26: but not lonely

I love living alone.

Among other things, it means I can play weird music in the morning and dance around the room half-dressed, falling all over myself because I was up most of the night writing or playing online scrabble or baking cookies or watching nerdy documentaries. 

Nobody is here to laugh at me, except me (and I do).

Nobody is here to get annoyed by me, except me (and sometimes I do).

This is the first time I've lived entirely on my own, and it's fantastic. First there are the simple, somewhat selfish joys of being able to do what I want when I want, having to see and deal with only my own messes, and just having the space to myself without having to share it with anyone (except when I want to).

This literal space, as Virginia knows, is great for creativity. Then it gives way to figurative space as well. I could not be in a better place right now: I am exploring this space and finding myself in it, uncovering new interests, discovering what is really important to me, trying to figure out who I am and who I am becoming.

This all may seem very self-centered, and indeed in a certain way it is. But I believe and insist that, even as—and because—I am "coming into my own," so to speak, I am also learning to connect with other people as I never have before. And that, my friends, is worth the monthly rent check. (Also, the hardwood floors are a nice touch.)

(note: the photo here is one that I took, of a house that I like, which is not my own)

04: waywords

Do you ever wonder what happens to your thoughts when you send them out into cyberspace?

You take them and wash them of irrelevancies, dress them in lovingly woven phrases that complement one another in tone and pattern, and maybe accessorize them with a few additional colorful descriptors or surprising interjections. The final punctuation secured on their feet; enough substance but not too much weight in their backpacks; their lunchboxes stocked with homemade syntactical treats, peppered with unanswered questions, and finished with a heartfelt note; you walk them to the end of the street and look them over once more to be sure you haven't forgotten anything. 

They turn and wave goodbye, pausing just briefly before climbing the steps into the packed bus, which presently rolls along the information suburban boulevard, lunging toward the ramp onto the freeway, which is just becoming crowded with the first electronic greetings of the day, urgent requests and efficient-to-a-fault one-liners speeding impatiently by in the fast lane.

At the end of the day, they're at the front door again. They've traded sweaters or shoelaces with a classmate, and they have plenty of words to offer in response to your "what did you learn in school today?"

Sometimes, though, you send them out in the morning and, in the evening, the bus comes by your street but does not drop them off. And so you cannot help but wonder: How might they have become sidetracked? When will they make it home? 

01: inspiration

I've been inspired.

NPR's All Songs Considered has opened my ears to a whole new world of wonderful music. That's not really news; I've been listening to the podcasts for quite some time now and consequently discovered many newfound musical loves. I just want to take a moment to recognize its important role in my life and to give thanks to the host, Bob Boilen. Not that he reads my blog or even knows it exists, but still, I feel like it's something I should do.

Mr. Boilen just announced the third annual RPM Challenge, whose motto is "Record an album in 28 days, just because you can." I don't know how to record an album. I've been thinking more about musical creation lately, so... maybe next year.

In the meantime, I am feeling inspired by the challenge and slightly embarrassed by what turned out to be a rather poor blogging showing during the month of January. Therefore, during the month of February, I will record a rhetorical album in 28 days. 

I don't guarantee thematic or even stylistic coherence like you might find in a musical album, but I will add a track every day for the remainder of the month, just because I can. I have recently discovered many new sources of inspiration, so I have a lot of ideas running around in my head and looking for a place to go. I want to see what comes of recording them together.

This is my record; these are my songs. I broadcast them from my perch in the California canopy, as I take stock of the materials I have been gathering for my nest. I invite you to listen and, as you feel inspired, to add a verse or a countermelody of your own.

a year in review: 2008 by the numbers

I've never been that into new year's festivities. More and more I am feeling that no particular calendar day is inherently different from any other (it's what you do with the days that matters). I like to think that time doesn't exist (though I can't completely deny that it does, for us, in our sphere), and I have a friend who insists that it is cylindrical. I don't quite get it, either. What I am trying to say is that the difference between December 31 and January 1, between 2008 and 2009, is artificial, but it is there, so I can't help but take a moment to reflect on the past year. It was kind of a big one, by some accounts. Let's have a look, shall we?

