one two three

i drove past mr. t's pizza on sunday. it couldn't have taken more than 3 seconds--but it all seemed like one moment. it didn't seem like a succession of events, but a smooth, swift firework of motions all at once that exploded into a little story. beginning, middle, end, all at the same time--little sparkles hanging in the air to look at for 3 seconds. a moment is 3 seconds, i think. it's just the right amount of time to contain one neat sliver of existence--a sliver that doesn't easily break up into smaller segments of time in one's memory.

see, first i saw a big black dog romping through the parking lot at mr. t's. no place for a dog in a busy area like that.

the car kept moving--i didn't even need to flick my eyes to see a woman near mr. t's window. she stood about two feet away from the building, but she was leaning forward from her hips so that her face was very close to the glass. her back was to me. i saw four white corners framing her ponytailed head: a flyer. my brain said, "maybe that's a 'help wanted' sign? maybe she's looking for a job." i didn't think it in sentence form, because there wasn't time, and because brains don't need to do that. i thought in keywords and just general wordlessness, i think.

just then the woman turned around. she was scrunching her eyebrows together and her chin was warbly--but i could tell that this wasn't a reaction to the bright sun, because the movement of her head unobscured that flyer so that i could read it. i was reading her face and the flyer together. the woman's ponytail slapped against her cheek. "LOST DOG," the paper declared desperately beneath a photo of a big black mutt. the woman's mouth opened and i saw but didn't hear her holler at the dog that was now thirty feet from her.

and then mr. t's was behind me. it wasn't an earth-shattering moment. but hey, then again, maybe it was. if it weren't, why would i have gotten a little shiver down my spine? and maybe that dog is home now!

doing things

some foggy saturdays i think,
"i am going to do a lot of things today,
and my last thoughts before i fall asleep
will be pure admiration of my own productivity."

so today
i sewed a button onto my coat
clipped my toenails
taped up a photo on my desk
rewound some tousled twine
blew my nose 86 times
listened to this song 86 times
ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
had conversations
lined up my shoes in a row under the bed

and decided that i would fall asleep
admiring something other than my own productivity,
like foggy saturdays in general
and the smooth restraint of tidy toenails in particular,
because those things are usually better
than homework anyway,
and also because the notion of "my own productivity"
has not yet made an appearance in reality.

duh!

september

doctrine I, MWF 14:00.
his voice rumbles, or maybe
it purrs
—but not like that.
strongly, lion-like.
when his words dip down
into that golden decibel,
that cavernous, cozy, loud, warm hum,
i feel the polished cover of
the textbook in my lap
vibrate beneath my fingertips,
shivering like a struck bell.

twenty-four freshly-sharpened pencils
(all yellow)
are never too many pencils.

my blue blue backpack is
the heaviest thing.
my red red heart is
all light.

first impression, june 1908, dust jacket preferred but not required

you might not have known this about me, but it's been my secret goal for a while now to walk into the thrift store downtown, beeline toward the bookcase, happen upon a mint condition first edition of anne of green gables, discretely carry it against my stomach to the register, casually place it face-down on the counter for the nice lady to ring up for fifty cents or maybe a dollar tops, and walk out of the place with a pounding heart and a book that i could sell for a thousand dollars but never ever ever would.

right now

thanks to the compact dimensions of my room,

i was able to reach my camera without moving.

as i was sticking some pins into my dress form the other day, i managed to plunk a toe over the edge of my little pin bin and flip it forcefully. i didn't get a single prick--the pins just piled neatly on top of my foot. i let out a single short snort-breath sort of half-chuckle. i have dangerous and inconvenient sewing methods. note the sewing machine...on the floor. i fiddle with that machine lying on my stomach. ridiculous. the floor of my room isn't quite big enough for me to stretch out completely, though--my feet slump awkwardly against the couch behind me. i think that description makes me sound like a giant flailing fish wrestling (limbless) with needles and thread in the middle of a carpet. oh well.

anyway, as i stood there with those pins swarming politely over my toes, i thought about what a singular situation it was. i didn't move for a little bit, appreciating the metallic coolness of those pins on my skin. i wondered what everybody else in the world was doing right then at that very same moment on thursday afternoon. somewhere, somebody was grinning into a mirror to check her teeth for stubborn salad particles. somebody was hollering to his neighbor across the street--was her power out too, or was it just his? somebody was re-buttoning his shirt because he'd done it wrong the first time. somebody was screwing the lid on a peanut butter jar and licking her thumb. somebody was unwrapping a birthday present and trying meticulously not to tear the paper and giving up and plowing through it. somebody was tugging tiny socks onto a baby. but had anybody dumped straight pins on her left foot at the exact same moment i had? i bet. i bet somebody in the world had.

