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Showing posts from November, 2008

A brief, distracted note on Thanksgiving

Yesterday Thanksgiving, & then & now, yawning out for a week ahead, we are in a hotel room two miles from our friend’s home, where we were not welcome. Turkey dinner was replaced with a trip to Safeway for greens & some deli chicken salad. We toasted, Stef her cabernet in a Styrofoam cup, me my winter ale, & we ate our dinner in our king bed here at La Quinta. I jawed the ears off my family prior, & took the weight of the situation, & balanced its circumstances with its calendar day. In the end, gratitude stands out in stark relief against the unfortunate backdrop we’ve been given here. But we’ve this roof & this bed & each other, & we neither enduringly suffer the abuses of the other, we neither acquiesce, we neither will resign ourselves to the venom we’ve seen here, or the sheer thoughtlessness, or the disregard for the fragile carriage of a friendship. Our values, these days, are shaken to their core, & we continue to mine & furrow into d

November 24

A difficult day of quiet strife, unfolding slow, almost inarticulate. Outside the sky remains inexplicably blue, the clouds few & hanging light & spare. The aureate glow of sundown hums about the farm & lends its odd illumination, the empty boughs of the deciduous trees black skeletons against the brilliant backdrop. & inside, inside the weight of our travels lands hard. In simplest possible terms, we have no jobs, the majority of our time is occupied by searching for work, the relentless cold of the barn has started to affect us & we are wondering how exactly we are going to get by. Every rock we overturn is slate-bare. There are for the time being two jobs that seem remotely possible for me here at present, though every day we extend our search. There is no room for timorous query here—if I meet someone, I have asked them within minutes if they have leads. & so it goes, with each day proving an addition to the last in some now mundane sequence of empty hope. I

November 21

How quickly accustomed we grow to our surroundings, in spite of their essential surreality. The windowed walls of this barn & the views they open upon already a kind of ingrained familiarity. After our trip we didn’t hesitate to unpack, to scour the place, to make a home of it. With winter coming on I wonder at it. The water will need to be shut off in anticipation of enduring cold so the exposed pipes leading to and from the outdoor shower don’t freeze & burst. The wood stove, bless its heart, cannot fill this space with heat, though it blazes tigerbright under its sooted lip & though I’ve come to find comfort in its spit & crackle. Perhaps it is having moved so many times already in my life, or perhaps I am still gradually unburdening myself of the exhaustion that attends to a slow & indeliberate move across the country. In either case thinking beyond this barn is almost an impossibility, if a necessity. & snow will come, soon, & send its flakes dissolving

Orcas Ch. Pt. 2

A blur of a day, a slow blur. Awakened a bit hung-over from a dinner party & our inaugural trip to the Lower, where a band played & people closer to our age danced about the small stage in various states of inebriation, some drunk, some clearly tripping, some merely enjoying themselves. & today the sun has been constant. Took Willa for a run through a private trail, the sun dappling the fine needles underfoot, the forest alive with a vibrance it hides in the rain. Stopped to help Steve with the worm compost on the way down to the barn, raking fresh scrap aside to get the soil thick like wet black cement piled aside for sifting. An awful stench, but a valuable lesson & an opportunity to help around the farm, which I welcome. A shower outside, the mist fine & articulated by the golden sunlight. & here, now, a sudden sleep upon me. We sink slowly into the island’s black soil, I think, as if it spreads its arms. Landing. *** Something about being resourceful becomes

Orcas Chronology Pt. 1

Just brought fresh madrona logs in for the woodstove, the rain quieting a bit in the loaming dark, the horizon cloud-bright in the figured distance that articulates in silhouetted relief the swaying tops of the Douglas firs down by the landing. Here, here, finally, here, a home. We have traveled 5000 miles, for a month & a half, sleeping on something like fifteen different beds, in four different states. Since we exited the ferry landing a week ago, we have slept in five homes, met countless people, winnowed our way into a community as fulgent & full of promise & enacted ideals as I could hope to find. & here, here, a home. The barn is modest & beautiful & rustic & easy all at once. Great vigas cross its low roof under white plaster & windows spread across the entirety of three of its sides, opening unto panoramic views of the farm & the forest & the sound off in the distance. Thick wooden posts line the room, rising of the red-brown floor. Mason