threw up all my lunch. Then I cried a lot and got into bed and turned off the lights and stayed there for sixteen hours.

My health has been complicated and unstable this whole past year. Whether it’s been migraines that keep me bed-ridden or a debilitating cold or a twelve-hour extra super-sized extreme hangover or now this fun Tonsillitis business, I am starting to feel discouraged.

I lay in the bathtub this morning, pondering life like I always do when I am submerged under the hot water, and I started thinking about how I need to be more careful with myself, how the things that I eat and drink matter a whole lot to my sensitive little body that the Dear Lord Above bestowed upon me. I think something needs to change.

Granted, I do work with small children who cough in my face on a daily basis, and I’m sure their germs are mostly to blame for this current state I’m in, but I still need to listen and respond to my body better. This might mean eliminating alcohol for a while or at least finding a way to moderate its affect in my life, or maybe I’ll change my diet. Probably both of those things.

I just can’t afford to miss out on any more days that might be holding something truly awesome in their arms. For all I know, I might only have seven months left in Portland, and I want to continue growing and being susceptible to whatever good things are lurking in the dark corners of this city, waiting for me to open my eyes and reach into them and then breathe a sigh that says, “Ah. How did I go so long without you?”

For the first time in months and months, I have a lot of time on my hands, and I want to use that time to sink myself down into good things. Blowing my nose into five-hundred Kleenexes is not a good thing. Neither is spending the entirety of New Year’s Day vomiting into the toilet. Making a large portion of healthy vegetable soup certainly sounds like a good thing, as does taking a yoga class at the JCC or swimming laps in the pool after work.

Here are some more Good Things that I have discovered lately:

1. Fleet Foxes
2. Writing long letters to people I love
3. Making friends with new people who are different from me
4. Hanging up pictures of my family and my besties and pretty things
5. Taking Ibuprofen
6. Being unashamed to admit I like 70% of the Mumford and Sons album
7. Eating grilled ham and cheese sandwiches
8. Realizing that being single doesn’t have to suck, but might actually be the greatest possible thing right now
9. Hugging a stuffed animal
10. Cleaning my room

Item #10 is not a new good thing, but it just continues to make me feel indescribably happy, so I had to include it.

I think that’s all I’ve got for right now. I need to go ingest some Amoxicillin, eat some toast, and get cracking on some more good things, since I’m feeling much better today.

Self Portrait with Journal

2011-01-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

This is what I look like today.

I am ill. My throat is swollen like two golf balls. Swallowing is painful. I made a fire. I am sitting on the couch, being still.

I got a new journal. Here it is. Here is some proof that I am a verbal processor: I can journal and journal and journal some more and feel like I've got everything figured out, but then I go over to Lisa's house and sit on the couch with a glass of wine, and then out of the blue, all these things come out of my mouth that I didn't even know were needing to come out. And then I realize that all those things that sprung up out of the blue are actually really important things, and then I get the insatiable urge to hug Lisa because she is a wonderful friend, and without people like her, I would be a big wad of gross.

My throat is gross today, but I wanted to document myself because it is the middle of January, and all my grad school applications are done, and it is Friday, and I am not doing anything worth writing about right now.

My new favorite sick day pastime: Supernanny.

My second favorite sick day pastime: Finding things to cry about on the internet. Like when Jo the Supernanny mediates a heart-wrenching conversation between a mother and daughter torn apart by remarriage. Or reading blogs that belong to people I don't know who had a baby with a severe health problem, complete with pictures and videos accompanied by music. Or listening to other people's problems. Other people's problems are not necessarily on the internet, but they belong in the category of "Things That Have Made Me Cry Lately."

There is nothing significant in this blog post. But this is what I look like today.

I Did It

2011-01-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

I applied to eight graduate schools.

It was supposed to be nine graduate schools, but one of them slipped through the cracks. Oh well. Eight is still moderately adequate.

If you see me, feel free to give me a hug.

A Bloggily Duely New Lack of Resolutions

2011-01-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

After a year of silence, me and Bryce have decided to embark upon Blog Duel 2011. Last year, we wrote about Being a Man vs. Being a Woman, and then we wrote about People Whom We Greatly Admire. Then we just stopped dueling.

Today, we are writing about New Year's Resolutions. You can find his first post on this topic here. Typical. I mean, this is what almost every punch line in every comic in the Oregonian has been about for the past two weeks. Resolutions, resolutions, resolutions. Who even cares?

This year, I made zero resolutions. Well, maybe that's not completely true. But before I explain any further, let us take a look at what I resolved to do in the year 2010. Here they are from last year:

1. Be the happiest single person in the entire world.

2. Find and name two small victories that happen each day, and two things that need to change.

3. Make fewer sex jokes.

4. Put God at the center of the wheel.

5. Write about God.

Let me start by saying that I failed epically at every single one of these resolutions. I will say, though, that resolution #4 sort of began to happen, just not in the way I expected, so maybe I'll count it as just half a fail.

Yes, so here I am in January of 2011 without a list of un-plannable expectations sitting in front of me and without any clue as to where I will be at the end of this year or where I even want to be at the end of this year. I haven't a clue. For all I know, I might be swimming across Lake Michigan or drinking salty water from the Atlantic Ocean on December 31st, 2011. It seems pointless to even pretend like I have some sort of plan.

Here is my one resolution for 2011: Don't be a wreck.

I think this resolution is totally doable. I'm feeling great about it. And if I'm allowed to diagnose my own progress over these first eight days of the year, I'd say that I am well on my way to officially NOT being a wreck in 2011. Wow, Jessica! You are amazing!

I just want to be ... stable this year, whatever that is. But I don't think stability necessarily means being boring or predictable or going to bed before midnight or giving random thirty-year-old men in bars the cold shoulder because I just don't flirt with strangers. Nope.

I think it means being an ENFP. Being me. Whatever. I like Meyers-Briggs. I like the fact that I crave the presence of people, that I like to listen and think deeply and be feisty while still trying to be at least a little sensitive to social situations and feel and verbally process and let the future figure itself out. I like that all of these things are fluid and changeable within me, and that with every person I relate to, different pieces of myself are pulled out and polished or put away until later.

