Blue Wail

water music

2006-05-20T23:40:00.000-04:00

In honor of the balmy weather, I reinstated my long-neglected habit of taking a brisk lunchtime walk around Jamaica Pond today. The pond is still roughly half-frozen, but in most places, the ice has already melted in the two-foot shallow band along the shoreline. As I was walking along, I kept hearing a lovely, shimmery, unearthly sound. On further inspection, this turned out to be the result of an odd melting pattern along the pond's edge; instead of uniformly transforming into water, the ice had melted into hundreds of tiny shards that were floating together in a miniature arctic ice flow. As the wind blew across the surface of the pond, the resultant waves jostled the ice shards together, creating a delicate silvery music of a sort you'd expect to hear being broadcast from Neptune.

It made me wish I had a little recorder with me to capture the sound. The ubiquitousness of digital cameras has made casual photography a plausible method of recording the visually beautiful moments in one's daily life, but there's really no good technological equivalent for preserving the auditory ones. Piggybacking on the appeal of photoblogs these days, I'm keen to attempt a soundblog - a place to showcase all the beautiful and unexpected little noises of everyday experience. I'd need the right tools for the job though, and -there- I'm at a loss.

Ideas, anyone?

i found your blog to be very inquisitive

2006-02-28T22:38:00.000-05:00

I haven't been to the blog for...well...a while. So when I came back to air out the place and take the dust covers off the furniture, I was startled to find several dozen new "comments" (read: spam), many of which are careful to inform me that "I found your blog to be very inquisitive".

????? Help me out here. Please.

(Although I have to admit that this particular post is, in fact, very inquisitive, in an oblique sort of way...)

pinky, we hardly knew ye

2005-08-10T00:04:00.000-04:00

Not the exact same baby squirrel I found at Jamaica Pond yesterday, but the spitting image of him. Even down to the nubbly white washrag he's lying on. Too bad he didn't make it; I guess walking around outdoors can't always be baby ducks and healthy hawks. I can't seem to get him off my mind, though. It's funny; I lost two clients this year, but the predictable (though certainly unfortunate) death of a newborn squirrel is the one that has made me feel the grimmest. Something about the tiny helplessness of it, breathing its last breath in the palm of my hand, has stirred a sadness in me that I can't distance myself from like I can the others. Or, more likely, the relative lack of investment I had in him compared to my human charges has conjured a grief in a manageable size, whereas the other two are just too big, too scary, and too sad for me to feel as viscerally as this. Anyway, I don't think I'll be walking around Jamaica Pond for a while. At least until I feel a little less raw about the whole thing.

long drought

2005-08-09T23:49:00.000-04:00

It seems like a really long time since I've posted anything here, and I guess it has been. I feel like I've gone from 0 to 60 in the past month - all more or less good - but have had little mental energy (or time) left for blogging. Or rather, for coming up with coherent sentences in long enough strings to be worth blogging.

To be honest, I'm considering putting the whole blog down for an extended hiatus - more on this soon when I have the aforementioned resources to handle it with the level of thought and writing quality I think it deserves.

In the meantime, to all my faithful readers (about four) and sometime-visitors: sorry for the long silence, and for the wishy-washy nature of tonight's re-entry. I'll do my best to have something more definitive here in the next few days.

tenant blues

2005-07-19T11:02:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning
And the water was off
Yes I woke up this morning
And the water was off
I had to buy some water in a jug
To make my morning coff
(ee)

(I've been promised it'll be back on by this afternoon; the landladies are putting in a new bathroom upstairs, and the water was off for plumbing installation reasons. Still, a 90 degree July day isn't the best time for these things to happen...)

blue night

2005-07-18T21:01:00.000-04:00

For no really good reason, I feel pretty down tonight for the first time in a while. I actually had a fairly terrific weekend; much of it was spent lazing around with a new friend in the hammock, and I saw Gribley for the first time in ages for a belated birthday celebration. I even got a fair amount of Arboretum time in, in between socializing. All day long at work, I've been looking forward to coming home and spreading out into the luxury of a little down time; I've got fresh veggies, a newly tidy apartment, and a 10 inch pile of books just waiting for me to enjoy them all. But instead of relaxed, I feel vaguely sad and worried.

Usually when I feel like this, I find out in a matter of days that some relationship in my life (with a friend, a coworker, etc) has gone sour, and my mood has picked up on it before my brain has. Sometimes it's nothing more than a blue Monday, a passing funk that doesn't signify anything more than the fact that it's my turn to harbor one the bleak moods that overtake the best of us now and then.

I'm gonna go through the motions anyway: good dinner, comfy chair, and a stimulating read. Odds are that by acting out my gentle, low-key evening I'll soon find that I'm no longer merely acting once I get into it.

And if not, well, what is this blog for but to provide me with ample evidence that blue moods come along every so often, but never last longer than I can handle them?

the beautiful boys of bluegrass

2005-07-11T15:15:00.000-04:00

A friend and former bandmate got married yesterday in a lovely outdoor ceremony. I didn't think I'd know anyone else at the wedding, so it was quite a surprise to see the rest of the (now defunct) band in attendance. The four of us haven't all been in the same place at the same time since last summer; one moved to NYC, another faded from view into the wilds of Somerville, and I've been typically bad at staying in touch with either of them. So to have everyone present and accounted for all at the same time was especially nice. Could a reunion tour be next? Well, no. But it was great to see everyone again. And between the good company, the natural festiveness of the occasion, the well-stocked open bar, and the irresistibly beautiful setting between the night sky and the sparkling sea, it's safe to say that a good time was had by all.

Plinka plinka plinka.

t-double-i-double-r-e-d

2005-07-08T23:00:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of dead air on the old blog lately - I've been meaning to write for several nights now, but there just never seems to be a spare minute. Life has been pretty full these past few days - albeit full in a good way. But there hasn't been much time left over for the basics; eating, sleeping, and blogging have all fallen by the wayside.

Plus, the world has been so full of overwhelming news and subsequent excellent writing about it - O'Connor's resignation, the next lap of what's turning into the second Hundred Years' War, the London bombings, fire out West, etc. etc. etc., that it seems small and ridiculous to spend time airing my own petty gripes and musings.

Between all the bad news (in general) and the busy schedule (personal), I haven't really had a thought worth posting for days. Hopefully my schedule will start to even out soon (I don't have much hope for the rest of the world settling down, I'm afraid), and I can get back to my public ruminations. In the meantime, I've got a date with my own cozy bed and a solid eight hours sleep. Maybe eight and a half, if I keep hitting the snooze button.

G'night, Gracie.

moths eat wool, right?

2005-06-30T23:38:00.000-04:00

So why do they keep biting me?!?
I'm not kidding; two moths have somehow made their way into my apartment, and every now and then, I feel a sting on my arm or leg. I look over and see a moth making a break for it, and a minute later, I have a small, itchy welt.
What, the mosquitoes aren't enough?

Maybe one of you entomologists out there can help me with this one. Save me from going to the dry cleaners and getting myself moth-proofed.

roslindale wetlands update

2005-06-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

A while back, I posted some information about a proposed development in my neighborhood that would be built on what's currently an open wetlands area. I noticed a bunch of signs about it in people's yards on my way to work today, and followed the link they advertised. After looking over the website, I'm not sure I'm in agreement with 100% of the motivations behind stopping the development, but I'm sure as heck still against the development itself. If you check out the website, be sure to click on the "photo" pages; it's a lovely way to see online what I'm lucky enough to see in person every day - and what will be lost to everyone if it gets turned into condos. There's also a handy "how to help" page for those of you with free time on your hands...

flotsam and jetsam

2005-06-27T22:06:00.000-04:00

In the interest of accuracy, I should mention that I wrote yesterday's post after drinking a cup of hot coffee while sitting in the afternoon sun in the backyard. So that may account for why I thought it was a little too warm.

In other news, if you were wondering if River Gods in Cambridge has the best veggie burger on the planet, the answer is a resounding yes.

And if you were wondering if significant changes might be afoot, fluttery-nervously-goofily-gushing-wise, well, that's a yes, too. Or at least a strong maybe. No, definitely yes. I think.

Hmmmm.

uncle

2005-06-26T16:59:00.000-04:00

OK, OK...so it may be a little too hot.
But only just a smidge.

I'll still take it over 15 degree snowstorms, any day.

this pause has the shape of your name

2005-06-25T10:41:00.000-04:00

Looking back over my blog entries of the past couple of weeks, I realized that they're pretty darn boring. "The weather is great; I'm having fun." "The weather is great; I'm having fun." The weather is great..." And it's all true: the weather has been great, and I have been having more fun lately. But it doesn't make for very interesting reading. And more importantly, it doesn't reflect the whole truth of what's been going on around here.

Part of it has to do with the nature of the blog format: anyone can read it. That's the whole beauty of the blog. I've had readers from Iceland, Australia, and West Africa, and it's thrilling (in a completely dorky way) to think that strangers from across the globe can glimpse snapshots of my life and thoughts as easily as I can peek at their own. It's a lot of fun, but it means that the most personal stuff (synonymous with "the most important stuff") tends to get left out.

Another part of it is the fact that the most interesting bits of my life (and probably most people's) are relational, not internal. The sensitive nature of friendship, love, and loss prohibits me from writing too much about it, as does the care that I try to take not to publicize other people's lives along with my own.

If you've been following the blog for any amount of time, it may be possible to read between the lines and trace the low points, the high points, and the slow mending of a badly bruised heart. Or maybe not. The past season has seen two relationships fade and metamorphosize into pale, weakly versions of their former selves, the growing obviousness of a family member's major health problem, and countless joys and agonies shared with my clients at work, who make up the bulk of my human connections. But something in me balks at publishing this stuff outright, and what's left tends to be a little banal.

