While I recover from last night's party, you look at pictures of it, and we'll meet back here later.

If you were me, you would:

Prefer red velvet cake over all others.

Have very sore ankles today from dancing all night in your Converse rather than your usual heels.

Be cooking a casserole.

Want to write a play called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Waiting for Godot," in which Vladimir and Estragon would meet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a Sharks vs. Jets-type dance-off.

Never accept the fact that no one else finds that as amusing as you do.

Have retrieved your strainer with a chair and a spatula.

Have finished knitting your first mitten last night.

In other news, my old buddy/former roommate Jesse the magician has lost what seems to be an entire child's worth of weight (as well as a whole small animal's worth of hair) since I saw him last year at his wedding. If it weren't for that birthmark on his nose I'd have thought that was another fellow entirely.
I'm glad he's looking so healthy now, and I'm so proud of him for all the work that it must have been. Hooray for Jesse!

Do you know that all of my roads look like car commercials, and that there are piles and piles of leaves that I can't just walk through for all the kicking and capering that needs to be done? And that I want to take those leaves and make them into big fluffy origami bunnies and give them to you because I like you so much?

Every time I've been out for the last few weeks I've stayed out hours later than I had intended, occasionally until the closing of restaurants and bars, because the people I know are so funny and smart and amazing. I want to learn how to make cheese danishes and give them to you, because cookies just don't feel like enough.

In the middle of the Math and Physics Club song, "You're So Good to Me" he pauses and sighs a little, as though he simply can't believe just how good she is to him. I love that, and I play it over and over and wave at complete strangers.

I still haven't gotten my strainer down. Maybe I should stand on the counter.

Tomorrow will be dancing at Neighbors for what may be the last time before Cat goes to Kenya, and everyone in town should be there, and yes, Adam, I'm looking right at you. In the meantime, I will be doing cartwheels or making zucchini bread or knitting mittens. Just in case you were wondering.

I just got home from work and man, does it smell like pumpkin in here.

So it turns out that if you combine about twenty people and pumpkin carving in one small one-bedroom apartment, what you get is lunacy. Total pumpkin-y chaos. And, you know, awesomeness. (Final attendee list is: Jean and Michael, Steph and Ryan, Phil, Jeff, Julie, Natasha, Cat, Manuel, Rod, Clare, Fester, Adam, John, Caroline and Chris, Dylan, Tara and Ryan and Gracie the supercute happy puppy. Holy geez, did I forget anyone? Stace, you were missed.)

Whoever put my strainer on top of the cabinets is so fired. Anyone tall that would like to come and fetch it is welcome, because even standing in a chair I can't reach.

I'm either going to have to move to a bigger apartment for next year or y'all are going to have to become really good friends so that you can sit on each other's laps.

I've carved pumpkins every year for as long as I can remember, and this year was the most fun so far. Thanks, guys!

Pictures via Manuel, Dylan, and me.

In other brief housekeeping, the trailer for the movie that Pete is currently embarrassed to be working on is here. Says Pete, "It has puppies!"
Well, I guess you don't hang out with samantha for five years without knowing that puppies are all I need out of life.

On a back road in Midwestern Florida I drove past a doorstep adorned by a small crying girl. I was far enough out of the city that the house sat on about an acre of land; one side of the yard held two doghouses and the opposite end boasted a chicken coop and what looked like a rabbit hutch. From all the toys in the yard I could tell that the house must have contained a whole mess of kids, but for the moment the only living creature in sight was the weeping little girl with twin braids on either side of her head.

As we've already established, I can't ignore crying children, and so I pulled over and went to check on things. I asked if she was ok and she said yes, but her voice was thinly held together and her hands trembled. A dog trotted around the corner and shoved its head against her nose, and she hugged it to her and sniffed. With each hand full of dog fur she mumbled, her voice muffled by a canine ear, "It doesn't matter, anyway." "I don't know, it must matter a little bit if it's made you this upset."

Her brother, she told me, had that afternoon thrown an egg from her chicken at her and it had broken on the grass. A few weeks before, her mother had given birth to a baby that was stillborn, and her mother hadn't been out of bed since. (That was why she was there alone--her family had gone to visit grandma, and she was left to watch over her mom.) She was worried that her pet would be like her mother, that it would never leave its nest again because her brother had killed its baby.

Her breath hitched here, and before she could blame herself for either incident I hugged her while her dog looked up at us with human eyes. It knew what was going on. I had nothing else to give her--my car contained a blanket, a pair of sandals, and a copy of Neruda--but in the end a hug is the world's best healer. I smoothed her hair and told her that they both would be fine, and she sniffed one more time and nodded, patting the dog on the head. She took me over to meet her chicken and then I got back in my car and went on my way. When I got to Tampa and told the boys what had happened, they wondered why no one had taught her not to talk to strangers.

Dostoevsky demands to know which is better, "cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?" But I think that what really matters is the space in between, the steps between the hackneyed and the sublime. I think that it's only in the ordinary every day that we get the chance to be supremely human, to be real, and to be compassionate.

Yesterday: A new baby and a new puppy, and bar hopping with the ladies. We found ourselves at the Green Room just before the Turbonegro show let out, and were treated to exactly the sort of show you'd expect from the Scandinavian punk crowd--drunken pseudo-rumble between a girl and a bouncer included.

On the phone with my mother:

"Samantha, why are you coughing?"

"I think I'm coming down with another case of bronchitis."

"Have you got kennel cough again? Ha ha, samantha has kennel cough!"

"Um, mother? I'm not a dog."

"Oh yeah. Right."

I love all of you who want to be kissing booths for Halloween. Two thumbs up.

Last night I was kidnapped by my coworkers for the seventh week in a row. This time, we found ourselves doing trivia at the Liquid Lounge. We managed alright, all things considered.

Of all the many fabulous people I've met and amazing emails I've gotten from the nearly-two-years of this website, nothing has astonished me more than the recent interest in my love life. There have lately been more emails that I would have believed about it, and I am honestly just floored by the idea that a whole bunch of folks are concerned about any such thing. The volume has been enough that I decided it needed adressing.

The first kind of email tends to be from people who are concerned that my recent melancholy is male-related, and to that I say not to worry. I am a much sadder girl here than I am anywhere else, and honestly I just haven't had a whole lot of free time lately to be sad about the boys. Really. Besides, 2005 has provided me with more than my fair share of attention. I'm doing fine, aside from the fact that my head may soon become too large to fit through most doors.

The second kind comes from people who are upset that I don't share more about that particular aspect of my life. To which I say several things. First of all, believe it or not, there are some things that I choose not to share with the internet. Yeah, I find it hard to believe too. Secondly, I am not dategirl. While my dating experiences are varied and entertaining, they're not really interesting. And although being interesting is certainly never a standard that I have held this website to, in this case, that's what I'm going for.
But honestly, it's all patently untrue. I do so tell you about my love life. I told you about how things went sour with the dancer, how the drummer showed up at 2 am after I hadn't seen him for months. I've told you about reconnecting with my high school crush, and how I'm sometimes still reeling over the boy with the crooked smile. I tell you when my dates fall through. I even tell you when I'm embarassing myself in front of someone cute (albeit sometimes late). It's all there if you speak the language.

Trust me, when I meet someone who sends me poloroids from Mars, I'll let you know. In the meantime, everything is generally just fine.

Now is the part where I admit to all of you that I finally saw my first episode of "The Daily Show" at our hotel in Leavenworth last night. What? I mean it when I say I'm not a tv watching sort of girl.

Leavenworth was not my office, which was pretty much the point of going. Oh sure, it was pretty and kitschy and odd, but also it was Out of Town, which is where I wanted to be. The man at the hotel said that there would be salmon, and they would be almost as big as me, but there were no salmon. Except that's a lie, because there were salmon, they just weren't as big as me and were also mostly dead.
But man, those trees. Trees and trees and trees.

I also mean it when I say that all I need is air in the spare. I have always been a fan of road-based adventures. I can't resist them.

I am now in possession of a six-string guitar with five strings. It was sitting near the recycling when Cat dropped me off last night. Aside from the missing string, it seems to be in perfectly good condition. This is obviously the universe's way of telling me that I really ought to be in a band. Not that I plan on learning how to play it.

Man, this weekend. Friday night Cat and I decided on the spur of the moment to head downtown to see the new Cameron Crowe movie. It was so cute, and we all know how much I like so cute. Afterwards we headed to Dragonfish for the late happy hour to deconstruct Cat's move to Kenya.

