list of things i plan to cultivate during my year in sicily

that effortless fashionable italian grace; will this be the year i learn to where heals? while farming?

a better italian accent. though all things sicilian need some polish as well.

eating of many many fresh things, preferably right after they've been baked or plucked from a tree

walking a shit ton on a daily basis. how else is one to keep their legs look fabulous?

all kidding aside, of which i am really doing none, just thinking out loud of things that perhaps sicily will afford the opportunity to do. like, yes, please, eat tons of gelatto in cafes. any ideas? anything you think i should check off a list?

less than a week to go before i leave for sicily. some moments i am pretty sure i will get everything i hope to accomplish done before i leave and some moments that seems impossible. i think i am being rash in the face of so much uncertainty which is needless and taxing, so here is myself talking to myself, go to sicily, ride what happens. okay, okay, i believe that will do. off to sort through another crate of things. then its continuing a series of letters to my old schools and eventually sleep. i'm nursing some frightful pain at the moment which is certainly not a helpful addition, but slowly. i happened across an old copy of the paris review today in the middle of this and that, i read the interview about the art of poetry on a whim and found myself smack in the middle of something i am glad i read. the poet was speaking of his luck in life, how all of his youthful desires became manifest and how now he was thinking about adult desire, what could actually qualify as adult desire. he seemed to have two figured out, but wasn't going to share them. fair enough. this notion intrigues me. what is adult desire? in the sense which desire is being used here, something like a thing worth accomplishing...

just finished reading a manga series called monster. it consists of eighteen books total and is a pretty amazing series. when i read i tend to think a lot about the way that a story is being constructed as much if not more than the story itself. this series, like most other things i particularly enjoy, is pretty astonishing in terms of the level of organization and the complexity of the story and its integration of multiple stories within its overarching master narrative. i feel the way one feels when the come to the end of something and are fully satisfied and in awe of its entirety. i'm not going to necessarily go into the story behind monster here, a quick wikipedia search will give you that information and more, as much as you want to read with regard to the level of spoiling you want to do for yourself if you plan on reading the series. i recommend you read the series.

lately i have been thinking a lot about the essay and being rigorous when it comes to thinking about the things one intellectually ingests. for a while i have kept lists and notes on certain things that i have been particularly interested in having some recollection of. i often scribble down or tumblr quotes that get me back into what i think is the heart of something i've read that i would like to remember. i've also recently been introduced to this by toby and have always read this in the past, both examples of people who are interacting with things they enjoy on a level that's sort of academic for the kids no longer in school. i like this self-assigned homework. i really like the idea of not just seeing something and being emotionally and even somewhat intellectually impacted by it, but sitting down and sussing out further the root system of one's response to a thing and even the thing itself beyond what can be understood at first. i suppose in a lot of ways i am thinking of teaching at the college level again, my head is itching to create a class syllabus, but i won't be doing that so soon what with the once again leaving the country and all. but its no matter, if i think there is value to something then for me there is value. its odd how deadlines and rules and requirements have lost their absolutism with age. its not to say that i don't cooperate by them, but only the ones that i myself can believe in.

there is more here about aging. but it isn't able to be vocalized quite yet. i have been noticing that as i think about the past and things i have done before, especially if i really try to think about them with as much honesty as possible, that a new perspective becomes manifest. i can think about the way i felt and what i thought at the time to enough of a degree to also hold it in mind while i judge things from the stand point of the present. its humbling.

happy halloween.

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

lovely weekend in iowa with autumn and friends.
got to see dan and alison and ransom and angie and audrey and harold and jamie.

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

the best of seasons.

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

my time at home is split evenly between eating and dancing.

yesterday was a hinge point, the things which were set in motion and slowly happening, up and happened, in a sense. i got both my italian passport and my one-way ticket to sicily. i leave in a month and much like how i am before everything i do that ends up becoming some sort of phase in my life i am ridiculously nervous and simultaneously calmly aware this is the next thing i need to do. so for the next month i will be packing. i will be taking final inventory of what i have and what i need to take. sicily will present new challenges to general living, i will go back to not having central heating or air, i will be living with family, in the country, without internet... let's just say there is a laundry list of things i already know about that do not make sicily necessarily easy, but that's okay. that's what i do. something tells me go to sicily and i will spend the next month considering why and i will spend my time there finding out. i want more than anything to just see.

dear doe.

i have been away for a bit. i have been back for a bit too. what is there to say. as for the having been away i went from coast to coast and i spent a great deal of time with a great deal of people i had not seen for what may be a long period of time, but time has a way of dissolving. the growing we've done more often in parallel that its simple enough to recall briefly and then carry on. to catch-up and then make new memories. and so i had many conversations, prepared many meals and had some served in front of me. we sat on porches and in parks, we talked and it was hot and it was warm and it was windy and it was chilly. i kept my hands in my pockets or held on to my arms or let them flutter with the exclamation of things or the holding of hellos and goodbyes. to everyone i saw, thank you. isn't that all that really needs to be said. now i am watching films and documentaries about them, i am reading and writing and looking through old papers because it seems that organization is a layered process. to be able to get rid of this or learn where to place that you must have done what needed to be done before to vacate that space or to let go of that object. the traveling is of the same variety just like the books and music and films which make sense because of when and where i am in relation to the reception of the sense they have to offer. so the continuation. i am caught up in a lot of circular thinking where i can see and genuinely understand a variety of things without having them at combat.

if documentation is to be trusted, and i believe it is, i started blogging april 8th, 2001. that's more than eight years ago and somehow that seems kind of nuts. during this illustrious blogging career i have held three different blog homes, blogger being the third. why, do you ask, do i bring this up. well, this fine journal is about to turn a year old. i'm not too big on that sort of marker, but since i noticed i might as well have a bit of a ponder about it. even in the past year that i have had this blog a lot has changed. but i would prefer to look on the whole history for a moment. blogging for me is a very one sided thing. i don't particularly know who reads this blog outside of maybe a half dozen good friends who i assume, much like me, read it to know more or less something i am thinking about and to occasionally get a fix on what must sound somewhat like what i sound like in person. the one-sided thing just means that i write for myself here first and foremost. i don't write everything, because everything doesn't have its place on a blog, but i have also not particularly set myself an clear objective for content. i notice that in life as in blog i may have gotten a bit more concrete and straightforward about the way i go about expressing myself, this, i think, is mostly on the side of good. sometimes things are more photograph heavy and sometimes i have a huge block of text that needs to clear itself out of my body.

soon it will have been about a month since i returned to the states. i will mark the occasion by spending a month on both coasts seeing people i have not seen for a minimum of one year and maximum of many more than that. the past month has been pretty good, i think i find myself unrushed and appreciative of most things. i find that i have a tendency to require being alone even though i heartily enjoy the rise in day to day people interaction. though i suppose an argument can be made for whether or not i actually see more people day in and out. they're different types of interactions. and here i run out of focus for the time being. i have a large music organizing project under way. i leave for nyc in a couple days. i have a stack of books and a short list of errands to occupy my time, but i promise what is most happening is consideration of the whole lot. maybe not in a way i'll be very eloquent about, but the balancing and the wonderment, they are here.