Magdalen Dale

this past moon...

2010-02-22T10:15:00.000-08:00

We had fallen into a routine. After Christmas Jen started leading dogsled trips. She was up before light in order to make coffee and eat before driving over to Theils’ to hook up the dogs on the gang line, lay out harnesses and water bowls, scoop poop, and greet clients. Some mornings I hardly even noticed her leave. She would grind coffee the night before and dress downstairs in the morning so I could keep sleeping. I would wake a couple hours later with Miles curled behind my knees and dust floating through the light from the window. I would read in bed or downstairs by the fire and after a chapter or two and a bagel and a cup of tea or coffee I would open up my laptop and write, taking breaks to stoke the fire, or add hot water to my tea. I finally felt like I was making progress. Sometimes I would take Arrow for a walk down the road or drive to the Corny well to fill our water jugs. And every evening, just before or after dark fell, Jen would come home with the smell of the dogs on her coat. We would make dinner together, watch a movie or play cards. Sometimes we went out. Often she fell asleep on the couch before ten.

Then half way through January the temperature starts fluctuating. First a thaw: icicles dripping from the eves into dirty snow, winter jackets ditched for hoodies and down vests, but boots still on to navigate the slush. I know in my head there are at least three more months of winter, but the warmth and longer days wake up something in my body. I feel like I do when I have to start my day before the sun is up: disoriented, groggy and out of sync.

I email everything I have written to my advisor and Davi (who is spending all of January in Chicago with her girlfriend). The rest of the week, I fend off boredom by perusing Facebook, cooking dinners, and picking up extra shifts at the bar while I wait for Jen to have a few days off so we can drive to Chicago.

I am just out of the shower and standing over the wood stove in my parents’ kitchen to let my hair dry when my mom looks up at me from the table and asks what days Jen and I are planning on being gone.

“Can you make sure to check in on Grandma when you get back?” she asks. “I’m going to visit Ann in Wausau for a few days, Jon is driving down to Florida with a friend, and Chris and Honey are driving out to North Dakota to see her family, so I want to make sure Grandma has someone she can call on.”

“When did that all happen?” I ask. After working with my brothers all spring, summer, and fall and seeing everyone over get-togethers during the holidays, it feels weird to now be out of the loop, but then I remember the last time we were all together and think it is probably good that we all get away for a bit. A couple weeks ago, dad scheduled an annual meeting for the farm. It went well, with good discussions about the direction we want to take the farm, and general agreement over any decisions, but when the meeting went later than my brothers expected and we were all hungry and tired, the meeting ended with curt tones, hurt feelings, and awkward exits.

*

The temperature drops. It begins to snow again on the morning we leave, but as we head south, the snow turns to rain and the snow in the ditches to dirt. In Chicago it looks and feels like November. We leave our boots and jackets in the car.

“I swear there was snow on the ground a week ago,” Davi tells us, yet it’s just another reminder of just how far away Chicago feels from home.

Jen and I catch up with friends, spend an afternoon wandering around the aquarium, eat chipotle burritos and a pub lunch and sushi. On Tuesday I meet up with Davi at a busy hipster coffeeshop near her girlfriend’s apartment. We leaf through my writing page by page. She has made notes in the margins and I add to them as we talk. At one point she slips as she talks, saying “So here in the movie I think…”

“Movie?” I ask as she catches herself and laughs.

“Yeah… about that…” she says, “When they want to make a movie based on your book, I’m telling you now I’d be more than happy to direct it.”

Davi, always the big dreamer, and believer of big dreams, and believe-in-er of friends with big dreams, is exactly who I need right now. The nine hour drive and money spent to get to and be in the city is all worth it if only for this one hour with my best friend sitting next to me on a worn couch, clutching my arm as she reads her favorite parts, and helping me imagine the pieces that have yet to be written, that will flesh out the story for a reader who doesn’t know me so thoroughly. I know we are both happier since we’ve moved home—Davi to NYC where she is closer to her family and surrounded by friends and the resources she needs to make her movies, and me up north with Jen and my family and the farm and deep snow—but I do miss the days of our treehouse apartment and making the most of small holidays.

I have arranged to meet with my thesis advisor before driving home the next morning but he doesn’t show. I call him and he apologizes saying he has a lot on his plate right now and he forgot and he hasn’t even had a chance to read it, but he will and he can email me feedback. Just as well, I think, because I’m tired and ready to be on the road, even more ready to be home. I’m not conditioned to the city anymore. Even with only a few things I’ve really needed to do in these few days down here, the stimulation of so many people and buildings and cars, leaves me exhausted. Jen drives for the first few hours and I sleep. North of Milwaukee we switch and I drive while she sleeps. A few hours from home we switch again. The highway has narrowed to just two lanes and we are both awake. There are fewer cars, more trees, and lots of snow, fresh snow. While we were gone the snow continued to fall, blanketing the bare trees and dirty snow in the ditches with white. The sun has just gone down. Between the trees I can see the moon again, almost full. I put my face against the window so I can watch it holding steady as the tree tops flip past.

*

Jen starts trips again the day after we get back. I run errands, do the dishes, and clean the house while she is gone. It hangs over my head that I should start writing again, but I find other things to occupy my time. My mom calls and invites us over for brunch on Sunday. My uncle will be up visiting from Minneapolis and it can be a belated birthday meal for my Grandma. Jen has to work that day, but I have nothing planned so I offer to come early and help my mom cook.

It’s nice to be with my family again, to take away the distance of our trips and to move beyond the hurt feelings from the farm meeting. We catch up some, but mostly we sit around the living room with coffee cups in our hands and watch my nephews play. After we are done eating Chris and Honey bundle up the boys to get them home before naptime. Uncle Dan takes Grandma home and Jon heads down to his shop to work on a project.

The bustling house has dwindled to just my parents and me. We sit in the kitchen and they ask me how my writing is going. I talk about Chicago, how nice it was to see Davi, that I’m still waiting on Michael’s feedback, and then I tell them I’m still conflicted about using the Ojibwe names for the moons to title the chapters of my writing. I talk about how I feel they describe the seasons of this place more specifically than months do and I connect to that because I connect to this place, but I also worry that I’d be using something that’s not mine to use. Both mom and dad are listening to me, maybe formulating how they want to respond, but the silence feeds my uneasiness so I keep talking, trying to explain.

“And then that just opens up all of these issues that I’ve never been good at articulating. I was born here, I grew up here, this is my home, I know that so deep down... but then there is still this lingering guilt about how we came to be here, not you guys moving here, because I know you just wanted a piece of land where you could put down roots and you partly chose this area because it was both rural and diverse, and I’m so glad to have the roots I do and the diverse friends that I do, but I guess I’m just saying I’m envious of the people with the deep deep roots to one place, like Andrea, even though she’s part white too, at least she has some of her roots in this place and she can learn the language of this place and use it and feel like it is hers to use, or Gio whose family has lived on the same land and spoken the same language for countless generations…” I breathe in deep and exhale with a sigh. Then add, “I hate even trying to talk about this because it just comes out like I’m complaining, and that’s not what I mean. I love my life.” My voice cracks as I say it. I get so bogged down every time I try to analyze this part of me and my writing. I am so fearful of doing something offensive, of being that ignorant white person (who I know I have been before), that I have considered avoiding the subject altogether, but I know that a story without this part of me would be incomplete.

My mom is sitting across the room on the red kitchen stool. She touches her chin with her hand and then turns her hand in the air as she says, “I think you can just say, ‘This speaks to me...’”
“I’m not Indian and I’m not trying to be Indian, but I am of this place.” My dad adds from across the table. I’m not completely convinced it’s that simple, but I do feel lighter sitting there with both them listening to me and offering their advice. I don’t remember the last time the three of us had a moment like this. Normally I just talk to one or the other, and yet today I appreciate that I have the balance of their personalities, and of their responses.

Dad gets up to retrieve a Wendell Berry book from the living room where he was reading this morning and thumbs through the pages looking for a certain passage. Mom steps into boots, pulls on a jacket and hat and goes outside. As Dad sits back down at the table and begins to read out loud to me, I watch though the window as mom steers a wheelbarrow full of wood down between the snow banks to the back door. Dad’s voice reading Wendell Berry mingles with the heavy bell dung of mom pulling wood from the wheelbarrow and the clack of the logs being stacked in the wood box. Harmony between our human economy and the natural world—local adaptation—is a perfection we will never finally achieve but must continuously try for. There is never a finality to it because it involves living creatures who change. The soil has living creatures in it. It has live roots in it, perennial roots if it is lucky. If it is the soil of the right kind of farm, it has a farm family growing out of it. The work of adaptation must go on because the world changes; our places change and we change; we change our places and our places change us.

As I drive home the sun is pink behind the trees and on the snow. Carol King sings on the radio, then Norah Jones, their voices rich and smooth. I pull in my driveway and wait for the song to end before I cut the engine.

*

I’m eager to write again. I knew my story would begin in Chicago, in spring, before moving back to the farm, but I had yet to settle on the specific first scene. While driving to work the other day it came to me, like a movie playing out in my head while I drove the stretch of Country Rd C from Mountain Rd to Washburn. I considered pulling over to write it down before I lost it, but instead I kept driving and played the scene on a loop, adding details, and making cuts, until it was perfect. At the bar, I opened and stocked quickly. I had an hour before anyone came in for a drink and during that time I opened up my laptop and jotted down notes for the opening scene.

I knew I would need a whole day to even begin writing it properly, a day that begins with a lazy morning, then coffee and my open laptop with no time in mind that I need to quit by. I’m still waiting for that day to come. Instead of writing, I watch my schedule fill up with commitments. Things I can’t say no to, like telling my brother I can come out to the farm and watch Silas while he helps my dad fix the tractor. I see the captain of the high school soccer team while I’m up at the school and she asks me if I’m going to coach again and if I’m excited for the season to start. She is clearly eager for the snow to melt so she can be on the field again, and oh how I can remember that feeling, but I don’t share it with her this year. I smile and tell her I could use another month of winter and then I’ll get excited. I can’t blame her excitement. Spring does feel closer as we’ve entered another warm spell. There is still plenty of snow around, but before driving into town, I don’t need to warm up my car as the sun as has already done the job for me, beating down on the hood and through the front window.

I remind myself that it is only February and to just enjoy the week for what it is. My schedule will clear up again and the temperatures will drop. I run into Krystle at the library and she tells me that she and Andrea have been playing basketball again. They are trying to get a team together to go down and play at a tournament at a reservation south of here. It’s an Indian tournament, so I wouldn’t be able to play on the team, but they need more people at practices if I want to come out. I haven’t really played since high school, but I wouldn’t mind the workout or the chance to hang out with Krystle and Andrea on a more regular basis. I am nervous the first day I show up for practice, but I quickly ease into the game. I know how to play and I know how to play with Andrea and Krystle, my high school teammates, the ones who taught me to play really. I even drive the lane once, something I never had the confidence to do in high school. Even though I’m trying to not fill up my schedule, I know I’ll be back next week.

