Some Things I Love

1. I love God. I love the way [They] decorate this land every spring and then make it barren every winter. The older I get, the more I appreciate the beauty of this land. I want to capture every single beautiful thing and share it with others. Every morning when it’s light out on my way to teach school, I stop and take a picture of these two trees. This morning was particularly wonderful.
   

   A few sunspots, but a beautiful sky.

2. I love my partner. Even when I am grumpy and don’t want to hear her singing in the morning before 9AM, she can still make me smile by making fun of my grumpy, pouty face. She’s beautiful, and I am so blessed. The past few weeks, since she finished school, have been a blessing. We’ve been able to reconnect in very meaningful ways. Walking at the Mounds every Sunday is one thing we love and one thing we share. Those walks have reconnected our souls.
   

   Aren't we cute?

3. I love my family. We are pretty zany, and sometimes we are a little out of touch with the rest of the world, but we rock nonetheless. My parents are getting older, but they still want to do fun stuff with my brother and me. This summer we are going to the minor league home run derby and all-star game in Buffalo, to Gettysburg, and to Hershey, Pennsylvania. My little brother is one of my best friends, and he takes me to eat oysters, which are also some things I now love.
   

   My little bro.

4. I love art, every type of fine art: drawing, painting, writing, 3-d design, graphic design, photography, theater, music, and all those I haven’t listed. Sometimes I even love bad art, because I think about it as someone trying to say something about this human condition. Good art just makes my heart sing. Good art makes the viewer feel more beautiful, more conflicted, more empowered, more enlightened, more spiritual, more angry, more depressed, more loved simply by being in proximity to it. Sometimes I feel as if I can reach through the art (in whatever form) and touch or feel what the artist was feeling.
   

   Sculpture in Front of Minnetrista

5. I love coffee and tea, but coffee more.
   

   Greek Coffee at The Artist Cafe in Chicago

6. I love my bicycle. I actually love any sports equipment that allows me to move my body. I love my Vibram Five Fingers, my kayak, my basketball, my disc golf discs, my bathing suit, and all of the other things that help me play outside during any season. This is the one of two areas of my life in which I am a little self-indulgent. I own way too much sports equipment.
   

   Zbornak the Bicycle

7. The other area of self-indulgence in my life is food. I love food: the way it looks, the way it smells, the ways it tastes, the way it feels in my mouth. I love experimenting with tried and true recipes, making up my own recipes, and just eating food in its natural state. Really, two things make my heart sing: food and exercise.
   

   Bison Steaks

8. For the purposes of this post, the last thing I love hearkens back to my childhood when I’d sit in my little red wagon on the way to the library watching the trains and waving to the caboosers and engineers. I love trains, and all things railroad. Watching trains roll by fantasizing about hopping on and riding until they stop, walking on the tracks or rails, lying on the ties on the trestle over the river looking down between them smelling the river water roll by. I look down the tracks and think about how blessed I am and how my life is coming into what I’ve always wanted it to be.

Lent Day 16: Do the Best You Can Where You Are

We are all complicit in the world in which we live. Unless we live completely off the grid, self-sustaining, and 100% independent of anyone else, we are complicit in what US culture (or global culture for that matter) has become. Wealth is made on the backs of the poorest and neediest. We criticize even those who try to make a difference. Perhaps because they aren’t making a big enough difference in our opinions. Or maybe they aren’t making the right difference in the right way.

What I learned in a succession of strange and serendipitous interactions today is that we each have to do the best we can to live our lives in a way that we can live with the choices we make, in a way that we can live with ourselves, in a way that we can look at ourselves in the mirror and not feel ashamed.

For some people, that way of living may be completely and totally morally reprehensible to someone else. For example, my Starbucks habit may make Fair Trade only coffee drinkers cringe. Someone else’s insistence on wearing Nike (or insert other brand) tennis shoes may perk up my sensors for labor abuse. People may look at my Mac and curse my choices, and I may see their copy of The Purpose Driven Life and question were those profits are going. Each of us has a commodity-related Achilles heel. Each of us has a love (or necessity) that is bound up in immoral and unethical practices.

But, if each us will do his or her little part to make the world a more ethical place, instead of continually judging each other for what we’re not doing, then we will see much ethical and moral growth. With each person making small strides, together we’re making great strides, right? I realize this is a little more pie-in-the-sky hopeful and optimistic—and even quite a bit cheesier, possibly a bit preachier—than my usual posts, but we have to start somewhere. If we start somewhere, it’s better than simply sitting around finger pointing, right? Right?

Now I’m respectfully stepping off the soap box.

*

A good portion of the beauty of today (and every day) was in simplicity.