skylark's 2008, by the numbers

4 hours writing for the specialty exam

96 pages in the completed thesis

1 diploma

2 weddings

1 passover seder

12 flights

1 drive to cleveland

3 solo trips to salt lake

1 walk to mexico

5 years in utah came to an end

2.5 moves

142 job applications

7 job interviews

1 job offer

137 train rides (estimated)

2 new wheels

1.5 heartbreaks

6 reunions with old friends

95 posts on etxerantz

1 new blog

Wherever you may be, happy new day. Well alright, happy new year, too!

nocturne without naiad, or, why am i still up?

I have been fighting sleep, staying up far later than I ought to, many nights during the last few weeks. Trying to stay on top of all the things I want to read (Google Reader is deceptively simplifying) and all the things I want to hear (surely I've mentioned my NPR podcast problem). And I have so many things that I want to write, and now, but the trouble is that I'm so tired that I can't manage to complete but a few of the half-thoughts that I have scribbled in a score of draft posts. But my reading list is not what is keeping me up. That's just a convenient excuse, I think.

Then what is it, you ask? Well, I have a theory, and it is that somehow, just below the surface of consciousness, my person is wholly convinced that, being as it is mid-December, I simply ought to be undersleeping and overintellectualizing. That's just what I do at this time of year, right?

This is the first autumn that I am not a full-time student since, well, since I started going to school twenty years ago. Twenty years! Okay, okay, so nursery school wasn't really that intense. But I think it can be argued that five consecutive years at university could have sufficiently conditioned my mind and body to expect the reeling, brilliant, sickening, prolific, anxious, exhausting, bizarrely beautiful stop-motion speeding chaos that is the closing phase of a school term.

Many of my friends are currently in grad school, and several of them have recently on their blogs discussed their sentiments or at least mentioned their frustrations as they struggle to tie up the ends of the semester or quarter. The general consensus is that they hate it. Of course they hate it in the moment; we all do. The way you feel when the clock is tick-tocking-telling you that you have twelve hours to write twelve more pages, and you can't figure out what you're trying to say, and oh NO what if, what if you don't finish on time? what if you fall asleep... that sounds nice... but you must finish! you can't go to sleep! not yet and you pour another tall glass of Diet Coke with Lime, no, Mountain Dew this round, and scrape another lemon bar from the pan, gooey sticky sweet and almost gone and you bring one to Claire, too, and it makes you feel ill, you've already had too many, but at the same time it is strangely consoling and the sugar should give you some energy at least, and you're back to the page and Sufjan is singing this time of year you always disappear and you think if i can just get this done and turned in then maybe i can squeeze in a nap before the next one and it's AWFUL! But don't you see? It's some sort of crazy wonderful, too. Sweetened at the end, of course, when you finish everything and slip the last paper under your professor's door and you feel like maybe you've accomplished something meaningful and now you can finally put your weary, frazzled little self to bed.

What's that you say? Do I miss it? Now why would you say that?

(I didn't think that it would happen so soon.)

Good night. Good morning. (It's all the same at this time of year, anyway.) And if you're still writing papers or preparing for exams, good luck and take cheer. Odds are I'll be right back there with you, sooner or later.

an observation, a complaint, a question, and an ellipsis

It has been a week since my centennial post on etxerantz.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing it, and not one person —not even a non-person spamming robot— commented on it! (Therefore, I feel kind of ridiculous.)

Is it just that I did such a thorough job on it that there was nothing left unsaid?

…

ten times ten and seven times seven

This is my one-hundredth post on Etxerantz.

As it happens, never in the first ninety-nine posts did I mention where the name etxerantz comes from. It is a Basque word, etxe meaning "house" or "home," -rantz being the directive case suffix (itself a compound of the allative -ra, "(going) to," and the destinitive -rentzat, "for"), indicating "toward." Hence the full title, Etxerantz - Toward Home. Now you know: both where the name comes from, and how nerdy I am. But you probably had a pretty good idea of the latter already.