Last night, I got into a debate about gender with a random stranger at a dive bar. His name was Jeremiah. He was thirty five, but I think he thought he was twenty-five. He had an eyebrow piercing and a surfer knit cap, and he was currently in the process of writing a paper about masculinity. He had been trying to strike up some sort of weird conversation with me and a friend for, like, twenty minutes, and since I'm sometimes lame, I had been trying to passive aggressively ignore him for as long as possible.

But then he threw the words masculine and feminine into the conversation, and I was suddenly turning around in my seat, staring him square in the face, and giving him the what-for. Suddenly all his booth mates and my friend were snickering and giving us sideways glances, and suddenly, we were all spending the next two hours squished together in a booth, playing Would You Rather and Five Fingers until midnight.

I think that's what I mean. I just want to embrace the fluidity of what it means to be Jessica without giving in to those weird insecure parts of myself that turn me into the biggest shipwreck Portland has ever seen.

How will 2011 be different from 2010? I have no fucking clue. But I am going to listen to the part of me that likes to swear, and hopefully I won't burn any major bridges this year, since I seem to love to do that for some reason.

Ta da.

A Story About My Day at the Ocean

2010-12-29T19:42:00.001-08:00

This is a story about the day I went to the beach. It started out as a normal non-working day: I got up late, shared the bathroom with Karli and got pinched in the bum by Desirae. Then me and Karli procured some cups of coffee and got into her little blue car. We drove to the beach. It was December 29th, 2010.

We both needed this escape to the ocean, to the edge of things, to the place where it is just you and the sand and the great vacancy. Where life feels huge and manageable at the same time. Where the mystery of the ocean makes everything that is confusing and frustrating and hurtful somehow sift its way through the cracks. We both needed to sit in the car and gripe and release and be in the presence of someone else who needed the same thing.

It started to snow before we even got out of Portland. It was like this for a while.

And then it was like this.

And suddenly, we were in Narnia, but we hadn't meant to go there. We were just trying to go to the beach.

I am not a person who cares too much which beach I go to. The Oregon Coast will always be the Oregon Coast, rugged and expansive, cold, gray and volatile; and as long as it is not Seaside, I will be happy. We did not go to Seaside. I felt very happy. I also felt very cold. I put on a sweatshirt under my coat. I have not done that in months and months.

We did horrifyingly illegal things like climb on whale statues labeled with "Please Keep Off" signs. He was such a happy whale, and we made him even happier.

I ran, and the wind pushed at me like it was trying to tell me something, like it wanted my attention. I think I listened.

I can't think of anything that makes me feel freer than running across a barren and windy beach in the middle of winter when the sun is shining and my heart is softer than it's been in a year. Running until my lungs sting.

I can't think of anything that we both needed more than this day.

I don't know what to say about this next picture. Insert your own caption here.

We found an orange rose half buried and flayed by the windy gusts of sand. I'm sure at one point it was someone else's rose, but it felt like a silly serendipitous gift to me from the God of the Ocean and Everything Else that Doesn't Make Sense.

I found a whip made out of seaweed.

Then I took some ocean self-portraits of myself because I feel like I am at a significant place in life at the moment. Everything is meaningful to me, like the rose. Like the seaweed whip. Like the baby seagull I caught a not-very-good picture of. Also, I was wearing three hats/hoods on my head, and I thought this was something worth capturing for future generations.

There was a tear on my face.

I got it on with a sailor. That's why we didn't come home until six pm.

And then we found the most delightful little pub on the Oregon Coast. There was a stone hearth and a fire and lots of tasty local beers, and we sat there in the warmth and ate soup and drank our beer and were quiet together. And we smiled.

Then the sun decided to set for us, and we got out of the car for thirteen seconds to take a picture because it was deathly cold. Then we drove home.

That was my day. It was one of the best. It deserved this long post.

And my new favorite word is goon. Don't be one. It's a bad thing.

Heatless

2010-12-23T12:21:00.000-08:00

This morning, I woke up in a forty-nine degree house. We have been without heat for five days, and this has been an interesting experience for me and Des and Karli. We've had a lot of fires, a lot of cat holding, a lot of space heater usage, and a lot of group sitting-in-the-living-room with the doors sectioned off with blankets.

I don't have much to say about this except that when I left the house this morning, it was warmer outside than in. And now Des and Karli are gone, so it's just me holding down the fort in the cold.

Me and Karli have also undertaken a new musical endeavor. It's called Sing Along Rap. We've gotten quite good at it. So far, we've tackled "Love the Way You Lie," with Eminem and Rihanna, as well as Eminem's "Lose Yourself." I have never met two twenty-five year old white women so gifted at rap as me and Karli. If you'd like to book us for your next wedding, just let us know.

On the wedding note, my oldest friend got married last night, oldest meaning that I have known her longer than any other person who is still my friend who is not my family member. It was nice. Me and Lisa sang a song.

I think that's all I have for today. I just wanted some sympathy because we have no heat. Pity me!

Mastication

2010-12-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

For the past two months, I have felt like a watery pancake sizzling on the griddle, spread thin like an inadequate amount of cream cheese on a bagel. I have felt this way since October 8th, and I have a reasonably reasonable reason. Let me tell you about it.

To continue with the food imagery, there’s been a lot on my plate. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon snack, linner, dinner, and Taco Bell’s fourth meal. Projects and grad school due dates and forty pages of creative writing and indexing assignments and a full-time job that brings me home in the dark. And underneath all that, there are scary questions about God, the possibility of moving across the country alone, and a significantly recent break-up.

Considering all that is currently at stake, I have spent the past month in a remarkably cheerful mood. You might have seen me skipping down a dark street carrying a Christmas tree or speed-walking down crowded Peacock Lane spewing off filthy jokes much louder than was necessary or in good taste. Or maybe I was hanging fake mistletoe from our doorframe, drinking too much whiskey at Lisa’s house, or playing the piano much more frequently than I normally do.

But underneath all that holiday cheer, there are things lurking. Yes, I just chose to use the word things in a very unoriginal manner. There is a lot of undigested food festering down in my dark recesses, and I have been too strapped for time to sit down and properly chew on it, to weigh it on my scale of life experiences and figure out how it all fits into the version of myself that I am currently in the process of reconstructing.

