Rubbing Stars

"To live without roads seemed one way

not to get lost. To make maps

of stone and grass, to rub stars together,

find a spark." 

~from "Spark," a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Sometimes it is in the wandering that we find ourselves in the most perfect of places. 

Just now, I am curled up on a couch in the lounge of a college in Vermont, happily tuning in and out of conversations around me; tuning in to hear discussions of publishing, of writing styles, point of view and audience. Tuning out to reflect on the day, on the last few days, on the end of last year. Last year when I came to this place of wonderfulness at the very end and after too long in transit. Tuning out to think of the next few days and the future smiling at me. 

To settle back into a small city, even if just for this period of 12 days, is beautiful. Walking everywhere--20 minutes down a slushy slide of a road to the downtown, dumptrucks loaded with snow driving past, clearing the way. On either side of the main streets quaint shops, local and proudly green or organic or handmade all. Espressos in honey-wooden rooms, crepe cafes and mad tacos and the most alice-in-wonderland sort of thrift stores. A sweater I have hunted for 8 years! Late night viewings of Les Miserables with my roommate at the old cinema by the capitol building and a taxi ride back through the night. 

Engaging in lectures on all sorts of wonderful subjects; of craft and of creation, of theories and possibilities and fascinations of all kinds. Readings that make you hold your breath, unable to breathe for the beauty of the words, of the particular arrangement of those precisely chosen words one after another in art and in meaning (and are those the same, afterall?). Losing yourself in workshops; reading and thinking and sharing--this wonderful back and forth--dialogue to take a work from what it is to even better; to impossibly better. Beautiful.

I love the new faces, the new stories, the new friendships being made. The fact that this place is obviously a community that exists across space and regardless of this particular place; the understanding so crystalline that when we leave this particular here we will still be together talking and sharing and exchanging. Pushing and encouraging each other and continuing these dialogues. Continuing this lovely engagement. To not only go out with a group of friends, of fellow students, but with professors you cannot wait to work with; have so much to glean from. 

I love that in all my wandering without roads, I am found here, in this perfect place. Ready to wander some more, ready to make maps of stone and grass and to find a spark--to make a spark. To write. 

Happy Sleepy Warm and Fuzzy Thoughts from a GRAD STUDENT!

I think January caught the flu; we've had about 24 hours now of enjoying the heat of its fever. After the bone-chilling weather of Vermont which had been years since I had to experience, the exceptional warmth of these days in NY came even more shockingly. Sleeveless dresses? Picnics in the warm sun? flip-flops to cross the grass while piles of melting snow tug at the corner of my eye? So bizarre. But not at all unwelcome!

These days of being back home, of adjusting to "real-life" once more; these mornings of waking up with the refrain I'm a student again! singing in my head so happily (far too cheerfully for so early in the morning!!) and of loving it, loving every minute of it. Tracking my first few books (yes, paper books still--I have yet to submit to the nook or the firepad) as they make their journey through the states (I think, it would have been so fun if the pony-express-boys could have had little gps devices attached to them so the girls in their dresses tucked away at home could at least follow the adventures of their little missiles...). Sitting in front of the computer screen and teaching myself it's ok, it's alright--release the Krakken; let your imagination come forth and swallow you whole. 

Writing. Just the pure joy and the crystalline despair of writing. Of investing in myself in this one thing which I love most and above all else. So wonderful! 

It's terribly invigorating. Though I have so much less time, I've already done more cleaning and more cooking and more baking and more walking and more scheduled eating than I usually do in at least a month's time. (Well, excepting the walking. I haven't walked that much yet, not a month's worth!) But really. It's like being alive again. 

Watch me take that back next week, when I get swallowed up in the craziness of starting up a semester again and decide instead of being alive, it's drowning instead... 

Today I made the experiment of cooking Ethiopian food. I had some ingredients for it hiding in cupboard around my home, I think they must have been whispering to me. And of course, experience says that when you are about to embark on the tied-for-2nd busiest month of the year, you should always have meals available for a quick grab, so that you don't subsist on 2 shots of espresso a day, office chocolates, granola bars, and shrimp and spinach. Not that those are bad things. But they don't promise the best nutritional balance or the carousel of flavour which I prefer to indulge my taste buds in. So now i have a freezer full of daro-wat and kik alicha, as well as enough in my fridge for the next week of off and on meals, and some stock to make into a hearty potato stew (if I get around to picking up some vegetables in the market). 

I also indulged my nostalgia and made poppy-seed bread which I haven't made in about a decade. It still tastes just as good! And fresh out of the oven poppy seed bread with a nice mug of fresh-brewed double-shot mocha is perfect for a Sunday morning. 

It was all very good. 

I think tonight I am just so happy it is hard to even think about sleeping, hard to imagine that I might close my eyes on this well of joy and wake up tomorrow still with this thrill, still with this exultation. But I suppose if I don't close them soon... I will be too tired and grumpy in the morning to even care about exultation! 

And so, goodnight my readers. I hope you sleep well, or wake well, whichever timezone this finds you in. 

Thanks for No Apocalypse

It only seems fitting to end the year with a note of some kind. I thought about saying goodnight to a tired year, but somehow I feel as though this year is wide awake and ready for a dance party with the new year. So why say goodnight to it? Why even really say goodbye? I want to say

2012, you have been a year of surprise. I knew how old I would turn this year if I didn't die beforehand, but I'm not sure I saw anything else coming along towards me.

I'm pretty sure 2011 was a tame travel year, but 2012--we saw the world together. Another continent, and the chance to go home again. Could I ask more? But there was. The West Coast again, and then the northeast coast with Maine. And then dropping down to Florida.

I went by last minute whim in the spring wondering what I was doing to a writing conference because I happened to do and enjoy an improv poetry reading night with a couple friends and a number of strangers in DC in summer 2011 and chanced on a lecture on essays and talked to one of the lecturers after and then on another whim in August applied to grad school. At the professor's school. Which is where I now sit writing this. Wow.

Somehow I happened into my first year in which not a single holiday was spent with my family, not a one. And yet I think this year has filled fuller with family and positive, bond strengthening family moments than any other in a long time past.

So many other things. Many of which are already chronicled here and will not be repeated in this post. But really, what an insane year. I don't know how 2012 isn't a tired year, after all it's done on my part alone. I mean, I'm tired just thinking about all this, and I cram a lot in, I think.

I have no idea what to expect of this next year. I know I should graduate from my county leadership program. I know I will be writing, a lot. A lot. I will be a full time professional and a full time student. Maybe I will learn to ski. I will watch my brother graduate and I will desperately miss the last couple years of having the very unexpected privilege of living nearby him and watching him grow up and become a bigger being and stealing a hug or a lunch with him. (or coffee and cookies)

I will also be loving the usage of student discounts again. I can't even say that enough.

But when I think about this year now closing, I have to say that really, I don't know what this next one will be. I hope it will be a little less sad, with a lot less loss (somehow!). But I also hope it will be also (still? anyways?) dynamic and surprising. Because 2012, it's been something else. Thanks for not going out in apocalypse.