july

july-- that's a pretty word to look at and write and say.

maybe that prettiness comes from the shapes of the letters-- from the low, gentle curve of j, from the smooth inverted arch of u, from the slim confidence of l, from the harsh angle in y softened by that elegant tail. july: a cat lounging on a windowsill.

or maybe it comes from the sound of the word when spoken. it reminds me of eating a perfect grape--not the grape-eating sound, just the feeling--and not the physical feeling, just the feeling.

but i'll tell you what. maybe the prettiness comes from what happens in the middle of that month made up of those four strong, fluid letters. maybe it comes from sitting on my grandmother's wraparound porch in a tiny town in vermont. the local library is glowing fifty yards from where i sit. order of the phoenix and a glass of pink lemonade are hangin' out on the table next to me. it's ten p.m. and this little street is as dark as can be, except for the aisle of warm windows i see when i crane my neck over the edge of the porch. it stretches on and on into the night, the squares of window-light getting smaller and smaller, closer and closer together. i think this road might stretch on forever, circling all the way around the globe and ending up right back at this old porch. there's nowhere else in the world. just this road. old vermont homes with vermont doors and vermont yards with wet green vermont grass, wet green blades that reflect the light from the windows, that reflect the big ol' vermont moon.

p.s. harry potter. i keep trying to read other books and keep coming back to the summer staple.

p.p.s. harry potter. "motion picture event of a generation"? that's so dumb. no wait, that's SO TRUE.

rain sails us in a leafy boat down the street

the innocence mission's new album is called "my room in the trees" and i think you should buy it as soon as you can, or even sooner. (it comes out july 13th, but if you pre-order it, it should find its way to your doorstep in a real jiffy, like mine did.)

i don't seem to have any words to say about the innocence mission. i suppose it's because i love this band so much that i can't be levelheaded enough to avoid slipping into sappiness. and sappiness is the last thing the innocence mission warrants. their songs are much too unassuming, noble, and true for sappiness. see, even that was sort of sappy, wasn't it? words aren't working. well, you and i would be better off listening to the words karen peris sings, anyhow.

how to bring home the big bucks

last night my sunburned fourteen-year-old brother sprawled out on my bedroom floor and coached me for half an hour on how to make more money during the summer. i thought others could benefit from his cornucopia of pecuniary wisdom, so i'm sharing some of it here.

a few of his ideas:

• be a road worker. "they just stand around a hole and eat lunch all day," he said.
• be an englishineer. "make people pay you ten dollars for every grammar mistake you fix on their billboards," he said.
• be a construction worker. i told him it might be a weird job for a girl. "oh," he said.
• invent edible socks. "easier than shirts, because socks are smaller," he said.

get to it, people!

apple summer

and i could tell
what form my dreaming was about to take.
magnified apples appear and disappear,
stem end and blossom end,
and every fleck of russet showing clear.

-robert frost

today i bought eight dollars' worth of apples

and some apple juice

and i wrote you a letter about apples

and i drew small apples with black ink on scrap paper

and i thought about making an apple pie

but i read shakespeare instead.

maybe i'll make that apple pie tonight

while everybody's sleeping

and when i go to sleep i'll dream of apples

and when i wake up i'll eat one

and it will be just as good as my dream!

APPLES:

THE ATTAINABLE DREAM

may 16, well after dinner

a walk around the neighborhood.
dusk. mosquitos.
lights glint blue off the river
that swallows up my apple core,
which i lob feebly, like a girl.
well, i am one of those.
father, brother, sister--
even the big ol' dog--
but not the mama,
because she is in the kitchen
canning chunked chicken
for the impending apocalypse.

jackson pond

top: a strange photo including a corner of the pond,

whose waters, as you can see, are much lovelier than many people think

bottom: the jumping tree and drew belz's high-up hammock

on the night before leaving school for the summer, we go down to jackson pond, like we like to do. we find our way through the woods with flashlights. no, with cell phones, the dim cold light of cell phones, because we have forgotten flashlights. cell phones! i am abashedly aware of the way that my twenty-first centuriness barges into this walden without knocking first. we are tripping over roots and stumps, slipping in sludge. spiderwebs catch on our lips and noses. oh--there is the moon shining softly off the pond! but it's dark dark dark, still. the moon is only bright enough to help distinguish between different degrees of darkness. and there is the bonfire on the other side of the pond, and there is the laughter of friends that tumbles happily over the surface of the water. closer, closer, here are their faces: here are our friends with stories and with guitars and in hammocks and with root beer and all glowing with the light from the fire and from their hearts.

