My November Guest

(although it is sunny today)

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

(Robert Frost)

A Farewell to October

Halloween really ought to be our national holiday. For real. It's not in my top three favorite holidays, but for some reason this year the quirkiness of this holiday struck me. On no other occasion is every single home expected to give free candy to every stray, oddly-dressed child who threatens for it. Regardless of race, religion, age, or gender, it's a given that we all participate. It's not a holiday necessarily centered around family or the people we love; the most exciting parts (at least for kids) (well, for that matter, maybe adults too- plenty of parents in our current neighborhood were strolling behind their kids with beers in hand) take place away from home. Its success depends on the participation of the community and public acceptance. It's the only night kids are encouraged to take candy from strangers, for crying out loud. It's such a topsy-turvy, contradicting mix of fear and fun, of terror and sugar, of screams and laughter. And I guess one of the many benefits is that it can be expressed in a bajillion different ways through decorations and costumes, whether hand-spun or store-bought; and unlike Thanksgiving or Christmas, there's no pressure or mounted expectation to be a smiley, loving, perfectly functional family unit. Expectations are as broad as your own creativity allows.

Overanalyze much?

In other news, I will never ever grow tired of watching autumn leaves flare up like so many matches, and burn down to smoldering embers until cold November rain snuffs them out.

how to be a girl

I have been traveling a lot lately, and inevitably the entertainment comes down to trashy magazines. My laptop battery is decrepit, I run out of new podcasts, and I need something more akin to cotton candy than whatever heavy, dense, fruitcake-of-a-book I happen to be reading (because, of course, it makes me feel good about my English-major-self to wade through books like this and check them off my list, but my attention span just isn't up to it). Enter: a glossy mix of celebrity gossip and fashion/personal care magazines.

They're fun and pretty and indulgent, but after flipping through two or three of them in a row, it starts raising all sorts of concerns in the far corners of my brain. For instance: I do not have a Skin Care and Beauty Regimen to speak of. The magazines declare this is a critical problem because, if I do not adhere to some sort of 5-step program, my skin will spiral into disrepair and LOOK OLD. Never mind the fact that it will, in fact, one day BE old--nasty, wrinkly, crone-face old--I never under any circumstances should look my age, and the time to moisturize is now. The magazines instill a sudden Sunscreen Paranoia I never knew I had. Usually I just wash my face when it starts to feel greasy; who knew that I was unwittingly propelling it even faster into the future?!

I can't even enter the Fashion arena because, a. even if I had the disposable income to spend on a purse with a four figure price tag, I couldn't bring myself to do it, because WHAT PURSE IS THAT AMAZING? and b. clothes are fun, and I like to look cute, but beyond that I am not terribly fascinated by the coming and going of trends.

Outcome of all this? I am a shoddy female. I probably spend the most personal care time on my hair, but that only happens every three days. I DO NOT SHOWER EVERY DAY (If that's a friendship deal breaker, I understand). I wear makeup, but usually when I'm forced out into the public. I hope my husband isn't too fond of the makeup, because if he tells me I'm beautiful too many times without it, I might just quit.

I guess this is where I'm confused: if all this "Personal Care" is really for myself, to make me feel good and for my own well-being, why is it so focused on what I present to the world? My (many) insecurities render me susceptible to how everyone perceives me, although I really really REALLY do not want to care what other people think about my hairshoesjacketeyeshadowrockhardabsjewelry. But I DO care, and I can't help it. We all do, even if it's just the slightest lack of confidence in one small area. And the glossy magazines are getting to me. Evidently there is all this stuff I should be doing, products and regimens to care about in the name of womanhood; an ever-expanding realm of personal care to be insecure about. I suppose there will always be some aspect of my body or appearance that I'm not whipping into feminine shape & order (And I don't even live in L.A., Manda- the body obsession must make you CRAZY).

Yeah, I'll be taking a break from the magazines for a while.

just the occasional hiccup

Okay. I now live in Michigan. Last week I was reunited with my husband and my dog after five weeks apart: all good things. Let's talk about the less-than-good things, hmmm? Just because I'm Negative Nancy.

Last Tuesday I was hustling a car full of suitcases of clothes, various toiletries, and bubble wrap stolen from my former employer, trailing warm memories of friends and mixed feelings about Denver behind me. It was a wonder the car made it from Denver to Chicago with no conniptions, and I may have been pushing my luck the last 300 miles... but anyways. I left Chicago late in the morning, in the rain. I drove through Indiana and southwest Michigan in the rain. Continued across the soggy mitten in the rain. Are you catching the less-than-subtle foreshadowing? Of the less-than-good things?