A Twin-Yolked Egg and Yummy Bacon

Little Purple Spring Flowers Growing Up Among the Brown Leaves

A Bridge I Walk Past Every Day, But It Looked Especially Artistic Today

Cod Fish Stir Fry

A Man Fishing, But I Am Not Sure He Caught Anything

Kayaking the White River: Looking at the Ball Mansions

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”—Toni Morrison in Rita Dove’s Grace Notes

I, too, always feel as if I am trying to get back to where I was. In a way, we are all trying to get back to where we were.

Lent Day 9: Insomnia and Catharsis

I haven’t had insomnia this badly since I was in college. For this week, I am averaging about three good hours of sleep. At least, unlike college, I am not so jittery I can’t stay horizontal, so I am rested, but not well-rested.Our hotel situation worked out strangely, in that many of the AWP Conference goers received king-size beds instead of two double beds for groups of three adult-size people. I refuse to sleep in a king-size bed with two friends, no matter how close they are, so I volunteered to sleep on the floor. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor, but it isn’t as conducive to good sleep as I would like.

Tonight’s keynote address is with Margaret Atwood, the author of one of my favorite books, Oryx and Crake, and another book I have found becoming frighteningly realistic, The Handmaid’s Tale. After her address, several of us are going to go out for a bit. My plan is to exhaust myself and have a couple of nice hard ciders, so that I will be sure to get some sleep tonight. I also plan to run in the morning. I haven’t been exercising much the past couple of weeks, and I think the extra energy I’m not spending may be contributing to my insomnia. We’ll see.

*

Chicago is a spiritual meditation. Chicago is cathartic.

Stop Here to Get Chocolate-Covered Gummi Bears

Don't Forget to Exit I-90 Before This Toll Booth

Expect a Beautiful View of the Lake

Bring Plenty of Supplies

Eat at Lou Malnati's on State Street

Eat at Trendy Cafes

Consume the All American Breakfast of Sausage, Eggs, and Hash Browns

Wash It Down With My First Greek Coffee

Don't Swirl Well Enough

Watch A Worker-Artist Clean A Goddess

Watch Him Work Some More

Make Black & White Photos During a Session in a Ballroom

Revel in Beauty Whenever & Wherever She Shows Her Face

Hope and pray and wish and dream that I can sleep tonight.

Gauges. Buddhism. Holy Friday. Running.

As I put on my headphones and feel the little puckered holes in my earlobes, I realize I still haven’t put my plugs back into my ears. In a mirror, the holes look like the mouths of hungry children, opening for food. They are rounded, soft, and raw, but almost quiver at the thought of being refilled, as if they’ll burst at too much food. I touch the little mouths again and send up a quick prayer for those same children who have no food, and I think about the large discrepancy between their hunger for food and my comparing my piercings to their pain. It’s a bad metaphor, but I keep it. Then I contemplate how I will manage to get my 1/2″ gauges back through the tight lobes that have returned, over the past three days, to smaller openings. This struggle is waged every other month or so when I take the plugs out of my ears to give them some breathing room. Inevitably, I forget to put them back in, in a timely fashion. Then, when I put them back in, my lobes are sore for a couple of days. As the pain subsides, I forget about the mouths and their hunger. I turn away from thinking about suffering. I move forward, leaving concern behind.

*

Today is Earth Day. Starbucks is giving away free drip coffee if you bring in your own mug. It’s nice.

*

During Lent, I have nearly read four books about spirituality. Along with almost daily readings in the Bible, I have completed The Joy of Living (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche) and An Altar in the World (Barbara Brown Taylor), and I am halfway through Rebel Buddha (Dzogchen Ponlop) and Love Wins (Rob Bell). Reading these four books together, has made me more of a heretic than I already was before Lent. I’m not a dense person, but I just don’t see how Buddhism and Christianity are incompatible teachings, as so many of my more conservative friends seem to need to persuade me to think. I suppose if you adhere in a fundamentalist fashion to either spirituality, you’d not be able to reconcile them. However, if you look past the literal, the overarching message of the two spiritualities is one of love and compassion, in which the believers, celebrants seek to leave a lasting impact of positivity and non-suffering on our world. I have a hard time seeing how these two do not work together. Prayer bleeds into meditation, daily professions faith bleeds into daily practice of compassion, enlightenment bleeds into sanctification, and the eightfold path bleeds into the Sermon on the Mount and the two most important commandments. I think both religions would agree that you should increase love and compassion, while decreasing worldly attachments. I feel no conviction that they are not compatible, as hard as some of my friends try.

