Settling

Anacortes ferry terminal

As I write this I'm sitting upstairs in my apartment watching the angriest cloud I have ever seen slither its way shopward over the water. Out one window I can hear Luis, the Chilean gardener, weed whacking in the back. Out the other, a woman I've never seen before is doing something I don't understand to the gravel pathway with the non-prongy side (official terminology) of a rake. Ole is replacing the rotted steps from the shop out into the yard. (I swear this will be the year I finally place his accent.) Syd's son Matt, having arrived yesterday afternoon from LA, is hauling boxes of pots into the studio. Penny is in the shop. Syd is waxing pots and glazing pots and checking her kiln and throwing the ball for Baxter with one hand while she, I don't know, juggles meat cleavers with the other. (The woman can do anything, and does.)

The cabin and part of the shop yard from my window.

I am the only person in the thriving ecosystem of the shop--the only person on the entire island, it feels like--with nothing to do. There are no orders in the shipping room for me to package and Syd isn't leaving for Europe until May, so what my mom's friend Sharon calls my "Boss Mama duties" have yet to kick in. I don't like having no responsibilities when everyone around me is busy. I feel useless, and that's something I've felt enough already in my life. I've tried making little lists for myself, but when you have nothing that needs to be done those little lists don't serve much purpose. I'm remembering that I felt this way a lot last summer, that people were always coming and going, mowing and sawing and raking upside down, while I squirreled myself away upstairs and pretended that I was a contributing member of society. I lived--and will again this year, I'm sure--for five o'clock, when the shop closes and everyone has gone home and the quietness finally validates my inactivity for the day.

Where I am right this second.

Later, if the weather holds, I may ride my bike up the hill to the hardware store to find something for the planter on my balcony. Or maybe I'll head down to the beach to look for rocks shaped like hearts. Most likely, though, I'll stay exactly where I am, drinking tea and reading and watching episode after lead-heavy episode of Breaking Bad.

Things will pick up--probably not until the middle of June, but they will pick up--and I will carve myself a little place in the general goings-on here.

Until then, though, you know where to find me.

No apartment of mine is complete without a Sounders poster.

The Unbuilding of My Fortress

I wrote this a couple weeks ago but was too embarrassed by my dweebishness to post it. Which is stupid, really, because if you've ever so much as looked at me you know I'm the nerdiest, bookwormiest person who has ever lived. I am dork, hear me roar. Let the judgment commence.


I leave for Orcas Island in just over two weeks. For the past few days I've been making my packing lists (because, of course, I'm never quite so happy as when I'm making lists). This evening I began amassing belongings on my floor--piles of toiletries, photographs, kitchen supplies--and I was having a grand ol' time...until I reached for my blue plastic milk crate and started filling it with my books.

I don't need to explain (though it appears that's exactly what I'm going to do) what a profound role books play in the small, contained universe that is my life. Each book is its own galaxy, each with its own planetary system and gravitational pull. Each one hollows out a place for itself in my life and settles there so naturally that I become the words I've read. Every page is an intergalactic compass and, at the same time, a tether that keeps me firmly rooted to myself.

You could say I like to read.

I have to be away from this face for five months.

When I began pulling books off my shelves (mind you, many of these are books I haven't even read yet), I became acutely aware that something just wasn't right. The feeling of weightless anticipation I'd been experiencing moments before was gone, and now each time I took I breath I felt like I was inhaling concrete. Unable to pinpoint what had caused the shift, I kept going. I reached for book after book and in a matter of minutes the crate was full and I was piling books on the carpet. When I finished, I leaned back against my dresser and stared at the battleground of belongings that was my floor. My cat wandered into the room and made herself comfortable on a pile of unfolded clean clothes. I called out to her and she lifted her head, yapping like the good little dog she thinks she is. I mention my cat here because one of the only occasions on which she offers forth a sustained period of affection is when any sort of packing is taking place. Having things in disarray unsettles her (at least, it unsettles me and thus I have decided that this is how she feels, too) and she needs to be right in the middle of it so she can monitor the situation. She thinks being sweet to me will make me stay. She doesn't want to be left behind, which is, invariably, the intended consequence of packing.