Yesterday was girl's day. I met Cat and Caroline for chai. We made a trip to Frye's to look for solar powered thingies and then over to the Traveler's Lounge for diner food. Back at Cat's furniture-free apartment we drank girly pink martinis, watched Sex in the City, and played with pretty miss Erin's boyfriend's new kitty.
Then I came home and found the guitar.
At which point (this is exhausting), I went downtown alone to The Stranger Genius Awards to see Voyager One and the Helio Sequence, as well as take in the super fun crowd that filled the place up. I came across Josh and Peter there, and we milled about, occasionally pointing at, say, a man in a full-length raccoon coat.
I want to run away to the south of France with the drummer from Helio Sequence. He's the most entertaining drummer ever. Him and that lovely pear tart from Thursday night. And a tambourine.

Today was a trip to Fremont with Caroline to see "Frozen" at the Empty Space, which you should all run to see, rather than walking. It's astonishing theatre like that that makes me keep going to see plays.

Tomorrow I'm off to Leavenworth, and in a week it will be time for extreme pumpkin carving. I'm so excited. Last year's special carving guest was Jacob, who I would soon develop a great big crush on, but who that night came over, carved a pumpkin, and left...and all we knew about him was that he had a hot tub. This year's party is sure to be equally full of celebrities.

The first time I crossed the Mississippi was in the afternoon of our third day on the road. Andrea and I had reached our stride, reveling in being young and in a car with the windows down in the middle of nowhere--elbows out the window, wearing tank tops we'd picked up at a store somewhere in Kentucky, bras tucked into our duffel bags. The cd player had broken in Nashville and so we were stuck with local stations or, when those faded out, whatever words we could make up to the noises inside the car. We were having an adventure.

And so we made it to Mark Twain's river and realized just as it came into view just what it was. I looked at Andrea, who was driving. "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
She nodded and answered, "When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."
(This is the code recently graduated English majors talk in.)

There were fields on either side of the bridge that crossed the river, and in one of them was a farmer on a large farm tool--a tractor, or a plow, or something. He nodded to us and tipped his hat, and as we reached the bridge we waved back and he tipped his hat one more time. And then we were on the other side and we knew in the way that you know when you grow up in the South that the Mississippi is the line that divides what you know from everything else. It was the point in our adventure that we knew we were driving off into what happens next.

It felt good, so we turned around and did it again.

Last night's Killers show confirmed that I am not two more types of girl--the arena show type of girl and the all ages show type of girl. It's always just as nice to find out what I'm not, like Noam Chomsky or Papa Smurf.

British Sea Power, the openers, were the most entertaining band I've seen in a while. A guy from the band dressed kind of like Mushmouth wandered out into the audience and down the stairs right next to me. The bass player broke a string and discarded his instrument, finishing the set by walking around and harassing his band mates. I've never seen a band have so much fun.

The Killers, obviously, need a tambourine player. (Jean's husband might recruit me as the tambourine player in his band. Then I would be the happiest girl alive.) They really pretty much rocked, although they took this weird intermission 3/4 of the way in to set up extra keyboards.
Evidently, all the cool kids are covering Bowie these days.

Pumpkin carving. My house. The 24th. I'm no longer taking no as an answer to anything.

You know what smells really good? The yummy cauliflower-potato-tomato-mushroom cheesy casserole I just made. Yum.

I am still conflicted about all of the shows happening Saturday. Do I go to Bird Show? Harvey Danger/The Lashes/The Saturday Knights? The Genius Awards, where Helio Sequence is playing? The Hold Steady/The Constantines? Too many shows. Any ideas? Anyone wanna join me?

I am still without plans for tomorrow night. Maybe a movie?

I fell asleep last night reading Henry and June, and when the light finally forced me back awake I found myself on the other side of the bed, cheek creased from laying on top of Anansi Boys. I never venture over to the other side of the bed; these days, it is used solely for the storage of books. And yet there I was, and I am firmly convinced that the cause for this somnambulant jaunt lies at the feet of Anais Nin.

I have always loved Anais Nin, loved how she regularly set her world on fire just to see how it would change the landscape. But at the same time I'll never forget the disappointment I felt the day I learned that the copy of her journals I was reading was heavily edited, and that in fact she had been married the entire time she was exploring other people. It was the first time that I realized that my idols could be, and in fact often were, fallible human beings.

It only took a minute to realize that the women sitting behind me were planning a wedding. They were each bent so far over the table that their heads nearly touched in the middle, and swatches of pink were strewn all over the space between them. The conversation was familiar: formal vs. casual, traditional vs. nontraditional, full bar vs. sober mother-in-law. I don't currently know anyone that's getting married--the rush has died down now--and I sort of miss the details. It eventually dawned on me that one of the women, the one with all the answers, was a wedding planner.
There was no husband in sight.


I would like to wring out the last few weeks, which have been rife with disappointments, and head to the ocean. Just me and a coastline. But I know that it's much better in my head.

My French teacher's baby, Eva, was fussy all evening. This is because Eva thinks I'm great, and because babies can smell a sucker from a mile away. She knows that if she makes noise I'll pay attention to her. If you've been playing along on the home version you'll know that I love babies and small furry animals, particularly, at this point in my life, when they belong to someone else. Tonight's lesson was excruciating, because I have been working at translating from English into French and it's a lot more difficult than the other way around. I need to focus and study more, because I have so much more shit to get together if I'm going to make it in France in the spring. What I need is someone who is fluent to hang out with (and if that someone was tall, skinny, and tattooed, well...that would be a bonus).
So today I have been completely defeated by a children's book, and that's a new and different kind of humbling.

On the phone with my stepmother:

"I'm taking an EMT class for work, and last week I had to do an excercise where I pretended that five people in my life were someone we were responding to, and I had to ask them questions about what their problem was. The first one I asked was your brother, and I told him to just make something up. You know what his problem was?"

"Hair in his eyes?"

"No. Spontaneous human combustion. He said it had happened to him four or five times in the last week."

"You're going to blame this one on me too, aren't you."

Somehow, last night went from Rod's birthday party at the Elysian to running into Drew and his friend on our way to get frites, to getting and consuming delicious frites, to heading to West Seattle for Will's birthday party and finally ending up watching both "Old school" and "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death" on Will's comfy couch. That last one has Bill Maher in it, and more skimpy costumes than you can shake a stick at.
I (heart) Seattle.

Anyway, you guys, I need Halloween costume ideas. One of the Halloween parties this year is an 80's party and my hair isn't long enough for Punky Brewster. I'm seriously debating stealing the idea for Haley's Comet from last year, but I'll bet you could come up with something much better.

I had just walked out of my office and was deciding what song to start the walk home with when a large German shepherd ran up, checked out my bright green shoes, and looked up at me like we had plans and it was sorry it was late. I looked down and asked it, "What do you think would be good today? 'Down Like Disco?' Do you like the new Dandy album?" It sat down, so I nodded and selected the song.
She was very well cared for, very pretty and well-fed, but she had no collar on. I reached down to pet her while I scanned the vicinity for potential owners, and was rewarded with a little lick on the hand. I couldn't see anyone, so I looked down into her serious brown eyes and asked where she'd come from; she responded by putting her paw on my knee and her nose against mine.
We were obviously best friends.
Just then I heard running, and looked up to see a little girl and a very red-faced man in a suit coming around the corner. The girl held a leash with a collar attached to it in her hand. He apologized, explained that the dog had run out of the car when he opened the door, that the collar had apparently not been closed right. At the sight of them the dog had jumped up and wagged her tail three or four times. It appeared that they knew each other, so I gave her a pat on the head and asked the little girl what the dog's name was. She answered, "Graciemonkey," and the dog trotted over to her. I nodded, said, "Nice to meet you, Graciemonkey," and the dad thanked me while I put my headphones in and started home.

I don't even need to tell Florida stories anymore to prove that the place exists in an alternate universe. It's doing all the work itself, what with exploding snakes and the new plan to turn the state into one big bar fight.

My home state is obviously going to be the site of the upcoming apocalypse. Just in case you were wondering.

She wanted to tell me a secret.

The top of her little brown head barely reached over my table, and I bumped my jaw as I bent down obediently to answer her command, a brief "Secret!" accompanied by the stamp of a pink shod foot.
I wasn't sure what role I was playing in her movie, but as I looked up you and I traded glances, destroying the game we had played all evening. I had studied your chin while you looked at my cheekbones, and not once did our eyes touch the same space. The half-smile looked like a road I've already been down once this year, reminded me that the doors at the end of that road only led to a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni and not to the vacation in Maui.
Her secret had no words, just a hurried "Psssh pssss psssh" noise. Satisfied, she turned to go. Her barrette caught the lights and twinkled at me while she raised her fist to eat the last of the cookie she'd been clutching. I smiled at her mother, who looked up just then and noticed that her little girl was no longer at her side, to let her know that the child was doing no harm. I watched as she bent down, picked up a leaf on the floor, and pressed it to her nose. Her little finger held it there while she followed the lines on the floor tiles back to the square between her parents.