*

Today is also Holy Friday. I am not going to church. Instead, I am going to watch the youngest pseudo-stepchild perform in the play, King Lear. I am immersed in Shakespeare. First, my students have been reading Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream. And now King Leer. This is an excellent way for me to celebrate Holy Friday. I need something to take my mind off of the fact that Jesus is dying today. Sometimes I get so bogged down in the holy mysteries, I can’t see outside them into the beauty of the world. And, I suppose that is how it should go. At this point in the Christian calendar, I should be consumed by grief, and I should be contemplative about the fact that in whatever way, I did this to Jesus. It’s good, though, that we will be taking in a show instead of participating in a Good Friday service. I need the distraction. I need make believe.

*

May 7 is the Indy-Mini. Am I ready? No. Absolutely not. I think I may just run the first six miles and then leisurely walk the last seven. We’ll see.

Quite An Excellent Day With Amy and At Church.

Today I met Amy at the worst Starbucks in the Midwest. If you are ever traveling across I-70, never, I mean never, stop a the Starbucks in Richmond, Indiana just off of I-70 on US-40. You’ll wait forever, and your coffee will be substandard. I have to admit, though, that today my Americano was tasty, and Amy’s cappuccino actually looked like a cappuccino. Well, at least it did until she put in the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg and made the top part of the foam all pocked and strange. The Mexican restaurant on that exit is delicious and it’s where we usually have lunch or dinner when we meet. Next time, we’re meeting in Indy at Peppy Grill, so there’ll be a bite more to do than walk around the tiny mall and hang out at Starbucks. It’d be sweet if Becs would come along, too, so we can all hang out together for a change.

Amy and I had one of the best times we’ve had recently, in my opinion. Lots of honest conversation. Lots of laughing about stupid things. And shopping at Goodwill on 99 cent Sunday. We didn’t find anything worthwhile, although I did have to restrain myself from buying (count them) three different White Trash Nativity Scenes.I already have around 40 of them in my collection, one of which is missing its Baby Jesus, because the cats just keep stealing him, manger and all, and hiding him somewhere. It’s sad, really, the way Mary and Joseph continue to sit there staring at a place where Baby Jesus should be. All the while he is probably in the duct work, or in the basement, or inside of one of the couches. Who knows? But they remain vigilant in their never-ending pose of parental adoration. Sad. The other excellent part of the day today was that Matt, our preacher at Commonway, spoke about the book of Lamentations in the message this morning. He talked about how we need to stop looking back on our lives, wishing for the “good old days.” Instead we need to plant ourselves in our realities and spread roots. We need to be hopeful within the situations we find ourselves in. In other words, we need to stop wishing to be in other places in other times, and we need to ground ourselves where we are. At first I was a little resistant to the message, but then I realized that was probably because he was talking to me in a lot of ways. And using my favorite book of the Bible to do it. Good stuff.

Sleeping and Waking. Injuring and Running. All in a days work.

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.—Marguerite Young

I wish I was this motivated.

I should be. There is no reason I am not.

But, I am not.

So, instead, I teach from 8AM to 3PM—or 4 or 5 if I have a meeting—everyday, coming home to walk dogs, eat dinner, grade, then couch. Instead of writing, I fondle the remote control, waiting for some titillating piece of cinematic prowess to stimulate my mind into wanting to write or read or do anything productive. What I do instead of doing anything remotely academic or intellectual is I fall asleep watching Jeopardy before 8PM. Then I get up at  an ungodly hour in the morning to grade or to read or to plan my day. It’s sad, really.

I thought this weekend would be different. I thought I had a no-fail plan for catching up on all those things I should have done during the weekends when I was otherwise engaged, be my engagement in conferences or traveling or whatnot (side note: I cannot believe whatnot is in the computer dictionary, and that there is no little red line telling me it’s spelled wrong or not really a word.). I thought this would be the work weekend to end all work weekends, but my neighbors and their dog had another plan.

As I slept peacefully on the couch downstairs where I had fallen asleep watching Bones, I heard a loud commotion outside. I discovered that much like every other weekend since they moved in, my neighbors were having a drunken conversation on their front porch. This conversation was taking place in that I’m-trying-to-be-quiet-but-since-I’m-drunk-I’m-really-being-louder-than-usual radio newscaster’s voice. All monotone and spacey.

They were talking about the beers they were drinking; at least they’re drunken beer snobs, so I get to hear all about different, good beeers, instead of then pontificating about the ins-and-outs of beer pong or Asshole. At any rate, the dog must have had to go pee, because they let her out. Normally, she stays in their yard, does her business, and then goes back inside. But, I am sure, since she’s a smart dog, that she recognized the fortuitous twist of fate, the fact that they were so drunk they didn’t realize they hadn’t put her back in the house, and decided to come over into our yard for a bit. Which wouldn’t have been a bad idea if she would have simply stayed quiet and in the front yard.