I wanted to do something special to commemorate my hundredth post. Like it or not, I am conditioned to measure accomplishments in numbers. And the number 100, in our base-ten society and double-is-better culture (like it or not), is kind of a big deal. My first blog topped out at 55 posts before I retired it; interestingly, the next one ended up with exactly 55 posts as well. (In its defense, it was meant to be short-lived, documenting only my five-week stay in Peru.) My photo blog is marching steadily toward its centennial, but, being very young still, shan't celebrate the big three digits until February. Having reached one hundred posts here helps me to be optimistic about the future of this writing space. I hope to celebrate with you many hundreds more.

Let's do one thing at a time, though, shall we? The task at hand is, or at least my desire was, to write a special commemorative centennial post. However, I did not come up with anything meaningfully worthy of such a weighty calling, and rather than spend more time brooding over it, thus unnecessarily delaying the next etxerantz installment--who really cares that it's the one immediately following the ninety-ninth, anyway?--I opted to post something that has nothing to do with the number 100 (though number 3 under the second category comes pretty close).

That said, one might be surprised by how much time and energy I managed to put into what one might have expected to be something of a throwaway blog post. Ah, but I take these silly lists seriously, you see. I'm doing my duty here (not that I don't enjoy it): I was tagged, after all. And I liked Vanessa's variation on the sevens theme. That was a lot of v's. Here's my own slightly modified edition:

7 Things I Can Do:
1. ride a bike
2. write
3. host a slumber party
4. surprise people by speaking Spanish when they least expect it
5. get lost in strange cities (and enjoy the experience thoroughly)
6. play the oboe (and English horn, when I can get my hands on one)
7. cartwheels

7 Things I Cannot Do:
1. speed-read
2. fly a plane
3. control the size of my netflix queue
4. fall asleep with cold feet
5. understand everything
6. ski
7. survive without water

7 Favorite Foods:
1. lomo saltado
2. tacos al pastor
3. tofu
4. pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream
5. costa pork salad
6. snow day black bean soup (it's kind of a family recipe)
7. chocolate (pretty much any variety, but especially the hot, drinkable kind)

7 Books I am Currently Reading (or at least intending to read in the near future)
1. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
3. Casi una mujer by Esmeralda Santiago
4. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
5. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
6. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
7. A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters

7 Songs That I am Currently Listening to Obsessively *Note: if you follow no other link on this page, you really ought to click on the one labeled "Elephants on Parade." you won't regret it.*
1. Headphones by I'm From Barcelona
2. Airport Surroundings by Loney, Dear
3. Face to Face on High Places by School of Seven Bells
4. To Cure a Weakling Child + Boy/Girl Song by Adem
5. Mirando by Ratatat
6. Elephants on Parade by Podington Bear
7. Incubator by A.R.S.

7 Favorite Words:
1. cacophony
2. luciérnaga (Spanish for firefly)
3. Flugzeug (German for airplane, literally "flying stuff")
4. ma'muaang (my best shot at transliteration. Thai for "mango")
5. matzaqik (Maya K'iche', said at parting and roughly equivalent to "take care;" literally "don't fall")
6. q'omer (Quechua for green. the sound transcribed q' might be my favorite phoneme.)
7. sassafras

7 Travel Destinations Currently High on my Wishlist:
1. Toronto
2. Bolivia
3. Chile
4. Lassen Volcanic Park
5. Iceland
6. Berlin
7. Australia (all of it. yes, I know it's a whole continent. could take a while to save up enough vacation time.)

some thoughts for the next (first) day

November 5, 2008: yesterday was a pretty important day here in the United States of America. Today is a brand new day; today I, along with millions of fellow citizens, residents, visitors, as well as onlookers in other countries, rejoice in the naming of the new President-Elect, Barack Obama. This is the start of a period of healing and renewal and progress. Watching Obama's speech last night, I had to keep reminding myself that it was real, that it wasn't just a fairy tale playing on the screen.

