on the line

the voice was being nice

2011-10-01T00:06:00.002-05:00

forward and present, in minneapolis. a city i love riding through. i come here in the fall when they leaves change color and there is an abundance of these changing leaves. i come here in the spring. there is oftentimes wind tunneling through the city and i get to see lovely people while i am here. play with basho. there are many things i love about my line of work and traveling and meeting people are certainly two. experiencing and making, too.

i've been thinking a lot about the current thread of clean visual movement the web is making. timelines and flipboards. it seems very interesting how web trends are distinctive. i think one could catalogue the past ten years in the way the face of the web has changed, by tracking design patterns. more than dress patterns, anyway. i wonder about this. i wonder about choice.

and i eat the most delicious chocolate filled croissants. and miss you.

2011-04-27T23:48:00.002-05:00

we bother home

in our boots

your little feet and mine

we bother home and the fuss

a little boy swims in a pool

full of wonder and shy

his name is the piece of the fish

when i tell him about my father's leg

perfect hiding place

i know he understands me

enough that i see his eyes

we bother home

all the messy get clean up

with towels and papers

the bed is made

2011-03-06T17:43:00.002-06:00

there is something essentially sunday and grand about sitting in a coffee shop, drinking an aranciata and reading alcoff and narayan. trying to write a decent essay about "the problem of speaking for others." at some point being a student switched on (again) in the more formal sense.

2011-02-02T12:18:00.002-06:00

we have to stop seeing each other like this. it seems like the time to actually update comes under the strange event in which i have enough time to meander over here and see its been a couple months. today, ladies and gentlemen, as you probably already know, is a snow day! that's right. the college has ceased operations for the first time in recent memory and i am home, occasionally looking out at the drifts. lisa and i have plans to take a walk out into that wintry white in a couple hours, in-between bouts of work and studying for my philosophies of feminism exam. oh yeah, i started taking a class winter term. i also joined the galesburg library book club and the whole girl scout co-leader thing goes well and gets more and more exciting as julia and i continue to introduce our troop to some pretty fancy things: semaphore! fires! cupcakes! i'm also taking advantage of this mid-week-weekend to write a few letters and talk to some people. there is also a potentially large scale, long term plan in the works out here in galesburg, but i will hold my tongue. for now, all is well and bright. someone is playing music of which i can hear the faint beat, there are sounds of shovels scrapping and i am warm.

2010-11-07T10:27:00.002-06:00

A weekend in which I have almost nothing to do, but think and read and write and walk. An update on life. I began a new job in August, going back to the Knox where I had a delightful time of it as an undergrad and now work. I really enjoy my job: part admission counselor, part writer/communications contributor. The best part about anything is usually the people and I have met some pretty amazing and intelligent people. Winter term I plan on taking a class. This is exciting. At the moment there are people outside my apartment shuffling around and trying to nail down a plumbing issue in one of the other apartments on the first floor. I live in a mansion. An old, huge, white home that was one of the first built when Galesburg was being founded alongside the college. Since it has been split into apartments. In mine a lovely, large fireplace holds many candles. I feel at ease in the space, at home. Lately I have been thinking about my lives in Japan and Sicily, gender and women's studies, organization and action. As I meet current students I am impressed by the things that they do and the creatures that they are. The same goes for colleagues. I want to acquire new skills which mostly center around technology. I want to travel soon, perhaps in the spring, specifically to Rio and Seattle. Since I have been away I began being in this gorgeous relationship with Adam, a boy I dated in high school. I am in awe of the fact that we dated then, as though I knew so much more than I was knowing at the time. To be with him again has been delightful and full of love. In Galesburg I have had a few visitors already, I look forward to more. I am actually, really, considering the potential buying of a home in the nearish future. This last thing seems so strange and right. During my work travels I got to make my way through Iowa and Minnesota and see so many great friends and do so many things, have so many conversations. And now it is sunny. The day has offered an extra hour for something.

2010-07-06T12:32:00.006-05:00

realistically i think i find tumblr a more interesting place for myself. this has to do with the fact that i find what really interests me to be the things that influence me, the things that mount up on my radar and cause me to think or relax or feel as though i am in the presence of beauty and usually all three. this blog though has a place and will continue to still have a place. in fact i am interested in giving that place more focus, as in using it to talk about what i have been ingesting and create combinations/permutations/possibility for what that might mean to myself and my own suitcases of prior thought and experience. this is hopefully going to amount to, slowly, but surely, an eventual place to house something like essays/creative nonfiction. bear with it if you would like because in all likelihood it will be a process.

lately i have been very future minded. the past seven months i spent in sicily were interesting in the way in which they presented to me an entire place in which though it would seem i would feel right at home, given my strong sicilian family history, i did not. the ways in which i did not weren't all together evident, they were slippery, being felt to a certain extent, but being fairly easy to deny or at least create simplified excuses for and then move on operating under the fantastically easy assumption that their essence had been sussed out, found to be impossible to alter and so... though in reality that being the case did not then go on to create a kind of understanding by which i was taken as different, but capable of being integrated into a system of what existed, rather it was a little of that and more of: so, now you are here and you are the one who is going to have to do the bending. this interestingly to me seems to span far more than just my particular experience in sicily, it seems to feed into and permeate a lot of the reading i have been doing lately and the general theoretical work going on in politics, economics and society.

this is nothing new, the first time i started to really think about this was in professor cohn's macroeconomic class... but what is new now is the introduction of things which have the potential to shape this impossible to describe, yet inevitable feeling of future. the cynism and sometimes necessity of the argument that there is a lack of clarity about the particulars of what a post-capitalist world would look like... one where things are going to change regardless of people's, institutions', ... lack of desire to want to or to know exactly how to. we are writing along the way.

part of the problem which might arise here and otherwise in my own daily life is that i am always talking within a continuium, of the stuff i have been through and the stuff i am reading and thinking about and most of it is happening outside of say my particular interaction with this particular person. this is because in part because we are not so neatly placed in the same continuium as we might have been when we were in school together or worked together or were in one way or another involved in the same world even in slightly different ways most of our days and, so here is a place to create context, a place to sit down and write and have a record of that writing, if one so chose, to be able to fairly enlighten someone else and allow them to step in enough to start to make some kind of real empathetical connection/contribution with what i am going through/thinking and then begin to also make that work both ways through the hoped offer of some shared interest type furthering discussion and materials...

2010-06-30T22:31:00.002-05:00

http://notroubles.tumblr.com/

2010-06-27T23:16:00.002-05:00

hitting the three week mark since i have been back in the states and i think the biggest change i have had to find ways of considering and coming to terms with is the change in speed of life. sicily was a very slow moving place for me in comparison to the amount of distraction and action the states seems ready to provide and engulf one in, positives and negatives to each abound.

my reading diet hasn't suffered much from the transition though, this is nice. what is also nice is being able to see a lot of people from a lot of different parts of my life. chicago is a good city and i feel the more i get to know it the better i feel about maybe staying, i know. but then again nothing is certain. if i know anything about the next part of my life its pretty much i am likely to be surprised. okay.

2010-06-02T05:49:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by notroubles.

wearing traditional albanian costume.

2010-05-22T14:37:00.001-05:00

, originally uploaded by notroubles.

last sunday, my grandfather turned 86.

2010-05-08T07:50:00.003-05:00

a steady stream of day dreaming. may is a lovely month. we have huge bowls of fruit and i cut and peel and make fruit salads and eat fresh bread with cherry jam and cheeses. the scratch on my ankle is healing, the blood dried and beginning to peel to reveal fresh pink skin. my bed flowered and i dream of many odd little things and people. there is something in the pages and songs and films that cross through me and i am giving it thought.

2010-04-26T03:05:00.002-05:00

sometimes the elasticity of time snaps. left to talk about is rome and for some reason i don't think rome is going to get talked about too much. it was lovely. all that history and present in one place. at some point i was just staring and it reminded me of what freud said about the mind in the beginning of civilization and its discontents. consider a place, a piece of land, now think of all these things that have occupied that space, not even the people who have been there, but even just the buildings that have stood there. in physical space one thing takes the place of the other. if here their used to be a castle and now there is a low-rent housing development, we see the housing development and though we might imagine the castle given our awareness of the historical what is now standing is what stands. the mind is unlike this. its more like a picture book with those semi-transparent filmy pages, all stacked up and see through one another. for in the mind nothing wholly gets demolished, but there are always crumbling walls, adamant pillars and the like attesting to past thoughts and reasonings and intuitions and feelings. dear freud, i am sure your own words would have done you better justice, but. rome was this physical existence of an otherwise solely mentally contributed state. i rather liked to feel this about rome as we walked through it. and we walked. we walked a lot. circling and checking off the sites of interest along the way on our map.

we also just so happened to get to the vatican on a day when the pope was giving outdoor mass, seeing him and hearing him address the world in all the papal languages. the vatican museums were amazing, the maze-like walk to the sistine chapel wildly entertaining because much like the field trip i tagged along on last saturday to the botanic gardens, the allure laid safely in watching all the people around beyond the gorgeousness of the place. and we had gelato, which i approved of, outside the vatican at this little hole in the wall type place where the two dudes serving obviously had a zest for life and serving gelato. to witness such things is a blessing.

2010-04-16T07:11:00.001-05:00

alright, let's get back on this whole reporting about my travels gondola, shall we?

next was venice. the train ride from milan to venice was just a few hours and when we got into venice, proper middle of the water santa lucia train station venice, who was there to meet us? water! yes. during the research phase of the trip i had done the very prudent thing of not only booking some sassy hotels, but also acquiring directions to said hotels in the hopes of being "on top of things" as best as possible prior to getting to a place. the print out directions for getting to our hotel from the train station listed no less that forty-six twists and turns and streets and bridges, i already had my misgivings about even finding a proper street sign let alone all forty-six demarcations it was going to take to get from point a to b ala the advice of trusted friend and advisor google maps. so we tried, jen and i put up the good fight toward following these directions and then about two minutes later... walked. just followed the signs that said s. marco/rialto this way. the signs themselves were a kind of plaything. abundant, to some extent, one wouldn't get too far without taking cue from a new one having shown its face to point in some new direction and oftentimes two... look at a map of venice. there is a plan there, but its not a particularly linear one. but we found our hotel, and finding it once under passes and tucked away, we were able to find it every other time we sought it out. not always from the same angle, but always and finally there.

after de-bagging we took our cue for the four days we would spend in venice from that first experience, let's just walk. and so walk we did. we found piazza s. marco and the rialto senza dei problemi (without issue) and we found plenty of other things too. and each time we would find something we would then take out the handy little map (the map was actually rather large and not usually consulted save for in the room) and its slim book explaining specific attractions (which was slim and taken out oftentimes) and find where we were, what we were looking at and why we should be looking at it. and so in this fashion we saw a lot of venice. i would venture to say, with a pretty reasonable sense of speaking the truth, that we saw most of venice. we had, after all, four days without rain. it seemed like by day four we had even become locals, walking through the gardens and parks which were populated mostly with morning joggers and students from the nearby military academia. we also managed to suss out a good few grocery stores by which to lunch and snack by, always a highlight.

we spent one day taking advantage of the public transport system of vaporetti, boats, to see both the glassblowing island of Murado and its nice little glassblowing museum and the beaches of Lido, another island, slim and long and where cars and busses were allowed. we also used our twelve hour passes to spend a little longer in transit and to see venice from the vantage of the water.

we never did round up the desire to set foot in a gondola, perhaps another time. it seemed their appeal was more in watching them than in riding one. plus, I didn't hear a single "O sole mio!" coming from the dashing gondoliers as they rowed. it is quite a thing of beauty to watch these men, we never saw a female gondolier, keep their balance throughout all kinds of watery mood shifts.

we did manage to visit the New and Old Ghettos and spent some time in both the Jewish museum and touring three of the five synogogues in the area. it was the only time we took a guided tour throughout the time we were traveling and i think it worked out very positively. the guide was friendly and informative and the tour small enough and taking place in a fairly untrafficked locale to allow for ease of movement and close attention.