*

I make it through my week of meetings and bartending and babysitting. Saturday morning I sleep in for a bit and then get up and check my email. A friend from college has sent me a story she wrote. The title of the email is “Autobiographical Fiction.” She has changed the names of characters and condensed time and we have been out of touch in recent months, but I can piece together what is autobiographical. It is so beautiful and raw and honest and I am honored that she shared it with me and glad that we are friends. I only have time to email her a quick “I love you” before heading into town. As I drive, little images and pieces of her story come into my head.

I get home a little before five. The sun is setting and I figure Jen will be on her way home soon, so I take Arrow on a walk down Happy Hollow. I figure it will take me at least an hour to walk to Theils’ and sometime in that hour Jen will finish work and get in her car to drive home. Arrow runs ahead of me a ways and then doubles back, gets distracted by a smell in the snow bank, sniffs around, and then runs ahead again. I love watching her, so suited to the cold. In the summer she shows her age, but on these winter walks she acts like a puppy again. I watch the sun come through the trees for half a mile then spread out over a snow-covered field. I am almost to the Faye farm when I see Jen’s black Subaru coming towards me. As she gets closer I can see her grinning. Arrow makes circles around the car, but won’t get in. Jen gets out of the car and pounces to get a hand on Arrow's collar, then guides her into the car. Once Jen is back in the car she looks back at Arrow and says, “Sorry Arrow. I’ve dealt with enough independent-minded dogs for one day.” As we drive she tells me about her trips that day, clueless clients and feisty dogs and the workout she got trying to keep things running smoothly. I tell her about my lazy morning and reading my friend's story and playing basketball. We arrive home in the half-light of dusk, let Arrow out of the car and walk inside together. Jen hands me a beer and grabs one for herself. I put water on to boil for pasta.

The next day I have to open the bar at one, but before I leave I send my friend a longer email. I write.

yesterday jen was up for work before the sun was--pulling an extra
blanket over me before she left to balance the loss of her warmth.
when i decided to get up a couple hours later, i jumped straight from
bed into two layers of sweatpants (oberlin sweats on top :) a hoodie
under a wool shirt, wool hat and winter boots. i went outside to pee
in the snow, and chop kindling. came in and got a fire going in the
wood stove before opening up my email. i had no real obligations for
the day and could spend the morning reading your piece. pausing
half-way through to toast a bagel and make coffee. i finished reading
at noon, shaking my head at the reminder of how talented and honest
and beautiful you are. i threw a thick log on the fire to hold it for
a few hours and then changed quickly into workout clothes and drove
into town to meet friends for a game of pick-up basketball, the whole
time wishing you were closer and could come play too. remembering how
i've also always loved the way you played sports-putting all that
intensity and honesty and fearlessness and messiness into the quick
connection of head to ball.

only three turned up to play and so we were left to shoot around
and run gassers if so inclined. andrea's daughter (almost four years old now) was
there too, skipping laps around the gym and saying, "good one mama!"
every time andrea swished a shot. during a water break andrea tells
me that the other night after watching a pick up game, her daugther
had said to her, 'mama, i have to tell you something. that ball is
yours.' i try to remember a time someone stole the ball from her
and i can't, instead i see her dribbling down the court, head up,
strong hand over the ball, thick black hair pulled back tight and dark
eyes reading the play. then that crisp hard pass, the same pass that
would knock my glasses off in high school when i wasn't paying
attention during drills.

i drove home with my window cracked, the sun pouring in and reflecting off the snow, thinking of mothers and daughters, lovers and friends, the ways we connect, and pulse, together and apart. your story is with me all day, the images and the essence, and i am glad i have the day to spend with it.

where are you these days? new york still? will you go back to AZ ever? are you coming to my wedding in september?

love,
magd

Strawberry Moon

2009-04-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

The moon has the ability to both surprise and settle me, startle and calm. As it did last Sunday when the sky blinked clear of spring time clouds to bare stars again and a thin bright “waxing crescent smile” or that same sliver of moon against a dimming autumn dusk that forced dad and I to quit work for the day and walk up from the fields together while night settled in before dinner. But as I write this now I am thinking especially of one night, of the full strawberry moon of last June.

Its waxing days were my waning days in Chicago, spent packing up my apartment, saying goodbye to friends, tying up loose ends. At the end of the day Davi (my housemate and best friend) and I would walk east through the circles of streetlights, stopping to buy 40s at the corner store under the el tracks, passing the park where children played late into the night while their fathers chatted nearby, and ending at a five block stretch of beach front deserted after a busy afternoon, the sand dented with footsteps, the smell of bbqs still lingering in the air. I remember these ritual walks down the beach always in half-light—absent of the car headlights and store signs shining a few blocks away, yet lit enough to see where water met sand, to watch Davi’s face as she talked, to feel safe. Sometimes we would also see the moon, hanging out above the water, above its own reflection stretched out and rippling. Yet this Chicago moon was one-dimensional: full, crescent, or half had the same affect—pleasing my eye, but not aiding it to see more, to dissuade the dark.

My mom comes down and we load up the farm truck with everything I own. We are on the road by noon, and then after a long day of driving, we pull up our driveway at dusk. The first night I sleep in my old bed in my old bedroom in my parent’s house and the next morning, my brother and my dad take time out from their work on the farm to help mom and I unload the truck, carrying cardboard boxes and milkcrates of my stuff into little house just up the driveway from my parent’s house, my grandma dale’s old house. They stack my things in the living/dining room and then head back out to the fields. Tomorrow I will join them, but today I am inside all day, cleaning and unpacking; I just want to be settled. I have been thinking about this day for so long—imagining my dishes in my grandma’s cupboard, my books on her shelves, my bed along the window in the upstairs loft. At five I drive to Washburn to train in at StageNorth, where I’ve picked up a part-time bartending gig to supplement the income I’ll make working on the farm. Before heading home I stop to buy groceries. At the store, I am overwhelmed thinking of my empty fridge and pantry, so I decide to just focus on breakfast, putting bagels and cream cheese and a bunch of bananas in my basket. I will have to wait for milk and coffee I decide, as I have also been fantasizing about my a trip up Nevers Rd to buy milk from Tetzers, the dairy where my family has bought their milk since I can remember, and then on the way back to the highway pulling in to buy coffee and chat with Harry, my friend Kate’s dad who runs a coffee-roasting business. I love catching up with Harry over a cup of coffee or bottle of beer, but today I know I don’t have the time or energy, also I promised myself that I would get a run in. It is dusk when I pull up the driveway. I’m tired and worried I’ll be running in the dark, but I dart inside anyway. Drop groceries on the counter. Change into running shorts and shoes and head out the door. Even if it’s a just a short one, I think. I’m training for a long distance run at the end of August. In Chicago I had been running five to seven miles every other day, but with the commotion of packing and moving it’s been almost a week since I’ve gotten a good one in. I head down the driveway and turn left—choosing hills over flats, in order to wear myself out quicker, thinking I’ll have to cut it short as I loose the last bit of daylight. Bending past Frizell’s driveway, and then the first small hill bordered by Tom Galazen’s almost ripe strawberry patches on either side, flat again and then dipping down after the drive into Johnson’s apple orchard. Up to Chelsea’s driveway and then a sharp left onto the rough patch of pavement that connects Valley Rd to County J in its steep ascent to the top of the hill. My legs burning, my heart racing, I tell myself, “If I can make it even half way up, I can turn around.” And then as I come out on J, I am reenergized by the round orange glow of a huge full moon creeping up from behind the pines that line the road. Only on this day, at this time, at this spot, does this exist like this, I think. I keep going so I can keep watching it—climbing as I climb. I must have caught a glimpse of the growing moon in the nights before this one, yet wasn’t expecting this. I no longer need to rush my run. Tonight, real darkness won’t come.

poem post-city

2008-12-21T10:55:00.000-08:00

1/26/08

I’ve spent a week waking up in other people’s apartments,
sleeping under their blankets,
between their sheets,
with the muffled lights and noises from the street shining in
through the window. It’s a kind of intimacy.

In New York everywhere there is talent, a beautiful face,

possibility.

Out of nowhere, he writes to me:
Bayfield was mentioned in the redeye.
Is that my nephew in my profile pic?
Will I be coming down to Chicago at all? (read: Am I still interested?)
He might be up north for Christmas.

I reply:
i'm in nyc right now--catching up with oberlin peeps when they have time for me in the midst of their busy nyc lives, realizing i really am living in a different world from them, a different pace, but it is still nice to visit.... to sleep in while they get up to go to work, to eat my breakfast on fire escapes and watch the pigeons and people rushing around. in a few minutes i'll leave anne's key under the mat and walk/train to the bronx to visit ellie at the cuny campus where she is
teaching art history.

His is as fleeting as the faces at the airport,
seen only in the length of a layover,
attractive at first glance,
and because I’ll likely never know the rest.

Like poetry,

I can love the city, in small doses.

Driving home I look out at the open road and the open sky,
the leaveless tress and a horizon unboxed by buildings,
and I think that is also the difference—
not as much to create upon, but so much more space to fill,
or choose to leave uncluttered.

Dear Thesis Advisor

2008-06-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

So last Friday, after emailing you to say I would be sending you a draft of my thesis in the next few days, I gathered together my journals and printed out pages with jotted notes, read them and arranged them in the best order possible around my laptop, and then double-clicked open the daunting word doc titled “home all put together” in the “thesis” folder on my desktop. I took a deep breath, read a paragraph, changed a word, erased a sentence, started another sentence to replace it, and then bit my lip to contain the panic that I felt rising up from my gut. I knew I could sit there for hours—that I had sat there for hours—feeling awful and not making any progress. So instead I opened a new word doc and started typing with the single desire of pinpointing the truth of this exact moment. I wrote: I think I need to start over. There are stories and images and metaphors that I like and can still use, but they need to be grounded in something new, in the present.

When we met in February you told me not to wait to start writing. I didn’t mean to wait. I put it on every to-do list I have made over the past five months, all in caps and with a box around it: THESIS. Sure, I rearranged a bit, found ways to incorporate some older pieces, added notes in the margin of where I wanted to do research and write more, but mostly it made me crazy to pay it much attention, so I didn’t.

