I, Honda Mechanic.

If you read my last post, you'll know: I spent two days this week repairing my car's sick carburetor. It was like heart surgery, and I, I came out victorious! I took it all apart, replaced three gaskets, got it all back together, and the god damn thing started right back up. I am still in shock, everytime I start the car I'm waiting for it to die. But, to prove it to you, my two faithful readers, I took pictures:

It's kind of hard to see what's going on here, but this is the engine, with the carb halfway removed. All the red blips in the photo represent the complicated marking system I had to invent to deal with the RIDICULOUSLY COMPLICATED vacuum system. I labeled by using the alphabet, and I got up to the letter "v". Yeah.

This is the top half of the carb, the pinkish thing is one of the gaskets that I replaced. Can it really be this easy? Can I really have fixed the car?!! (Okay, okay, so it took me like ten hours to do, still, I'm amazed. I've never worked on a car before and those mechanics at the dealer made it sound like it'd be rocket science.)

Anyway, I came home feeling totally and completely victorious over machines, feeling like there was absolutely nothing that a man could do that I couldn't do (that's right, bitches), and so I played the few messages I had on the answering machine, and, I had a tentative job offer from the college! SWEET! Overly aware of the good luck I had stumbled upon, I locked myself up in my bathroom, drew a hot bath and read about 200 pages of the latest Harry Potter book. I figured the luck would have a hard time running out if I stayed inside.

So, I'm sending some good vibrations out into the nether spaces of the web, hoping my good luck will multiply and infect the lives of the readers of this here page (y'all know who you are).

Gettin' my hands dirty.

Today my job was to replace all the gaskets in our carburetor. I didn't finish. I got about halfway done and it started raining and I feel like my back is broken and my ass hurts. I'm proud of how far I made it though... this was the first time I've ever worked on a car, and I did it alone. Now my hands smell like gas and they're kind of greasy and I think I'm really tough. :)

So, I'm lame for not posting anything during thanksgiving, like I said I would. It was small (a few factions failed to attend) and we ended up playing a ton of board games which was the most fun I've had for a very long time. (Although I think I'm too competitive.)

Okay though, here's the deal. I'm doing a poll. Everyone who reads this far into this post, vote by leaving a comment on what major I should pursue my master's in:
Communications
Criminal Justice
Education (Teaching)
or Pick Your Own that I Should Study

Thank you. My future awaits your decisions. That is all.

))<>((

Bread and Snow

It was warm in the kitchen, if I had been a passer-by outside it would have looked orange inside, glowing, like walking home from shoveling sidewalks with Emily, the houses all lit up like christmas trees. We appreciate being inside so much more during winter. So I used the expansive morning to make a recipe for deluxe raisin bread and drank coffee did some algebra and contemplated the idea of winter; cold and grey and lonely and death. But we don't have to waste our time saying goodbye!

Yesterday I found myself subbing in an eighth grade math class. It was glorious. They were just discovering algebraic expressions, and I was trying to help them understand. The rules of math came back like riding a bike and I was amazed at how much I enjoyed what I was doing. I forgot that I like math. Or maybe it's just that I never fully discovered that I do. (Did anyone else have Mrs. Hamilton for high school algebra?!) So I didn't get called in this morning and so I went to the local library and checked out a couple algebra textbooks. I figure my foundation is a little weak, so why not reinforce it. It's never too late for renovation, right?

Maybe life is like the process of peeling away the layers of an onion. Maybe there's not supposed to be a great epiphany -- there's no gold hidden in the center of the bulb, just more layers of onion peel. Maybe the thing to do is to try and peel away as many layers as you can with the time you've got.

By the way, I'm blogging thanksgiving in realtime. Stay tuned all turkey day for photo updates of my crazy, crazy family. ;>

Rise like lions!

And then it dawned on me, at four o'clock in the morning, that all we ever are is alone, fragile, vulnerable, and the irony of it is that this is exactly why it's meaningful. I am a selfish wreck of an ego, and so are you, it's not the worst of all fates. It is a waking life, it is nothing if not resoundingly impermanent.