Today is my first day of winter break. Along with the three-year olds, I have been given two weeks of freedom. With the exception of two random days of work, I have two full weeks of life that have been handed to me like a Christmas present to do with as I choose. To be honest, this gift feels completely undeserved considering the lack of blood, sweat, and tears I shed at work, but I’ll take it! Present accepted.

Maybe I’m a little scared of the time and space I’ve been given. Maybe I’ve become attached to this frenzied running and jumping through hoops and taking risks and trying out new things and new people. But this will be so good. I am going to finish my remaining five grad school applications, and I’m going to finish them well. I am going to put them in the mail before the due date. I am going to scribble words in the remaining pages of this ripped and shredded journal and then buy myself a new one and fill the first pages with even more words. I am going to listen to jazz music, watch improvisational comedy, go to a wedding, sing a lot of songs, take a soggy hike up a hill, go to the beach by myself, and attempt to accomplish my New Year’s resolution from last year.

And I’m going to process all my food. Chew my cud. Masticate. Yum.

Things That Matter

2010-12-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

I love this picture. It symbolizes all that is right with my life.

These are the women who know me. They don't know me biblically, but it's close.

This next picture represents all that is becoming right with my life. My house. At Christmas. I took this photo yesterday, standing alone in my dish-filled kitchen and missing my housemates who have changed me more than I can summarize here.

Ah house. How you have affected me. I remember lying in my bed last October on my very first night, wondering what kinds of feelings I would harbor between the four walls of my new bedroom. I really had no idea. I still have no idea about most things, but I think I've grown.

And then there is my blue sweater dress. Thank you, designer who thought to invent the sweater dress. You have done me a great favor.

This probably isn't the best angle for my sweater dress. It looks a little droopy and strange. But in reality, it's my best friend.

And then there is Thor, the miracle cat. If you have an insatiable and dangerous urge to cuddle/spoon/fornicate with someone, just hold Thor on your lap for five minutes, and you'll be good to rejoin society. I am not joking about this.

In conclusion, I haven't blogged in two weeks, and this is what I've got: some people who make my life feel like a life, a living room filled with light and a green sparkly thing, and a person in a sweater dress embracing a miracle cat.

On a different note, I should be receiving an A+ in journaling this season from the God of Diaries, Journals, and Logs. I rule at journaling.

Losing and Finding

2010-11-26T17:36:00.001-08:00

When something big happens in life, I always lose myself for a while. I gather my belongings around my knees and try to hold them as closely as possible: my journals, the look of my own face and body, my relationships with my siblings, my late lonely nights, and then I try to let time pass while everything else goes whirring past. Some of the less-important things in my life will inevitably get lost in this process, and that’s fine; places I used to go a lot, television shows that now feel like a waste of time, music that I had planned to listen to. I feel like a pioneer on the Oregon Trail, dropping things behind me out the back of my covered wagon.

The hardest and most unsettling part of this process, though, is that I feel like I am chasing myself down somewhere. I’ll wake up and feel like Jessica in the biggest sense of the word. I’ll brush my teeth as Jessica, zip up my boots and tromp out the door with my cheerful blue bag, and then suddenly, I’ll turn on my car and forget my name. Not literally. I mean I’ll sit there and suddenly have no concept of who I am and where I’ve come from. I know that I’m going to work just like I do every day, but it just feels different. It feels empty-ish.

But then the radio will come on and the NPR news will give me a radio hug, and I will remember that everything is exactly as it should be right now, that I feel unsettled for a damn good reason, that I am sexy and stylish in my own way, and that there is a cat back at home who loves me very much. I remember that life can only be lived one minute at a time, and right now, in this minute, I am still Jessica even if I don’t feel like it. And then I am fine. No, I am more than fine. I am GREAT! And then I go on to have a moderately fantastic day up until the next moment I lose track of myself.

Right now, at this specific moment in this specific day, I’ve kind of lost track of myself. I’m sure in twelve minutes it’ll turn out that I was just hiding behind the refrigerator. I hope so.

Let's Take a Vote

2010-11-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

The time has come, dear readers, for a vote. Where would YOU like to see Jessica in the fall of 2011? Here is a list with photographs for your decision-making pleasure.

Your input is required.

1. Amherst, Massachusetts.

The town is 27 square miles total. Uma Thurman is from Amherst. If I lived here, I could go to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Doesn't that sound lovely?

2. Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This city lies on both banks of the Mississippi River. Isn't that awesome? If I moved here, I could spend spring break floating down the Mississippi on a raft. The Minneapolis/St. Paul area has the coldest annual mean temperature of any major metropolitan area in the continental United States. It is the third largest theater market in the country after New York City and Chicago. Minneapolis and Seattle are supposedly tied as the most literate cities in the U.S.

3. Providence, Rhode Island.

It is the capital of the enormous state of Rhode Island, and was settled in 1636. Supposedly, Providence has a really chaotic street layout and is in the eighth highest percentage of pedestrian commuters, meaning that lots of people walk everywhere. That sounds nice. It has one of the most active and growing LGBT communities in the Northeast. Has a cool underground music scene.

4. Columbus, Ohio.

Evidently, a very up-and-coming global city. Evidently, one of the nations "best places to raise a family." Get this: in 2010, Columbus was ranked the 2nd manliest city in the U.S. by Sperling's, whatever that is. The Silence of the Lambs was filmed here.

5. Syracuse, New York.

The county seat of Onondaga County, New York! The largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse"!

6. Ann Arbor, Michigan.

You know that a city is not really a city when you type in the words, "Ann Arbor skyline" into Google, and this is what comes up. Population 114,000. Thirty percent of those people are students at the University of Michigan. It's the sixth largest city in Michigan!

7. Iowa City, Iowa.

Population: 67,830. Basically, a corn field. But! The Iowa Writer's Workshop is the home of Flannery O'Connor, T.C. Boyle, and others.

8. West Lafayette, Indiana.

This city is the home of Purdue University. I think that's about the only interesting thing to say about West Lafayette.

