men i don't know inside my brain

You know what I realized yesterday? When I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (which is as often as possible), I picture James Thurber, or some Thurber hero. I think it has to do with the era, and the clothing, and the age of the man. It would have to be Thurber in a bad mood, though, becuase Prufrock seems so much less able to laugh at himself. Strange, strange thing, the way a mind works.

Speaking of my mind working (ish), I forgot my ATM PIN for the third time in four months or so, and also forgot where I wrote it down, or possibly threw that away. And now that David Foster Wallace is gone, my constant mixing him up with Scott Russell Sanders is more of a problem. Then again, maybe I'll be able to distinguish them now. It has nothing to do with their writing, it's just that they both have three names, and I discovered them at the same time. And it's not really mixing them up, because I would never call SRS by DFW's name. I just call them both Scott Russell Sanders. I'm just waiting for the day when David Hyde Pierce, Michael Ian Black, or Stephen Jay Gould enters the mix. Oh, lawd.

I do not believe in the end of blessings.

Today is the day for a haircut, and maybe the purchase of a new Bible, and a sweet-potato-and-black-bean quesadilla, and a trip to Goodwill if I'm feeling especially indulgent.

Yesterday I went to the movies too early, so I walked to the library and got some books on comics. I owed four dollars in late fees, but only from one day of lateness because it was two DVDs and they are two dollars per day late per DVD, so it wasn't as grave as I thought. The movie was beautiful, but I didn't quite get the ending, so maybe one day I'll read the book. Maybe not. Erin went with me and rode her bike home, and I pulled up behind her at a stoplight. I came home and ate homemade shells and cheese with breadcrumbs on top, then graded an impressive paper.

The day before that I went to the first meeting for Disciple Bible study, and the leader is the father of a friend from college, which was a surprise and made me feel even better about joining the study.

On Saturday, I spent the day in the upstairs of a coffee shop downtown reading and researching, and the evening at a reggae festival and then a terrible redneck bar about which my curiosity is now soundly sated.

On Friday, I found the herbal drink I've been searching for, Celestial Seasonings' Roastaroma, at the co-op. I was afraid they didn't make it any more.

In two days and a few hours I'll be on the road to Cooperstown, New York, for a wedding reception.

Two weeks after that is the public library book sale,
and then I'm reading at a reading,
and then it's Halloween and I'm going to Greensboro for the Avett Brothers,
and then it's Writers' Week,
and then it's Thanksgiving and Christmas,
and then AWP Chicago with Art Spiegelman,
and then it's almost time to start dreaming about summer and maybe a move downtown.

So who cares if I'm better at having ideas than implementing them? Who cares if I don't have a boyfriend or a date, and if one of my classes is not well, and I'm probably not going to enter that one great writing contest? Everything is the picture of perfection, and the way things are is a perfect way for them to be. I don't mean I don't want to change. I don't mean there's no better way; in fact it's the kind of perfect that can only get better. I just mean this is perfect and for once I know it.

Rachel Writes a Blog Post

I'm going to this Bible study tonight, and it is going to last 34 weeks. That's thirty-four weeks. Longer than anything I've ever done continuously, with the possible exclusion of school, which is only longer by a couple of weeks. I have never met or seen any of the other people in this Bible study. I have glanced briefly at the workbook, years ago. And the people will probably be older than me and talk often about their children and family life, and I will not identify with that, but for some reason I'm very excited about this study, so it will take a pretty terrible group to make me leave. I have always heard about this study and book and how it changes everyone's lives, and now for the first time it is working with my schedule and I'll live in the same place long enough to do it all, or most of it. I feel as though I'm getting down to business. Finally. But it could always not be for me--that happens all the time, everyone but me loves something. I hold my mind ajar. We will see.

In other news, I saw Burn After Reading and laughed and realized I am that woman who talks in movies and wondered when that happened. It was very funny, very well-acted, with lots of good scenes, but they didn't add up to much of a movie. As I'd been forewarned, the Coens and I are still OK. I would recommend that you wait and rent it or, as the kids do these days, Netflix it.

I have pulled off the coup of the decade in my poetry class, with permission. I "wrote" an entire poem of eleven stanzas using only found text from the Reader's Digest Science Reader from 1963. If I can continue to write poems by stealing lines and have professors say it's a great idea, I am switching genres. Not really. I keep telling myself I'm here for a challenge, I'm going to research and write this book, I'm not going to fall back on memoir, and I'm going to like it, and so is everyone else. Of course, when one has never had a class in research, one wonders how to proceed beyond the library. Maybe I could contract someone to do the interviews and stuff. Except I would still get to travel and meet people, just not have to take notes or anything.