2010-03-29T16:14:00.003-05:00

next up was milan, we only spent a day there and i think a day did the city justice by me to be honest. coming from paris we took an overnight train in which our cabin mates were two couples as wholly different from one another as from us. the whole thing was a stellar social experiment and i really enjoyed interacting with everyone a couple hours before we all got organized and in our respective beds. a brief description of the six of us: two an older hippie couple from britain, well read and well informed, very interesting, very well traveled and totally self-sufficient, two a younger couple from milan, very urban, the man spoke good english and was quite friendly, the woman spoke french (both italian) and was a bit more self-contained and in-between this communism and consumerism was us or so i believe, two late twenty-something college educated north americans who i am less able to come up with adjectives for so freely because as with most things the more you know the more that slips away from brevity. what i mean by this is being more connected to something, obfuscates.

once in milan at some sun rising hour i felt at home simply for the fact that i could now speak italian. that i now knew more about the culture, the gestures... in milan we utilized to excellent end the subway system which was simple to navigate. we went to the duomo, gorgeous and a nearby castle, video-ed and its adjacent park. our hotel was family run and "the man of the house" was quite witty, our room awesome: green walls, old wooden window frames, high ceiling,... the day was very unrushed and milan seemed to me fairly bland, an urban mid-sized city in which one can see the daily happenings of a mostly residential population and which would mean more to one if one lived there, but didn't make me yearn to live there. i am glad we stopped by, milan has a kind of odd status around here since a lot of people head up north to work since work is scarce closer to home and it was worthwhile to have an actual place to connect and deflate the hearsay.

2010-03-28T13:17:00.009-05:00

got into paris and armed with jen's french and my own handful of randomly known french words/phrases we made our

way to our hotel near the republic. we took on paris mostly by foot with some strategic use of the metropolitan and rer

trains. the first evening we walked over to the louvre and decided to get right to checking places off our list, a list that

was somewhat vaguely precise and kept growing based on maps acquired and things overheard or seen, further

explanation for the latter forthcoming.

the louvre is nuts. i was immediately in awe of the scope of the art present and on display and the masterful way things

were organized and shown. at first we thought, i thought, we might be able to see the whole thing. spanish floor plan in

hand, soon obvious reconsideration, plan altered, ambling about open mouthed and pleased. one of my favorite pieces

in the louvre was the "Victoria de Samotracia" and how gloriously she began to take headless flight.

the next day we met up with bill, my old roommate from new york city, and later mike and ronan, two excellent guys from

ireland, one of whom used to be a sendai alt. we would also eventually meet up with nathalie, another former alt, who is

from paris and showed us the parisian suburbs where we were guests for a night in her father's lovely home. but these

laundry lists say nothing, nor would listing the places we went. instead i'll just tell you about some of the best moments

for me in paris.

at some point, after having discussed many random things with bill and sitting once again on the metropolitan i felt like i

could live in paris. as though i already was living in paris. this moment, if and when it happens, is always a great one. so

were the moments when nathalie and i were spearheading the search for a baugette on sunday, when most businesses

have shortened operating hours, and made our most successful strides by going in the direction in which people already

holding baugettes were coming from, genius. this ended with us not only acquiring some excellent breads, but finding a

choclaterie as well. one in which three amazing japanese boys were making very specific plans for the macarons they

would eventually acquire. oh man, japanese tourists! i love them so. some of the most enriching experiences with

strangers in all the cities we visited had everything to do with my poor japanese skills, yes, please.

we saw notre dame, inside and out, damn. walked the champs des elysees, total high end shopping street and of no real

interest, but the walk was nice. saw the eiffel tower, arc de triomphe, the markets at puces, the musee d'orsay, the opera,

the bibliotheque nationale, where i would totally hole up for hours and days... too many, many great things in sum. one

of my personal favorites on this long list which included some places from amelie near the sacre cour in montmartre

were the catacombs.

after having seen the catacombs in palermo i was interested in seeing the parisian catacombs which were to be wholly

different and they were. two kilometers of well underground passageways, part of which were lined with the bones of six

million people. i am not sure what exactly to express about the experience, it was mostly quiet and contemplative for me.

in palermo the bodies are still very much present, skin still hangs on the bones, hair and clothing somewhat intact, but

here the bones were stripped of skin, the skeleton deconstructed and bones grouped. skulls created a band at about

waist level and the impression i got was of the immense organization, the massive numbers of bodies, although some-

what adrift in this impressive quantity which was hard to really imagine without full skeletons present. a lot of the time in

paris and later on especially in rome i had the sense of considering what actually remains from having lived a life.

2010-03-27T07:38:00.002-05:00

oh man, spring is totally here. i've been waiting to really say that for a while now and i think i feel confident going out a limb and proclaiming, right now, spring is here! been away for a little bit mostly traveling in and around sicily with jen and my father and then heading off with jen for my first proper european jaunt. we went to paris, milan, venice and rome. i will shortly attempt to do justice by what was done and seen and my own thoughts on the matter. for now though, spring! yes. i am really ready to get out hosiery and shorts and dresses...

2010-02-11T05:00:00.002-06:00

at the moment i am sitting at the kitchen table. i have always been very attracted to the sunny places in a home, pair that with a large table upon which to scatter the books and pens and laptop of my doings and i am pretty much in my element. no snow has fallen here which makes the snow all over the east coast and in the midwest take on an even more mythic quality. i remember snow in the past, when the streets of new york city were more likely to be cross country skied than taxied. i have a soft spot for snow, the covering of everything in this powdery white thing. i have an immense love of natural phenomenon. i have also of late developed a particular awe for people's actions, especially people who remain calm and collected and rational in the face of very stressful and illogical attacks on their person or beliefs.

2010-01-23T06:39:00.001-06:00

i know lately i haven't really been putting up much in the way of photos and video,

its mostly because i haven't been walking around with much lately. i like keeping light.

either way, here is a little video of "burning the devil" something that happens

annually in contessa where we stuff some clothing full of hay, make a family of devils,

this year there was a mother, father, sister and brother, and then let the children

light them on fire as a symbol of warding off the bad right before christmas.

2010-01-21T16:32:00.002-06:00

sirens late at night. i still most love the time after everyone else has gone to bed and i am still awake. and i am working on something. even the crisper air, my cold toes, somehow add to the appreciation of it.

in italy there are these government funded campaigns/advertisements to end homophobia and to stop racism, i think these are fantastic things for a government to invest time and attention in.

lately i have been thinking about the past decade, but i was reminded that the decade doesn't end for another year, so i will keep my thoughts thinking.

there is a very lovely quote in the man without qualities that ends with, "finally one has no way of knowing whether the world has really grown worse, or oneself merely older."

right now, as i listen to the elevator, i feel like this.

finally it was as though she was in a real church

2010-01-20T15:08:00.001-06:00

in the city i like standing on the veranda. i like hanging the clothes out seven stories high and watching the clothes of others swishing in the currents. its been sunny most of the time and i have been memorizing the roofs of buildings which create the skyline here which is mostly low to the ground. palermo is an old city of villas and piazzas. sicily is an old island. it occurs to me that there is nothing like a new "downtown" edifice anywhere in sight, i hadn't thought about that. a couple nights ago while waiting for my aunt outside a store i just watched the people passing on the street. sicily is a mix of high end brand boutiques and street vendors where you can buy pretty much anything, but where i like most to buy fruits and vegetables. i have been watching the news almost religiously here because it seems that my whole family is obsessed with seeing the regional news program followed by the national news program on a nightly basis. i think the news out here has less filler than american news programs and it doesn't make me cringe to watch. i have a lot of observations swimming around in mind trying to sort themselves out w/r/t defining italians and italian culture, considering racism in italy and the ex-patriot populations here, the current economic climate of now and in the future for italy and europe in general and religious/spiritual considerations of a more personal, but also community sort. consider that roughly a top five of the things that are more or less giving me pause lately. i've been writing letters with a nice consistent production clip and i think its something i want to keep up regardless of whether or not dsl is available to me. there is something about letters that i love, i'll chalk it up to that little romantic heart that resides almost smothered by my blood pumping no nonsense strictly business of staying alive heart. its a complete joy to say be hanging laundry up outside and have the postman stop besides me to hand me an envelop and then be off again on his motorized scooter while i look at the address on the upper left-hand side of the envelop fresh in my hand and smile. this church titular business happened in church oddly enough. before its mention though i want to pay homage to a particularly lovely piece of the local greek church which is approximately a minute walk up the street from my grandmother's home: the stairwell leading up to the organ holding balcony at the back of the church. a white stone surrounded tight spiral staircase which accomidates only one-way traffic and gives you the illusion, once you've made a full circle and the bottom and top openings are both totally out of visual reach and thusly only living in the belief you carry with you and staircases both begin and end by depositing you somewhere, a tentative belief at that moment trust me... its like entering a cave though you are still above ground. its like being buried alive, but brief enough to not instill panic, but rather remind us of the value of ... yes, it is a staircase, but for whatever reason its resoundingly the perfect staircase for my little romantic heart, the one that writes letters and that found a real church in church that had nothing to do with church or christ or a priest or a book, but that had everything to do with a little hand. a tiny four year old boy's hand holding on to the neck of his father's coat as the lateness of the hour began to weigh his head, his eyes. oh, sweet little hand, that is my church.

un sacco di tempo

2010-01-20T15:06:00.001-06:00

we talk about the moon in july. iceland where i want to run. perhaps this is just me, but i can feel it like through the car windows in that forested patch to the mountain school. where i was a deer. closing my eyes and still feeling the flash of lights through the trees signifying movement. a train to portland that never got there and this time too, no seattle, but i am happy because there is a sack of time, as they say here. keep one eye on the quickening and one on the slowing down, the deep diving. i'm speaking to myself in the open collar. in the red sleeves. i gasped this morning waking myself from dreams in which there were pins in the joints of her fingers. quickening clouds and water, i am not the only thing racing. the wind feels so good against my face.

too many birds

2010-01-19T07:10:00.001-06:00

the weather acts out in the short span of the time it takes the clouds to cover and uncover valleys. in the city the landscape is more of this. despite the reach of the buildings one can still see the mountains taller and larger hunkering over. the orientation of being surrounded except for the breathing sea. an open. mare. i sit still in the south. drives past midnight through the streets mostly deserted save for the small spots where clumps of sicilians speak animatedly in front of a bar, half on and half off scooters, half on and half off helmets. and we race through it. the garbage is piling from strikes. we raise our voices to shame the raised hands and violence of the government parties which seem to think they are more in a boxing ring than in their legislative seats. i think sometimes that my mouth cannot handle all of the vowels, all the syllables in the italian language. it seems that i have spoken truncated for twenty-seven years and habits of a lifetime are hard to break, but not impossible. there is an ugly monument erected to the decline of the mafia rule in palermo. it is meant to be ugly because it stands as a reminder of the ugliness of the mafia.

i believe in symmetry.