9. Seattle, Washington.

Surprise! As of five minutes ago, I have decided to apply to the University of Washington. It is going to be awesome. I am not going to write anything about Seattle, because everyone already knows about it.

My list has dwindled from an original ten schools down to eight and then back up to nine (hurray for the University of Washington!), so take your pick. You will be buying a plane ticket or getting in the car to drive to whichever place I end up, so get excited and vote.

Self Portrait With Wood Floor

2010-11-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

This is what I look like today.

I got a new driver's license in the mail today. In honor of my twenty-fifth birthday.

Yes, nine days ago I turned twenty-five. Remember last year, when I wrote about how I was going to make twenty-four the best year of my life? Well, that year came and went. It was .... significant. And .... good. Yes, it was good. But I also spent most of my twenty-fourth year lost up in my own head, trying to be happy.

This is what I look like today. I am at the cusp of something that I'm a little too scared to think about right now. I won't look like this in four months, or eight months, or a year. My hair will be a different length. I will have different clothes. There will be a different light in my eyes.

I took this picture because I needed to document myself today. Because I'm important.

Look at These Spider Babies!

2010-11-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

At least, I'm assuming they're babies. Or maybe they're just friends. Whatever their relation, these spiders were hanging out on the side of our house next to the driveway. I simultaneously love them and hate them.

Please, little spiders, do not come hang out under my bed like so many of your friends. I promise to enjoy you as long as you stay outside.

Monday, November 1

2010-11-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog,

It's me, Jessica. This is a letter to let you know that I have been writing horrible blog posts lately, and I am embarrassed. I just wanted to say that I have neither forgotten about you nor lost all my creativity and/or intelligence. Please don't hate me.

The reason for my general crappyness is that I am completely overwhelmed with my nine (yes, 9) grad school applications. There are scribbled to-do lists lying all over my bedroom, in my purse, in the pockets of my jeans, in my official foldy folder. Lists about filling in application blanks, emailing professors about letters of recommendation, sending away for transcripts and GRE scores, scanning things into PDF files for uploading, writing personal statements and curriculum vitaes, writing essays of expository prose for teaching fellowships, looking up GPAs, class listings, due dates, and above all else: creating my kick-ass writing sample. Multiply all the above things by nine, and you've got my level of stress.

Due date: December 1st.

I am dying just a little bit. If I make it through all this and come out with even one acceptance out of the nine, I am going to be the happiest and most relieved woman among all women.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I will be back with full attention and creative powers sometime in January. Until then, please think fondly of me and don't judge me too harshly when my posts are incredibly boring and dumb.

I think that's all.

Love,

J. E. Porter

Spokane

2010-10-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

This is what Thor was doing the other day.

Snuggling with Babo the ugly doll.

Me and Lucas went to Spokane. It was cold and windy and rainy, and fall leaves were stuck everywhere. We got to see Megan and Delynn and a dog who licks people's teeth and a baby who explosively poops and spews white vomit onto Delynn.

This weekend, it sunk it with finality that my younger sister is much more photogenic and generally attractive whilst posing than I am. This is a depressing fact that I have been in denial of for quite some time, but I think I'm now ready to embrace it.

Here she is on the left with her friend Emily and a rooster.

Here's me. Yup.

It's okay, though. I'm older and have less hair to wash. Whatever.

Romping

2010-10-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

I am romping to Spokane today, and I am jauntily excited about it.

Romp is one of the greatest words ever invented. It means, "to play or frolic in a lively or boisterous manner." Such a word!

Also, multifarious is a pretty great word. It means, "having many different parts." I just like words. Especially romp, jaunty, and swell.

It is a swell Friday. I don't think I'm sick anymore. That is nice. I had a rough week of feeling terrible, but now I don't feel terrible anymore. I feel moderately adequate.

Romp!

Sick and Happy

2010-10-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

I am home sick today with a fever and a sore throat. Being sick is not my favorite pastime, especially when there is a lot that needs doing, and especially when a beautiful fall day is lurking outside. But! Let me just say that..

Apart from being sick right now, I am ridiculously happy with life. There, I said it. I'm just happy.

Yesterday I came home early and feverish, and Thor curled up with me and massaged my face and hair with his fluffy white paws. He nuzzled me and gave me cat kisses, and it made me quite happy. Then I watched/slept through seven episodes of Family Guy, drank some Powerade, and then Lucas came over to take care of me and feed me Nyquil! What a comforting and happy sight!

Today I have been lying on the couch with Dayquil, water, tea, powerade, and thirty-two ounces of root beer. Yes. And my journal, and my almost-completed index, and Glee, and a book of very difficult crossword puzzles that have clues like, "Norton, to Kramden," and "Rotherham radial". I am sick and happy at the same time. It is nice.

Yes. Sick and happy. And I'm not really feeling that sick anymore, so I guess I'm just happy. It's been a happy September and October. Also, my birthday is coming up in three weeks. I would like to have a fall-ish birthday party at my house for whoever would like to come. Mark your calendars. Saturday, November 6th!

Reasons Why I Like My Job

2010-10-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

1. Small children are hilarious. They say things like, "I stuck my hands down my pants, and then I smelled my fingers, and they smelled like chicken because that is what I ate yesterday."

2. I get to wear whatever I want every single day of the week. I also have the freedom to get tattooed and/or pierced if I want.

3. At six pm, there is no rush hour traffic!

4. As snack lady, I have access to an endless amount of tasty food. Hello breakfast and lunch, english muffins, bagels, fresh fruit, crackers, cheese, and hummus.

5. With health benefits, I have the freedom to get Lyme Disease and live.

6. Forty hours a week

7. Lots and lots of school holidays

8. Nice people who like me

9. I get to spend three hours a day outside. This means I get to experience the changing of the seasons, the sunshine, freedom to lie in the grass and stare at the sky, the fresh air. This means I actually get to wear my coats, scarves, gloves, hats, and boots for more than twenty minutes a day. Hurray!

10. Nap time. It is nap time right now while I write this blog. Child-version Bjork is playing quietly on the stereo. The room is dark. Kids are lying on the floor. I love it. Best time of the day.