I started reading French Women Don't Get Fat. When I typed that, I put "far" instead of "fat," which makes the sentence funny but not true. It's surprisingly readable, and I look forward to putting its concepts into practice. I am also savoring The Moviegoer, sometimes reading sentences repeatedly because I like them so much.

Two lost things someone should write: the second half of Aristotle's Poetics, in which he probably wrote about comedy (the half we have is about tragedy); and accounts of mortals who were welcomed into the Olympian community--according to Edith Hamilton, this happened to several humans, but once they went to Olympus, they disappeared from literature. What was their life like up there? When I say someone should write these, I mean me. So no stealing.

Tie Up the Cows, Maw!

I haven't bought bread and batteries or put together an emergency kit. I have, however, filled some containers with water and my car's tank with gas. I just don't know what to make of this. Classes are canceled, but they also get canceled when there's a quarter-inch of snow. So just how bad is this going to be?

Nothing to do but wait. I have plenty of food and stuff, and my cell phone and car. But still, how weird. The last one I remember that did anything was Fran, and we were out of school for a week because power was out all over, and we did word puzzles by candlelight. Not so bad. And now I get to see if I can do it as an adult.

This Is Just to Say

that Art Spiegelman is the keynote speaker for AWP 2009! ART SPIEGELMAN! Chicago, here I come. I think I would like to go ahead and get a ticket and hotel room just because if I miss this, I will cry for forty days. ART SPIEGELMAN! I guess it's time to buy Maus, too, so I can get it signed. ART SPIEGELMAN! I. Am going. To see. Art. Spiegelman. ART SPIEGELMAN!

I Can't Win. But Luckily It's Not a Competition.

I'm back in Wilmington now, just getting used to the new/old rhythms and responsibilities. My body doesn't remember this place; the sand shifts as I walk on it, while the mountains always stood firm. The air is thick and wet, the sun goes down so early, and I'm just now not too stiff for yoga (which I skipped for the summer in favor of hiking). It's strange, albeit delightful, to read until midnight--in Montana, I always got caught up in something social instead. So little time now, for just hanging out and doing nothing. Always a lesson plan or a workshop piece or a library trip looking over my shoulder disconcertingly until I do it. I'm glad to be back with my clothes and kitchen and bed and friends, and praise the Lord! I actually write every day! But this summer I just got another magnet under my skin, pulling me toward yet another place I'll always miss. I knew this would happen--while I was there, I thought about being here, and now that I'm here, as I predicted, I'm obsessed with Montana. I wonder if I'll ever stop doing this to myself, going to places knowing I can't stay, and then I wonder if I even want to.

Rocky Mountain Fever

Either Audubon or Muir called Glacier National Park a place with "care-killing scenery," and that's what it is. When work is ridiculous and tiring, I forget it when I step outside and see the mountains. The Blue Ridge is (are?) really nothing in comparison. We have this peaceful coexistence thing going with the big-horn sheep, the marmots, the Columbian ground squirrels (who sound like birds and are nicknamed whistle-pigs), and we just let awe take over in case of bears and moose. I saw a moose swimming across the lake one day, only its head above the water.

My motto for the summer is "The world needs all kinds of people." Slow hikers and non-hikers in addition to hard-core, race-ya-to-the-top hikers. Reserved alongside gregarious, sweet next to salty. We can't do without each other, no matter how one type dominates in certain settings. And if one's gifts are private and hidden rather than obvious to all, they're just as valuable and dazzling as the easily-spotted ones. This comes, as most of my insights do, after a childish fight with the way things are. I got here and felt like a slow-hiking, taciturn fuddy-duddy. It took me a while to realize those first two terms don't make me inferior to anyone who walks fast or talks a lot. Hence the motto.

I had planned a much grander blog post, having waited so long to write it (the internet at the hotel is--shudder--dial-up, so I'm now in Canada, in the parking lot of a Safeway, which for some reason has WiFi). I think you've got the gist of my summer so far, grand or not. I'm sending you the wind on the lake, the reflection of the trees, a patch of snow the shape of South America, someone eating a bug on the front porch, profoundly inane conversation, sweet fatigue, and knowing on the steep way up that you get to take it easy on the return. I'm going to try to get some pictures up, a lame simulacrum being better than nothing. I can't really see them, so I've picked three more or less at random. Enjoy.