I had this dream last night that I was in love with a man who was horribly mean to me. I think we worked together. He was rude and insulting and beautiful and I had a huge crush on him. We worked in a school or something institutional. One day we had to go on a trip across a very large lake, so we found ourselves on this boat, like a ferry, we were sitting near each other on the open deck. It was overcast, cold, the water was choppy, there was this glorious danger about everything. He came over and sat next to me. He told me that he was in love with me but had a crippling fear of rejection which was why he was always so ridiculously angry. He had this menacing smile on his face when he was saying it. I woke up and I wished that I didn't have to move or breathe or think because the feeling I was left with was perfect, like complete satisfaction, like being hungry after a good long swim, you don't want to eat you just want to stay hungry. Like if there were a portal between this existence and the next THAT feeling would be the gateway. It would be like a magic-eye where you have to screw up your vision to see the picture; you would have to screw up your sensations to cross the void. The feeling of hunger and complete equanimity. Sympathetic joy?

****************************************
Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number, shake your chains to earth like dew, which in your sleep had fallen on you. Ye are many, they are few!

I feel like swearing. A lot.

We can take energy and turn it into matter, we can make electrons change from billiard balls to light waves we can make things dance and sing and pulsate and breathe, but damn if we don't know what happy is.

Watching this show last night, my favorite show, the main character has this mantra that he repeats to everyone to help him make decisions, "family comes first". And it's kind of a joke because the family is so fucking dysfunctional, but the decisions are all made as if that is the keystone to the whole thing. Family comes first. And we were sitting around last night and dad asks me if we're really moving back out west and where to and what for and when. And this big fucking elephant came crashing in through the northern window of the room and sat down right on my chest. I bit back some tears (soldier through it) and tried to not talk about it, went to check my email. And I realized, maybe for the first time, that I'm not entirely happy with the idea of moving back out west.

No, Ohio does not make me happy, but, can a place? I really don't know, can it?

I had these opposing visions of the desperation of the west, and of the desperation of this town. Is it better to be unhappy when you're surrounded by the people who you love most in the world?

What is the purpose of any of this.

Alarming, maybe, but I'll figure it out. I usually do. But god dammit if cigarettes weren't bad for you I would dedicate myself to smoking. I would be a professional fucking smoker and I would write a scientific paper using the hypothesis that nicotine is a gateway drug for creativity. For insecurity, for boredom, for hunger, for emptiness. Me and you and everybody else, we'd all light up.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, friends.

Morning sit this afternoon.

"Are you afraid?"

"Actually, I was just wondering that. And I guess I think I am."

"Of what?"

"Well, I'm not sure really, life I guess. Of life. But that sounds vague and annoying and doesn't seem completely true."

"Can you clarify?"

"Hm, I was thinking about the future, I guess. These anxieties always start with thinking about the future. And I started to think that everyone I know will die, including me. And I had this feeling, like I was missing something. Like there's a purpose or a sense of participation to life that I'm worried I'm missing. Like everyone else has this feeling but me. And there's no way I'd ever really be able to know that I'm not missing it."

"Like those dreams you sometimes have where all of a sudden it's the middle of the school year and you have completely forgotten to attend a class and midterms are coming up and you know you'll fail it."

"Exactly. Exactly. I guess I'm just afraid of waking up some morning at age 62 and slapping myself in the head for not getting it. For not understanding life's purpose for the entire duration. Afraid that the realization will come too late."

"The frustration of not being able to make the magic-eye turn 3D."

"Goddamn, yes. But it's all bullshit though. God, this is what's most frustrating. I can understand, intellectually, that life is just crazy abstract. That you can't think about it as a whole movement, as something with rational stages. It's just a bunch of fragments and moments and thoughts and boredom, whatever. It's the breaths that slip in and out of the body, unnoticed. But I can't let the anxiety go. I can't take that understanding and pull it down to the body and understand it unequivocally. I still feel like everyone but me was born with a 'Life for Dummies' manual."

"You worry too much, you know? If you ask me, you've done okay these past 26 years."

"Yeah, you're probably right. I am the product of an entitled culture. We're probably all plugged into computers somewhere and this is just some silly artifical reality that doesn't mean anything anyway."

"Here we go...."


...........................................

All this and I was supposed to be meditating. Shut the mind up.

We are all skeletons on the inside

The sun was shining through the yellow and orange leaves still clinging to the sweet gum trees whose branches press against our upstairs windows. The effect was beautiful; the whole of the upstairs looked like the inside of a Japanese paper lantern for about twenty glorious minutes this morning. And I wished that I had Emily's brain to be able to capture it on film. But I didn't, so I tried to enjoy it while it lasted.

