From the North Country

Back from Minnesota, and glad. Highlights:

-I loved the girls on the trip! It was so much fun to hang out with them for five days and get to know some other English major girls better. The three I roomed with had me laughing all the time - it was wonderful.

-The landscape, which was like Lars and the Real Girl. I love that movie. L.O.V.E. And better stop before I give in to the urge and watch it again for the fourth time since December.

-The hordes of nerds there who made me feel just a little bit less nerdy (let me state now that I am not, nor ever will be, a Battle Star Galactica fan. Thank you Lord). I felt pretty normal right up until I went to the poetry session, and loved hearing other people read their stuff and got way too excited about reading mine. In my session: a slight Korean Buddhist boy, an emo gay guy, a plump-ish, smiley, bohemian skirts girl, and a 53 year old man from a coal mining Kentucky town. They all had really good stuff.

-Finding the Mississippi river and devouring Thai food with Christine and Liz.

-The Minnesotan people. They are so nice. Like, really really nice. Like, people-helping-you-on-the-bus kind of nice. And I love their accents.

***

Now I'm back to spring in the South, spring in Alabama, spring at Samford. Which is certainly one of the loveliest things in the world. I'm much more an autumn than springtime person, but this right now is so beautiful I can't help but rejoice in all the alive and warm and soft of it all.

I took a walk yesterday in the neighborhood behind Samford, and found all sorts of lacey white and fuschia and purple and yellow loveliness, and even a pink dogwood.

And I went to the little park and laid myself down on a rock for a while, and it was good.

See the marketplace in old Algiers

send me photographs and souvenirs

Just remember when a dream appears

you belong to me

-Kate Rusby

Tomorrow, at the ungodly hour of 4:20 a.m., I will leave Samford and go to the Birmingham airport. From there I will fly to Chicago, and then to the jewel of the Mid-West: Minneapolis. What brings seven lowly Alabama English majors to the great state of Minnesota? Why, nothing less than the illustrious (cough) Sigma Tau Delta (or, STD - snicker) convention. There, along with other poor abstract souls, we will read papers on such highly relevant topics as "Renaissance Poetry: Gender and Class Identification in The Faerie Queen," and "Necrophilia and Neo-Capitalism in Poe's Early Short Stories."

Yes, we are nothing if not relevant. That's why they confine us to a convention center in Minneapolis once a year. 

On the upside: All I have to do is read some poems that I submitted at the last moment. 

On the downside: I  . . . I can't remember what poems I did submit. I mean, I know SOME of them for sure, but like I said it was last minute and I really didn't think they'd get accepted, sooo . . . this is where I can pull the "constant revision" card. Who are they to say if "Novemb

er Morning" could not be revised and evolve into "Tulips and Motorcyle Drag"?

Is it sad that my younger brother is the one who reminded me about the Mall of America when I was whining to him about what to do there? All I'd found was an art gallery (actually . . . I probably will go) and some museum on the mill industry (gag blah I'm zoning out as I type it). So, shopping and art. And reading The Education of Little Tree. All in all I'm still bitter about having to miss Dr. Brown's Amazing Folklore Class tomorrow, but who am I to refuse a University Excused Absence for three whole days? 

***

In other news, here is the best I can do as far a haircut photos go. Mac Photo Booth pictures always end up looking emo and self-conscious. 

I hope I can find some sort of internet connection up there in the wilds of Minnesota, and fill you all in on my Mid-Western adventures. Until then - peace, children. 

Scenes from Spring Break: Act One

Yesterday, I scheduled a haircut. I went with a speech prepared. The speech went something like this:

"I am ready for something new; something professional that doesn't take a lot of time . . . nothing too drastic, but I'm willing to experiment."

I recited my speech very well. Except for the one clause I left out. Guess which clause? Yes. The one that includes "drastic." 

A note of explanation. My sweet mother always kept my hair bobbed when I was growing up, so when I got older I rebelled by growing it long(er). I even made it to the tops of my shoulder blades for a while. And every year when the weather gets warm, I resist the urge to chop it off to a chin-length bob, and the urge passes, and I go back to my long-hair happiness, and resolve to let it get even longer. 

Until yesterday. My hair has not been this short in eleven years. The resolution and dedication of eleven years, gone in a few swift shears.