As is the usual way of Seattle, I headed to the Mike Doughty show alone last night and ran into people that I knew. Those people were Holli and Casey, who I ran into at the last Mike Doughty show at Neumos, and who are together now and cuter than a whole mess of buttons. We then came across two more of their friends, and at Holli's behest squished all five of us into the photo booth at the Showbox.


Dear Mike Doughty,

Thanks for coming to visit us again. How come you weren't wearing your hat?

I have to ask you not to play the Showbox again. It's too big for Small Rock. Small Rock just kind of disappears in ceilings as high as those. Also, we were pretty spoiled here in Seattle by the Bumbershoot performance of "Hungry Like the Wolf". Please play "The Gambler" forever.

But seriously, the Firetruck/It's Raining Men remix was just freaking amazing. You could tell who in the room had listened to "Smofe and Smang" because the people who hadn't were just plain confused. If you ever find yourself in need of a tambourine player, you know who to call.

love,

me

I have been a total slug today, and so instead of doing all of the things I'd planned to do, like go buy milk to make soup, I'm going to stay home and eat pizza. I'm actually a little fuzzed about going out right now because I'm still a little tweaked about the crazy late night doorbell ringing incident--even though I know who it was and that he's harmless, and I wouldn't have answered the door anyway, well...in the end I'm still a single girl who lives alone and it would be a couple of days before people noticed I was missing. And that's not something particularly fabulous to be reminded of. So if you need me I'll be at home, willfully not cleaning my apartment or cooking.

(Also, you should know that Cat and I are famous. And that even cool people appear in public with major fashion don'ts sometimes.)

A note to all boys:

Please don't come ring my doorbell at 2 am on a Tuesday morning if you haven't called first. Especially do not do this if I haven't seen or heard from you in a month. I will think you've done gone crazy, and I will so not be answering the door. Further, I'll really be pretty annoyed, because I have to work in the morning.

Thanks,

me.

I've got a bunch of little lumps on my head from yesterday's hailstorm. I ran back inside, but evidently not quickly enough.
Honestly. A hailstorm in October?

When I first met Paul, coming up on a million years ago, he was really just moments from bursting out of the closet like a little kid playing hide-and-seek that just can't wait any more to be found. His mom wasn't a fan at first, and so Alex and I took turns hosting Paul at nights. When it was my turn, I'd sneak him through my window after I went to bed, and we'd huddle under the covers and giggle for hours--it was a month long slumber party. Eventually his mother came around and started trying to set up blind dates with her friends' sons rather than their daughters, but the giggling like eight year olds has held.
He called this afternoon to let me know that he's moving to Maine. He can't take Florida anymore, and I can't blame him. The place is a sink, and since Mark has been dead for years and his mother passed the spring before last, there's nothing for him there. We talk in song lyrics, which is a game that has always been great fun because we don't listen to the same bands so it's like speaking in two different codes.
He stops me with an audible sigh when I get to, "She got a call requesting that she use her words accordingly, but she'll never stand a chance with the one who moves her." I can hear him shaking his head, but all he says is a disappointed, "Mouse."
A million years of friendship lets you know just which buttons to push.

I once dated a man with deliberately rockabilly hair. I didn't hear a thing he said for weeks because I was so distracted by that bouffant.

I'm pretty sure that my headache has reached a point where it's producing BTU's. Ow.

Dear everyone,

In just a couple of days, it will have been a year since I started my job. And I still love what I do, regardless of the days that are long and frustrating and full of ornery folks. I'm lucky to have fallen into the place.
But man, the things that have changed in the last year.
I got home late last night, after another marathon happy hour with my coworkers, and I wanted to call you and tell that I understood. I even wrote myself a note and left it here on my desk--it says, "Phone call: you understand!" But now in the daylight I don't remember who or what or how or when. I guess it doesn't really matter, because I still do get it. And if I don't, just let me know.
In case you haven't heard, my dear friend Cat will be moving to Kenya in a couple of months. This is going to be such an adventure for her, and she will be able to do good things for so many people. Doing good things for people is what she does best, after all. But we will miss her. I'll have to find myself a new local single girl friend, someone I can talk about dates and nondates and the general every day workings of being a single girl with. And with any luck I will make it to Africa next year for a visit.
I am sitting at my desk with my feet on the baseboard heater, and my soles are starting to tingle a little because the heat has turned itself on. When I woke up this morning, my cheeks were cold to the touch. Fall is here, and all of the streets look like car commercials. I'll make my second batch of potato-leek soup this season tomorrow, and on the way to and from the store there will be puddles that I'll consider jumping in. It is time to put away my spring-and-summer research paper about e e cummings and the rhetoric of textual impressionism and pick up something for fall-and-winter. (I'm leaning toward something about sentence structure in Tolstoy, but I need to make sure my translations are good.) Only spring is better than fall.
October is a busy month, with shows and shows and shows. Tonight I'll be seeing Math and Physics Club again with some other folks, and Monday is Mike Doughty. (Anyone else going to that?) There will be Moroccan food and readings and my third annual pumpkin carving. And boy do I have plans for the next year.
You've all been great friends while I've been loaded up with mean reds, with doubt and with dislike and with occasional outright loathing. I am trying to do better.

love,
me

I found myself ducking out of the office this afternoon to head downtown and fight the winds. When I was in college and the mean reds had me I would wait until dark and then slip down to the seawall by the Castillo de San Marcos and try to stand against the winds. Now that I am an urban adventurer I tend to fight my reds in the streets, up and down city blocks.
Plans of all sorts have fallen through for the night. My original Thursday plan was to go see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Croc., but I tossed that plan in favor of a girl's night. Only the other day my girl became homesick or boyfriendsick or both and headed to Pennsylvania to rejoin her other half. Sadly, the CYHSY show had sold out. And now I am at home with Neil Gaiman and Minus the Bear and tea, and that's fine, but the only way to get from there to here was to go downtown and put myself in my place.

As I was fighting the wind and trying to lick the rain off my nose I realized that a man had fallen in step with me. We reached the same bus stop and ducked under the same awning, and so I looked up and smiled. The folds around his eyes gave him a concerned air, and in a moment of paranoia I wondered if my edges were showing. He smiled back, and commented on how much of a struggle it had been to make it down the street. I agreed--the winds were heavy and I am light, and as a result I had gone a half step backward for each one forward. (This is pretty much par for the course, these days.) After a little more small talk he introduced himself, reached out to shake my hand, and that was when I realized that he was only in possession of three fingers. His middle and pinkie digits were missing, and as his hand closed over mine I tried to tell the difference. But the pressure of his thumb on my palm was firm and reassuring, and I looked back up at his crinkled eyes and smiled. He smiled back and nodded, and in that moment in the wind we understood each other.

There was once that you told me about how you hated to hear what other people dreamed about. That night I dreamt that you were roller skating through the dreams of others, hands over your ears, singing songs from Sesame Street. I can only guess at what that means--or, I could if I wanted to--but when I told you the next day you put your hands over your ears again.

I am a shy girl around the people I actually want to talk to. This works out nicely in my professional life where I can be charming and get things done, but after hours I spend a lot of time looking at the ground.

My way home at night is always a little bit treacherous, always a bit of dodging between pools of darkness and hoping that no one is already sleeping in them. It is some amount of hoping that no one wants to make an after-dark snack out of a small girl. My grandmother would scold me if she knew about the places I wander at night.
But it is at night that I glance through windows, look briefly at the scenes behind the glass. I like looking at people as vignettes. But the best part of my walks are the times that I skirt around what are very likely first kisses. They make my sentimental heart go all pitter-patter, and in my head I cheer for the potential for a lifetime of fluttery moments.

And then the lights of my city come into view through houses and across trees, and it is often all I can do not to skip the rest of the way home.

When Ryan was very small, his main concern was sharing with whomever he could get to stand still whatever it was he had in his hand. When he was overtired he would get hot to the touch, a sleepy littleboy furnace.
Eric wanted to make sure that everyone was covered with his blankie if they were sitting on the couch. When he was very sleepy he would suck on the fingers of his right hand backwards.
When I am overtired, I rub my forehead. It pushes back some of the pressure between my skin and my brain.

Being a good sibling does not run in my family, if my father's stories of adolescent knife fights and broken limbs are even partially true. Our family was always more a game of psychic dodgeball than it was anything resembling what was on tv. Maybe that's why I've never really watched it.

I have been on auto-jitter lately, imagining palmetto bugs out of the corner of my eye. On top of that, I have been cultivating a talent at putting myself in awkward situations. Somehow my better judgment has gone on vacation.

My mother called a few days ago to let me know that my cousin, a year older than me, is now pregnant with her fourth child. There is also some story about her ex-husband's girlfriend coming to beat her up while she was pregnant with the last one, but my attention drifted.
She does not, she assures me, want me to worry about catching up. Which is good because the thought had never crossed my mind. I find myself comparing our timelines, my mother's and mine, tracking where she was in her various marriages and the raising of myself when she was my age. I think, "At this time twenty-three years ago, she was two years away from her first divorce." And I realize that twenty-three years ago isn't really that far away, and that my imaginary parallel mom is shortly going to face the betrayal and the lunacy that would shape the rest of her life.
It's really then that I come to admire my mother. All of my own serious wounds have been from my family, who are people that you can't really trust to be on your side anyway. None of them have--yet--come from someone I have chosen to be around.