It's Halloween, people! This is one of the most magical days on the calendar, the air is spiced with rotted leaves and burnt pumpkins and it's okay for you to go up to a stranger's door, knock, and ask them for free candy. I love this day. I always think of walking up the deserted part of Morgan Street with Emily and Libby, the creepy stretch to our grandparents' house, the crunch of fallen leaves under our decorated feet. And the song The Monster Mash, that would always play on the radio as soon as we made it into our grandparents' house. And the fact that they lived right in front of the cemetery, and Halloween was the one day where that was cool and not a liability.

And what do skeletons like to do? They like to dance.

A Nikon and cigarettes

Nightime in Philadelphia. Here for a long weekend, and extended break, a trip, an adventure. Patrick is attending a conference on experiential education and I, well, I suppose I am a tourist.

I am posting again, after a long absence. I return to you disgruntled, disaffected, unenlightened and in the midst of a mid-life crisis at the age of 26. This is a journey, or maybe it's a hunt, or perhaps, and more likely, an awakening. It's good to be back.

This one is for the children

Carl Steinberg had become one of those men for whom it was possible to have a mid-life crisis without ever being fully aware of it. His forty-three years on earth had been very comfortable. His parents were so satisfied by his birth that they decided to have no more children. He lived with them for his first 14 years quite happily, and became a thoroughly spoiled child. It had long been understood that Carl would become a college professor just like his mother and father (who taught economics and law, respectively), and so during his 15th year he was sent away to a private prepatory school, thus beginning his long yet not very arduous journey of ivy-league education. Carl found himself studying as an undergraduate at Yale University during the height of anti-war sentiment in the 1960s. Wanting to belong, but not wanting to rock the boat, he decided to stage a protest of his own; he became an English major and declared his desire to teach English at the college level, instead of choosing architecture, the more practical course of study that his parents had chosen for him. Much to his dismay no one seemed to care what he studied -- he wasn't even sure that his parents had noticed the change in curriculum on the report cards he sent home. And for the first time in his life, Carl had the fleeting suspicion that he was not "the captain of the ship", as they say. That perhaps there was no captain at all.

The next twenty or so years of his life passed like clockwork; he graduated from Yale with honors, and went on to study at Cambridge and received his doctorate in the literature of the English Renaissance, and after a brief tour of Europe he accepted an assistant professorship in the English department of a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. Like most whose lives are planned far in advance, he grew fat and sluggish and rather boring, but was quite contented with his station in life. The gears were well oiled, the clockwork never broke down, and life went efficiently by.

To be continued.

And like a phoenix,

I'm back and better than ever.

Check out my new website.

The jig is up!

My candle burns at both ends,
it will not last the night.
But ah my foes, and oh my friends,
it gives a lovely light.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

...................................................

So, it’s gotten really negative, hasn’t it? There’s a war being waged, people dying over oil, over something that we should have evolved beyond years ago anyway. A war to pave the way for the government’s brothers and sisters to set up lucrative contracts rebuilding what was destroyed, or what never was (I heard that there’s a Pizza Hut in Fallujah). With its right hand Congress is making moves to severely debilitate Medicaid benefits, and with its left it’s trying to force legislation to keep a brain dead woman alive, a woman whose family relies on Medicaid to pay for her daily observation and life-support equipment. The average CEO makes 360 times what the average laborer makes, WalMart stores are popping up like monsoon frogs, and lawmakers are laying the bricks to make a move towards a future ban on abortion. Racism, poverty, inequality, the brazilification of our entire society.

There is so much negativity, it will swallow us up if we don’t watch our backs, it will consume us whole. And it nearly got me.

I can’t continue to add to the downward spiral, the cynicism, and the constant critique of nothing. Friends, this is my last blog. I wish you all health and happiness!

Peace,
-Anne

xoxox

Ostara

Spring is slowly, slowly creeping into the corners of northeast Ohio. It’s been a long winter and even the tiniest sliver of sunlight fills me with anticipation; and today there’s not even one cloud in the sky! I’m skipping lunch and I’m going for a run, reuniting with the kid I used to be, the one who would spend the entire recess at Prospect doing back flips on the big double slide. Play time!

And also, I bought a guitar over the weekend… (Rock star photos to follow.)

