On Friday night I made my debut as a cocktail waitress, which seems like it should have been a spectacularly bad idea, given how clumsy I tend to be. But a friend of mine needed help and in this post-Michael economy we could all use a little extra cash, so I gave it a shot and didn't fall over even once. My next trick will be to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Saturday turned out to involve piling 10 people into a van with a side door that wouldn't close for a trip to the beach. Five of those people had just finished a half marathon and were in varying states of injured, sore, and bloody. Marathons, like cocktailing, are not as easy as they look. (None of it looks even remotely easy, actually.)

And yesterday was the end of gay pride weekend, so I closed out the night dancing at a leather bar in a sweaty press of shirtless men all kissing each other and yet still, somehow, ending up kissing someone myself. So far I am quite fond of the shape of this summer.

You know, I had something else I was going to say, but I am too busy being bummed about Michael Jackson. In my baby book my mom wrote that one of my first phrases was, "Michael Jackson! Yeah! Alright! I like that!" When I got a record player in my room I listened to "Bad" over and over and over again, and no one will ever be able to convince me that the video for "Billie Jean" is not the greatest video ever made. With the shoes! And the light up sidewalk!

He was a tragic, brilliant mess, and most of my early years were lived to his songs. His death has kind of derailed me.

In World War II Japan built bombs tied on to balloons that they released into the jet stream in hopes of bombing forests and cities from across the ocean. They launched 9,000 of them, and about 300 were found or seen in North America, although they were hoping to land about 900 of them. (The rest, I suppose, were eaten by whales or sank all the way to the bottom of the water to give the Kraken a nice massage.)

They were assembled out of mulberry paper and edible paste, which the young girls putting them together frequently stole to eat, and their bombs were set to be lit and dropped after three days in the air. The balloons made it as far as Detroit, some of them, exploding all over the West coast and even short circuiting the power at the Hanford nuclear site.

The balloon bombs didn't do a lot of damage, except for the day that one killed six people in Oregon during a church picnic, while they were trying to pull the balloon from a tree. There had been a media blackout about the bombs, because no one wanted Japan to know if any of them were reaching land, so none of the people in the cities where they were landing had any idea that they should stay away.

The rest of them could still be out there, somewhere, in forests or ponds or trees, waiting. Maybe they're all corroded and unexplodable, all of the cracks in their metal pieces exploited by the plants, covered over, disconnected. Future archaeologists will find them someday, faded bits of parachute coated in muck and haphazardly preserved, attached to those sad lumps of metal by the impression of strings. They will look just like planters or lawn ornaments, as whimsical as gnomes and flamingos, stripped of their danger and therefore unrelated to bombs.

We set out a box on the curb labeled "Free!" and full of everything we no longer needed. Bouquets from the weddings of couples who are now divorced, math books full of equations that never added up, ghost stories and butterflies and sugar packets and the bones we found papered in behind the kitchen wall. The neighbors took most everything in the night--well, someone did, and whether it was the neighbors or the squirrels or a roving band of hermit crabs is anyone's guess--and the sides of the box crumpled a little in the morning dew. It all smelled of mildew and roses and celery.

Left at the bottom was a tumbled layer of crackling flower petals, exclamation points, and a snake oil cure for heartache. We held our breath as we looked at it, waiting for it to be sad in the way all left-behind things are, but just at that moment a shaft of sunlight broke through the tree behind us and coaxed a rainbow from that snake oil like a turbaned charmer with a golden recorder.

There was nowhere to go from there but sideways.

We have two weapons in the summer of not overthinking, and those are drinking and remaining well-behaved. And I must say that though it is boring, keeping my hands to myself certainly does calm everything down. I haven't smashed anything in ages, and there are few people that I am embarrassed to run into on the street. I can see the appeal, although I am having a hard time with it lately.

I guess that's not entirely true, though. There are other weapons. Hugging and making plans helps. Dancing for hours on a twisted ankle, eating french fries, sitting in parks. Playing catch and sleeping until afternoon. Napping with all the windows open.

It's all very pleasant, of course. Like an ad for jeans, all sunny and carefree, attractive people with sunglasses and terrific hair. Which is making it a little difficult not to spent a lot of time thinking about how everything will go wrong. I usually am my own biggest obstacle.

