yesyesyes

(here)

green green green

To walk through wall-to-wall veggies - heaven!

(here)

wa-hoah

"I love you, Johnny, but I can't marry you until you've seen the place."

So said my grandmother to my grandfather oh so many years ago.

I spent the weekend traipsing the meadows, woods, and brooks of Colebrook, CT where in 1787 my great (times 3 or 4?) grandfather built the Phelps Inn, a colonial tavern and family home for generations.

It's a magical, enchanting place. Frequented, I'm sure, by my ancestors' passing spirits in the fashion of the inn's guests who came and went centuries ago.

Tacked to the wall inside the bar, alongside the wall of mini liquor bottles (many labels long out of make), still hangs a note my grandmother wrote, decades before my birth.

"I never want any further part of GIN; I'm tired of it. *

(signed) Nancy Phelps Blum

Witnessed: (1) Peri (Mama)

(2) Carrington Phelps (Papa)

(3) J.A. Blum 10/2/45

* This means I don't want any more."

I can't help but romanticize my grandmother (she who attended round table discussions at the Algonquin with Dorothy Parker and Harold Ross, wrote two books on her family history, and built a barn to house her astounding collection of books, yet never attended college) regardless of whatever wonderful imperfections plagued her.

Oh, how the vices of the past gleam and sparkle with class, rich with elegance and mystery, when today we kill ourselves over the tiniest fault.

(Anna emailed me this image, but I found it here.)

years

What Are Years?

By Marianne Moore

What is our innocence,

what is our guilt? All are

naked, none is safe. And whence

is courage: the unanswered question,

the resolute doubt,--

dumbly calling, deafly listening--that

in misfortune, even death,

encourages others

and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He

sees deep and is glad, who

accedes to mortality

and in his imprisonment rises

upon himself as

the sea in a chasm, struggling to be

free and unable to be,

in its surrendering

finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,

behaves. The very bird,

grown taller as he sings, steels

his form straight up. Though he is captive,

his mighty singing

says, satisfaction is a lowly

thing, how pure a thing is joy.

This is mortality,

this is eternity.

Are Years What? (For Marianne Moore)

Mark di Suvero

funny

http://www.patrickmoberg.com/animalpharm

A Month in The Country

"We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever--the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.

But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow."

The last few poignant paragraphs of A Month in The Country by J. L. Carr.

Memory is a funny thing. I think I too often get caught up wondering or worrying about the way I'll look back on things. It's not the future exactly which sways my decisions, but more fear or hope of the way I'll remember myself and my choices and motives...though I suppose that self we leave behind is always an elusive stranger, romantic, mysterious and enchanting.

it would be cool if it were this easy

maybe it is.

(here)

she's the one for me

Last night was Elizabeth Bishop's 100th birthday.

The Poetry Society of America had a fitting celebration in which 20 contemporary poets read their favorite Bishop poems, interspersed with excerpts of her correspondence with her New Yorker editors. It was most beautiful. The packed Cooper Union Great Hall was warmed by her mostly grayed, yet still starry-eyed admirers, each beaming with love, eagerly soaking in Bishop's familiar verses.

I cannot think of more pleasant company, a more deserving tribute, or more captivating words that could have eased my racing, confused mind with such sweet grace. While New York City may not be for me, Elizabeth Bishop will always be. I'm grateful that we, whoever we all are/were/will be, could settle in one great room for one great evening and share in reverence for a woman who affected each of us in some great way.

(here)

peanut butter

thanks, Jamie

"I don't think you necessarily answer these questions by consciously
wrestling with them. I think they weigh on you, and solutions are to
some degree worked out unconsciously." - Louise Gluck

mmmm

from Jamie of course

11

Listen! I will be honest with you,

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,

these are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly

settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an

irresistible call to depart,

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those

who remain behind you,

What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with

passionate kisses of parting,

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands

toward you.

Walt Witman, Leaves of Grass

signs for courage

Matins

You want to know how I spend my time?

I walk the front lawn pretending

to be weeding. You ought to know

I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling

clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact

I'm looking for courage, for some evidence

my life will change, though

it takes forever, checking

each clump for the symbolic

leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already

the leaves turning, always the sick trees

going first, the dying turning

brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform

their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?

As empty now as at the first note.

Or was the point always

to continue without a sign?

