Meditative Prose
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
The Wedding
Monday was our first wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we took a long walk — past the bomb factory, under the railroad bridge, and toward the lake. We were going to sit on our favorite grassy bank and catch the tail end of the sunset, when a skunk encouraged us to continue south. Before long, Sarah & I were near Oakledge Park and the Earth Clock, the very place where we exchanged vows a year ago.
As we crossed the footbridge, we heard the faint sounds of a flute and drum. Rounding the bend, we smelled frankincense & sage, and started to get nervous and excited at once. When the huge stones finally came into view, we saw a group of about fifteen people sitting in a circle, playing music and celebrating the longest day of the year.
Something about this scene made us both really happy. Maybe it was because this isn’t the type of thing we’re likely to see outside of Burlington, and we realized we’re leaving a very weird, very special place. That is certainly true. Mostly, though, I think we were just happy to see people taking the time to mark the turning of the seasons. Although humans have been celebrating these solar holidays for ten thousand years or more, it’s a rare thing to witness nowadays.
Having our wedding on the summer solstice was our first effort at reconnecting with the rhythms of nature, and a symbolic way of blessing our marriage with the prosperity, abundance, fertility, and magic that are associated with summertime. One year on, I think it worked! The magic is still potent.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Photo by rosefirerising
Things are changing. I got tired of this website and wanted something different. So I designed a new one, with a new name, lots of colors, comments, tags, and all the bells & whistles. I agonized over it, and spent long nights making it look just right. Then one morning I woke up and thought “This is all wrong!” I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So I gave this journal a fresh design rather than creating a whole new website (check it out if you’re reading this in your email or feed reader) and now I feel good about it again. If you’re using a modern browser, the site should use a nice font called Gentium; otherwise, you’ll see the ever-lovely Georgia.
Now for something completely different: We’re moving to Iowa! Sarah applied to twelve MFA programs, and after all the stress and tears and worry, she got into almost all of them. Iowa State’s program is a three-year MFA in Creative Writing & Environment. In exchange for teaching a few composition classes, her tuition is covered and she gets a stipend for living expenses. The cost of living in Ames is incredibly low compared to Burlington. We are looking at two-bedroom apartments for about $300 less per month than we are currently paying for our one-bedroom! Unbelievable.
A year ago, I never would have guessed that we’d be moving to Iowa. I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t even know where Iowa was until Sarah got accepted and I checked a map. But now it seems like the obvious next-step for us. Of course we’re moving to Iowa. And when we get there, we’re getting a cat!
Friday, 21 August 2009
Photo by Nicholas_T
After a week of intense heat (for Vermont), the weather has finally turned. Through the window behind me I can hear perhaps the second best sleeping music nature provides: a chorus of crickets accented by the occasional breeze stirring the leaves. Bed is calling me, but I feel compelled (after three and a half months) to check in with whoever still reads this website.
For a few weeks now, I’ve been noticing evidence of the changing seasons. This happens every year: mostly it still feels like summer, and people are acting like it’s summer, but every once in a while, something — often a smell, but sometimes a chill in the air, or just a hunch — reminds me that fall is just around the corner. This year the first sign was when we were walking into town on a cool day and the sidewalk in front of us was littered with crab-apples. Some of them had been crushed under foot, and the rotten-sweet smell made me suddenly aware that summer was almost over. Soon, apple picking & cider donuts. Hay-rides. Pumpkins.
Another day as I was walking to work, something made me think back to the first day of school each year, which was always surreal. I had to get up earlier than I had been all summer, put on my first-day-of-school outfit, have mom take my picture with my brothers on the steps, and then wait at the bottom of the driveway for the bus. I would usually kill time by throwing rocks at the metal box attached to the power lines across the road, secretly hoping a direct hit would cause it to explode in a shower of sparks. There wasn’t much traffic on our road that early on a weekday morning, and I could always hear the rumble of the bus’s diesel engine before I saw it. I remember the first sight of it, cutting through the fog as it rounded the bend, lights blinking and stop-sign extended. But mostly I remember taking that first step inside the bus, greeting the driver (for many years, it was Annie) and the smell of the big vinyl-covered seats washing over me. The smell of schoolbus seats! One whiff still conjures scores of memories for me.