It was while I was watching my cat trying to plant herself amid the chaos that I realized I was doing the exact same thing. My books have always home to me, and I maintain that I can make myself comfortable anywhere in the world as long as I have them near me. But as I stacked them inside my crate I felt like I myself was being displaced and tucked away, and I was instantly and deeply lonely.

There are three books I take with me whenever I move anywhere: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and a book of poems by Ted Kooser called Delights & Shadows. These were lying at the top of the crate and my gaze shifted from their bent and faded covers to my cat, then back to the bent and faded covers. I took another breath of concrete. Deciding I couldn't live for two more weeks in a state of emotional limbo, I began unpacking the books, one by one, until each one was back in its rightful place on my shelves. When I finished, the room felt bigger. The air felt like air again. Taffy nodded her consent and curled her head under her paw before going back to sleep. "Yes, baby," I said, sliding the crate out the door so I wouldn't have to see it. "All's right in the universe now."

Poetry Corner Monday

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I have read this poem over a hundred times. I can see where each line spills into the next even with my eyes closed, can understand that these words lay bare the most basic elements of the human condition while at the same time tugging at an emotion so raw, so private and specific, that it seems they couldn't possibly make sense in the context of anyone's else's life.

It's the only poem I've ever memorized. One hundred times and it still makes me cry.

After Years

Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina

as he stood in the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell.

A Beautiful, Beautiful Thing

This link is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me:

Have the Timbers Won Yet?

Some Things Before I Go

I'm leaving for Orcas in less than two weeks, and before I go I have a list of requests that I would like (both of) you to consider while I'm gone. Please and thank you very much.

1. Don't die. Seriously. Do not.

2. Don't suffer an emotional breakdown--or a breakdown of any kind--that cannot be remedied over email or Skype.

3. Don't wrap your car around a tree (even if it is the tree's fault) or decide to jump off the roof of a four-story building just to see if you can recite the entire alphabet before you hit the ground.

4. If someone could pop over every couple weeks to make sure my parents are clipping my cat's claws, that would be great. Thanks.

5. Stream Netflix on as many devices as possible simultaneously. I may have the world's most temperamental internet that goes down if I so much as stand up to turn on the light, but I will sleep a lot more soundly at night knowing that the people who mean the most to me have full access to everything I want to watch.

6. Photoshop me into all your pictures.

7. If you hold auditions for my replacement, I don't care what she looks or acts like--she could be a pyromaniac with, like, seven arms and a necklace of human teeth--but please, for the love of God, make absolutely certain she's not a Timbers fan.

8. Please let me know when Orange is the New Black starts up again.

9. Brace yourselves for long, rambling letters from the shop that feature such quaint touches as a running tally of the number of people who comment on my being left-handed, as well as ink splotches that result from the phone scaring the bejeesus out of me as I'm writing. (Meaghin, who has the misfortune of receiving my most inane island letters, can attest to this.)

10. I'm going to just miss the lilacs blooming in my yard (a fact that devastates me), so please go out of your way to smell every lilac bush you possibly can.

11. Forgive me for not responding to missed calls and texts in a timely manner. Due to some cruel, totally unhilarious cosmic prank, my phone will ring and I can receive texts at my apartment, but when I answer the line goes dead and if I try to text back the messages don't send. I will do my best to catch up on non-computer correspondence whenever I'm in Eastsound, where my cell service is (mostly) reliable. If it's an emergency, hang up the damn phone and call 911, you crazy person!

12. I will be spending a lot of time by myself in my apartment, so I welcome any and all TV and movie and music suggestions. That's a lie--I welcome most TV and movie and music suggestions. I can only watch glaciers melting so many times on Planet Earth before my poor little polar bear-loving heart implodes on itself.

13. COME VISIT! Pleeeeeaaaaase! I'll have plenty of room and I promise to ply you with chocolate muffins and garlic parsley walnut bread and picnics on the beach.

I think that about does it. I love you all and I will miss you so much. If anyone needs me for any reason, just say the word and I will be on the next ferry home. Truly.