Louise Gluck

Beer!

now that I am gone

so they say

Maybe they're right, maybe the grass is always greener on the other side. Or maybe hindsight really is 20-20. Most likely, though, change is just plain confusing, and clinging to fleeting stability and idealized pasts is the brain's way to rationalize self-doubt.

The last few (6 or so) months in LA I was antsy. I'd landed in Los Angeles after college pretty comfortably. I'd come home. Found a job. Built a routine. A life. I was happy. Enough. But there was a persistent sneaking unease that I was letting myself down. A year earlier I had grandiose dreams of traveling the world but there I was, living in my parents house, in the city I grew up, with a daily desk job. Still, I'd made the city my own anew, was doing the exact work I'd wanted, and was surrounded by those I loved.

Alas, I needed to give something else a shot. As much I do so love LA, I was restless, with one foot out the door.

Contrary (hypocritically even?) to what I've always thought I felt about the whole LA vs NY debate...here I am now. New York City. Sure, it's no Tangier or Istanbul or Belem. But it's a whole new place for me. And I'm giving it a shot.

Of course these last 3 weeks have been riddled with confusion, uncertainty, and (surprise) near paralyzing self-doubt...maybe I was right from the start and this city's not for me.

But maybe not. Maybe most important after all....nothing ventured nothing gained?

Some wise encouragement from my mother:

judging people by their books

Npr had a review of Meghan Daum's Believers online with this exert of dialogue:

"Did you take a look at her idiotic books?"

"No," Karla lied.

"It was all 'How to Read Palms' and diet books."

"Well, you don't love someone because of the books they read."

"Don't you?"

I think that's exactly why you love someone? I mean certainly personalities are compatible for all sorts of reasons, but what really excites me about - sparks my curiosity about or affinity for - others are those peeks into their psyche that are subtly hinted at by books more than anything. TV shows must have such mass appeal that you only get broad stroaks about a personality by their choices. I am rather ignorant when it comes to movies...and, well a movie collection is less accessible (important?) than a library.

(The Rijk Museum in Amsterdam (here))

two become one

Neat, right?
(via)

yum

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.” – M. F. K. Fisher

(via)

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love
the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are
written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which
cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And
the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps
you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some
distant day into the answer.

- Rilke

woohoo!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07apples.html?ref=dining

The Apple Trees at Olema

By Robert Hass

They are walking in the woods along the coast

and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon

two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened

every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten

but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire

of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches.

Blue-eyes, poppies, a scattering of lupine

flecked the meadow, and an intricate, leopard-spotted

leaf-green flower whose name they didn't know.

Trout lily, he said; she said, adder's tongue.

She is shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring

of the apple blossoms. He is exultant,

as if some thing he felt were verified,

and looks to her to mirror his response.

If it is afternoon, a thin moon of my own dismay

fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them.

He could be knocking wildly at a closed door

in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss

resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock.

Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh

of appetite in the cold white blossoms

that had startled her. Now they seem tender

and where she was repelled she takes the measure

of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer

has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy

as the tide, going out or coming in, at sunset.

The light catching in the spray that spumes up

on the reef is the color of the lesser finch

they notice now flashing dull gold in the light

above the field. They admire the bird together,

it draws them closer, and they start to walk again.

A small boy wanders corridors of a hotel that way.

Behind one door, a maid. Behind another one, a man

in striped pajamas shaving. He holds the number

of his room close to the center of his mind

gravely and delicately, as if it were the key,

and then he wanders among strangers all he wants.

National Poetry Month

April.

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

my boss just got an iPad

I came across this article in the New York Times today about e-books and the book jacket. I don't know why it's never really crossed my mind, but with the iPad and Kindle and whatever else, we're losing the beauty of a real live book.

I haven't expended much energy thinking about it because, well, I figured I'd just always chose a physical book. My relationship with words on a page is never really going to be in jeopardy.

But (gasp) I forgot about changes rocking the communal aspect of reading. Reading off a uniform electronic tablet eliminates personality, eliminates recognition, eliminates inspiration, eliminates the spread of a good read that's often excited by a quick glance.

I guess we'll see.

(here and here)

Speaking of: http://wellmedicated.com/lists/45-beautifully-designed-book-covers/

My Darling Clementine

Wyatt Earp: Mac, you ever been in love?

Mac: No, I've been a bartender all my life.

oh, if only!

I wish this job still existed: "lector".