2010-01-18T16:09:00.001-06:00

its kind of absurd how much of the world's entertainment originates in america (or japan). the stars that get talked about, the movies that get put into theaters... yes every country also has its own cast of celebrities and music, but they almost always start and end in the country they originate from barring some break out artists who tend to use english in their music or start working in hollywood. i've been listening to mtv again. i refuse to watch any of the programs that aren't music videos so its all good. it acts as a background to the things i am doing in the foreground when i am around the house. i have discovered italian hip hop and rock. the former i imagined would be on par with the absurdity of its japanese and french counterparts, but its surprisingly a little more serious than campy, the latter is just poor. i guess i've had it in for pop rock for a while now, but really? the on-going saga continues of figuring out sicily and italy at large, culture and streets and the present. i am glad i am here. things are starting to amuse me instead of just confuse me.

on a completely different note, i am going to collect pajamas of the world on my trips. pajamas!

the collection has already begun.

2010-01-18T16:04:00.000-06:00

schifo is quickly becoming one of my favorite words. vergonia, too. its not that i am particularly fond of their meanings the former something like repulsive/mess/shit and the latter for shame/shameful, but rather the way they are said. the conviction and audacity of the sayer. this culture is ridiculously outside my scope dears. here i look like an insider and i am, deep inside. i had a conversation with a linguist today and she was pleased at how archaic my dialect is. not only do i speak sicilian, but a sicilian preserved the moment my grandparents left sicily almost fifty years ago. its interesting in that when i open my mouth everyone hears an eighty year old sicilian country bumpkin although prior to that everyone here seems to think i'm eighteen/nineteen years old. i'm in the city now. the days are more varied because essentially they must be, but i study and i walk, that i do mostly every day. the holidays are approaching and we've already burned devils, made dolls of fig and observed saint joseph and santa lucia... explanations will be left to your imagination. we have high hopes of getting internet in the new year, but things here are slow and riddled with strikes. shoporo! since i have been here there have been multiple school strikes, a strike of airport employees and of the nation's waste disposal teams.

how i never hear the absurd, loud "young-uns" making noise at all hours of the night right outside my bedroom window because i am sleeping which means

2010-01-17T06:54:00.002-06:00

i am no longer really capable of hearing anything.

a.s.f.t.i.n.d.a. was a success. it was somehow uniquely american in a very positive way. i raced through it which is odd considering it is 1) a collection 2) nonfiction. but i have been reading a lot more nonfiction of late. a couple of my favorite moments are the last couple pages of the first essay, d.s.i.t.a. in which the description of being completely swept up in the moment at hand happens to the distraction of what may or may not have been a tornado sweeping d.f.w. and his tennis practicing partner, literally, off their feet. and the sprinkled with paranoia and fear title essay which has a particularly diamond sort of section on cruise ship toilets which i can attest are as fear inducing as d.f.w. found them with the added bonus of also being hilarious because my brother, on the two cruises we found ourselves on in childhood, made them explosively so. as a kid he would flush one and then run, as though his life depended on it, which probably it did given how small he was, into the main cabin to fall in hysterics on a bed right as the full thrust of suction was making its awful death siren of pulling into itself any contents unfortunate enough to be within vacuum reach. i need to send this particular few pages his way some day or quote them extensively in some future phone conversation.

life is chugging along here much in the way that i described (see below). our next big event will be the extensive baking activities of the upcoming weekend. with st. nicholas happening on sunday we are to prepare special bread which looks basically like three small balls of bread pressed against one another because it is. the whole thing comes off as sort of shamrock and floral/decorative-ish. i can remember one other instance of being around to make them with my grandmother years ago on one of my visits out here. this is, of course, an annual tradition and everyone else is old hat. even my youngest cousin, at age eight, has seniority. this is interesting in that this stands as a distinct feature of my whole life here. though i have come around on and off most of my life for two or so weeks at a time i have never been here long enough to 1) really make this place my home and 2) in a sort of troubling way, even remember much of the "meaningful" things i had done while here. the latter is troubling because it seems that memory (mine) is even worse than i had thought. i keep hearing stories about what i used to do as a kid out here, who i used to visit, what i used to like to eat, how cocky and self-assured i was about helping out in campagna...etc... these stories usually illict a blank stare from me because 1) i cannot remember them at all 2) but, come to think of it, i do vaguely remember ... playing with a train set, being adamant about picking blueberries,...etc... its all really confusing and interesting to me. it seems that memory is scaffolded by repetition. that i am more likely to vividly remember things that happened in and around chicago because i lived there for consistent stretches of time, what happened and who it happened with and where it happened was thusly ever-present as reminder/storyteller. and considering that we are talking about pre-full-conscious times, like pre-twenty years of age, these reminders and retellings are especially important. that whole pre-full-conscious thing, take that lightly, there isn't so simply a full-conscious to be fair and certainly not w/r/t a specific age. anyway, i am going to keep trying to make things make sense and to recall. i am going to slowly build something i can remember while i am here, which, as far as i can tell, is until late august at which point i have a wedding to attend and be a bridesmaid in!

back there, at seniority, there was another direction i could have taken this conversation in. despite perhaps maybe not believing it dear reader, i am initially shy. as in like very shy. i know that in comparison to a certain subset of my friends and to my friends in general this seems absurd, but trust me. if i seem outgoing its because 1) you are more introverted than i am, though we are both clearly more introverted than your "average american" stereotype or 2) we hit it off immediately for whatever combination of observable and sixth sense seeming reasons that are hard to really pin-point and there was no need to be anything but forthcoming and welcoming and chatty and at the heart of things. so, i live in a small rural town and like many small rural towns and even a lot of bigger towns and cities people who live here tend to stay here unless they 1) marry someone from somewhere else or 2) get a job somewhere else. this means that a lot of people stay put. add to this that the imaginary threshold for "leaving this town" also seems pretty damn high to anyone who has lived here "all their life" and you get a pretty stagnant population. you may also want to add that information technology is slowly crawling into town and since most people don't have or think about the internet it is a safe bet the "whole world" hasn't quite become everyone's "backyard," yet. still there are plenty of open-minded and intelligent people here and plenty of people who are not those things, or maybe one and not the other, that not being the point anyway. the point is its difficult to become a part of this town. or rather, not difficult, but challenging. these people have known each other for a lifetime and have the ups and downs, likes and dislikes and complications of a lifetime under their belts with one another and while we are at it why not stretch out the timeline to several lifetimes since its been generations of knowing that are still recognizable/memoriable because generations of each family are still alive and kicking and adding into the pot of relationships and impressions which exist like some complicated vietnamese electrical wiring out above the streets. which means everyone knows me. well, everyone over forty knows me because they in some way knew my father and can on spot find enough things in my face to remind them of him, i think we have the same severity of face which says something like don't mess with me in the kindest/not so kindest of ways... so unlike walking into a small rural japanese town where i was Obviously not a part of things and could start, in some ways since there are always foreigner/gaijin preconceptions, from scratch, here i cannot start from scratch. where i start from is somewhere else of which i had at best a tiny bit of control because of my own prior visits here and my conduct during them, but in reality very, very little control over since its all bigger/older than me. under forty folks grab their cues from finding out i am related to my uncle, the local go to guy when it comes to insurance and soccer, which makes him popular and/or my cousins, both hellians in totally different ways and/or my cranial science and math teaching aunt and/or kind-hearted grandparents... what am i trying to say? add in that its really difficult in a whole different way to make friends with people in their mid-late twenties compared to grabbing a soccer ball and just playing with kids when you're like nine/ten because these mid-late twenty friendships have to 1) center around more shared interest than "running around" together 2) involve me, an oddball to put it kindly, and someone who probably is already married or at least engaged and might have children, not that this is a big deal, until you figure in 3) i am somewhat a lingual and 4) cultural outsider of which 3 and 4 are complicated because i can speak sicilian, but neither albanian nor italian (all three employed regularly in this town's communications and because i grew up in a very sicilian household, but in the middle of the chicago suburbs, a very american melting plot sort of place back then...). i am not having an identity crisis. i don't even begrudge the difficulties anymore because they are ones i have created by coming here in the first place. something i rerealized in the middle a.s.f.t.i.n.d.a. is that at some point, probably first unconsciously, i thought about life and saw that people get caught up in habits and routines which when they somehow can no longer sustain themselves because of things like growing old or death or other people's decisions and other various things we have zero control over are totally crushed. that those habits and routines become like impossible to do without and then what follows are periods of denial and heartache and any number of poor outcomes or the slow and excrutiating outcome of "dealing with it" and (i) would rather not end up too tied to things in the face of their inevitable loss... this is not as pessimistic as it may sound, its slightly buddhist, i guess, but while its more buddhist than pessimistic its centrally not really either. it also does not mean that i pre-empt heartache by never being connected to people or place, instead, in theory and in some degree of practice, i try to give myself absolutely over and simultaneously make it a point to go out of my way to remember that prior bit of business meanwhile so that while there might be some very specific points in which i might make life difficult in a seemingly unnecessary way its more that i am 1) coaching myself on flexibility and 2) beyond and above all just following what seems to be natural/of my nature... looping back to some degree to remind oneself that nothing is wholly ever impossible to do without... this is something i come back to so there is going to be no scarcity of rewording and communicative tries. its quiet here and i am, as far as i can see, in both the delicious and difficult point in which i am not tethered by the belief that what is happening around me is so dire as to cause me any recognizable bouts of worry... you know, when you first get somewhere and you have this "clean slate" type deal going for you and your observation skills are in some ways crystal clear because you are totally aware of people and their concerns because they are different from your concerns and then with time you get tied up in those concerns and can no longer do this, but by then it doesn't matter because the concerns you could once clinically name and distance now matter and so things matter, like, you know, Matter. not that nothing matters to me right now, remember i've been on this planet twenty-seven and a half years, plenty of time for concerns and matters to form regardless of how "clean slate" a certain move might be or how hell bent a certain theoretical idea i find very important may be...

at some point about two inches and a half from the bottom of that last paragraph i stepped away from my laptop to help setup the christmas tree that now takes up a good chunk of the foyer on the first floor of my uncle and aunt's home and also managed to carry four baskets of freshly cut logs from my grandfather's tractor bed to just outside the basement window to said house where i handed them off to my aunt who arranged them in a holding crate of sorts for storage and eventual use in the wood burning stove that acts as heater and cooking center in their kitchen. sometimes one needs to be physically engaged. solely too much thinking or too much physicality are too much.

written december second, two-thousand nine

the year i went from drinking way too much bottled tea to way too much pear juice.