Anyway. I'm looking out my window as I write this now, and it looks like the weather's gonna be great. And I'm gonna try to have fun. Stay tuned for the full report. . .

golden afternoon

2005-06-24T19:50:00.000-04:00

Well, I came home early from work today, since I was there a couple of hours over yesterday, and I was just about as pleased as I could be to see that while I was out, someone had installed a hammock in the backyard.

And I thought summer couldn't get any better.

So the past few hours have been spent drifting back and forth in a euphoric daze, novel in one hand and lemonade in the other, watching the shadows of the leaves of the enormous oaks above me dapple enchantingly across my legs and feet. There was a brief interlude of taking the dog for a brisk walk through the arboretum (I've found that late afternoon is my favorite time to go there lately); now it's back to the hammock for as long as I can stay before the mosquitoes find me.

Mmmmmm, hammock. Thank-you, lawn fairy!

if you can't stand the heat...

2005-06-24T00:36:00.000-04:00

I just checked the weather forecast for this weekend, and it's supposed to be 97 degrees on Saturday. That's right: 97. As a transplanted Southerner who still hasn't totally accepted the bitter hag that is New England's climate, I say: Whoo-hoo!! Bring it on. I've got my shorts, my lawn sprinkler, and coffee ice cubes. This is what summer's supposed to be; I'm glad Boston is finally gonna get it right.

my blue heaven

2005-06-21T18:01:00.000-04:00

Man, it's a gorgeous day out there. I just got back from hiking the Skyline Trail over in the Blue Hills; I met up with a hiking partner and hoofed it all the way up to the observation tower. It's really a fantastic view up there; you can see the bay, Boston and beyond, and all the way down to Hull (where there's a nifty windmill) and the outlying islands. There was a guy up there with a telescope, who said on clear days, you can see Mt Washington (today was a little too hazy for that). Still, it was a spectacular view, and definitely worth the work it took to get up there. And it was pretty cool to look through the telescope; that observation tower may possibly offer the best view in the whole state.

This whole "I've gotta do something besides sit around and check my email all day" plan is going even better than I hoped; I got outdoors, got some exercise and a lovely view, got to hang out in the woods and see chipmunks, and enjoyed the company of others - all at the same time. Woo-hoo!

kickin' it old school

2005-06-19T18:32:00.000-04:00

In my second kickball foray this week (I don't know what the fascination is, but it's strangely compelling), I went to a pickup game at Jamaica Pond this afternoon. The game took a while to get going, but once enough people got there, it was a pretty good time. Usually I get intimidated by team sports of any kind, but this was pretty casual; the pitcher didn't even bother to put down his cigarette for something so trivial as actually pitching the ball, and nobody seemed to be keeping track of strikes or fouls. It was definitely the most informal game I've ever been a part of, which is good, because when it comes to sports, I have all the dexterity and coordination of a near-sighted water buffalo. The game was so informal, in fact, that we didn't actually stick to the main rule of kickball - namely, kicking a ball. Instead, it was more of a choice-oriented game; when you were up at the plate, you could go the traditional route and kick a rolling ball, or you could opt to bat a wiffle ball instead. Either way; it was all fine. I always went for the kickball myself (figuring the bigger the target, the better my chances), and actually got on base a few times, thus exorcising the demons of my athletically-impaired adolescence. I even caught some balls as a fielder, which is so statistically improbable that I'd need a PhD in mathematics to even try to explain it. Where I really shone, though, was in the noise department. It seems I have a talent for shouting random praise at people, and it was really, really fun. Our team was so extraordinarily bad that it became necessary to get creative with the positive reinforcement after a while ("Nice try! And I like your shirt!"), but I kept doggedly at it for the whole time.

All in all, it was a pretty entertaining way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and to meet some new people as well. And if you were out trying to have a peaceful walk around Jamaica Pond this afternoon, I hope all that yelling didn't interfere too much.

you can't always get what you want

2005-06-16T19:57:00.000-04:00

But if you try sometimes...

I got good and sick of moping around in front of my computer, and decided to see what I could scrounge up to do on a grey Thursday night. Craig's list turned out to be one stop shopping; in less than a minute, I discovered that I could play kickball in Somerville, take a free Judo lesson right in my own neighborhood, or play ultimate frisbee tonight - and that's just from today's postings.

I gave the kickball team a try (anything as wonderfully absurd as adults playing kickball in an organized way is something I have to do at least once), but left early on account of the cold weather. The people were friendly, and even though I may never do it again, it was a refreshingly new and fun way to spend an otherwise humdrum weeknight.

It's nice to know that it's so easy to find stuff to do alone in Boston; a common theme on this blog is how isolated it can feel living in lovely Roslindale. But it only took me a half hour to get to Union Square (where the kickball happened) from work this evening; a half hour that I otherwise would have spent obsessively hitting the "random page" button on Wikipedia (which I kind of view as my own personal information slot machine). I just need to remember to do it - to get off my duff and go try new stuff. Even if I try a whole bunch of things only once, it's still a way to get out of the house and meet new people. After all, in a city of 600,000 souls, there's gotta be something interesting going on out there any given day of the week. All I have to do is find it.

life needed

2005-06-13T23:41:00.000-04:00

My mood depends way too much on whether I have new email in my inbox or not. I'll bet I'm not the only one, either. Probably someone should set up a support group around this: People Who Spend Way Too Much Time Checking To See If They Are Still Part Of Things Based On Whether Or Not Anyone Has Emailed Them In The Past Hour Or So, or PWSWTMTCTSITASPTBOWONAHETPHOS, for short.

Catchy.

stop the angling; i want to get off

2005-06-12T23:06:00.000-04:00

So my spiffy new oscillating fan came with a full-length instruction page, which includes the following mind-benders:

1. The air flow can be angled to right or left by pushing the body of button oscillating switch. If you want to stop angling, push it again.
2. Turn the knob of timer to position which set the time you want, the fan will stop when time is over. In case the timer is not use, set the timer to "on".

Of course, time really will be over if you neglect to mind the following warning:

3. Be sure not to make water or other liquid enter the inside of motor.

Maybe I'd be better off with one of those crinkled-up paper fans we all made in grade school. I can make any liquid I want enter the inside of that, and time will flow on just like it always does (although my fan will be considerably wilted and less useful).

eyes wide shut

2005-06-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

Last night, as I was marching down Beacon Street in the heart of downtown Boston, surrounded by spirited lesbians, transgendered people, and some people who seem to have rejected the notion of gender altogether, I realized that I have a lot to learn about courage, and integrity, and generally being a decent human being.

I live in a private studio apartment on the first floor of a co-op house. All the folks who live in the co-op part of the house are gay, and all are movers and shakers in Massachusetts equal rights activism. They're also a lovely bunch of people, and when they invited me to come with them to the annual Dyke March last night in Copley Square, I said "Sure." What I actually meant when I said "sure" was "I'm not sure how to say no to this, so I'll think of an excuse and back out at the last minute." I don't like crowds, I don't like downtown, and I'm shy enough that I'm uneasy with being part of any identifiable group of people in public, whether they're lesbians, farmers, or the national tiddlywinks team. When I left work on Friday, I was all set for a quiet evening at home, with plenty of time to think of a legitimate reason why I hadn't gone to the parade after all.

In a rare example of both poetic justice and instant karma, I got home to find that all of my housemates had waited for me so that I could ride over to the parade with them, even though that meant that they would be late for the opening festivities. I had about 3 minutes flat to drop my stuff, change out of my work clothes, and bolt out the door - not a second to spare for lame excuses or feeble backpedalling.

The Dyke March started at the Boston Common, and there was a bit of a wait before things really got started. There were the endless speeches and attempts at energizing the crowd that are common to every political rally, along with various women walking around handing out goodies. (I got a plastic whistle, a t-shirt, two mini-zines, and a neon green sticker). Eventually, though, the speeches ended, and the crowd got semi-organized for the march itself. We headed out of the Common and onto the streets, where I immediately noticed that
a) the streets in Copley Square were all blocked off for the parade, with police cars and irritated drivers and curious onlookers everywhere, and
b) there were dozens and dozens of people with cameras, all of whom were strangers, and all of whom were snapping shot after shot of anything and everyone involved in the parade.

At the time, I was walking in a loose group of people comprised of my housemates, my housemates' dog - who was wearing a t-shirt that originally said "I heart my vagina", but which had been adulterated with a black marker to read "I heart my mommies' vaginas", several women I didn't know, one of whom had a megaphone and was chanting at top volume, several transgendered people who had opted to march topless, and a woman carrying a giant poster that proclaimed "I fuck women".

I'm not proud of this, but at that moment, I did not feel pleased to be doing something meaningful to support my friends and their rights to be treated equally as people and under the law. I was not reminded of how only a short time ago, marches like this one helped to raise awareness for the need for equal rights for people no matter what color their skin or what religion they practiced. I wasn't thrilled to be exercising my own civil rights to speak out against injustice and prejudice. I wasn't any of those things, because I was too busy being absolutely mortified, and unreasonably terrified that someone might take my picture and/or recognize me in the parade. That someone might see me in a Dyke March, and judge me accordingly.

It wasn't until I was sitting on the long T ride home that I realized what a huge lesson the experience had been, and how blind I'd been to what was actually going on. For the hour or so that I was in the parade, I thought of little else but trying to remain as inconspicuous as humanly possible without actually crawling under a manhole cover. But for many of the people I was marching with, being inconspicuous is a luxury they just don't have. And while I was selfishly preoccupied with not being mistaken for something I'm not, I missed sight of the fact that all of the judgment and criticism that I was anxious about gets doled out to those same people all the time, simply because they are who they are.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like the world's biggest hypocrite. On the outside, I was marching through Boston, supporting people who call me a friend, and wait patiently for me to come home. On the inside, I was harboring the very same prejudice and bigotry that the parade exists to protest against.

