never leave lonely alone

went to elephant rocks. played on rocks with scott and rufus. wished we had brought climbing shoes.

had an amazing thanksgiving with friends, not family. "this is way better than family" was our motto all night. there was a roaring fire outside and the night was cold.



worked almost 40 hours. everyone else was out of town. didn't mind, because i didn't have classes.

spoke to evelyn on the phone. she's a beautiful woman. we had a great conversation.

enjoyed having a quiet house, no boys upstairs, no old man downstairs.

spent time with scott. he gave me the most beautiful flowers ever. we saw darjeeling limited, which we thoroughly enjoyed. we ate bad mexican food at the place we swore not to return to last time.

thought a lot about shannon, her situation(s), our friendship, my role to her, my love for her.

yesterday classes started again. today i turned in a paper in ceramics about clay as communication. we did a critique of our teapots. mine got a lot of comments. i felt like i made something cool.

tonight sean and i whipped up a kick ass dinner. he cooked rice. i cooked black beans with onions. we threw the two together with salsa and some last minute jiffy cornbread muffins that were actually more like pancakes. i can do awesome things with a can of beans.

tonight i made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for evelyn, to whom i will mail said cookies tomorrow. plus the five letters i wrote her and the cd i made. evelyn has invited us to montana to visit. scott and i are determined to make it out there sometime within the next year, maybe late summer.

scott and i are praying that we will be gifted with the funds for a spring break trip to nicaragua and costa rica with a friend who has family in those places. if that plan does not work out, we might move the montana trip up.

tonight sean and i went to check out the unloaded anagama. an anagama is a humongous wood fire kiln that all our millions of pots were in from ceramics class. by "we" i mean all of the ceramics classes, who all had pieces in the kiln. the kiln is large enough to fit 15 adults inside. imagine that much space filled with nothing but pots on shelves. it's a lot of pots.

one night recently i had a vivid sex dream, underwater, in fact, and i woke up to my body having an orgasm. kind of weird. actually, very strange. i guess i never realized that women could have wet dreams like men can. well, it's true. it happens.

i can't seem to figure out how to post these photos where i want them. it's been a good week, except for my toothache. must, must, MUST make a dentist appointment tomorrow. my jaw is probably rotting out of my head. how's that for a silver lining? :D

if you stayed over

autumn music:
(artist/album)
Jose Gonzales/Veneer
Bonobo/Days to Come
Bark Psychosis/Codename:Dirtsucker
Sam Prekop/Who's Your New Professor
Devendra Banhart/Rejoicing in the Hands

all heart wrenching, like autumn itself. a time and place to feel out the dusty corners of the heart. see what's still moving around, see what's died and is just bones. been missing my family and friends very much these past couple of days.
been missing scott, too. or just how we used to be. very much in love, very involved. flowers, nice words, lots of attention, lots of time together. i know that i traded all that in a sense, for a stable thing instead, with much more quality than quantity, but sometimes it seems we don't see one another for days. and it causes amnesia as to what it was like in the beginning - how every love is in the beginning - a cause for the world to turn.
we took a shower, i said "let's get pregnant so we can tell everyone at christmas!" why did i say that? i don't know, let's go over the possible reasons in a minute. he did not respond, just gave some looks indicating my insanity. i made some appropriately insane looks back at him. we proceeded to have unprotected sex in the steamy bathroom. do we both want it? am i close to ovulation? am i actually crazy? do i really care about finishing my degree? if not, am i just wasting time and money? if i don't finish my degree, what will i do? pottery? massage? finish it after the baby? do i just need someone else to love? will scott's and my life ever align so that i feel nourished by our love?
meanwhile, sean and i have a silly crush on one another and our friendship, i have to admit, tries to fill what isn't filled by scott's and my relationship. that is to say, we spend time climbing trees and talking about God. we have an amazing friendship, though sometimes i battle my attraction to him. however, what keeps me safely from that attraction is the privilege i feel to be his close friend versus just another girl in his life. this kid had three summer girlfriends, and they just didn't work out for him. i'm so glad that i am not in that position. that i can be his friend safely, because of my marriage, which creates this huge boundary that we are both respectful of, and take caution to not cross or come near.
let's be honest - "chemistry is a dime a dozen" (citing scott, 2005). knowing that can safeguard a friendship. why did i not know this in high school? i thought chemistry meant something! i could have saved myself from at least two failed relationships. damn.

it's a vague feeling, what i'm sitting in this morning. is it wrong to hold a secret, evil hope that scott might not get into nursing school? it is evil. i'm sorry. i would just love to move. can't stay still for long before i long to leave. i feel uprooted and undone.
"this is an undoing" is an art installation in the caleb bingham gallery in the fine arts building. it's incredible. $500 worth of sunflower seeds are piled on the ground, and above them hang 3,000 fabric forms. the fabric is sheer white, shimmery, and has been treated with a heat gun so that it folds in and makes fluffy, cloud-like shapes. these shapes are hung with something similar to fishing line from the ceiling. in two diagonal corners of the room, light projectors shine white light, which is actually written words, through the fabric and the lines that hang them, onto the surrounding walls. meanwhile the rest of the room is completely dark, and speakers play the artists' breathing slowed to sound like an approaching storm.
the effect is like watching a rainstorm and hearing thunder. if you lay in the seeds, nest yourself in, get cozy, and observe the forms from below, it is both like lying on the ground watching the clouds, and also like being underwater, which is my favorite sensation in the world. it's a large installation and encourages interaction. it's the artist's graduate thesis, and it's the most wonderful art installation i've ever experienced.
it's also like free therapy, lying in those seeds, feeling them work into your clothes and hair, staring at the "clouds" above. the light words float over you, touching your skin and sliding onto the wall. "this is an undoing. i want to be undone." watching the light spread through the fabric is like . . oil on water, maybe. it spreads and seeps, instead of just shining straight through. it's also like watching lightning illuminate clouds, but without breaking through them.
it's phenomenal.