I apologize. I promise to be big-eyed and full of wonder again soon. It is shaping up to be a lovely fall and there are such good things coming. I have a terrible habit of dwelling on what I can't fix.

Steph and I spent the afternoon in Fremont, wandering and drinking beer, and I'm hard pressed to to think of a better way to have spent my Saturday.

Right before the Pale Pacific set, we decided that nachos would be the thing to keep our buzz from overtaking us. But lordy, there were a lot of nachos, and so I was standing in the crowd holding my leftovers when a guy walked past and asked where I got them from. I offered him my leftovers and he accepted. A little while later he wandered back past again with an almost empty plate. No waste here.

The line for the port-a-potties (not Honeybuckets this time) was mostly women because there was a trough for the men somewhere else. But there was a man in line in front of me, and he ducked into an opening door in front of the woman who was meant to go into it. An angry buzz broke out in the line and another woman stepped forward and shook the toilet that he was in.
The moral here is don't get in between women who have to pee and their receptacles.

A relatively unrelated addition to this post, which didn't really fit over there:

The reasons I've seen The Saturday Knights twice in the last month are:
1. Their EP is all red velvet inside.
2. They look like they're having so much fun.
3. They've actually got a guy playing guitar and occasionally keyboards rather than samples of such.
4. It's almost impossible not to start dancing.
5. A cowbell and a tambourine? Do I need anything more in a band?

The reasons I've seen The Pale Pacific twice in the last month are:
1. We keep ending up in the same place.
2. They occasionally get so distracted rocking out that they run into each other, which just cracks me up.
3. Billy Joel cover.
4. "I'm going to stop talking now. I'm so awkward."
5. Super cute. The bass player is my favorite, but they're all really fun to look at.

At around 6 am, just when it's starting to think about getting light outside, the Space Needle comes into high relief. It looks painted on, like someone has propped up a neoned poster outside my window.

Hey, you guys in Texas? Cat, Craig, and Bill? Please stay safe.

Yesterday we did happy hour at Hooters. Everyone kept their hands on their wings. Additionally, the tag on my favorite shirt says: "Things we like: 1. frisbee 2. bloodhounds 3. mittens 4. nostarclothing.com 5. the sun 6. nate 7. rubber cement 8. burritos 9. O.D.B."
These are things I like too.

Very late last night I was up, notsleeping, wrapped in my fuzzy robe and wearing my nerdy glasses on the porch. I had spent the evening listlessly sifting through books, picking up and putting down Anais Nin, Truman Capote, collections of stories about the connections between writers and the kindnesses of strangers. There aren't any recent nights that need thinking over. I haven't done anything very special or met anyone new and interesting lately. I am stagnant, and unsure how to stir myself out of this little rut.

From somewhere across the street I could hear an open window playing an old "Sea and Cake" album.

One afternoon in Hangzhou, we hauled ourselves all the way across the West Lake and collapsed into a tea room. After we had sipped our tea and let our heart rates return to normal, after we had played a dozen games of cards, the talk turned to poetry. Rich translated for me a Rilke poem from memory. And I loved, right then, that we had brought this German poet with us to China, that there is nowhere in the world that poetry feels irrelevant. I spoke of Corso, grew flushed again over his 'Leaky Lifeboat Boys' and his perfect love poem 'For Lisa, 2'--a poem that I have scratched into the backs of my eyelids for whenever Sunday morning becomes too much.
Walking back out into the ancient world, I understood why Chinese poets always talk of nature.

I have been Nancy Drew lately, only a sandwich and a "jinkies!" away from a Scooby Doo episode. And I have been reading everything I can find about vitrification, the process of changing things into glass. I tend to think of most days as an act of putting small fires out with my hands. Because sure, I could put the fire out and everything could be alright. But if I delay, if I forget or fail to be brave, then I could burn myself and turn my fingerprints to glass. And I fear what might happen to a girl with glass fingerprints.

We took Mike's girlfriend's fancy car out at lunch today, and wound up at a teriyaki place down on Rainier that had bible quotes all over the walls, handwritten in colored felt pen. Underneath this sign was a box for you to put your wishes in.

Ryan came over a while ago to borrow my fencing foil, and then I walked down the street with my bright red pigtails to buy some milk. In the corner store, I overheard the following:

"Well, I thought I was...you know...in whatever with her. But she had this thing she did. And I just, man, I couldn't handle it."

"What sort of thing?"

"Dude, she'd bite her toenails. And it was just fuckin disgusting, you know?"

"Couldn't you have asked her to do it in another room?"

"What? Who's side are you on?"

"Well...no offense, man, but that girl was hot. And you're kinda ugly, know what I'm saying? So what's a little toenail biting when the girl is hot?"

And to that, I say ew.

(Still. Not. Sparkly. Distinctly grouchy. Hoping that making cookies and watching The Princess Bride will make the whole world better again.)

My new favorite entomologist told me yesterday all about some bugs that split right down the middle, one half male and one half female. (This is called bilateral gynandromorphism, if you're playing along on the home version.) This is especially interesting in butterfly species where the two sexes have different colors--one wing will be, say, bright blue, and the opposite one will be white.
A girl standing by broke in during this explanation, asking hesitantly, "Does this mean that they, you know...mate with themselves?"

Being on the UW campus still stings a bit. I miss being a student. I'll go to grad school eventually, but no one ever said that I was very good with rejection. Especially not rejection twice. And especially not academic rejection twice. Couldn't they have just said yes and insulted my hair instead?

Today is talk like a pirate day. Y'all better have gone 'yarrrr' at least once or you're disowned.

Today's children's book was the French version of Everyone Poops, called, "De la petite taupe qui voulait savoir qui lui avait fait sur la tete." In this story, a small mole--la petite taupe--goes on an adventure to find out who has, quite literally, done on her head (fait sur la tete).
French kids stories are always so much better than American ones.
Cecile reads these stories to me, and I try and figure out what they're saying. Then I read them back to her, working on pronunciation. I tend to get really excited when I actually understand, and my coffee guy just shakes his head. We're like the kooky neighbors in a middling sitcom.

I know that I've been neglecting you lately, but I haven't been feeling very sparkly. And sparkly is sort of my trademark.

At the bug festival today, a woman and I stepped up to the collection of a boy who looked to be twelve or thirteen. "Do you do your own mounting?" the lady asked him. The collection was very professionally done, very impressive. "Yes." "And how long have you been collecting?" He looked at us seriously from under lowered eyebrows, as though he was used to getting this question and being unsatisfied with the response. "About nine years." The woman and I exchanged glances but passed on adding further insult to any past injuries. She asked him where he had found a certain very large moth.

My friend Paul just stopped by on his way home to Yakima to drop off some new headphones, marking the end (I hope) of the month of birthday celebrations. The festivities were many and varied and climaxed Thursday night with an evening of ill-advised debauchery that resulted in several peculiar bruises and a few hours worth of blank spots in my memory. (A? Any idea what I might have done to obtain a bruise in the middle right side of my chest?) It's only a few times a year that I am that girl, and I only remember afterwards just why that is.

My favorite junk mail is the stuff addressed to “The Family” at my address. I always bring it inside and show it to my plants. “Should we get cable, guys? Is it time for life insurance?”

I walked through Belltown last night in the dark and the rain to hang out with the photographers. That is how I like Belltown the best—a little dimmer than the rest of the city, with people huddled in doorways and the lights above empty storefronts reflecting off the damp street. We had challenged ourselves to make self-portraits, and I was mulling because I had overthought the idea and so gone nowhere. Overthinking and going nowhere are both things that I do well.)
Waiting for the light across the street from Uptown, an ambulance drove down the street and the sound of a dog howling followed the noise of the sirens down the block. I shivered. Urban dogs prefer to bark instead of howl, and so howling dogs will always keep a sort of horror-movie cachet for me. I am on the lookout for axe murderers when howling dogs are around.

Anyway, the question that had me stuck was the line-or potential lack thereof-between a self-portrait and a picture of myself. (Admittedly, I haven't been sleeping again, have instead been out playing pinball or having quesadillas or wearing pirate shirts or in all ways abusing parentheses right and left.) Is there a difference between the two? I have my thesis about the whole thing, my map of ideas, but I'm having trouble finding the line between this slight personal theoretical gap and my ongoing, boring existential crisis. I feel that there ought to be a difference, a feeling borne of all my years studying art history. Shouldn't a self-portrait reveal some sort of truth? What truth is there to be found in one more picture of my big Muppet head?
None, is my answer so far. I just can't see the point of trying to shoot my elbow in a light that makes me say, “There it is, my self-portrait.” I can't see myself in knees or hands or shadows. But the trouble is that all of my lines are overlapping and I can't tell what I should really be dwelling on and what I should be napping through. And it is entirely possible that all I need is an ice-cream sundae and a hug, and I'll be happily snapping pictures of my toes.
I don't know which way what goes, internet, but it's got me frustrated.

