The Museum of their Encounter

What's that? I wrote a poem.

2010-04-28T15:49:00.003-06:00

Fort Rêve

How many houses

we have built up

inhabited, torn down.

The space below the bed

the table draped in sheeting

the leaning branches

elephant ear leaves attached with thorns

the grass-roofed

open-walled hut

the place beneath the stairs

dark and steaming

with the smell of noodles

tamped-down earth

blanket walls.

We invented rules

custom hung on a nail

a twist of ribbon

a certain page from a book

that remains there

the way you hitched

a knee to climb

up or under—through

a rough opening of tree branches.

Gaston Bachelard

speaks of “recapturing

the reflexes of the ‘first stairway’”

“The feel of the tiniest latch has remained in our hands.”

In my hands, so many

houses I’ve been building,

dreaming, destroying.

Always, with the primitive forts

came the moment of destruction.

Pulling down with our hands

what we immediately begin to rebuild in our dreams.

Walk and Photos

2010-01-27T17:47:00.012-07:00

Went on a walk today with the dogs

Used "Shake It Photo" on my iPhone to take some mock Polaroids.

Got a little artsy fartsy. Not like me.

But, hey, why not?

Last Day of the Term

2009-11-19T15:06:00.006-07:00

What happens when you teach in a private school, and a health class is taught in your room during your off periods, and that class is having a "condom party" as part of its review for the last unit test on contraception?

When you return to your classroom, the air is close with the cloying smells of bananas, latex, and teenage embarrassment. The trashcans are full of cut up pieces of condom, and on the tables smears of lube and ice cream glint in the late afternoon sunlight.

It has been a very long week, and I suddenly feed the impulse to teach some of James Joyce's very nasty letters to his wife, Nora Barnacle.

(pictured above, smeared lubricant)

Fiddled a Drizzle

2009-09-18T13:33:00.003-06:00

Why Google translation services may be overrated...

"Go pom, pom, pom, I love my toasted apple and I imagine you next Wednesday enjoy your apple!!"

" Allez pom, pom, pom, je croque d'amour ma pomme et je vous imagine mercredi prochain savourer votre pomme !!!! "

As a word for word translation this doesn't look too far off the map, but in terms of conveying meaning, it shits the brick. In a similar fashion, my senior English students do a good job interpreting and analyzing words, sentences, pages and stringing them along into a reasonable approximation of an essay, but they need help combining these bits of analysis into something meaningful. They are smart kids, but we have plenty of work ahead of us.

So, to sign off:

"Do not you remember anything ????..But yes, the carnival, the blaring, music and slides of the beautiful Magic Roundabout. How many laps in winning the prize. You remember the booth candy coated peanuts and the good taste to caramel. There was this beautiful scent throughout the house. Just a board for the completion of the toffee, take an old pot. Otherwise, scraping hot. Redo the operation of the coating twice, because it makes bubbles at first. I fiddled a drizzle caramel to save it."

Shit that tasted good!

2009-08-24T13:08:00.003-06:00

Obviously, I went with the pancake idea. I tried to make these Korean vegetable pancakes all last summer, but seldom got it right. This one was nearly perfect. Amazing how things can turn around like that!

Dilemmas

2009-08-24T12:14:00.004-06:00

I love reading other people's blogs, and I love the idea of writing a blog myself, but where oh where is the inspiration? Where is the focus? Is focus actually necessary?

One thing I've been thinking about these last weeks is how easy I find it to waste time. What? It's 12:15 already? But I've accomplished exactly nothing so far except the boiling of some beet green stems for some undefined cooking plan. I'm not sure what I'll be doing with boiled beet green stems, but somehow, it seemed like the thing to do with them.

I envision them in some kind of tart, or maybe a soup, or a vegetable pancake, but can't actually decide what I will do with them. They sit, boiled, on the counter in the colander. Looking at them, I wonder how I am going to be able to teach a full day of classes at Rowland Hall in little more than a week, when today I can't even handle a bunch of beet green stems.

Poem

Boiled beet green stems
on the counter
bitter, stringy, pointless
end of summer.

Security Words

2009-05-28T15:10:00.003-06:00

Sessibl

I have a fondness for those nonsense words that web pages make you type in as a security feature before you can comment, or click through to some other page. I like how they are word-like, but not words. I can imagine to myself how they would be pronounced, and used in a sentence, even, but they are still non-words. It is this quality of wordness (to make up yet another word) that makes them good for security purposes. Machines cannot guess them, because they are not real words and don't really follow any pattern, but any thinking person with a sense of grammar rules and linguistics (which is most everyone who has grown up with language) can recognize a funny closeness, an easy familiarity in them. I'm thinking about writing a poem using mainly these words, if I can collect enough of them. So far I have the word at the top of this post, "sweambo," and "ourse." Evocative, don't you think?

On a related note, I just completed a "spam check" security question on the utahfm page that required I DO MATH rather than type a made-up word. WTF? Why you gotta go ruin my fun by using math for security checks rather than spiffy word-like non-words? I know what 9 + 9 equals; that's not a problem, but don't start getting fancy and asking something like 2x + 7[y]/84 = z. I'll be screwed.