There is the normal craziness that comes with deadlines, with big projects, with potential publication, and striving for perfection, but the subject matter and timing of this project carries additional anxiety for me. I want to write about home, about my family and the farm, about my friends and the community I grew up in, the country, but also town, and the island, and the rez. And as I’ve started writing about home, I’ve realized I also want to be home; I need to be home. The initial plan was to move home for the summer: Jon, my oldest brother, was planning on moving back home for Seattle that summer so I could see him. Silas, my brother’s Chris’s first born son, would be turning a year old. Expenses would be minimal, so I could work on the farm part-time and then spend the rest of the time writing my thesis. Then it grew into a year: Jon wouldn’t be moving until the fall now. I realized it had been eight years since I had spent a fall season at home, since I had been there for the end of harvest, for applefest, and thanksgiving, and the first snowfall. I was also probably pushing it to think I could finish my thesis by the end of the summer.

Up until a year ago, I never thought I would be able to live at home again. At most, I could spend summers up there, I had thought, but never would I be able to make it my home again. I was drunk on the city—everything at my fingertips, something to do every night of the week, always new people to meet, diversity, gays. But once I started remembering home, started thinking about being there again, really being there and not just stopping through, the appeal of the city began to fade. Like booze, I didn’t want to give the city up completely; I just didn’t think I could have it everyday anymore. It blows my mind to think back on my thought process of this past year and how quickly I turned my head around. The contrast is illustrated in my journals. The first Christmas home from college I wrote: I’ve been trying to get a hold of Krystle, but don’t have a number to reach her at, and then tonight I ran into her sister at the movies and she tells me that Krystle left this morning to go back to school. I’m so frustrated. She was one of the people I wanted to see most, even just to see her face, but really to sit down with her and talk and really know how everything’s going, to take away the distance. I’m sad about not seeing her now, but also upset because I don’t know when I’ll see her again, which is what I’m really feeling right now, not just about Krystle but about everything. Being away at school and now being home again, I have come to two conclusions: 1) I love my family so much. I think they are the greatest ever and I value my relationships with my parents and my brothers and my friends here with all my heart. 2) Bayfield is in the past (and maybe? –probably not- in the distant future), but for now I’m done with it. I feel I have taken advantage of all it has to offer, but after seeing just splices of the larger world through traveling and friends and school I know I’ve moved way past it. Both conclusions are great in themselves, but put together create this wistful feeling: that maybe never again will I live in the same place as my family.

For whatever reason, I stopped writing in this specific journal sometime during my first year of college. It has sat on my shelf for years now with half the pages still blank, until this past winter when I was looking for something to journal in and I pulled it down, flipped it over and started writing from the back—working my way towards the middle, working my way home, to meet the scrawl of entries that took me away from home seven years ago. This past February I wrote: I’ve been saying I want to move home for a year to work on my thesis, and spend time with Silas before he isn’t a baby anymore, and live with Jon when he gets there, and have a real autumn, but the more I think and dream about it, the more I am beginning to believe this move home could be for good. Especially if I can manage to incorporate Oberlin-esq “winter terms” every year and spend some time traveling in the late months of winter when northern Wisconsin is virtually unbearable. There are so many books I want to read, movies I want to see, places I want to travel too, people I want to visit, and the only way I can do all this is by getting out of the city, simplifying my life and cutting down on my expenses (i.e. paying less rent). But really it’s way bigger than that. I want to be home. I want to share food, walks, space, talks, books, movies, card games. I want the “commune” of my family—ridiculous that this is almost revolutionary in our culture. I remember Cory ending a ranting email saying, “ you know, in most cultures outside of western civilization, people really don't ever live alone” and thinking at the time it was so funny how she was making this grand statement, but now thinking she totally has a point. I thought I could create this community with my friends in the city, but we all have different lives and different priorities and I can’t expect them to stay here for me. They aren’t who I should commune with. I can always visit them and be re-energized by these visits, but it is too much to have it all the time. We need our space alone. It is better when these magical times together are contained within a week or weekend, when all of our energy can be focused on each other. I want the every day to be with my family.

So it’s not that I haven’t been writing it’s just that all of the writing I have been doing is in this vein of journal-entry-dreaming about the future. Some of the dreaming is more specific—thoughts on the artist retreat I want to open on the farm, or the rural magnet high school I want to create. I have a list of the countries I want to visit on my winter terms and a growing list of books and movies and projects I will get to when I have more time to read and watch and work for myself.

I have tried to go back to some of the pieces I started about home and expand on them, fill them with details about my life there. When we met last summer you asked me to describe the chores on the farm as Debra Marquart does in her essays, but I honestly don’t know them like she does, didn’t do them or don’t remember. I tell people I am moving back to the farm and they ask me how many acres we have and I don’t know the answer to that either. The truth is I didn’t love living there. It was isolated. I was lonely. I had a lot of passion and not a lot to pour it in to. I definitely didn’t put it in to the farm. I put it in to sports and more often than not was disappointed by coaches, I put it in to being different—dying my hair pink and sewing my own clothes with my best friend, I put it in to crushing on a college girl that worked on our farm in the summers, and I put it into “getting out.” I spent hours online looking at different college’s websites. I spent the first half of my senior year of high school as an exchange student in Australia. The second half I spent taking college classes a couple towns over. Then I went to college. Then Chicago.

I went to this hippie school in Ohio. I loved it. Everyone was gay and read a lot. They also thought it was fantastic that I grew up on a blueberry farm. “That must have been so great,” they would tell me and I would try and tell them how it really was. I hated how they romanticized it. They had no idea what it was really like to live on farm. Their flowery tone took away everything that made it real. And then always the next question: “Is it organic?” We aren’t and for good reason and yet I felt judged by these city kids with their Whole Foods education. I wanted to defend my family and our farm. I knew we were responsible, that it just wasn’t feasible to never spray ever and still expect to have a crop come August, but I didn’t actually know the specifics. I could hear my dad’s ranting in my head and I knew he was right, but I could only remember the emotion behind his arguments, not the details.

It wasn’t just the farm that I found myself struggling to defend in my time away from home. I went to high school in Bayfield, a tiny picturesque little tourist town on the shores of Lake Superior. Half the kids in my class bussed in from Red Cliff, the Indian reservation the next town over, a few ferried over from Madeline Island. The abstracted reality of farm-life is nothing compared to the way the life of Indians and Islanders is so often romanticized. I was in the same building with the same class of forty kids for Kindergarten through graduation. I had friends in town, in Red Cliff, and on the island. I knew these places well, but I also never felt like they were mine. I wasn’t comfortable hanging out in these places without the company of a friend who was from there. So now when I’m away from home and there is discussion about Indians or Islands, I want to join in, I feel like I have something to say, but I my white girl from the country status will often times hold me back from claiming authority. I’m torn between feeling connected because of where I grew up and yet not wanting to be this person I’m complaining about that puts forth an image or judgment on something they can’t fully understand.

I do know though that the longer I am away the more I want to know. I want to know the names of trees and birds. I want to grow my own food and cook it and can it and turn it into jam. I want to buy milk and coffee and meat from my neighbors. I want to chop wood and build fires. I want to fish and hunt. I want to run on the back roads and through the woods. I want to get lost and then find my way again. I want to learn to swim better and kayak better and hit a softball better. I want to go to powwows with Andrea and watch Animikiikwe as she learns to dance like her mother.

I’ve tried to bring some of these bits of home into my life in Chicago. I bought a hummingbird feeder. (They never came to drink from it. I think I missed their migration.) My roommate and I tried to make homemade mayo. (It didn’t work.) But we have been growing little plants in our windowsill. And a mourning dove has been coming to visit me lately while I sit and read on the porch. The first day he just chilled in the tree, then last week he came up on the porch rail, today he flew up in my path as I was running. “What does it mean?” I asked Cory, one of my best friends from home and the one who influenced me to start paying attention to the animals in my life more. She emailed me back: Doves are related to pigeons. Early navigators took pigeons to sea in hopes that, if they became lost the pigeon would show them the way to land. The pigeon assists us in finding the stability of home that has been lost. No matter where pigeon ends up or how it gets there, it knows the way home. They do not get lost because they are in tune with the natural ways of earth, and are always aware of their goals. They use all their senses equally and navigate their lives in a balanced way. If Pigeon comes to you, it is asking you to keep your sights and sensitivities clearly set on where you want to be, and start moving. Even if you don't know exactly how to get there, by following your inner guidance you can find your way.

The dove is just one of many teachers. Going home I am fortunate to have teachers all around me to teach me how to claim home. There is so much I can learn just by working alongside my family and friends. I gave this thesis a working title a long time ago: “Roots and Wings: Lessons from Home.” At that time I thought I would be writing about the lessons I had already learned, but now I am realizing I am just getting started. I also had only thought of roots and wings as a metaphor, referencing a quote that hangs on the wall of my parent’s house: “There are two things you should give your children: the first is roots, the second is wings.” I was going to write about how central to my life it has been that they lived by this motto—providing me with both a home I could always return to and the encouragement to leave and make a life away from this home. But that is only the introduction to this story. The rest of the story lies in the lessons I have yet to learn, the lessons about and from the roots and wings that will surround me on my return home.

This is my truth as I know it at this exact moment—sitting in my apartment in Chicago with pieces of my life already packed into boxes, counting down the days until my mom rolls into town with our big silver farm truck to take me home. The rest of it will be written up north in between morning coffee with dad and days spent working on the farm, between snapping beans with mom and kicking a soccer ball in the yard with my nephew. It will draw on memories from the past and it will lay the foundations for my future, but it will be always be written in the present tense of learning.

Long Distance Breakfast Date

2008-04-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Winters are hard. But this past winter I was determined to not let it get me down, to not forget about all the things worth waking up for. I created a morning routine of appreciating the little things--waking up, putting on music, taking a long shower, brewing coffee, cooking breakfast. And when I sat down at the table to eat, when I warmed my hands on my coffee cup and stared out the window, instead of missing my friends and feeling lonely, I tried to imagine each of them in their own houses or apartments following a similar routine--of waking, and drinking, and eating, and thinking, and appreciating.