Those are the top ten reasons. If I think of more, I will write them later. For now, it is Thursday, and it feels like fall. This is a wonderful, peaceful week. Hurrah.

September, October, Autumn

2010-09-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

It is the last day of September. The sun is shining. My windows are open. I am going running again today. I have a four-day weekend in honor of two Jewish holidays. Delynn is driving down from Spokane today. Lisa is getting married in two days. My brother is turning twenty-seven on Saturday. I just flipped my calendar over a day early.

The month of October is stretched out before me in a chart of empty numbered squares, and the blankness of this coming month is like a gust of life-giving autumnal air. I am excited for October. I think a lot of good things are going to happen this month. Good things are already happening, and I am ready for this season to settle itself down in my living room, in my big green bed, in my fall-loving heart.

Last night, I went out to dinner with a dear old friend. We sat in a noisy pub, me with a red-golden beer on the table in front of me, her with a glass of clear water. We each talked about our Wednesdays, and then moved back from there to August, and from there to the greater scheme of life and everything. I think there is nothing as great as being understood and loved by someone who will always be your friend, someone who loves you because you are you, and not because you just happen to be living life together at the moment. Someone whose heart connects with your heart so readily and willingly that it does not matter what you have done lately or whether you ran away with a truck driver and got pregnant or decided to become a Wiccan.

Friends like that make me feel like Jessica. Autumn also makes me feel like Jessica, as does making art, playing the piano, writing at Albina, and eating Lisa's french fries. I am going to try to do all those things in great quantities this month.

And as for now, I am off for a fifteen-minute run. Hello sculpted legs.

Carrots

2010-09-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

I harvested some carrots this afternoon.

More Photos

2010-09-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Here are more photos. I shall give some narration.

Side note: Everyone should see the film "The Secret of Kells" immediately. It is the most beautiful work of animated art I've ever seen. It made me smile a lot. Watch it please.

Anyway. Here we go. Off to New York City, wherein we meet two cats named "......." and Trixie. Now I can't remember the first cat's name, but she was fluffy and lovable. Trixie was a one-eyed morbidly obese man cat with dandruff. Please admire his beauty below.

Yes. Lucas will sadly not be having children now.

Here is another Central Park picture. We walked the entire length of the park, and it took us about half an hour. We stopped at the boat pond and ate some grub. We sweated a lot.

A delightful pigeon!

Some parts of New York City are actually rather quaint and old timey. This cobblestone street was the outdoor dining area for a pub.

Me and Lucas and Michelle on the Staten Island Ferry. It was free! And we got to admire Lady Liberty!

Now we shall jump from New York City to Madison, Connecticut, home of the oldest stone house in New England, built in 1639. What!

Now Jessica shall look longingly off into the distance in front of the oldest stone house in New England.

It boggles my mind that Lucas is from this place. Madison. A beautiful old beach town full of colonial-style homes and lots of middle-aged white women wearing Gucci.

Cutesy-poo at the Connecticut beach. That's another thing! In New England, you have to pay to go to the beach! What?!

On the east coast, Dunkin Donuts rules the world, literally. I kept a tally going and counted 34 of them.

Crossword puzzles at the New Haven train station.

White sand in Pemaquid, Maine!

Here we see Lucas and Jessica smiling very naturally in the White family bathroom in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where one might find a witty saying in the wallpaper. The saying I found most inspirational was, "Don't tell your friends about your indigestion. 'How are you' is a greeting, not a question!" So true.

A lovely spider at Loon Pond. We tried to get him to eat a cicada, but it didn't work out as well as we hoped.

I caught a fish for the first time in my life! Here I am at Loon Pond, bursting with joy.

I also ate a lobster for the first time in my life. It was delicious, but a little too violent to make a regular habit.

After I ate my lobster, I felt happy as a clam.

There I am in front of the lighthouse. Yup.

That's me.

Lucas! So photogenic.

I felt a little depressed yesterday. Just a little, like I always feel after the presents have been opened on Christmas day.

This trip was a gift, and I am so thankful.

Favorite Photos

2010-09-09T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am home now. I need to write about this trip. It was better than I ever could have hoped for. For now, a picture is worth a thousand words. Interpret them as you will.

I took 248 pictures total. I love them. Here are some of my very favorites:

Lucas in Times Square.

New York from the Staten Island Ferry.

The best picture I've ever taken of Lucas.

Me and Lucas smooching on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Trinity Church.

Central Park.

New England beer! It was definitely not as good as Northwest beer, and it was expensive.

The woods behind the old White family home in Madison, Connecticut. I got a deer tick in my arm here. Todd the Tick. Lucas pulled it out of me at Lenny and Joe's Fish Tale. Don't worry, I don't have Lyme Disease.

Loon Pond in Acton, Maine! The most magical place on vacation.

A happy lady bug on Lucas' face at sunset in Madison.

Trains! Lots of them.

Here is what happened. Lucas buried me in the sand in Maine, and then he was mean and sprinkled chips across my stomach, and then the seagulls swooped down and ate them off of me and I screamed a lot.

The White family and me!

On the rocks at the Pemaquid Lighthouse in Maine.

Pemaquid Lighthouse.

Those are my favorites. I'll write more later.

A Few Photos From Our Trip

2010-08-31T05:47:00.000-07:00

We went to New York City! It was enormous and fantastic. We stayed with our friend Michelle and saw some really tall buildings that made us feel like we had vertigo.

The buildings in lower Manhattan are old and the streets are windy and beautiful. Hello New York! I like you.

We went to wall street.

We went to Time Square, and it was overly crowded with people and advertisements. And I was really really hot and sweaty.

We walked over to Ground Zero and peered through the fence. There was literally nothing there except lots of construction machinery and a building that looked invisible and two-dimensional.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Did you know that the $20 admission fee is merely a suggested donation? We got in for a whopping dollar a piece and saw some truly incredible things including items from King Tut's funeral, lots of Van Gogh paintings, and some samurai armor.

We did lots of other stuff too, but this is all I feel like sharing right now. More to come when I get back!