Vivas las palabras. (That's for Thomas, who is learning spanish.)

UPDATE: Here is the poem I just wrote. I particularly love the first stanza. I have a feeling more of these will be written shortly, after all, I'm in the middle of grading finals!

Shbusne

In sessible sweambo
viativis ourse.
Intae winglike nossun,
semming a zorter harchie.

Movence bycol uryngin
coosse the fabions,
tarous aryor so resotsho
then daursm termove nomou.

Deali bilito.
Deali bilito.
Sessa affiliaj,
sessa cernhog.
Dabings straion
over the prousti ingul

or in sessible sweambo.
Viativis ourse,
Intae winglike nossun.
Viativis ourse nossun.

And Something I Love

2009-04-09T20:31:00.001-06:00

Thank-you, "The Office".

Some Things I Hate

2009-04-09T15:25:00.003-06:00

Why does this suck so so so so bad?

Demolition String Band covering Madonna's "Like a Prayer."

And how much do I hate when bluegrass bands call themselves string bands?

And another thing I hate: discovering a new string band that sounds good on instrumentals, but sing in that saccharin cutesy voice that has somehow become attached to "old timey" music. I'll take my old-timey singing raw and with some grit, thank-you. If it sounds "cute" and "pretty," you aren't doing it right.

Okay, I'm done.

Why You Shouldn't Trust Plumbers

2009-04-04T11:55:00.003-06:00

We had a leaky faucet.

It wasn't a drip problem; it was a split seam on the side of the spout so that water jetted out the side of the spout (and over the side of the tub) every time we used the shower problem.

When I looked at it, I thought: "No problem. We just screw off the busted spout and screw on a new one" That's when the doubts set in. What if it isn't that simple? Why are plumbers paid so much if it's really that easy? Maybe I should have a professional look at it.

We had some professionals look at it. They suggested replacing the whole faucet and piping to the shower head. For $550!!!!! The other professionals we called wanted to charge us $85 just to come and look at it!

Fortunately, Molly's dad suggested we look at England Plumbing, on 33rd East and about 10th South. England is an old-time locally owned plumbing supply shop that carries new and salvaged parts. Today we drove out and showed them a picture of our tub spout. In less than a minute the guy had the part in our hands and we were paying for it. He said: "Just unscrew the old spout and screw this one on."

Like I thought originally! And the best part is that the new spout cost $10. I'm not sure why I doubted myself. I've always had an intuition about how things are made and put together. I probably should have been an engineer.

So, in my experience plumbers WILL take advantage of those who are unsure about how things work. If I hadn't had that nagging doubt in my mind, we may have paid $550 for a whole new, fancy, metal faucet and spigot and shower riser that we didn't even need!

NEW SPOUT!

2009-03-22T21:13:00.006-06:00

Two loves: Ida and my fiddle.

I've been playing the fiddle for about 7 years now. The first two years were misery. I thought I sounded awful. Learning any concrete song was like trying to use chopsticks for the first time again. The one thing I eventually developed was an excellent ear for melody, and the ability to follow along in a lilting sort of rhythm.

I was always painfully aware that my fiddling lacked the drive, the rhythm, the flexibility of true old-time fiddling. But, I could play along with many of the songs we played, and eventually I thought it sounded okay (but not great) when I played along with the melody.

Enter Chris.

Chris is a local banjo-player and fiddler with a band called "Bueno Avenue String Band." He plays a rollicking, loosey-goosey, good-time fiddle that I found myself wishing I could replicate. We've played music a few times together now, he's given me some excellent tips on old-time fiddling, showed me how to cross-tune my fiddle, and all of a sudden I'm having a hell of a lot of fun listening to fiddle music, thinking about how the sound is created, and then trying to come up with my own phrasing on my fiddle. So far, the tunes I've learned are: "Cherry River Line," "Black Eyed Daisy," "Over the Waterfall," "Willow Garden," and most recently, "Cluck Old Hen."

All of this makes me very happy.

As for Ida, we had an impromptu photo shoot night when she was tired and lying on the bed. I started taking pictures and it was like she was posing in the most adorable positions on purpose so that I could take pictures with my iphone. I think she was a plus-size model in some previous life. Here are a few other pictures from our shoot:

Of course, I would be remiss to write a blog entry about loves without mentioning Shed and Molly. I'm damn lucky to have them. It's good to remember that right now, with my work future on uncertain ground. If all else fails, I can become an itinerant fiddler, and train Shed and Ida to dance around like monkeys as I saw a tune and Molly backs us up on rhythm guitar.

In Love Like...

2009-03-21T12:06:00.006-06:00

I was thinking this morning about why it is that some cds don't hit you until months, years, decades after you first acquire them. This is a topic I've discussed many times with my brother Thomas, (who writes about music on his blogs--casket, shroud, and grave and per diem) because we're always giving each other music, and only months later finding ourselves really loving it.