In order to remember this routine and also to share it with my friends and thank them for helping me through the winter, even from far away, I made these cards and CDs and mailed them to them. It was so nice to have a project to work on, but the best part of doing it was getting the responses back from my friends. Just goes to show that giving really is better than receiving.

from Leslie:

Hey dude! After I talked to you yesterday I went to my P.O. Box and checked my mail and i GOT THE BEST THING EVER! I loved the card! So sweet! You made it! You took the photos! It was so awesome! I hung it on the fridge where it'll be for a long time. And I do remember the photo. That was at the end of the year, I think Sophomore or junior year and we were all out there on North Quad fucking around, I think Kay was there and some other people. We had a blanket on the ground and it was warm and nice but I think we were a little sad to be leaving in a little while.

from Annalisa:

this morning
i woke up
went for a run
stretched
took a shower
and had brekfast (cappuccino) while i was reading the paper and listening to the cd you sent to me.
thank you so much.
you really made my week warmer
i am so so happy and lucky to have you
you are so special and something stable deep inside of me.

six word memoirs

2008-03-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

davi and i wrote our memoirs over breakfast this morning.
this is mine:
"and she has dimples!" said grandma

Valentine's Day

2008-02-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

Ships

2008-01-29T12:03:00.000-08:00

My sophomore year of college I had to write a play for my Introduction to Creative Writing class. It was titled “Ships” and explored that middle ground between friendships and relationships, that crush/attraction/fascination that seems to embody most high school and early college romances. The characters were named Alex, Sam, Nic, Morgan, Jody, and Taylor and I made a note that “they can be played as either gender, or preferably as neither gender and just as.” Most of the scenes were snip bits from the melodrama of shifting and unbalanced affections amongst the characters. The dialogue could have been (and much of it was) copied word for word from the melodrama of my life at that point, none of which feels very relevant to my life at this point now. But there is a quieter scene between Nic and Sam that I return to throughout the play and that I found myself connecting with as I returned to it today.

* * *

(Lights down on stage right and up on Nic stage left. S/he is lying on his/her back on a blanket, looking up at the sky. Sam enters.)

SAM: Are you going to share some of that pillow?

(Nic moves over, they lay down together, both heads on one pillow, on top of one blanket, but still managing to only brush limbs.)

SAM: Do you know any constellations?

NIC: Yeah. A few. My dad and I used to stand outside together in our yard when the stars were bright and he would point out different ones. I can always pick out Orion. See those three bright stars in a line? That’s his belt. And then the line of fainter stars coming off the side? That’s a sword. Wait never mind, I think it’s supposed to be a knife ‘cause he’s a hunter. And he’s supposed to be holding a bow and arrow, but I can only ever pick out the bright star that makes the tip of the arrow.

SAM: Hot damn, I see it. I wonder who came up with that. Like couldn’t you just connect those dots any which way and draw a dog or a naked lady or something?

NIC: Once when I was little I was looking at the stars with my Dad and we were lying down in the grass and I had just gotten Oscar then and she was laying on my stomach purring up a storm. I found three kind of faint lines of stars on the horizon and named them after her whiskers.

SAM: Can you still find them?

NIC: I always look for it, but I’ve never been able to find it again. Sometimes I think I might see it, but I don’t have any one to verify it.

* * *

(Lights back up on stage left—Sam and Nic in similar pose from before looking at the sky.)

SAM: Nic! I just saw a shooting star! I’ve never seen a shooting star.

NIC: Are you sure it wasn’t a satellite?

SAM: No. I’ve seen a satellite before.

NIC: Well, I don’t know. I thought everyone had seen a shooting star before too.

SAM: I can’t believe I just saw a shooting star.

NIC: Did you make a wish?

SAM: No. Should I?

NIC: I’m not really convinced it makes any difference.

SAM: I just saw another one! Did you see it?

NIC: No, but I bet there’ll be more. It’s probably the beginning of a meteor shower or something

SAM: If the stars all start falling at once. Do everyone’s wishes all come true at the same time?

NIC: Like I said, I don’t really believe in it to begin with.

* * *

(Lights up on stage left. Back to Sam and Nic.)

SAM: The stars were never really that good growing up. The smog only allowed the very brightest to shine through. You were lucky if you could see the moon. But you didn’t need moonlight. The streetlamps seemed to illuminate the whole world. It’s funny. I always thought that everything seemed so big in the city, with so many buildings and cars and people and that when I came to college out here in the country it would feel so small. And it does feel small during the day. I mean, I can walk three blocks and cover the whole down town. But at night, lying here like this, I look up and it is so huge—bigger than I could ever have imagined while I was in the city.

* * *

(Stage left. Sam and Nic.)

NIC: Sometimes it’s comforting to feel so small, so insignificant. You know? Like you can fuck up and everything is still going to continue and the sky is still going to be there with its dots of light. And you can look up at the three stars that make Orion’s belt and be like “I know you. You are so fuckin’ far away—farther than I can even comprehend, and I know you.” I spent a semester in Australia and even there I could find Orion in the sky. It was upside-down, because I was in the southern hemisphere, but even upside-down or backwards, I could still step outside at night and see him.

* * *

(Lights switch to stage left, Sam and Nic.)

SAM: What’s that light, near the horizon? It’s moving but it’s just sort of shifting around in its own little area. It can’t be a star.

NIC: I think it must be the light at the top of sailboat. They probably just dropped anchor out there to sleep and the waves are rocking the boat, so the light is rocking too.

SAM: Yeah, I can kind of make out a shape under it.

NIC: We should probably go to sleep to.

SAM: I’ve never slept on a dock before. I’m afraid I’ll roll off.

NIC: You’ll be fine.

a beautiful campaign

2007-07-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

(an Italian Sonnet)

“I think you are a beautiful campaign,”
he said to us, this boy from Italy,
as we explained how we had come to be—
an Italian, German, and American,
three girls who’d met as students on exchange

and under an Australian sun had schemed
to trade goodbye for the next lazy season,
our plan traced eagerly into the sand.

We fashioned a collective map of homes
and homes away from homes with open doors
connected by a path to be explored.
First marks on where we’d soon return alone:
a city, small for Germany, near Koln,
a farm on shores of Lake Superior,
a white Stucco in Brecsia, (north of Florence).
Then Lisbon, Canada, Sicily, Rome...

Land circled. Money saved, to execute.
We named our first adventure with a date
and talked of it so often it became
a mantra: Summer 2002.
That summer we would meet in Bonn and prove
the smallness of the world by conquering
Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Italia

(at least the north), and Salzburg too.

He said campaign and we assumed he meant
“a company,” or group, not like the sort
of military term once used in France,
translated “open country”: Armies spent
the winter in the comfort of their quarters
and in the summer took to the campagne.

mapping minneapolis

2007-07-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

I’d wanted a good map of the cities for awhile. “The Cities” are the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Growing up, my family would make weekend trips down to the cities from our farm in rural northern Wisconsin. We would usually stay with the Beyer’s. Bill was my dad’s best friend from college. His family lived in a little stucco house on a fairly quiet street in St. Paul, just a few blocks away from the Lutheran Seminary my dad had entered after college and subsequently dropped out of. This is the piece of the cities I know best—the soft blues and cream of their combined living room and dining room, the little wooden bench that my mom and I would share pulled up to one end of dining room table, the bread and cheese and wine at every meal, the little staircase leading down to the basement a multi-purpose guest room slash t.v. room slash office slash library with bookshelves living every wall and big red cushions that could fold into couches or be pulled to create beds on the floor.

I can also remember the apartment where my older brother Chris and his wife Honey lived for three years, furnished with a lot of the same furniture they have now, but cramped into two bedrooms. I vaguely remember the two other apartments he lived in with friends before he and Honey got together and the dorm room he had at the U where I got high for the first time.

When we drive in the cities, there are bits of familiarity—the water tower near Beyer’s that marks St. Anthony park, the neighborhood my parent’s lived in when they were first married, and where my mom’s parent’s had lived when returned from eighteen years of missionary work in Papua New Guinea, the white pillow of the metro dome breaking up the skyline, the two towers of square apartment buildings with squares of primary colors where it seems there should be windows, another architectural experiment filled with poor people, I remember being told, the flashing pink sign for the Gay 90s that marked the existence of gay people, even though I later learned it wasn’t actually that gay.

More recently, I have traveled up to the cites from Chicago with my girlfriend Sarah. Her parents live thirty miles west of the cities, where farmland blends into suburbia. We drive into the city to meet up with her sister or friends from high school. We mainly hang out in uptown. From the dreadlocks and tattoos and mismatched clothes sported by the people on the street and filling the bars, I imagine it’s the Greenwich Village of the cites, although I’ve never actually been to Greenwich, just seen it described in books and movies.

Just two months ago, Cory, my best friend from high school, moved to Minneapolis. We talk on the phone and she tells me of the coffee shops she frequents and the bike ride she has started to take every night to the lake to sit and write and think.

The cities exist in my head only in pieces. A house, an apartment, a storefront, a story from my Grandma Dale that she would walk everyday from the hospital where she was in nursing school to the lake to swim. But I don’t know where the hospital is and I don’t know in what direction she had to walk to get to the lake. Unlike Bayfield, surrounded by Lake Superior, and Chicago, pushed up against Lake Michigan, the Twin Cities don’t have one huge body of water to rest against. Instead there is a river that snakes through the cites and over a dozen small lakes scattered through out.

Last Friday I rode up to the cities with Sarah in her beat up little teal green car. I told her, if we cut over into Minnesota at LaCrosse instead of taking the interstate, we can drive up along the river. Our little detour made the trip almost two hours longer, but it was one I would take again. There was something about following the flow of water instead of the flow of traffic that felt right. Even though I knew I couldn’t trust the river to run in a straight direction, I knew that this river cut through the cities, and following it would take us there.

A day later, after getting drinks with Sarah’s oldest sister Vic, sleeping in at her parent’s house, and then coming back into town to buy a bike map and split a pizza, Sarah dropped me off at the airport. I flew back to Chicago, leaving Sarah and her car behind. Ever since we had started dating, just over a year ago, I had known that Sarah would be moving back. She had done her undergrad in Chicago and then stayed on an extra year when she was invited into a MBA program. She had been counting the days until she could leave the big city for her smaller one before we had even met.

I took the map out this morning. I laid it on the floor. I stared at it, attempting to commit it to memory, starting with the blue line of the river and blobs of the lakes. I took out my address book. I wrote down the address for Beyer’s and the Chris and Honey’s old address. I texted Cory and asked her what her address was. I wrote down other places I wanted to look up: Bryant Lake Bowl, Northwestern Hospital, Luther Seminary. Then I went online to Google maps. I typed in an address or business name and it would bring up the map, a green arrow marking where two families sat around the table and passed a bowl of pasta, where Chris and I played darts on the porch and drank Apricot Ale, where Cory and I lay on navy blue sheets and dreamed about our futures, where Sarah and I kissed on the New Year, where Grandma Dale learned to check for a pulse, where my Dad had given up on the church. One by one I committed each intersection to memory and then returned to the map on the floor with a brown marker, drawing an X and a name.