This morning I woke up on Lucas' youth pastor Ryan's couch in Madison, Connecticut. The cicadas were chirping from the salt marshes in their backyard. Today we are going to the beach. Bye!

The Way It Is Right Now

2010-08-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

I am happy and taken care of. It is 5:51 in the evening, and I get to leave work in twenty minutes. Before I go, here are the happenings:

1. I have one day of work left. One day!

2. Tomorrow I am getting on a plane to New York. With Lucas. That's the best part.

3. As of September 1, 2010, I have health insurance. Yay! This means I am now officially allowed to become ill.

4. I start my new job on September 13th. The timing could not have been more perfect. You may call me Madame Snack Lady or "The Floater." Either one is acceptable. This job is truly a gift from God, and I am thankful.

5. A new index project will be waiting for me on my doorstep when I get back from the east coast. Hello large sum of money.

6. I will probably be able to afford my loan payments this year.

7. Sigh.

I think I'm just amazed by the way God is taking care of me. The last few years have been a struggle for me, and even though I am still not a published author or the editor in chief of a major publishing company, I feel proud right now. I feel cared for.

And after this phase is done, on to the next one!

Reflections on Peace

2010-08-21T19:16:00.000-07:00

I find peace difficult to describe. I began this post by writing a sentence other than the one you just read. It was going to be a sentence about how peace creeps up on a person and makes the world feel wonderful. But then I realized that I actually have no clue what peace really is or how I should go about describing it, and I thought that maybe I should not write about something I don't understand.

So, instead of acting like I grasp the concept of peace, I'm going to reflect on it instead. Here I go.

Peace is sharing the truth with someone. When a person cannot be honest about what lives inside the heart, peace feels elusive.

I feel peaceful when I take pictures of cats, when I sit on the porch looking out at the sky and the night breeze comes to rest in my hair and I touch my thigh to make sure I have not yet lost the disappearing day like a torn ticket in my pocket.

I feel peaceful when I apologize for things that need to be apologized for and when I let myself be vulnerable with people who are not going to hurt me.

Peace is making a big noisy fuss and then a big quiet silence. Sometimes you can't get to the silent part without first making the noisy fuss, and that's okay.

Peace is found in having a perfectly normal day. It is found in having twenty-nine perfectly normal days in a row, or even fifty-one normal days. After that, peace is found in doing something outrageous and then taking a long nap.

The first three letters of peace spell pea. It is a green vegetable. The last three letters spell ace. Ace can mean a number of things including a name for someone who is really good at something, or a verb meaning to do a great job, or the highest card in the deck.

To sum things up, I am feeling peaceful today, and this is a nice thing. If you have any thoughts on peace, please feel free to voice them. Let us all hold hands and sing Kumbaya now.

Ducks

2010-08-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

I think it would be quite wonderful to be a duck. Ducks paddle around in ponds and float about buoyantly on their round bodies, quacking and gobbling up wet pieces of bread and other gross things. They also don't have any arms.

I think ducks are special because they are water birds. They commute across the bridge between sky and water. If a duck fell in love with a fish, they could make it work.

Water is such a quiet thing for ducks; it acts as their couch. Fallen logs are their beds.

Yesterday I visited the Rhododendron Garden, one of my absolute favorite places in Portland. It's free on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and every day after dusk. It is a great place to wander and sit on a romantic bench, to watch the ducks and soak up the sunset.

I did not take these pictures. I forgot my camera. Ducks don't use cameras. They seem to be peaceful creatures. They enjoy following little children who carry bread crumbs. They like to curl their necks back into their wings and shut their double-lidded eyes and rest as the sun goes down.

I am having a moment with ducks right now. Sometimes this happens to me, where I have a rather silly and intense desire to switch bodies with an animal. Today it is ducks. I've wanted to be a whale before, and a horse.

Quack.

My Post Joanna Newsom Sunday

2010-08-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday is peace day. It is a day for going out to breakfast and drinking too many cups of coffee, for kissing and sitting and doing little things that need to be done.

Sunday is progress day, for making headway on projects that feel overwhelming on every day that isn’t Sunday.

Today is Sunday. It is a good day to make a list.

A List of Ten Good Things:
1. I lost 4 pounds.
2. Last night I sat twenty feet away from Joanna Newsom’s sweaty face. We clapped loudly enough to get a second encore.
3. Ten graduate schools made the final cut and earned a permanent place on my MFA applications list. Midwest/East Coast, here I come!
4. I applied for a new full-time job.
5. In honor of Karli’s birthday, I built the inaugural Porch House bonfire.
6. Yesterday I went out to girly tea with the Porter and Almost-Porter women.
7. Megan made me a surprise giraffe cake and left it on my doorstep. Pictures to follow.
8. I have eight pumpkins.
9. I have three digits of money in my savings account for the first time since I lived with my parents.
10. In 19 days, I am getting on a plane.

That is my list. Now that I have felt sufficiently peaceful and made an adequate amount of progress, I can officially declare this to be a successful Sunday.

A haiku for Sunday:
Rapid heartbeat heart
beat skip a beat, hey, it’s me
with too much coffee

I can always tell it is time to stop writing when I resort to talking about how I’ve had too much coffee. Usually that means it is time to move on to other endeavors. Goodbye.

Seven Pumpkins

2010-08-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

There are seven pumpkins growing in my backyard. Being among them in my garden calms me in the same way as does twitching my toes back and forth during church.

My pumpkin plant decided to take over the yard by weaseling in between the carrots and overshadowing the celery, but I've put a stop to the creeping ways of this beast. I took a pair of scissors and chopped the monster up. I whacked away at the leaves and stems that were not carrying a baby pumpkin so that nutrients will not be wasted on barren arms.

What is the point of prickly green pumpkin plant arms that aren't bearing any pumpkins?

I want to bear pumpkins. Not literally. Not from my loins. I want to grow and produce small green things that will grow into large orange things. I don't want to be stagnant.

The largest pumpkins are the ones closest to the source of the plant. I want to bear large pumpkins. I want to abide with the source.

One could interpret this as me saying I want to give birth to fat babies, but really, I'm talking about growth. I want to grow as a person.