I talk a big talk about compassion, and equality, and the stupidity of fundamentalist right wingers who would deny equal rights to people based on their sexual orientation, or any other innate trait. But when it came to walking the walk - literally - I was barely limping along.

I'm not sure what to do with this realization. I want to apologize, to say a big "I'm sorry" to everyone who accepted me openheartedly, and assumed that I would do the same right back. But it's a little too late for that now, and trying to do so would only create more problems than it solved - especially since the only one who really has the problem here is me. I don't want to be one more person who natters on about her liberal guilt, then goes right back to enjoying all the privileges that come with being a member of the dominant culture in a society that's riddled with glass ceilings and invisible walls.

I don't know what to do to fix it now, and I sure as hell didn't know last night, sitting quietly by myself as the T rattled and rumbled its way back home.

block pride

2005-06-11T12:43:00.000-04:00

I was rounding the corner onto my street on my way back from the grocery store this morning, when I noticed that someone had chalked across the sidewalk, in giant blue letters: "The Best Street."

I happen to agree, and applaud whomever took the time to post the official notice, just in case there was any confusion over this important issue.

in the summertime

2005-06-09T21:17:00.000-04:00

There's something inexplicably wonderful about walking down to the village in a sundress and flip flops, smiling hello at a few familiar faces from the neighborhood, grabbing an ice cream cone from the local shop, and walking back through the arboretum at sunset, aforementioned ice cream melting all down my hand and leaving a drippy little path along the trail.

It gives me a feeling of somehow ripening, of being bigger on the inside than on the outside; there's joy and hope and a head-over heels-in-love-with-the-world feeling that scares me a little - a swelling sense of the terrible wonder of being alive that presses against the little shell I've constructed to shelter me through the rough times of the past year.

Why is it so much easier to be happy in the summer than any other time? Part of it is simply that it's too warm to be bothered by much, and part of it is pure nostalgia; the happiest times of my life were spent in a place with long, hot summers that got started around April Fools' Day and stuck around until Halloween. I realize I'm treading on dangerous ground here; I'm hazardously close to rhapsodizing about the good ol' days, when I was a kid and a phone call only cost a dime. I'll keep an eye on it, and if I catch myself writing about how they don't make ____ like they used to, I promise to throw in the blog towel and get a job harassing kids on lawns instead.

In the meantime, I'll do my best to remember that even a belated break is better than none at all, and that the brevity of the New England summer only serves to remind me not to miss a bit of it.

americana?

2005-06-07T22:42:00.000-04:00

In the line of duty, I recently agreed to watch the musical "Oklahoma". I'm a music therapist, and a group of my clients wants to put on a truncated version of the play; I figured it would be good for them to have a goal to work towards, and they'd all get a kick out of it, so why not? I'd never really seen it, though, so I borrowed a video of it for research purposes.

Well, after watching about half of the film version (all I could get through so far), I have a few answers to that "why not?". Mostly, it's just a bizarre piece of theater. It started out innocuously (if saccharinely) enough: boy likes girl, girl likes boy, but both are too smart-alecky to admit it. Oh, the tension! Midway through, though, things take an abrupt turn towards the macabre when the lead male character walks into his rival's hut, notices a rope lying around, and helpfully points out that it would be a good rope for hanging yourself with. He then launches into a surreal song from the point of view of the people attending the rival's funeral, after he (the rival) has hung himself.

This is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, and I've seen the entire corpus of John Waters and a 3D porn movie from 1977.

I guess I should go back and watch the rest, but I'm a little afraid now. I mean, how do you follow up a number in which a Hollywood cowboy serenades a Hollywood farmhand with the soundtrack to his own hypothetical funeral? There's a scene coming up involving homemade pies; maybe they'll turn out to be human pies a la Sweeney Todd. I'm repulsed and intrigued at the same time. . .

drink beer, win valuable prizes

2005-06-06T20:07:00.000-04:00

When I lived in Memphis, several lifetimes ago, I used to work for the weekly paper there, writing book reviews and answering random telephones. Twice a month, a group of folks from the Flyer (the weekly paper) would get together at a cozy little crosstown bar named Kudzu's to mentally duke it out against teams from competing media entities, including the daily newspaper and a couple of local TV news stations. It was kinda like Trivial Pursuit, except that each team took turns writing the questions themselves. Also, there was no board or anything. And, needless to say, copious amounts of beer were involved. I was hopelessly outclassed most nights, but it was the mid-nineties in the South, so if it was my turn and I had no clue whatsoever, I could always shout out "Bill Clinton" and have at least a 50% chance of being right.

It was a pleasant way to spend the evening, and a good way to blow off a little competitive steam, too. (And it was only a little bit like Quiz Night from "The Office", in the most benign way possible.)

I've been a little homesick lately, and Memphis has been on my mind a lot. I've also been feeling the lack of any kind of significant peer group here in little Roslindale, and I suspect that there may be others out there like me who would enjoy an excuse for a regular neighborhood get-together.

So, never one to sit around and mope for long (well, not too long, anyway), I'm attempting to recreate (loosely) the glory of times past: I'm putting together a trivia night of my own. It'll be at Doyle's, in JP, but conveniently close to Rozzie, too. If you're not doing anything this Wednesday, why not come on down for a fun-filled battle of wits and beer? (That's "battle of wits", along with beer. There will be no beer battling. At least as far as I know.) It promises to be good, dorky fun for everyone involved. It looks like about 10 people are in for sure so far, but the more we have, the better it will be. And if you have no idea what the answer is, you can always shout "Bill Clinton."

Hope to see you there.

random question

2005-06-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

Why is it that "horrible" and "horrific" mean the same thing, but "terrible" and "terrific" are opposites? It's a puzzler. . .

In other news, today's Southern Living cooking project is: candied violets. Well, pansies. I've got tons of of them on the front porch, and they won't last too much longer in the heat, anyway. Mmmm, flowers. . .

book score

2005-06-04T12:46:00.000-04:00

The Roslindale library is having a book sale today. I found a couple of good ones, including an old copy of Auntie Mame and - the ultimate summer book score - a 1996 Southern Living annual cookbook. You know the ones I mean - everything's grilled, fried, or smothered in whipped cream, and a full half-page in the index is devoted to the boldfaced heading "bacon".

It was a standard library sale - hardbacks $1 and paperbacks $.50, but even that was half-price to library members (of course I'm a library member).

Gotta head in to work now, but I'll bet you can guess what I'll be up to the rest of the weekend. . .
(If you guessed cooking old-school Southern meals to be eaten in the backyard while immersing myself in my newly acquired books, you guessed right.)

when in doubt, cook

2005-06-03T19:00:00.000-04:00

It's been a rough week. My cat beat me up, my guitar needs repairs, and my brakes are starting to squeal.
One of my clients lost her battle with MS this week, and another fell and broke her hip, setting her up for the decline that too frequently comes with an extended hospital stay.

I felt kind of rotten about all this when I got home today, so I decided to do what I always do when I need to de-stress after a tough week: cook up a decent and tasty dinner for myself. Fake chicken with real basil, fresh green beans, and little homemade sandwich cookies. . . the act of cooking (and eating) something that didn't come out of a box or a can is comforting on a fathoms-deep level.

Speaking of which, I'd better get cracking if I want to dine before midnight.

Bon Appetit!

food, sort of

2005-06-01T22:11:00.000-04:00

1. The Thai restaurant that finally opened in Roslindale Square is going to put a serious crimp in my finances, I can already tell. Let's review. Last night: Thai food at the restaurant. Tonight: Thai food take-out. And it's only Wednesday.

2. For an interesting (read: queasy-making) consumption-related experience, try watching the Silence of the Lambs on tv, featuring Hannibal Lecter describing gruesome cannibalistic meals, interspersed at regular intervals with commercials for restaurants featuring close-ups of steak.

Not sure what to make of this, but it can't be good.
Whoops - commercial's over. Back to wiling away the irretrievable hours of my quasi- adulthood in front of the boob tube...

jamaica pond report

2005-06-01T13:17:00.000-04:00

Sighted on my lunch break jaunt around the pond:

1 snow white swan
3 turtles sunning themselves
5 fuzzy goslings
18 adorable baby ducklings
umpteen million various water birds, squirrels, and little songbirds, all enjoying the day

If there were a job available for "bird counter", I'd be a shoe-in.

getting better all the time

2005-05-31T22:57:00.000-04:00

Well, it feels like the worst is over.
Some of it is environmental: the weather cleared up, Nell's future looks more secure, and I got to see actual forest over the weekend.
I got some old paperwork taken care of today, and went out for Thai food with friends in the neighborhood.

All of that stuff helps, and I'm glad of it.

I suspect part of it, though, is the simple passage of time. The intensity level of badness I felt over the past week and weekend can't be sustained for that long; like a sprain or the stomach flu, sooner or later it has to clear up on its own. I still feel a little unsteady, just the same as if I were recovering from an actual illness; after the flu, I wouldn't go out and eat pizza and drink til dawn. And after a hard-core case of the existential jumps, I've got to remember be a little gentle with myself. Eating regular meals, getting enough exercise, spending time with trusted friends - these are all post-nervous-collapse type activites that I've learned help keep me from falling back into the funk I've just gotten over. Please forgive me if this is too personal a topic for blogging, or is turning into The Adventures of Self-Absorbed Neurotic Woman (and her sidekick, Obvious Girl). But one of the big reasons I started blogging in the first place is to leave a record of the ups and downs of living alone, so I can go back and re-read about the peaks from the valleys, and vice versa. A reminder that none of it lasts forever, and hopefully a guidebook for getting through the next time.