This weekend Patrick and I finally raked the entire back yard, and deposited the accumulated mass of leaves into our newly built compost structure. I have never seen as muddy a back yard as I saw on Saturday. Shame on us! Our punishment for putting off the task for the entire winter is that now we’ll have to plant grass seed. (Which needed to be done anyway.)

But, the leaves had already begun to decompose. Even through the freezing cold. Some of them were translucent, some of them looked as if they had been petrified, there were big fat earthworms and seedpods from the few sweet gum trees. At the end of the raking I was exhausted and instead of using the shovel to move the piles upon piles of leaves I plunged my hands in, and moved fistfuls. The smell was amazing; it was wet and earthy and dark and like thick roots dug up and covered with Ohio clay. And reminded me of the forest on Evergreen’s campus, and the path to the Organic Farm.

I think I might form an Open Spaces Coalition of my own.

My lunchtime story.

Today I had lunch at the burrito bar with a few people. We got our burritos, and took the table next to the rack with all of the hot sauce, napkins, and silverware. About fifteen minutes into my lunch (the burritos are huge) a college students walks in, gets in line. I don’t take much notice, because someone is telling a funny story.

So, sometime later this same college student has made his way over to the hot sauce rack with his freshly rolled burrito. It is then that I really take notice of him.

He was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket, and a pair of levis that were falling down around his hips, you know, the way the kids used to wear them, drooped. Except the problem was that the guy wasn’t wearing any underwear. Nothing. Nada. His pale but phenomenally hairy ass was hanging out of his pants for everyone to see. And I mean everyone; kids, old ladies, me. It was an equal opportunity horror. He was shaking his shit around like it was happy hour and we were in some tropic locale. It amazes me that he didn’t feel the cold air caressing his exposed cheeks, but now that I think back, maybe he didn’t notice because his exposed parts were completely covered in coarse, thick ass-hair. Or maybe he did notice, which is even more disturbing.

Suffice it to say that I didn’t finish my lunch. Jesus Christ. I wish I had taken my camera.

I don't like petroleum, either.

I like movies. I tend to watch them a lot, the good and the bad, and I tend to have strong opinions about them. So, if you noticed, I’ve added a “recently screened” list to my profile. And maybe, just maybe, when I’m really bored, I’ll make a separate page of reviews, and link it to the recently screened list.

Having said that, I watched I Heart Huckabees last night. If you haven’t seen it you should really watch it. Especially if you received a liberal arts degree. Especially if you have ever been captivated by philosophy or the English language, or have secretly enjoyed an awkward moment with a stranger (you pervert, you). It’s funny, it’s witty, it will affect you, and hell, it has Mark Wahlberg. And he wears a firefighter’s uniform.

Have you seen it? What did you think?

Happy day, Patrick!

I have the coolest husband, ever. And on this, his namesake day, I thought I’d tell everybody who stumbles across this blog about it. We met about five years ago, in between years of college, when I was his supervisor at a summer job. I was naughty and assigned him to every job that I knew I’d be working, because I had a crush on him. Early on in our courtship he asked me if I had ever experienced “the lion”. I blushed profusely, as I tend to do, and soon came to realize that Patrick is a crazy perverted bastard.

But that’s part of the appeal.

We broke up a couple of times along the way, partly due to the fact that we are two of the most stubborn people I know. But the ego has a way of deteriorating with time (if you work at it) so we always ended up gratefully back together.

Then one spring day, as we were taking a walk through our neighborhood, we decided to get married. So we did, last October. And our relationship keeps getting stronger, deeper, more fluid with every passing day. (Sorry about the sap, everyone, but we wouldn’t have Maple Syrup were it not for the sap!) Sometimes he becomes an extension of my consciousness and I his, and I can’t remember if we’re husband and wife or brother and sister or if each one is each…

Patrick is the only man I’ve ever known who has encouraged me to shave my head bald. He’s the only guy I’ve met who is a better feminist than I am. Patrick wishes I wouldn’t wear makeup. He thinks my biceps are sexy. He boils water for me to fill up our giant bathtub when I take an hour-long bath and the water gets cold. He doesn’t accept “no” or “I can’t” and he’s the only person who has consistently been able to challenge my notions of right and wrong without being condescending or self-righteous.

So, Patrick, happy day, I am so lucky to be married to you!

I'm sick.

