Maiden Voyage

black capped chickadee

isnt' the web a wonderful thing...I found the sound I was woken by, on a web site of bird calls!

Here Listen

cool huh?

The whole site is here.

dee-dah

It is 5:56 am, and I have been listening to a bird going dee-dah, dee-dah, over and over again, relentlessly, for the past 40 minutes....cruel cruel nature.

the pollen is flying, my eyes are inflamed, my nose runny...giving up all hope of sleep, I turn to my computer, only to find someone has left an organ enlargement comment on my blog! Is this the new spam? now not only in email, but on my blog I will be pelted with obsenity?

In the Sunday Globe yesterday there was an article on the philosophy/psychology of disgust...does ketchup on ice cream disgust you? they asked. A resounding No! echoed throughout my empty kitchen. Does a thirty year old man having sex with an eighty year old woman, they asked? This one I had to think about. If I imagined myself as the eighty year old woman, it quite pleased me.

But "enlargement of a sexual organ that I don't even own" comments on my blog???

That disgusts me!!!

abandonment

oh bloglet! how I have left you, neglected, unattended to. Me and 2.5 million teenie boppers who thought we could handle the day to day pressures and responsibilities of blogging along with work, the dishes, recycling and the rigors of a phd program. How foolish we were! How naive! The appeal was tremendous. My very own blog! How cool is that? And yet, no body warned me...how would I ever find the time to keep up. It's not just the entries, no, it is the news, the other bloggers you are committed to reading...the endless pressure to be cute, to be pithy, to be wise, engaging...I cracked. What can I say? The pressure got to me.

I am deeply sorry to have been so cold, so heartless....I will try to take better care of you and consequently me, in the days and weeks to come.

here's to a consistently more regular relationship in the new year...to fun and folly, to a place to blow off steam and cease the seriousness of the academic pursuits.

college

internet access has been sketchy, not that there has been a moment to blog...days full of explanations, presentations, dissections and discussions of the minutae of the program. Haggith, my Israeli roomie, delighted to point out that this program, is critical pedagogy. it is an amazing opportunity to construct learning that is socially relevant, and personally meaningful. but what a headache to actually make it happen.

I am longing for the peace I'd foolishly thought 10 days in Vermont would provide. I wake at dawn to the sun lighting up the sky over the mountains long before it is visible. This morning, as I was walking into town, head down, absorbed in serious scholarly thinking, I was startled by a loud clicking noise on the pavement directly in front of me. I looked up in time to see a deer, not two feet away, dashing from behind a house, across the street and into the woods. It wasn't until later that I realized that the deer had crossed the empty morning street, properly, in the cross walk.

college

it is really college...dorm room....computer lab....cafeteria.... beautiful drive through the mountains to get here, Rita A. in the passenger seat, and I talking non stop about movies and education and Union and visual culture. I am now bleary eyed at 7:13 and ready for bed. must be the mountain air...eight other learners in our group, several teachers, one women teaches self defense and lives in Vermont, two came from as far away as Hawaii...but the best, the absolute best part of college life, so far is the cafeteria...run by interns from the near-by Culinary Institute, there was amazing food: some kind of cream of apple soup, gourment salads, pork spring rolls, chicken, lasagne, and tons of deserts-cookies and brownies and ice cream sundaes, and fruit and best of all...creme brulee! I could start to get used to this....

autumn

walking along the charles yesterday I was struck by the essence of autumn. its about death, but yesterday as the saturated colors filled me up, I thought that just maybe, if one had an opportunity to reach the end relatively healthy, relatively lucid, that perhaps it would be like fall on a day like yesterday. brilliant, hyper-real, saturated. the grand finale.

we are going to truro today to empty and the clean the house. the closing is on the tenth and while the money will help defray the cost of grad school, there is nothing that can replace the land....what a special place that is.

the leaves have fallen off the tree outside my window, but the clematis on my neighbors fence goes on and on....if only I could do a scratch and sniff, it'd bring a smile to your face.

no time

as the deadline looms large for my presentation of my proposed ph.d. program, I am blogging less and missing it so. this morning I was faced with the choice to blog or to email all those important work-related, dry, explanations, negotiations, confirmations, congratulations and obscurations that the liaison part of my job requires. The blogging panel at Simmons last week was faboo, and Scot and Megan and Shaun were assume, we had a full room and I was a happy camper.

then off to NYC to have a wonderful visit with Alex...out to Brunch, shopping at the Dynasty supermarket in Chinatown where he lives, listening to him reworking some of his older compositions on the keyboard while I snoozed in his bed, and dinner-Chinese food, what else-My only frustration was that I only got to watch the first of of HERO which Alex bought on our shopping trip...it hasn't opened yet here, but what an amazing feast for the eyes.

now if only I had time to blog....

getting to the root

who ever thought this procedure up had a beautiful mind...tiny little drills to excavate....syringes with long needles to irrigate and all the while you are grinning like a cheshire cat with the help of a dental dam...something I'd heretofore only heard about in the context of safe sex....don't even ask me about the part where they cauterize these tiny rubber shoots-all natural, the endo assistant assured me-so that they melt into your tooth's root...

if there is any doubt in your minds, let me still it. god does have a sense of humor...Picture this: Me reclining in the chair, the endo man screwing these miniscule probes in and out of the roots of my tooth, with the help of this cool little telescopic or are they microscoptic attachments to his glasses, looking for all the world like the main guy in CSI...what is his name? and oldies 103 as the sound track. The Beach Boys start singing, "good, good, good, good vibrations.." as the excavating drill drones. My endo man and his assisant are singing along. I had to smile. I had to smile.

I turn to thee....

lol in the bathtub this morning...reading "Stealing the Mona Lisa," by Darian Leader,

"Most things become more interesting once we've lost them. We can start looking for them, and then, perhaps, realize their true value. Civilization actually manufactures certain objects – such as the umbrella and the handkerchief – whose main function is to be lost."

I'd add single socks.

:-)

estranged

what a fabulous word...e-stranged...you become strange to someone with whom you used to be familiar...you used to know every burp, thought, blemish, sleepless night, obsession, joke, reference, nuance in their face, ring on their fingers, sock in their drawer. You used to know where they were, who they were meeting with, which doctor's appointment they had, what time they were coming home, which muscle group they were doing at the gym, how much wine they drank, when they used the last sheet of toilet paper, finished the seltzer, threw in a dark load, threw out the crossword puzzle.

Now you meet for dinner, sit across the table from one another, chatting pleasantly, laughing at the obsessive compulsive lady at the table behind, dividing her food by color group, each in its own separate space, not touching and she doesn't even try to hide it. You try and figure out what language the party of twelve next to you is speaking and you share your pad tai, but you don't know what is in her heart, how she really feels, what she cares about, who she is now.

You leave the restaurant and unexpectedly stumble on the donor/daddy....the guy who made your son's life possible....and his wife. You stand there awkwardly kvelling about your "collective" son, make a joke about genes, and for a moment, you two are together, Alex's moms, again.

When you get home, you introduce her to your neighbor as your EX, and the word turns to ashes in your mouth. But that is now, what (who, she would correct me) she is. Strange.