Thanks for bearing with me; I'll try to get back to arboretum pictures and pirate jokes soon.

a day in the sun

2005-05-30T22:10:00.000-04:00

I went hiking here this morning; it was absolutely beautiful. I was worried that the Arboretum would be packed with people for Memorial Day; frankly, I was worried that Moose Hill would be, too. It was just fine, though - I only saw about four other people the whole time I was on the trails.

There's something about hiking around in the woods by myself that makes everything seem like it's gonna be alright, after all.

Not that you asked, but a Mass Audubon membership is only $25, and it helps keep places like this protected and accessible. Plus you get a nifty sticker for sticking on things.

snuggly kitties

2005-05-29T12:29:00.000-04:00

Suki and Nell seem to be getting along pretty well these days...
(For those of you just tuning in, Nell (in stripes) is the latest member of the household. She's a shelter kitty, mostly feral. She's very, very shy - she won't let me get closer than about three feet away - but she's obviously taken a shine to Suki!)

here comes the sun

2005-05-28T11:53:00.000-04:00

Wow, the weather really makes all the difference.

I even pulled up the shade to the window behind my computer this morning - there's finally a view out there worth looking at.

It's ludicrous how connected my mood is to how sunny it is outside - now that we've got a clear day, I feel like myself again for the first time since I got back from vacation. Whew, that's a relief.

I'm not sure how long it will last, so I've assigned myself a mission for this weekend: go hiking someplace I've never been before. I've got three days. (Well, two, really - I have to work this afternoon.) A good long hike on a new and adventure-filled trail is just what I need to sweep the last bits of rain-blues out of my system.

I'll bet I'm not the only Bostonian who feels this way; maybe I'll see you out there.

rattling the cage: update

2005-05-27T19:48:00.000-04:00

Home from work, I hoofed it down to Roslindale Village to see what my adopted hometown had to counteract the aforementioned meemies.

I returned, 45 minutes later, with a six-pack of Newcastle and a $2 copy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in tow.

It's not much, but it may be enough to stave off the willies for one more Friday night.

(It would be nicer to be out with people somewhere, but I guess I did make this hermit's bed I'm lying in. This is one of those times where it would actually be nice to live a little closer to civilization; in Cambridge-ville, I could just pop down to the local bar for decent music and good company. In bucolic Rozzie, the best I can do is a beer on the porch with my headphones on. Which is still pretty good, when you think about it, but just not the same.)

rattling the cage

2005-05-27T14:34:00.000-04:00

Every so often - about once every two or three months, I'd guess - I get the creeping crawlies. Anxiety is too clinical a word for this feeling; "anxiety" is medical, chemical, subject to the mediating influences of caffeine and the environment. That's not what I've got. I've the crawls, the screaming meemies, a dark night of the soul that, ignoring the laws of semantics, hunkers down and stays for days. I still go to work, brush my teeth, pay the bills, but it all happens a mere toehold away from the dark undertow of fear and restlessness that lurks blackly in the not-so-background, waiting for the slightest opportunity to drag me under.

It's come and gone my whole life, this tidal system of unease, and from longstanding familiarity I've learned to recognize its character, its habits, its leering, pointed face. I know that a series of dark, chilly days will set it off, as will the possibility of a major upcoming change - both of which may have been factors in this latest bout. I know that getting outdoors - walking around, listening to the birds and watching them (and the insects, and whatever else is out there) do their daily things will help take the worst of the edge off it. Playing music helps, too; the focus it requires gives meaning and structure to what would otherwise be random nervous energy. I also know that nothing really helps except time - slowly but inevitably, the beastly jumps will recede and a calmness approaching normality will return. It always does, though never as quickly as I'd like.

In the meantime, though, I have to keep going to work, keep brushing my teeth, keep paying the bills. The little elements of my daily routine are a comfort, albeit a small one, and they give me something to do with myself while I wait for the tide to recede, so I can stop climbing the walls, once again.

generalized blech

2005-05-25T23:44:00.000-04:00

Today has been one of those days in which all of the ordinary events take place against a low but steady background hum of anxiety. Nothing too urgent, nothing too focused, just a constant and low-level uneasiness. Should I apply for a PhD program I'm looking into, or is it too soon? Is my landlord going to evict Nell (my cat's cat), or was it just an offhand comment? Is there going to be enough water to drink in 10 years, and will there be any trees left to drink it under? Will it ever stop raining and feel like spring? Will I ever feel like I have a purpose, or will the next 60-odd years be one long stretch of meaningless bumping around, sometimes with friends but mostly alone?

It's hard to believe that one week ago, I was happily and confidently forging my way (quite on my own) across a foreign country with nothing but a Rough Guide and a steady intake of nuclear-strength coffee for security and courage. Now that I'm back home, every little thing seems too overwhelming, too suffused with hidden pitfalls and vaguely menacing consequences to take any action at all.

God, I hope it's just the weather. It's been dreary enough long enough to knock the starch out of the staunchest pirate (when did pirates start taking over this blog? that's the second reference this month...). Maybe I better go look at my vacation pictures again, in the hopes that photographic evidence of my former moxy will cause it, like the mythical south, to rise again.

Arrr.

a splash of color

2005-05-24T17:37:00.000-04:00

Here's a recent photo of some of my plants (on the front porch), taken in a brief period of non-rain last Saturday morning. Just around the corner, out of the lens frame are: a little herb garden (basil, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, and marjoram), some viola seedlings, some marigolds, and a lovely lavender bush. The herbs and seedlings are currently crowding my kitchen table - I'm worried they wouldn't survive tonight's cold, windy rain. The lavender, the marigolds, and all the others are still outside; I'm afraid they're gonna have to make it through the night on their own. Just like the rest of us.

am i blue

2005-05-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I made it back from Ireland in one piece, thoroughly thrilled with the week's adventures. Now that I'm back home in my little apartment, though, I seem to have contracted a bad case of the post-travel blues.

I took way too many photos while I was away (read: >250), and my current preoccupation is the organizing of the best of them into some kind of coherent scrapbook, commemorating the trip. Once I have a handle on that, I'll try to post the highlights here on blue wail.

In the meantime, I guess it's good to be back. But it would be better to still be away...

bon voyage

2005-05-11T16:29:00.000-04:00

Well, me hearties, in a little over an hour, I'll be heading to the airport to fly away for my week-long visit to Ireland.

I'm planning to keep a journal of what I see and hear while I'm there, and I promise if there's anything that bears repeating, I'll post it here when I get back.

In the meantime, all that's left for this travellin' geek to say is "so long, and thanks for all the fish!"

planning 101

2005-05-09T23:26:00.000-04:00

In preparation for my impending trip to Ireland, I made a list of things I needed to do before traveling, and another list of things I needed to pack. Then I made another list of items I needed to purchase for the trip, and added a list of things I need to do to get the house ready. I lost the original list, which was ok, because I had come up with an entirely new set of items that needed to go on it. I made a list condensing all of the above lists. I then (you guessed it) made another list - this one of all possible bus schedules and routes between the Irish towns I'll be staying in. I threw in a list of hostels, complete with addresses and phone numbers, that I'll be staying in for good measure. Finally, I made a folder in which to store all of these lists, complete with a master list on the front of it, denoting which lists are contained therein.

So all I really need to do now is, well, um. . . .pack.

thinly stretched

2005-05-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

Those of you who have been following this blog since its inception have probably noticed that my postings have plummeted lately, both in frequency and quality. Part of that decline is due to my swiftly approaching trip to Ireland, of course. But there's another factor contributing to the literary desert that Blue Wail has become over the past couple of weeks, one that my tired and burnt-out brain has only recently assembled (sans directions) in the dimly lit garage of my consciousness.

This blog began as a vehicle for me to write about living - and therefore, spending long stretches of time - alone. The ups, the downs, the round and rounds. The problem is: lately, I haven't really been alone. Not that much, anyway. It's a wonderful thing that my social calendar has been so chock-a-block, I guess. All I have to do is glance through last month's postings to see how eager for companionship I was in the none-too-distant past. And I certainly don't regret the time I've spent lately with friends, old and new. Honestly. It's been lovely.

Still, though...

I feel a bit like Goldilocks - for a while, I complained that my social life was too cold. Now I'm griping that it's too hot - at least for a self-proclaimed hermit-by-choice. In my defense, though, I work six days per week (well, ok, one of them is a half-day. But any day I have to haul my guitar around and sing "Daisy Bell" at all counts as a work day in my book, thank-you very much), and the one remaining day I have to myself has to get me through the next six, each and every week.

Trying to see my friends and family occasionally, going on the odd date, and getting done all the time-consuming little errands that always seem to need doing (note to self: look into getting a valet immediately) AND making a little time for solitary Arboretum-rambling, book-shop browsing, and otherwise decompressing, all in the few and precious hours that are left over, is proving a Sisyphean task.

I mean, honestly, something's gotta give, and soon.

Because I'm wiped out.

roslindale: the city that never forgets

2005-05-02T23:33:00.000-04:00

from the LANA (Longfellow Area Neighborhood Association) newsletter I found stuffed unceremoniously into my mailbox this afternoon:

"The Arnold Arboretum (as part of Harvard U) wants to put research facilities on 14 acres of open space at Walter, Weld, and Centre Streets.

. . .Forty years ago, the City gave the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center permission to build a facility for seniors at the nine-acre Joyce Kilmer Park on Centre Street. After promising to protect the remaining open space at that site, the City later allowed the Rehab Center to double in size in 1973. Most of the remaining parkland was subsequently paved for cars in violation of public deed restrictions on the property.

The lesson of Joyce Kilmer Park [currently Park-ing lot] is that once an institution gets established in a location, there is little a neighborhood can do to limit its eventual expansion."

Later in the same newsletter, LANA appeals to me (and my neighbors) to do something about a developer's evil plan to build five big nasty condos on a wetlands parcel of land, adjacent to the Arboretum.