My mom has been scanning some of the photos that she found after my granddad died. My granddad grew up in Pinellas County, and so did my mom and so did I, and my veins are all tied up in that ground. Like this photo, taken under the old Kapok tree, which is over 400 years old and right down the street from my mom's house now. Back then, it was still on my great grandpappy's property. By the 1960's someone had opened up a restaurant with crazy ballrooms and giant gardens. Now there's a music store there, but the Kapok tree is still standing.

All these photos of picnics in the park that was eventually my mother's backyard and where I learned to drive, of people that I've never even heard of, of beaches I went to to kiss boys. My favorite photo of my grandparents, evidence of where my love of books came from, the origin of my giant clown ears and unconscious smirk. All of it in black and white but under the same hot blue sky of my own memories. I can hear the cicadas rising in all of these photos because it's the same sound that lines my own ears.

It's why my whole relationship with the place is so complicated, I think, why I ran so far but still dream in heat and sand.

Walking home in the earlier end of the night, Self got a conspiratorial grin on my face and nudged me in the ribs, eyebrows raised, suggesting that we have been so well behaved for too long, that it's time for running away and changing names. Time to go hunting in the Palouse for those worms that smell like lilies, time for bonfires and holding hands and kicking shins and talking too much about boats. Time to move to Argentina and learn how to cook.

I scowled at Self, shook my head firmly. We will not be moving to Argentina or kicking anything or finding fragrant white worms. We have things going on, plans coming up, drinking on patios and sitting in parks to do.

Self grumbled, and for a moment we paused and considered the poppies grown up along the road, trying to regather our truce. Those poppies are almost done for the season, their petals almost flat, nearly falling off. A month ago their petals were all furled, tucked under a little cap. I looked at Self and Self looked at me and we both shrugged and continued walking. Some of our conflicts won't bear resolving.

You would think that only having two weeks to go before my first quarter of grad school starts would put a limit on how much worrying and overplanning I am able to do, but you would be wrong. I am extremely fond of planning, and knowing exactly what is going to happen, and it's been three whole days since I got my letter and I still haven't been able to register for a class. (Ok, so two of those days were a weekend, but still.)

I like to do things as far in advance as possible, because it's too easy to forget important details at the last minute. Sadly, the universe generally refuses to conform to my plans for it, and right now is no exception. Also unfortunate is the fact that I will do just about anything in the universe to avoid talking to people on the telephone, which means that I will be waiting for things to silently resolve themselves for as long as I can possible stand. (Tomorrow, probably.)

In celebration I drank a lot of whiskey and then bought myself a tiny gray computer. Now all I need is to know where and when my tiny new computer and I should show up.

Internet! Starting in about two weeks I will be a graduate student at Seattle University. As late as yesterday I had myself convinced that if I did get in it would be for summer quarter of next year, so now I am kind of hyperventilating. Though not in a bad way.

Holy moly, I got in to grad school. The third time, as it turns out, actually is a charm.

So it look like big changes are coming! I'm only planning to take one class this quarter, to ease back into this school thing after being away from it for six years. And then, in about two and a half years, you will all be able to call me Master. I mean, officially.

Captain Toby and I have declared this the summer of not overthinking, which, given that overthinking comes to me even more naturally than breathing, means that it is probably actually going to be the summer of strenuous denial. But I've never yet been able to turn down something done in the name of adventure, and in either case the outcome should be fun.

I went on kind of a fun bender there for a couple of weeks, out every night and all available afternoons, sitting in parks eating ice cream and drinking tequila, having and going to bbq's, making up nicknames and always, always laughing. I came home at dawn for the first time in ages last weekend, having been snugged in a basement nest full of friends for hours watching a movie with a warm hand resting just above my knee. In my garden, everything is growing, even the experiments that I was sure would fail, and every day each one of those plants is different.

My instincts always lead toward smashing, toward lighting everything on fire, but just right now that seems like too much effort. My angry robot wants it, but my hands are too busy petting friendly dogs to do anything else. Seems like as good a time as any for the summer of not overthinking to start.

This is a thing I don't normally do, but: some friends of mine are running the Rock n Roll Seattle half marathon to raise money for another friend's AVID class, since the universe is kind of made of budget cuts these days. These are kids who are mostly from low income or minority families, who will probably be the first in their families to go to college, and they need support for SAT prep and college visits and all sorts of good things.

So, I mean, good cause. This is a first marathon for everyone, I think, which is kind of a big thing. We're into changing the world, though, especially while wearing silly costumes, and so this is happening.