2010-01-05T15:01:00.000-06:00

my grandmother and great aunt's two orbs caught in the kitchen. they have a sixth sense for their relation to one another. they carry their weight with them everywhere in that kitchen and as i cut vegetables and boil water and make a stew they are almost invariably in the way of where i would like to go, namely the sink. and yet, their positions are immovable. i could ask them to let me in to toss something in the trash or to wash a plum tomato, but that seems against some base law. so i watch as they make their patterns in relation to each other, i stand there and take my openings when i can get them between this and that slower turn and preparation i zip in and out. this is the way my stew gets cooked, that and under the severe stare of my grandfather who much like my father watching me sew has a lot to say about my particular techniques, though neither does my grandfather cook nor my father sew. the main difference between them is that my father comments out loud and my grandfather does not.

written december first, two-thousand and nine

the year i spent watching way too much walker texas ranger.

2010-01-04T14:07:00.000-06:00

but really any walker texas ranger is too much.

i am in sicily. i am sitting very still at the moment in front of my laptop and i am constructing this entry. since i have arrived i have spent my time predominantly in contessa. it has been pretty miraculous thus far. sunny more often than cloudy. warm more often than cold. i have been taking mental notes about the way things are conducted here and without meaning to brag i think i have a hold of the general. the particulars they come with each new day.

in the morning i wake up at 6:15/:30. i count time in quarters here because this is when the church bell chimes, each quarter of an hour. i do not often hear it despite its proximity, but when i do i count on my fingers. i deduce the time and know my place in relation to it. on waking i go into the living room where my grandfather is already watching the morning news, i catch the main stories, sometimes the weather and sometimes the daily horoscope and make my way into the kitchen for a breakfast of fruit. in the kitchen there are two pots of coffee to be made, the first the smaller for my grandparents and the second larger for my uncle who'll come at about 7:30 before heading to work to drink coffee and have two small packages of biscotti. he'll be followed by my cousins, usually the younger first, but the older always, who will make their way into the house and greet us sitting and standing where we are.

there is greeting here, much like when i would walk into work each morning in japan we also announce ourselves with a hello upon meeting. so move forward to about 8am at which point i will have already gone across the street to have showered at my uncle's and we are walking. we are my grandmother and i and a cousin or both, the who changes, but usually within the confines of some variant of us four. grandmother stops at padre pio, a statue of a monk, where she gesticulates in the form of some kind of prayer and positive omen bringing which is and isn't foreign to me. we carry on to nino's, the little market on the corner, we take small and slow steps and maybe a cousin will run ahead. we pull aside the curtain and enter with hello. walk to the bread counter and buy the bread for the day. the order seldom varies much, two long loaves with seasame which are crusty, two large round rolls for ina and four panini for satisfaction of the youth, i included. we go back home and split two panini open, make a sandwich apiece for the cousins who have school at 8:30 and will leave on foot to the next door elementary and in car to the middle school not terribly far, but "terribly" far given that the ruler with which we measure in this town is this town.

thereafter i have a some of this hot fresh bread alongside my grandmother. i with butter or cheese or nutella and she dipped in coffee followed by confections, her name for the pills she needs to take three times daily. all the while, mind you, we talk of things, this and that and the other. what emerged the day before and what gets talked about forever and ever, namely family. if there is wash to be done, wash gets done and hung. if there is a floor to sweep and mop, then yes, that happens. beds made. shelves dusted. there is a strict rotation of things getting done when they need getting done.

then i take out my things and get to work, while i have time i study, having dictated the curriculum of reading, writing, studying japanese and soon more properly studying italian once my books arrive. grandmother and great aunt set to work in the kitchen preparing for lunch and grandfather is already long gone, i forgot to mention, by 7:45 on his tractor to campanga, the country/the farm land. there is a ritual in this, someone has to open and close the doors of the garage when he leaves in the morning, and then when he comes for lunch, and then when he leaves after lunch, and then when he comes home for the evening in the early evening. there is in fact a lot of ritualistic door opening and closing. the keys in their places waiting.

so lunch is made slowly. things take a long time to boil and necessarily so because we like our pasta soft, so are the dictates of my grandfather, a force to be reckoned with when it comes to setting standards. he is back by now and at noon the bells chimes more than just the time, but in a hearty celebration. its noon! its noon! and we all sit down and eat. my grandmother, grandfather and great aunt all in their eighties and i sit down and eat. afterwards a quick and very organized clean up occurs. food stored and dishes washed. grandpa is off again on his tractor and the door to the garage closed. it is time to rest for the household so my great aunt goes upstairs and my grandmother places herself on the living room couch and i, i take up my bag, the red one i very much consider a friend because of what it reminds me of, of japan, another time zone i live by, and packed with my laptop and books and water i grab keys.

the door closed behind me. i walk down to the newer house. i set up shop. i open the windows and let in the sun. open the doors so the rooms can get aired even if they aren't in constant use, they are being used by me for now. i have a little desk. i have a shelf of my own books and papers. i have some less frequently required clothes in drawers. since its winter i have a shawl and a throw and i write letters. and i make my way through the current book i am reading. i tell you its quiet and miraculous. i place myself right where the sun pelts at me and it makes my hands warm enough to move. i am starting bertrand russell's history of western philosophy, i told you i am trying to be serious. i am trying to understand things i don't and don't find easy to.

so i spend a few hours out there while some rest and others work in other fashions. when i am done for the day i lock up. leave the house back to its normal state of shut and dark. i make the walk uphill back to the house and i enjoy this walk immensely. by the time i get back the cousins are back from school. they have been fed and are being made to do their homework before they'll be allowed to run around the town.

this is where things will get less structured though they are still fairly predictable. perhaps we'll drive to corleone or busacquino, maybe we'll play soccer or run around town on an errand or just a walk, maybe we'll be inside eating or outside talking. dinner happens whenever one wants it to. the big together meal of lunch behind us. and after dinner there is more to do. i try to deal with movement of the body and forget about anything but running a little or yelling a little. then in the evening, at about 7 or 8 since its winter and it gets cold outside, it gets dark early, we'll all find ourselves in the living room. three generations, two and a half families, but really all one family and just a fragment of it anyway, and the cousins will fight and vie for attention and love in their own ways and we'll watch quiz shows talking most of the time or playing cards. eventually ina and the kids will leave to head home to bathe and sleep and we'll be left, the elders and i and this is when the news finds us again and i try to listen and understand the italian which makes me worry that my mouth is just not built right, absurd i know.

and then texas ranger comes along, somewhere about 9 or 10 i head to sleep. i know. this is a shocking admission because my general bed time is 4am in the states, was 2am in japan, but for some reason here and now, the winter, i feel like i better stock-up on sleeping. i wake up at 4something with some dreams clinging to me and then lay down until 6something greets me with my grandfather downstairs and the television on again.

of course there are variations, nothing can stay the same. there are seasons to worry about and growing old. at the moment there are olives to be picked to be made into olive oil. then there are things that one cannot foresee at all. there is too everyones' natures; given my own nature there is moving. there is still the life of the city and myself in it that will need recording. i will have to make it to record it you see. but i am breathing easy on that account. it will come time and when it comes time it will happen. i am slow.

written nov. 28, 2009

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

2009-11-12T18:47:00.003-06:00

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?

2009-11-10T23:23:00.004-06:00

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...

2009-11-01T22:23:00.004-06:00

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.

2009-10-31T22:23:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

2009-10-26T00:11:00.001-05:00

, 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.

2009-10-23T00:50:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

the best of seasons.

2009-10-20T21:24:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

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

2009-10-16T12:50:00.004-05:00

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.

2009-10-08T19:04:00.002-05:00

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.

2009-08-31T00:41:00.002-05:00

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.

dominick

2009-08-26T21:16:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

2009-08-21T20:44:00.002-05:00

summer is winding down. i cannot say that it has even seemed like much of a summer, before i left japan the weather was hardly making me work up a sweat and classes were still in session up until the week prior to departure so no kids and bikes and late mornings then. when i got here there were a few days of summer heat, but the fact that i live, again, in a temperature regulated bubble and was most drawn to libraries and research and film off the homecoming bat certainly did not make for the bbq and firework memories of ice cream coned summer porch sitting. well, so it goes, the rituals of summer are not the only ones i am bypassing this year. it seems to have recently dawned on me that for the first time in twenty-two consecutive years of being regulated by the school clock i will not begin a new year with the end of august/ start of september right of passage which is ticking in a new number on the academic ladder as either a student or a teacher. this hit me hard, but has since settled. i don't mind it too much. you'd think i would have gotten to this flight sooner rather than later, but somehow i ushered myself without pause into a career which i find fulfilling at large. i'll be back school year, don't you worry. i'll be back and perhaps another twenty-two year stint as more teacher than student, but still student will be in the works, but for now this brief hiatus. to move. to do a less structured set of research and analysis and observation.

2009-08-14T10:51:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

here's a photo from late on in japan. i know i need to go through those photos and kind of organize them and figure out which i should put out there. its unlikely that most of them will go out, but i do have tons from the last month or so of me and my kids saying goodbye with the kind of sincerity and maturity that i feel is uniquely japanese. its also an overwrought and super sentimental way just so you understand that i am a realistic person. everywhere i have been i have seen the positive and the negative of a situation. there are just some places where the negatives have a way of dissolving or at least being easier to fathom living alongside. the sicily train is still chugging along, its going to take longer to get there than i had anticipated, but that just offers me the ability to really just take on the thinking at my pace. i look forward to every day.

a list of people i have seen since i got back for my own amusement

2009-08-08T06:30:00.010-05:00

the family (14)

and their affiliates (9)

trish

eve

curtis

audrey

joseph

leyna

vern.

rachel

jennifer

ian

meghann

bram

dave

brian

katie

jessica

brian

rylee

kim

marissa

andrew

bronwen

farnoosh

hope

gavin

asher

chris t.

kevin

jane

julianna

casey

yasmine

matt

julie

chris m.

page

crystal

jon

sarah

frank

drew

hook

kate

joshua

eileen

brittany

dan

alison

ransom

angie

audrey

jamie

2009-08-03T22:22:00.002-05:00

its still a little too soon to really get into a post from the home front, i mean we are only coming up on a week here, actually physically here. there have been the series of errands run with regard to things that are better not procrastinated about. there has been a lot of family interaction, a lot of movie watching, something i didn't do much of in japan, lots of reading and spending time in libraries. i have been looking through old stuff now that i am done unpacking my suitcases and the couple boxes that have made their way via mail. the looking through of old things comes at a great time. for one thing i have been away from everything that i am looking at for more or less three years. that amount of distance makes it really easy to divorce myself from the object and more important to the object and myself, its sentimental value. there are things that i value regardless. but i am finding too that some things last in the mind without physical reminders. i guess this is part of what i can say so far, there has been a lot of sitting down and consideration already. honestly, for the most part, i haven't thought about japan. i don't think its quite time to do more than fondly look at some photos and reread some letters from kids on that front, it'll all settle. way deep somewhere where it'll be recalled vividly. and its still vivid, its just the thinking doesn't come with pangs of longing or the feeling i have not left, i have left and i am here and now. distance. yes, we'll leave it at that, physical and temporal distance is on my mind and its meaning, its logic.