This has been on my mind recently because I put on an old cd by the Avett Brothers in my car, the other day, and ended up falling in love with at least 3 songs that I had never noticed before. I got the cd about 3 years ago, when I was a DJ at KRCL. In those days, with KRCL's huge library of music, I was always scrounging up albums, copying them, finding one song I liked to play on the show, and then moving on to the next cd. That's one problem with DJing--I have a compulsion to keep finding new artists, new songs, new sounds. That means that I often move through cds quickly, mining songs and not paying attention to the cd as a whole. The Avett Brothers' cd, "A Carolina Jubilee," provided me with a song that I loved, and which I played on the show. I think once I heard this one song, I stopped listening to the record:

This week, with the cd in my car on my commute to work, I've discovered 3 new songs that I cannot believe I didn't fall immediately in love with before.

and

Right now these songs seem so obviously FANTASTIC, that I can't believe I didn't like them when I heard the album for the very first time. But no, except for "Love Like the Movies," I thought I didn't like this album. Why is that? I have no clear explanation except for this one possibility: at the time, I was listening to a lot of music by the Magnetic Fields that Thomas had passed on to me. Not surprisingly, "Love Like the Movies" is the most Magnetic Fields-y song on "A Carolina Jubilee." Perhaps music sounds different depending on what other music you've been listening to at the time. Kind of like with food and wines. Certain flavors can overwhelm others, making them taste weak and simplistic, but if you try that flavor alone, or in combination with similar ingredients, it will suddenly taste amazing.

Attn: Avett Brothers

You taste amazing!

Ambitions

2008-10-02T16:57:00.004-06:00

In seventh grade English, today, one of the girls was giving back massages to her friends. (And no, she wasn't supposed to be doing this, but it was during group work and there is always that awkward 5 minutes at the end of group work when the fast groups are done and slow ones are still working--what's a bored seventh grader in a fast group to do in this situation? Give back rubs, of course!) This girl was really getting into the back massage; I mean, she was using her elbows and everything. I was impressed.

I asked her, "Hey, Lindsay, are you going to be a massage therapist when you grow up?"

"No," she said, "but I want to own a salon. And be a brain surgeon."

Did I mention I teach at a private school?

For further enlightenment, listen to the song "I Want a Pony" by Candypants.

School: What a Shame

2008-09-30T15:31:00.002-06:00

It's the end of a school day, and I have just said good bye to a class of rowdy and confused seventh graders. It's amazing how much school and teaching absorbs from my life. Teaching children is a bit like this, sometimes:

Your life is a bucket filled with water.

70-80 children come along with sponges and throw them into your bucket.
Their sponges absorb all your water.

At the end of the transaction, your bucket is empty.

Then you have to take their sponges home with you and grade them.

Okay, so that's a pretty bleak picture of teaching. It's not always true. Sometimes, they don't even bother to throw in their sponges. Sometimes they just sit around throwing their sponges at each other.

It was a hard last period of the day. Time for this bucket to go home and get refilled.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

2008-08-25T20:50:00.020-06:00

WOW! We returned home from a week's trip (including an unexpected day's delay out of Indianapolis due to Hurricane Fay) to find this bountiful harvest overloading the vines and plants in the back yard! It seems that while we were gone everything grew gangbusters, as if I injected the plants with steroids before I left. Not having the chance to pick any of this for a whole week, it turned into a haul.

We have the following vegetables sitting in the kitchen now...I just have to find room in the fridge for it all:

2 Japanese eggplant--a bit damaged from overwatering they received from when I was trying to sprout some seeds I planted nearby.
5 zucchini--including the largest I have harvested this year. What am I supposed to do with this mother? It will undoubtedly be tough and stringy inside, with huge seeds surrounded by dry pith. Perhaps I can salvage some of the flesh for...any ideas?

3 large green peppers--in addition, the pepper plants have at least 5 more new peppers growing to good sizes on each plant. I think I will make stuffed peppers with these ones, as the fresh flavor is a bit compromised when they get this big.

20 lemon cucumbers--most much huger, and many much more yellow than I've allowed them to grow before this week. I hope they still taste good! How are we going to eat all of these?

The regular (green) cucumbers I planted haven't done anything. They have been overtaken by basil plants, lemon cucumber and watermelon vines, and pepper plants. They get no sun! Poor things.

2 Watermelons--one a weird, stunted melon that didn't grow at all while we were gone. I figured I might as well pick it, just to see what it looks like inside. It was pale pink/yellow/white inside, but quite sweet, actually. The other melon I was trying to pick up out of the vines to show Molly and it just came off the vine. Hopefully it won't be too under ripe. I have another melon that was about the size of a golf ball when we left, and is now a lot bigger...perhaps the size of one of those crazy big walla walla onions...or a small sugar pumpkin. I think I'll leave this one on the vine until first frost...if I can.

And finally...15 tomatoes!