we sit and sit and sit. i put my face in my hands to hide from the smoke that burns my eyes and throat and i smile into my fingers.

suddenly a handful of us are walking back around the pond to the jumping tree. we climb up in the darkness. i tilt my head back and watch the faint silhouettes of four friend-heads as they bob up branches against the blueblack sky. the night hides their mouths and eyes--joy is only patent in the sounds they make, in the yelps and jokes. and then there are four successive splashes that i hear and feel but don't see. i am at the top of the tree now. maybe i am fifteen feet above the water? twenty? i look down but it's the same as looking up, only the water is too churned to reflect the stars.

i leap blindly and hit the water before i expect to. the top layer of the pond is warm and perfect, but beneath that the early-may water bites. so i float on my back with my ears underwater. silence silence silence is in my ears. the sound the pond makes is silence. fish aren't making any noise. the midnight sky is pouring into my eyes. i am not even trying to look and it's just pouring. no clouds at all, just stars and stars. do you know what a star looks like up close? well, the sun is a star and it looks like the most beautiful thing. it looks like this:

and so i suppose the stars above jackson pond look like that too, except i am just a little tiny human cheerio floating very far away in a bowl of jackson-pond-milk, so i can only see them as a numberless collection of bewitching white freckles. and this moment, this moment, this moment. i know it has to end at some point, but for now i'll just float.

literary studies in spring, 1:00-1:50

class outside.
the sun is too bright at last and i'm glad.
i sit on a rock--
head cocked,
left eye shut,
forehead folded,
nose and mouth struggling to switch places.
i think my face is a disorganized picasso version of itself.

dr. tate is backlit.
his face is too near the white sky--
i can't look at it
but i know his eyes are wide.
i know his brows are raised.
sunlight outlines his knees, shins, elbows.
he is glowing a little bit.
he is royal a little bit:
the king of cacophony.
the duke of diction.
gerard manley hopkins reincarnate.
he is "like shining from shook foil."

it hurts my eyes.
i lower them to his shadow:
slightly foreshortened tate-shaped ink
pooling definably at his feet,
ink that climbs the tips of his black shoes
and hides beneath his heels.
his earnest shadow-fingers clutch hopelessly at mulch,
wave over tufts of resolute grass.

"why do men then now not reck his rod?"
his voice has caught the sunlight too.

i think what our student-faces must look like to him.
twenty tense young spring grimaces.

one long question, one short remark

you know how sometimes you're walking to the library
and the sun is shining so brightly
that your face gets all squinty and you bite your lip,
but you're cold and shivering so you suck in a bit of air,
and because you're biting your lip while you're sucking in air,
you accidentally make a half-whistly sound
somewhat like a feeble human birdsong,
and just as that tweet escapes your lips
you trip over a discrepancy in sidewalk uniformity
(partly because your boots are too big
but mostly because you aren't very good at walking),
and then you notice that two people emerging from the library
are looking at you as if you had just--
well, as if you had just done everything i've just written?

i enjoy that moment of silly pathos.

i remember with 5 senses

the days when i was 5
taste like bubbles
(non-toxic, wand inside)

the days when i was 8
look like tempera paint on the back steps
(each brick a different color)

the days when i was 11
smell like mod podge
(satin finish on magazine clippings)

the days when i was 15
feel like grainy cement under the lifeguard stand
(spf 35)

the days when i am 19
sound like pages
(a crush on e.b. white)

about football

i'm an american but i don't know very much about football.

chalice and i spent the last few days of winter freedom being pummeled to and fro by a great deal of football-related entertainment, namely many episodes of friday night lights on netflix (oh dear) and a trip to see the blind side. so much football. so much violence. so much yelling. so much team spirit. so many confusing rules.

"what does it all MEAN?" we asked ourselves.

we tugged our snuggies tighter and pondered the significance of the sport. (i distinctly recall the first time i saw a snuggie commercial on TV. i laughed heartily at the family sitting on bleachers at an autumn sporting event with their brightly-colored sleeve-blankets protruding from the crowd as i imagine a large pikachu or charlie brown parade balloon might do in the middle of a monday evening traffic jam. no more i laugh at the snuggie. no more.)

after a while we figured, "hey, we've been seeing a lot of this nonsense on the screen. maybe we'll pick it up just by watching. after all, we have a patriotic duty to know the facts about this game." but with all the crazy lingo and fast-paced television editing, we couldn't tell left from right.

we made a list of everything we knew about football:
-touchdowns are great
-tackle the fella with the ball

it was a very short list.