2009-06-30T09:29:00.003-05:00

14. quiet, in its varied forms. i live in a small town. i live by myself. there are all sorts of quiet which surround me. i live in quiet if i want to. i don't have to stay awake until three a.m. so that i can finally feel the house breathing like i would have to back in the states, although sometimes i do. quiet takes other forms too. coming from a boisterous sicilian family gets you used to all level of decibel, but in japan things are quiet. japanese comes with its own loudness, the held high pitch, but for the most part when people speak, even when they call out to each other it happens as though in a different world. then there is this, sometimes i imagine myself as an older woman. i think of myself in my fifties. given what has happened in the past twenty-six years i cannot realistically expect to know what my fifties will look like, but i get the sense that i want to live as quiet. eat well, dress simply, learn, teach, persist.

27

2009-06-29T10:33:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

2009-06-28T09:04:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

so begins the saying of goodbyes. this week i'll have my last eikaiwa class and last visit to my farthest elementary school. went to michinoku for the last foreseeable time in a while, the colored yoga balls are back which makes me ecstatic! many random and awesome surprises this birthday weekend as a couple of my grads brought me over a birthday cake.

2009-06-25T07:44:00.008-05:00

tonight when i went to the grocery store pretty much everyone shopping there was someone i knew. that's the kind of night its been. there is a gorgeous crescent moon in the sky and biking was kind. with the sun down the swelter of the day has become almost (almost) sweater worthy. i am listening to the dirty projectors on repeat lately and like any new album, bitte orca, beckons me to dig into their back catalogue. i remember seeing them in the basement of a university building/cafe in madison. they played the getty address in what must have been its entirety. that was a good night. lately i've noticed a very strong olfactory/memory connection to fresh, off the vine, baby tomatoes. i'm re-realizing how much the smell reminds me of both my grandfathers and their hands, their gardens. a while back i heard news that my grandfather had turned his front yard into a garden, the one living in the northwest suburbs of chicago. i cannot wait to see this. it seems only fitting to have all these suburban houses surrounding a farm. i'm looking forward to ice cream sandwiches and tons of watermelon, so you statesides better be ready for that and walks. time here is winding, its almost july, the end of which i'll board a plane and leave this island for, eventually, another. things here are ever gorgeous and becoming more and more so. there are more talks in the hallways, people stopping me and saying this or that. there is more smiling. the commonality of growing toward the sunshine like the plants we are. i've also decided i want to learn latin.

2009-06-23T06:30:00.000-05:00

13. teaching and being taught.

2009-06-16T05:35:00.000-05:00

12. peace and safety.

2009-06-11T10:16:00.001-05:00

11. architecture and furniture: form and function and the use of space.

2009-06-11T10:10:00.003-05:00

10. japanese pop culture: it seems like this past year in particular i have been inducted into the world of excellent japanese pop culture. manga like yotsuba to, death note, genshiken... anime like azumanga, haru-hi, lucky star, k-on!... jpop like perfume... jhip-hop like m-flo... jrock like the pillows... its really nice to be aware of all of this stuff, not just trends, but stuff within the pop-culture i actually enjoy. i think that's why its taken a little while, there is plenty of horrible japanese pop culture. the comedy is basically slapstick and juvenile, but even there, there are some surprises. oh, yeah, i've also managed to buy a wii a couple years ago, that's another addition worth note.

2009-06-04T07:12:00.002-05:00

today i felt particularly comfortable in my skin. its a combination of reasons some of which i have an idea about and some of which i don't so consciously understand, but contribute. i keep thinking about what i have and how gorgeous it is and i think about the fact that in less than two months i will leave and probably be away from japan for at least five years and my life here for pretty much ever, but i don't get anxious or think i've made the wrong decision. i'm looking forward to whatever happens next and i have a very interesting sense of calm about what i can take with me and what i will say goodbye to. i'm a bit of a woman of hazy allusions to things sometimes and this next sentence will be one of those: i believe that the most important things will remain intact and continue to grow.

lately i have also been thinking in patterns, as in clothing patterns, as in sewing things. jen and i have plans to make circle skirts one of these days and i think i'm really interested in getting back home and spending some quality time with the sewing machine i bought before i left. i also hope sicily proves a lovely place for fabric markets. right now i keep thinking of the markets that wind the back streets of parlermo and the graffiti. i am going to a tougher place in some ways.

2009-06-02T08:00:00.003-05:00

9. random plans. you want me to help you plant rice? you want to invite me to a mochi making party? teach me proper tea ceremony? put me in a kimono? go karaoke? yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, please. one of the best things about japan is how oftentimes things just sort of happen. i'll be walking around and bam i'm in the middle of a festival or all of a sudden it'll be me and five of my kids trying to make sense to each other and laughing all the while. i have been invited to do so many random and lovely things from just going to dinner or having lunch to going on hikes, to onsen, bowling, ... at the root of this are the people and the people, of course, are also at the heart of this list. this whole list. the one thing that's irreplaceable about wherever you go are the people who are there. they might be similar to someone you knew or will know, but they are not the same. i can go on and on about the people i have met, the list of names is long and the things they have contributed to my life even longer, but that's just one thing i'll have to circumvent to get anywhere near right. to step around and hit the notes beside in the hopes of calling to mind the central sound, in the way of workshop speaking... today in the middle of my walk in what's been a fairly humid evening i remembered throwing snowballs on the baseball field a couple years ago with a few of my boys...

2009-06-02T07:48:00.002-05:00

8. clothing and iced tea. that's right. oddly enough this past summer when i went home for a couple weeks to visit the family and nearby friends the one thing that i missed about japan was tea. at the conbini or nearby vending machine you have at least five varieties of cold unsweetened tea to choose from, at least. its a rarity for tea to be sweetened here and that's awesome. not to mention that desserts and the like are also not super sugary nor fattened. sometimes this can be sad, say on the quest for a brownie, but for the most part its delightful to not need to sit down with the weight of your just eaten pastry. clothing, i am lumping into this post which would properly be labeled things i like to buy in japan or shopping. the genius of my shopping partner in crime that is mrs. broadwater has unfortunately already flown the coop, but still, there are places i go and will miss. bear with the superficiality, though in actuality i think fashion is a nice extension of art that can be most publicly displayed... another post that. anyway, thank you mart always seems to have a bunch of dresses that fit me for about four dollars a piece, muji is like the inside dreams of my soul of storehood brought to fruition: clothing, furniture, food, stationary... then there is hanjiro which is always good for the unexpected and malaika where i get all the fancy pants at. just to round off a top five sort of deal, the hyaku-en or dollar store as you may call it, is the best. i'm talking actually useful stuff: umbrellas, school supplies, cleaning supplies, crafting supplies, supply supplies...

2009-05-28T08:22:00.002-05:00

7. an overwhelming sense of rightness. i cannot quite express this one well. its a sense of happiness, of perfection, of being grateful... sometimes when its sunny out and i am walking around on a sunday afternoon with the windows open and nothing in particular to do it hits me that i have a great number of wonderful things happening. then i just stay and think about those things, the people i love, the home i have, the food i have just eaten, the breeze,... i promise you i am a plant and an animal. that feeling how right everything feels and knowing it in the now is so very good.

2009-05-27T07:20:00.002-05:00

6. going to the grocery store twice a week. i only have a mini-fridge. i'm talking college fridge. that means i can't stockpile food. at first this seems a little inconvienent. what kind of meals were you cooking at a time when you only had a mini-fridge. answer: beer. but really its kind of great. i get to walk to the grocery store at least twice a week. all my groceries fit into one eco bag. everything is fresh and a lot less get wasted. i can completely change what i eat every couple of days because i am basically starting from scratch each time.

2009-05-26T07:30:00.004-05:00

it is almost june and i am in preparing to leave mode. the little tasks i have to do like shipping a box of books or canceling the internet provider are coming up and so i too am thinking about the past three years. about the things japan has introduced to my life and those it has helped me sustain. what will i miss about japan and what will i carry with me. here is the beginning of a list i'll continue throughout the next couple months.

1. being super aware of your trash. i separate all my trash into no less than a dozen specific categories here. burnable and non-burnable, three kind of glass, two kinds of plastics, cans, clothing, cardboard and paper, ... everything, everyday. at first reading the garbage calendar, what tells me when to take out each bag of trash, was a little daunting, but the thing is you can create habits. some people complain there aren't enough public garbages, this may be true, there aren't trash cans at each street corner, but there are at least three separate bins: regular, pet bottle and paper, at every conbini, on every station platform and next to each vending machine. there is very little litter scattered about the streets in comparison to pretty much every other place i have ever visited or lived.

2. serendipity. this one is nothing new, my appreciation of it continues to know no bounds. consider today, i went to the post office to mail some postcards and clarify a question about tokubetsu yutai isatsubutsu and a guy i have not seen for at least a year got in line behind me, called me by name and said hi, later on my walk home a postman on his scooter called out to me by name and said goodbye and tonight, at the grocery store where i bought bunches of yellow and purple and pink flowers the woman at the checkout made small talk in japanese after using some english to alert me to a sale on both my bananas and potatoes. someone flicked on the its easy to approach maria and use english switch, yes and thank you. there are even more shocking examples of this phenomena, suffice it to say the point is made.

3. using another language or making complicated and interesting sentences in a language you barely have a toddler's grasp on. this one seems gorgeously inevitable. but every time i understand something complex being said, have an epiphany about the way something is worded or approached, or can manage to say something close to if not precisely aligned with what i mean, well, victory is mine.

4. not being hyper-saturated by the news of the day. i read the news. international and domestic, i pay attention to things in contemporary culture which interest me like books and fashion and music, but being here means i can also not listen to the incessant media, the mediocre conversations about drama ... which means that i have found my head spinning less and less with reactions and the ability to digest what i read more directly manifesting more often.

5. an awareness of the seasons and the seasonal changes in landscape. this has a lot to do with the inability to live in an insulated indoor temperature controlled cocoon. you have to be cold in the winter, you have to sweat in the summer and develop a humid malaise that sticks to you like a clear coating of mucous membrane. you will need to wear a hat to bed in the winter and attempt to divert from the path of large insects flying at your face on your bike rides in the summer nights. when everything turns green in the spring and likewise colors in the fall you'll be overjoyed and your psyche will take a hit when winter bares the trees and you're left with skinny frames that look as cold as you feel.

2009-05-21T07:14:00.003-05:00

things have been chugging along. girls at school taking my hand in the hallway and demanding we play ring around the rosie or the boys and their igo board and i playing connect four to the fifth stone. i started teaching my adult english language class at the community center, this go for eight weeks, every wednesday. the ladies are back, their grandeur intact, of course. lately i've been floating on the interaction that familiarity brings and just whispering reminds of lighter, lighter. i went back to deja vu, lion hair in the teacher's office twice saying hello in the taking of and returning of a key, two birds fluttering away in plenty of time and tomorrow the littlest kids. i try to wear something of a very bright color each day and smile on my way to work because of something, today it was the grandfather with the shocking white hair and his granddaughter who no longer requires a stroller. her feet capable. i make goals, next month its to buy more flowers.