If I have been calling you 'darling' lately, it's because I have been pretending to be Audrey Hepburn for the last week.

Two of my favorites:

Getting ready to go out for the evening after a day of staying in. Radio up, singing along, piles of discarded outfits on the floor and jewelry on the bathroom counter. Feeling fabulous before I leave is far more important than actually looking fabulous once I get there.

When I wake up and don't remember, for a moment, who or where or what I am. My head feels like a house with all the windows open and it's only then that I can be whomever I want. Eventually, of course, I remember, and that tends to be a bit of a disappointment.

Last nights bands were: The Saturday Knights, The Pale Pacific, Ian Knapp, Tom Brosseau, and 50 Foot Wave. Bonus points to The Pale Pacific for rocking a Billy Joel cover, Tom Brosseau for having a Johnny Cash sing along, and 50 Foot Wave for, you know, Kristin Hersh.

The way to get honey out of a honeysuckle flower was to very, very gently pull the middle part of the flower out through the stem. If your touch was light enough a small bead of honey would form, briefly, on the very bottom of the stem. You would have to change tactics immediately and very quickly dart the tip of your tongue forwards to taste the honey; if you were too slow in getting there it would slip itself back into the stem and then you'd have to suck it out, which always ended up tasting like bitter pollen.
I could spend hours laying under the honeysuckle bushes, trying to coax out the sweetness, half a brain on the lookout for fire ants.

This cold is probably what I get for standing in the rain to watch the Posies on Sunday, in which case it was completely worth it. I have this sudden urge to find someone with a boat and stage a Viking raid on Mercer Island. Anyone have a horned hat?
A late night phone call last night involved three dirty jokes and a, "the trouble with you is that you don't know how to sell yourself." I tried to ask where and how, but he was already off on a reunion in Florida that will not happen because I will not go back there. My strangest phone calls always come from the East Coast in the middle of the night.

The doodle bugs, they lived in inverted cone-shaped homes in the sand. An unwary ant would teeter at the edge of the cone and fall in, and the sand that was disturbed by all of its little tiny legs would alert the doodle bug to the presence of lunch. It was only then that he would pop out with his teeny pinchers snapping and haul that ant down under the earth. It was possible to dig out the doodle bug, but the better way was to lay next to his home and try to touch the sand just enough with a blade of grass or a finger tip. If you were both very careful and very lucky, he would mistake your grass or finger for a tasty bug. It took a light touch to coax him into the light.

Thanks to everyone who came out last night! You guys totally made my year. I felt like such a rockstar. (That flickr tag also has pictures from my spring party attached to it, just so's you know.)

I'm home sick from work today, trying to stave off this cold I've been getting by drinking all of the orange juice in my apartment and making soup. I just haven't the time to be sick right now.

The freckles on my left shoulder are darker and larger than the ones on my right, leftover sun damage from driving to and from school my junior and senior years of high school--mornings and afternoons with my arm out the window, singing along to the radio at the top of my voice. My hair was long then, halfway down my back, brown and curly, and always stuffed into a clip.
This time of year, the freckles on my nose and cheeks refuse to be completely dimmed with makeup. I've got tan lines that I know are there even if you can't tell. I'm slowly growing out of the clothes that I've had since middle school; not taller but rounder. The old game of fitting two hands around my waist isn't so much possible anymore. And that's all fine. My seventh grade fashion sense left much to be desired and people don't often hassle me to eat anymore.

For a long time people described me as their friend samantha who was little. Being smaller than everyone else was my social identity, and as an awkward and obsessive teenager I worried about who I would be if I wasn't the smallest anymore. It's only recently that I've realized that I have other distinguishing characteristics, that I have freckles and scars and friends who don't need labels. I'm still the smallest, but I find that I just don't care anymore.

Ok, let's talk a little bit about Bumbershoot, seeing as how it was my first one and all. (Even though I was a bad first timer and decided to skip Smoosh, the Blue Scholars, and New York Dolls on Friday in favor of shopping and Audrey Hepburn movies.)

Saturday: I showed up in time to catch the end of Vamola, where Cat was waving palm fronds around in front of some dancers and a volcano. We wandered a bit and then caught a few songs of The Academy Is--which we left almost immediately. Cat went back to wave palm fronds some more and I looked around for my friend Chris, who was working somewhere on the grounds. I never found him.
After the palm fronds we debated going to see IQU, but the line was just too long and so instead we poked around a bit before heading over to Visqueen. I love Visqueen, and I really love how they all dress like third grade math teachers. Next was the 826 benefit, and then we left to go to Bill's Off Broadway for pizza and singing happy birthday. I blew out the candle on the table.

Sunday: The whole point in going to Bumbershoot on Sunday was to see Math and Physics Club. They've been one of my favorite bands ever since "Weekends Away" came out at the beginning of the year. I carefully stepped on the toes of the man standing next to me whenever he talked too loud, and MAPC made me smile. My enormous crush on James was strengthened.
I debated sticking around for Headphones, but instead headed over to see Lauren Weedman perform her one-woman show, "Wreckage." She was really amazing, playing characters and switching from funny to sad on a dime. Since it was raining I stuck around for Open Circle's "Are We Scared."
A snack, and then the Posies! I caught the first few songs and then headed over to check out Pretty Girls Make Graves. But the line was so long that I went back, in time to see Ken Stringfellow wearing little else than a clear plastic garbage bag. Awesome. Afterwards, I met Cat and Caroline for the Carolines and Key Note Speaker, as well as a bit of chatting with fellows out to make nice with Cat, and a bit of checking out the sound guy.
(What?)

Monday: I met Cat and Caroline way, way too early in order to catch The Decemberists. Astonishingly, they played the whole of "The Tain". I nearly beat up a girl to steal her "Pirates arrrr cool" tshirt. (I found it tonight and bought it!) They get an A+ for performance. I just love them.
We couldn't take the Dashboard Confessional crowd, so instead we wandered over for Los Amigos Invisibles. They were "superfunky"--they told us so themselves. A bit of a dance party was refreshing, because after all there is nothing like breaking it down in the sun in Seattle, unsound shin and all. We then meandered over for Earlimart, who were probably pretty good, but not good enough to make a dent on all the superfantastic things I had already seen for the weekend. So we went back outside and got in line for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, about five minutes before the large part of the Flogging Molly crowd showed up and things got insane. Ted Leo was good, although the bass was overpowering for the first couple of songs and the vocals were too low.
I debated sticking around for Tegan and Sara, but by then my kidneys were tired of being elbowed and instead I came home.

Thanks for letting me get that out of my system, guys. In all, I'd give the whole Bumbershoot experience an A-.

I always know that I've been going out too much when I'm not disappointed that my plans have fallen through for an evening. I had intended to be out with a stranger, but in with myself sounds so much better.

We took apart Mike's laptop at the office today, and by we I mean Mike. He knows better than to let me near delicate electronics with a screwdriver. I am always awed by the insides of computers--they always look impossible to me. Like science fiction.

I have recently come into possession of the complete poems of e e cummings, because people out there still believe in encouraging my consuming love of language, regardless of how ridiculous it tends to make me look. And so I have a sudden free evening to cover myself in thousands of words, and to remind myself of things that are delicate and beautiful. This will be nice, because I have been feeling a little tarnished lately, a little too far away from the better versions of myself. But like he says himself, "Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being."

I hope to see lots of you tomorrow evening.

And so my first Bumbershoot weekend was largely a success.

Ever since I came back from China I've had this really sharp ache in my shin after a moderate amount of walking. I'm pretty sure my leg is structurally unsound.

Math and Physics Club yesterday were splendid. That makes it twice in as many months that I've seen them and I may be turning into a groupie. It was my solo Bumbershoot day, which meant that I found all sorts of characters. I got cruised by some fellow in the army (just a tip from me to you: the way to make friends with this girl is not to start a conversation by making fun of my boyfriend the Space Needle) and chatted with a guy carrying a vacuum around.
Later, at the EMP Liquid Lounge, Cat got me a birthday shoutout by Key Note Speaker, a band I'd like to see again when my friend isn't getting picked up by another out of state boy.

You guys? The tambourine? I'm serious.

Also yesterday was Open Circle Theatre's "Are We Scared Yet? An Experiment in Child's Play," which was bizarre and splendid and lovely. It's at their theatre for another week, and I'd recommend it if you're as entertained as I am by the strange things kids think up.