I imagine Cory’s bike ride to the lake. I imagine Grandma’s walk to the same lake. I note that uptown is actually south of downtown. Everything makes more sense. I’m eager to make more Xs by digging up the old addresses of apartments and houses where my family has lived. I’m curious about the future, the Xs for homes that have yet to be discovered.

a muddy practice

2007-06-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

It’s a rainy spring morning, so the field at the high school is wet and muddy, but with their first game just a couple weeks away, I make them practice in the mud anyway. They start out whining, avoiding the puddles and holding the ball with just the tip of their fingers and a disgusted look on their face. Then Isamar fakes a pass and Giselle falls for it and slips in the mud as she tries to chase after her. Isamar laughs as she touches it down past the orange cones that mark the try line and Giselle, no longer worried about getting dirty, is up quick and tackling Isamar to the ground even though the play is over. It spreads quickly now, with the muddiest girls eager to make a good tackle on the cleanest girls, the sort of tackle that dents the ground and forces mud into the space between fabric and skin, hair and scalp, shoes and sox. Soon, all brown, they are no longer distinguishable by the colors they wear. Only the natural shape of their faces and bodies separates them into individuals.

I have organized them into four teams of five, and marked out a small grid with cones, ten paces by fifteen paces. The teams are lined up along the side lines. When I say go, one team runs around the far right cone and another team runs around the far left cone. They meet in the middle. First there is a tackle, the fastest defender wrapping her arms around the legs of the ball carrier and bringing her and the ball to the ground. Then a ruck, where the opposing teams push against one another until the stronger team is able to step over the ball. Once the ruck has moved over the ball, another player picks it up and runs with it until she is brought to the ground and another ruck forms.

The girls work harder than usual, diving for tackles and throwing their bodies into rucks. When they have the ball in their hands they spin and juke and stretch their bodies to touch it down across the try line. They whisper strategy to one another as they wait their turn on the sideline: “Joana you take it in first, and Christina be ready to ruck. Then I’ll try to dish it out to Pearl.” And they yell in support as they run through the drill: “Joana! Give me ball! Help! Who’s rucking?! Ball out!” The teams converge in a ruck, a shoulder fitting into the cup of an opposing hip, fingers grabbing jerseys and shorts, cleats digging and clinging to mud and grass and roots, and then once the ball is passed out of the ruck everyone breaks apart and sprints to the next break-down, where they will converge again. Tight and solid and pushing together in one unit and then running and cutting and exploding apart, together, apart, they pulse.

It isn’t always an easy thing to teach, getting dirty, but it is the only way to teach rugby. The hardest worker on the field is usually the one with the dirtiest jersey. When I teach tackling to new players, I am constantly telling them that the easiest way to bring someone down is to throw yourself on the ground with them. The more seasoned players have already learned this, and then there are some girls who never need to be taught, who have no problem jumping right in and getting dirty. I was one of these girls.

Growing up, I don’t remember ever halting my play because I was afraid of getting dirty—flipping the rocks that create the border of my mom’s garden, pinching the soft wet body of earthworms, pulling them up from the soil and feeling the tickle of them wriggling in my hand, or constructing sandcastles in the sandbox with Chris. I remember summer nights when we would be in the sand box for hours, adding a roof-top skate board ramp (Chris) or a clover-leafed moat (me) to our designs. Our shoes and sox would come off and be set on one of the thick rail ties that served as a border for our 5’x5’ beach. Without an ocean tide, we would haul pails of water to test our moats and rivers, watch the water wind through the trenches and then disappear as it seeped into the sand, leaving the mini-banks smoother and a shade darker than the rest of the sand.

After the sun had set and the cool sand and breeze brought out goose-bumps on my arms, I would sit on the rails and rub my hands together, knocking the little grains of rock back into their box. I would rub my hands over my arms and legs and poke a finger between my toes, step out of the sandbox onto tip toes, grab my shoes and sox, and dart up across the sharp mulch path to the front of our house. I would rinse my feet and hands off under the cold sharp sting of the outdoor tap, leave wet toe prints in the entry way and kitchen as I walk back to the bathroom to clean feet and hands again, this time with warm water and soap.

I don’t think anyone can know how good it feels to be clean unless they’ve been really dirty. The shower after a camping trip, or a day of work in the garden, is a completely different one from the wake up and get ready shower in the morning. It is a wind-down shower, a long comprehensive shower that requires you to really scrub at every patch of skin to rinse away the dirt and sweat. The stream of water is felt underneath your skin as well, slowing down and soothing the pulse of your muscles to a hum, a quiet song of the activity of the day, a lullaby.

Practice is over. The girls got in trouble last week for tracking the mud from their cleats into the school, so I’ve brought them plastic bags to put their muddy shoes and clothes in.

“Ahh… Thanks Coach!” Diana says with a glint in her eye as hugs me from behind and is sure to wipe her muddy hands along the clean gray sleeve of my coat. I watch as the rest of the girls catch Diana’s glint. Then I am sprinting to my car as the mob of brown muddy bodies chase after me, hands out stretched. I am running away because I am in my work clothes and can’t get muddy. Coming from practice, I will already be late to work, with no time to change or shower. As I run away, I imagine turning around and chasing Diana down. I imagine dropping my hips just as I approach her, bringing my shoulder up into her hip, my hands grabbing behind her knees, lifting her up for a split second and then letting gravity pull us back down, the thud on the ground, the spray of mud, the perfect tackle, the perfect response. I imagine playing until I am as muddy as the rest of them. I imagine going home and stripping the wet dirty layers off, turning the shower on, feeling the hot water hit my body, watching the mud slide off my skin and slip down the drain. I am clean, calm, content.

aiguardent: a journey into human solitude...

2006-08-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday: I pushed the stroller around aimlessly for awhile. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through my contact list looking for someone other than Sarah to call. It had only been a few hours since she left and I thought I should be able to hold out longer than that. I called Davi and hung up when she didn’t answer. I put my phone back in my pocket, walked a block, pulled it out again, and called Sarah. It was one of those awkward conversations where you can’t really hear each other and it doesn’t really matter anyway because neither of you really have anything new to say ‘cause you just saw them and you’re mostly just missing them because you know it’s going to be a week before you see them again. We had hung up before I reached the end of the block. I pushed the stroller down Granville to the park by the lake. I unbuckled Keira and set her down to play. She had no interest in the play ground and instead insisted on climbing down the rocks to the beach. At first she was shy of the water—letting the waves hit her toes and then running back up to the dry sand. I would stand with the water lapping at my ankles, kicking sprinkles back at her. Eventually she waded out to me, and fell over, and loved it. Pretty soon she was squatting and hitting the water with her arms as hard as she could and shrieking every time she splashed herself and entertaining the cute old couple that had climbed down the rocks with their folding chairs and sun umbrella and were sitting pretending to read the newspaper.

Saturday: I woke up at 5am, hungry, because I had fallen asleep without eating dinner the night before. I pulled on a sweatshirt and poured a bowl of cereal and watched an episode of Queer as Folk. I liked the song that played during the credits, after Justin ties Brian’s bracelet back around his wrist and walks away, so I went online and bought it. And then bought some other songs and uploaded some songs and made a melancholy mix. I lay back down and sort of slept but mostly just kind of stared out the window and wallowed. I finished my book. Around 2pm I finally got out of bed and did the dishes and cooked some potatoes and eggs for potato salad and cleaned up the scraps of fabric coating the floors. I shoved all my dirty clothes and towels and sheets in my duffel bag and put on my work-out clothes and walked to the laundromat. After putting everything into wash I went for a 26-minute run. I ran out to the lake and then along the break wall, down to Hollywood beach, and around to the path and back. I tried to do intervals, picking a tree or pole to sprint to and then falling back into a jog, but mostly I felt weak, and worried about going to Milwaukee next week and not being ready. I changed my clothes to the dryer and ran to the gym. I felt weak there too. At one point though this guy caught my eye and told me I was really dedicated, which made me feel better. It's funny how compliments can make you feel good even when they come from random people that probably don't even really know what they are talking about. Like this dude doesn't know me or what I do or that dragging myself out of bed twice a week to do forty minutes of shoulder strengthening exercises isn't even close to dedication when you measure it up to all the gym workouts that Pam and Farrah have been doing in order to prepare for the world cup in a couple weeks. I jogged to the laundromat and picked up my clothes, went home and showered and got dressed. Then Rosie and Sandy picked me up and took me out to dinner at this Thai place in Lincoln Park. Then we went and got coffee at Bourgeois Pig and I heard their whole how they met (thirteen years ago!) story. Then we went to this play that I had gotten them tickets for at the Goodman. It was called Aiguardent and it was part of the Latino theatre festival. It was really weird. It was a one woman show and there was hardly any talking, just some mumbling in Spanish that you couldn't really hear. It started with her lighting a cigarette and for awhile the only light you could see was the flame of her match and then the lights slowly came up and she was sitting in a dining room chair (slumped a little bit like teenagers sit, or how you sit when you are tired or feel defeated) and there were wheels on the bottom of the chair. She started slowly moving and spinning, but she was only moving her feet and by her expression and posture it almost seemed as if the room was moving instead of her. Then she spins up to this dining room table that also has wheels and she starts moving with the table. It all felt very reminiscent of how I felt this morning as I stared out the window and willed myself out of bed, kind of depressed, but almost relishing in it. There was a wine jug on the table and she kept wanting to grab it, but then stopping herself. It seemed like it had to be about more than just controlling an addiction to wine though. It was like she kept trying to keep her thoughts off of the wine, but also enjoyed the game of resistance she was playing with herself. Eventually she begins to drink the wine and then she is pouring bottles and bottles of it down her throat and on the table and on the floor. Six big jugs of wine she pours out all over herself and onto the stage. After it's gone she looks out and hits the table with her arms, like Keira in the lake, and the water splashes everywhere, and you can see each little droplet in the stage lighting. Then she does it again and again and again. Then she is on the floor "swimming" through the wine and under the table and flicking the liquid out into the audience each time she kicks her feet.

Sunday: I’m sitting in the box office of the Goodman and a woman calls asking about the play going on tonight.

“Aiguardent?” I ask.

“Yeah that one. Can you tell me what it’s about?”

This is actually the first time someone has asked me this and I fumble. “Well, it’s a one-woman show, and uh… there’s a lot of dance…”

“Have you seen it?” she asks.

“Yeah. But it’s kind of hard to say what it’s actually about.”

“And you liked it?”

