No Flowers Yet

As April nears, we are finally on the brink of Spring. The grass is pretty much completely green now and the sun comes up before i have to go to work and i wake with the sounds of robins. Spring is a slow process here in the midwest, but it's coming along. Only a few more weeks until the unbearable humidity and heat of a relentless summer. Hopefully i will escape the worst of it. Last night i dreamed that i was back in the Pacific Northwest, in Seattle acutally, on the shores of the Puget Sound. I was standing outside a motel room with some other people that i sensed were also from the midwest. They were very sleepy and lacked enthusasim and i got the feeling that they wanted to go back to sleep. But i was so excited! It was a nice day in Seattle and the mountains were out. The Olympic Mountains with their jagged peaks and white snow caps. Even Mount Rainier was huge and looming with snow above the city skyline. I pointed this out to them! It was all so beautiful. It's a rare thing to see these mountains, I explained to them. You can't always see them. You can't see them when it's raining. They shrugged as if seeing them was no big deal and had an air of self-righteousness like the fact that you couldn't always see the mountains made the mountains defective in some way. So the Pacific Northwest was therefore faulty. Midwesterners have this attitude about the rain up north too. They think that being around that much rain would be depressing. I have to see the sun everyday. And here, where it is sunny most of the time, everyone gets sad when it rains one day. The rain is so depressing, they moan and stare ominously out the window. In Portland it rains all the time so you just feel normal in it. And then when the sun comes out. The glorious and mysterious sun rears its shining face, you rejoice! And you do it amongst daffodils that start blooming in February and lilac bushes that are fragrant along the sidewalks right now.

Dreamers Can't Be Doers

I've been living almost entirely within my own head lately. Dreaming about future plans that may never happen, taking trips to uganda to feed hungry orphans, backpacking through the forests in British Columbia, restoring a small town Iowa firehouse into a bed and breakfast that makes the best pancakes in the state. Getting married, opening a business, having kids, a dog, a garden. Decorating a small one bedroom house with a wood-burning stove. The scenarios change often. I find myself spacing off during these daydreams, forgetting things that happened moments ago and "waking up" periodically throughout the day, looking around at a restaurant full of depressed waitresses and customers who show up in the obituaries every few weeks, and burrowing back into my mind again. I know this sounds bad. It sounds, seems, and even feels quite a bit like escapism. And i guess that's what it is. I've always been a dreamer. I remember one time in first grade i was sitting at my desk, just thinking, going over all kinds of adventures and questions in my little head. My teacher snapped me awake by asking me to go check on Megan. I looked up and all the other kids were standing near the back of the room, huddled around a desk. Since when had she stopped teaching? I walked out in the hall because i sensed that's where Megan was but i had no idea really. Apparently she had thrown up in the middle of class and there was a big commotion about it. I hadn't even noticed. That's how i feel lately and i'm hesitant to admit it. I'm afraid that it sounds like i am being too passive with my life. Or that it sounds as though i am very depressed and that i can't handle being in my own life or around the people in my life. But that's not how i feel about it at all. I actually really enjoy the people in my life right now and have a feeling that my life is on the brink of becoming something great, even happy. And even if it means letting a child read four pages without ever correcting his mistakes because i am too busy placing elderberry and fireweed on a three-tiered chocolate cake at an outdoor wedding in the Chugach Mountains for the bakery i run in my head, well then i apologize. Because i really enjoy dreaming about things to come. And if i just live my life without ever dreaming about it, then those dreams are certain to never come true. Because they never even existed in the first place. And all the doing in the world can't replace that.

May you be a half an hour in heavan before the devil knows you're dead.

Cheers!
Happy St. Patricks' Day.

Slainte!