And today! The Decemberists with Cat and Caroline. They put on such a good show. Afterwards we found ourselves in a Latin American dance party. You know, like you do.

Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes and phone calls and text messages and posts and assorted miscellany. (Michael, what on earth am I supposed to do with a penis shaped money clip?)

Steph and Ryan win the prize for several things, not least of which was surprising the heck out of me by showing up at my door this morning with a new stereo. Thanks, guys!

Also? After Visqueen yesterday Cat, Jeff, and I headed to the 826 benefit with Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Mike Doughty, Lemony Snickett and Death Cab for Cutie, cleverly disguised as the Transatlantic Orchestra. And I have to tell you that the most astonishing thing I've ever seen is Mike Doughty on stage with Death Cab for Cutie and Lemony Snickett on the accordion, playing "Hungry Like the Wolf." I'm still swooning.

Today there will be Math and Physics Club, which is just icing on what has turned out to be a splendid birthday weekend.

Today is my birthday, and I am still always nine years old.

Ok, Seattle, I have decided to go ahead and have a birthday, um, thing. You know. One of those. So if you find yourself with a little bit of free time on Wednesday the 7th, come down to the Zoo Tavern on Eastlake after 8:30ish. I'll be there, drinking away my astonishment at having made it through this last year. There will be hugging.
I'm not saying that I'm going to cry if you forget me, but I am strongly implying it.

(Also, have you noticed the sky today? It's astonishing--I want to run away with it to the south of France.)

Dear everyone,

I realized this morning that sometime in the last few weeks my walk to work has started to smell like dried blackberries. I love the scent and wish it were a perfume, but it was really very recently that the morning smelled like ripe blackberries. And that makes things different somehow. Charged.
I strolled home alone from happy hour in the gloaming tonight, the specific half an hour of every day that makes me positive that I am missing something important. Down by the lake it smelled salty and reminded me, suddenly, of evenings fishing off the pier when I was a kid.
I'm keeping all of this. I'm storing it up and waiting until I figure out how to spool it through my usual minor chords to make it into something worthwhile. But I'm not sure just how quite yet. Or even if, in fact, something worthwhile is possible.
August was a big month full of learning for me, full of processing and coming back down a few pegs. Life works at teaching us humility and if we refuse to learn then it forces us to be humble against our selfish plans. That's why it's in charge.
Are you ready for the fall? Because it is nearly here, and soon enough we'll be looking for big piles of leaves to jump in. There are holidays and shows coming up, reasons for giving presents and making cookies and wearing silly hats.
As it turns out, there are only so many strangers that I can make eye contact with before I start to feel silly, before I want to turn and run back into my head. I'm not sure that I ever want to leave my apartment again.
And hey, I'll be at Bumbershoot this weekend by myself. Let's hang out! It's my very first one. But I'm warning you right now that Saturday is my birthday and that is my excuse to spend the whole day telling people my favorite gross, politically incorrect joke. So brace yourselves.
I'm easy to find--I'll be that girl who smells of dried blackberries.

love,
me

On my way out the door tonight, headed to my French lesson, I threw on a light tan jacket. It's one of my favorites but it isn't very warm, so I don't get to wear it too often out here. Today it was just enough to protect my thin bones from the returned chill in the air. As I walked down my hill I stuck my hands in my pockets, and rediscovered the little red bouncy ball that lives in this coat. It's a ball that was handed to me several years ago by my buddy Jonas, who informed me only a little bit kidding that it contained his soul. I had lost my own yellow superball soul a few minutes before when it had bounced off into the bushes.
Every spring I put the coat away and forget about the ball, and every fall I remember it again. It never fails to make me smile.

Walking, the heels of my red shoes clomped thickly on the pavement. My fingers fiddled with the soul in my pocket while the sun shone and the sky rained at the same time--my favorite thing for each of them to be doing.
It's so good to be home.

Today is apparently the day when, in 1565, Spanish explorers first landed in St. Augustine, the town I went to college in. It was this wrong turn, four hundred and something years ago, that led directly to my current residence in Seattle.
No, really. If they had never accidentally stumbled upon St. Augustine, Ponce de Leon would never have decided that the fountain of youth was there. And then Henry Flagler would have had no reason to eventually build his grand hotel there, so there would have been no place in town to house a Flagler College. If there had been no Flagler College I would not have been home from there for a summer to meet Pete, and then I wouldn't have had a reason to move out here.

Yes, this is how I pass my long, slow Sundays: in hand-me-down Italian jeans, working on the perfect spaghetti sauce and concocting elaborate historical conspiracies.

Friday night, TMS and I sat at a bar and talked about China, about how restless we both get every spring, summer, and fall. He's thinking about moving away this winter, which really means that he's gotten himself involved with another waitress/novelist that he doesn't really like any more. I speak the code, but I don't really care. Eventually, one of us has to stop running, and it might as well be him. Besides, it's more likely that when I see him again in another five months he'll have just cut his hair or changed his job, and he won't have stopped dating waitresses.
My friends are often so, so funny.

Last night Cat and I sat at the same bar, and I decided that many thing would be much easier if we had never left the third grade. It would be great if I could just have her pass boys notes that say, "Do you like my friend samantha? Check yes or no."
The answer was always no back then, too, but at least it was filtered through someone else first.

In China, the middle finger gestural equivalent is the same move we use here for, "I've got your nose!" I can't tell you how difficult it was, once I found that out, to not run around the countryside stealing people's noses. I didn't, because that would not be in the interest of fostering intercultural harmony (or at least, in the interest of not getting run out of town by crowds with sticks). But it was a near thing.

Late night at an empty bar in Jinan, I'm sitting with Scott flailing my arms about the need for a sense of place in a Southern novel. He's from Louisiana and is trying to write one such, but is finding it hard to do so far away. I'm trying to help by pressing the point that being gone might be exactly the thing.
Behind me, there has been a man singing while tennis plays in the background. It's not exactly karaoke, but it is close, and he's been singing in Chinese so I haven't been paying attention. I sit up straight and turn around, though, when I realize that his last song is "Love Me Tender," and that moreover he is doing a perfect Elvis voice.

The next day I'm alone in a cab with the driver, which makes for a pretty silent ride. He has turned up the radio, and standard Chinese pop is playing on it. But then a UB40 song comes on, in English, and I realize that somehow I know all the words. The driver looks at me sideways and starts to sing along--he doesn't speak English, but he has memorized the song regardless. I sing along too, and there I am, riding down the road in a crazy swerving cab, singing with the radio and the cabdriver on my last day in China.


Ok, kids, so here's the thing: my birthday is next weekend. I haven't had an actual birthday gathering in almost two handfuls of years (aside from the year Sarah and maybe Pete conspired against me and forced a lovely birthday party on me), because generally they tend to go wrongly.
I don't know. I put a little too much emphasis on birthdays as important markers. I've written and deleted this at least fifteen times but I'm going to post it because I have to be honest even when it makes me feel silly.
My birthday is next weekend, and I was thinking about having some sort of gathering the week after. Probably not at my house, to avoid all the cleaning and cooking involved, but maybe over at my bar or something. And so I want to know what folks think, when you might be free the week after next to come hang out. I generally try and avoid my birthday but I feel that this year needs to be marked, somehow. It's been a big one for me.
So...what do you think?

Every trip has a low point or, I suppose, we might miss the fun of all the high points. My low point came (as they usually do) in the middle of the night.
The train trip from Suzhou back to Jinan had promised to be excruciating. We were only able to procure ourselves hard seats on a moderately fast train that would land us in Jinan at about 1 am. But the train was late and the day got longer, and I was just plain worn out from the heat and the exercise and the constant bickering of my friends.
And so it came to pass that I found myself sitting in a hot compartment full of people who didn't speak the same language as me, and who further didn't share anything but the basic physical components with me. I realized then that I had never felt so disposable, so completely trivial--that I had never felt less human in my life. I couldn't shake the idea that these points are just not adding up to a worthwhile story, that I am telling all the wrong things and forgetting the right ones. I knew, then, that some day very soon the promise of future hugs is just not going to be enough to fill in the holes.
All I wanted was out of that stifling close country, out of its crowds and its noise and its unfamiliar traditions. I wanted to come home.

Fortunately, of course, trips also have their high point, a moment that cancels out those dark nights whimpering on trains.
The Lion Grove in Suzhou is a garden that was built in the 1300's by a monk who created it in memory of his mentor. It's made up of a labyrinth of limestone, a little maze and a miniature mountain right there in the middle of the city. Climbing through the labyrinth the rocks are often hard to hold on to, hard to stand on--they're shiny and smooth.
While I was in the process of tripping through the rocks I realized that the reason the rocks were all worn smooth is because people have been touching them in the same spots for almost 600 years. Emperors have hung onto them, poets have looked around those corners, beautiful women have cooled themselves by those pools. Millions and millions of everyone else have stood there and understood the same things I knew only then.
It's hard to realize in China just how much history has passed, to know that for 5,000 years people have been being people there. But it was standing there in the Lion Grove, sliding my palms over silky stones, that I felt myself connected to all of those other people. History has always felt like such a heavy weight to me, like it is pressing on the back of my eyeballs. Only it turns out that it's not history that I carry, it's the past--and looking actual history in the face, the past just isn't that important.

