Last Picked in Dodgeball

It's way worse in grad school then grade school. In grade school, even if you are last picked, you still get a game that has a bouncy redball or a large, worn parachute to play with. With the aid of these distractions, you quickly forget that insecurity. In grad school, the game has no bounce- it's a group paper that everyone is dreading and when you are last picked it means you are left with the Regurgatator who can only spit back, verbatim, things the professor has said. And you are left with the Looney Bin, who thinks that classes in education are therapy sessions only thinly disguised and so, out of some lame form of politeness, you and the other girl in your group who seems sane, let her go on and on about how she has been stalked by students before. And instead of writing that paper that you had wanted to be publishable, so good that Obama would read it and hire you for The D.O.E., you know you are gonna be lucky just to make it through the project with all your marbles intact. And you long for the days when losing your marbles was just something that happened at recess.

Weary

A woman is cemented to the concrete outside of a Dunkin Donuts on a warm Autumn Day while my radio is throwing the words 'economy' and 'crashing' in my ears. My face is overwhelmed by the heat and the traffic of a five-way intersection in South Boston. It made me sad to see her. She didn't look dead, just really beat up by life, by heroin. Dunkin Donuts was this Faustian presence, beyond the reach of a listless arm that couldn't reach no more.

The greyhound and a phoney smile

Fearful of the decapitating Canadian riders as I boarded the greyhound, I armed myself with David Sedaris' new book and the accomadatingly packed breakfast from the nicest B&B people in all of Ashland, Oregon. When I saw that the woman across the aisle from me was a Pamphlet Reader, I decided to jot a few notes down about what I observed. Her pamphlet was called: Failure is not an Option and I would occasionally catch a phrase as she studied each page intently: The hardest thing you'll ever have to do is try and save your family. The first crisis to be conquered is our attitude. So what do you have to loose if you try God's way. With glimpses of these gems and allusions to the Apollo ride and B-list celebrities circa 1973, I thought that I was collecting good fodder for a witty little character sketch. Her plastic baggies full of assorted snack foods and her white velcro sneakers, with back-ups in the other plastic baggie made me chuckle while I kept my hip-new American Apparel sweatshirt on to avoid the dirty grunge of my well-used seat. As I listened to my ishuffle blaring music of what you might call the emo-variety, I impudently thought of how lucky I was to be surrounded by such fodder for stories. Then, I watched Pamphlet Reader carefully open yet another ziplock, this one full of hallmark cards addressed in scrawling penmanship to Nurse Wanda at the Sisikyou County Jail. She lingered on every mark on the cards, even if it was just a signature after the pre-printed joke that involved cute bears. She caressed the words with her eyes and the tips of her finger. She stared at the particulars of each card and safely returned them each to envelope, to baggie, to the gift bag that stored them all. Lovingly appreciated, her each precious action scolded my snooty tendencies and my ridiculously superficial approach to capturing the world around me.

Family time and Moonshine

When you see a really beautiful moon, my sister Kate one time mentioned, do you ever feel guilty the moment that you turn your eyes to go to bed? I mean, when is it okay to stop looking at a beautiful thing? In these past two weeks of travel through a beautiful part of the world, part of my family and I have had the luxuries of eating good foods, looking at beautiful things and enjoying each others' company. I think that is why the Emily character in Our Town really annoyed me last night; she seemed a bit preachy about how often we do not stop and really realize how wonderful the world is. Maybe Thornton Wilder was onto something, and perhaps his reminder of appreciative and grateful living from time to time is a good thing. But Emily seemed to flail about the stage, a bit whiny, just before my parents and brother and I are about to go back to our normal life cycle and she pissed me off. Because, sometimes recognizing the world's beauty needs to stop so the world can keep turning and being simply beautiful, instead of reflectively beautiful. It has been a beautiful trip.

The fog of Tourism

It was funny that the fog hit as soon as we awoke in Astoria, Oregon. It's funny because we had allotted two days to travel and admire the natural beauty that is the Oregon Coast. It's funny because we couldn't come up with a plan B, so there was a bit of tension sprinkled into the car ride. Was the fog in the way or part of the beauty? When your whole goal for a day and a half is to drive and appreciate beauty, real Purpose begins to feel a bit foggy. Then you get out of the car, go for a wee walk in the wood to see an old spruce tree or a lighthouse, or Devil's Churn and you ohh and ahh like the Fourth of July and you really mean it because Damn. That is just a work. And you feel awed by your own smallness as well as the world's bigness. And you feel a bit foggy about a lot.

sculptures and a troll

The Olympic Sculpture Park was a destination; we bopped in and I struggled with my inability to appreciate the giant orange traffic cones. I walked through the great steel sculpture with my brother and let his appreciation rub off on me, yet I still couldn't shake the feeling that this was just in-between space. It didn't feel like a destination, it felt like an attempt to make barrenness demand attention. I know, I am obnoxious and blind to some greater truth. When my old friend Dan happened upon the troll under the Aurora bridge, I felt more appreciative of the sculpture. I was in awe of its size and I felt a childlike appreciation of its scariness. That it rested under the Bridge of the goddess of the Dawn allowed me to imagine that stories existed which made the sculpture seem more significant. That it is was a real VW, made the monster seem more alive.

Hutmacher Estate

In Northwest North Dakota, near Watford City and the North side of Teddy Roosevelt National Park, we stopped by the renovation project of the Hutmacher estate. This sod house had been inhabited until 1979. Yup. They had a television at that point, and a deep freeze. The Hutmachers had lived in it since the beginnings of the 20th century when Papa Hutmacher decided that he didn't want to pay taxes (being a German from Russia, he had a natural disinclination to support government) so he committed himself to earning less than 500 dollars a year. They dug coal in their back 'yard', had cattle, grew a small garden and used local (and by that I mean walkable) resources like rock and sod and cardboard to build the estate that had multiple buildings. I helped deconstruct a wall (just like a good grad school student), I slung mud up on the roof to help the roofers, I applied generous linseed oil to all the wooden remnants and I ate a lot of prairie dust. The wind was angry that day, my friends, and the dirt was loose. My movie star sunglasses came in wicked handy, but I was dental flossing dirt out of my teeth for days.