The result of the presidential election, however comforting and awe-inspiring, did not come as a surprise to me. What does surprise me is the result of the vote on California Proposition 8. I really did not expect it to pass. I noticed the extra push by the No on Prop 8 campaigners in the last few days leading up to the election, but I couldn't imagine that their efforts were anything more than a security buffer.

You may remember that I had a hard time with Proposition 8 when I first moved to California in August. Well, I still do. Either way I look at it, it makes me upset. I don't fully understand it, and I cannot tell what will happen in the future as regards this issue. Ultimately, my vote on Prop 8 came down to a matter of trust in the prophet and apostles of the Church, trust that they are blessed with greater foresight than I, trust that they know what they are doing, trust that they would not endorse a particular position on a particular political issue if it were not very important for some reason(s) that I do not yet understand.

Am I happy that Prop 8 passed? No, decidedly not. Would I be happy if Prop 8 had not passed? I'm not sure. Maybe, at least in the short term. The good that I see coming from the passage of Prop 8 is that it will not last. I know it won't. Too many people are upset and hurt (and can you blame them?) and they will not sit back and say 'oh well, we tried.' We will be called to vote again, we will be called to act, we will be called to enact a change that is really functional. I don't yet know what it will be, but I believe that after several incarnations of prop 8's and counter-prop 8's, we may eventually hit upon something that everyone can agree on. Call me a foolish idealist if you will. All I know is that it's not working now. But that doesn't mean that we should give up hope. Hasn't the Obama campaign taught us anything, after all?


What follows is a text that I originally wrote in an email to a friend, since we had earlier begun a conversation on the topic. When I came to the end (which is far from an end to the discussion), I realized and commented that perhaps it was a little silly to be writing this in an email. While my primary intent was to renew our dialogue, the primary effect was that, even before receiving a response and yet ignorant of whether my friend would even read what I had written, I felt better (if ever so slightly) just having gotten my thoughts out on paper, so to speak. Writing is mostly narcissistic. But every once in a while it transcends. And our stubborn hope in that once-in-a-while, I suppose, is what propels us humans to continue sharing our writing, somehow or another.

To be sure, I do not feel "vindicated" or even, more mildly, "justified" by the outcome of the prop 8 vote, nor do I feel any sense of relief. I do stand by my decision to follow my church leaders' counsel in voting on the issue, but I never did feel comfortable asking others to vote as I would (and therefore I did not). To be honest, the whole issue makes me feel sick, literally sick to my stomach. Part of me wants to run away from it, but mostly that tells me that it is important and must be dealt with somehow.

Regardless of which way the vote went, the very fact that it was so close tells me that this is not a simple black-or-white issue. Though others who voted "yes" may rejoice that we "won," I know that's simply foolish. I know very well that this is not the last we will hear of it, nor is it the last time it will come up on a ballot. Besides, the way I see it, democracy ought not to be about winning or losing. Something's wrong if we're fighting. If an issue is so starkly divided, that to me means that neither side is wholly right. There must be some other resolution that will make everybody better off.

Frankly, I think that we are in need of major reforms, more revolutionary perhaps than legalizing same-sex marriages. Under the law, take away the right to marry from everyone. Let any two people establish a civil union and enjoy the legal (and equal) rights that come along with that, and leave marriage entirely up to the churches. It's a semantic issue, perhaps, a matter of names. But what's in a name? For me (the phrase "the Word was God" comes to mind, not to mention my linguistic/literary background), words, names, are very important and far from empty; it seems, too, that I am not alone: a lot of the emotion surrounding the prop 8 issue, I believe, stems from the meaning(s) we attribute to the word "marriage" itself.

This is just the beginning. I do not know what will happen next, but we will continue to live in the struggle.