I will not be running, because that would be embarrassing for everyone, since I run like a five year old, but I will be handing out shots at strategic places and doing a lot of jumping and screaming and high fives at the end. Although maybe if enough of you donate from here we can work out some sort of something awesome.

Really, though, you want to sponsor this marathon team. Promise.

We asked only for heat and movement, careening wildly forward with elbows out scraping the walls, both leaving behind and taking along. Talking like a rabbit warren, all twists and dust and dead ends that only we with our long ears and swift feet could navigate safely. When we emerged we were always cracked and bloody and covered with dirt and sweat and tears, but also unselfconsciously convinced that we had never before been so alive.

Only one day we held a buttercup up to the moon and found all stained yellow a light riddled with cracks and broken places, solid proof that the meteors we had been flinging at each other were damaging everything else, too. And we learned too late that running over a daffodil too early will force it never to bloom again, all greens but no yellows. So in the name of no longer tearing down we tucked in our elbows and kicked dirt over our flames, and learned to walk in running ways. We came strolling out of doors we had never entered, like cameos in a cartoon.

Even still I am not convinced that saving the moon is worth the absence of fever, and coming home at dawn clearheaded and friendly makes my hands curl in smashing ways, makes my elbows reach for the jagged walls. Restless, I tear at my hands unthinking, noticing only when a casual movement causes a jolt of pain through my fingers.

The moon has been around much longer than I have, and withstood far more rocks than I could ever throw.

This morning, at the intersection of the lake and near the lake, I found myself waiting to cross the street in a snowstorm of dandelion fluff. The breezes had picked up and the plants had let go all at once, and wisps and clumps of white cartwheeled all through the air. Had I been a little less sluggishly under caffeinated I probably wouldn't have been able to resist doing a pleased little pirouette in the middle of the street. It was just so pretty, all of those wishes suddenly set free, spiraling gently up into the soft blue morning sky.

Standing on the corner I looked wildly around, at all of the cars stopped at stop lights and the bicyclists whizzing past, trying to make eye contact with anyone to share the second with, that sudden flurry of fuzz and sunshine and sweet-smelling breeze. But everyone had their windows up and their morning frowns on, looking at their telephones or catapulting on two wheels through the red light. It was just me on the sidewalk, in a pink and blue sun dress, suddenly even smaller than usual and trying to hold in my eyes all of those wishes for all of those people who never even noticed them.

I still have them, here, just under my lashes. In case you need one.

It is always in these better hours that I am always unwillingly thinking of those Greek soldiers that Herodotus told us about who, charged with holding the gates against the Persian army, first sat down and combed their hair. When Xerxes, shocked at the display, asked what it was all about, they told him that before they left their lives the men were going to make their heads beautiful.

It is that I think we are unwittingly doing with these days, stretched full-length in the grass with cheap beer in a plastic cup and salted caramel ice cream melting slowly towards our knuckles, pausing only to register unselfconsciously exactly how alive we feel. We have been through these battles and held our gates but know full well that the next rush might topple us altogether, that no one comes through this war alive. And so it turns out that the only thing that sticks is friends gleaming in the golden hour, is leaning out in to the wind from the very top of a museum in Italy, is catching a firefly only to let it go. We are making days beautiful while we still have them to make.

The sign on the outside of my picket fence reads, "Gone Fishin'". I took yesterday and today off of work, and combined with the long weekend, that's going to end up meaning a whole lot of sitting outside in places having fun. My tomato and strawberry plants are already putting out flowers, and something bright pink is seconds away from blooming.

On Wednesday night I ran home from the bar, the empty streets and sidewalks overwhelmingly tempting, and yesterday I woke up one solid ache from ankles to shins. My shoes are only just barely walking shoes, never mind made for running, so I plan to get around town this weekend mostly by piggy back ride.

The antipodes of most places are in the water, somewhere at the bottom with the dirt and the dark and the eyeless fish. Oh sure, some of New Zealand is in Spain and some of Indonesia in South America, but almost all of us are swimming in our opposites. Which leads me to believe, generally, that the exact opposite of where we are standing now is in the middle of some underwater mountain without a name and coated in magic that we won't ever see, not even if we dive down deep and close our own eyes.

Even there I think our opposites are still just us, propped up on elbows and Tennessee Williams and sketches of what probably won't ever be.