I cut a large part of my hair off again today. I've always taken it out my hair when things aren't going according to plan. I imagine that my hair wishes that I'd find a new way of dealing with things.

After a friendly kidnapping by a cabdriver and a trip to an Indian restaurant in Hangzhou (these are both stories that must be told in person--I don't write funny enough to do them justice) we took a slow boat to Suzhou.
I just love saying that I took a slow boat in China.
We shared our teeny tiny cabin with a man who spoke surprisingly good English, but who wasn't interested in talking to me because I don't speak any Chinese. That was just fine with me. The best part of my trip was easily the fact that I was always excused from talking to anyone. I am an overcommunicator by nature, so it was incredibly refreshing to have a chance to remove myself from my normal behaviors.

Very early the next morning, we were woken up by loud music. Val and Rich asked our roommate what was going on, and he told us that what we were hearing were the words of Mao set to music. China isn't really very Communist anymore; they're all too concerned with making money, and most Chinese kids couldn't tell you what Communism means. But Mao is still sort of everywhere. He's a bit like a crazy old grandfather that the family still fears but doesn't talk about much. Every now and again, you'll come across Mao. And no one really knows how to react when they realize a foreigner is looking at the Chairman. They freeze, and then try and divert your attention. It's a very Chinese way of handling things.

I have to tell you that I have never appreciated bathrooms as much as I do now. Chinese toilets are foul, foul, foul. Pictures are largely done, except for my last day in Suzhou at Tiger Hill.

As far as the food in China goes, well, there was a whole lot of pointing at the menu and hoping for the best. My friends' reading comprehension extended far enough that we had a general idea of what sort of meat we'd be getting, but not a whole lot farther. I can say that it is unlikely that I ate any dog, as that is generally consumed during the winter and thus was considered 'out of season.' I learned that the Chinese food that we get here is largely from further south than I visited, and I learned that if a Chinese person knows enough English to point to something and say that it's, "Very delicious," I probably don't want to eat it.
Largely, my trouble was the garlic, which I am allergic to and which they believe helps keep away bad spirits. I spent a lot of the trip feeling vaguely ill, which is pretty much part of the business of travel.

But I can tell you that the most amazing food I had on the trip was in Hangzhou. The area is the place to find Longjin tea, and one of the local specials is a sort of fried tiny shrimp cooked with the tea. It's splendid, but even better was what they call Dongpo Pork, named after the man who wrote a poem in praise of pork. I don't know how it's made, but I do know that it would have been a lot easier to eat if it hadn't been served as a huge hunk of pork to be eaten with chopsticks.
Chinese table manners being what they are, I was probably just supposed to pick it up and gnaw on it. Instead, I chose to fight with it, to break it into manageable bits with my chopsticks. I won in the end, and it was delicious, but I probably should have gone the Chinese way.

No bugling in Jinan. None.

(I am uploading pictures at the little restaurant down the street, and I can understand the words of everyone around me. We will be at the Zoo Tavern on Eastlake around 8:30 or 9 tonight. To drink beer. Not in a bottle! And not Tsingtao!)

Driving in China is interpretive. In the cities there are, in fact, lines on the road, but all of the drivers seem to treat them as suggestions. The only traffic rule seems to be not to run anyone over, and even that appears to be open to interpretation. As a result everyone uses their horns constantly as a means of alerting the other drivers to the fact that they will be swerving around with complete disregard to the laws of physics. I am usually a nervous passenger, but with this sort of reckless abandon in evidence I can do nothing but hope for the best. It doesn't even seem worth it to worry.

Jinan, where my friends live, is also under construction. It's a pit of an industrial town, but since it's only a couple of hours by train from Beijing, they are in the process of trying to clean things up. I don't have a chance to really look around, though, because the day after I arrive we head off by train to Hangzhou.

In the grocery store one woman tells another (in Chinese), "Americans have nice color." I decide to be flattered. Potato chips come in about a million flavors, things like "Italian Red Meat" and "Mexican Barbecue Flavor."

Now and again, through the window of the train, I see farmers who have their wives pulling the plow.

Thanks to the twin miracles of international datelines and sympathetic airline staff, I'm home a day early. I'm going to sleep for about fifty three hours and then, I swear, I'll start to get to the pictures. And boy, are there pictures. In the meantime I'll start with the stories:

The Beijing airport is hot and dirty and full of people. I'll find out later that that's the state of the city as a whole--of the country as a whole--but for the moment my first impression of China is of heat and noise. The entire place is under construction in final, desperate attempts to clean things up for the 2008 Olympics. I am, all of a sudden, overwhelmed by the newness of this situation and the complete absence of anything familiar. I am the only pale skinned redhead in sight, and I feel like a sore thumb.
But I can't check in for my connection to Jinan for another hour, so I retreat into music. With my headphones in, I can pretend that I'm not quite so scared. A small crowd forms around me, gesturing and jabbering and, occasionally, pointing.

Earlier, going through immigration, I had befriended an astronomer in town for a conference. We passed the time trying to determine just what the active verb for being an astronomer is. The best that either of us could come up with was 'stargaze,' which is a really passive active verb. I told him that I had concentrated hard crossing the dateline, but that I hadn't managed to feel fifteen hours different. He said that you come to recognize the feeling after a few trips, and then all you want to do is forget it.

There is only a certain amount of pointing that you can ignore, and so after a while I start staring back. My small audience (maybe ten people) notices that I'm paying attention to them, and start nudging each other. The boldest of them, carrying what I will come to recognize as the sort of bag the migrant workers tend to carry, steps forward a bit. He points to his ears and then at me, and back to his ears again. I get his point, but I'm not sure--I'm listening to Tullycraft, and I'm not positive that twee Northwest indie pop will translate in Chinese. But he seems to think that it's a good idea and so I wave him over and pass him the headphones. He listens for a moment and then grins hugely, his brownish teeth gleaming in the fluorescent lights. Slowly, and not in any sort of beat, he starts to bob his knees. Halfway through the song, the knobby old Chinese man is dancing in the airport. His friends are all grinning, and so am I.

Greetings from China, which is hot and noisy and full of Chinese people!

Actually, due to the required crappy train ride yesterday/last night/this morning, I'm a bit grumpy at China at the moment. I'm tired of sweating and, unsurprisingly, homesick. If anyone has decided that they just can't live without me, now would be the time to confess--I'm in just the sort of mood to be up for that.

But boy, do I have stories to tell you. I've been to Hangzhou and Suzhou, taken a few train rides and one slow boat in China. I have discovered just how much fun it is to tell awful dead baby and brothel jokes at normal volume in a crowded compartment full of people who don't have a clue what you're saying. And lordy, do I have pictures.

I've met two people from Seattle, one of which worked for the same nonprofit I work for.

I'll be back Monday afternoon, and I imagine I'll be holding court at the Zoo Tavern Monday or Tuesday night. Let's all drink beer!

My mother called today with a very quiet, "I have news. Dan died."

I have written a little here about my ex stepfather, but I try and step lightly around the fact that I lived in terror of the man from the time I was eight years old. It was because of him that I had to leave the house on the run so many nights, fleeing from the threats of his angry drug dealing friends or of his angry drug abusing self.
I spent years and years hiding out from looks and touches that were just off to the side of appropriate, spent years pretending to be a stuffed animal and practicing getting into certain hiding spots. I taught myself, at one point, how to climb into my bottom dresser drawer and close it with myself in it. Just in case I couldn't make it out of the window in time.
I spent years protecting all of the grownups around me from learning just what was happening that they didn't know about. I lied and pretended and stopped eating and cut myself to ribbons in an attempt to not make things worse for everyone else. And that has to be some sort of joke, right? I was just a kid.
Of course, because of this man, I stopped being a little girl for good one October night when I was seventeen. Even still today, whenever I hear bumps in the night, my first instinct is to cover my face, to hide.

News like this you expect to come from the sky in a flash of lightning. You expect to be able to see the striped stockings roll up under the shattered porch, expect someone to take you by the hand and introduce you to the wizard. But there is no light, no wizard, no explanation for anything. There is just a very quiet phone call from my mother. And on the one hand it feels like a great big weight is gone, like a heavy package I'd been carrying has just been taken away. But on the other hand, well, it feels a little silly to hate someone so much that isn't even alive anymore--and I feel cheated by that. Like I've just lost a shade of green that I didn't even realize I had been looking at.
I have been searching for a couple of hours now for some sort of sorrow, for some sort of compassion that this creature that was human--that my mother loved--is no longer alive. And the fact that I can't find even a ghost of sadness worries me a little. I do not want to be a girl who is so consumed by the things she can't change that she doesn't feel for people anymore.
This isn't to say that I won't accept any hugs brought my way. I'm a little stricken, feeling a bit like a rug has been yanked out from under me.