OK. This is one of those issues I tend to react to before I have all the facts. It seems to me that somebody is trying to build stuff where 14 acres of Arboretum land, plus a few more acres of local wetlands, currently stand. This is very bad news, right?

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know how I feel about the Arboretum.

Before I go chain myself to a tree, though, I feel like I should at least make an attempt to get the other side of the story. What's going on here? What, exactly, does Harvard want to build? How much green space will be lost, and how many new roads/parking lots will be added along with the actual structures? And how do you stop developers from building condos that will disrupt a wetlands ecosystem (however small) just to cram yet another condo into a neighborhood that's already chock full of condos for sale?

If you know, you'd better let me know soon. There's a hardware store right in the Village that I'm sure can outfit me for an extended protest just as soon as I march my morally outraged butt down there, bright and early tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, here are the phone numbers of city officials who can do something about the developers (although not Harvard, unfortunately. . .):

Maggie Goedecke, Boston Redevelopment Authority: 617.918.4253
Dave McNulty, Mayor's office: 617.635.4830
Chris Busch, Boston Conservation Commission: 617.635.3850
Councilor Rob Consalvo: 617.635.4210

Thank-you.

birthday shopping to do?

2005-04-29T19:08:00.000-04:00

For the woman/man who has everything:

While supplies last (and until the chickens wise up. . .)

irritation, with birds

2005-04-29T13:32:00.000-04:00

There is an unbelievably petty war going on at work right now over scented candles, and I'm on the losing side. The place smells like the evil offspring of a French whorehouse and a Dow chemical plant, but I guess some people like it.

Embittered and exhausted by the noxious scents and attitudes, I left over lunch and ambled around Jamaica Pond for some fresh air and new perspective. I was rewarded with the treat of getting to see a big, gorgeous hawk hanging out over the pond, periodically alighting in a tree or swooping down to scare the bejesus out of the local duck population.

I was feeling much better until I came back to find that the General of the Scented Candle Campaign had set up an honest-to-god yard sale in my office. (Every three weeks or so, people bring in old clothes, shoes, etc. for a workplace swap - a nice idea, but I'd prefer to be asked before it gets installed in my hard-won space.)

Grrrrr.

april showers

2005-04-27T18:29:00.000-04:00

What a dreary day. I sleepwalked through work today, and came home with no higher hopes than a peanut butter sandwich and a relatively good Simpsons episode. How nice, then, to find that the perennial portion of my garden order had arrived, safe and sound and waiting for me to add it to my steadily growing collection!

I got some of these,

a couple of these,

and one of these, too.

They don't look like much just yet, but at least they make the rain seem a little more purposeful.

i heart baby goats

2005-04-25T20:45:00.000-04:00

So we're scrapping our hard-won reproductive rights, burning up the lingering remains of our oil reserves in gargantuan SUVs, and clear-cutting the rain forest faster than you can say "global wasteland".

To all of that, I say: "Baby goats! They're so cute! And playful!"

And it really does make me feel better. At least for a little while.

(photo courtesy of Gribley, as always.)

static on the line

2005-04-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Honestly, this whole going-to-a-foreign-country-on-a-last- minute-whim thing is way more time consuming than you might think.

Or maybe it's exactly as time consuming as you'd think.

Either way, it hasn't left a whole lot of brain juice left over for eloquence, or even a daily update.

For those of you following along at home, sorry it's been so dull here on Blue Wail lately. I apply for my passport today, and that should be the end of the flurried activity for a few days, anyway. After which, I hope to get back to the in-depth coverage of what I ate for dinner and whether or not I cleaned the bathroom lately that you've come to expect.

new emotion

2005-04-19T23:29:00.000-04:00

It's a bracing blend, consisting of equal parts utterly thrilled, completely terrified, and the sinking realization that I'm gonna be eating ramen noodles for months to make up the cost.

I'm going to Ireland.
By myself.
In two weeks.

It was kind of a snap decision.

More on this later, after my snyapses have cooled a bit.

(I've never been out of the country before. Not even to Canada.)

go forth and multiply

2005-04-18T18:20:00.000-04:00

There are currently approximately 500 kids under the age of 12 in the backyard next to mine.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

lucky duck

2005-04-18T13:29:00.000-04:00

After all the complaining I did about my job last week, it's only fair to report that, in some ways, it's a very good job indeed. For example, the building it's in is right across the street from Jamaica Pond, and my office window looks out over a lush green lawn and the pond itself. I just took my lunch hour to walk around the pond, stopping every now and then to watch the ducks and geese bobbing around, their squinty little hearts brimming with the hope of breadcrumb handouts. (They weren't disappointed, either.)

I realize that my blog is in danger of narrowing into variations on the theme of "I walked around outside, and it was fun," but hey - it's what I do.

culture shock

2005-04-17T22:26:00.000-04:00

I'm so used to getting in my car and zipping up to Somerville/Cambridge that I forget how far it actually is, sometimes.

Today I walked from my house, through the Arboretum, to the Forest Hills T-stop. It's about a 30 minute walk, if you walk quickly, and it's the loveliest, most scenic route you could ask for. Today was typically beautiful: birds were singing, wildflowers were in bloom, and fresh green buds were out on nearly all of the trees. The path to the T-station goes though several incarnations, from dirt to asphalt to gravel; near the end, it circumvents a marshy pond complete with little duck families bobbing around on its surface.

The gravel path ends right across the street from the T station. From there, it took two trains to get me to Davis Square; 45 minutes later, I emerged into a cityscape where people were a little younger, a little hipper, and a whole lot more numerous than in Roslindale. Blinking in the sunlight, I felt like a country relative in for a visit to the "Big City", even though I lived in Somerville for nearly two years, two years ago.

The day was fun, and I'm glad I went, but it was kind of a relief to go home again. It felt like a long voyage from an oddly foreign land: clamber back down to the weird underground world of the T, switch trains, then arrive back to resurface safely at the gates of my beloved Arboretum once more.

There's something magical about passing through those tall iron gates; I feel as though the Arboretum stands as a green and gentle buffer zone between me and the hustle and bustle of the crowded northern squares. The ducks were still out, dipping along the bottom of the pond for an evening snack. A few people were still in the park, playing with dogs or rounding up tired kids. And I breathed a little easier in the peace of it all.

I am a little wary of how provincial I'm becoming; my perception of how crowded Cambridge-ville is, along with my accompanying nervous reaction to its hip and busy pace, is very different from how I perceived it a couple of years ago. And Roslindale can feel a little isolated at times, especially when it comes to hearing good live music or seeing randomly familiar faces on the street.

Still, between the stress of urban living, and the isolation of my friendly island amid the green hills of the Arboretum and the other big South-of-Boston parklands, I'll take my idyllic isolation any day.

did you win the lottery today?

2005-04-15T17:35:00.000-04:00

If so, please consider sharing some of what you've got with these good people.

Didn't win yet? Then maybe you'd like to consider spending an hour or two per month visiting someone with Alzheimer's disease. They'd really appreciate it, and it would earn you about 1,000,000 karmic bonus points.

Thanks.

late bloomer

2005-04-14T23:29:00.000-04:00

Arrrgh! I spent hours and hours poring over the seed catalog, scrupulously choosing which plants would go in my garden this year. I scrutinized, I cross-referenced, I cut out the catalog photos and made a little paper garden to see how it would all fit together.

Perfection achieved, I triumphantly logged on to the catalog website, extensive notes in one hand and credit card in the other, only to find....

NO!!!!

Nine out of ten of all the plants I'd so carefully chosen are SOLD OUT.
I was too slow.

I still ordered way more than I can afford, and I'm sure they'll all be beautiful. But I'm having a hard time letting go of the garden I'd so lovingly planned, the one that will never exist because I waited to long to make it happen.

Drat.

i will not abuse the kindness of librarians...

2005-04-13T20:12:00.000-04:00

Tonight's Simpsons was a rerun I'd seen a little too recently to enjoy again so soon, so I took the half hour traditionally reserved for my second, yellow family and headed down to the village center instead to return a library book before it accrued any more late fines. And since I was passing by two bakeries and a grocery store on the way, I promised myself I could pick up a little something sweet and chocolatey on the way back.

When I got to the library, there was only one person ahead of me in line. (At any other library, I'd just drop my book off in the returns pile. At this small and idiosyncratic one, though, people tend to pick up books from that pile and check them out before they've been marked "returned", so weeks later you end up in a protracted argument with the librarians over whether you returned them or not.)

The girl in front of me was around 13 or 14, and had apparently lost a paperback book she'd checked out. The librarian was suggesting that, rather than pay the lost-book fee, she could just bring in a paperback of her own to replace it - "something people your age would think was interesting," and they'd call it even.

How cool is that? The Roslindale library takes trade-ins!

I was so impressed with this idea, (and with the gorgeous twilight sky on the walk back home) that I completely forgot to buy the chocolate. Already, I was thinking of all the books I'd gladly sacrifice from my own collection in exchange for those hard-to-find volumes the library owns that I've coveted for years....

Ok, so that probably wouldn't work. Still, it was an awfully nice thing for that librarian to do. Maybe it will keep that girl coming back to the library for years to come. It sure makes me less begrudging of my own measly but inevitable late fees, knowing that they're going to support a neighborhood library that really acts like a good neighbor .

banjo players: 1, hermits: 0

2005-04-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

Every Tuesday I'm supposed to have band practice (well, duo practice).

I didn't feel like making the effort of human contact tonight, so I rang up my bandmate to call off tonight's rehearsal, making the feeble excuse that I didn't want to drive out in the (barely) sketchy weather.

"No problem," he replied; "I'll come out there instead."

He then proceeded to cheerfully and effortlessly brush aside all the excuses in my armory - it's too cold, too gray, I'm too tired, the almanac said it's an ill-omened day for singing.