I think the apiarists have the right idea, surrounding themselves with the bees that would sting other less-prepared people, gathering only the sweet things without getting hurt. It's a path that seems less strewn with landmines than something more exciting like snake charming, which is really just lying by playing a flute to an angry snake without ears. But then I guess the bees are all dying and the snake charmers, too, propped up only on myths and flowers and the tales of somewhat less than one thousand and one nights.

I spent pretty much all of this weekend outside, planting tomatoes or drinking mimosas on the patio of my brunch spot or throwing a bbq on a rooftop deck belonging to some friends who are out of town, and the rest of it involved in dance parties or otherwise engaged in hijinks. There was no real reason to go home except to sleep, not when there were so many new inside jokes to make up and cocktails to drink and piggy back rides to go on. And now I have come out of this weekend with one sunburned knee, twice as many freckles, and a burning wish that it would just go ahead and be Wednesday already so that I can get started on my five day weekend and do it all over again.

I have a whole plan for summer that is almost exclusively made of outdoor drinking, barbecues, and playing catch in the park. There are a lot of sundresses to wear and a lot of high fives to give, and I honestly can't be fussed about doing anything but having as much fun as possible with whoever happens to be around. This is sort of always my plan for the summer and it generally works, but I intend to make it work twice as much this year through sheer force of will. I need a break from all of the everything.

I am running incredibly low on both inspiration and energy lately, wrestling with another bout of bronchitis and waiting for the spring to hook me. I am thinking only of taking naps and growing things, of how many people there are and how many years are left and how many miles can be covered by how many steps. I am exhausted by the sheer volume of numbers available, all the time and distance and options available. Just now, the world is too big and time is too much.

My garden this year is running more and more toward falling and climbing sorts of plants, plants that will wind around all of the metals of my balcony and greenly cocoon the end of my apartment. I'm growing three-leaved clovers in the hopes of growing a four-leaved one, and I've sown flower seeds and seedlings in whatever containers I could find. I won't even know what some of them are until they bloom, my usual need for order trumped by this sudden strong longing for the unthinking beauty of growing things. I suspect that this is related to how gray and flat I've been feeling myself, lately.

Some number of weeks ago, a cluster of balloons got tangled in one of the trees I walk past every day on my way to and from work. Most of them managed not to burst on impact and have slowly deflated over the space of days, victims of the wind and small twigs like spikes, of visiting birds, of too many hours. On Monday there was only one left with any air in it at all, a small lump of balloon still holding on while all of its compatriots lay exhausted and tangled in the branches.
By this morning the leaves of the tree had filled in completely, obscuring anything higher than the bottom most branches. I like to think that the final balloon was still a little bit alive when it was finally covered all the way by that tree's leaves. It held on long enough to deserve the shade and the green.

All rectangles are squares at some point or another, and probably circles too, secretly, somewhere underneath.

We are happiest when fixed in motion, soothed by the motion of winds and ideas across our cheeks, like shipwreck survivors still somewhere longing for the swell of the waves. All of the laughing waiting to happen, resting in our throats, clinking against our vocal cords like ice cubes in a glass.

Our skin looked stained under the halogen lights, all of those shadows burned into our cheeks, eyelashes in place of eyes. Each time the lights buzzed I though about reaching up and loosening their hold on the socket, idly hoping that a touch would cause the bulbs to blister and explode. And each time I thought the same thing about my own skin, that one more touch would weaken all of the strongest bonds, causing all of my pale inches to rupture, both explosions leaving the room in darkness.

This morning I mailed off my grad school application, and now there's nothing left to do but wait. Waiting is not a skill I actually have, so instead of doing that I'll probably pace around my apartment talking to myself a lot, and drink too much and lie loudly that it doesn't matter, anyway, because the point was trying.

The reason I moved to Seattle, all those years ago, was grad school, and after I didn't get in I came here anyway because the thought of staying in Florida was much worse than starting over somewhere else. But that first rejection was big for me, the first time I had ever not gotten what I wanted academically, and the first time that simply deciding to do something didn't result in actually doing it. My stubborn single-mindedness of purpose ran head first into reality, and it was a long recovery. (It was also what I deserved for being just like every nineteen year old girl ever and writing an application to a literature program about Sylvia Plath. For crying out loud.)

After visiting the mailbox I went to the farmer's market for plant starts, because it's growing season again. I don't think it's possible to explain how much has changed in the last six years, but the girl that talked about flowers in the market, redheaded and wearing a sun dress, was not a girl that most people from before Seattle would have recognized. This town has been good to me so far.