Tomorrow is the big day. People in the midwest celebrate St. Patrick's Day with much more fervor than those in the Pacific Northwest. It's something i remember complaining about while living there. In the midwest, on St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish and every bar is an Irish bar. Last year in Portland a couple of Minnesota friends and I walked into a sports bar called the Jolly Roger all dressed in green and it was like a record had scratched off and everyone turned to us. What's with the green? We sighed and lamented for our hometowns, for pub crawls and green beer and taking off work to start drinking car bombs at nine a.m. But Portland definitley gave St. Patrick's Day a much needed sense of authenticity. Maybe the Jolly Roger shouldn't be draped in green shamrock lights and bright green Mardi Gras beads. I mean what's Irish about that anyway? Before we walked into that quasi-pirate bar, we had been up at a pub called the County Cork. Now with a name like that in Iowa, the pub would have been packed with people in light-up shamrock necklaces and giant foam Dr. Suess hats with green stripes instead of red. There would have been an enormous beer tent outside and a high school girl throwing up green beer by the kybos. But it wasn't like that. There was a small band playing traditional Irish music, with traditional instruments, and not just drinking songs. People wore Irish wool fishing sweaters and drank thick pints of Guiness and straight Jameson. They served fish and chips instead of corned beef and lamb stew instead of cabbage. I don't think they even had green beer in the bar. It actually felt like being in Ireland where they don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day anyway.
That being said, I am glad to be in Iowa for St. Patrick's Day this year. I am going to start the morning off right, down at A.K. O'Connors for a breakfast pint with the king of American Irish celebrating, my dad, who can drink any one of you under the table. I won't even try to keep up with him anymore. I tried one year and ended up asleep watching Darby O'Gill and the Little People by eleven a.m. But we'll have a beer or two there and then I'm heading to Waterloo with Steve where we're meeting up with some of my old friends that I studied with in Dublin. I'm very excited. Not only to see my buddies, not only to celebrate Ireland, not only to drink black and tans until i'm full, but to have a weekend. I haven't had a weekend in...hmm, in months at least. I work seven days a week and when Friday comes around I kind of get excited, I think it's a sentiment my subconciouness has held onto from childhood since really I have to get up even earlier on the weekends than I do during the week and all my days pretty much feel the same. But not this weekend. This weekend not only do i not have to work, but I'm going on a road trip. Granted it's a short one and just to eastern Iowa. But that doesn't matter. It's still a weekend, still a weekend trip. I've been excited about it all week, making mix tapes for the drive, doing laundry, smiling at random times just thinking that it's almost Friday! I haven't really had weekends since i was in Americorps and this past week i'm remembering what it was like, what a luxury it was to have weekends off. The week could just drag through itself, blending one miserable day into the next and it didn't matter because Friday always had that same feeling. That feeling of freedom, of accomplishment, of excitement and exhausted energy. And then Sunday carried with it a feeling of starting over. And not in a monotonous way, but in a fresh way. Man i really miss that. It's nice to have a little taste of that again this week. But i gotta tell ya, I can't go back to Portland and work weekends. There are just too many camping trips to miss out on. And the camping, the recreation, the weekend, is the whole reason to live in Oregon. Slainte.

Behold the Ides of March

Well, today I pay off my Wells Fargo cerdit card in its entirety. Back in September it was near five grand. I managed to have this credit card active and still didn't use it my entire year of Americorps. Pretty impressive on my seven hundred dollar a month living stipend. But once i got out of Americorps it started accumulating again and the next thing i knew i was maxed out again. Cedit debt is amazingly easy to obtain without ever really buying anything. I know that now. I'm one of those people who like to learn my lessons the hard way. Anyway, that just leaves my Bank of America credit card left:

Current credit debt: $1,741.96
Credit debt as of September 2nd: $9,124.25

My estimated pay-off date for that card is April 26th. I am going to celebrate with a road trip down to Kansas City to visit my friend Mara. I also might buy a Wi-Fi chip for my laptop. That leaves the final expense. I am going to buy a Subaru wagon from the early nineties. This may require a road trip to Minnesota since people either don't drive Subarus here or don't sell them. Originally I planned on saving up enough money to just buy the Subaru with cash. But it's not looking like that's going to happen. At least not if i want to head back to the Pacific Northwest in June with any type of savings at all. And i'd like to have at least a grand or two considering how difficult it can be to find a job that pays anything out there. So i may have to take out a small bank loan to pay for the car. I'm pretty bummed about that because the main reason i came back to iowa was so i could return to Portland debt-free. So i could start fresh. But there's just not enough time to make that kind of money. I need to be back there by June tenth for a wedding and it's pointless to come back after that. But i guess if this bout of indentured servitude in Iowa has taught me anything, it's that as an adult, you are never truly debt-free. There are always bills to pay for some reason or another. I think i will feel a lot better about paying for a car, paying for the thing that will take me to the Oregon Coast and to Mt.Hood and out to the Columbia River Gorge and up to the Olympic Peninsula, than i did about paying off credit debt. So i'm learning to accept it. At least i won't be paying for a round of shots i bought at an Alaskan tavern four years ago.
So things are starting to wrap up here i guess. They are finalizing themselves. I feel happy about this, excited. In just two months i'll be back out on the road, heading west again, where the mountains and the ocean are simultaneously an hour away. But i guess i don't feel as happy as i should, as happy as i would have two months ago. I've been in iowa just long enough that i feel i am losing touch with my friends in Portland and feel closer to my friends in iowa. I've been settled in the comforts of iowa just long enough that heading back to Portland seems... well, it seems scary. I'm scared that i won't find a job and when i do it will pay next to nothing and i'll have to work on the weekends, the same time that everyone is going camping and out to the coast, all the things that i live in Oregon for in the first place and i'll miss them. I'm scared i'll get into a bad situation and have to start using my credit card again. And i'm scared of Dan. I'm afraid i'll be scared to go to all my favorite places, like the Laurelthirst on Tuesday evenings for Jackstraw, because he will be there. Just waiting to demean me, to call me a whore and make me feel guilty about everything i have ever done with my own free life.