Summer is almost gone, but who can complain? Every day on my walk to work, I pass an amazing garden with a silver-leaved tree (Eucalyptus?), a large holly bush, and an old blooming hibiscus with flowers as big as my fist (a friend tells me it’s called a “Rose of Sharon”). On my walk home, I run my hands over the fuzzy flowers of a lavender bush and take a big whiff, instantly putting me out of work mode. Life is good.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Today is Green Up Day in Burlington and all over Vermont — a day of environmental service where people get together to clean up public parks and roadside litter, plant trees, or do anything that helps make our green state a little greener and more liveable. Sarah and I got up early to go with friends to UVM’s Horticultural Farm to help plant saplings for Branch Out Burlington. B.O.B. is a local group of volunteers who grow, plant, and maintain all the beautiful trees that live in the city’s “greenbelt” (the grassy space between the sidewalk and the street). It was a great experience, and a beautiful day for it — sunny, but just cool enough that we didn’t break a sweat from shoveling mulch and pushing wheelbarrows for two hours. Everybody seemed to enjoy helping out, and there was even a roaming group of musicians/clowns who played accordions and danced! Awesome.
Happy Green Up Day, everyone, and belated Happy May Day / Spring Equinox. And Happy Spring!
Monday, 16 February 2009
Photo by MemaNH
I am curious as to what life holds for me and Sarah after the wedding. We love Burlington, but we’ve been talking about moving to a smaller town for a long time now. I was writing about Lewisburg the other day, and I got caught up in a rapture thinking about that place — not specifically Bucknell’s campus, although some of it (Bucknell Hall and the grove) has a kind of magical significance in my memory. But the town itself, with all its churches and old Victorian painted ladies, and the three-globed street lamps, and the river, and the railroad bridge, and the dogwoods and cherry trees and magnolias blooming… All that has contributed to my idea of the ideal town.
We’re not done with Vermont just yet. This spring we are going to join a car-share program and take day-trips to different small towns. There are so many parts of this beautiful state that we’ve heard about but never seen! There’s actually a region called “the Northeast Kingdom,” which is supposed to be especially beautiful. We are also considering a small town called Bellows Falls along the Connecticut River (Vermont’s border with New Hampshire), which, despite its small size, is supposed to have an incredible arts community.
I get the sense that the wedding will mark the beginning of another period of growth for us. Burlington is fun, but limiting in some ways, and I think we’re almost ready to pull up our stakes and move on.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Photo by robokow
Back from Chicago. Flying in over Lake Michigan, the city looked like Burlington but a hundred times bigger. I got picked up from O’Hare in a white stretch limo, which took me, another woman who also works for the company, and the VP of Sales for a “waste management” company to our hotel. I made small-talk, but I was put off when the VP, who had a Virginia drawl, lamented that nobody in Florida wants to build landfills these days. It seems that with the current economic “downturn,” there is not as much new construction, and so less demolition & construction waste. Sales are down. How tragic!
This, apparently, is how America operates. Every company, my own definitely included, is trying to increase sales. It hardly matters what they’re selling, or whether or not anyone needs it, or if it is even good for people, let alone the land and the larger community of life. A handful of powerful people set sales budgets, and the rest of us scurry around trying to meet them, because we need to pay the rent. Meanwhile, schools don’t teach kids the virtues of frugality, living simply, or even how to determine what is truly necessary — because that would be bad for the economy! (A hundred and fifty years ago, a good friend of mine wrote a book that deals with this, among other things.)
The trip wasn’t as bad as I expected. My roommate and I had compatible senses of humor. He was sarcastic and definitely kept things interesting by getting on the trainers’ nerves. The other folks there ranged from holy rollers, to utterly boring retail zombies, to inoffensive people on a mandatory business trip, to a few I got along with well, including one 38-year-old guy who still skateboards. I got to see the nine acre warehouse, which is like Mecca for textbooks. I ate lots of free food. I learned some things that should make my job easier, and heard plenty of things I don’t agree with.
As long as I need this job, I think I’ll be able to do it better (i.e. with less stress for me and my co-workers) now. But mostly, this trip made me want to get out of the business of selling for the sake of selling. All I want is meaningful work. Give me clay and a pottery wheel, and I’ll happily sell bowls and vases for the rest of my life.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Tomorrow I am off to the belly of the Corporate beast for a five-day training, indoctrination, and brainwashing session. All kidding aside, I am sick with worry about this. They are making me room with a complete stranger, and for five days I have to wear khaki pants, a shirt with a collar, and dress shoes. I don't know anyone there, and I'll probably be the youngest person. Mostly, I don't want to leave Sarah for so long. She is my constant, and the only reason I am still sane.
It has been an extremely stressful month, and lately I just feel ill-equipped to deal with things as they are. I hope someday soon I'll work less and have more time to do good things. Until then, I guess I'll just try to survive this week.
Friday, 19 December 2008
Photo by Muffet
A month or so ago, Sarah and I were grocery shopping and decided on a whim to get a crate of clementines. If you’ve never had the pleasure, a clementine is a little citrus fruit, like a small orange but sweeter, and usually seedless. They are like little balls of sunshine in the Vermont winter, completely satisfying in every detail, from the way the peel separates so readily from the flesh, to the perfectly bite-sized segments, to the size — just right for a snack at any time of day, or you can make a meal of two of them.
