i've held so many people in my suitcase heart

--the weepies, "slow pony home"

i remember

I remember milk in the yellow kitchen
I remember lemonade on the corner
I remember Dr. Pepper at the pool
I remember orange juice on the bridge
I remember Gatorade at the finish line
I remember vodka in the dorm bathroom
I remember cappuccino at the piazza
I remember mulled wine in the cold winter's snow
I remember Guinness in the basement, folk music stomping overhead
I remember chai outside the orange clay hut, flies and chickens and the wealth of "poverty"
I remember calimochos at the beach, with tank tops and sunburns and girl talk and dancing
I remember Silver Moon amber and the poetry slam, leaving early when the words hurt
I remember cab-sauv at the vineyard with an extra bottle for the cab driver
I remember Cruzan rum in the car just because it was legal
I remember lime sparkling water on the porch, the dog panting, and looking, and time standing still
I remember rice wine in the village, Naxi women playing cards
I remember lattes in mugs late in the morning, writing, and wondering...
I remember water half-frozen at my head and waking up on the ground
I remember the sips, the gulps, the burns, chokes and spills, the bitter, the sweet, the satisfaction and fizzes, the quenches and slakes and
I remember drinking it all in

te ching

"return is the movement of Way

and yielding the method of Way

All beneath heaven, the ten thousand things:
it's all born of being,
and being is born of nonbeing."


-- #40

sprang

As much as I love winter, it really is joyous to come out of hibernation, and right on time, spring sprang here in KC. Eighty degrees two days in a row! With freezing temps expected for the weekend. Perfect spring behavior.

To celebrate, I took my bare legs outside to the trolley track trail for the first intentional run in three and a half years. Sweating and panting and struggling at the 1/2 mile mark, I was bewildered to acknowledge that this body I was dragging along twice broke a six-minute mile. Glory days no more. Today, I rejoiced at making it through three 3/4-mile segments (with long, slow walks in between) and more importantly, and refreshingly, remembered how I love the feeling of running! So with that, I've finally resolved to overcome this irksome IT band that's kept my knee weak and pained since November 4, 2007. (After all, I have to complete my trifecta of masochism and someday do another marathon.... 4:02 and 4:01 must be deposed. That ain't gonna happen without some serious recalibrating.)

Elliptical, I hate to admit it but -- it's been real. I'm phasin' you OUT though. Let the real running begin again. Slowly. Someday is a long way off, and I do only have two knees.

(We'll see how I feel about all this when I wake up. Hopefully my legs will still be in operation and my feet not in my mouth.)

rollin' round the bend

Something I love about being home is the sound of the trains, which I notice usually at nighttime. I guess I've always loved trains, but I don't think that was a conscious love until I looked back through an old pre-teen journal and I had listed a bunch of things to do with my life, one being take a train across the country,"--which I kinda did coming back home from Bend. (Portland--Chicago--KC over three blissful days of rolling monotony and traveler's anonymity.)

Anyway, the continuous sounds of the trains in the night make me think of this that I read in an Anthony de Mello book:

When Brother Bruno was at prayer one night, he was disturbed by the croaking of a bullfrog.

All his attempts to disregard the sound were unsuccessful, so he shouted from his window, "Quiet! I'm at my prayers."

Now Brother Bruno was a saint, so his command was instantly obeyed. Every living creature held its voice so as to create a silence that would be favorable to prayer.

But now another sound intruded on Bruno's worship—an inner voice that said, "Maybe God is as pleased with the croaking of that frog as with the chanting of your psalms."

"What can please the ears of God in the croak of a frog?" was Bruno's scornful rejoinder.

But the voice refused to give up. "Why would you think God invented the sound?"

Bruno decided to find out why. He leaned out of his window and gave the order, "Sing!"

The bullfrog's measured croaking filled the air to the ludicrous accompaniment of all the frogs in the vicinity.

And as Bruno attended to the sound, their voices ceased to jar, for he discovered that, if he stopped resisting them, they actually enriched the silence of the night.

With that discovery Bruno's heart became harmonious with the universe, and, for the first time in his life, he understood what it means to pray.