7 big beef (bright red)
6 brandywine (pinkish & yellow/green)
1 green zebra (yellow with green stripes)

AND

1 red chile--there are a ton more chiles on the plant, all green, but I should probably start picking them soon. This is the only one that turned red while we were gone. I've forgotten what variety of pepper they are. Perhaps serrano...usually when I see serranos in the store, they are green. I am curious to cut up this little red pepper and see what it tastes like.

I just realized that I forgot to check the cherry tomato plants. I'm sure there will be more to pick from them in the morning. I also have a feeling that in the fading light I may have missed som cucumbers and tomatoes. I am still waiting for ripe tomatoes on the Hawaiian pineapple plant and the black krim. I am also surprised that the zebra hadn't produced more ripe fruit while we were gone. Perhaps the light of day will reveal more to harvest tomorrow. Tonight, I'm putting all this in my fridge and going to bed.

A Knitting Post -- Two Gifts

2008-07-27T14:36:00.005-06:00

Gift #1: You've heard of the Peace Train...introducing the Peace Envelope Purse.
It's a present for my 13 year old niece, who loves all things peace sign (as I did at that age, 21 years ago). It's also my first felted bag. I've heard a lot about them...but since I don't carry purses much, and have not the patience to knit anything larger, I have never attempted one.

The design is my own...except I took the peace sign chart from this website. Everything else I made up as I went along. I started at the point of the envelope flap, added 2-4 stitches every row or s0 until I reached 33 stitches (throwing a yarnover buttonhole in there along the way). At the end of the flap, I did a turning row (like you do for a hem) then I knitted a long rectangle with the peace sign chart on one side, and the contrast gray for the other, with another turning row in between them. I folded it, sewed up the sides and when I felted it (at 1:30 in the morning) it shrunk into this dandy envelope size. Then I decided it needed a tassle and a felted i-cord shoulder strap. The yarn was various worsted wools from my stash. The button is a knotted leather button I had in my sewing toolbox. And that's about it for the Peace Envelope Purse.

Gift #2: Pink and Green Baby Sweater
This is an old project that I pulled out of my stash to give to Molly's friend Brooks who just had a baby. Again, I designed this as I went (and can only hope it will fit an actual baby). The contrast edging is in seed stitch, and the body is in stockinette. There is no shaping at all...just a bunch of rectangles sewn together, but the squared/slit neck and the 3/4 sleeves makes it work (at least in my imagination). The yarn is all cotton--an apple-y green for the body and a 3 strand yarn of pink, orange, and green twisted into one yarn for the contrast edges. It really is quite fetching, I think. I'd love to see how it looks on an honest-real-life baby. If I ever get pictures from Brooks, I will post them. This is the problem with my knitting. I'm always knitting baby things and giving them away. I often forget to take pictures, and moms never seem to have time to take pictures of my knitted goods and send them my way (it's cool...I know it's hard and time-consuming to have a baby either feeding off you, throwing up all over you, or sleeping on you most of the time). So I've never really seen any of my baby projects in action. I hope someday I will see some in action on my own kid...but that's a tall order.

The crop is in...

2008-07-20T13:21:00.001-06:00

PEAR or POTATO?

An Old Familiar

2008-06-20T09:06:00.004-06:00

Walk: City Creek Canyon off-leash dog trail
Length: 2 miles?
Duration: 1 hour?

Here is a picture I took at the top of the off-leash trail at Memory Grove. The dogs had to wait patiently in position while I got the camera set up, and then not move as I came rushing at them to take my place. It took several tries to get it right, and to make sure I didn't look too much like a mushroom.

Walking this trail is nostalgic, because I used to bring the dogs here all the time when we lived on Capitol Hill. The dogs knew where we were as soon as we got out of the car, and the race to the off-leash section was on. As we walked, I was very conscious of how obnoxious Ida is, but also of how she is improving slightly. We're going to have a dogsitter in July to take care of the dogs while we are up at Snowbird for the Folk and Bluegrass Festival. I thought about all the weird shit that I do to control my dogs, and wondered how I'm going to be able to convey that to Meghan, or whether, indeed, I need to. Am I just over-controlling? If I wasn't here, would they be placid, friendly little beasties? I don't think so. So, I will have to explain to Meghan Ida's psychology (wow...I'm really starting to sound like a harf!): she wants dominance, but she's also very very fearful. I'd say that's one of the worst combinations for a dog. The way this comes out on the trail is that she feels she needs to control every little movement that Shed makes. If I let her, she will keep him corralled and cowering at my ankles for the entire walk. The only way to break her of this is to make her heel, and tell Shed to go ahead. If he breaks out first, she'll ignore him. Making Shed go first, however, also takes some work because his psychology is to be submissive and avoid confrontation, and he doesn't often believe that I can really stop Ida from herding him. He eventually will run out a little ways, but when I release Ida from the heel and she comes running up to him, he always crouches down and braces himself for the blow he knows is coming. I actually think that move of his is very cute...sad, but cute.

One happy thing for Shed is that he is unafraid of other dogs (unlike Ida). So here he is going in for a nice butt smell on a huge saint bernard. Ida gave this dog as wide a berth as she could. If she's really scared (usually when a dog approaches her), she'll put her hackles up and start whining softly. Occasionally, if a dog gets too pushy, she'll turn and snark him. This never happens, however, if I tell her calmly that she is okay and to just keep moving.

