it's a pretty nice town

there is solace
in playing volleyball with strangers
staying past when my arms hurt
walking home in the late summer twilight
stopping for ice cream along the way

thumping up the stairs with tired legs
playing Van Morrison a little too loud
standing at the kitchen sink
and doing the dishes

photo by Joe Parks, Berkeleyside Flickr pool

I hope you had a nice summer evening too.

Leap Day

you didn’t know that I write?

well:

I had forgotten too, to tell you the truth

writing

for me

is an untangling of sorts

a loosening of stubborn knots

and a stroking of tender muscles

I write when sentences won’t do the trick

when uncompleted thoughts and abandoned fragments

say what a carefully constructed paragraph cannot

I write when I am weary

gingerly gripped by despair

turning a painful thought over in my mind

poking a bruise until I know exactly why and how it hurts

I write when my pain is mixed with joy

and when my optimism is studded with flashes of melancholy

I write to scream

I write to be silent

I write when I am alone

I don’t, when I am not

I treasure a late night spent in the company of

a ticking clock and my clacking keys

a soft, burning throbbing behind my eyes

and a gentle aching in my heart

I write to get it all out

but to keep it, while I do

writing

for me

is an undressing

it is peeling off a damp wetsuit

and standing

naked

on the beach

Boston pictures, etc.

they slice feebly through the atmosphere,
at an angle far too steep for 3:00 pm:
these rays of fall sunshine that somehow
look so warm and feel so chilly, I mean

they skitter across the November grass
that grows in haphazard little rainy-season-clumps of lush green
I will never understand fall in California,
how it manages to feel something like fall after all

the rains are coming and I can smell it on the breeze
I will need that blanket and that cup of tea,
please,
I will need late night talks and staring out the window for a time
and I will need some silly jokes
and some long, long runs that numb my body and my mind

some friends and I decided that being an adult
is not what you thought it would be
you stay the same, and stay the same
but then you look back and realize that something surely must have changed
because this is not the same as that
and you didn't even know you were on a path from there to here

the thing is:
time will never cease to push you,
but you have to keep yourself facing forward
otherwise you get lost, or you move backward,
or you end up in the middle of nowhere

this time next year will suddenly feel like fall again
we can look at ourselves in the slanted sunlight
and try to decide how much we've changed
and which way we're going

Oh fall

you are beautiful and I will walk in you
until my feet are tired and wet and drooping
dragging/floating across the concrete sidewalk
like so many fallen leaves

I will clench my sweatshirt a bit tighter
and relish the long, slanted rays of your orange sunshine
I will drink hot chocolate with melty marshmallows
I will stay in bed for twelve extra minutes in my cold, California house

if I am very still, I will hear tiny droplets of water spraying against my roof
and I will miss thunderstorms
and still I will be sure that snow is just around the corner
and I will be wrong for yet another year

Oh fall
you are lovely and glowing,
a tinge of bittersweetness at the end of one season,
but hiding the smoldering promise of a new beginning
in the palm of your hand

a haiku from this morning

early morning run :


a childlike wonder before


the world is awake

******************

Unfortunately the childlike wonder has worn off and I need another cup of coffee to make it through my readings tonight.  This is what I get for having a fun weekend and getting no work done!

Don't tell the dogs!

But I'm going to be extremely selfish in a minute here and go for a run by myself. I know, I'm an awful dog mom, but I haven't been on a run by myself in (literally) months, and today just feels like a great day for it. I heard this song by Bon Iver again today (scroll down and click on the "Listen" link if you want to hear it), for the second time, and I have decided this is the next album I need to buy. But it put me in such a nice, melancholy little mood, and with the clouds rolling in on a chilly December afternoon, I just want to run around town by myself for a while. Campus will be deserted, the leaves are all still lovely, drooping, and yellow, and I'd like to have nothing else to think about except my own feet pounding the pavement.

In other news, I'm still enjoying having nothing to do, and I've taken the opportunity to read non-school things and watch movies so far. I've also been cooking and have decided I need to make a greater effort to eat healthy. It's easy to eat nothing but sweets around this time of year, and I've definitely hit the point where I feel kind of gross and don't want anymore. So I've been loading up on veggies and am trying to find interesting new things to do with them - if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

So after I finish this blog post, I'm going to hit the road for a while, then I'll shower and get dressed (in my new clothes!), then the one thing I want to get done today is to write a letter to Michelle. Are you reading this, Michelle? I am going to write you a long overdue letter today. I'm thinking about going to Barnes and Noble to do it, just to get out of the house for a while and have an excuse to treat myself to some yummy tea or a Frappuccino or something. Oh right. Eating healthy. Maybe I'll stick with the tea.

The other things I guess I should update you on are as follows:

- I checked my grades the other day and am very pleased with them. Hooray for a successful first semester of grad school! (Not that grades matter that much anymore, but it's always good to get positive feedback.)

- Since I got some money for Christmas, I went clothes shopping the other day and bought some much needed new jeans, as well as some corduroy pants that were on sale and a few cute tops.

- I am leaving for the Bahamas on Friday!!

Since I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately, I hope this will suffice. I wrote it a few weeks ago. You can consider it a belated Christmas present, if you like. Here's to the end of a very interesting 2008!

* * * * *

Berkeley in November

is a failed watercolor

(the kind no one wants because the colors have all run together).

More than that: nothing even matches.

The earth is a parched and dirty brown,

but the trees have somehow regained their lush green

just in time to signal the transition to fall.

(Think of a broken traffic light

that switches on and immediately turns a garish yellow.)

And the sky! Who would think to swirl together such hues of

rose

burnt orange, dirty white

charcoal and cyan?

Frankly it’s all a bit too Thomas Kinkade for my tastes;

the houses glow with luminescent warmth,

the purplish hills come alive with twinkling lights

as the sun sets into the sea.

I just don’t buy it –

the real world is not rendered in such a palette.