I love my pumpkins. I am proud of them, although I didn't do anything to cause them other than plant the starter in the ground and water it a few times. Then I waited and did other things and stopped paying attention, and it grew.

So now I have seven pumpkins. I'll probably have a few more by the time fall rolls around. I'm considering selling them on the street corner.

I need to spend more time alone. As much as I shrivel away from solitude, I need time to lie alone in the warm dirt like a pumpkin and be filled with nutrients. I need to return to the source of Jessica and be reminded that my prickly green limbs are for growing.

If you would like to eat pumpkin seeds or carve a face in a squash this fall, please consider dropping by The Porch House. I hear they have some pretty fantastic pumpkins festering in the yard.

School Drool Golden Rule

2010-07-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

Enough pictures of beans. Let's talk about what I'm doing right now.

I am sitting in the computer lab at Portland State University, illegally typing away on a computer that I probably shouldn't be using, under a login name that is not mine. Call me weird, but I miss this.

I love school, and while I don't lie awake at night lusting after my college Medieval Lit professor or reciting lines of iambic pentameter to myself or cutting every stanza of The Wasteland into the flesh of my arms with a razor blade, I miss being a student. I miss English departments and people who wear awkward hats to class. I miss that fluttery feeling I get in my stomach when someone begins reading a poem I wrote aloud. I miss the challenge of being forced to write consistent and coherent prose, of being held accountable for things I put on paper, of being forced to edit and revisit yesterdays emotive spewings.

For me, school is not about lame classes you are forced to take. It's not about feeling bored and staring at the clock and wanting to kill the next person who raises her hand to share a completely irrelevant story about the one time she was stereotyped for being a woman and how it made her suddenly understand how all black people must feel.

School is about being challenged and inspired by people who are older and smarter than you. At least, that's what I think.

Today I emailed eleven graduate programs for information. It made me feel awesome. Enough about beans. I'm ready for school.

My Garden

2010-07-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

is flourishing! Look at it!

A Breeze

2010-07-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

I honestly do not have anything to write about. Is that acceptable?

No really. I mean, I'm sure I could think of something about how much I love beer and how I like my job and how I went to the beach last weekend and it was wonderful, but I just don't have anything to say about those things. I'm sure I could formulate some thoughts about my uncertain career path and my soon-to-be-disappearing income, but I really don't want to.

Right now, I'd rather let things be just as they are. Let the breeze blow through the house; in from the front door and out through the windows and across my little garden. Let my windows remain open at night until Charles the cat crawls through the blinds at 2 o'clock in the morning and settles his little self on my pillow. I'd rather just let that be.

There are a lot of things in my life that are somewhat uncertain or unplanned or half-way formulated right now. That's fine. They might be that way for a while. I'd like to leave them be for right now.

What's that verse, that Beatles song? For everything there is a season? Yeah, well, I'm not quite sure what season I'm in right now; maybe it's the "time to plant" season. Yes. I think it is.

Anyway, I think that's it. It's a lovely night.

On Vacating

2010-07-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

These days have swept upon me like magic, like a handkerchief sprouting wings and becoming a dove.

My mantra for the past month has been, I need a vacation, I need a vacation, I need a vacation. And suddenly today, I just realized that I am on vacation. Right here in Portland in the middle of my 50 hour work week, I am on vacation.

What I mean is that I am happy. The sun is out. I am surrounded five days a week by boisterous children and jolly quirky college-aged co-workers. Life feels romantic. I spend my evenings lounging at the park on a blanket next to a hot boy or grilling vegetable skewers outside on the lawn with friends. I get eight hours of sleep a night and wake up with a breeze pouring over me in the morning.

What I mean is that I feel refreshed.

Also, I am taking a real vacation at the end of August. It's official now. We have tickets to New York, Boston, and some places in between for 12 days. I could kiss everyone right now.

Vacation. Vacate. Vaca. Vac. Va. V. The countdown has begun.

Shabbat Shalom!

2010-06-25T16:40:00.001-07:00

Today I was named an honorary Jew by Samuel Hedine, our Jewish enrichment specialist. He taught me how to pronounce some Hebrew words. I sang Shabbat prayer songs.

Honorary Jew!

Drums and Plants

2010-06-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

I went to a pow wow yesterday. There were drums and dancing and fry bread and beads and babies and lots of white people selling dream catchers and t-shirts of wolves howling at the moon. I loved the drums the best. And the singing. I couldn’t help myself; I started “bee-bopping” as Lucas calls it, moving my elbows and tapping my feet against the ground like I was part of a bluegrass band. Except nothing could be less bluegrass-y than Native American singing and drumming.

In honor of the drums and the Indians, I now present to you the first two parts of my favorite poem of all time:

Drum as Love, Fear, and Prayer (parts 1 and 2)
By Sherman Alexie

1.
Drums
make everyone feel
like an Indian.

Drums make
everyone feel
like an Indian.

Drums make everyone
feel
like an Indian

Drums make everyone feel
like an Indian.

Drums make everyone feel like
an Indian.

Drums make everyone feel like an Indian.

2.

I have more faith
in drums

than I have in the people
who play them

I told her
and she said God

is a drum.
I have more faith

in a small drum
because I can carry it

everywhere I go
I told her

and she said God
is the smallest drum.

The pow wow made me sad that so much has been lost.

On that note, my church moved to a new building. Today we got in the car and drove to 12th and East Burnside to attend church in an actual church building. Goodbye Franklin High School. Hello newness. Hello biking to church every Sunday.

And my garden is flourishing! Look at it!

Ignore the white lines of slug bait.

Ignore the weeds.

Beans, glorious beans!

A strawberry!

This is a beautiful day. It's Father's Day!

Places

2010-06-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

There are places that make me feel happy, specific places in Portland that hold special meaning for me. When I go to these places, I feel instantly wonderful. Here are some of them:

1. The Albina Press. When I first moved to the Porch House, I walked here at least three times a week. I wrote in my journal. I searched for a sense of belonging and I found it. The baristas here are friendly, the coffee is tasty, and a cup of french press is only $1.00. Art on the walls changes every few weeks or so. They play good music. There are soooo many places to sit, inside, outside, on a couch or at the counter. I sit here alone or with friends and write and think and feel happy and at home. Sometimes, when I am lonely, I come here just to absorb all the really nice people that study here. I don't really talk to them, but just sitting near them fills me with peace.