“Yeah. I did."

new books make everything better

2006-06-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

scene of me yesterday: i'm sitting outside of visionary eye care professionals at clark and foster. i kind of want to cry. i had an appointment for 5:30pm. i biked down and filled out the new patient form. when i brought it up to the front desk, i handed them my insurance card as well and asked if they accepted blue cross. he played around on his computer and told me i wasn't in their system. i asked how much an appointment would be and he told me $100 if the doctor had to dilate my eyes, and more if he wanted to see me again. i asked if that would be necessary. he answered with a blank stare, (slash didn't). i told him i just wanted to buy contacts. i don't even need him to look at me. i'm sure i sounded dramatic, and it's not this dude's fault, but what the f? i hate dealing with this sort of stuff, (p.s.). clearly, because the contacts i have in right now i should have thrown out a couple months ago. anyway, i cancel my appointment and walk outside and i'm frustrated with the whole impossible medical/insurance bullshit system and even more frustrated with myself for always being such a baby about dealing with this stuff. fortunately my favorite bookstore is across the street. i figure as long as i'm down here with the afternoon free now, i may as well stop in, and ultimately spend money i don't have to spend. which i do. i have three books in my hand after wandering the store, but i talk myself down to two: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago by Robert McDonald and Kathie Bergquist. the one that gets put back is The Rivals by Johnette Howard. all three of these books have been on the constantly growing list in my head. my friend marian told me about bechdel's graphic memoir over breakfast one morning last spring. marian and i have some stuff in common with bechdel: we're homos, we went to oberlin, we're creative (marian makes pretty postcards and is entering a master's program in book and paper arts at columbia college in the fall, i'm hoping to get into a master's program at northwestern for creative nonfiction writing). i was pretty excited to find it yesterday. it took me awhile to track it down because i was looking too hard--it wasn't in the mix of other comicesq books, it actually had it's own table and a sign with a picture of ms. bechdel herself, to let us know she was stopping by to say hi and sign books in a couple weeks. the field guide i read about in the reader last week. i think the woman author of it actually works in the bookstore i was wandering around in. she may have actually checked me out. it seemed like a book i should own, loving the gays and exploring this city as much as i do. a small part of me is against guide books though. i worry that the great places they describe will suck once they are populated by people following a guide book to their entrance. and i'd kind of like to discover them on my own. anyway, i caved. the rivals has been on my list since it came out. i try to read everything on women and sports, especially with a queer edge, as research for my own project/future and because i can't get enough of it. but i also need to branch out, hence the decision to postpone my purchase.

i bike home and decide to do laundry so my day can still feel somewhat productive. mostly, i'm just excited to sit down on the curb and start reading fun home while i wait to move my clothes to the dryer. my girlfriend meets me at the laundromat with the same look of frustration that painted my face earlier. she has spent the whole day working on a finance assignment. she expected to be done hours ago, and instead feels she still has hours to go. i tell her it's okay because i have a new pretty book to distract me. which is the truth. she is sitting over my laptop at the kitchen table. i am propped up in my bed, the next room over. i have twenty pages left when she finally decides to quit. she tells me she wanted to take a break a while ago, that she was staring at me waiting for me to look up and tell her to take a break, but i was absorbed in my book. i shrug and smile. 'i would have looked up if you said something,' i say. 'i know,' she replies.

rugby

2006-05-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

April and I needed rugby. We didn’t keep the team going so that Davi and Jenny and Buster would have rugby at Oberlin, we kept the team going so that we would have rugby at Oberlin. If there was someone else to do it, we would have gladly let them. It was in the last couple weeks of my freshman year at Oberlin when I walked into that rugby meeting. I wasn’t sure of my role on the team yet, having only played a season, but I knew I wanted to at least voice my passion for this sport and this team and its existence. In electing officers, and namely a president, I was going to vote for the person that would build the program back up, get us the numbers to play a full game without having to borrow players from the other team, make sure we had cars lined up to travel, and jerseys and balls packed, that there would be more than five people at practice and that when we were at practice we would do something more than gossip and toss the ball in a circle. I was quiet for the first part of the meeting, listening to the discussions among the upperclassmen about who was going abroad next year and who had too many other commitments, a couple people threw out names of people that weren’t at the meeting, “Maybe Chris would come back. What’s Flinch up to next year? Is he graduating?” April and I shot worried glances back and forth to each other. The lack of commitment in the current season had been frustrating, but I couldn’t stand the idea of no rugby at all.

“We just need to recruit more—update the website, put flyers up in the fall. April and I will be here during preseason/orientation week. We can try to get the freshman before Frisbee gets to them.”

Everyone in the room nodded at my suggestion, looking a little more hopeful. I fed off that hope, and fell into a motivating speech listing what we already had and what would be easy to acquire, the same sort of speech I had made time and again when my high school soccer team was not only lacking varsity status, but sometimes enough players to field a team, a coach, a smooth grassy field with lines and regulation size goals, and even a bus to our away games.

I didn’t intend for my speech that day to be an election speech. I wasn’t trying to be president. I’d been playing wing for a season. I had just started to get a handle on what everyone in the backline is supposed to be doing. I was clueless about the pack. They were that mess of people that smushed their bodies together and drove over the ball, so that we could get it out and run with it. I was also only going to be a sophomore and I planned to play varsity soccer again in the fall. The other committed upcoming sophomores were voted in as treasurer and match secretary, and then Sarah Cole nominated April and I for president. April could head things in the fall while I was playing soccer, and then I could take over in the spring when April would be occupied with varsity softball. We had no choice but to accept.

We started in right away. I made a new flashy rugby website as my final project in my web design class. I wanted to have an opening page that would stream some sort of ode to rugby across it. I requested April’s help in composing it. A couple of nights later, my roommate and I were up chatting after going to bed, when April burst into the room clearing her voice and reciting from a crumpled sheet of paper:

Rugby?

Isn’t that like football, they ask.

Yeah, but without the pads, I respond.

Before any other game I wonder if I’ll win.

Before a rugby game I wonder if I’ll survive.

But with each successive tackle I am able to forget

the paper that was due four days ago,

the fight with my ex-girlfriend,

and the bloodstain on my shorts from my overflowing keeper.

I laugh through my mouth guard and let all the bullshit slip away

because I can say ‘Saturday’s a rugby day!

April found a book on rugby rules and drills and we put more time into studying it than we did studying in any of our classes. Another night she ran into my dorm room at two in the morning with a rugby ball and pulled me out into the hall. “When you played basketball, could you make a behind the back pass, right? Can you do it with the rugby ball? Do you think that would be obstruction?” We practiced our behind the back rugby passes in the hall for a little while and then moved out to the grass in front of the dorm, yelling at a friend walking past and asking if she would come run at us while we ran our play.

April and I talked about rugby so much that my roommate developed a hand signal to indicate when she was annoyed with us for “talking rugby” as she called it. "Talking rugby" included reminiscing about past games and practices, dreaming up rosters, plays, and drills for future games and practices, drooling over new balls, uniforms and ruck-pads, and listing the people we knew that would make good rugby players and strategizing how we would get them to join the team.

Fall semester, we arrived on campus two weeks before classes started. I had preseason training for soccer and April was working as a dorm R.A. We taped signs in every stall in every women’s bathroom and on the tampon dispensers too that read “bleed more than once a month, play women’s rugby” and had the website address printed on little tear off strips at the bottom. We had a ton of freshman trying out for the soccer team that year. At the first meeting, we went around the circle making introductions. When it was my turn I said, “My name is Magdalen. I’m a sophomore, from Wisconsin. I play rugby. You should too. In the spring. (Or if you get cut, I thought.) Soccer players make great rugby players.” My coach shot me a look from across the room. She had tolerated me playing rugby. I think she knew that if she made me choose, I wouldn’t be playing for her anymore. But she wasn’t too keen on the rest of the team dump tackling, rucking, and mauling for their off-season work outs. More than the risk of injury, I think she feared the risk that players wouldn’t come back to soccer. I didn’t care. Soccer would always exist. Soccer didn’t need to fight. It was Varsity. Varsity was fresh jerseys, different colors for here and away, clean and folded and laid out in front of our lockers on game days. Varsity was a coach bus parked outside of the gym half an hour before the scheduled departure, stocked with bagels and water and granola bars and movies playing on mini TVs above the seats. Varsity was game stats posted online so when you scored a goal everyone knew it and congratulated you in the cafeteria lines at dinner. With Varsity, I didn’t need to worry about anything but myself. Everything else was taken care of. Out of my hands.

It was also out of my hands when I sat on the bench knowing I could contribute so much more if given the chance, when my teammates told me the same, when I stayed after practice to practice my cross and finish and the only coach that stayed after with me was my best friend on the team who had all the technical skills I lacked, seeing as she had been playing since she was five and I hadn’t started playing until my sophomore year in high school. Just as it was out of my hands when my high school wouldn’t let my soccer coach give out a MVP award at the athletic banquet because soccer wasn’t a varsity sport, even when he said he would buy the plaque himself.

I’m not usually a crier. If I get hurt I play through it or come out. I always hated the girls that cried on the bus after losing basketball games in high school. I didn’t really see it as the end of the world. We lost every game. Did they really think we were going to win? Or that crying now would make anything better? Get over it. But after the last soccer game of my junior year season, I lost it. It was a frustrating game to begin with. We were capable of winning, but didn’t. We were all off of our game and playing harder, but not smarter, to make up for it. All of the seniors were sad because it was their last college game ever and it wasn’t how they wanted to end the season. In the back of my head I knew it was my last game as well. I had been frustrated all season and my heart wasn’t in it anymore. We would do sprints at the end of each soccer practice and I would rock them because I was so annoyed with everything and then I would pick up my bag and walk to the very north end of the athletic fields where the rugby team practiced and I would watch from the sidelines, cheering when there was a good play and instructing when there was confusion. After practice I would join the circle of ruggers and we’d all sing: “Rugby women are the biggest and the best, ‘cause we never need a break and we never take a rest, and we set a better ruck, and we give a better fuck, and when it comes to rugby we never get enough. Out on the pitches, out in the scrum, rugby women will make you come. We’ll build mauls, kick balls, score on you, and when it comes to tries, we’ll take two, three, four, sixty-nine.” On game days I would get back from soccer and find the rugby girls drunk and sprawled in my yard, handing me their beers so I could catch up, and filling me in on their game and the social that was held after where both teams got together and drank and sang. Even though I hadn’t decided yet that I wasn’t going to play soccer after my junior year, I knew. I came out of that last game biting my lip, trying to keep it together. My coach brought me aside, thinking I was crying because she had taken me out, or because we lost, or because I had messed up a penalty kick. I just shook my head as she searched for an answer to my sobs. She had never seen me like this. But I didn’t even have it sorted out for myself then. I just knew that soccer wasn’t right for me anymore. It was like moving on from a relationship that you know isn’t working, but you still have so many memories and attachments to. On the bus my best friend, the same one that had stayed after to coach me so many times, held my hand and tried to cheer me up by making jokes. Every time I looked up at her, I just cried harder, hers was the face I was leaving. But I knew she would be fine. I needed rugby. And rugby needed me.