I could always just move to Cuba...

(via)

I want to read more.

"Always continue to learn--reading is a great way to intake information--and never think you're the best. You always have something to learn from someone."

- Murs

There are so many books, poems, stories, letters, articles, words to read, and I can't seem to take a moment to make any tiny dent.

"I'm fifty-six and still a Virgo."

- Liz Carpenter

real beauty

(via)

I'd like to move to the country. Live on a farm. Well, not quite a farm. We wouldn't have any livestock, only produce. Keep a couple chickens. Maybe a rooster for good measure. Have a few choice hounds to protect the henhouse. A cat that comes and goes.

Ideally it would be my grandmother's old house in rural Connecticut. Or some reincarnation of that.

The house served as a colonial inn and tavern during the Revolutionary War and onwards. Since then it's survived a couple of fires and the most basic modifications (modern plumbing, etc).

Out back my grandmother built a barn behind the garage. A big, hollow, red-brown wooden barn. A book barn.

Inside were four walls of floor to ceiling bookshelves. The two levels were delineated by a horseshoe balcony along the three walls facing the door. In the center were a few couches and chairs, a wood-burning stove. There was a desk too, a couple of rocking chairs and a bench or two by the windows on the upper floor, and a toilet room under the staircase.

It might be the most wonderful, ideal home imaginable. Nancy Phelps Blum was a phenomenal woman. She was a tiny woman, but she was mighty. Intelligent. Extraordinarily well-read. In the last few years of her life she researched and wrote her entire family history as well as a book chronicling the life of the Phelps Inn. She took full advantage of the abundant nature she surrounded herself in, fighting against paving the dirt roads of Colebrook, supporting the Nature Conservancy and Historical Society, exploring, truly knowing the teeming forests and brooks at her doorsteps, keeping her garden.

If I reflect any of the charming, dynamic facets of her personality by late in my life, I will be sincerely full and pleased with myself.

(here and here)

Touch-and-Go

by Sylvia Plath

Sing praise for statuary:

For those anchored attitudes

And staunch stone eyes that stare

Through lichen-lid and passing bird-foot

At some steadfast mark

Beyond the inconstant green
Gallop and flick of light

In this precarious park

Where vivid children twirl

Like colored tops through time

Nor stop to understand

How all their play is touch-and-go:

But, Go! they cry, and the swing

Arcs up to the tall tree tip;

Go! and the merry-go-round

Hauls them round with it.

And I, like the children, caught

In the mortal active verb,

Let my transient eye break a tear

For each quick, flaring game

Of child, leaf and cloud,

While on this same fugue, unmoved,

Those stonier eyes look,

Safe-socketed in rock.

imagination

Succulents are my favorite plant group. It's pretty fascinating that such a diverse group of lusciously chubby little plants thrive in our arid, desert climate.

I think the texture of their leaves/stems/roots must be what dinasour skin felt like. Sort of leathery, cold, and tough but plump and with a little squish.

Close your eyes and the wrinkles of a dried out and dying aloe vera could just be an aging brontosaurus.

Maybe it's a stretch, but I'm okay with that.

(here) (via)

"Be a first rate version of yourself not a second rate version of someone else."
- Judy Garland

black and white are beautiful together

I used to play dominoes for fun. Mexican train.

There's something satisfying and soothing about numbers. Compounded with the no nonsense grace of basic black and white and the most simple geometry. Just about the most reassuring game there is.

(here)

Atlas

by Lucile Clifton

I am used to the heft of it

sitting against my rib,

used to the ridges of forest,

used to the way my thumb

slips into the sea as I pull

it tight. Something is sweet

in the thick odor of flesh

burning and sweating and bearing young.

I have learned to carry it

the way a poor man learns

to carry everything.

little things

(here)

a little skip for your step

There are a few things I've been wanting to start for a while. I'd like to memorize a poem a day. Well, at least a stanza a day. I came across this article while hopping around poetry blogs, and it resonated with me. There's something so enchanting about the repetition, recitation, and rhythm involved. The poems become yours to shuffle through in your head - roll around your tongue, swish between your cheeks. A channel to the poet across time, space, distance. Like reading aloud, intimacy abounds.

I'd also really like to learn to identify birds, flowers, and trees (all plants for that matter, I suppose). Maybe it's the same sort of inclination. A desire to hold those names and images, delicate scents and feel, in my head, internalized, make them mine without having them physically in my hands.

