Why does this blog get so many referring links from porn sites

It has been so long since I climbed a mountain.


In reality it has been a little more than three months. It feels like an eternity.

Yes I am grateful.



In my dream several people told me that I had chronically bad breath, and I was deeply embarrassed.

It has been so long since I dreamed of crocodiles.



Sure that song may have been a hit but in order to make the music video they collared and leashed a real live leopard and for that I will never forgive them, I will never respect them, and I will never celebrate their song.


I am remembering baking those butter-and-bourbon-filled nectarines in that small upstairs apartment off Dupont Circle, and I hope you're doing well wherever you are now.


He has purchased four almond poppyseed muffins for the low low price of $1.49. I will enjoy them vicariously when he warms them up in the toaster oven, slices them in half, and melts a pat of butter on either side. Meanwhile I will slather almond butter onto a large organic banana or glug down one of those pea protein and collagen shakes I got for free in the mail. For dinner this evening I had wilted spinach cooked into dairy-free, gluten-free rice mac 'n "cheeze," which is kind of outrageous.


I am learning about sweet and bitter and salty and boiling. He removes the candy thermometer from the syrup and adds the heavy cream. Cyprus flake salt is very dramatic looking but surprisingly mild in flavor. 


How is it after 10 pm already. Today has been a busy day.

I had hoped to purchase an orange this evening, but there were no oranges at the grocery store. There were only grapefruits. 

I was just thinking that I love you

I think I'm too close to bed for that.

I am eating a melange of vegetables coated in Lite Italian Dressing.

Tonight at the disc golf course a dog with red eyes started chasing sweet Hanna. At first she thought they were playing, and so she played along, and then he lunged for her neck, and he tried to bite her, and he kept lunging even after she dropped to the ground with her tail between her legs. I shouted OH NO YOU DON'T and I kicked my legs between them and I pushed him backwards and I used my body to shield her. I am trying to teach her that she is safe now, and I will kick any mean dog that I have to in order to help her believe it.


Tomorrow is Halloween and the last day of October, which is normally my favorite month, which did not connect with me this year in the same way it usually does, which is maybe to say that I did not connect with October this year in the same way that I usually do. Which was and is sort of unsettling.

I think I have just been sorting out so much in my own head that I haven't been as connected as I normally am to what is going on outside of it. Also my ankle snapped, and it has kept me inside for so long. I started taking my cues from my inner world because for months I was no longer part of the outer one.

I suppose this is not a bad thing. It is simply the thing that is going on with me this October.

From "Ars Poetica?" by Czeslaw Milosz

...

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:   

a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us


...

It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,   

when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.   

...

The purpose of poetry is to remind us   

how difficult it is to remain just one person  

I will write and write and write and enjoy it too

Suddenly I remember him whispering in my ear, as he lay on top of me with my shirt off, that I was lucky he was choosing not to rape me because there was nothing I'd be able to do to stop him, and I am filled with so much anger that I finally forgive myself for ceasing to answer his calls.


The depth of sorrow and rage that I feel over what these hateful, voracious men are doing to the earth is perhaps the greatest sorrow and rage I will ever have the experience of feeling. There are no words.


I must not be beaten by 2011. I will write and write and write and enjoy it too, the sound and sensation of fingers flying over a keyboard always strangely comforting to me.

Here are some of the images that come to me running on the combined baseball/field hockey field at my old high school, dressing up as an elf to dance dirty in the narrow, darkened, sweaty hallway, biking to DC dubstep parties through the most murderous neighborhood in the city, having beer-fueled sex across four apartments, sneaking down to the kitchen for bowls of ginger and raisins and grapes, laughing so hard on my back with my best friend in a tent beside the reservoir, lying out on a colorful quilt in the dark grass of the Christmas tree farm, the whole class listening as I shared my thoughts on Transcendentalism, watching the video of two-year-old me taking my father on a walk, playing that weird audio recording of my writing project mashup while sitting in front of the class, locking eyes with Wilson the day we went to pick him up from the shelter, pushing the bounds of so many new neighborhoods on two feet or a bike, the river water sloshing against the concrete breakers at Astoria park, standing under that sand beach of stars in Maine, getting drunk together under that tree on the edge of the lake, sipping whiskey by the fire at the Nature Inn, climbing into the backcountry, flying down hills on my cross-country skis, Hanna trying to eat that big hunk of carrot.

Down amidst the carrots and celery

I remember when I was younger I dreamed of being cool enough to wear a hair style that was longer in the front than it was in the back. I subconsciously thought I would never be confident enough to go for it. Now I have worn my hair that way for several years and it doesn't even cross my mind.

The vacuum R2D2 goes erp, erp.
The red switch inside the clear plastic frame and the silver hose curled alienesque across the black shiny exterior.

I have dusted the record player and the bookshelves.

Wilson is perched on the ottoman even with my left shoulder. I am sitting on the floor beside Hanna, who is sleeping deeply such that her exhales breeze across my thighs. My left butt bone is digging into the thin rug.

There is a green fan by the doorway.

There is a fuzzy white dog toy lying in front of the bookshelf.

One half of the bottom shelf is lined with records, the other with books about wood-frame house construction, sewing, rhetoric, kombucha, harmonica, mountains, geosystems. On the shelf to the right of that one sits the record player and stacks of colored pencils.

Above that shelf there are two sections of shelving lined with books, and on the top shelf there are black speakers, black headphones, a local trail map, and a busted headlamp.