2009-05-10T08:53:00.002-05:00

spent the weekend at home alone going through this and that doing this and that. got the chance to catch up with a few people i haven't talked to in a while. man, i know some great people. pretty much i can leave it at that. i know many, many gorgeous people. and for whatever time we have crossed, are crossing paths, i am grateful (always presently grateful).

2009-05-06T09:01:00.004-05:00

went to tokyo for a few days of golden week. a kind of goodbye though there weren't so many actual goodbyes. just walked and walked. my favorite small patch was sitting in yoyogi. watching everyone just playing. dancing around. picnicking. and i went to the mori art museum. a room full of spinning lights.

lately i have been really moved by flowers. trees and bushes and leaves. i am not sure why. this has not always been the case though i do have specific memories of snap dragons in the yard and against the neighbor’s home. how one would press them in until the popped open and that particular feeling and sound of their skin. otherwise for the longest time i was adamantly anti flowers. they seemed so very sentimental without want to me. but i reconciled. flowers are gorgeous because of their short life. a bouquet springs and dies. i'm not going to be good about making sense kids. probably hibernation into the twisting of the words is likely. likelier than it has been in ages. but there were these white puffed pockets of flowers on the way home today. they were hollow. they were gorgeous. i don't know their name. i don't want to know save that i want one of those thick books filled with illustrations of everything that has a name that can be illustrated. just to have the names. but not necessarily to call them.

and that room. if you stared at the wall a kind of vertigo, a dropping. all that spinning. perhaps i do not meet very sentimental people.

2009-04-27T16:32:00.002-05:00

spent the weekend at arabaki rock fest my first festival since the initial pitchfork festival at union park, what's that, like three or four years. arabaki is a saturday/sunday deal featuring a lot of japanese rock. the weather was dismal, especially saturday and chunks of sunday, being both rainy and cold, but we put on some ponchos and made good efforts. my feet were acting strange after saturday night, a condition that seems to be overruling my body of late, something for a different post, but otherwise all right. most of the fest was about wandering around and catching some bands and passing judgement on them. i'm not well versed in japanese rock though of late i have been really into the pillows (also perfume, but that's jpop territory). we managed to hear some pretty great stuff: ogre you asshole tops the list here. i also really liked your song is good and the zazen boys. wish i could have seen the telephones, but they were playing at the same time as the pillows. what really made it for me though were the polysics. i had heard of them before and even listened to their music, but seeing them live was great. so much energy. plus this just adds to the theory i have been becoming more and more certain of late: i like noise. this has always been more or less a fact, but there were still plenty of bands i couldn't quite manage to get into. i think i have been reconsidering some bands from that camp lately. noise doesn't mean walls of indistinguishable noise, it means working fine things into noise packages. but for now off to work/work preparations. it'll be very nice to have this wednesday holiday tomorrow because i feel a little stranded in the week.

2009-04-22T10:15:00.002-05:00

also, well aware that those who read this probably know me, i make a lot of mistakes. talking typos. one i have been making of late more than others is pluralizing, or rather not. this dear review board of grammarians has a lot to do with the japanese language. there are no necessary cues to distinguish one from more than one.

2009-04-22T08:08:00.002-05:00

today on the walk home, even through the large window while sitting at my desk, the quality of light was astounding. it was one of those skies that paints everything a surreal bright orange/red even though there are ominous clouds directly ahead. its the quality of light that sometimes accompanies summer storms as they end. from the moment i woke up until sunset there seemed to be that quality in the sky. a large patch of dark gray with sun pushing in at its perimeter. this round of book speaking notes has made me a little introspective about why i love books. honestly when i think of time i think of the books i can read with that time (and the music i can listen to, places i can travel to, things i can learn, experiences i can have, people i can love...) one of the reason i love books so much is that they act as markers. i always find it reassuring to be able to mark achievements. the way marking and achievements is defined here very personal and specific. anyway, i especially love books that were daunting when i first picked them up, insurmountable, but then presented themselves to me again at a later time. a more appropriate time. there is something thoroughly satisfying about coming to a book the second time, third, fourth,... and having it finally speak to you. not just speak, but sing. how did i not understand this before? seems perhaps in someway, despite how hard it is to gauge given my daily proximity to self, i must have grown larger.

2009-04-14T06:55:00.002-05:00

taking in all the cherry blossoms. there are trees all over town. some of my favorites are on school grounds. they always strike me as beautiful when i am walking down the stairs to the teachers office or when i catch sight of them out the window in the middle of a lesson. something like snow or cotton candy. the kids are lovely, too. the new school year began on the 8th and the kids are all fitting into their new roles and responsibilities. given that all my english teachers have changed i am the one they know the best at this point which has afforded a lot of interesting conversation. i'm the go to teacher. this is a little piece of grandeur which accompanies the changing of the academic year that i bask in. in time they'll go first to the teacher they have day in and out, even then they ask me questions because we still do know each other well, but it won't be quite the bombardment of now. i've been meaning to write many things here and to people in particular, but for some reason i am not much good at anything but my present tasks. the written words barely come, but speaking, moving, that there is.

2009-04-12T17:14:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

cherry blossoms! yes, dearest deers. the spring has flushed its cheeks and begun to skip around outdoors. this year its been a particularly quick change. the flick of a switch. put on a man eating octopus shirt and made it under some of those slightly blushed blossoms.

2009-04-05T07:27:00.001-05:00

hush.

the weekend makes me think the seasons have changed. the first term already spreads out. there are a lot of things to do and i think at the end of them i will be exhausted and satisfied and ready.

2009-03-25T07:42:00.003-05:00

started reading the assistant by robert walser (thank you sweet sweet farnoosh) a few nights ago, its the perfect read in bed book. i am going to try and make time for it in its place for the duration of spring break which began today with snow. i don't like to get vexed by the weather or even spend so much time discussing it, but for some reason the ever lengthening arm of winter is will-eroding. spring break here is two weeks long and everyone still comes to school during it, more or less. the kids who will stay in j.h.s., past first and second years, current second and third years, have club activities. incoming and outgoing students have new schools to attend, uniforms to pick-up, new rules and procedures to commit to memory. the first few weeks of the term are always a frenzy of adaptation. the new first years look so much younger in their uniforms than they did when i saw them last in street clothes at their elementary schools. the teachers go about their own preparations. yesterday we had official word of who would stay and who would change schools. this week teachers will visit their new schools for preliminary meetings with the principles and vice-principles and pack up their current schools and lives (if they change apartments), next week the new teachers get introduced to their new colleagues. group photos get taken and things start on the 8th in terms of the new year with an opening ceremony which is pretty much graduation in reverse to welcome in the new students. sometimes i forget how little i knew about the japanese annual event system given that its all become habit at this point. i began writing out what'll be a lengthy packet to my own successor and i realize this might all sounds foreign to everyone who hasn't been a jet (most of you), but, you know, so it goes. all four of my english teachers at the junior high level will be transferred so fresh staff for the last term. i'm really going to miss the dynamic we all managed to cultivate and hone these past two and a half years together. then elemen. is always a month of surprises since i will only find out who did or did not leave when i visit each school... so it goes. the kids, they stay constant. i see them from kindergarten through three years of junior high and amid all the flux we know each other, at least until summer vacation. right, that's basically what's going on, really i just wanted to post about reading, but transitions demand mention for some reason. i'll report back about the assistant and hopefully be able to do a post on the castaneda series (nine books proper) which i just finished prior to a plath poetry collection which i just finished. in japan the fall is known as specifically being a good time for reading. cleaning is done around the new year. and winter needs to relent.

2009-03-22T04:26:00.003-05:00

things i purchased this weekend:

four cds for 250 yen a piece (approx two and a half dollars) including tlc's crazy sexy cool, the new kids on the block hanging tough, destiny's child's number ones and a cd of gregorian chanting.

a plastic box

four sitting cushions

three spoons

way too many articles of clothing, most linen including pants, three dresses, a scarf, jeans and a couple shirts

many delicious meals

many train and bus tickets to get from here to there

concert tickets for arabaki at the end of april

origami paper and envelops and rubber bands

a bath sponge, face wash and moisturizer

2009-03-18T07:37:00.004-05:00

during recess. the phrase makes me think of high grass brushing past bare legs, the kind of sheer summer image that conjures up the smells of summer and exposed knees and elbows. during recess i went outside to read. sat on the boardwalk linking the outside main entrance to the entrance to the workshop and special ed. class. a second year boy noticed i was there and came out to say hello, and what has thankfully happened a lot the past week occurred. instead of saying hello and promptly taking his leave with that conversational exhaustion he sat down beside me and we talked. we talked about language and baseball and reading and becoming a leader. the same way a boy getting out of his mother's car the morning prior at the intersection in front of school didn't just wave and begin walking toward school, but waited for me to cross the street and then asked, "shall we walk the rest of the way?" we talked about his dislike of english and joked. i'm at a small patch of peace.

2009-03-11T05:02:00.002-05:00

hold steady. the snow it swirls around her. the musical sounds of simple toys are there to. in my dreams he is lurking. determined to place his hands where they don't belong. we write in fragments. not so coded, but in need of some deciphering. she wills it to happen and it does. she wills it to happen and it does. then she wills it and nothing comes. i will offer we are in a globe. the shaking comes from somewhere else. from koi. from volcanos. i cannot be certain at this time. he leaves when i make him, but it hurts my throat to have to yell so loudly. and she has left too. she is off walking over the children. trying to get somewhere else. yes, there are changes for the better and there are changes for the worse. most changes have no signals. no markers. no labels. no intentions, yet.

2009-03-09T08:21:00.001-05:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

another graduation come and gone. this one sparked in conducting. the efforts of everyone and giving thanks. i'm going to miss these kids. they were kind and generous and odd and funny.

2009-03-08T06:58:00.002-05:00

the woman at the grocery store who checked me out was amazing. she was just so earnest and happy and wanted to explain the important things to come to me genuinely. like how close i am to getting 100yen off my purchases from using an eco bag... i am not kidding, this is phenomenal. sometimes how earnest and kind people are and have been to me makes me need to stop and be grateful. went to natori to watch a doc. with the boys today. a couple nights prior ian and colin and i went out to karaoke in kakuda, a low key and ultimately excellent use of time. the doc. was religulous. and as bill mahr made a lot of decent points about the absurdity of religion and doing anything for the sake of it what i did not like was his hostility. his shared part in being nonconstructive in the refusal to not just speak, but also listen. this lack of empathy on his part was pretty damaging to his cause. this prompted conversation about religion, of course, but it also prompted a continuation of the conversation i am always having in my head of observation of the people around me and how they act. a conversation that sometimes veers into japanese and american cultures and their respective vague definitions in contrast to each other... i'm going to drop the ball here. if you want to have a conversation about these things with me, let me know. eventually i'll give a shot at placing my reflections on that sort of thing here because after all they're bound to manifest in words. for now, touch the surface. one thing that has always been troubling to me about Religion, as in large institutions that dictate a lot of things about salvation and morality and offer an expression of what is damned... is how a thoughtless affiliation with a religion causes laziness. this is not something only tied to religion by any means, capitalism is a complete extension of this laziness into secular realms... if one simply follows these large institutions blindly they may be going along with ideas and actions which were they to consider in singular there is no way they would go along with.

