book arts

The Minneapolis Center for Book Arts is right by the Megabus stop. I am waiting in a coffee shop facing a glass cabinet full of slim volumes that their authors all, one exciting day, received in the mail as proof that they had indeed published a book.

I am suspicious of most books that have pictures of attractive women on their covers. Unless it is Divisadero, because the image is made interesting in its mirroring.

Like so:

When are you allowed to call yourself a writer? I think I am because all of my jobs since 2008 have been for stringing words together. But if I were not so lucky?

My dystopian impulse assumes that one day, all books will be locked behind glass.

What is a book.

I have a large backpack and a cumbersome laptop bag, so I am afraid to wander too much in this building. I could knock things over and cause trouble.

Dear friends. Let's build a lighthouse in Montana, and wait for the sea to find us there.

This week has been like a dream, crawling from one bizarre task to the next. Today I am in a strange city with no time to really explore it, after a long night wandering a hospital, befriending nurses, breathing in time with the beeping of a thousand different machines, trying not to gawk at the neurosurgical patients with wires and tubes streaming from their skulls like futuristic hair.

I want more than anything else to be home in Wisconsin, stirring up the strange brew that our politics have become. I am trying not to be scared about the future, but I am feeling particularly fiercely in love with/loyal to the concept of "a Wisconsin" now that its fate is in the hands of people whose values are not mine. This is probably normal for political losers. I just feel like there's more to hash out, and I feel personally responsible for fixing it all, somehow. This is narcissism, truely, but I'm not alone.

The Odyssey is a story I've been obsessed with since high school. So naturally it should be the subject of my first tattoo. Better than Icarus, all that yawing tumbling angst, right right right? Maybe there will be more. Maybe not. This one took me so long from conception to realization, I might not have that persistence in me again.

The pain was awful, I thought the needle was going to buzz right through me at times. David Foster Wallace helped me pull through, bless the man, and the sweet strains of a metal band that sounded kind of like Donald Duck. I mentioned this and my tattoo artist said I'd ruined "Skeleton Witch" or something like that forever. When I got home, wobbly-legged, I messed up my wrapping bandage right away but had brown mailing tape at home so now I am bandaged up like an express package and smell like a post office and various other grime I will have to live with for now, as I cannot shower yet. In the morning begins an awkward cycle of wash, moisturize, do not scratch or pick or form a scab.

Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus, tell us in our time, lift the great song again.

There's a pause most people take that wards off such disasters.

This city is crawling with poets who know me. I haven't written anything worthwhile in months, so I start to feel panicked and acidy when I see old professors or the one curmudgeonly jazz poet who remembers me from my high school competition days and says really encouraging things about how I can totally make it without an MFA. I managed to bump into both varieties yesterday and acid, acid, acid.

I also took the garbage out yesterday and was two seconds too late to stop the back door from swinging closed. I forget for a critical moment that my building has auto-locking outer doors. None of my neighbors was home. All the doorbells seem broken, anyway. I learned I can climb to my back porch by standing on a railing and grabbing another railing and just hoisting. But the door I never lock was locked anyway. I sat up there until I got cold.

Luckily I'd already finalized my plan to meet some friends at the top of State St. for dinner and a Book Festival reading, so I just started walking, phoneless walletless, wearing not quite enough, passing the big "legalize pot" festival and accompanying fire dancers on Library Mall. About 45 minutes, I think. I got to the rendezvous just in time, bummed dinner off one friend and a scarf off the other. Mary was crashing on my couch, and had a car, so we drove back afterward, and knocked on the front door until the downstairs neighbor who I never see wordlessly let me in. I think he hates everyone, and has potential to become the reluctant but heartwarming friendship you see in Sean Connery movies.

I really enjoyed climbing up and down from my porch. I have this fantasy of coming and going that way all the time. Or forcing friends to do so.

Went to Minnesota to see some long-losts. My brother would have been there but instead we traded places and probably passed each other on the interstate near Osseo. The leaves are starting to go-go-go. My friend Amelia took this photo of my butt and my favorite sweater, then we climbed a mountain and ate too many desserts and became lumps fused with the floor, occasionally saying things.