For the past I don't know how many years, I've had an increasing problem with spoken and written language. Sophomore year of college I learned the vocabulary of semiotics, and reading and discussing Saussure and Irigaray, among others, helped me vocalize that plaguing intangible distrust for the confines of language.

While I'm consistently preoccupied with language's inefficacy and frustrated that natural feelings, meaning, and interaction are trapped by arbitrary words, I can't help but love these classification systems.

I can't explain it, but there's something inexplicably romantic to me about these names. Maybe it's uniting the natural world in my daily discourse. Integrating language, man-made and enforced, with the mysterious and beautiful. Maybe words can't rationalize it.

(here)

somewhere in the black mining hills of dakota

When we drove home from college last May, Amy, AJ, and I decided to take the northern route from St. Louis to Los Angeles. Up through Wisconsin --> Minnesota --> South Dakota --> Wyoming --> Colorado --> Nevada --> California. The geography was stunning. The US has such a diverse wealth of landscapes. Rolling green hills then flat cow-speckled prairies, drastic terra cotta rocks piercing endless cloud spotted skies, people concentrated only in the few and far between cities and towns.

As we were driving through South Dakota, I saw a sign for the Laura Ingalls Wilder house. The trip to her house, something like 90 miles out of the way, was vetoed.... and I've yet to let that grudge go. Not only did her books captivate my childhood, but they defined my girlish confidence and strengthened my sense of self. And I know I'm far from alone.

(here)

I love the shared experience that books provide. An infinite number of people can read the exact same words and have myriad experiences, interpretations, ideas. A single written thought shoots sparks in every direction, incessantly spurring domino reactions (always diverging and intersecting) of discourse, contemplation, understanding, confusion, who knows what else and to what degree.

That's sort of magic to me.

"I think if you buff history you get violence." - Lee Quiñones

(here)

from Jamie

Ways of Talking

by Ha Jin

We used to like talking about grief

Our journals and letters were packed

with losses, complaints, and sorrows.

Even if there was no grief

we wouldn't stop lamenting

as though longing for the charm

of a distressed face.

Then we couldn't help expressing grief

So many things descended without warning:

labor wasted, loves lost, houses gone,

marriages broken, friends estranged,

ambitions worn away by immediate needs.

Words lined up in our throats

for a good whining.

Grief seemed like an endless river--

the only immortal flow of life.

After losing a land and then giving up a tongue,

we stopped talking of grief

Smiles began to brighten our faces.

We laugh a lot, at our own mess.

Things become beautiful,

even hailstones in the strawberry fields.

the key to this girl's heart

Peonies

By Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready

to break my heart

as the sun rises,

as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---

pools of lace,

white and pink ---

and all the day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes

into the curls,

craving the sweet sap,

taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---

and all day

under the shifty wind,

as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,

and tip their fragrance to the air,

and rise,

their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness

gladly and lightly,

and there it is again ---

beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.

Do you love this world?

Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,

and softly,

and exclaiming of their dearness,

fill your arms with the white and pink flowers

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,

their eagerness

to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are

nothing, forever?

(here)

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.
- Don DeLillo

reading aloud is under-appreciated

I'd like to have a book club. Headquartered here:

Or here:

We don't have to dissect or analyze all that much. Mostly take turns reading aloud. People from anywhere or anywhen with anythought will be welcomed and embraced.

(here)

here comes the sun

Rain in LA is lovely.

And always long overdue.

All of our colors are saturated. The sharp blue sky flirts with the dancing greens of the happily quenched leaves, thirsty for so long. Smog, dust blown to bay for a brief respite. The coast is clear for miles.

The sleepy grey green mountains born anew. Flowers awaken, remember how to bloom.

I used to be frustrated in the winter when I lived in St. Louis and miles away my mom or brothers would exalt at any sign of rainfall. "You should be grateful for the sunshine! I'm dying in the cold." I guess I had forgotten the beauty that unfolds in response to each infrequent shower.

(here)

endorphins are real?

For Christmas a couple of years ago my mom tried to make a holiday card by cutting and pasting pictures of her, my brothers, and I into one. While her creative intentions/ideas are usually pretty good, her follow through isn't always there. This time was no different. In the final Frankenstein photo, there were cute little floating heads of her, AJ, and Mike, but the picture she chose for me, who knows her logic, was one taken right after a run. Sweaty, sports bra, frizzed out hair. Honestly, I don't exercise that often, that may be the only existent photo of me after "working out" since I played sports in high school. It's almost as if she had to work to find it. "What? I think you look cute!" Ugh.