Sometimes I feel like a real idiot when I'm walking my dogs. Why can't I just have normal dogs who run and frolic and play? No I have to have these weird creatures with their social hangups...I mean CUTE weird creatures!

Other highlights from this walk include wild rose bushes...

lots of water...

a snake!...

and the rock footprint.
After the walk, I went to the yarn store and bought some lace weight yarn in a blueish-gray called "Charcoal." I've been wanting to try knitting lace for quite a while now, so I've found this pattern: halcyon. I'm going to knit it without the god-awful ugly ribbon and bow at the ends. Really...why ugly up a pattern as nice and simple as that?

2008-06-17T18:17:00.008-06:00

The Walk: Porter Fork in Millcreek Canyon

Length: 1 hour

Distance: ?

Well, in the heat of the afternoon, the dogs and I headed up Millcreek Canyon despite the skeptical looks of Molly, who objects on principle to the $2.25 fee you must pay as you leave the canyon. But I wanted real canyon hiking though, and Millcreek is the only close canyon that allows dogs (off leash, no less!), so that's where I went.

I was disappointed, however, in my choice of walks. I pulled off at Porter Fork, on the recommendation of my mom, and perhaps under the supernatural influence of Orrin Porter Rockwell (the avenging angel!). Porter Fork is a paved road, with private cabins lining it, following a fork of Mill Creek up a steep canyon. It was pretty enough, the dogs loved playing in the water, and there was sometimes enough shade, but not enough. And the paved road, the houses, and the cars kept getting me down. Still I had that moment I was looking for of "I'm up in the middle of a goddamn canyon!!!" on the way down, when I looked up from my feet (I'm pretty clumsy) and saw this vista:

It made me pretty happy! I don't know why...just did. $2.25 worth of view, right here...If only Shed would turn around, that is (there were other hikers coming up the road, just around that bend).

Along the road, I saw many dandelions. I wondered if they had been carried up on the undercarriages of cars visiting the cabins, or if they grew naturally as a weed in the Rockies. As I walked along, I thought about that bunch of "Dandelion Greens" that I often see at the grocery store next to the Kale and Chard and Collard Greens. It runs, maybe $1.99, $2.49. I've never bought them because I always think "why should I buy something that grows for free on my lawn?"

Seeing all those dandelions growing for free on the side of the road, away from the fertilizing and pesticides of urban lawns, it made sense to collect some for dinner tonight. See, Molly, I broke even on my trip to Millcreek, because I got the greens free, see there? Of course, Molly would never pay money for greens, period, not liking them. But she knows I like them (knows...not the same as understands), and knows I often pay good money for them. What's another thing she doesn't understand? The kale I'm growing in our raised backyard vegetable garden. I'm sure she sees it as a waste of good space where basil could be growing for pesto, bruschetta, and tomato/basil/brie pasta...Molly's trinity of favorite dishes. There are things like this, and times when we just don't get each other's ways. The other night when she had insomnia and lay in bed staring at the ceiling (something that unnerves me greatly...I'd rather be reading a book), I looked over at her and said "I don't even understand one thing about you right now! You're like a completely separate person from me" (duh!). After 10 years of marriage, it seemed revolutionary to say. I'm sure she thinks the same about me all the time.

So I turned one of the plastic bags I picked up for dog poop at the beginning of the trail into a dandelion bag. I pulled the youngest, smallest looking leaves I encountered (though I didn't avoid all flowering plants...apparently the rule if you want to avoid bitterness in the greens). I cooked them with dinner tonight by blanching them in water with garlic, then sauteeing in olive oil with some honey, lemon juice, and salt. It ended up good...bitter, but yummy.

One small problem I have with Porter Fork is envy. Seeing these cute, old cabins up along the creek makes me nostalgic and envious. One little yellow house had smoke coming from the stone chimney...it was a lovely smell and a lovely sight:
Unlike the ugly, ostentatious, over-sized new construction going on across the road and up the creek a bit:
The trees and vans here occlude some of the uglier bits...but trust me, it's UG-LY. And big.

Nevertheless, Porter Fork was a good walk. Enjoyable. Especially for these two rascals:

2008-06-09T18:12:00.000-06:00

Walk: Shoreline Trail, between Red Butte Gardens and This is the Place Monument State Park.

Distance: 2 1/2 miles?

Length: 50 minutes

On this, my first day of freedom after my first year as a teacher at Waterford, I took a walk with my parents, their dog Schatze (on left), and my dogs Shed (middle) and Ida (right). My parents are both recovering from knee replacement surgeries, but still they sometimes outstripped me on the trail. How sad. I realized recently that there are no stairs in my life now. My house is one story. The school I teach at is one story. And that's about the extent of my past 9 months. The walks in my new neighborhood (much to my enjoyment) are mostly flat...only by heading in one direction (east) do I ever face a steep grade. Somehow, I always walk north, or south, or west. So, climbing to the base level of the Shoreline Trail winded me a bit.