However, she decided that it might be nice to go to the back and start snooping around, sniffing by the garage door, and nosing around in our back yard. This one, seemingly miniscule, action resulted in my being up from around 115AM when they awakened me with their revelry until about 5AM when they finally got their dog back in the house, and I finally calmed mine down for the third time. Yes, there were three cycles of Jane (their dog) barking and carrying on, which incited Sydney, who got Celie all riled up, who then got Lily all howly, and then I would come thumping down the stairs to quiet them down. On round number two, I took our dogs outside to pee so they could see that it was just Jane who was in their space. They didn’t really care. They didn’t want anyone in their space at 2AM.

Finally, after this second round, after I startled one of the neighbors while he was peeing in a bush, and after he decided to get Jane into the house, I stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch until the third round of barking which must have been inadvertently stimulated by a squirrel or something in the backyard. Once those dogs get wacky, there’s almost no calming them down! I fell asleep watching Criminal Minds around 5AM. I should have used the time to write or read, but as per usual, I couched and remoted. I woke up about an hour-and-a-half later and went back upstairs to bed. I got up at 815ishAM. Needless to say, I am worthless today, so I am going to try to read the rest of the books I need to read. It’s about all I’m good for.

*

I finally went to the doctor for my ankle, and I have to wear heel cups, do stretches, and massage it with ice frozen in Dixie cups. I am going to start running again on Tuesday, but I have decided to move my runs to the afternoon, just when I get home from school and after I walk the dogs. I am going to start at the very beginning, so I don’t re-injure my ankle. My hope in running in the evening is that I will be able to run out the stress of the day and run in some energy to read and write for the evening. I figure if I can get to the point where I can get home, walk the dogs, and run by 530PM, I will have an hour for a nap/leisure time before Bec gets home. (I may have to reverse the order of the nap and the run.) Then, I will be more energized. Also, I am going to try to avoid the TV and the Internet between 630PM and 930PM or 10PM. Maybe this will help me get more focused as well.

One thing I will also have to work on is the way I eat. I have been eating like crap lately: lots of cookies, candy, animal products, and soda. I am not sure why I do this to myself, because I feel much healthier when I don’t eat these things. I love grape soda, so I am not sure I want to cut it completely, and a couple of Oreos won’t hurt either. I just need to stop eating ten or twelve Oreos and a couple of sodas each day. On top of regular food! It’s silly, really. And, I will need to stop the caffeine intake, too. No more Americanos that aren’t decaf.

Not only will I need to change what I eat, but when I eat. Seemingly, it would work better to eat more for an early breakfast when I first get up , hopefully by 430 each morning. Then by eating more for lunch, too, I will be able to run five hours later and skip dinner, having popcorn and an apple for a light snack before bed.

*

So here I go again setting goals I may not keep. The goal date for the following is July 22, 2011, my birthday:

1. Finish a marathon.
2. Stop shaving my head. Let it grow for Locks-of-Love.
3. Spend at least half an hour reading the Bible, praying, and contemplating God each day.
4. Have 75% of my students grow one academic year’s growth.
5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
6. Run 1000 miles.
7. Stay vegan.
8. Learn to say only what is necessary. Listen more than talk.
9. Read one new book and one magazine from cover to cover each week. Follow the news.
10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

At the Blue Bottle

It’s really noisy in here. I have on headphones, and I can here too much noise for my liking. I’m not sure why people think they need to yell when they work in food service. I think all the restaurant clang makes the workers temporarily hard of hearing. I know it made me that way. So, I sit and listen to the Indigo Girls punctuated by loud utterances of laughter and food industry slang. I like it here. It’s real.

Tomorrow morning I will run 7 miles. I am shooting for 13-minute miles, so I plan to get up around 5 to run because it is too fucking hot otherwise. I don’t say that lightly, that it’s fucking hot. It is. This morning as I walked the dogs, the sweat puddled around my neck and in the small of my back. My shirt was drenched by the time I made it the slow, two-mile jaunt. The dogs were panting. I was panting. We relished the cool, air-conditioned house.

We are supposed to go move Grams’s stuff from Norwood to Warren Home tomorrow, too. I hope this move goes smoothly for her. It’s strange, really, how we move old people about from place to place either by force or by desire. There is much to be said for cultures who keep the old ones in their homes with them. I think it brings less fear of death and less fear of aging to see it happen right before your eyes. I have never seen anyone die. I have never seen the sloppy parts of getting old, except the time when Mrs. Rhine, our across the street neighbor, pooped on the floor when I went to visit her one time. She said, “Oh, excuse me,” and made a bee-line for the bathroom. A little poop fell out right there on the floor. It dropped in slow motion from the hem of her house dress to the floor while I sat there, a small child, not knowing what to do. “I’ll be back next week!” I shouted as I ran out the front door. I wasn’t sure what to do with the little poop staring at me, so I ran.

In fact, I think that could be a metaphor for my life. When there is a little poop staring me in the face, I want to run.