Well, less than 10 miles from my destination (and my dog and my husband and his family), I exited the highway on a curved off-ramp. Ever so slowly--and yet marvelously quickly!--the rear end of the car decided to try to pass the front end, like a scampering puppy whose front paws can't keep up with the back ones. I couldn't tell you which pedal I was kicking at (if at all) or what words were tumbling out of my mouth until I came to a complete stop, but I can tell you that the back end of the car slammed squarely against the guard rail--blessed, precious guard rail--and slowed me down. 30 minutes later, my husband and father-in-law came to collect me, my bumper and my crunched car and drove us all home.

In the days that followed we took a brief trip to Hamilton and back, and I started settling in at my husband's parent's house (possibly while nursing a sore neck). On Saturday we ventured out to find cider donuts and apple cider, because that is what Midwest Autumn tastes like, and it's glorious. Unfortunately, we came home to a slightly altered version of Toby: Scarface edition. We trucked him over to the vet, and one hour later escorted him home with dilated eyes and ten stitches in his cheek. How he managed to gouge his face open while chasing a tennis ball, we may never know. Certain unnamed neighbor children won't be playing unsupervised any more, that's for sure. Toby may not be playing unsupervised any more, either.

This whole major Life Change Transition could be going smoother, is what I'm trying to say.

boy do I have updates for YOU.

but until I have time to pull it together, check out the most recent book Yann Martel sent to Stephen Harper. I'm pretty sure I've posted/written about this project of his before, but I find it fascinating and tremendously important. What is Stephen Harper Reading?

out of the office (autoreply)

Sometimes I go for long stretches without blogging because I hit streaks when I feel like I have nothing to say. Lately that's not the issue. It's because my internet access has been particularly limited. I was checking all of my usual internet time-suckers the other day, and I could hear my power cord making strange crackly noises, so I shut my laptop down and unplugged it for 24 hours or so. The next day I plugged it back in, and 20 minutes later the crackling was back- so loud that the dogs (not Sadie & Annie- we have moved on to Bailey & Shelby) were intrigued. I figured this could not end well, and while I was trying to block their not-small-or-weak bodies from the chattering power cord, it gave a tiny pop and died. My laptop battery is just about useless, so I steal a few minutes of internet time where I can find it on the behalf of my hosts or the library. But it won't be a consistent presence in my life for at least another 10 days, which, horror of all horrors, is forcing me to READ MORE. I HATE my life.

To be clear: this coming weekend pop and stepmum drive out to CO to help me keep my sanity through my final drive across the Heart of America, which if your main goal is at the other end, and does not include leisurely stops and sidetrack adventures, feels a bit like falling down an endless rabbit hole. It's long. A long, long, flat, long drive one shares with truckers and occasional construction. Almost exactly 1,000 miles of FLAT. (Well, 1,000 miles to IL. Another 300 across MI to where my husband is.) One day, we will make it to Ontario. And all our stuff will too. It's a matter of logistics, but do not doubt I will keep you updated on the joys to be found in work visa applications and the housing market in Canada. Hello, adventure!

currently reading:

I'm in the middle of "The River Why" by David James Duncan (who also wrote "The Brothers K" which I have yet to read) and it is about fishing. I care as much about this topic about as much as I care about Nascar or physics or the Jonas brothers, but I am still reading. If you pay attention, Duncan has a sneaky sense of humor and richly multifaceted characters, and I can't help but like this book. Here's an example of why:

"A native is a man or creature or plant indigenous to a limited geographical area--a space boundaried and defined by mountains, rivers or coastline (not by latitudes, longitudes or state and county lines), with its own peculiar mixture of weeds, trees, bugs, birds, flowers, streams, hills, rocks and critters (including people), its own nuances of rain, wind, and seasonal change. Native intelligence develops through an unspoken or soft-spoken relationship with these interwoven things: it evolves as the native involves himself in his region. A non-native awakes in the morning in a body in a bed in a room in a building on a street in a county in a state in a nation. A native awakes in the center of a little cosmos--or a big one, if his intelligence is vast--and he wears this cosmos like a robe, senses the barely perceptible shiftings, migrations, moods and machinations of its creatures, its growing green things, its earth and sky. Native intelligence is what Huck Finn had rafting the Mississippi, what Thoreau had by his pond, what Kerouac had in Destination Lookout and lost entirely the instant he caught a whiff of any city. But some have it in cities--like the Artful Dodger, picking his way through a crowd of London pockets; like Mother Teresa in the Calcutta slums. Sissy Hankshaw had it on freeways, Woody Guthrie in crowds of fruit pickers, Gandhi in jails. Almost everybody has a dab of it wherever he or she feels most at home... But the high-grade stuff is, I think, found most often where earth, air, fire and water have been least bamboozled by men and machines."