Just before Baraboo on the numb-butt restless part of the drive home, all the sunflowers were like this:


Next paycheck I am getting a low-budget camera (the above photo is someone else's) and going back to see them shrivel up and die. Tonight, a lot of writing of the least fun kind.

yes

Crockpots are magical creatures. Take heap of browning apple slices, handful of water, plenty of cinnamon, and one long, amnesiac day later you come home to a nice surprise. Better than the housewife with the martini. Hi honey, would you like a quiet bowl of September before bed? Yes.

---

I have been reading the end of Ulysses repeatedly this week, Molly Bloom's cascade of "yes" et cetera. Aloud. This is difficult because there is no punctuation, and sometimes the stream-of-consciousness diverts midsentence. But a rhythm emerges slowly from the mess and the "yes" pulls you through it to the end. Yes, I should own this book, yes I will Yes.

---

Last night I dreamed about a plane crash. I think there were many loops, because at the end I knew it was going to happen, and I looked out my window in time to see the whole nose tilting down. Somehow I survived and there was no falling or dream dying to wake me up. I woke up thinking more about Lost than today's anniversary, though. And I think it was fed by a friend telling me about an airplane dream. That plane landed safely on State Street. I don't like planes much lately because they require a specific destination. I hate choosing and I hate sitting on my ass in a cold tin can.

I want to go to there

The PR director for the International Crane Foundation is going to South Africa for 18 months to manage a wildlife reserve as a volunteer. She knows I've been there, and we were talking about where exactly she'd be. It felt strange - beautiful - spitting out old place names I haven't said in more than a year. "Oh, by the Drakensberg?" Those are the mountains that inspired Tolkien's Misty Mountains. "The Giant's Castle? Howick? Yes, I know the place." Lesotho is close by. I miss Lesotho with an odd ferocity for a place I only spent a few days in. I question my motives for loving it - if I didn't hate the words, I would probably unthinkingly call it "remote," "exotic," or even worse, "cute." But also, "very poor," but also, "little crime, little rape, overbrimming with trust," which meant that after 6 months in Cape Town, the contrast was both astounding and welcome. At the end of our talk, A says, "My door is open, if you're ever up that way and need a place to stay."

So the rest of today I've been daydreaming about finding someone who will pay me to go back and write about efforts to save the wattled cranes amid the government's efforts to redistribute land to people who were cheated of it during apartheid. Poverty of persons versus poverty of cranepersons. Someone with more credentials may already be writing that story, though. And I think I'd probably need more than a 2-week paid vacation (which I haven't even earned yet) to do it.

In search of the Fountain of Youth

There is a non-blurry version of this one, but in it we are all really obviously sweaty.





Cemetery seahorses



Ernest Hemingway's writing studio-cum-mancave.



Sunset festival in Key West



Church in Key West



Our sweaty, suffocating homestead on Sugarloaf Key.



Powerlines



Giant prawn?



GIANT PRAWN!



Dragon fruit



Torrential downpour, with camera flash on.



Everglades with rain



That emu doesn't care at all that I'm about to kick its ass.



Shells playing cards.

Yeah, I don't care how long this post is. Some of the horizontals seem to be cut off, so for full views and more photos I recommend going to my Flickr page.

If I delete this later it's because I used it in a project.

Independence Day in the Florida Keys coral reef system. All you can hear besides the motion of the water is the tiny crackling scratch of thousands of fish eating coral. If you look up from the sea floor, above the waterline, you will see twenty other tourists face-down in the water, invisible except for their snorkels and luminescent flotation devices, looking for all the world like giant fishing lures. Days before, NOAA reports a 61-80 percent chance of tar balls coming this way. There is a sense that one should be gobbling up as much of this experience as possible, in case it is the last chance.

Florida, day 4

Back from Key West. Both vile and amazing. Today started with snorkeling on the reef ($30 and worth every penny, I would have gone back for another round if we'd had the time) and ended with fireworks on the beach. Other stuff between. Bird sanctuary yesterday, the house where Hemingway wrote half his works and petted six-toed cats, the bar he spent every night in and which is now kind of vile. Sadly. Lots of tasty fish. & more to say, but I am saving some of it for a more formal piece, and anyway we drove straight back after the fireworks and must take M to the airport in four hours and are very tired and filthy and ready to sleep in an apartment instead of a 90+ degree tent with a rainfly on it and three people's worth of body heat. And chiggers.

Miami, 2

We drove down to South Beach just to see it. That was enough. Best club name: "Lord Balfour." It looked like every other club there, though. $15 for parking, so we didn't even stop - just turned around and crawled (congestion and idiots dashing into the street, sigh) back the other way. If tourism ever collapsed here, the city would have nothing, it is a boneless blob of places to live and places to spend your money and places to work as a waitress.