And, on another note, also this...


and as the original poster of this video says, sorry for the sideways-ness. The sound quality is quite good though.

l e a r n from the way
the wild flowers
g r o w

--matthew 6:28

close encounters

I'd heard of this man before and enjoyed his music when I caught it but never made an effort to get real acquainted--until--we were acquainted two nights ago. A favorite lovely lady had four free tickets to his show and we field tripped westward into Kansas college town territory. A few months ago listening to "So Runs the World Away" online I never, never, anticipated I'd be hanging out with this dude on his tour bus. And now I have Ritter fever. Forget Justin. It's all about Josh now.


Like when I wrote a David-Sedaris-style essay for an author imitation assignment and a year later met the man after a reading. And he read [ie, politely scanned] my imitation of him. Right over my grade school heading of name/date/name of assignment, "David Sedaris imitation," he signed his own name! omg!

It's strange and fun to realize people you read and listen to are people in fact.

hopes & prayers

Today my life idol is having major cancer surgery--at the age of THIRTY SEVEN. I don't know what is in the KC water but this makes the second of my two most favorite STA women (and the 80-millionth that our family knows??) to have breast cancer.

She's been re-reading some of her travel journals and on her blog she shared this, which she wrote while living in Central America fourteen years ago:

To me, we are alive to learn as much as we can in the time we have. We are to learn about ourselves, others, and the world we live in. We are here to have and to accomplish dreams, we are here to fail, to love, to hurt, and to be hurt. We are here to desire and to be desired. We are here to accept and to deny. We are here to find balance in ourselves and in what we do. We are here to live, I mean really live. To take chances and to not be afraid of what those chances may bring. If we don't we will never learn. And education is what makes us be and what makes us wise. Never stop learning because learning equals life.

Somewhere, there must be a lesson in all of this, but I wish there was another way to learn it.

they're BACK

My uncle's house in Dinkelsbühl

iced out & snowed in

What's a winter vacation (in the most desirable of January locations) if it doesn't get extended by four days, after two canceled flights, three rebookings, two feet of snow and a free drink racked up at Alterra through it all? Not a proper winter vacation, that's what.

Lake Michigan shoreline, Feb. 2, 2011

And what's a best friend's wedding if it doesn't include the bride's radiant joy, a reunion of too-much missed faces & a trip to Wolski's? Not a best friend's wedding in Milwaukee, that's for sure.

resonance

Catching up on my Reader, I see that Dave Eggers was in Beijing for a literary festival. Reading What is the What and Zeitoun probably would have been instructional/a good idea for me.

An excerpt from the interview:

I was really hesitant. I had no expertise in this...I hadn’t written a biography and I hadn’t thought of writing someone’s story like that.

I was naive because I thought it would take me a year to do it, and I promised him that it would be a year, and I was just a fool. It took four years. And the thing that drove it at that point was that you’re obligated to an actual person. If this were a book about Lincoln or something, I could have given it up and no one would have cared. But there was a guy waiting for the book on the other end. It was really difficult, that process, and knowing how many times I wanted to give up, and not having that option, was really hard.

And then when it was finally finished, I vowed never to do it again.

… Then I came across the Zeitoun story a few months after What is the What came out. And then I thought, "This story is incredible and no one knows it. And if I don’t write it it won’t be written." And then I again I was a fool. I thought, "This one for sure will only take a year to write. It’s domestic, and it just happened last year, and how long could it possibly take?"

But I’m an idiot when it comes to that stuff.

[from The Beijinger]

i feel love

I've been meaning to really for real organize my pictures in a navigable format for interested parties to peruse. This means I opened Picasa and looked through them myself without doing much by way of organization.

Currently I'm sitting not far (I mean, I can see it out the window here) from where the Sheboygan River spits out into Lake Michigan at Nana's. And since in Kansas City, I reflected on my Wisconsin heritage, I should, while in Wisconsin, reflect on my farther back heritage. Which means I'll post this picture and leave it at that (that Nana's, and therefore, my, people came from Slovenia) because it's 1am, and even though I'm rather wide awake, my brain cares not to think too much at this hour except to be amused by my motley bloodline, a fact mi nombre belies.

Slovenia Pavilion, World Expo in Shanghai, June 2010

'tis the season

no longer, unfortunately, despite the mounds of snow and chilly temps.