Memoirs of Indentured Servitude

The other day i got my taxes all finalized. I'm getting back a little less than usual, but it's still a nice little chunk that feels free even though it is actually my money in the first place. The thing that really distressed me about my taxes this year, though, was not how much i'm getting back but how much i actually made last year. In the year 2005, as a smart, creative woman in her late twenties with twelve years of work experience, refined job skills and a college degree, I made $14,098. What kind of shit is that? And the thing about it is that i don't really feel like last year was a particularly bad year. In fact, towards the end, I was feeling like i was making more money than i had ever in my life. Granted i was unemployed for almost a month and a half of 2005, but still. That is a ridiculously small amount of money and i'm honestly surprised that i'm still alive. When i tell people that i'm home now to pay off credit debt and i tell them that it was upwards of 10 grand, their eyes always widen. Damn, that is a lot of debt. How did you manage to rack that up? And i feel bad when i get that reaction. Like i'm someone with a shopping problem who had to make up for some kind of void in her spiritual life by surrounding herself with things. But really, i have very few things. In fact my wardrobe is so limited i can't really do a six-day workweek without wearing the same shirt twice. I don't have a car. I don't have an Ipod. I don't have any new CDs. I don't have health insurance. I have done a lot more travelling in the past five years than someone making less than 15 grand a year should, but it was never extravagent travelling. Mostly camping and staying with friends. I can remember taking my credit card to the grocery store. Taking cash advances out to pay bills. Bottom line is, the reason I got so far into debt is because i'm flat ass broke and i've been flat ass broke since college. Now i am not someone who is concerned with money. I believe that success and happiness do not follow the accumulation of material goods, but instead fall in line with waking up, going to sleep and doing what you love in between. But here's the kicker. I'm not doing what i love. I'm working random jobs to pay off my bills. And i know that if i was doing something that i love; If i was teaching writing or running my own bakery, I would not only be happy, but i would be making twice what i'm making now. And then i could do things like go to the doctor if i need to, replace my phone when it falls in the toilet, buy produce, have my own place to live, get a haircut, get my pictures developed, have a weekend. I deserve at least these things out of my life. I have earned it and i want it.

Wish Walk

This weekend i dropped my cell phone in the toilet at A.K. O'Connors. That's just kind of how things are going for me lately. So now i'm waiting a few days to see if, when it dries out, it decides to work again. Until then i don't know anybody's phone number. I have also semi-recently changed email addresses and only have a few people's emails in my new address book. So i'm feeling a little cut off right now. It's kind of like being in Alaska, except without all the fishing.