 And I love it. I feel older. And my hair does not look like an animal sleeps there anymore. And it's bouncy and cute and makes me want to wear a sundress all the time. And I will post photos as soon as I'm near a camera when I haven't woken up from a nap and don't look like some creepy puffy-eyed emo kid. 

***

In other news, life at home = beautifully relaxing. As a good friend pointed out, I find it hard to just stop and rest. Even my rest time has to be productive somehow: I must catch up on all those issues of Cooking Light, and organize my room, and bake all those things I can't at school, and walk the land - so that soon even relaxing becomes a to-do list, and I'm still wound up in a tight little ball. 

So I've been trying to take this friend's advice. Like today, when I dragged a quilt onto the back porch with some books and paper and pen, and wrote a poem for a while, and then just rested. Lay face down on the sun-warmed quilt and dozed. And came inside to crash on the couch and doze some more. 

Or last night when I put away my book and actually watched a movie with my family instead of glancing up every so often. And I found out that I really love High Noon and that haunting song that runs all the way through it and all future boyfriends must live up to the GCS (Gary Cooper Standard). 

Yes. Work and rest. A balance between the two. Not a constant mix of both. 

***

Also, my family has eaten dinner together every night so far. That never happens, because Jim the social butterfly is doing something every night with high school friends. [And I don't blame him - if my friends lived close, I'd be with them all the time during breaks. But my friend group comes from college. This is because I was anti-social in high school, and didn't figure out how to be anything but shy until my senior year. So by the time I found out that the kids in my class were actually pretty cool, there wasn't time for anything but a casual friendship. And this has been a really long side note.]

So it's been nice in the evenings, to sit and have supper while the sun sets and Dad and Jim quote There Will Be Blood and I laugh hysterically and Mom serves us really good food. And then we all hang out in the keeping room after dinner and watch old movies and I have the feeling this week will be one of those memories you come back to rest in later.

Do not forsake me, oh my darling

Wait, wait along

I do not know what fate awaits me

I only know I must be brave

M, I, Crooked letter, Crooked letter, I . . .

 . . . Crooked letter, Crooked letter, I, Humpback, Humpback, I. 

That's right. I spent the day in the great state of Mississippi. A land whose welcome centers flow with free Coke and root beer samples. 

Today, you see, was the first of Dr. Brown's Folklore Fieldtrips. To Freeney, MS. Where is Freeney, you ask? Well. For those ignorant of the geography of backwoods Mississippi (like . . . me), Freeney is on the Choctaw Indian Reservation, near the Silver Star Casino.  We spent 4 hours driving to a bona fide general store. And I do mean general. Everything from Choctaw rivercane baskets to screwdrivers to Moonpies to chipped crockery. It was wonderful. 

After watching a Choctaw woman (and a random non-Choctaw woman) weave and drinking Coke from a glass bottle and wandering around the store for about an hour, we left for the casino. (Oh yes, and there was a weird old man with guns in the back of his car who kept blasting this hand-held horn and telling us the origin of the phrase "honky white man." That was fun too.) And the casino was just sad. 

We didn't actually do that much. Most of the time was - well, driving. And actually, that was just fine. The best part, even. Because I was crammed in a car with four witty and delightful people, so thank you to Ellen, Josh, Jordan, and Drew for making me laugh until my stomach hurt. 

It was one of those days where you're not concerned with much besides whether to eat at Popeye's or Wendy's, where you make fun of Howitzers in front of Assembly of God churches, a gentle and lazy sort of day where you let everything happen without trying to control it too much. I like those days. I am naturally introspective, you see, and while that's not a bad thing, it makes me love the days when my mind quits its feverish churning and I look Out instead of In. 

Good company + spring weather + driving in the country = perfect way to spend a Saturday. And now I can't wait til the canoe trip in April. 

***

On the way back we were all tired and hungry like little kids after a long day at the park. I got back to my room and ate black beans with rice and salsa and whipped cream cheese (college cooking lends itself to creativity) and took a relaxing walk in the warm spring night and typed up my Folklore notes. 

And now I am ready to sleep. For a good long while. 

Go to sleep, little baby

Everybody's gone in the cotton and the corn,

didn't leave nobody but the baby

Thy wonderful works

My paper (due tomorrow) does not have a conclusion and I still have 30 pages of basket-weaving text to read (due tomorrow) and forget even doing that Thoreau reading (due tomorrow) and I am pretty sure that I will be single til I am 38. 