In a very few number of hours I will be headed off across the world. And suddenly, remembering where I've come from, that really doesn't seem so far.

For some reason, I remember the nights better than the days.

Maybe it's because the days were full of hiding out, of turning my watch back and going home by the broken streetlight. They were days and days of wedging in corners and hiding behind doors, curled up over books and concealing the fragility of my bones.

Daisies are my favorite because they grow wild, because they look so frail but last and last. Daisies are friendly and quiet and pleased that you've noticed them. They are sweet.

The nights, on the other hand, were for me. They were for slipping out once the yelling started and walking the quiet sidewalks, noticing the exact sensation of my pulse. They were for being barefoot in prickly crabgrass, for hunting small frogs, for pressing on my bruises.

Even still I bruise so easily, usually not even sure where the blue flowers under my skin have come from. I trip and bump and move ungracefully and, as a result, find myself covered in tender spots. I have stopped feeling self conscious about them.

My days were spent at the park, swinging in the swings and kicking the clouds. They were spent cheering the boys on the basketball court, for watching my best friend mince and prance and hunch her shoulders suggestively. All of my photographs were of the days.

It was in the nights that I knew myself, knew beyond the frizzy hair and awkward ways.

The Mysterious Stranger and I sat side by sat in a bar last night and realized that our approach towards travel is the same as our approach to the rest of life. We both tend to overplan for the things we can't control and neglect what we can, like how he went to Australia in December with sweaters and heavy jackets or how I always manage to leave the house without bell, book, and candle.
This tendency is the exact reason that TMS never sticks in one place more than six months, and the reason that he only reappears on my voice mail about four times a year. Life always happens opposite from how he'd planned.

I have started packing, determined not to forget a thing this time. I am scared out of my (admittedly loosely held together) wits, but I'm always scared of something. I need to find something to read that will balance out my Proust--love him though I do, I cannot read him for a whole twelve hour flight. Anyone have a suggestion?
And hey, anyone have some free time in the early afternoon of the 22nd? Want to come fetch a poor, travel-weary girl from the airport? I'll be your best friend.

At this point I'm feeling that the best part of this trip will be the fact that everyone will have to quit it with the, "Maybe you'll meet a nice Chinese guy and come back married!" Honestly. Is this a common problem? Is marriage contagious in China? Is it an exit requirement that no one has told me about? I do not understand why people hustle me to get married in the same breath that they applaud me for being a single girl. People freak me out. At least over there I don't speak the language.

It is nine million degrees in my apartment again, not at all helped by the fact that I am baking blueberry coffee cake muffins for my team. Earlier, jubilant that I could finally do my laundry, I may have sprained my toe. And then, just a bit ago, I took a great big swallow of sour milk. It's like a constant Laurel and Hardy episode, hereabouts.

I can't tell you how long I've been sitting here, trying to figure out an appropriate birthday post for my Sarah. But the trouble is that trying to explain this girl is tough, like trying to describe the exact taste of a smile.
Because the thing is that Sarah is amazing. She is strong and beautiful and smart, and even beyond that she is kind. She is the sort of girl who will on an hour's notice drop everything to go pick up a friend with a broken down car three states away. (Yep, Val told me all about that.) Sarah considers people, really tries to see them for who they are, and to accept them for all of that. She recognizes her own faults and tries to fix them, because she will not give up the struggle to decide who it is that she really wants to be. And if we are in fact each others demons and angels then I am confident that Sarah is my angel. She is the sort of girl that I want to be, and England is a very lucky country to currently have possession of her.

I am a lucky fool, very rich in amazing friends. And of all the people I know, Sarah is my star. I can't wait to see what she does next, what she learns and who she becomes. I am her biggest fan.

It's your birthday now in England, darling, so happy birthday. I love you.

Today was Julie and Keivan's SECRET WEDDING. (I'm sorry, I've been thinking of it in all capital letters for a week.) Julie is one of my very favorite coworkers, and she was a member of the Hoosier expedition--NIH Regionals edition crew. She is sweet and wonderful and splendid and one of the nicest people I have ever met.
Last Friday Julie let us in on a great big secret--she was getting married in a week to her special guy Keivan. No, she really does call Keivan her special guy, because she really is that adorable. She asked us to keep it a secret if we could because she didn't want people to make a big fuss about it. She had mentioned before that her whole family was going to be in town this week, but never once let on to the real reason for their visit.

So this afternoon Carolyn and I mounted up and headed for Bellevue. The day was perfect and sunny and her son was napping in the backseat. And I have to tell you all that this little wedding party was just. Perfect. Keivan's family came in from Iran and Julie's came over from New York, and other than both great big families there were just a few friends milling about in the yard. The families cooked some delicious food and everyone was friendly and so happy.
While discussing just how Julie the whole event was, her mother told Carolyn and I that 10 minutes before it was time to head to the church she was in the hotel room with Julie, who had her dress on and her feet up against the wall, helping her remove her old nailpolish.

We all know how much I love a wedding, but the reason for that is because I love love. And today there is a backyard in the suburbs nearly bursting with it.

So what I've realized lately, during this last round of notsleeping, is that what I am is fortune cookie fortunes. Some people, you know, are sweeping epic novels and some people are books with pink martini glass covers, and some people are graffiti tags. But I? Might just be fortune cookie fortunes. And maybe I'm ok with that.
This is possibly why I've been hoarding the things all of these years. Perhaps I've been gathering my own kind, creating a portable little family.
In the end this is all speculation, anyway.

There is a reason that I have been so worried about my grandma. The thing is that my birthday is in a month, and although you may roll your eyes at me, it is an undeniable fact that last year at birthday time my other grandmother tried to kill herself. I am not superstitious about many things, but I feel that the unlucky nature of my birthday has proven itself over the years. And so I am fretting.

I have found that whenever I'm telling a story that happened while Jesse and I were roommates, the story is made infinitely better by adding the phrase, "I was living with a magician at the time."

I emailed my exboyfriend this afternoon to ask him if he would like me to bring him back a mail order bride from China. I'm thinking of getting into the trade, or anyway that's what I'm now telling people when they ask me why I'm going to China--to become a mail order bride. "I'm a bit less submissive and considerably more foul-mouthed than the average, but I'd like to give it a shot anyway."
He hasn't answered yet, but I'm betting on a yes.

Today's shiny blue skirt kept me sliding off of my new desk chair all day long. This was at its most entertaining whenever I'd try to swivel quickly to answer a question from behind me and barely catch myself with my toes to avoid falling off entirely. It happened more than I'd like to admit; I'm not always very quick on the uptake.

The drummer doesn't have a telephone, and I find that this works for me. It completely eliminates all phone call returning anxiety and turns the whole thing into a very casual, 'I'll see ya when we run into each other again' type thing. Very breezy.

Because it is roughly a million and fifteen degrees in my apartment, I headed downtown to do a little almost-last-minute shopping. (Nothing says 'ready to go to China' like buying a purse big enough to carry mosquito repellent and my enormous rockstar sunglasses in.) On the bus, the woman sitting next to me leaned in close like she was going to tell me a secret. "You'd be much prettier," she stated, "if you got a nose job."
She's probably right. But I've lived with this crooked honker my whole life and am far too concerned about the idea of not being able to recognize myself anymore to even consider plastic surgery. Besides, ew.
The man sitting in front of us whipped around and stared at her, shocked out of the typical bus rider's no eye contact comfort zone. I blushed and slid lower in the seat, my shiny blue skirt helping me slither down, at which point she nodded as though she had just performed her civic duty and returned to her newspaper. The man and I avoided looking at each other entirely.

Have I told you guys that my newest goal in life is to play the tambourine in a band? No, seriously. So if you happen to have a spare tambourine and no one to play it, you can just give me a call.

All y'all bitches missed a fantastic show last night. I think that my favorite part about seeing Aleksandra play is that she rocks and screams and kicks ass while the music is going, and then in between songs she's sweet as pie. It's just adorable.

I don't know about you, but all of my roads lead to maybe lately.

After the show I was back at my bar, spouting frantic samantha babble about literary deconstructionism and Derrida and Bahktin.

I wish that you had something new and different to tell me, or that I had something new and different to tell you--something about the proper way to wish on a handful of fish scales or the exact makeup of green cheese from the moon. I am working on the homesick playlist for my trip, picking out the songs I should hear in those moments when what I want most is my own little apartment. I'll be the samantha none of you know, out there; the girl who wears boy's swim trunks and no makeup and pigtails, who crosses the street without looking both ways.