Where am I going with this?

This was a pretty rough weekend. I'm not one to talk that much about things that upset me. I sort of dissect and internalize them. I realize that's not the healthiest method and am trying my best to open up to and lean on my friends. That being said, I'm not going to loose my cool at work. Still, its hard to prevent emotional stress from affecting day-to-day behavior. The end of last week, beginning of this one, I was sort of short at work. Did what I needed but invested no more energy than that.

Then, finally, Tuesday morning I went for a long walk along the beach. On the phone Jamie reminded me that, while it's easy to use upsetting events as excuses to vegg out, be lazy, sort of shun taking physical care of yourself, exercise can be a catalyst in pulling you out of a slump.

Shooooot, girl was right. Just going for a quick run these last couple of mornings has given me so much more energy and enthusiasm than I expected. Yeah, none of this is mind blowing, but it's sort of nice to remember. Physical health is so obviously tied to mental health, yet it's pretty easy to forget.

any port in a storm

I've been thinking too much. Because I'm trying my best to logically interpret and understand my thoughts and surroundings, I feel like I've been at a disconnect. All this introspection might be getting in the way of just plain living.

I've been giving myself a little too much credit. Imagining that I have some sort of grasp on what's going on now....perspective....but I realized that verbalizing confusion doesn't mean clarity.

Naturally I'm an observational person, but maybe it's time I take an active approach and start taking some risks.

Easier said than done, but I want to give it more of a shot.

(here)

women in work

In elementary school it was pretty much understood that girls were smarter than boys. Boys were stronger, though, and better at sports. There were exceptions, sure, the boy who could recite the times table back and forth or the tomboy that owned the dodge ball court, but for the most part these were widely accepted facts. Of course, by middle school there was grey area, and in high school the lines had disappeared.

Growing up in a conservative Westchester suburb, the average family was governed by an investment banker father and home-making mother. I'm certain a few moms had jobs, but thinking back I can't remember any of my friends with working mothers or even a female neighbor with a full time job. These dynamics shifted as I got older, yet even still I'm not sure if the change was caused by ever-shifting societal/gender roles or just my family's move to Los Angeles. My own mom didn't pursue a career until later in life, post-divorce and after two of her three kids had left for college.

In school, we're almost aggressively taught that women are as capable as men, but we've also had enough women's history months to know that equal rights have never been a breeze. I'm well aware of the glass ceiling and gross injustices/sexism in even the US workplace; logically, none of that should surprise me.

But, here I am, in "the working world" and, now that it's right in front of my face, it's jarring. I live and work in LA. It doesn't get much more liberal than that. And, while I'm in publishing, we're more tied to the entertainment industry than anything. You would think that if there's a place that inequality in the work place is least pronounced, it'd be here.

Still, my company, which is around 30 people, employs nearly all men. The CEO is a man. The CFO. The VP Sales. The Executive VP. All the creative guys. Everyone with any authority is a man.

My boss is very well connected in entertainment. As his assistant, I hear all the calls he makes and have come to recognize the names of the various high powered lawyers, executives, etcs with which he interacts. They're all men. Save maybe one or two. The only woman that comes immediately to mind has a very high powered husband.

As a young woman, you're always somewhat aware that it's "a man's world." But I assumed as a well-educated, capable, and motivated person, that it wouldn't actually matter. They say that, sure, but, I can do anything, right? Well, I've become abruptly aware that "they" were right. I don't think I'm meek, but I'm not all that forceful or combative either. How do you balance being a respectful, thoughtful girl in an abrasive, innately chauvinistic environment? I'm still working on figuring that out.

clearly I like poetry

Facing west from California's shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,

the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;

For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,

From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,

Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

Walt Whitman, Facing West from California's Shores

(via Anna)

questions persist no matter where you go

Maybe I should have been brave enough to go abroad like I had planned/imagined/hoped. Or maybe not.

Questions of Travel

By Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams

hurry too rapidly down to the sea,

and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops

makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,

--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,

aren't waterfalls yet,

in a quick age or so, as ages go here,

they probably will be.

But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,

the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,

slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

Where should we be today?