all this. and falling leaves every day. the ambiguity of a looming winter. vague and vast as the landscape, and as a body, craving change and love.

the water in which we wade

"well who knows, who knows
yeah, i may come home
yeah, i may return
this is the way i'm always leaving
this is the soft voice of the evening
this is the way i hear my father
these are the flames that drown the water"

note to self: look up book "the land remembers"

listening to devendra banhart like a maniac. perfect for falling leaves.

finally connected with evelyn. we've been playing phone tag for, well, probably six months or so, but just a couple weeks were we actively trying to catch each other on the phone. then we spoke, and it reminded me of who i am, and of who she is. and it's amazing, our friendship, that survives like a desert flower without much water, just plenty of sun.
she asked questions about everything, and i asked her questions.
we are still very much who we always were.

we talked about the West. which has to be capitalized due to importance and vastness. i hope to return to the west someday, even if i don't end up living out there. but when i think of "home", i see mountains in my mind's eye. and my heart aches for those mountains! it's a weird tie, that the heart makes to the land we grow up on. my ceramics teacher noted a book called "the land remembers" when talking about how the land she grew up with is what influences her thoughts and consequently her ceramics work.
speaking of ceramics, i am registered for next semester and i have a place in the intermediate ceramics class! i am thrilled.

unthrilled about this - i'm sick. had a scratchy throat for about four days, accompanied on and off with a killer headache. yesterday i started sneezing and coughing and snotting. last night was hell, trying to sleep with all that mucous trying to get out of my head. scott's in the same state i am. we're sickies! rufus even sneezed today.
rufus and i take walks through rock hill park, this small state park very close to our place. it's beautiful, and he's able to be off leash, so he romps through the forest, skidding on leaf covered rocks and splashing in the water. i've watched fall in its stages in this park, and i'm humbled by the greatness and beauty of nature.
the vast land.

cupid's trick

places to look for your mind
. bookshelves
. lovers' mouths
. greener pastures
. pant pockets
. driftwood
. empty bottles
. pillow creases
. pin cushions
. under water
. fenceposts
. birds' lost feathers
. power lines
. cello strings
. love letters
. lost buttons

how to know
. un
. sp
. ok
. en
. wo
. rd
. sa
. nd
. sp
. ok
. en
. on
. es
. to
. o

. wh
. at
. di
. dn
. ot
. oc
. cu
. rw
. he
. ni
. tw
. ou
. ld
. ha
. ve

sweet nothing seranade

today i saw the perfect maple tree, all leaves a fiery hue and tossing in the wind.
the wind was surging around me, lifting crunchy leaves into the air, shaking soon to be crunchy leaves from the trees. the sun was infusing the trees with a glow. the colors shone.

how hard we try (both hands)

the autumn itch.
rather, the itch that occurs whenever and wherever it pleases. the itch with a purpose, a personality, a desire.
the itch that will one day drive us out of this town.
if we stay here for two and a half more years, that is, if i finish my degree here, i will be genuinely surprised. for some reason it seems like a prediction of the future you know will actually never occur. something you believe for convenience, a pretense taken for granted, because it's what would come next. it's the most likely thing to happen, but at the same time it seems unreal. feels like an imaginary game, to pretend we'll be here that long.
the leaves are blowing, blowing past the windows today. the windows are open. the tea is steeping. the future is wide open.

we talk of moving to chattanooga, tennessee. we talk of what will happen if he's not accepted to the nursing program.

"i'm recording our history on the
bedroom wall
and when we leave the landlord will come
and paint over it all"

the itch is now accompanied by it's stronger, older sister - the biological clock of my woman's body. the need to bear children. the urge to raise our children together - lindsay with hers, us with ours. cousins in the same town. the town is near mountains. it's near a coast.

scott and i are both born with the itch. a recurring rash that has promised to return for the rest of our lives. just when you think you've conquered the rash - it hasn't shown up for three seasons! - it comes back. just a few bumps at first, no itch yet. then it seems to multiply overnight, a million times, and you wake up and are covered inside out with bumps that itch like hellfire. the itch has arrived, and taken over. for the next few days we'll look at schools in different states, surf real estate websites for the perfect starter home in a new town. we'll dissect digits that mean nothing, because the itch is strong enough to negate the numbers.

not pregnant - my period came and erased the inkling of (fear? hope?) that i had been holding on to, carefully. why do i pretend to not want it? i want to be pregnant, my body pleads for the experience. my arms beg to hold a new life. scott even wants it, i know. but what about my degree? if i don't finish it, what a disappointment. to myself and my family. not that it couldn't be finished later, but . . .
it's funny how i've said "school just isn't for some people", especially referencing lindsay. a brilliant woman who went to school and tried, but stopped going, and has found something else. many somethings that not only bring in money, but fulfill her life and her passions. i never lumped myself into that category, because i thrive in school. i enjoy writing papers, i easily achieve all a's. but am i being fulfilled? do i really want the degree? at this point i just want out. it's the itch. it's spread to every category of my life.
except my marriage. for some reason i feel more planted, more right, than ever with scott. i love him more than i could have envisioned ever loving a man. he's incredible to me. and something more - he also has the itch, like me.
we're two similar spirits tainted (gifted?) with the same itchy rash to keep us moving.
let's go!