"the writer's almanac" stole my heart away

i bet that if i could hear the voice of god, it would match garrison keillor's deep molasses baritone, which--to my great fortune--recites poetry through my radio every night at 9:58pm, thirteen minutes after i leave night class, and three minutes before i pull into my driveway.

after listening to this program religiously for the last seven months of my existence, i have reached this conclusion: if i ever meet a man who can read poetry to me the way dear mr. keillor does, i will marry him. i am confident that we'll be able to work through potential conflicts with my own quirks (the vegan issue, of course, and using only vinegar or baking soda to clean house, and my awful nail-biting habit) and his (what if--god forbid--he likes wearing socks to bed, or growing hairs out on his shoulder blades, or keeping the tv always on as "background noise"?) because every problem will likely be resolved soon after he pulls out a book of poetry and starts to read. i can feel my heart warming up to him already.

unfortunately, a 58-year seniority would pretty much disqualify any interested party--no matter what he sounds like--but i think i can settle for a nice 10- or 12-year difference (haha, does it sound like i'm still in love with d. much?)
keep your eyes open for me, ann. i'm ready to be swept away.

film, batteries, and a (pending?) breakup

sweet jesus, i don't know what to make of this. i have a history of favoring rip-the-bandaid kind of breakups, and although they always seems harder to initiate, i've found that it's easier on both parties in the end. but this? this is crazy--we start, we stop, we sputter, but we're still together. should i feel guilty? should i do something?

well, i have a camera loaded with film (birthday-present film, thank you anna), the batteries are crisp and new, and the light outside is perfect. do something, i shall--please excuse me from my life while i pretend that nothing's wrong, go hiking, and take some photographs.
love you!

coming home: a reflection

if i learned anything from my visit home last week, it was this--in the time that i'd been away, i had managed to convince myself that my current relationship with dad is much more functional than it was three years ago, and i fooled myself.

can you believe that in the four days i was home, we didn't have a single conversation of substance? everything--everything--looped back to god, to god, to god.

i craved an easy, equal exchange about less divine matters--perhaps, what he ate recently that make him blissful, or what job he just finished with greg at work that was especially rewarding, or what memory from his childhood still flickers in the present, one he cannot forget. perhaps i would have told him about trying (and failing) to make borscht the way mom does it, and how i secretly fear that i'll never master cooking. i might have told him that i'm terrified of the future, of all the opportunities i'll have to make the wrong choice. i might have remembered, out loud, the summer that he taught me to play soccer, and how we'd split the older kids (back when i was the youngest of the group) into teams and then play in the alley behind our old rental until it was too dark to see the rocks that stood for goal posts.

my imagination sets me up for incessant disappointment. we talked instead--in broken, awkward sentences that ended too soon or trailed off long after we'd both lost interest--about how i was getting too old to be single (i didn't tell him about vince because i think we're on the verge of breaking up), and that i need to stop messing around and enter reality. he preached about spirituality and how we have a responsibility to pray for the world, and that god has a plan to make us (meaning dad, mom, and their offspring) rulers and clergypeople (there will be no genders in heaven, so the fact that our family is 71% female now will not interfere with our claim to greatness later) and that we have to prove to god that we'll be capable of doing our jobs well. i mean, it was all so ridiculous, but i kept trying to humanize him, to see the world through his eyes and realize that he too has hopes and dreams and fears. and i couldn't.

i'm still afraid of him, intimidated by his eyes and the permanent grimace of his lips and jaw and wrinkles. his voice still scares me, that way he asks his questions--skillfully drilling past my pretense and boring deep into my center, to my trembling truths. he knows that i'm a fraud, that i say "thank god" only as a figure of speech, and that the prayers he forces out of me as about as genuine as the plastic roses mom buys from the dollar tree.

but lord, i want so terribly to love him, to get past my senseless past convictions of his never-ending faults. is it possible, do you think, that we will ever approach each other without hostility?

i never thought

i would ever be so happy to go back to spokane, even for a few days. i'm fucking ecstatic!

cleaning out my life.

with all the decisions that will determine my future still pending, i am cleaning out my bookcase and computer files and car and closet to regain a sense of control. ann, i can't wait to talk with you. i so desperately need to see your face...

english breakfast, and similar addictions.

when i drink tea--every morning before i shower, every afternoon after lunch, before my shift starts at work in the evening, and when i'm settling down with a book before bed--what i really want to be doing is smoking a cigarette.

when i quit two summers ago, i thought the hardest part of transitioning into a nonsmoker's lifestyle would be resisting the urge smoke with friends--and for a while, i was right. but in time, i realized that while i had learned to converse freely and unconsciously (sans cigarette) on "smoke-breaks" with my friends, removing its presence from my daily routine was by far the greater challenge.

this is how school days used to go: i would wake up, get ready for class, eat a quick (and, paradoxically, a healthy) breakfast, and then reward my speed with a cigarette on my drive to school. it would last three and a half tracks of whatever rage against the machine album i was playing in my car that morning, just long enough to usher me into the entrance of the college parking lot. after my first class, i would join a boy i liked (who smoked the same brand i did!) outside the communications tech building to smoke and talk. our discussions were always lively and invigorating. later, if i was stressed because i had forgotten to finish my philosophy homework, i would smoke to motivate myself into doing it in the hour i had left before class started. in the evenings, halfway through the lecture (during our ten-minute break), i would smoke facing west with a classmate i found remarkably intelligent, and we would discuss the world according to ayn rand as the sky turned orange to match the end of the girl's camel, and my american spirit. after class was over i would take the long way home, watching the city reduce itself to neon signs and steadfast streetlamps, listening to everyday prophets, and flicking the ashes of my final cigarette outside my open window.

when i first started trying to quit, my boyfriend suggested that i chew on straws. the length (after i snipped it to be approximately 85 millimeters long) and diameter made the straw a perfect mock-cigarette, and whenever i felt like smoking, i would hold it between my fingers and chew the end intermittently. not only did i look like a fool, but i found no satisfaction in chewing plastic--and so i gave up, bumming cigarettes from my boyfriend instead of buying a pack of my own so i wouldn't lose complete possession of my recently-acquired self-righteousness.

but then that the term ended, my boyfriend and i broke up, and i rediscovered tea. my environment and routine changed (arguably for the better), and black tea emerged as a perfect stand-in for cigarettes: caffeine replaced nicotine, and when the tea was hot enough, steam filled my throat and lungs almost as well as smoke once did. tea was cheaper than cigarettes (four dollars for twenty bags versus six dollars for the same amount of spirits), remained relatively portable, and didn't leave an aftertaste in my mouth or an odor on my hair and clothes. i was overjoyed.

fast-forward twenty-one months, and here i am, still smoke-free. i crave cigarettes constantly, no less than once a day--the perpetual cup of tea in my right hand might give this away. i have replaced one addiction with another, and i wonder if i somehow cheated my way out of smoking--but then, does it really matter? sure, i might still develop heart disease or high blood pressure from my above-average intake of caffeine, and perhaps the process of manufacturing black tea has some serious, yet-to-be-identified negative health effects on the consumer. but at least, i suppose, i can now run--and i've reduced my chances of developing lung cancer, and mouth cancer, and whatever else we blame on cigarettes (wait--do i sound defensive?).

premature wrinkles, gray skin, yellow teeth, sagging breasts, yellow fingernails, brittle hair, brittle bones, deepened voice; emphysema, bronchitis, and reduced fertility. i need to write this list down and look at it whenever i want to smoke. this is madness--after i worked so hard to quit, why would i ever want to start again?

image credits: english breakfast via stash, american spirits via flickr.