La vida es lucha, y la solidaridad para la vida es lucha y se hace en la lucha. No me cansaré de repetir que lo que más nos une a los hombres unos con otros son nuestras discordias. Y lo que más le une a cada uno consigo mismo, lo que hace la unidad íntima de nuestra vida, son nuestras discordias íntimas, las contradicciones interiores de nuestras discordias.

Miguel de Unamuno, La agonía del cristianismo

if you've run out of books to read...

...you can check out "Unamunian Microcosms: Four Short Stories in a New Translation into English," now accessible through the world wide web. The abstract, other general information, and a link to the full pdf can be found here. It has bookmarks, so if you want you can skip the parts that you don't feel like reading. A tip: if you open it with Adobe Acrobat (as opposed to Preview, for instance), it should automatically show facing pages, which will make things easier when you get to the side-by-side translations.

navigating the job market in the electronic age

jobs that I have applied for: 11
jobs that I have applied for through email or web-based forms: 11
cover letters addressed to a person with a name (not simply "Hiring Manager"): 3
jobs that I applied to that I thought I was qualified for: 11
responses received: 2
non-automated responses received: 0

hope of ever getting a decent job: dwindling swiftly

it's almost like real friends

I just knew that all that hard work would pay off!

reasons why i have not been blogging

1) I escaped for a few days to California for Jack's first birthday.
2) Shortly after recovering from my first cold of the season, which lasted about three weeks, I caught another one.
3) I have been spending too much time following the presidential campaigns and primary elections. No, seriously.
4) I finally decided that it was about time to start studying for my master's exam. I crammed for a couple of weeks, and everything that I read during that time blurred together. A few days before the exam, I realized how much of the reading list remained neglected, and I became ill and sleepless from anxiety. The day of the exam, I re-read old exams from my courses, and I reviewed Bécquer's Rimas during the 12-minute bus ride to campus, where, I was nearly convinced, I would face my doom. Then I read the questions and I laughed. I realized that the word "comprehensive", as it is used to describe the specialty exam, is pretty much a big joke. I breathed a little sigh of relief and began writing. Four hours later, I was done. Now there's just this little thing called a thesis to worry about.
5) I have been reading this bizarre book called The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. I bought it at a yard sale in Chicago mostly because I was drawn to the absurdity of the title.
6) I have been wandering around south Provo with my camera. I think I'll post a few pictures soon.

why i read steinbeck

My first encounter with John Steinbeck's writing came in eleventh grade English class. In the preceding years, I mostly just read books for school because I was supposed to. There were a few that I enjoyed here and there, and in my high school years I began learning to appreciate various kinds of writing, but no school book had ever captured my attention like The Grapes of Wrath. I instantly became engrossed in the plot and emotionally attached to the characters, and at the same time I was fascinated by the structure of the novel itself and the style of the writing. I had never been so interested in class discussions, and I, shyest of all classroom spectators, even contributed once or twice to the conversation. At the time I had no idea why I liked the book so much, but I guessed that it had something to do with the author. So, in the following years, I made sure that Steinbeck was a prevalent figure in my summer reading. Some of his novels are rather heavy, while others are just plain quirky. The other day I finished reading East of Eden. Some consider this novel to be Steinbeck's masterpiece, and I can't say that I blame them. As I made my way with the characters through the pages of their story, I was repeatedly struck by the author's uncanny ability to portray his characters' humanity. He somehow makes them more real than reality. I don't really understand that either, but the stark, so-called "realist" novels just don't do it for me, so I have to assume that Steinbeck does something different, something higher, yet at the same time more down-to-earth. Maybe transcendent is the descriptor I am looking for. I know, it's really vague, but I am going to leave it for a moment because there is another reason that I like reading Steinbeck. I have always been the kind of reader who hangs on every word. It doesn't matter what I am reading: a news article, a chemistry textbook, ancient scripture, contemporary poetry, or a novel that is just for fun; I relish every syllable. Just try getting me to skim or scan anything. I even analyze cereal box literature if it is sitting in front of me and I have nothing else to do besides eat my cereal. Maybe I should be embarassed by that. My mom once enrolled me in a speed-reading class because she was worried that my leisurely pace would get me into trouble in school. It didn't work. I can't say that my low-velocity reading has caused much trouble, except maybe sleep deprivation. Anyway, my point is that, for better or for worse, I seem to have a heightened sense of writing styles. There are some that I like, some that I hate, some that I find unique or innovative, some that bore me, and then there are just a few that really resonate with whatever it is that my mind and spirit seem to expect to get from reading. Maybe you have guessed that Steinbeck's style falls into the latter category. I still can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something about his writing that to me seems darn near perfect as far as fiction writing goes. I only wish that I could write like him. I like reading Steinbeck because I want to write like him. Or maybe, after all that, I want to write like Steinbeck because I like reading him.