Even though Shoreline is an on-leash trail (with lots of joggers and bikers), my father insisted that NO ONE walks their dogs on leash there. So, the pooplers ran and ran. All in all, they probably walked three times the distance we did. They also lolled in mud puddles...and sprawled in large swaths of grass, tall and green from all the rain we've had lately...
I took lots of pictures of flowers for some reason. This is something I normally object to. Perhaps it was the unfettered freedom that got to me...the sense that nothing I did today matters to anyone. Having no classes to plan for, no papers to grade, no students to worry about was blissful. And so...
Walking with Lyn and Russ is mostly talking about flowers, politics, the dogs, and upcoming social events. Not much time for ruminating, but an enjoyable spin nonetheless. I don't like how sunny this walk is, but I must admit it's a beautiful view. After the walk, my parents joined me to meet Molly at Koko kitchen for a celebratory lunch of sushi and noodles. Feeling done with the school year has made me very happy today. I planted. I weeded. I read The Crocodile Street by Bruno Schultz. I looked at books I have yet to read. I harvested the first veggies from my new garden (chard), then at 6:00 P.M. (10 hours after posting final grades), I get this e-mail from a student:

hi Dr. Taylor,
I hope you're enjoying summer!! I'm trying to! but i keep having this feeling to email about you recieving my paper. So i'm curious to know if u did? I hope you get this soon! and i can hear back from you! and have a great summer! Oh and one more question! what's my current grade in your class?

thanks,

Xxxxx Xxx

Hmmmph. So many exclamation marks. Such neglect of proper capitalization. Such inconsistent use of "u" rather than "you" (I don't mind abbreviation, but choose one or the other and be consistent!). Such an airhead thing to e-mail your teacher 2 1/2 weeks after the essay was actually due. And now, suddenly, I have one more thing to worry about before I can put school out of my mind completely. So it goes.

More from the outpost of Summer in a few days.

A Lesson Learned: Or, Why I Hate Most People Outside of My Immediate Family

2008-05-29T08:07:00.000-06:00

The Walk: Well, I was supposed to make it all the way to M & M's house, but karma intervened.

Distance: With the four blocks of doubling back, about 15 blocks.

Okay, so I was a bad dog owner.

My dogs are usually fairly routine in their business. The black dog seldom shits anywhere except in the back yards of the three houses he considers "home." The white dog, if walked at a certain time of day, will always shit as we pass the off-leash dog park; I suppose she is urged on by the wafting smell of the thousands of dogs who have shat there in the past. When we pass this park, I always pick up a bag from the dispenser because I know what to expect. Last night proved to be no exception. I felt like a good dog owner.

Until several blocks later, when she decided to take yet another dump, right on someone's lawn, of course, and me without bags. So, I didn't slow down. I just kept walking. It wasn't the nicest thing in the world for me to do, but it wasn't the worst either. I just hoped the shit landed on the lawn of someone who might understand. Boy, were those hopes dashed.

Several blocks later I was flagged down by a boy on a skateboard, who pointed behind me. I turned to see a very angry older woman bearing down on me. As soon as she noted the eye-contact, she said "Your dog just shit on my lawn! I was just cleaning! I am an old lady! How could you do this to me! You must come back with me an pick it up! How could you do such a thing! What kind of person are you!" As soon as she stopped to breath, I said "You're right. That wasn't very nice of me. Certainly I'll come back and pick it up." And I turned to accompany her back to the scene of my crime, for my penance.

As we walked back to her house, she marching ahead, the dogs and I walking behind at a pleasant pace, she kept turning back to continue her tirade against me, and this is where my equanimity began to turn to hatred. Again she told me that she was an old woman, and that people shouldn't do this to old women. She was 71 years old, and she had to follow me 3 blocks! I was thinking, "How could I have known you were old? Did you have a sign on your lawn I didn't see, which read 'Warning: Irate Older Woman Lives Here,' because that would have been helpful. And why is it any worse for me to let my dogs shit on an older person's lawn? And why can't you shut up? I'm coming back to pick up the fucking dog shit already!" We continued walking, and I said "I admire your fortitude."

Now, this may make me a despicable person, but ever since sixth grade I've found that an easy way to make stupid people shut up is to use words they don't know. Smart people will ask you what the word means. Stupid people will just look blankly at you. Perhaps she didn't know what "fortitude" meant, because she did shut up for half a block.

Then she criticized my parenting skills, abused my dogs and the size of their shit for a while, and said she was going to call the police. We finally arrived at her house.

After fetching me some bags, she stood over me, expressing a near-constant stream of verbal abuse, while I meticulously scraped up my dog's stinky shit from her yard. The lawn, I noted, was brown and patchy. She probably blames the condition of her lawn, I thought, on the evils of dogs and their negligent owners who allow them to do their business there. Every once in a while she'd break into her tirade to point out another microscopic spot of shit I had failed to remove properly. When I was done, she told me not to throw that stinky, disgusting shit into her garbage. I was to walk along and find another garbage can to use. Then she told me to never walk my dogs past her house again.