He's hurtling over in his vegetable-oil powered car right now, a merry poster child for the Yankee can-do attitude, forcing me to crawl crankily back out of bed and start tuning up my guitar.

So despite my best efforts to sabotage it, it looks like I'm back to the plan of hanging out with a friend, having fun, and doing something creative all at the same time.

Thanks for the arm-bending, J.

workplace blues

2005-04-12T15:19:00.000-04:00

It's been a tough week to be a music therapist.

Most of the time, I love my job. It's fun, it's challenging, and it feeds my need to be creative as well as to do something that's instantly helpful to others.

Sometimes, though, the sadness of it all is just too much.

I think those of us who work in human services have to fabricate a certain level of denial about our clients; otherwise, the stress of being face to face with so much chronic pain (physical, emotional, and spiritual) can deplete you to the point where you have nothing left to give.

On the other hand, if you become so calloused to the raw need you're continually surrounded by, you're in danger of becoming apathetic, insensitive, and even cruel to those who need your kindness the most.

The middle path between those two extremes is a narrow one, and not easily kept to.

In the brief period I've been in this field, I've seen otherwise wonderful, compassionate people fall to either side of the middle path, much to the detriment of the clients who need them. It's so easy to burn out with the overwhelming sadness and frustration of it all, and it happens all the time.

Most days I'm able to see the little joys and strengths that shine through my clients like so much sun breaking through an overcast sky. Every now and then, though, the raging unfairness of illness and disability - together with its inexorable and humiliating meanness - get to be too much, and I need to go through a kind of mourning for the health and wellbeing of the people I care so much about.

I hate feeling this way; it's like I temporarily lose the ability to rationalize or see past the pain I'm immersed in, and my heart turns into one big, achingly tender bruise.

In another sense, though, I'm glad I do. I don't want to be a therapist for a year, or five years, or ten, and then burn out and spend the rest of my days as a bitter old crank, full of complaints about the system but without the will to do anything to fix it. I'm in this for the long haul. And instinctively, I know that this cyclical period of mourning, of periodically staggering under full weight of how sad this work can be, is ultimately what's gonna keep me on the road. It's hard stuff, and if I don't acknowledge it now and then, it'll make me hard, too.

But I've learned by now that this feeling eventually goes away, and in a day or two, I can come back to the work I love with renewed energy and passion, able to continue for the next few months, once again able to see the joy, and the hope, and the strength that was there all along.

I just hope it happens soon.

good folks

2005-04-09T20:34:00.000-04:00

Today is my father's 54th birthday.

My father grew up in the Deep South, the squirrel-huntin', drawl-talkin', church goin' son of Southern Baptist parents who had grown up, in their turn, on the farmlands of rural, Jim Crow-lovin' Mississippi.

My father is not going out for dinner, or having friends over, or engaging in any other traditional birthday festivities tonight. He's in a little room in the basement of an Episcopal church in downtown Lowell instead, a charter member in a newly founded support group for gay and lesbian people and the people who care about them.

No one in my father's family is gay, and, as far as I know, neither are any of his friends.

My father was trained as a Southern Baptist preacher. He ministered in the banjo-dueling highlands of east Tennessee, and in the buckle of the bible belt in Memphis. The same churches that today are proclaiming that George W. Bush is the right hand of God, the same congregations who won't sleep soundly at night until women's rights are blown back to the dark ages and marriage is legally limited to a religious and binding contract between a man and a woman.

At some point in my early childhood, my father left the church of his childhood, the church of his parents and their parents before them. He could no longer accept the intolerance that ran through its bylaws like kudzu runs through a volkswagen.

Today, my father has formed an alliance with another religious expatriate, a Cuban-American former Catholic priest who left his own church for much the same reasons my father left his. They both share a respect for the spirit, not the letter, of church law, and they both have a healthy disregard for any authority that dictates otherwise. Together, this priest and my father have concocted a plan that will allow gay and lesbian couples to be legally married in the Episcopal church; my father with his still-valid minister's license will perform the ceremony, and the priest will be on hand to bless the marriage instants after it takes place.

And tonight, my father, with his irascible southern drawl fully intact, is attending a gay and lesbian support group for no other reason than that he was invited by a friend from the congregation. In downtown Lowell, no less - a city infamous for its blue collar past and gang-ridden present. I can picture him there - him and my mother both - two middle-aged, slightly-out-of-place people, people you'd expect to see snapping photos from the Swan Boats, tourist maps in their pockets and Red Sox slogans plastered across their newly purchased t-shirts and visors. And they are those people. But they're something more than that, too.

And in an age where Christianity has become almost synonymous with conservatism, and empty-nesters are expected to buy luxury SUVs and settle down with a spoiled lap dog or two, my dad is out there quietly making a difference, holding up a faint little light of tolerance and love in otherwise dark times.

I'm so lucky to live in that light. And I know that the best present I can give my father is to tend my own candle, to share the lessons of generosity of spirit that I've learned from him over all these years.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

waiting for the other shoe to drop

2005-04-09T18:27:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a beautiful day here in the neighborhood.

I started off with a walk down to the local coffee shop for some joe and a croissant, then ambled down to the pet store for supplies and a long conversation with the owner about Dorothy Parker, the Algonquin Roundtable, and the (mis)representation of Prohibition-era women writers. After that, what else could I do but duck into the used bookshop next door for a browse? Next door on the other side is the guitar store, owned and run by the kind of guy who would look more at home on a Grateful Dead album cover than behind the counter of his own business; I popped in for a few repairs to my guitar and ended up getting drawn into a discussion of Russian balalaika music.

Back home again for a bite to eat, I joined my housemates (my place is the only private apartment in a larger co-op style house) for a luxurious sprawl in the sunny front yard, idly flipping through seed catalogs and planning my fantasy garden. The household dog was out, too - soaking up the sun like the world's goofiest, friendliest solar cell. Across the street, a teenaged boy was playing with his own dog, and a little girl who couldn't have been more than four walked proudly up and down the sidewalk, tugging gently on the leash of an amiable old basset hound.

All in all, it's been a pretty idyllic day, here in lovely Roslindale. It's closer to my childhood memories of sunny green Memphis, feeling safe and welcome in my old neighborhood (and the world at large), than anything I've experienced in my adult life.

It makes me want to preserve the day in words, in photographs, like pressed flowers - warmth and neighborliness nestled between the leaves of a heavy dictionary for the generations to come. I'm worried it won't last, and that I'll forget this feeling when night comes and I'm feeling small and lonely again.

It's hard to feel too worried, though, when - even as I write this post - the piercing notes of children laughing, the earthy smell of fresh peat from the neighbors' early flower beds, and the golden brilliance of the late afternoon sun are all drifting in my open window, enveloping me in the knowledge that this is my new home, and it's pretty darn great.

here you go, pliny

2005-04-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

"You say there is nothing to write about. Then write to me that there is nothing to write about."

- Pliny the Younger

Pliny was an inveterate writer himself, and not without his little quirks. Examine, if you will, the following lines, drawn verbatim from the Wikkipedia article about this charmer:

"Pliny had three wives but no sons. Only his last wife, Calpurnia, occasioned emotional words in the letters. He was quite wealthy and owned several villas in Italy; the two villas in Como, his native town, were named "Tragedy" and "Comedy"."

OK, ready for a fun challenge? How many things can you find wrong with the previous paragraph? I got 6, but only if you allow that "Pliny" is, in fact, a real name and not a whimsical prank played by Roman historians. Which, frankly, I'm on the fence about.

(If you guessed that I'm bored out of my mind over here, you'd be right. If you further ventured that Friday nights at home in my little apartment are lonely in their own heart-grindingly unique way, why, you'd be right again.

Yeah, well. . . I may be spending the last remaining Friday nights of my fast-fleeting youth making smart-aleck references to 2000-year-dead Romans. But you're spending yours reading it, so get off yer high horse already. Thhhhppbbt.)

feeding myself: update

2005-04-06T20:12:00.000-04:00

Mortified by yesterday's admission of my disintegrating eating habits, I corrected the situation tonight with a tasty homemade dinner of fusilli with marinara sauce, a fresh green salad with orange and yellow peppers, and - for dessert - plump, juicy blackberries....all at the eminently respectable hour of 7:15 pm.

It's astonishing how greatly the simplest little acts of taking care of myself (like eating a decent meal) can impact my mood. I've never been a stickler for daily schedules, regular housecleaning, or any other of the basic habits of independent adulthood, but I'm starting to see the benefits of at least some of them.

Of course, the fact that I'm just now realizing this, having been a fully functioning adult (at least to the untrained eye) for 12 years and counting, is just plain sad.

In all seriousness, though, I do think it's worth remembering that a little investment in my own life - whether it's eating well, visiting friends, or just mopping the floors occasionally - isn't a bad idea.

words at my door

2005-04-06T17:36:00.000-04:00

There's something delicious about coming home and finding that the books you ordered have arrived in a tidy little box, just waiting for you to open it up.

And if this rare event occurs on a beautiful spring day, early enough that you can take your new acquisitions out to the backyard to read in what's left of the daylight, so much the better!

feeding myself

2005-04-05T22:43:00.000-04:00

It's gotten more lax every day here at casa del mio.
I started out great - healthy, regular meals consisting of traditional breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods.

Over the past two weeks, though, there have been a whole lot of macaroni or pizza dinners. A lot of brownies at midnight. Skittles for breakfast. It's not a good trend.

It's not that I don't have plenty of normal, healthy food in the house. I do. It's just that with nobody looking over my shoulder to judge (or to remind me that it's past 11 and I should really start thinking about cooking a little something), I tend to get preoccupied, and wait until I'm craving a sugar (or salt) fix before choosing food.