a tribute to g5

My mom ordered some things from amazon.com and had them sent to me. Well, sort of. As you know, I recently moved. What you probably do not know is that my old address and my new address have a few things in common. They both contain apartment numbers and they are in the same city and state. Also, they both begin with the number 7. Now, I am not quite sure how this happened, but I am guessing that Mom was filling out the form, hit 7, my old address popped up (something to do with cookies, right?) and, well, next thing you know Pai is calling me to tell me that a box addressed to me has shown up at the old apartment. Whoops.

So the other day after class I stopped by G5 to pick up the package. It was weird, walking down the hill from campus, down that oft-cursed staircase and across the street, the same route I took several times a day for nearly three years, toward that funny-pinkish-colored building and up the stairs to an apartment that had become such a standby in my life and now has suddenly become strange.

I have been meaning to post a tribute to G5 ever since I started this blog, and I figure now is as good a time as any to do it. So now, if you will join me on a little jaunt down memory lane...

I would like to begin with breeannisms. This is what we call things that our roommate BreeAnn said, that for some reason or another just stuck, and we still remember them and laugh. There was this one time, for instance, when she picked up an afghan throw, wrapped it around herself, and asked, "Can I wear this as my clothe?" Another day, she announced that she was very hungry. "But that's okay," she said, "because today I'm going to eat a big food!" (I guess she meant a big lunch, or a lot of food, and combined them by accident. Kind of like in Mean Girls when Cady says "grool".)

We had a lot of fun with BreeAnn. For instance, Claire had this big, green exercise ball that we would hold out in front of us as we ran full force into the wall, or each other. This resulted in hysterical laughter, and we tended to do this around two or three in the morning. We were literally bouncing off the walls. I don't think our neighbors liked us much...

Speaking of our neighbors not liking us, this one time they wanted to share our wireless network and we told them no because more people on the network would slow down the connection, and we didn't even know any of these people. I mean, that's why we put security on the network in the first place, to keep people we didn't know from using it. Anyway, they were just appalled that we had refused their request, and the day after last hearing from them, the network "screwyougranary5" appeared in our range. We thought it was funny, and took it as a compliment that they cared that much.

Occasionally, we would vacuum the floor at one or two in the morning. I wonder how our neighbors liked that? Oh, speaking of vacuums... so, it had been just a few days since Claire had moved in, and she was vacuuming the living room floor. I was back in my bedroom when suddenly the lights dimmed for just a split second and immediately after that I heard *poom!* Wondering what had happened, I went out in the hallway and rounded the corner to see a huge dust cloud that filled the entire kitchen and living room. Then through the haze I saw Claire, sitting on the floor in shock next to our exploded vacuum. We ended up out on the front porch laughing for probably an hour straight. I think that might have been the night that we sprinkled the stairs and the porch below with uncooked spaghetti that a former tenant had left, and then BreeAnn thought it would be cool if it rained, because then the spaghetti would cook.