I stood up and looked her in the eye. "Wait a minute," I said, "you have no right to tell me where I can and cannot walk my dogs. Next time I pass your house, however, I will be sure to have a bag with me."

"I hope you have learned your lesson," she said.

"I certainly have," I replied. "Thank you very much for teaching me this important lesson today, and I hope you have a pleasant remainder of your week"

And I continued on my walk.

The Couch: Signs of Change

2008-04-15T12:06:00.000-06:00

The Walk: Accidental death march around the neighborhood

Distance: 22 Blocks (3.3 miles)

Duration: Lost track of time toward the end...over an hour? 70 minutes?

Thoughts: I worked on this essay I was asked to write for school:

“The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth.”
--Erich Maria Remarque

“Even though I’m only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who’s right and who’s wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas, principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I’m more of a person than a child—I feel I’m completely independent of others.”
--Anne Frank

Twice in the last week, in two different classes, I’ve found myself asking my students “how do you know when you have grown up?” They answered: “You don’t. You can’t.”

My students are brilliant.

Objectively, how can you know that you are, now, officially an adult and an experienced veteran of war instead of a frightened recruit (in the case of Remarque’s character, Paul Bäumer), or an independent, self-sufficient young woman instead of a little girl (in the case of Anne Frank). When do you realize that you are a pillar of salt instead of a woman (Lot’s wife from the Bible), a cockroach instead of a human being (Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis”), or a flower bending over its own reflection in a pond instead of a young man (in the case of Narcissus in Greek mythology).

Are you aware of the moment of change? Can you see it in yourself without external validation (Honey! What happened? You’re a pillar of salt!) Does it dawn gradually as you lay in bed and wiggle your multiple legs, flex your antennae, aware of some subtle difference, until finally you raise your head and see, unbelieving, the horrible change that has occurred? Or, like Narcissus, are you so absorbed in your own beautiful condition that you remain blissfully unaware that you are now a flower?

I still remember the moment when I finally felt like a full-fledged adult. It was not the first time I voted. It was not the day I could walk into the bar and legally order a Flaming Dr. Pepper. It did not even occur on a birthday. Instead, it was the day that I bought my first couch. Until that moment, it had been futons for us. Futons are cheap and practical. In a small apartment they can serve as both couch for TV watching and guest bed for those occasions when your friends drink too many Flaming Dr. Peppers and Brain Hemorrhages and need a place to crash.

Futons are also dreadfully uncomfortable as both couch and bed. As a couch, the mattress is always slipping down. As a bed, the mattress has an uncomfortable lump in the middle, from always being folded up. After a while, our friends wised up, stopped drinking mixed shots with silly names, and no longer needed a place to crash. So one day we decided to buy a couch.

It was a real couch, and it wasn’t even from IKEA. It was hand-crafted: velvety brown micro-suede stretched over a wooden frame and springs. Sitting down, one sank into soft, plump cushions. It took up most of the living room in our small apartment. As the delivery men wedged it into place, we stood back to take in the effect. Suddenly, we realized that this was no longer the home of two college graduates making do as we struggled in transitional jobs and graduate programs. This was the house of two adults. We were adults.

Now, long before this particular moment occurred we had begun to change. Our friends, our lives, our methods of entertaining ourselves. Had we noticed these changes? Perhaps, but the total effect was not understood until we found ourselves in the presence of that very grown-up piece of furniture: the couch. Will it be the same for you? Probably not. You may score your first couch from a street corner, or as a hand-me-down from a parent. At some point, however, you will have a moment. It may be your first apartment, your first payment on a brand-new car, or the first time you hear a helpless infant screaming for you in the next room. You will turn to someone next to you and ask, “Are we really that old?” And then you will tuck in your shirt over a spreading paunch, push the hairs back over the thinning spot on the back of your head, or tug nervously at the Spanx riding up your butt, and awkwardly shamble back to your state of unawareness. Trust me, it will happen.

Meeting Folks, Murals, Walking-Pains

2008-04-14T08:29:00.000-06:00

FRIDAY
The Walk: Around the neighborhood

Length: 12 blocks (about 2 miles)

Duration: 40 minutes

Thoughts: Walking along 1300 East I ran into an acquaintance...slightly more than an acquaintance, because I went to her wedding, but less than a friend and not quite a family member. She was pushing a stroller and walking two dogs...neither the dogs nor the baby were hers, though; she was babysitting. She told me she and her husband were moving to Texas, and I thought about how some relationships work like this: they move along by big events. Last time we saw her was likely at some event (perhaps another wedding) not long after we'd seen her at her wedding (a dreadfully boring one, by the way), and now they are moving along to another place, another time in their life. We are happy enough to see each other on the street and catch up on the big news, and we won't see each other again until the next wedding in the group. As I walked away (or, was dragged away by my two dogs) I thought about how she doesn't really exist in my mind until I see her. She exists only as an occasional update to the software, otherwise she's one of the programs that sit at the back of my hard drive and don't ever emerge on the surface of my screen.