Everglades today. Rain all day. Beautiful, of course. And now the rain has pulled all the heat and misery out of the air.

Tomorrow we head to Key West to camp and snorkel and poke at Hemingway's old house. Storms predicted. The idea of being, in some ways, in the middle of the ocean connected only by a thin strip of causeway...I predict moments of agoraphobia. It's exciting.

I'll have to put up photos when I get back.

Miami, 1

Miami. Fetid air, pelicans and mangrove. Sea urchins just sitting there in the Bay of Biscayne waiting to be manhandled, little bone mouths and spines all grasping for the palm of your hand. Ineffectual. Water warm as a bath. Three nerdy girls: we bemoan the general dearth of ocean-safe laminated books. R almost loses her glasses to a strong wave, we fumble for them on the seafloor, blinded by the salt. Find, eventually. Salt residues on the skin. Breathing through air that is mostly water, air that clings like a plastic film on the skin. Feet scraped smooth from walking bare on sand. In the night, distant lightning flicker-flash silent over the nearby ocean, from R's balcony we see big condo towers dark (empty), an airplane perilously close, the bone and muscle insides of the clouds. A canal behind every apartment building, leading eventually to the sea. Everyone has a boat. From above, the land looks like a green sponge, soaked in blue. It is a wonder that the buildings manage to stand at all.

Hongdae, Seoul

Korea and Japan are both big on cranes as symbols of happiness. In the country, in Korea, you can see them wheeling about in the sky (white-naped? red-crowned?), untroubled by bad news. If you told them about the threats they face, they'd probably laugh it off. The Japanese word for crane is "tsuru."

My biggest Asia souvenir besides the photos and the memories is a piece of crane art. The only other things I bought were food and $1 chopsticks and some insane postcards.

In Wisconsin, the sandhills flap flap overhead when I go on long bike rides, when I'm driving from point A to point B. Always part of a journey.

Should I recuse myself from further stories about cranes? Because yes, I kind of love them.

Everything you need in life could fit in one of these.

My body thinks it's the future still

I am back from wandering east Asia. Left a trail of chopstick wrappers, subway tickets, leaky/dried-up pens and good-bye hugs in my wake. Some sort of summary or collection of anecdotes or observations or 4 of 500 photographs will appear at some point.

A room of tatami mats and sore knees, a table crammed with fried pork and tofu and horse meat (the kind of thing a person has to try if she is only 85% vegetarian and which is, admittedly, delicious) and super chocolate brownies, four Japanese conversationalists, two American teachers, two gawk-eyed tourists, lots of laughter, rain on a tin roof. Robin and I teach the Japanese "party foul" and "jail bait," after they tell us Hal has already taught them "cougar," and "sugar mama." 24 hours in the country, and she still has not knocked anything over. I have knocked over wineglasses (party foul), and several small old people who just bow and say the Japanese or Korean equivalent of "no problem." At least I think this is what they said. I have a photo of me next to a woman who is way shorter than me. I am big and klutzy and I keep forgetting that it's rude to yawn.

There is absolutely no point in talking about how awesome the next ten days are going to be until they've actually happened.

Google Talk excerpts: planning your vacation to Japan

Hal: I'll send you a cheat sheet for airport signage, how to get to train stations, etc.

me: I just want to minimize stress once I'm out of the country

k

cool!

I am excited to have this cheat sheet

just for having it

Hal: that sounds like a solid plan to me

me: "hello, I am a tourist, dur dur dur"

Hal: watch as my seemingly innocuous phrasebook nets you a sudden career change as a mail order bride

me: haha!

as long as you teach me how to say "pay only in dollars"

Hal: ドルだけで払える

Where days bend and straighten

This girl just gave me a wretched case of cabin fever.

"spanish comes straight out of a frying pan, jumping and spitting. it dresses it’s Rrrrsss in fur. portuguese sounds like a russian solider set on staying south for life. the sun rose for a minute in lisbon and then got swallowed up like a clementine by some mean clouds. all the streets slouched and crouched near the shore. the only things that seemed to hold most of the buildings together was blue tile and laundry lines. i ate dried apricots and drank coffee with construction workers underneath the eaves of a cathedral when i got lost trying to get up to lisbon’s only castle."