Is is right to be watching strangers in a play

in this strangest of theatres?

What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life

in our bodies, we are determined to rush

to see the sun the other way around?

The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?

To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,

inexplicable and impenetrable,

at any view,

instantly seen and always, always delightful?

Oh, must we dream or dreams

and have them, too?

And have we room

for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity

not to have seen the trees along this road,

really exaggerated in their beauty,

not to have seen them gesturing

like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.

--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard

the sad, two-noted, wooden tune

of disparate wooden clogs

carelessly clacking over

a grease-stained filling-station floor.

(In another country the clogs would all be tested.

Each pair there would have identical pitch.)

--A pity not to have heard

the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird

who sings above the broken gasoline pump

in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:

three towers, five silver crosses.

--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,

blurr'dly and inconclusively,

on what connection can exist for centuries

between the crudest wooden footwear

and, careful and finicky,

the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.

--And never to have had to listen to rain

so much like politicians' speeches:

two hours of unrelenting oratory

and then a sudden golden silence

in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come

to imagined places, not just stay at home?

Or could Pascal have been not entirely right

about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:

the choice is never wide and never free.

And here, or there...No. Should we have stayed at home,

wherever that may be?"

people surprise me

"To be a part, that is fulfillment for us: to be integrated with our solitude into a state that can be shared." Rainer Maria Rilke

This confounding dislocation has some pretty pleasant side effects. It's incredibly uniting.

Because we're all in such a funny state of flux and uncertainty, it seems people are uncharacteristically open...to knew things, places, people, ideas. It's refreshing.

I ran into a kid from my high school at a club this weekend. I'm not sure I ever had a conversation with him in high school, but I was thrilled to see a familiar face. We spoke briefly but with ease and enthusiasm, and I left super excited. It's a little peculiar that such a slight interaction made me so happy, but lately I've been animated by a lot of similarly insignificant exchanges.

It's the same with new friends. There's a nice little group of kids from Wash U in LA right now, and everyone continues to sort of come together and meld friends and acquaintances from all over. Maybe it's because we're all on loose ground right now, so judgement falls by the wayside. We're all candid with our insecurities and empathetic to each other's states. That makes this is a pretty unique spot in life, and I'm not sure when or if it'll ever happen again.

We're all at the bottom really, trying to figure out where we're going, why, and with whom. But it's not a competitive latter climb. In a few years egos will set in again and divisions will form or reform. It's probably impossible to prevent, so I guess I can try to just take it for what it is and be happy for now.

ny vs. la

Pretty much all of my friends from college are from New York. New York City. Manhattan.

Yeah, that's an exaggeration, but it sure felt like that. After freshman year there was even a pretty popular facebook group entitled "No, you effing ignoramous, Washington University is in New York"....a play on the pain that it is to endlessly have to explain that our college, despite its name and apparently common logic, is in St. Louis, yeah, Missouri.

And, whatever, I'm all for "The City", I've never had any steadfast LA pride. To be fair, I was born in New York. I didn't move to the west coast until I was 11. Nevertheless, the memory-laden, identity-forming, experience-heavy, adult(?)-half of my life has been in Los Angeles. There are remnants of my roots, sure - my Dad and brother ingrained a sort of default loyalty to the Yankees, Giants, Knicks, and Rangers.....but I'm pretty sure that's the height of it.

I've never been one to argue the virtues of LA though, either. I was pretty bummed as a kid to move here. With some time I got used to it, learned to love it even. But I was sure I wasn't going to be here for any sort of long haul. I needed to go to college far enough away that I'd be guaranteed a little snow and a reprieve from the saturating superficial. After college? I had no answers to any what/where/when, only that come May '09, I didn't want to be back in LA. I needed a change. I didn't think this city would stimulate me any more. Alas, here I am.

And it only continues to grow on me.

But I'm not about to fight you over it.

New Yorkers, though, their hometown pride borders on aggressive. Two of my buddies visited me one summer and spent half the time they were here making comparisons. Enlightening me as to why NY is that much better than LA. Where's the city? We have to get in the car again? Everything moves so slowly. In New York we'd never have to wait this long. Why can't anyone here make a decision?

I can understand that for those who've lived in a typical city all their lives, LA is a hard thing to wrap your mind around. The concept of a city that stretches as far as you can see, composed of various isolated commercial city centers, however many suburban areas, and who

knows what else in between, is pretty wild for someone used to a 22 mile condensed urban island.