And yet - I'm happy. 

Or rather, thankful so deep it runs to gladness. It's one of those times where life isn't perfect or easy (um, definitive No), but the blessings are so rich you can't help but be light. There are lots of things to say Thank You God for. 

Not the least of which is that I just titled an American Lit. paper after an Auden poem ("The More Loving One: the Pattern of Male-Female Relationships in Hawthorne's Short Stories"). But you have to be an obsessive English major to see anything happy in that. 

***

Thankful things include a wonderful winter retreat where we laughed and talked and hiked and generally bonded; going to dinner with famous poet C.D. Wright (5 minutes before she takes the podium: Dr. Johnson - Want to go to dinner with us afterward? Me - YES! Yes, I'd love to. I mean, ohmygosh, that would be GREAT), moving from casual friend to real friend level with neat people, devouring my free stack of pancakes at IHOP tonight with Deb and Joanna, and getting a very productive cane-splitting lesson with Dr. Brown (eight, count 'em, eight strips). 

Tomorrow I've planned a working lunch: picnicking on the quad and stripping cane. 

The daffodils are blooming - and what's amazing is that I care this year. A year ago Spring, everything hurt. Everything. A year ago Spring, I was trapped under a boulder of depression, a rock so big that even now I think of my life in terms of Before and After. A year ago Spring, it hurt too much to think about blue sky and resurrection and what life was like Before.

The daffodils are blooming - and I care so much, it hurts. 

 He brought me up out of the pit . . .

Confessions of a young basket weaver

I'm so tired . . .

. . . of thinking about Hawthorne and Thoreau. 

It is very frustrating, this conflict within my personality. I like to cross things off lists and accomplish concrete things. But my mind is good at analyzing and theorizing and, well, playing with thoughts. If the professor doesn't require outside critical sources and you're already familiar with the text, then writing a paper requires: 

A lot of staring into space. 

Sometimes this is absorbing and fun. And sometimes . . . sometimes you spend two hours checking Facebook every two minutes. 

***

In other news:

- RUF Winter Conference this weekend. Please snow.  

- Ode to Decongestants: I do not sound like a chain smoker anymore and I can sleep at night. 

- Brother is coming to Winter Conference, too. 

- Reaching for the Invisible God by Philip Yancey. I love.

- The Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee. I do not love. 

- One hour and ten minutes +  one helpful instructor + one college girl lacking artisanal skills = one bamboo cane strip. Out of the 100 needed to weave basket. 

[I hope no one finds my bamboo. I hid it by my sorority house. And I really am not eager to journey the way of the Possum Carcass to harvest some more bamboo. Although, as Dr. Brown pointed out, it did sport a great example of omnivorous canines.]

Happiness is . . . golden flowers

So Jim came to town yesterday to see Step-Sing and we hung out all afternoon. Lunch at Sabor Latino, shopping at the Galleria, coffee at O’Henry’s. [Note: Yes, Jim likes to shop, too. A

 shopping buddy brother who still manages to be straight? I feel the lack of a sister less and less. Although it does weird me out a little bit when he’s telling me about the ridiculous sale at Gap.]

 And we sang and stepped pretty well, last night, I think. I did wake up with the Misery - a mix of some wicked Step-Sing hangover and the beginning stages of consumption.  (such is the price of performance). When I called Mom to ask what I should do to stop hacking up nastiness, Jim grabbed the phone from her.

“Anna. Wild Sweet Orange at Starbucks. With lots of honey. Like, gobs of it. I’m serious.”

 I am at Starbucks now, drinking my Wild Sweet Orange tea, and indeed I can feel the health flowing back into my bones.

***

I love Folklore but I am not excited about reading Survival of the Bark Canoe (main point: they don’t make canoes like they used to), even though I am very excited about canoeing. So instead of doing my homework, I am going to share my tulip bud with you.

 This is my tulip poplar bud. Say hello, darling

These are all its friends. Happy ribbons. Happy happy happy.

In fact, Spring (!) is almost here. Not really. But I did see my first daffodil last week and now they are everywhere. Also forsythia. 

Which was too lovely not to bring into the room. 

Hello, spring.