It’s definitely easier to have things be “out of my hands.” Easier to not be the one in charge, not be responsible. But I get bored when things are easy. I don’t see the point. I want it to be raw, messy, real. And that’s rugby too: no pads, no time-outs, no fouls, continuous play. There are rules. You can’t tackle above the shoulders. Passes must be backwards. You can only tackle the person with the ball. You can’t play the ball on the ground. Once a ruck is formed you must drive over the ball in order for it to be playable. There is an order, but the theory of the game is simple. You hold the ball in your hands and run forward in an attempt to place it over the line. You can stiff arm. You can pass. You can kick it ahead. To defend, you tackle. Unlike soccer and basketball that have so many rules about where and how you make contact, in rugby you can never be too aggressive. The players that excel at rugby are the ones that go out full tilt. You can’t hold anything back. You’re going to come off the field muddy and bruised and bleeding. And weightless.

grandma dale

2006-04-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

     When my dad told my grandma that I was a lesbian, she paused and then said she had always wondered about her Aunt Anna. I’ve only seen Aunt Anna in a small black and white photo, framed in a thick gold oval and resting on Grandma’s bookshelf. Her hair is short and gray and permed. She has a short string of pearls and pursed lips. She doesn’t have the soft roundness or smile to her face of an Aunt who comforts with candies and kindness; her cheekbones cut sharply, her stare is direct and firm. I think she was a schoolteacher, never married, a reader, she owned a canoe. When I picture Grandma as a girl trotting down the block to visit her Aunt Anna, she looks a lot like me running up the driveway or taking the shortcut (that was actually longer) through the woods, stretching my steps to take the stairs up her porch two at a time, knocking on the door and walking in before she had answered, kicking off my shoes, lifting the cookie jar lid more out of habit than hunger, plopping down in the easy chair and surveying the room: the full bookshelf (my books—a series of Raggedy Ann and Andy adventures and later the American Girl books—were on the bottom shelf), flowers freshly cut and centered on the table, empty vases along the top of her cabinet, birds outside her glass doors at the feeder and on the deck where seeds had spilled. We would sit and chat. I would tell her all the ways in which my brother’s had been mean to me, probably exaggerating to get more sympathy. As I sat in her lap and she read aloud, I would poke at the veins that protruded on the top of her hand, trace them and push them together under her skin. Her knuckles were thick with arthritis. She would pause in her reading to comment on how ugly they were, saying that’s what happens when you get old. I look down at my own hands now, squeeze tightly at my wrist until my veins fill and pop a little, imagine her loose pale skin over wiry veins and knotted joints. Those hands: bizarrely strong in the places they are flawed, like scars, thicker and tougher where there was once hardly any protection at all.

     When Grandma was a girl she wanted to be a schoolteacher like her Aunt Anna. It was the depression and her dad was drunk and then gone. It was her and her sister and her brother and her mom. She did what she needed to do to keep going, found refuge in the bookcases that walled her aunt’s cramped apartment, saved the money she made working at the local movie theatre and babysitting in a bank account that she had opened herself. She was going to be a schoolteacher like Anna. She would wall her apartment in books like Anna. She would get out, get away from her mom and sister that pretended as if things hadn’t changed, that bought new clothes and dainty shoes that were too small. She couldn’t leave them completely like her dad had. She was still subject to their pleas, they were still her family, but she knew she was better. She was like Anna. She finished high school and went to collect the money she had been saving, dreaming of college and escape; instead she found that the account was empty. That was when she learned how her mother and sister had been able to keep pretending. It was needed to get by, her mother responded nonchalantly when confronted. It was used for the family. How else could they do it with their father gone? What does she need school for anyway? A husband is what you need. And you won’t get a husband looking like that, that’s for sure. I’m just looking out for you. I am your mother remember.
     Grandma signed up for nursing school. It didn’t cost anything, as long as she committed to work. She didn’t particularly like taking care of people, but she was good at it, practiced at it, she’d done it most of her life, and it was the closest she could get to independence. She left home and lived in the dorms, practiced sticking needles in oranges, worked as an aid, changed sheets and bed pans, and handed out little paper cups of pills. Every morning she would get up early to swim. In the summer some of the other girls would come down with her to the river, they would all pile in a cab and split the fare. In the fall and spring the other girls complained the water was too cold, and Grandma would get up earlier and walk. In the winter she went to the Y. She liked swimming she told me. She laughed when she described her suit, one piece and rubber.
     She married too and raised four kids. My dad was the third. She kept nursing, picking up night shifts and putting away the money she earned. Checking it weekly to make sure it was still all there. She put all four of her kids through college, starting with Judy, the eldest and only girl, who became a schoolteacher. When dad was a kid they moved a lot. Grandpa would get a new job or lose the one he had and they would up and leave, always in the middle of the year and always to the protests of Grandma and the kids. After one particularly bad period when they moved four times in three years, Grandma finally said no, that he could leave but that they were not leaving with him.
     I never met my Grandpa Dale. He died of a heart attack, soon after my parents wedding. After the kids had grown and Grandpa had passed, my Grandma started traveling. She went to Europe and Australia. She gardened, she read, she owned a camper van. When my parents bought the farm and built their house, she had hers built just up the driveway, tucked away in the woods. She woke up early and did her stretching exercises, made coffee, and visited with my dad before he started his day working between the blueberry rows. Sometimes, I would wake up early and run up the driveway and join them. This is how I know her: in a house walled with books, alone but not lonely.
     It has been this way for as long as I can remember—a constant. The garden has fewer and fewer annuals each year, the cookie jar is more often filled with cookies bought at the store, conversation becomes more disjointed, but she is still always there in her house with her books and her vases and her birds and her strong knobby hands gripping her coffee cup. I pick a book up off of her coffee table and ask her how it is. She wrinkles her nose with slight disgust, oh that’s just something Judy sent me, it’s okay, and she goes on to tell me about how much she really likes reading biographies and how she read this great biography on Truman, and what a good president he was, what a good person really, down to earth and honest. We talk about this book every time I visit.
     This is the memory I keep anyway, because really I know that she has since had to move out of her house into assisted living and then into the nursing home. Her house is still there, just up the driveway from my parents, and the cookie jar, but they are empty now. In her room at the nursing home, the framed picture of Aunt Anna is propped on her dresser, next to a vase of fresh flowers. She is ready to die. She has been ready for awhile. She is content to live each day and go when she is supposed to. I am surprised, and not, with each day that she keeps on living. When I go to visit her and the confused look on her face doesn’t match the confident look I remember, I worry she’s not even really there anymore, that she doesn’t know who I am, or what’s going on at all, but then she squeezes my hand, those same firm fingers gripping my own, and she smiles. She asks me how I am. Her face is blank as I respond, telling her about Chicago and work and rugby. I know there is nowhere for her to store new information any more. It won’t be kept straight. She won’t remember. But then so clearly, so confidently she looks at me, and tells me I’ve done well, I’m doing well, I will do well. I don’t remember the exact tense and really it seems as if all three tenses were used and implied at once, that I’ve got it together, always have and always will, that she is confident in that, that I have that strength, that she continues to pass it on to me as she presses my palm in her own.

art

2006-03-31T15:05:00.000-08:00

We drove up Monday night. The drive was familiar—Chicago to Oberlin, seen through the windshield of Kari’s red mustang with the busted heating flow that demands feet to be wrapped in a fleece blanket when riding passenger side or roast when driving. When we got there, it was exactly as I expected it to be—undone. I had imagined coming in at the point of break-down and taking control, reminding them that the goal was not perfection anymore, but completion, as I had done so many other times when one or the other had come to me throwing pens and crumpling papers. But this time the goal of perfection would not be dismissed and they were trading in sleep and showers and food and sanity in hopes to obtain it. Leila’s craziness was comfortable…familiar. Davi was a zombie—typing or sweeping, slowed by exhaustion but never pausing and never taking my suggestions for quick fixes even though she told me everything was better now that I was there. While Kari settled in measuring and hanging pictures on the wall, at ease in their insistence for perfection because she couldn’t imagine doing it any other way, I had to stop myself from contributing, knowing my rushed and imperfect efforts to finish and go to sleep would just leave Davi and Leila with more things to stress over and fix.

Kari and I decided we would stay and help until Black River opened and we could go get breakfast. I had hoped to take Davi. To see if maybe she would be a person again, if I could get her out of the studio and get her to eat. But she said there was too much to do, that she couldn’t leave. And then I didn’t even really want to go myself, but it seemed like we had to because we had purposely waited this long. We had gone for a walk a couple hours earlier to see the Ilan billboard at sunrise like Davi had said was best and check the Black River hours on the door. It was so nice to walk out of that timeless den of distress and mess to see the half-light of morning and unmarked snow on the sidewalks. And Ilan really does look best in the sunrise—so good.

At breakfast I wanted to cry. I was so tired and so cold. I think I was probably rude to the waitress. I couldn’t help it. Kari was perky and trying to make me laugh. I wanted to cry. She wanted me to talk to her about what was wrong. I told her I hated seeing Davi not take care of herself. And I was also thinking something about her… about being together or not together and wanting to be or not wanting to be… or something different all together. In that state everything seems so clear and so blurry. Like I all these pieces made sense and no sense. I wanted to talk, but not to her. I wanted to write. So I could go back later and see if any of it was right. More than that I wanted to sleep. I wanted to be warm. I ordered peppermint tea and washed down as much of breakfast as I could, kept pushing it past the lump in my throat, trying to swallow that too. We drove back to Davi’s house and pulled all the shades down in her room, put on as many layers as possible and still I felt like I would never get warm again. I was too cold and cracked-out to even think of refusing the spoon Kari offered.

I woke up feeling so much better. We went out to eat again. Sesame chicken. And then we met up with Morgan to go watch West African Dance Class. We all had different peeps that we were there to watch—Diana, Genevieve, Davi. I just liked being there in general. We all walked out of Warner together. The three couples and the dancers were dancing and imitating the other girls in their class and laughing and being so beautiful and Davi was smiling and it was my Davi again and it was so good to see her laughing and being a person again. And Morgan and Diana are so beautiful—individually and together—so beautiful. I can remember everyone’s laugh right now. Diana’s deep and Gen’s with that weird hiccup thing and Morgan’s awkward and the way each sets off the other. So good. I walked with Davi back to Fisher, via Diana’s apartment for a fishbowl. We found Hope’s bike outside of Firelands and it sparked Davi’s enthusiasm. I rode it back to Fischer while she galloped along side. We walked in, and I wasn’t sure if that much more had actually been done, or it was just being able to leave and come back that changed the way we saw it, but for the first time is felt manageable, like this might actually get done.