I woke up with a scratchy throat, puffy eyes and a headache as big as Texas. So I immediately went back to sleep. All morning I dozed, it was wonderful. (Except the times when I woke up feeling horrible.) I had to come in this afternoon though, client appointments that I couldn't cancel because they don't have phones. And it's been really busy so far.

My head is like a big bubble, disconnected from my neck and I kind of feel like I'm not really here anyway. Like Ed Norton's copy of a copy of a copy in Fight Club.

Anyway, think you're not getting paid what you're worth? Read this article, and you'll really get pissed off. The shitty thing is that Oberlin's President is down on the list. Keep scrolling, you'll find her. All this and Oberlin is in the middle of a budget crisis, laying off janitors and administrative staff. Bullshit I say!

Also, read the Anonymous blog today, it is masterful in its accuracy. Everytime the delivery guy marvels at my ability to move around a fully-loaded pallet jack, I will think of you Anonymous, and smile. We haven't all been brainwashed by this culture's ridiculous gender socialization!

I think I'm gonna go take some tylenol.

Crap-stop blues

So, the guitar playing is going pretty well. I’m trying to learn new chords every night, and the calluses on my fingertips are coming along bravely. One problem I’m running into, though, is that the guitar I’m playing is a piece of shit. Seriously. 6E is never, and I mean never, in tune. This is just something I’ve learned to compensate for. (Heh!) The neck sort of looks like it might break off, and I noticed that a brace-like thingy on the inside of the body is cracked. Yes, that’s right, it’s a piece of shit. But I already said that.

So! My good people! I am in the market for a new guitar. And it’s really exciting! I haven’t purchased a new musical instrument since high school and I’m feeling all giddy about it. But I need your help. There are five gazillion acoustic guitars out there… where does one start? If you have any advice on what kind to buy, why to buy it, what your favorite is, et cetera, please leave a comment about it and I will love you forever.

I swear.

Maybe I’ll even write a song about you and post it for all to hear. (Well, all three of you who read this, anyway…)

in between, something.

We had a snowstorm last night, lots of dense packing snow, it's beautiful and I'm cracked out on too much coffee and breakfast cake. Tomorrow is our food distribution and I spent the whole morning moving cases of food, crashing into shelves with the pallet jack, drinking coffee and laughing. A lot. I feel giddy today for some reason.

Please, read this blog, I found it very well written. And it made me laugh.

I am listening to:


And things, for now, could not be better.

What's an eoty?

It’s been awhile and I have no excuse for it other than I’ve been increasingly lazy about the internet and have spent far less time online. My friends, I have decided to teach myself how to play the guitar. For real. I’ve had a guitar for ages, but can’t do anything more than strum two muted and atonal sounding chords. So, watch out! If anybody has any tips on learning, or a lesson book to buy, or what have you… you know… let me know about it.

And also I’m building a dining room table, training for a 5k, trying to save the world via this town’s low income population, bench pressing 100 lbs, and not taking no bullshit from nobody, no how! Never stop the self-improvement!

Can I add more exclamations?! You know I can!!!

....................................

Also, I see him in the gym. Often.

Lil' heavy for a Friday.

I began tearing through the March/April issue of Mother Jones as soon as it arrived. I made my way to an article on how the conservative Right has claimed the moral high ground, and why the liberal Left lost the fight for it. As I read, I came across this:

“Nihilism begins with the spectacle of people who have been so badly flogged by the system that they can inspire only compassion or contempt but never comradeship. You might take a food basket to the doorstep, but you wouldn’t think of stepping through the door.

To be honest, I have begun to lose patience with ‘compassion,’ be it the conservative version that sees poverty as a moral disease to be cured with a benevolent dose of 19th-century rectitude, or the liberal version that views poverty as an exotic culture to be scrutinized through the kindly lens of tolerance. Poverty is not a culture to be understood; it is a condition to be eradicated.”

And I find myself unable to finish the article because the sentences above form a statement that is so perfect, is true with such simplicity, that I’m afraid it might be spoiled by any further elucidation.

……………………………………………

From time to time people who mean well will come into the office with some food to donate, some clothes they no longer wear (it seems that everyone has a box of cast-off clothing in the basement, reserved for those less fortunate), and occasionally a monetary offering. The lobby functions less like a waiting area, and more like a moral repository for those of us who are better off; I’ve given to the community center this year, I’ve done what I could for the poor. Clean, quick, discreet.

And this way of thinking is also corrupting my brain.