2. Hopworks Urban Brewery. Even before I moved to the east side, Hopworks was one of my favorite brew pubs. Sooooo many significant conversations in my life have taken place at Hopworks. Their happy hour menu is tasty and full of carbohydrates and oh-so-cheap, and they used to have delicious pizza cheese sticks, but now those are gone. Ah well. Their Pint O' Pretzels is almost as satisfactory. I know one of the waitresses by name. Ashley. There is another waitress I know quite well; she is blonde and really nice, and sometimes she has to work by herself late in the evening when it is busy. I've never asked her name, but I've seen her walking around Portland a couple times. Anyway, when I walk into Hopworks, it feels like home to me.

3. The Cricket Cafe. This place is only open until 2 pm every day. They serve delicious breakfast. My favorite waitress has tattoos that I am envious of. For some reason, the coffee at the Cricket Cafe tastes better to me than coffee anywhere else. I don't quite know why. I go here with Lucas a lot. We sit and talk and do the Willamette Weekly crossword puzzle while we wait for our food. We read our star signs out loud because they are always ridiculous and creepily correspond to our lives. I feed Lucas bites of sausage across the table because I always order more food than I can eat, and he helps me out with it. When it is Sunday afternoon, there is a long waiting list and we sit outside on benches sipping coffee and feeling happy.

4. Gabriel Park. This is a favorite place that is far away now that I live across the river. But when I lived with my parents, this is a place I went to when I needed to write and think and sit in the sunshine and watch people walk their dogs. Now, I go here after work some days when it is sunny and I don't feel like spending any money and need to do some thinking. Gabriel Park makes me feel very Zen. That's my new way of describing how I feel after I sit at one of my favorite places for a while. Zen. I have felt just about every possible emotion at Gabriel Park. Many things have happened there. It's a big park. I have gone sledding on the rolling hills in the winter. I have gotten a tan lying on a blanket in the summer. I have slept under the shady trees. I have walked and jogged the paths. I have climbed the forest-y trees. When I was in junior high, I filmed amateur movies there. I have cried there and laughed there and felt filled with love and friendship. It would be ironic if I got married there. I won't, but that would be very fitting.

There are more favorite places, but right now I only want to write about these four. Buffalo Exchange would probably qualify as a favorite place, but it's just a store, and that's lame. But yesterday I walked to Buffalo Exchange by myself and felt more Zen than I have in a long time. I don't know what it is, but standing in front of a rack of clothes and shuffling through them one by one looking for the cheapest and most attractive garment on the rack has a very positive affect on my life.

Maybe I'm thinking about these favorite places because I'm probably going to move away in a year. Yes. I'll move away and then come back. These are places that make home home, places where I feel the most like Jessica and the least like a limited version of myself.

Portland has great places. Places places places. They are more than just places.; they signify people and events and feelings of the heart. But I love that I belong in these places.

A Clean Moment of Pre-Sleep Quiet

2010-06-10T00:39:00.000-07:00

The past week has been packed full of frenzy. Lucas' parents are here from Massachusetts! Massachusetts is a very difficult word to spell.

I got another spur-of-the-moment index project with just one week to get it done. The book is about using recycled materials like windows, sheet metal, and random found objects as garden hardscape. It's really quite lovely.

Laurel is here from Southern California on her way across the country to Chicago! She's sleeping in my basement as I write this. Her hair is delightfully yellow.

And on top of the above-mentioned things, my boss is on vacation this week, and I have been manning (womaning, actually) the office on my own. Oh yes, and I began training my lovely assistant on Monday. Rhonda. Yes, I have my own assistant. She brought me coffee on her first day, not because I made her, but because she wanted to. It was nice and kind of odd.

I haven't had a second over the past seven days to do anything except eat lots and lots of food with the White family, say hello to Laurel on my way in and out the door, index with the furious fury of one thousand lighting bolts, and take deep breaths whilst trying to handle lots of chaos at work.

Also, Charles the Cat got an infected wound on his tail, and he had to wear a cone for a few days. He looked like a drunken and angry clown. His tail had a stripe shaved out of the center. He was rather unhappy with his situation, but it was humorous to me.

So, that's all I have to write about right now. Portland has been a rain forest lately. I need new clothes. I'm working a lot. My hair is starting to feel too long. I'm ready for an adventure. I want to go to the Rhododendron Garden.

Next week I shall have time to do these things. Next week.

I'll Smash This Book With My Face

2010-06-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

I did it. I followed Lisa's lead and deactivated my facebook account. It was time.

Here are my reasons:

1. Life was never meant to be lived this way, this internet way, where I know too many things about too many people I've never met.

2. Facebook became my emotional crutch. Sad? Look at other people on facebook. Happy? Look at pictures of yourself and your friends on facebook. Jealous? Look at pictures of other people who are prettier and happier and cooler than you on facebook. Want to get married? Look at the wedding albums of strangers you have never met. I don't know why.

3. If I have a blog, I don't need a facebook.

4. I would rather know real things about real people whose lives actually affect me on a daily basis than know how So-and-So's husband bought her a puppy for their anniversary.

5. It's just not worth it for me. The bads outweigh the goods. I'm done. At least for now.

On to better things!

The Next Step

2010-06-01T20:18:00.001-07:00

I had a revelation today. It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally ready. It's going to happen as soon as possible.

I am going to grad school. Yes. Graduate school in the fall of 2011. I am getting my MFA in creative writing.

These past two years were exactly what I needed, but now I need something else. This isn't a career move. It's a life goal of mine. I've been struggling to make ends meet for a while. I've had three different internships and three jobs since moving back to Portland. I've become a freelance indexer. And I just feel restless. I don't feel proud of myself.

I took the GRE two years ago when I originally thought I was going to grad school, but then I got a boyfriend and lots of friends and a new life, and then I didn't want to go away anymore. So I stayed in Portland, and it was wonderful.

But now it's time. I am going. I started looking at schools today. It is happening.