Three hours passed quickly. We ran back to Davi’s house to shower and dress, stopped by the Feve to find her family and friends and drink a beer, and then headed over for the opening. There were so many people there I hadn’t even thought about seeing, plus all the others I had been looking forward to seeing for weeks. Rian and Davi were talking and I included myself in the circle. Rian gave me a big hug, her son hanging off her hip completing the hug with a silly grin on his face. We talked about rugby and the film project. I offered my help at any point. She said she wanted to interview me, maybe she could even make a trip to Chicago. I was grinning so hard the whole time. I told her if she thought Oberlin rugby beautiful and the culture crazy, to just wait until she got to Nashville. We parted without good-bye, but I’ll see you at NashBash.

After a few beers I walked up to Melsen and told him I really wanted to see his work too. That Davi talked about it a lot and I always really liked the stuff he did in the silkscreen class we took together. He smiled shyly, said I could find most of his work online at melsencarlsen.com. We talked more and he asked what I was up to these days. There was an awkwardness in the question. Instead of answering the question, I acknowledged the awkwardness, said it should be awkward, we weren’t really friends before, friends of friends, but I never really knew him, but all the same, it’s never too late to start. Then I said I was living in Chicago, and asked what his post-Oberlin plans were. He said that Reese was looking at grad school and he would follow her. Well him, he’s transitioning, Melsen said. I told him I was glad they were still together and happy. I felt like we should have hugged then, but we didn’t.

At one point I was talking to someone and I looked up at the map on the wall. There were two people standing on the ladder. They wanted to draw the great lakes onto the map to locate their places and they had Davi’s map book opened to my page in order to get it right. It made me happy.

Later in the evening, I walked past Leila’s piece. Her and Davi and Marisol were all sitting inside with their feet in the pool. I wanted to be a part of it, but I didn’t want to intrude. I pretended I didn’t notice that they were all there when Marisol shouted at me to join them. In some ways, it meant the most that she was the one that asked, that she felt like I should be included in that almost sacred circle. All of this beauty that wasn’t mine, but I still felt so connected to—that I couldn’t claim ownership of and would never dare too, yet still was so affected by in that deep way you are only affected when you are intimately involved. Davi and Leila stood up in the water and were holding each other’s faces in their hands and their words were drowned out by the crowd, like music in a movie when the words are secondary anyways. Leila’s mom was taking pictures from outside the pool. I asked for the camera and walked around them clicking. In a movie the camera would circle them so that they are the only clear image and everything outside of them is circling and blurring and the music gets louder and is on point. It’s when you cry because it is so damn beautiful: That connection. The hands gripping faces. The intense intermittent hugs. The expressive faces. The tears that are held up by grinning cheeks. You cry because before that moment in the movie, you have seen them struggle, you have watched them hurt and want and need, you have seen those pieces of beauty, you want them to be okay, to be happy, they deserve it, they are worthy of it. You kind of want to be that person that makes them okay/happy/worthy. You would do a good job of it. But since you aren’t in the movie, you are glad when they find it somewhere. It makes you cry.

After a few hours, the crowd dwindled. I was drunk. Davi went home to sleep with Hope. I passed Kari on the phone in the stairs on my way to the bathroom. I asked who she was talking too even though I knew it was Zoe. Her reply was rude. I didn’t matter what her reply was. We were both drunk and didn’t feel like being nice anymore. I left with Leila and Morgan and Micah and Linda. We went to the Feve. The rest of the evening was blurry. I think Micah bought all my drinks, like a good big brother. At one point Morgan and I went downstairs to say hi to Diana as she closed the downstairs. Morgan helped her push tables back and put chairs up. I requested Rhino shots and we got whipped cream all over our faces, except Diana who had this expert way of drinking them cleanly. I left the Feve with Leila and Jolie and went to a party above the hardware store. Kari was there. They were playing Quarters. It wasn’t our crowd. Lelia danced on our laps to entertain us. We left and went back to their place and ate some cold take-out from the cartons. After Jolie went to bed, I remember Leila sitting on the chair in her living room and me sitting on the floor with my head on her lap, or near it. I don’t remember what we talked about, but it seemed important. I went home and crawled into Gen’s huge bed. I don’t remember if Kari woke up. I think I may have ignored her if she did. She had sent a txt earlier in the evening asking if I was mad. I didn’t really care. I didn’t respond. For tonight, I just wanted my people.

I woke up in the morning and showered and dressed. I walked over to the gym and walked past Jane’s door. She saw me and called out to me like I hoped she would. I sat down in her office and we had the best chat about my new life plan to be a rugby coach. She was so helpful and formal and goofy and for once it was just the right balance of it all. She gave me good websites to check out, said that she believed rugby had a chance, said that I was on the right path, that I needed to just stay involved and keep coaching as much as I could, that I should have other things to fall back on, that she would keep her ears open for rugby now and pass on anything she hears. She gave me a little NCAA women’s championship pin as I was leaving. She said she wanted to give me something. She said I could put it on a bag or on my bulletin board and look at it and gain motivation from it. Oh Jane.

Then I went back to Fisher and had my own time in the space. I walked around and read everything. I read the comics that Davi had framed. I assumed they were all ones I had read before and was happy for new ones. She is really so good. She knows how to pull out the right bit from a story that makes it funny/touching/etc. I want more. I took the book of maps off of the podium and curled up in her “bed” with it. I loved it. Each map tells a story. I wanted to know more. I hadn’t looked that closely at Kari’s before. She had included Bayfield on her map as one of four important places. She drew the farm and listed all the different varieties of raspberries and blueberries, something I’m not even sure about myself. Our maps are so good together, perfect really, cause in many ways they were formed together. How can she give that all up? How can she not see it? And for what? There’s no Philly on her map. No NYC. What does she see in her? It’s so empty. Yet she chose that over me.

I climbed down out of the loft and walked around the corner to the rugby pictures. I guess you could say I walked over to what I chose over her. I had only glanced at the statements while we were hanging them up and now I went through and read every one. They were beautiful. I was crying. It was the first thing that had actually made the tears tip. The sentiment that hung above all others was that you couldn’t explain rugby, and that when you are talking to other rugby players you don’t need to you, that explaining it somehow takes away from what it is. I wondered whether this book idea is a good one, but I still believe we can find the words, even if we never find them completely adequate.

I walked over to Leila’s installation and walked around inside, taking notice of all the tiny details. I wish I had time to listen to the ninety minutes of audio that piece them all together, but I resigned myself to knowing that they did. Davi’s class began to arrive and walk around. They gathered to talk. Leila and I stayed outside the group and had our own conversation. When they were ready to begin crits, Johnny looked at Leila and asked if she was going to join them, and then he looked at me and asked me as well. Again it felt good to know that I was included, almost without question.

At one point in the discussion, Melsen asked about how it was to have real family and chosen family in one room mingling together. Leila and Davi acknowledged that there were some awkward moments, like at the opening when Ellie yelled something about getting high and then was introduced to Leila’s father, but that’s also what it’s about. This is their family portrait. It’s one family—not easy, not smooth, but real—past and present and ever evolving and blurring.

I thought a lot about where I fall in this family. Of course there are friendships and bonds to the other Oberlin kids there and almost a matronly relationship to my little ruggers, but I am glad it doesn’t stop there. Leila’s older brother buys my drinks and I shove Davi’s little sister’s shoulder instead of saying hello because it means the same. Leila’s mom gives me a hug when I extend my hand and says she has never met me yet she feels like she knows me. Interesting how before we all know each other (and since many of us will probably never really completely know each other) we live in the stories that the person that connects us tells. This thing, this art, this show, that’s not even mine, but kind of is--I wanted all my people to see it, to be reminded of how we are all connected. (and affected.)

jon

2006-03-29T21:38:00.000-08:00

(that's him on the right... i'm in the middle.)

You know that thing, those things, you hold on to. One moment in time… maybe you don’t even remember the exact place or time or the person… but usually you remember the person and one sentence. And maybe not even the exact words, but the essence. And because you have remembered it again and again it has been revised and given another angle of meaning each time it is remembered.

This is what I remember: I was in Seattle. It was January-term, my sophomore of college. I was twenty—such a frustrating age, so close to finally being an adult. I was living with my brother for the month. He had a one bedroom apartment and he was hesitant for me to come to stay with him, but also encouraging. He is twelve years older than me. He left for college when I was six years old. I date my earliest memories by whether he is in them. Little kids see everything one sided. They understand the roles of those that are there to comfort them, but they don’t understand what it means to the comforter to be able to comfort. Children are completely genuine in their roles. They don’t realize they are benefiting anyone by needing, they only know to need. They aren’t pretending. They really can’t reach the door knob. Or tie their shoes. Or defend themselves against big brothers. But bigger brothers can do these things. And in doing so, they can move from needing to be needed. I slept on a futon that I rolled up and stored in the closet during the day. I worked at a community center three days a week—batiking pillows cases with the kids and painting the walls of a reading room blue. I did my own batiking the rest of the week. Jon had set up a “studio” for me on the porch. Half of it was roofed so I could be out even on the warmer rainy days, with the escaping drops hissing in the hot wax. For the Christmas before he had made me a set of frames for stretching the fabric. They could all be screwed together to make one huge frame. Or used individually for smaller pieces. During that month I stretched and waxed and dyed and waxed and dyed and ironed four large squares of fabric. Jon thought it was a good start. I was able to really experiment with the materials, he told me, suggesting that none of these squares were yet art. He is always the most critical of my work. I promised to make him something for his apartment in thanks for the frame, but it didn’t happen that month. We drank a lot. And smoked a little. We sat on his porch and it was the first time I had spent that much time with him since I was six. Since I could remember. We talked about our family and about the roles we each play. He likes to tease me about being the baby. About needing. About getting my way. In agreement, I told him I thought I was probably a brat when I was a kid. I remember having a friend over and thinking she was getting too much attention, so I spun in circles with my play purse loaded with wood blocks. I spun my circles closer and closer to her until the blocks hit her and she cried. And then I was scolded and she was comforted and it all back-fired. That’s all I remember but I’m sure I was a brat. Jon said he remembers that I was always reading. That I brought a bag of books with me everywhere. Even before I could read the words. I would just look at them. And no one could tell me that I wasn’t actually reading. He remembered the day I was born. He said I was smiling. He said that everyone else was smiling. He looked at me and said that our family got better the day I was born.