Being back in Iowa has its perks. For one thing i have rekindled old friendships. I'm spending time with my cousin, Brad. I'm kicking around with people i haven't seen since high school. In some of those cases, a freindship was rekindled and then fanned out again. I saw my oldest friend's mom at Hy-Vee the other day. I serve coffee to my old little league coach on Friday mornings at the cafe. We talk about the old team and are still trying to remember the names of all the members. We were named the Larks and had peach-colored T-shirts. I like this about Iowa, it's quaint, comforting. But i just get so tired of the same streets everyday. The same buidings and the same stoplights. I guess you could argue that this could be true of anywhere. I could get sick of anywhere really. Maybe i am just a wanderer. But i think it's Des Moines. I think it's the fact that i grew up here. There is something so unnerving to me about passing by my elementary school everyday. That just seems like something that i should come back and visit, see occassionally and get nostalgic. It's not something i should pass everyday without even noticing.
On Saturday night I went out with my old friend Kori, who i hadn't seen since her wedding six years ago, but who i ran into at a bakery in Roosevelt. We used to sew together in her little apartment on University by Drake and draw pictures and smoke a lot of pot and watch the summer Olympics. We did a couple of Phish tours together and camped out in Indiana and made hemp jewlery and ate mushrooms by the campfire. She married Ben, another old friend of mine and they lived in Colorado for awhile and came back to Des Moines when his grandma got sick. One day he just decided he couldn't handle it anymore. He needed to see fly-fishing rivers and mountains and so he left. Went to Mexico, Alaska, where ever. Just off adventuring. Since Kori and i lost touch, she has been in the baking business. Learning to bake from scratch and use all natural ingredients. She had stumbled across a website for a bakery in Portland and she was impressed by the cakes, the pastries. It the old bakery i used to work for. I'd made those cakes and took the pictures for the website. We both expressed our disgust with speed scratch and bakery products that come off a truck. She said she wanted to open a little inn, a bed and breakfast type thing, in the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. I said i wanted to help. We already know that we will work well togther. We used to sew together and just from being friends with someone you can tell if it would work out or not. So that's my new dream, but it's shaky. She needs to live in Des Moines for two more years and save money. I would have to do that too. So we could plan, so i could save money, so we could really be partners. That would mean two more years here. That would mean no grad school, at least not for a long time. It would still mean Portland, but it would mean Portland in two more years. I can't wait that long. If i would just sit down and commit some time to dreams, to planning them out and preparing and really making them work, then i know i could be successful and happy. But i just can't. I need to see fly-fishing rivers and mountains and i need to go out adventuring somewhere. Even if it leaves me broke and distant and cut off and feeling somewhat lost. I guess i wish sometimes that wasn't so true about myself.

Working on It

I've been working on various pieces of writing lately. One is a very short story for my friend, Darby's literary zine called Other Than. It's been kind of a bear of a piece since I'm trying to cut sixty-five pages of writing into seven. This is hard for me because i like to be so wordy. I'm also struggling a little with the plague of the writing student. I studied writing every semester in college and a little outside of college too. And i studied it at Iowa, not at the workshop, but was taught by those in the workshop. Iowa finely tuned the study of writing and made it very pretty and a little exact. I like that. I feel like i really know how to write a story. I know what elements a story needs and i can tell when a story lacks those elements. But because of this i feel like i lack a sense of freshness, of edginess. Maybe i had that before i learned how to write, maybe i never had it. But i'm feeling a lack of it in my current writing.
Another project i'm working on is writing a piece to read at my friends' Sarah and Kevin's wedding in June. I'm very honored to be part of this wedding and it's fun to think about what to write because i've never really written anything like that before. But it's proving a little difficult. For one thing it's hard not to get really cliche and make refrences to birds fluttering side by side through a flowery meadow. It's also hard not to make it a reception-like speech, rambling about how awesome they both are and how this one time, it was so cute what they did and we were all like awwww, they are so cute. But i am determind to make it neither of these things. So while thinking about this dilemma, i went looking back through some of my old writing and i found something that has nothing to do with Sarah and Kevin, but that i wanted to share with everyone anyway:

ODE TO ODE
June 26,1999

By this time next week Susan Ode will be moving away from Iowa City to Utah. I just can't imagine living in this city without her. Once i was eating lunch in the River Room, gazing out at the snow on the Iowa River, sad about something, I don't remember what. Probably something dumb involving a boy, and i saw her crossing the bridge towards the art building. There was no way it wasn't her. Green coat, black hat, red and gray striped scarf. I ditched my lunch, grabbed my backpack, ran out of the River Room, through the Union and outside to the bridge, but she was gone. I sighed, sad again, and sat on a cold stone bench by the bridge to the stairs and solemnly smoked a cigarette, kicking at the snow with my boots. By the time I finished my smoke, she was there, smiling at me from the stairs. "we-he-he-helll. Fancy meeting you here." And i smiled too, because i needed to talk and i think sometimes, that if it weren't for Ode, I wouldn't talk to anyone at all. She knows what to say, when to listen, frown or smile or laugh or just shake her head and say, "Shit. That sucks, dude. I'm sorry." And never ever makes me feel stupid, even though that's how i feel most of the time. Every minute little problem of mine is as big to her as it is to me.
Ode is like my safe spot. And she's going away. Today me and Denice walked into their apartment and she was sitting there on her floor crying amongst half-packed boxes. I love her. I love that she has emotion through all her strength.