Since that fateful day, we have happily gone through a crate per week, and my life has been about 10% better because of these magical little fruits. I dread the day, probably in the next couple of weeks, when we’ll go to the market and they won’t be there. But let’s not speak of it yet.
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Photo by zerega
What an interesting weekend! I worked late Friday to prepare for the coming book buyback week, and left work exhausted but excited to be free for a couple days. I walked straight into town and met up with Sarah for dinner, and then we had some cafe time, which has been rare lately. I finished reading Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse, which was just as good and insightful as Demian, but longer and more complex. Will has been encouraging me to read Hermann Hesse for years, and I had read Siddhartha in college and tried once before to read something else without success, but now these books are hitting me just right, and I can see that I have a lot to learn from this German seeker.
We walked quickly back from Muddy Waters (our home cafe), talking and enjoying the sight of the first big snowfall, eight or ten inches piled on the ground. As we turned left onto Caroline St., I had the brief and peculiar sensation of feeling like my heart was glowing or emanating heat, and even in the 20° cold, I felt warm. I can only guess that this was the feeling of being perfectly comfortable, carefree, and in the moment — and I hope I get to experience it more often. A minute later we were home, and I knew it was going to be a good weekend.
Boy, was I wrong! It was fairly horrible. We both slept late on Saturday, which, nice as it is, never bodes well for the possibility of having a busy, productive weekend. Then, after lunch, we decided a nap was in order. When Sarah woke up, she said “I have to throw up” and hustled off to the bathroom. Apparently she picked up a stomach bug from one of the kids at the preschool she works at. (This kid’s mom should have kept him home from school after he threw up at home, but didn’t, and Sarah not only had to clean up after him at school, but then got sick from it.) So Sarah would get up from bed every hour or so to throw up, and I watched sci-fi movies and wished I could do more to help her.
Today, Sarah was still recovering, and not able to stomach solid foods, so we missed Indian brunch for the second week in a row. I spent the first half of the day in bed with a splitting headache and churning stomach, but never did throw up (knock on wood). Eventually my headache subsided, and I was able to get up and have a semi-normal evening.
And that was my weekend. I hope yours was better!
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Circular Cloud
When Sarah and I first moved to Vermont, I had this uncanny sensation that I could feel myself growing up, the way a tree must feel in a particularly good year when it adds a thick ring to its circumference. It seems like a such a little thing now, after more than two years, but graduating from college and moving away to live with my love changed me. Something broke then, in a good, freeing way. It was the last stage of childhood: no longer walking hand-in-hand with my parents, or helped along by an institution like Bucknell, the training wheels off and the final push given. It was terrifying and exhilarating, and exactly what I needed to continue growing.
Now is another time like that. A few weeks ago, I stepped into a local jewelry store looking for an engagement ring, and half an hour later came out with one I knew was perfect. I carried it around with me for a few days, took it to work and showed my giddy (female) co-workers. Contained in its little box, hidden away in my backpack, it was like an ember burning in the back of my mind, especially when I was around Sarah. One night, sitting on the futon and listening to the unexpected rain outside our open windows, I almost gave myself away smiling.
That was the moment, but I didn’t know it until it had already passed. Instead, the ember burned brighter, until one night I couldn’t get to sleep, couldn’t stop tossing and turning. Sarah knew something was up and pressed me, until finally I hopped out of bed, fumbled around in my backpack for the little wine-colored box, and proposed in my underwear. That is how it happened — probably not how either of us had imagined it, but the important part (“Yes!”) was perfect.
We have been living together since our senior year of college, when Sarah basically moved into my dorm room. Our new apartment is not much larger than that (and actually, when you include the common spaces, it is much smaller) but the circumstances are completely different. We are financially self-sufficient, handling the stresses of working full time and paying bills, while our core of joy and love has grown. We have surrounded ourselves with simple, beautiful things, filled our shelves with our favorite books, and settled into our little nest. By any measure, we live very comfortably.
But the time for fast growth has come again. We have dreams that need attending to. The next stage of our life together is beginning — I can feel it. There is no reason to dally: we hope to get married on the summer solstice this June. We don’t have concrete plans beyond that, but we have a shared vision that is urging us onward. Some of the books on our shelf might provide a hint at where we are going: for starters, there’s this one and this one. Our shared vision also includes some little ones padding around barefoot, and all the joy and responsibility that comes with them.
To paraphrase Thoreau, we are growing like corn in the night. Wedding plans, as well as a website, are in the works. I’ll keep you all posted. Until then, be well and enjoy the coming of winter!