2009-03-05T06:45:00.002-06:00

feeling odd. took a lot of walks tonight in the cold. first to the bookstore and pharmacy. then to the grocery store. this oddness is not particularly bad. i think graduation is catching up with me. the graduations of my kids. this is the first class i can really remember things about. i mean, for everyone there is some story or some image that comes to mind. been compiling the english yearbooks and of course this is an adventure through photographic territory that just conjures and conjures. i like holding my feelings at a distance to observe them and simultaneously get heavily wrapped up in them. i bought strawberries and chocolate and origami paper to make gifts for the third years i won't see graduate at my smaller school. i made small bouquets of purple and pick flowers for the four girls in that class. today i taught the three year olds at yochien for the first time. initially some of them didn't know what to do with me, but they did well. when i left to head back to the j.h.s. for the rest of the day their little faces pressed against the classroom windows and they energetically waved goodbye. i get the sense that things are progressing well even in this vaguely odd feeling of some full feeling thats just not yet here.

2009-03-03T06:46:00.001-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

no espero lo que puede ser.
solo tienemos lo que es.

utopia

2009-02-22T07:00:00.003-06:00

utopia, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

set this breath free this weekend. see: / just got back from a dinner party. the weekend was nice. simple, but good realizations occurred and now i feel lighter for them. this is a very good thing. the week ahead promises. on friday we'll have a farewell to the third years in which i get to play a part as a kimono-ed villager. it seems like people are buzzing. and despite a pretty heavy snow and some cold these past few days i feel like warmer things are close at hand.

update: me

2009-02-19T06:33:00.002-06:00

today after work etsuko and i took a flatbed small truck, the kind you see putting around the japanese inaka, and brought it on over to my apartment. i got rid of a bed, four faulty or faltering chairs and a broken kotatsu. this is the first round of apartment cleansing. these were not things that i was using really though the kotatsu was acting well as an end table and the chairs had given me their fair share of usage. the bed on the other hand had been replaced by the cot i futoned the hell out of which i inherited from casey and juli. this is to say a lot of the particulars here will not make sense to you unless you have lived in or visited japan and thusly visited my apartment. but the general point here will make sense to anyone. i really enjoy simplifying things. when i was a kid i remember thinking about all the really cool things i wish my mom had kept. pictures of excellent t-shirts haunting the closet space. even remembering back to my grandmother's dresses of when i was a kid i really just panged to twirl in them. but now i get it, we cannot hold on to everything. well, its not now i get it, its more like now i get it in this very particular additional way. so now the apartment is a bit more sparse. there is more room for dancing around and a nice little reading space has emerged where the bed frame used to be. i cannot wait until warm weather comes and i can open up the doors and make my way through the usage of all the rooms and not just the heat ones. its going to be a sweet way to fill the remaining months. plus i really like rearranging and settling things. i like being able to organize all the papers that have accumulated and the little scrawling i've scattered all around. i like organizing my books by size and no longer author. i like laying around in the perfect lighting. sometimes i am about the details. sometimes they make sense in a way they didn't yet make sense.

2009-02-16T06:44:00.002-06:00

an itching. a scratching. the necessity to make plans. things all seeming inevitable, but that doesn't mean i have any idea what is going to happen. in my dream this early evening, napping yes, i was speaking horrible italian and trying on emerald green gowns. my cousins were running around in the basement and the first floors. and i could feel the frustration with my new language legs, but i thought i could be alright.

2009-02-15T07:24:00.001-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

2009-02-14T01:10:00.002-06:00

it was sixty two degrees today. and i know this kind of conversation dominates, especially this well into winter when everyone is itching for spring. the spring itch. the forecast didn't anticipate anything and continues to indicate snow/rain weather for the next five days. but here, in the middle of it, how nice. the windows are open. did some hand washing of scarves which are fluttering in the strong winds. wind is a beautiful thing. on warm days when it cools you off. wipe your hair around. messes it up a bit. wind is playful. the other day i was thinking about the photographs i like. how they seem to have a very definite quality of simplicity to them. then it dawned on me the colors of the photographs. how maybe i was nostalgic for simpler technology. and sparsity. the technology bit is interesting to think about. what about a specific technology ties it to time if the time when it was widespread had nothing to do with you. you were not alive then. its unusually and funny how we incorporate our ideas of realities outside our time into our time and how sometimes we intuitively feel more at home in times other than our own, but those other times are still existing in our own time when we choose to adopt them. carry on, carry on.

2009-02-09T10:05:00.001-06:00

lay me down in some tall grass. the sun shining. and in shorts.

that's what i want. i want spring and thaw. more daytime and walks to take in it.

2009-02-06T22:35:00.002-06:00

and even after a week i still have to look at myself twice in mirrors because what i catch is someone else's hair first. just like how i can see the tips of it in the wind getting pushed against my face in an unruly way and have to think about it. about the color. ah, saturday. took on chris' suggestion to re-listen to beirut's the flying club cup and have not been disappointed. the world is gloriously sunny and i feel like i thrive in it regardless of what i am doing. and today is a day of tasks. small cleaning tasks. i hung my laundry out on the line, late but with plenty of time. ate last nights pasta with ricotta and spinach, black olive, tomato sauce for brunch. feels like i could count and name the days from here into whenever. feels like they all stand very much apart with their connective tissue somewhere hidden.

2009-02-02T01:31:00.001-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

2009-01-26T07:56:00.003-06:00

the sky opened. i cover her in blankets and pillows. we are waiting for the rain. under these awnings. it all opens. the benches take cover. the street signs quiver. i'm a necessary animal. and all the lines and dashes seem to point, this way. when i was about four or three this is the kind of standing i was used to. but he is smaller. and stares. there is nothing in it. there are three cups in his hands and the extensions, they know not what to do. so i ride away. the cold is something.

2009-01-26T04:53:00.002-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

last week was all about the english camp. got the chance to teach some high school students at a three day / two night sleep over english intensive camp. the kids were great. all first years in high school they were amazing. they really played with the language. got it to say what they were trying to say. that kind of enthusiasm and flexibility a seeming rarity at times. i taught a couple workshops, one of which i got my students to sing and dance for twenty-five minutes to a lykke li song, amen. really looking forward to future opportunities for more control and creativity in the classroom. a nice thought given the midpoint of this year's adventure is steadily approaching. i'm still conscious of the months and days and what is happening in them.

2009-01-18T09:37:00.001-06:00

we stay up late. never walk in straight lines. forget single file. my nails are blue and we wait in the dark. we wait and we wait and always wake before the sun does. i tell you maybe things that are a little scattered and shaky. i don't know. i am learning a new language and though it resembles another. it is not the same. we drift through covers. a four leafed girl. jumping on the bed. at smiles.

2009-01-15T10:15:00.003-06:00

listening to the new animal collective on repeat. its watery and varied. had my last class with the sixth graders at one of my elementary schools today, we worked on adjectives and comparing two things to one another. for some reason, even though the lesson itself is no necessary crowd pleaser, it went over incredibly well. i think the class was in high spirits. the contagious enthusiasm. tomorrow is another school and another day of running around and feeling splendid about it. this week has come down to two days of teaching since i spent the first two, post a monday holiday (coming of age), attending the annual mid-year conference. i gave a presentation, the results of which are out, but mostly just sat and listened and met a lot of nice people and realized i know a lot of people still. the annual and what stay intact beyond a year. i'm really focused, for whatever that means to anyone reading this not so close to my head right now. i feel like i have always had vague notions of enough future to crystalize as it became pertinent and remain haze enough to not disappoint. its an approach i can see in my observations of others and who i am drawn to and who i am frightfully worried for. this is not judgement, this is observation. it reminds me of my mother who stumbles across epiphany in empathy and observation and quiet. sometimes i need loudness too, a trait she does not share. where i am going with this i do not know. its late, but i am fully awake. there is a lot of uncertainty and chaos around; consider the economy and politics and currency and climate, but still they don't dictate everything.

viet nam

2009-01-08T06:14:00.001-06:00

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then we took a three day tour of ha long bay. the tour thing is touch and go, i would rather travel without an itinerary that i couldn't modify at a whim, but sometimes that's the way things work out. we opted to do two tours the whole trip. the day before leaving for ha long bay we went to the perfume pagoda. one of my favorite moments of the trip was talking to our tour guide about buddhism and how it is practiced in viet nam. he went into some details about the dead and various signifiers and animals and forms. the tour to ha long bay consisted of being on a boat for one day and one night before going to cat ba, an island in the bay which is half nature perserve, for a day and a night and then spending the last day traveling back to hanoi. the whole thing was a disorganized mess and simultaneously wonderful. it sort of became a running joke what would happen next since nothing went according to any set itinerary anyway. this is in general a key point to the viet nam that i observed. nothing gets clearly explained, even under the best circumstances, but you are never in any danger and everything has a way of working out well or better in the end. the main coping mechanism being to roll with it. in hanoi, in and around the old quarter, we would see someone painting a wall at midnight while someone else was sitting down in the restaurant they worked in talking to five or six of their closest friends. the whole place was about relaxing. throughout the course wandering the cities and towns we kept noticing that people lived where they work. they felt at home there and just as often they literally lived there, or above there. i have never been anywhere where when you come back to your hostel/hotel after eleven pm there is someone waiting for you in the dark to hand you your key quietly as you tip toe around the rest of the employees who are asleep at your feet on cots or in sleeping pouches or on futons. there was such a sense of family and friendship pervading everything. people met your eyes and sometimes they were bored with you and sometimes they were happy.

viet nam

2009-01-06T06:14:00.001-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

its going to be tough to unpack the past two weeks. there is so much to them that i won't remember right now, but that will emerge and fit into its place. but starting means somewhere. the scooter traffic was amazing. to cross a street in the cities meant to do a waltz with the traffic. to step out casually and spend a few minutes crossing. giving everyone time to dodge you and yourself time to judge if you could step one more step or if you had to wait. the scooters and bikes went about the same speeds and one had to be careful of buses and taxis. it didn't change inbetween cities. in the rural areas there was still this pervasive scooter culture. families of four or five on a single scooter. the exhaust during rush hours forcing us to take kerchiefs and wrap them against our nose and mouth like bandits. it was gorgeous crossing and watching. the way the whole was an organism unto itself. in saigon (ho chi minh) the first place we went it was our favorite thing to just watch the streets. the ridiculous amounts of wires crossing at the poles. the crouching people going about their daily affairs. the women wore pajamas on the streets. the older women patterns in silk and elastic. the younger girls in cotton with cartoon characters or little flowers. after dinner one night we wandered into a grocery store to buy cookies for christmas and came upon the second floor. i bought a pajama in the style of the older women. i wore it out on the streets after some prodding and felt accomplished.

the soundtrack for the visit began to emerge in the mtv i would turn on before going to sleep. and it continued throughout ha noi and hoi an. three songs dominating. i drank a lot of coca cola which is something i stopped doing in the beginning of college.

the box is not heavy. the sun is bright.