I was saved from whatever bastard agglomeration I would have had for dinner tonight (cinnamon toast and a snickers bar? green beans and coffee? I'm only half joking here...) by the kindness of friends who invited me to a last minute quesadilla party high atop their third-floor balcony in lovely wooded Newton. These people lived in Mexico and Costa Rica; they know how to make a quesadilla. Plus, there was this incredible fizzy red wine involved - apparently it's all the rage in Italy. And you can get it at Trader Joe's.

In an added bonus (the good times just keep on coming!), one of these charming people is my new music partner, so I stuck around after dinner and we rehearsed for a while.

It was a great way to celebrate what felt like the first real day of spring. And it sure beat sitting at home alone, eating whatever instant-gratification delights I tend to choose in the absence of witnesses. (Note to self: potato chips are not a vegetable. And chocolate cookies are not for breakfast.)

garden season

2005-04-04T20:43:00.000-04:00

I just got my new seed catalogs in the mail today, and I couldn't be happier! I pore over those things like a teenage boy with a Victoria's Secret catalog. There's one from Burpee, of course, and another from Henry Field's. I've been getting them so long, seeing them in the mailbox is like receiving a letter from an old friend.

I've been gardening since I could walk; my mother and grandmother had me 'help' them put out new seedlings as soon as I could toddle down the garden path. There's nothing better than the colors, textures, and scents of a good garden; it's tonic for the senses and balm for the soul.

The only hard part is deciding what I can order this year; I want everything in the catalog - from dahlias to runner beans.

Happily, my new landladies are thrilled with the idea of me putting in a garden here this season. This summer, when we all have cookouts and friends over for backyard picnics, it will be that much richer with the sights and scents of my little garden as the perfect backdrop.

Until then, I'm perfectly content to go through the catalogs, marking old standbys and circling promising new hybrids, dreaming up the perfect garden for my new home.

rhyming couplet

2005-04-03T23:25:00.000-04:00

everything I try to write -
including this - turns out too trite

hope and keep busy

2005-04-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

Nosy as ever, I was noodling around the blogosphere yesterday and came across the blog of Henry David Thoreau. It reminded me of the aspect of living in New England that I really like - being immersed in the environment of the great northern woods (what's left of them, anyway) and the culture of the brilliant thinkers who lived in and were shaped by them.

I'm fascinated by the overlap between the ideas of New England's transcendentalists and those of Buddhism; both emphasize the beauty and wisdom of the natural world, and a thoughtful, meditative, do-no-harm approach to life.

Inspired, I got out a book of Louisa May Alcott's life and letters. (in an interesting sidenote, the book was edited by a woman from JP in 1889; LMA died in 1888. I live right next door, so to speak, to JP. How cool!) It's one of those books that I've had around forever, and glanced through but never really read.

I'm really enjoying it now; it seems newly relevant to me - a single woman in New England, just trying to get through the day and maybe make a little something creative besides. (Not that I'm comparing myself to LMA, of course!)Incidentally, the title of this posting is a suggested antidote to depression taken from LMA's journal.

Speaking of good advice, here's a little admonishment Louisa May Alcott kept all her life, imparted by her mother (as good today as it was in 1850):

Rule yourself.
Love your neighbor.
Do the duty which lies nearest you.

Boy, those Alcott women were pretty sharp.

rainy day (with poetry)

2005-04-02T17:06:00.000-05:00

cold rapid hands
draw back one by one
the bandages of dark
I open my eyes
still
I am living
at the center
of a wound still fresh

Octavio Paz said it, but man, I sure am feelin' it. Something about rainy weekends brings out the worst in me...the grayness of the long dim day, unbroken by society or accomplishment, has a way of highlighting my losses, making all the little pains and failures of the past year feel raw and new again. I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow, but what to do until then? Wallow in the grim sympathetic fallacy of the weather? Or get off my duff and do something productive? Stay tuned...but right now all the smart money is on wallow.

the exciting adventures of nell the cat

2005-03-31T19:19:00.000-05:00

March 30, 10 pm: Arrived. Crawled under the bed. Observed a person and another cat in the room. Hate them both. Made periodic growling noises so there would be no confusion around this.

March 31, 9 am: Still under the bed. Person and cat both very noisy in the morning - too much stomping around. How many feet do they have, anyway?

11:00 am: Person finally left. Stayed under the bed another hour or so for good measure.

2:30 pm: Person returns. Looked for me under the bed...ha ha!! I'm not there anymore, stupid stompy person! You'll never find me now....nyah nyah!!

2:33 pm: Curses! Discovered in the closet. Decided to stay put until I think of another super top secret hideout.

3:00 pm: Still thinking...

4:00 pm: Still here...

5:00 pm: Must have fallen asleep. Woke up. Still in the closet.

6:00 pm: Oafish person returns. Pah! This is MY closet now. And I'm never coming out. Never never never never nev - hey - is that tunafish?

6:30 pm: A tough call, but ultimately decided to stay in the closet. Person seems discouraged. Good.

7:00 pm: {Yaaaawn} Still in the closet.

and the beat goes on...

population increase

2005-03-30T22:47:00.000-05:00

This living alone business is getting more crowded all the time.

So here's the story: My cat, Suki, is eleven years old, spoiled rotten, and a little on the neurotic side. When we first moved here, she seemed thrilled to have a whole apartment all to herself (well, with me too, of course). As the weeks went by, though, I started to get more and more worried about leaving her home alone all day - there's not much to do around here by yourself, even if you're a cat.

So I started looking around at shelters online to see if there might be any other older, sedate, low-expectation cats in need of a good, if smallish, home. Kind of a feline au pair, if you will.

I didn't really think it was a great idea to get another pet - in a 600 square foot apartment, that would be one cat per 300 square feet, and that's a lot of cats. I'm already a 30-something single woman, living alone. . . I really don't want to turn into one of those crazy cat ladies who have pictures of their pets in their wallets where their grandkids should be.

I went down to the shelter anyway, more for something to do than anything else. I'd seen a photo online of a beautiful black and white fellow who looked like he might be a good candidate, and I told myself that I could go look, and that's it.

When I got there, it was love at first sight. He was gorgeous, charismatic, and a total pushover. He literally leapt into my arms when I opened his cage, and rubbed his face against mine, purring to beat the band.

I was all ready to take him home, when the woman who ran the shelter asked me to look at just one other cat. I tried, but it wasn't easy - she was cowering under a towel, hunched up in a tiny ball, pressed against the farthest corner of her cage. All I could see was that she was vaguely brown. The shelter woman told me that she was worried that this pathetic little creature would never be adopted, and it was easy to see why. I'd never seen a less appealing little animal. She (the lady) then proceeded to tell me the saddest sob story you ever heard about the cat's history - going from pregnant and abandoned in Hyde Park, to a dank basement complete with rat poison, and ending with a kitten that got adopted instantly, leaving the mother cat to linger alone in her cage, running out her clock in smelly, noisy confinement.

So to sum up:
1)I need another cat like I need a hole in the head.
2)If I were going to get another cat, there's an adorable, loving, cuteness-factor-10 cat at the shelter I visited.
3)The other cat I looked at had all the appeal of a worn-out bathmat, and freakish mutant toes besides. (Did I mention the mutant toes? There must be 7 of them on each paw.)

Careful readers will have already figured out how this story ends.

I think I'm going to call her Nell.

six strings of joy

2005-03-29T20:59:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons I wanted to live alone again is so that I could have the space to really start working on my music again. (God, that sounds pretentious! But it's true, nonetheless.) I've been working on the whole singer-songwriter schtick for the better part of a year now, and I've recently realized that if I'm going to move much further with it, I'm gonna need a partner.

I put a couple of ads on craigslist looking for someone to collaborate with, but nobody really felt like a good match. I was about to give up looking, when lo and behold, I heard from my good friend J, who used to front a band I was in. (No, you never heard of us. Nobody ever heard of us; the sum total of our playing experience began at the Central Square YMCA and ended with an open mike at the Burren.)

After a couple of hours trying out some songs together, I remembered how amazingly good it feels to make music with another person. By myself, I can sing and strum a few chords. With J, my songs sounded like music - there were new melodies, fuller harmonies, and - most importantly - the indescribable quality that comes of two people playing off of one another's ideas, the quality that makes a song really come alive.

A pessimist to the end, I'm still not convinced the partnership is going to work out as fully as I currently hope it will. I''m too insecure about my own playing, and we're both a little too busy to devote the time and energy regular public performing would require. But it's so much fun. . .

My apartment seems a little quieter now than it did before.

ewww

2005-03-28T20:13:00.000-05:00

I stopped by Trader Joe's on my way home tonight, determined to purchase something other than frozen pizzas and brownie mix. I picked up a tin of coffee and proceeded to use the store grinder since I don't have one at home. I happened to look into the tin before reclosing the lid, and I noticed a little piece of string poking out of the coffee grounds. I reached in to pick it up, and it just kept coming. It ended up being a four-inch long, hairy, woolly-looking string. In my coffee!! Yuck!

Needless to say, I grabbed my pizza and brownie mix and booked it on out of there.

I'm thinking about switching to tea.

blue skies, blue hills, and the kindness of strangers

2005-03-27T16:05:00.000-05:00

Whew!

Eager to get out in this gloriously beautiful day, I took my winter-tired self down to the Blue Hills for a bit of a hike. There was still a surprising amount of snow on the ground, making the going a slipperier affair than I was planning on. Maybe because of that (I spent a lot more time looking straight down at the ground than usual), or maybe just because I'm gifted with an innate ability to get lost in seemingly idiot-proof surroundings, I soon found my one hour ramble stretching into two, then three hours of increasingly anxious trekking.

After reaching the summit of what felt like the 600th slush-covered hill, I was starting to worry that 1) I might not find my way out again before the sun went down, cooling the air beyond the ability of my light jacket to warm me against, and 2) I really should have brought more than one measly granola bar.