In early December we joined the KC Wildlands' effort to remove non-native red cedar trees from the land a tad east of town, and tromped through some tall grass looking for just the one non-native red cedar for our living room. We all agreed this was a good lookin' tree, hacked it, dragged it, shoved it into the car and set off on our merry way. (Oh, Christmas humor..)

Pulled out the back of the station wagon, our dear tree, so quaint and natural and perfect in its non-native habitat, suddenly dwarfed the back door. Thanks to some heavy duty shears and Dad's eye for aesthetics, the tree got lopped to about a third of its size and set up in the living room. Out house smelled like Kansas City wildlands, and the thing guzzled a whole tree stand of water its first night at home. Luckily the picture doesn't show the blunt branch ends that resulted from the pruning.

Ain't it cute in all its natural non-native perfect imperfection though?

missourah

'mafraid I might be more Missouri than I thought.

Some recent field trips through the northwestern corner, past the hometown of Sir Jesse James (site of cross country district championship win '02, hollerr), through slow rolling hills, past signs for the Stetson store, boot company, and Pendleton outlet (Gainfully employed, I would've stopped at each.), stirred my pioneer heart with fondness for the state I've never really accepted as my own.

Badger-bred and cheese-curd-cultured, I never felt much entrenched here in this state. As a first-generation Missourian I bled neither black and gold nor blue and red for the MU-KU rivalries and didn't know I-70 went east til I started heading there for meets, visits to Marcy's grandparents in Marshall, and State soccer cheerleading. Da YooPee? Yah, I know where dat is, but Rolla what? I know more about Wisconsin's geography and have seen more of it than Miss MO's. Kids here titter at my parents' long As and make fun of the way all we Kellys say "Wisconsin." Wisg-onsin. Not Wes-Consin. What are you, from Missourah?

But then I started to wonder when some nerds at Marquette freshman year thought I had a drawl. And my recent little drives got me thinking about Missouri's place in our fine country, at the edge of the plains and prairie, where the west began, and where south still meets midwest. Yeah, y'uall this is the heartland.

I have to say, I quite like my bicultural formation. Alternating between Spotted Cow and Boulevard, fish fries and barbeque. I can dig it. I'll don my Stetson, pick up my boots in St. Joseph, spin my spurs and hop on that Oregon Trail. With summer sausage in my wagon.

measured in music

Around this time last year I listened to the All Songs Considered podcast "The Year's Best Music," looking back on listeners' picks for 2009, and can't believe that the "Best Albums of 2010" has shown up in my iTunes library. I remember vividly spending the bus ride to Hangzhou at the start of winter break listening to The xx, Phoenix, Edward Sharpe, Metric. Most songs I would hear and ask Megan, "Have you heard...?" to which she would give me a seriously? look and say "Yyyeah..."

And now here I am, a total 180 from a Chinese bus, lounging in my nana's sun-stained arm chair in the comfort of the living room, already listening and looking back to 2010, including The National, Yeasayer, Sleigh Bells, Mumford & Sons, The Black Keys, and others I wasn't cool enough to catch.

everything i've ever wanted

Ft. Collins brewery Odell asks:

Ever been in a warm, cozy cabin and had a secret desire to get snowed in?

YES. and with you, o Isolation Ale, especially. The label itself has me packing a rucksack and snowshoes for a remote Montana cabin. A massive fireplace, beer chilled in the snow drift, and man in flannel await.

nostalgia

Yesterday my female roommate and I went to Hooper's to watch the Rose Bowl, which my pop was watching in person in California. The night before he and his buddies sought out a watering hole (no!) and were approached by a Badger-clad woman.

"Are you the guys that had the mud-wrestling party?"

Of course.

"I broke my leg there!" and she reached for her phone to call a mutual friend who had broken her tail bone at the same event.

My mother was telling me this exchange, giggling.

me: I wish I was that cool in college...
mom, boastful: We went through five half-barrels on Erin Street at one of our parties. You never had any keggers at your apartment?
me: no...
mom: Oh. [Clearly disappointed in me.] Sore-y!

not.

For a writing class I had to write an I-Search paper and chose the question What were my parents like in college? Raucous research conducted at a reunion ski trip yielded an entertaining write, and read. But the missing conclusion:

Way cooler than me.