it's cold outside

i'm on my porch, wearing layers, smoking an absolutely wonderful cigar, and i can see my breath. those of you who know me at all know how special that is to me. it makes me want to write.

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can you believe i spend my time thinking about this stuff? i think i am finally and irrevocably an academic. i actually think to myself, ooh, that'd make a great paper topic.

up to date

welp, i was checking my counter the other day and noticed that some of you still check on this blog. it's rather embarrassing, then, that i haven't had the decency to update it in such a long time. so i thought i would let everyone in on what i'm up to, and what's consuming so much of my time.

1. first and foremost, i'm married, and looking for another job. i currently wait tables at the olive garden, and i'm hating every minute of it. i thus spend a lot of time missing my wife while i'm at work, and my friends who don't live nearby--which is all of them.

2. i was supposed to have an adjunct teaching position this fall, but it fell through when an emeritus professor stepped in and asked to teach. so i'm currently academically and professionally bored.

3. i'm working on a novel. i'm not sure how long it'll take since it's something i've never attempted before, but it's engaging, and i like thinking about it, at least.

4. i'm also toying with some pretty ambitious (if i do say so myself) ideas for an online poetry project that there's a good chance no one will ever see, but this project, along with some other writing projects, is primarily what has kept me from this blog. for those of you interested, and i assume that means the one or two people who still check up on this blog, if anything ever happens with it, i'll let you know immediately.

odd???

i sometimes find the sensations i experience somewhat oddly composed. for example: i am soon to be married. i find in this thought a variety of feelings: relief; a romantic easiness; sexual arousal; irresistible smileyness; and, perhaps, etc. of particular interest to me, though, is the nature of the relief (just stop your mind right there: i'm not going there. well, not really). relief that wedding planning is over, that non-stop work is coming to a break, and that i will perhaps have more luxury time on my hands, etc. now, here is where i find my feelings oddly composed. Holly and i have a rather extensive collection of books that i have hardly been able to spend any time with this summer. usually my summers are centered on reading, and this summer i've largely missed it. so along with the relief of marriage is the excitement of having more time to read. but, i suppose because that excitement falls into thinking of marriage, when i find myself thinking of reading (just reading) after the wedding, i also experience feelings of a romantic easiness; irresistible smileyness; and, perhaps, etc. . . . . . . .
is that odd????

wedding coming!

in just a little over two weeks i'll be having sex in the smoky mountains. obviously i'm pretty excited. excited enough to bring it up without any real point of having said it. i just wanted to boast.

i'll be glad, though, when all this wedding stuff is over. now, my life hasn't been as hectic as is often portrayed in movies like Father of the Bride and such, but there has been little time for pleasures like reading, and certainly almost no time for that incredibly time consuming (yet intensely pleasurable) task of writing. i haven't been so much running around trying to finalize wedding things, myself, though, as i have been trying to make up for about 2 1/2 months of not working this summer because i had a crumbled bit of wood-work for an arm.

an interesting phenomenon of having a wedding coming up is the number of puns that pop into your head, and into the heads of everyone around you. i'm sure that most of you have experienced this already, and that i don't need to go into details, but suffice it to say, my title is an example. for that very reason i left off adding "quick!"

similar, yet dissimilar

rain
fills
the yard
of faces
lapping
full mouths
and
roots
drinking
rain
through
painted
jars
in the
window

i have about as much faith in my ability to indefinitely produce somethings worth reading as i do in my ability to live forever. i struggle on an almost daily basis to say something that i like myself for having said, and that doesn't even begin to extend to my concern for readerly tastes. i've kind of been in a dry spout lately, for one reason or another, but i thought i better go ahead and say something so you all know i'm still around.

that said, let me share with you some of my pet peeves that i have discovered in the past week.

1) stories that pretend to be great when they're not (see The Illusionist, as well as Syriana)

2) criticism that pretends that there is an objective scale for good or bad art

3) people who express opinions that, at best, don't get along, at worst, are mutually negational.

but enough of that.

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painted
walls
fill
rooms of
rain
full
faces
floating
in the window

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.