As luck would have it, just as I was beginning to feel genuinely nervous, I heard someone tromping my way. Sheepishly, I told him that I was lost and in need of a little help, and he kindly directed me back to the path I needed to be on to get home. A half hour later, I was back at the trailhead; my little white car never looked so good.

Home again, I'm struck by how elated I feel after my minor adventure; I really feel as though what Eliot Garbauskas calls "my unsinkable affection for the world" has been renewed. It's a scary kind of feeling as well as a joyous one; inherent in the feeling of falling in love with life again is the vertiginous awareness of how precarious that life really is.

Two lessons from my Blue Hills adventure give me heart, though:

First, one feature I noticed over and over again along the paths was the unusual way the snow was melting. The snow itself had been packed down by numerous hikers into an icy sheet, the edges of which clung to the steep grade of the trail. The middle of each sheet, though, had been warmed to transparency by the sun, and I could see little rivulets of melted runoff trickling underneath them, like tiny subterranean rivers. The metaphor that struck me was one of movement and change stirring beneath a thin veneer of icy crust - mirroring my own slow progress towards active interconnection, slowly building behind my often icy, hermity exterior.

The second lesson was simpler and more direct; I needed help, and help arrived. If I hadn't run into the kind man who gave me directions, I might still be wandering around those hills.

Instead, I'm back at home, a little happier, a little wiser, and hoping that I'll remember this next time I feel lost and alone: help will always arrive, if I just keep walking.

wild nights

2005-03-26T19:18:00.000-05:00

After spending the afternoon negotiating my way around the city by means of bus, subway, and sneaker, I'm home again, buoyed by a sense of accomplishment but chilled to the bone. (Spring? Hello?)

All I want in the world right now is here in my little apartment: a hot bath, a cup of cocoa, and a wide open evening in which to embark on my new book (courtesy of gribley) snuggled securely under a toasty warm comforter.

Yeah, I know it's Saturday night.
But hey - how often do you get the chance to make all your wishes (for the moment, anyway) come true?

Next Saturday I'll see if I can do something about painting the town red. Tonight, though, I'm gonna wrap myself up in everything warm I can find and feel as cozy as a cat in the sun.

Mmmmmmm, bliss under a blanket.

girls in the air

2005-03-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

There's a tree in the front yard of my house; it looks like a crabapple, or maybe a pear tree.

When I got home from work today, I noticed that there were two little girls in it. They looked about 10 years old, and seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing, as if sitting in a tree, swinging your heels high above the neighborhood were the most natural thing in the world.

And I guess it is, at that.

warning: incoherent rant follows

2005-03-24T21:40:00.000-05:00

So I just returned from a small party held in a dazzlingly urbane apartment on the moneyed side of Cambridge, where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and children aren't allowed after cocktail hour.

I was invited by a friend of the guest of honor, and I went as part of my continuing effort to be more sociable and less of a unibomber caricature.

I was given a warm welcome, and instructed to eat a little, drink a little, and generally have a good time.

I tried, I really did.

After spending the longest possible time poised over the buffet table in an attempt to look as though I were merely weighing every possible option before selecting just the right slice of chevre, I found myself sitting among what appeared to be Boston's most beautiful 30-somethings, taking a brief break from their hectic schedule of setting new hipness standards to celebrate the birthday of one of their own. Casual conversations about the price of land and the distinctiveness of the merlot abounded, while I sat there in my Target sweater and corduroys with the hole over the right butt cheek and felt like something with three heads.

I lasted less than half an hour.

In the foyer while making my escape, I bumped into a new batch of incoming party guests, one of whom was wearing a pair of heels and real perfume that probably would have paid half my monthly rent. Mistaking me for the real thing, she gave me a friendly hug of greeting before moving on to the party proper, and my coat now smells like Louis Boston.

On my way to the car, I thought I'd left my scarf back in the apartment. I mentally gave it up as lost, rather than facing that genetically gifted crowd again, before discovering that I hadn't lost it after all - just stuffed it into my coat pocket.

OK. A few deep breaths....

The truth is, every single person at that party was both friendly and welcoming to me. Several people made smoothly gracious efforts to include me in the conversation, and people seemed genuinely regretful when I left. In fact, the only person in the room who was actively working to make me feel inferior was me. The friend who invited me is one of the most open-hearted, least prententious people I've ever met, and I have no reason to believe that he'd be friends with others who weren't as well.

So where does this rampant insecurity come from?

I'm tempted to blame it on my formative years spent in the class-conscious South. I vividly remember when my family converted from salt-box Baptist to mint-juleps-at-the-country-club Episcopalian, and the resultant shame I felt when I suddenly became everyone's favorite "friend" to bring along for company on family vacations that my own parents could never have afforded. That, and a whole host of other subtle (and not so subtle) messages about invisible class lines that made me and my family move beside, but not among, the symphony-going, theater-subscribing, quietly racist upper echelons of Memphis society, may have left me oversensitive to such things.

Maybe.

But how much power can those outdated ideas hold unless I buy into them myself? Like the old adage says, no one can make you feel inferior without your permission. In the case of tonight's party, not only did I offer my blanket permission, I conjured up my own inferiority parade out of whole cloth, completely independent of the actual behavior of anyone else present.

Which means that, when it comes to allowing your own prejudices to influence your opinion of other human beings, I was completely outclassed.

good friends

2005-03-23T23:07:00.000-05:00

For someone as hermit-like as I can be, I sure have great friends.

Far too often over the past year, when I've been invited to gatherings my friends have had, I just haven't shown up. Lots of reasons why, none of them very good. I'm uncomfortable at parties, I don't like going all the way up to Cambridge, I have to wash my hair, etc.etc.etc.

So when the tables were turned, and I invited a few friends out for drinks to celebrate my birthday, I was sure that they would subject me to the same treatment. It would be no more than I deserve, after the cavalier way I've blown them off time and time again.

To my great surprise, every single person that I invited showed up. Willingly and cheerfully. I even got presents.

It really made me take a good look at how important those connections are to me, and how I have to stop taking them for granted. I'm so lucky to have such warm, caring, brilliant people in my life. I'd forgotten for a while just how lucky.

I got a big fat reminder of it tonight, and I can't imagine a nicer birthday present.

happy birthday to me!

2005-03-23T00:12:00.000-05:00

For those of you counting along at home, that's 11,315 days, 271,560 hours, 16,293,600 minutes, or roughly 195,523,200 breaths. Hooray!

a bad, bad choice

2005-03-22T22:01:00.000-05:00

For what's probably the 12th week in a row, I blew off going to meditation tonight, effectively negating any chance for me to interact with live, friendly, like-minded people.

Instead, I opted to watch 5 consecutive episodes of Father Ted on DVD, leaving me with a moderate guilt complex, a new appreciation for the myriad uses of the word "feck", and an inexplicable crush on Ardal O'Hanlon.

The good times never end, here in my little room...

arboretum report

2005-03-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's gorgeous out there. A red letter day: my first coat-free arboretum ramble of the season! Most of the snow is gone - only a few patches are still valiantly holding on. In its place are a number of tiny rivers where no rivers had been before - runoff from all the melting/ed snow, I presume.

Evidence of pruning was everywhere. It surprised me, since I was taught that you never prune in the spring; it will cause the trees to lose too much sap as it rises up and out the raw ends. One more thing to look up in Fenyvesi, I guess.

Most everything still looks pretty dormant, with the exception of a few willows that are starting to bud. I saw a huge, brilliant male cardinal perched near the top of one, singing his head off.

I can't say I blame him; it's that kind of day.

a note on the title

2005-03-22T00:05:00.000-05:00

"Blue Wail" is the name of my favorite Uri Caine album, as well as the title track of said album. More to the point, it's frequently the sound of a neurotic 30-something trying to carve out a solitary existence in what can sometimes be overwhelming circumstances. (It's also a homonym of "Blue Whale", which, apropos of nothing, is a very nice animal indeed.) There may be some actual wailing on this blog over the weeks to come, but it will most likely be tempered with little success stories and misguided attempts at humor. At least that's the plan...

feet forward

2005-03-21T22:07:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am. Boston, MA. 1,360 miles from the warm and distorted memory I nostalgically call home (although at 7 years in exile and counting, maybe I should rethink that title). I've got a cat, a graduate degree, and a full set of kitchenware. And I'm on my own.

Before I moved to New England, the idea of adults sharing housing was strange and foreign; "I have roommates" meant "I'm still in college." Or possibly "I need extensive supervision, especially after that incident at the Kwiki-Mart. They're *still* finding play-doh in the dairy cases."

So I was totally unprepared for the reality of Boston housing costs. I toughed it out in grad school, living with classmates. I enjoyed (at first, anyway) a brief cohabitation with a then-boyfriend. I lived in a 21st century boarding house, complete with eight roommates and 2 1/2 bathrooms. And then something snapped, and within 30 days, I found myself alone once more, in a lovely, tiny apartment all to myself.

I was so excited about living alone again that it never occurred to me that
1) living alone in the town you grew up in, within walking distance of virtually your entire social community is one thing; living alone in a new, cold, highly transient city is quite another, and
2) I might have scoffed at communal living, but over the years, I'd gotten pretty accustomed to its subtle benefits, some of which I never even registered until they were suddenly, drastically, absent.

So solitary living has not been quite the liberating lark I'd envisioned.

Never one to suffer in stoic silence, I decided to chronicle my experiences - the good, the bad, and the banal - in this blog. My intention is to create a map of some kind - one that shows the scenic vistas as well as the fetid swamps, the long painful roads and the zippy shortcuts of the sort you can only see in hindsight. A traveller's guide to freedom, loneliness, and washing your own dishes.

And hopefully, when it's got enough miles on it, I'll be able to look at it and find some perspective, some beauty, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from travelling a hard road well.