"how to play football," we asked everyone's favorite search engine awkwardly in a sort of non-question. it was a slice of a sentence that was entirely unsure of itself, grammatically confused, answerless, yet holding so much promise. those four words were the confident blue plastic lid on the giant footballian tupperware containing all the answers of the great american pastime. all the black and white stripes of the referees' shirts. all the whistles and shoulder pads. all the baseball caps being plucked on and off coaches' heads in muffled frustration. all the yard lines and yellow flags and mouthpieces and coin tosses. it was all there, a melange of sweaty, bruised, helmeted glory, there for us to pop into the google-microwave and dig into thirty seconds later, mulling slowly over each crunchy bite of football knowledge.

i still don't know very much about football. but i know more than i used to know, and things are looking up. someday i will know it all. someday i'll make it to the NFL. hey, i dream big.

you know, i feel a lil' bit more american.

here is autumn

walking beneath bright trees

leaves that are too beautiful

friends that are too beautiful

funny faces

little forest elfs


knitting parties in cozy homes

how to save money at walmart

only buy things that are purple.

p.s. this does not actually save much money, because granola bars and various adhesives are rarely purple and you'll probably need to buy some of those, and you'll probably accidentally end up buying ladybug-shaped pushpins and a nice tin of colored pencils, but purple-themed shopping IS pretty fun.

here i am up on a mountaintop

oh golly. it sure is great.

important fact: my roommate is made out of gold.

here is a silly picture of us with some carter hall room #360 flora:

(the humble green plant, clusia, is apparently capable of reaching a stately stature of over thirty feet. i did not know this when i purchased it for $1.99, but the prospect excites me, however impractical and improbable it may sound when considered in the confines of a room the size of a small canoe.)

my job is to clean things. i have acquired many useful skills that i previously struggled to perform gracefully. you should see with what adeptness i can coil a vacuum cleaner cord these days. you should see how smartly i scrub toilets. i don't mind so much. in the chapel at seven a.m., birds come and sing on the windowsill while i spray and wipe the glass. i can't hear them chirp because the glass is so thick, but i can see their little mouths move sharply. piano and violin strangle each other in a lovely muffled mess, played in side-by-side practice rooms. there is genteel and amusing tension there. i spy on the practice for west side story while i tidy the auditorium. i held a small grudge against a certain group of people who ate powdered donuts in the same spot every day until i realized it was just the ceiling crumbling a little bit and snowing down onto the chairs and carpet.

i have a little collection of apples that i take from meals and forget to eat. they punctuate our room nicely but soon they will get mushy. for now i'll admire their shape and color and continue to forget that they are food. how pleasant and wasteful! oh dear.

pancakes

chalice is home from new york!

to celebrate we made pancakes for breakfast,

but they did not turn out very well.

they looked like this:

but three-dimensional and more arresting to one's sense of smell.

but they really DID look like two-sided feet

because,

for lack of more appropriate cookware,

we fixed 'em on a pan with ridges,

which i suppose was meant for meat.

they also did not taste very great,

but we are blaming that on the 1975 church cookbook recipe,

and not the baking powder mix-up.

the main point is that i am glad that my friend chalice is home for this week so that i could make pancakes with her, however unpancakelike those pancakes might be.

no slugs

last night my family rushed out to the front yard to see a space shuttle. i was confident as i walked through the blackness blindly, barefoot, trusting the brick walkway that's been my friend for so many years that by now it knows not to let any slugs slide under my feet. it's not a good idea to tell someone that i probably won't ever wear the shirt she bought me for christmas, but it's okay if it's my mother because she understands. she wants me to tell her. it's not a good idea to go shoeless down a walkway on a pitch-black summer night, but it's okay if it's my very own walkway, because my walkway understands. it wants my feet to fall upon it heavily and without hesitation. sometimes you can do dangerous things around people and walkways you trust. or maybe this is just foolishness by dint of familiarity, but it seems to work out pretty well.

anyway, we never saw the space shuttle. there were trees and clouds in the way. but we never saw any slugs either, and for that i am glad.

p.s. these days i am 98% certain that my mother would never buy me a shirt i didn't like.