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SATURDAY
The Walk: To a friend's house

Distance: 4 blocks (.6 miles)

Duration: 10 minutes

Thoughts: I want a mural painted on the back of my house. Why? The back of my house is ugly. A big boring slab of gray-green paint, with two glass windows, and three boarded in windows. It is not open, or alive like the back of my parents' house. It does not have any interesting architectural features, like the back of Molly's parents' house. It is drab and boring, and the cheapest way to liven it up, to my mind, is to cover it with bright colors and figures. I think it would make me happy. I think.

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SUNDAY
The Walk: From our house to May and My's house

Distance: 18 blocks (3 miles)

Duration: 1 hour

Thoughts: The heat. The heat. I think it has gotten to my brain already, because during this walk all I did was obsess about the pedometer and getting to 10,000 steps. Such thoughts are too boring to discuss in detail here. Just one thing I'm mulling over...I wish I didn't tire of walking the same route so quickly. I've walked to their house maybe 3 times? I usually walk along 800 East, because it isn't as busy as 7th and 9th, and 10th doesn't go all the way through. Yesterday, I felt bored with 8th, so I cut up to 9th. I guess there's no real problem with that, it's just that if I get sick of things so quickly, I'm going to run out of new routes to walk in my neighborhood. I remember when we moved here last July, the first walks I took were so fun because it was all new terrain (I had grown so sick of every walk in the old neighborhood). Now I'm starting to see the enjoyment tarnish a bit, and I haven't even been walking here a year yet. It just annoys me, is all.

Rocking Chair Reds

2008-04-09T20:09:00.000-06:00

The Walk: From the furniture store to home

Distance: 1.6 miles

Duration: 30 minutes

Thoughts: We bought two new red rocking chairs for the front porch. Birthday presents. They look great, and they have a nice, smooth rock. As we set them up on the porch, flakes of snow began drifting from the gray skies, a lazy drift. None of them seemed to land on the greening grass, or on the yellow daffodils. It was a cold wind, however, that escorted me home on my walk, along with a steady, but light, drizzle of rain, then soft hail, and then the snow.

People at school were bitching up and down the halls, but I like a spring storm, and a gray sky. I've been thinking a lot about T.S. Eliot poems lately--the early stuff. I never think about his later work, I have no taste for it. But as we are reading All Quiet on the Western Front, the word "anesthetized" from Prufrock keeps popping into my head. I know. "April is the cruelest month" would be more appropriate.

The Charm of Arrival

2008-04-08T21:17:00.000-06:00

Walk: From the Dutch Deli to home

Distance: 16 blocks (2.5 miles)

Duration: 50 minutes

Thoughts: Why do I enjoy walking in one direction only more than doing a round trip? Perhaps the key is I like having a destination. Walking in a circle has never appealed to me. Going around and around the park, circling the blocks, it can suffice, but the best walk for me is a long one that ends someplace different than where it began. There is just an innate pleasure in getting somewhere.

I have long fantasized about walking an extremely long distance, with stops along the way, a walk that takes most of a day, but not in the mountains. I'd like to do this walk somewhere urban. When I lived in L.A. I imagined myself walking from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica beach (according to Google Maps, 16 miles). Now, in Salt Lake, I can't think of a good, similar, option. Once I walked from our house on Capital Hill to Malon and Myron's in the Avenues, and then to Rocky and Erin's house in Harvard-Yale, and then to my parents' house on Wasatch drive (isn't that just the perfect list of snobby liberal neighborhoods in Salt Lake?). That was about a 7 mile walk (again, according to Google Maps), and I remember at the end of it, feeling that I could hardly keep walking. Thoughts of death marches drifted through my thoughts as I trudged up the hill to to Wasatch. Perhaps the LA walk was always a pipe dream...

Folk Art Landscaping

2008-04-08T09:28:00.000-06:00

Walk: to Bright Yellow house on 700 East and back

Distance: 14 blocks

Duration: 50 minutes

Thoughts: It was weird how, as I approached the house, I carefully composed my face into an "I LOVE what you're doing with plastic and gold spray paint" and tried to banish all expression of "You are fascinatingly creepy and weird for decorating your porch with Barbie's dream car and plastic flowers." Both emotions completely true, but I know that one is offensive, so I banish it to the recesses of my brain because I wish to avoid conflict. This house, with its classic white-plastic garden chairs spray painted gold, it's display of Minnie Mouse stuffed animals in the upper windows, its God Bless America sign and garden statuary is a fabulous piece of art. What are the rules of putting stuff in your yard? The gaudy over-spillage and decay of one house can be completely appealing, while the drab over-spillage and decay of another (right behind my own house), tends to get me pissed off in a self-righteous white middle-class kind of way. What's that about?

On the way to the Yellow House, we passed the drinking fountain at Liberty Park and Shed danced and caught water droplets from the air as I jetted the fountain with my thumb. Ida watched glumly because I would not let her keep Shed in line by biting his ankles.