That reminds me of that cup-o-noodles sort of stuff that Nan used to make all the time, often for breakfast. It had some sort of fishy fragrance and it was very pungent. BreeAnn would show up at my bedroom door and complain, wrinkling up her face, "Nan made smelly noodles again!" At one point we had two roommates from Thailand. They knew all the other Thai girls in the area, and from time to time would invite them over. All of them. That was when we wanted to put a sign on our door welcoming visitors to Little Bangkok. We tried to learn some Thai from them, but mostly all we retained were the swear words. They just happened to be short, easy-to-remember words, which were exclaimed loudly, and fairly frequently. They would always be followed by "Don't repeat that!" but it was always too late. In the Little Bangkok days Pai used to make coconut sticky rice with fresh mango. Mmmmm... Claire and I would eat bowl after bowl of it, ignoring Pai's chidings that we were making ourselves sick, because it was oh so tasty!

Which brings me to the cinnamon rolls. Claire has this amazing recipe for cinnamon rolls. These are not just any cinnamon rolls. You make the dough from scratch and each roll takes up an entire pie tin, and once they are cooked and drizzled with icing, you peel off strips of yumminess. Claire has several baked goods recipes, collected from family and friends into a little booklet, and they are notorious for producing industrial-sized yields. And we usually forget all about this until after we have measured out the ingredients and begun mixing and then, whoops, this mixing bowl isn't big enough, hmm, neither is that one, we'd better get two! So it was with the cinnamon rolls. I don't remember exactly how much we made, but it was an all-afternoon affair, and even after half of the ward showed up and ate up a good portion of them, we still had maybe four or five pie-tin-sized cinnamon rolls left. Which we devoured during the next, oh, two days maybe. Beginning at around four o'clock the following morning, since we were still awake, hyped up on all the sugar we had already consumed. That was the night we started writing in a little notebook all the funny things that we said. We like to call them "bizarrities", which I am convinced will make it into the dictionary one of these days. We wanted to put a sign on the door that said "Bizarrities abound". I don't know why we always had these ideas about putting signs on the door and yet we never put one up.

Anyway, the night of the cinnamon rolls was followed in suit by midnight jaunts into the street, where I would frolic around in the drizzle while Claire sat down and came to a realization of the absurdity of it all. There were also countless late nights of paper-writing and such, often accompanied by lemon bars or brownies and of course large quantities of caffeinated beverages. Often I would fall asleep on the couch and Claire would try to wake me up and make me go to bed, sometimes with success, others without. And there was that one time I slept through the night in the windowseat. We got on a late-night Scrabble kick right before we moved out, but if you think that's nerdy, just let me tell you about the Friday evening we spent reading aloud from The Odyssey. Three different translations. I know. That was the life. In case you couldn't tell, I miss it.

the cosmos are trying to tell me something

I am not a little bemused by the melodies and the colors, but judging by the calendar, I think it has something to do with my being past due for a blog entry. Or two, or twenty. I consider yesterday's class discussion of blogs an exclamation point added to weeks of my mind's ignored pleading. Time to start writing again!

a new beginning

Well, here it is. In response to my mind’s pressing need for release, in memory of how much I enjoyed writing on my last blog, and encouraged by repeated requests by friends, I hereby inaugurate the new blog.

It seems an appropriate time to begin a new chapter. You see, I am moving. No expat leap, no cross-country haul, just over to the other side of town. But I have lived in the same apartment for nearly three years and, while I feel that it is time for a change and that it will do me good somehow or another, still the thought of leaving is a little hard to bear if not totally bewildering. The first few months after I moved in here appear in my memory as nothing more than a transition period, defined only by what preceded and followed it. The previous semester I had studied abroad in Spain, and when the transition semester ended, Claire moved in. We immediately became inseparable, and suddenly my apartment was not just a place where I ate and slept and kept my stuff. It was where I lived, and it began to feel like home. In many ways, Claire is the best friend I have ever had. And she is moving to Chicago next weekend. While that is hard to face and in a way makes the transition more difficult, it is also one of the reasons I am moving. I had gotten very used to living here and, for the most part, have been very comfortable calling it home. But I know that it just wouldn't feel like home without Claire.

So here's to a new home, both on the earth and in cyberspace. I have been thinking a lot about the idea of home, and I plan to write more about it. But Claire just got home and it is time for a round of Scrabble.