Maybe that's where my problem is. In my experience, Los Angelenos are pretty relaxed. Perhaps to a fault, I don't really know. I listened to those guys complain for two days without much in the way of defense. I spoke my mind, but I'm not going to stress about showing them better or worse. In the end, their intense, antagonistic need to convince me of my err in judgement only proved my suspicions. It's an attitude that's hard for me to wrap my mind around.

My theory is: it's such a crowded, bustling, fast-paced city where people are constantly on top of one another that people are fiercely defensive of that little personal space they have. That leaves people more guarded than polite and more abrasive then friendly. In LA, we are all about spreading out. We spend hours alone in our cars, our individual little space bubbles. Maybe we're starved for personal interaction, resulting in fake warmth and forced sociability.

I'm sure that's too extreme, but it makes a little sense to me. I don't know which is right or wrong, and why does it matter? Probably doesn't.

I guess I'm trying to justify still being in LA 9 months after graduation. I have to rationalize it every now and then, because why should I be confident about any decision I've made since college?

photos by Alwyn Loh

The Departure of the Prodigal Son

Rainer Maria Rilke

Now to go away from all this tangledness

that is part of us and yet not ours,

that like the water in old wells

reflects us trembling and ruins the image;

from all this, which as if with thorns

still clings to us--to go away,

and on this and this, so near at hand,

which almost from the first you ceased to see

(they were so common, so undemanding),

suddenly to gaze: tenderly, full of amends,

as if in a beginning and from up close:

and to see at last how without least malice,

how over everyone indifferently the hurt descends

that filled childhood to the brim--:

and then still to go, hand leaving hand,

as if you were tearing open a new-healed wound,

and to go away: where? Into certainty,

far into some unrelated warm land

that behind all action keeps its distance

like a backdrop--garden or wall;

and to go away: why? From urge, from instinct,

from impatience, from dark expectation,

from not understanding and not being understood:

To take all this upon yourself and in vain

perhaps let fall things firmly held,

in order to die alone, not knowing why--

Is this how new life begins?

how did we get here?

As I left for work this morning, I called to my brother Mike, back in LA for winter break, "I'm off to schoo-- ugh, if only I were still in school." He scoffed and barked something along the lines of "school sucks" or "yeah, right."

After who knows how many years of formal education, here I am...in limbo. Back in LA. Back at home. Waiting for....what? Life after college is the great unknown.

As a kid, teen, young adult...whatever label at whatever point, you imagine that understanding just hits you once you begin your "real life." Life is a progression of stages, vaguely defined by where you are in school....grade school, middle school, high school, college, then ??....and more specifically, you (or I do at least) categorize memory by year...6th grade was all fun and games, 10th grade there was self-discovery and junior year of college were all of those adventures abroad. Now that I've lost the parameters by which I measure my life, am I just floating somewhere in space? That void between events? What happens now? I guess I move out of my mom's house. Do I start to measure my life by decades, or those big obscure milestones - work? marriage? children? retirement?

I'm confused, nostalgic (on the road to that old loopy bag lady living in the dreams of long passed youth?), excited (I'm on the precipice of something big, right?), impatient, anxious, underwhelmed and overwhelmed....but there's one thing that's become abundantly clear?

I'm definitely not alone.

All of my friends feel like they're swimming in circles, my brother, a couple years ahead of me, struggles to get his bearings, even those who appear on a linear path towards their dream of success have untold cracks in those straight-laced seams.

So, I figured, might as well chronicle whatever diluted road I'm taking and perhaps some sort of clarity will follow. It's worth a shot.

Oh, and some apt wisdom from a friend:

Sitting here in limbo

But I know it won't be long

Sitting here in limbo

Like a bird without a song

Well, they're

Putting up resistance

But i know that my faith

Will lead me on

Sitting here in limbo

Waiting for the dice to roll

Sitting here in limbo

Got some time to search my soul

Well, they're

putting up resistance

But I know that my faith

Will lead me on

I don't know where life will lead me

But I know where I've been

I can't say what life will show me

But I know what I've seen

Tried my hand

At love and friendship

But all that is passed and gone

This little boy is moving on

Sitting here in limbo

Waiting for the tide to flow

Sitting here in limbo

knowing that I have to go

Sitting in Limbo

Jimmy Cliff