of lawns and little imperfections

how many of you are familiar with panera bread? i used to work there, but that's beside the point. for lunch today i went to panera, got half a turkey sandwich and a bowl of the best french onion soup ever, and took it to my new apartment where i ate on my porch in the sun, overlooking browning grass and a couple quiet streets. i can't say exactly why i like it here so much. it's green, but it's never so green as some other places i've been. oregon's green like something you thought only existed in exaggerated advertisements for cameras; the green in belo horizonte occasionally peeking out of city streets between buildings like a hidden thing. if there's a flaw to this place, this is it. this is lake country, and trees find all the water they need in the ground, but the grass here, and even more so home, in iowa, visibly asks for more rain than it gets. it weathers early, like age settling too soon. and sometimes the rain stops for a while, and, unless shaded, the grass dies for its shallow rootedness. a little further north and this is no concern because there are so many trees to provide shade that the grass either thrives, or dies buried in it and pine needles . . . or in water. and besides, the trees themselves comprise such a lush green that a brown undergrowth is a welcome contrast. now, don't get me wrong, i love a nice lushgreenlawn, and wouldn't care very much at all for a half-to-three-quarters dead one, but there's something in the slightlyyellow, bareblybrowninggreen of the middle of the united states that suggests a consciousness of the weight of living and the inevitability of not. and it's somehow freeing.

making up for lost time

i just got back from vacation with holly's family. we went up to a wonderful lake near hayward, wisconsin, something like 1 1/2 hours from lake superior, and fished for a week. i, who am obsessed with the north, found this opportunity to go further north delightful. and it was not disappointing. but after a while i started to feel a little claustrophobic because i didn't have my own car, boat, cabin, or room. i'm secretly a very solitary individual. i went so far in college as to not allow anyone to enter my dorm room for two semesters. so it was a good thing that it ended when it did because i was starting to feel very crampy after 7 nights in close-quarters with people i could not get away from.

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my internal compass points to water and cold. i don't know why. but the most beautiful things i can remember seeing are (1) the Pacific coast along Oregon, which was icy cold and covered in fog, and (2) one night when i was little when we were being so helplessly buried in snow that it was clear no one would be going anywhere anytime soon (digging oneself out of one's home, buried in snow, is delightful, especially if you have a fireplace). some images of woods in fall, and one week when it was so cold outside that schools and businesses closed, are close runners up. so is the idea of seeing the redwoods.

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writing (and, i believe, all art) is the translation of experience (broadly defined) from one form into another. in order to write you first have to understand how you understand. then you have to decide how to translate what you understand and what to translate it into. but you must also be aware that whatever you have translated you have done only for yourself, and if anyone else seems to connect with it, it is very lucky. for this reason everything i have ever written has been something i've wanted very badly to read.

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on mattresses
blankets
wait
with
pillows
feather
weight
in
the
sun's
gait

a bit of nonfiction composed at mile-marker 69 on I-88, West, June 10, 2004

I am no lover of Illinois. This may be because of my limited experience of it, since I really only ever move through it to get somplace else. But I move spitefully. It is to me a gap of the mundane--a space of mediocrity between two beautiful lands: Wisconsin and Iowa. Of course I know that many people find my affection for Iowa as something beautiful, odd (or worse), and it may be true that I think so only because it is my home land. But I reply to them in two ways: next time you drive through Iowa, look out the window; and, it at least appears to me that Illinoisians agree with the unattrativeness of their state, since they vacation almost exclusively in the neighboring ones: Wisconsin, Minnesota, and mine. Besides, this is about my observations, and when I drive through Illinois I do it as fast as possible, scorning the flat, greenish-yellow thing.

But today I am forced to observe it a little closer: I ran out of gas on the inter-state. I had planned to continue sprinting through it to Iowa, stopping at the first Iowan rest-stop, praising my home state with the ferver of a returning victor, and congratulating myself on making it through a land that would be more appealing if it were desert.

But from this slower vantage point I can see across it. As I approached this spot I had thought that there was nothing nearby but a farm-house. Looking out my window now I can see that that farm-house is really part of a community. North of it are several more, larger silos, a water tower, even what appears to be frequented train-tracks. The surrounding area is vast spaces of corn, scattered trees, and scattered houses, and in between these spaces sit small civilizations, each one like, and yet unique from the others. And if I hadn't already taken all this into account as a given, I might have to reconsider my opinion of Illinois.