2008-12-21T07:02:00.001-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

coming on a new stretch, tomorrow marks the end of the second term of the school year. third term is short, barely three months, and given that graduation happens at the beginning of march and my january is booked it'll go by in a blink. i'm also leaving for vietnam on tuesday. i'll be gone for two weeks. i plan on doing a lot of walking about and people watching. i plan on not thinking about anything work related. yes, please. happy holiday kids. i probably won't get to say it around christmas or new year because i'll be adventuring, but there it is. snowy.

2008-12-15T10:32:00.001-06:00

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welcome to team rabbit. the end of the year party was nice. we played games and ate lots and lots of food. afterwards we onsened. some of my favorite times are in the quiet. dipping into and keeping out of the hot mineral waters. there was a sense that this was the last time. i think a lot of my teachers may be changing after graduation in march. there was also a sense that we know each other. i've spent two years if not three with most of these teachers. now i'm contemplating whether or not i want to make brownies. but i might hold that off until later in the week.

2008-12-13T04:30:00.002-06:00

the week has been a flurry of dinner parties. closing up in a quiet, quiet saturday. i'm shuffling around the house, cleaning and gathering up loose ends of projects, thinking and stretching. i've been seeing someone lovely. i've been encountering connections amongst my community and its people. i've been having conversations with old friends. the holidays are approaching and as with a lot there is a bit of outside of to them. this is fine. all i want to do is laze around and take it all in.

2008-12-08T06:26:00.002-06:00

listening like mad to með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust which is lovely. this past weekend was a little bit of pretty much everything i have built around me in the past two and a half years. lunch with my circle of fifty and sixty and seventy year old friends who are all learning as much now as they ever were. some time with the wii with a family i met last year when there was an abundance of thirty something and their early elemen. kids to spend the weekends with alongside the shepards. and the english speaking posse of this year. things seem to be changing. i know i talk like this a lot here, but you have to understand how annual it all is. a completion of four distinct seasons and then we are off again. already the talk of job switches which crest at the end of march has begun. the atmosphere changes then. all the little things are still intact. this early evening when walking home with my hands in the pockets of my bright green coat i saw two of my kids in the distance. bless their hearts they were playing in the driveway of her house. a boy playfully chasing after a girl. and when i got closer the girl came at me with open arms and she had something to tell and in this and that language all misformed we made sure it was told.

2008-11-30T07:19:00.003-06:00

lovely weekend. got to watch heima and dream of iceland while awake. got to walk around aimlessly and buy a couple things. including a copy of the first sayonara zetsubo-sensei (goodbye mr. despair). the best parts were the quietest. lazying around. watching music videos. leaning. good night november. in december i'll take more photographs.

2008-11-27T16:35:00.002-06:00

when asked whether it was important to learn english or not one my students responded it was not important to learn english. well, quite a few did. what was of more interest were their reasons. a lot of them were pretty flimsy: we are japanese. english study is hard for me. my favorite was one by a boy i know actually enjoys english, but still refuses to study it. he said we should not be made to learn english because "human relations are tiresome".

human relations are tiresome!

this morning marks the start of waking up in the dark. winter is here and settling it.

2008-11-25T16:21:00.003-06:00

we work in hair she said. thick and thin. we work to coil and push and pull and slide it in. the places are small and large and the lengths long and short. all of it, of course, to accommodate any sort. we play it across the face and away. we work in hair she said, eating the ends before we go to bed to lay.

first snow

2008-11-20T08:46:00.004-06:00

first snow, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

woke up to this this morning. first snow. really early in comparison to the past two winters which have seen some snow, but not too much and not for too many consecutive days. really looking forward to snow. and skiing once more while the mountains are close and people are into it. had a really excellent day of teaching elementary. now i'm mostly sitting around and taking care of some odds and ends like planning places to stay when in vietnam during the holidays. really looking forward to going to vietnam. i know close to nothing about it and feel like the best way to find out the feel of a place is to just walk around its streets. also planning some future sewing projects. i'll post pictures soon w/r/t the sewing happening. have to look into how feasible it is to use the school's machines. right, wintery. hot tea abounds.

2008-11-18T06:02:00.002-06:00

its windy. i rode my bike standing on the pedals most of the way home from the grocery store. one of my graduates is back to working there which makes me immensely happy because he is so nice and uses english phrases whenever he can. my kids wrote somethings and i am going to post a few sentences. the first years had to write some sentences based on photographs from one of my old yearbooks which is one of the few things i brought to japan with me with the intent of using and hadn't really done so until now. they had to think about the picture and write four sentences in the third person about what they thought the person in the picture would like or have or... one sentence included their potential name and relation to the student doing the writing exercise.

one. this is my brother bob. he lives in spain. he likes cigarette. he has money.

two. this is my friend takao. he lives in park. he likes cardboard. he is a homeless junior high school student.

three. this is my brother takashi. he lives in the democratic people's republic of korea. he likes pistol. he has rifle.

four. this is my friend pirate. she lives in greece. she likes jesus christ. she has bible.

amen.

my third year's have also been up to some writing. they have been assigned to write their future dreams. of the batch i graded one stood out quite serenely from the numerous wishes to travel or achieve fame or a pro-baseball career. it said this.

i have a dream that one day i will die peacefully.

amen.

a small explanation of the amens i have been using. they simply mean affirmation. so it is. so it goes. they mean to point out what i think is a sacred instance. my conceptions of life and its living have not recently become belief ridden in any sort of new way. all i mean to say is the sort of thing in franny and zoey when zoey berates franny for not understanding an offering of consecrated chicken soup biting her in the face. its been that way in which i find i can explain myself even a little hinting toward how i am feeling about the cataloguing of these things. i find more and more that i am a silent type of person when it comes to these sharings. the distance between me and others is a very real one and a created one as well. stepping slowly though. now i am going to eat a few more mikan and prepare for tomorrow's lessons for both my day and night classes. i'll make mushroom soup and try my best to save a few minutes before bed to read. someone said it might snow tomorrow and i am not sure if it will. we'll see. we'll see.

2008-11-16T09:44:00.002-06:00

just finished up my weekly chat with my parents. we video chat most weekends. this week my grandparents were also in attendance. and my father, brilliant idea man he is, decided to skype his parents in sicily meanwhile. therefore, i just talked to my parents in chicago and my family in sicily while sitting in japan. this leaves me beaming. ah, family.

2008-11-16T07:15:00.001-06:00

, originalmente cargada por if objects are much too solid.

the weekend consisted of a superior karaoke session of classic rock and indie music. got some dance in and tambourines! not to mention everyone doing a stellar job of bring it. the next morning jen and colin and i had some steel cut oats and totoro shaped bread before heading out to meet up with ewan and ian and andy and go to the planetarium. the planetarium was a mixed bag of offerings from interesting interactive exhibits to the sadly low key constellation projections. the place where the planetarium is, ayashi, was pretty gorgeous with autumnal color. that night we ate at pachikali, the first time i had eaten there since curtis and eve left japan. it was perfect. got the daal and some chai and felt full and warm and safe after. and today jen and i had a sewing party. i got to make a few things before heading back home. have a lot of big plans for sewing this winter.

2008-11-11T06:27:00.000-06:00

物

on writing

2008-11-11T01:46:00.005-06:00

this, my third year in japan, has, like the two that came before it, turned into something completely different. for one thing i am actively pursuing the study of kanji this year. something that seemed altogether too overwhelming to deal with when i first got here and on the few other times i attempted it between then and now. the thing about kanji is you have to deal with a close to infinite set of symbols which signify any number of potential readings in japanese. kanji was taken from the chinese system of writing and brought to japan, but since there were already words in japanese which signified specific things the pronunciation of the same character was not always the same. i know i am not doing a good job of explaining that and there are plenty of places which do.

today i went to one of the eight elementary schools i teach at. my schedule had been shifted to make time for a fifth grade japanese demonstration class which i was invited to join and watch. the class basically comprised of reading a section of an ongoing story in the fifth grade japanese textbook. recitation occurred from each of the students and specific sentences were picked apart and both their meanings and structures were highlighted. the class really made me want to continue to study kanji, i was aware of about sixty percent of the kanji being used in the text and on the board, and also served to really drive home the differences in techniques for teaching japanese versus english.

now, this warning comes a little late on, but i make it none the less, this post is about teaching. its about something that i really love doing and find frustrating and rewarding and pretty much my calling. therefore there will be some passion involved, but mostly what'll be involved will be conversation about language teaching, not everyone's pleasure reading topic of choice.

part of the reason why it has taken me so long to actually study kanji is that i was intimidated. i do not learn through memorization and it seemed to me that memorizing had a lot to do with studying kanji. that and it was so foreign to me as to render it a slippery subject. no adhesion to the brain. what has happened is a) i have gotten better at speaking japanese solely by virtue of living in rural japan (not because of any kind of diligent study on my part, trust me) and b) i have seen enough forming of characters by others (on chalkboards and paper) and done some of my own to cause a kind of unconscious familiarity which is now opening itself into the consciousness. the astonishing thing is that methods which are used to teach japanese, practicing the characters over and over and reading and repeating passage after passage, actually do work toward creating an understanding of the japanese language and literacy.

the problem is that those methods do not work for the teaching of english. in fact it has never occurred to me to think of assigning a language class to write vocabulary words down ten times in order for them to be other than punished. its true that some people do learn through that kind of repetition, but that's just one kind of learner. what would be most constructive in the case of english literacy would instead be a firm foundation in phonics. being able to recognize single letter and blend sounds and distinguishing what makes up a syllable.

the general point i want to get around to here is that the longer i am in japan the more i understand about the system of teaching here. its incredibly interesting to be a part of another country's educational system and realize the variety of approaches which exist in relation to something which had seemed choiceless prior. i seem to be unable to come up with the word i actually wanted to use at that juncture actually. what i mean reaches beyond the scope of just teaching, but happens to be something which i can talk about in the confines of teaching as example. one is constantly operating under certain assumptions. when operating under assumptions one is unaware they are assumptions at all. it seems that that is all there is. and what is beyond the bounds of that assumption is unfathomable. because it cannot be fathomed. if it were to be fathomed the assumption would be found out and one could no longer operate under it without making a conscious decision too. its the problem of choice, perhaps, but its also the tyranny of ignorance.

i am going to stop here. i have a lot to prepare for this evening since i teach a weekly adult english class at the community center, teach english at twelve schools (elementary, junior high, and kindergarten) and attend a japanese class twice a week. i also have demanded certain things of myself in terms of self-study and general reading and writing projects. plus this is an open ended set of thoughts. a lot of the reason why i find i am never actually working in the first place is that teaching is always a source of interest to me. i am a constant student while i am a teacher.

today at recess i ran around with the kids. one of my second graders picked small bunches of berries for me. he demanded i watch him do flips around the standing metal bars and we rain around the open field with some of the girls playing freeze tag. on my bike ride home i met some of my first year boys from the nearby high school and loaned one of them my bike. amen.