Then of course there are the birds. They cover the wall in pencil colors, birds of the forest, the wild meadow, the lakes, the sea.

Wilson has decided to lie down. He rests his eyes with his face pointing directly into my cheek.

All of the shoes we own are piled underneath the table inside the door. The seasons change by the day here, so there's no use in putting anything away: flip flops mingle with snow boots, rain boots bump against worn-soled kicks, hiking boots shed dirt onto pink and gray running shoes. I'll use them all in a week, save the rain boots, which are required far less often than they were on my commutes to the large brick building back east.


The two moose sit on the log bench, lost in each other as always, whispering love secrets such that their nose presses into their ear.

Behind them: Bright pink, orange, red, and green stationery. An unusual pick for me.


Dinner was a whole organic chicken cooked down amidst carrots, celery, onion, hard cider, red potatoes, and butter. Oh me oh my.

Now I am sitting here on the floor with a borrowed laptop, looking at a butterfly and listening to the Grateful Dead with a dog's head in my lap.

Incredible update

Incredible update. He has purchased me a full set of ice dancer's regalia for $6 at the local thrift shop.

I am either too chicken or too sensible to wear it to the local brewery's haunted Halloween party, but I intend to wear it to Tuesday night's house party so long as I have an opportunity to get good and drunk beforehand.

Truth be told I feel a little too old or simply too introspective for it all, retreating to the edges of the patio outside to nurse my two gluten-free beers. Inside it is loud, and so crowded, and that man in the baseball cap won't stop staring into my eyes even though his girlfriend is standing near the foosball table in a penguin outfit. When he makes a joke I laugh too hard and I don't say anything because I have either forgotten how to do this or I am no longer interested in doing this. Someone is dressed up as Marge Simpson, someone as a meatball, the pizza delivery driver comes up and gives me a big, drunken hug, everyone around me is drunk, I do not know them, it's all a little too much.

When we return to the basement apartment Hanna has strewn the entirety of the trash can's contents across the living room rug. After picking up the chewed bits of trash I fall asleep on the loveseat and I don't wake up until I am confused in the dark at 1 am.


Today I go to the bank, the post office, the laundromat, the grocery store, and the local disc golf course, where Hanna bounds around picking up sticks and reveling in smells. She has earned her off-leash privileges in certain circumstances, and even though technically I don't think it's appropriate behavior for her to gallop up to the fisherman as he walks along the trail, I only call her back halfheartedly because to see her wag her tail and initiate hellos with a stranger is a small miracle. For so long she has been scared of anyone but us.


Granted, the fact that he smelled of fish probably helped quite a bit.



My creativity is my birthright and so is yours.

I am listening to the Microphones and sitting on the loveseat in the 10X12 foot living room/kitchen/office. I am eating baked lentil bean crisps; Wilson is curled up on my lap; Hanna is curled up with her tail in her nose beside me. Because of these animals every day I know that I am loved, and that I give love, and boy howdy doesn't that make living more worthwhile.

I think I have forgotten to bring my pumpkin costume to Colorado

What I have been writing is changing again. I am like the wood chopper, metal fangs gleaming.


A can of Hunt's tomato sauce sits red and green on the table beneath the windowsill.

Wilson's small nose smooshes into his chest, my arm resting lightly across his torso. We are sharing the afghan my mother made when I was eighteen. Hanna sprawls out at our feet atop my brother's old throw rug--blue and geometric, it is fitting.

Yesterday I spent three hours teaching and practicing yoga and today my thighs are growing. To look at my legs is to see what it is to work toward building muscle all the time, and to see what it is not to use them. My right leg is still so weak. My left leg is stronger than I ever knew my legs could be.

My fingers remain as spindly as ever. The numerical looks harsh and so I replace it.


That was all so long ago.


I make chia pudding and I eat it for breakfast every morning. It is kind of bland because I didn't feel like hunting down the vanilla extract from the high shelf above the kitchen sink, and because I didn't feel like buying a whole bottle of maple syrup when I only needed a quarter cup. Luckily I have a penchant for bland foods, my friends teasing me for the fact that I hardly ever add salt. 


I am using fewer em-dashes than I ever have before. Perhaps it is because I am less anxious.


This afternoon I will see the bodyworker for my ankle and do more yoga and then I will meet the people who are becoming my friends at the local brewery where I can drink locally brewed, gluten free beer from the tap.


Tomorrow I will research human anatomy, go to the laundromat, and contemplate a temporary return to Pennsylvania. I have been away longer than ever before.


There is only one part of my life in which I frequently feel like I am delusional, and that is in romantic relationships, which is to say intimacy, which is to say whenever I start thinking too hard about certain situations. Which is to say whenever I wonder what other people think of me.



I have started to believe that I am worthy of pursuing. By that I mean I am in pursuit.


It is time to carve pumpkins again. Whatever will you be for Halloween. In the past I have been a peeping Tom (only everybody at that DC dubstep house party thought I was the dude who founded MySpace) and a children's pumpkin costume from the Lancaster Salvation Army. The orange fabric digs into my armpits and I wear a green sweater underneath so that three quarters of my torso isn't exposed. I bobby pin the green top into my hair and get drunk with my friends.

I think I have forgotten to bring my pumpkin costume to Colorado. Whatever will I be for Halloween.


Soon enough I will outgrow this basement apartment.


It has taken three hours for the temperature to rise. 

From " Yom Kippur, Taos, New Mexico" by Robin Becker

"I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer
            to fit my own dimension."