Last time the weather changed, I was embracing darker images. That was a very very hot day in October, at Robert E. Lee Park, just north of Baltimore City. I was excited about bunking down for the eventual fall and the winter. I was livid that it was so hot, especially since we were to take a daytrip to Washington a day or two later.

Now, I’m happy when the forecast is warm. I am thirsting for some color, some sun, sandaled feet. I am bummed at this weekend’s forecast, which means movies and reading and cooking. But no fun outside awesomeness, especially since I woke up with a tickle in my throat today.

Poor me.

It’s been cloudy and crappy so many days this spring that I would enjoy a nice, sunny, hot day today.

Remind me, in two months, that I said all this.

Photo Friday: Fragile.

I keep forgetting that I have a dissertation to edit and send to my committee and have since the end of last summer. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off because, once I send it, I’m unemployed. Now, I tell myself, I am a student. Even though, of course, in practice and in my own mind, my student days are effectively over. Still, it will be nice to get this out of my life and over-with. And for everyone to have the “option” of calling me Doctor.  It might have been nice if I had realized that I implied I was still a full-time student on every job application I have sent minus one.  Damn it.

I have a stack of Moleskine Cahiers with Nietzsche notes in them from last year.  Most of them have some of my favorite quotations on them, like these do.  Those notebooks worked well, especially since I spent last fall in a semi-nomadic fashion, much like Herr Nietzsche himself.  Not that I had any great thoughts long the way.

Please do keep any “Nietzsche hated women” and “Nietzsche was an anti-Semite” comments to yourself, lest you reveal that you do not, in fact, understand Nietzsche at all. Or, at least, have not bothered to read any of his books.  And if you feel the need to do it, don’t troll.  Come back and answer for yourself.  Nietzsche would.

Maybe even when he is fictionalizing his “stories” he was still honest to some degree, more so than one would believe when I started writing this post. Maybe he was a complete liar. I don’t know. Either way, you should still definitely check out this book. Or anything else by Chatwin you can get your hands on. I found this book, first edition, sitting on a stack when I walked into Normals one day this fall, after looking for that book for a long time. I exclaimed out-loud, “I’ve been looking for this! It’s like it was here just for me.”

But now I am restless. Very. When I read the first essay last week, I went shopping when I was pretty sick (and got sicker) because I could not stand the idea of staying home all day after reading something like that. Is that sad? I have finally gotten around to filling in a travel journal from our research trips in fall 2006. They were a bit of a pain at the time, when I was trying to get a dissertation written. But now I wish I could go back to New Haven for another chilly Friday morning wishing I brought something other than sandals. Or to New York for a thunderstorm on Broadway, ducking into the largest Barnes and Noble I have ever seen. Or to Boston, within a mile of where I lived for two years, remembering all things I loved and hated about that place. Hours at my favorite cafe’ there.

For now, I have to settle for books and other people’s experiences. And, of course, remembering my own.

[Larger images here.]

Do not adjust your screen. That is in fact a photo of two copies of the same book. Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals. I received a copy of it in June 2003 when I finished my MA from an old friend. I was excited about getting to read what I wanted to read between grad programs and was generally giddy about starting my PhD program. I finally read Kerouac that summer and listened to a lot of great music.

I was in a funk often during the school year of 2002-2003 wherein I was feeling very shallow, materialist, boring and cold. I worked too hard (really, I used to do that), lusted for things like more jeans than a person can actually wear and an army of coffee cups. I tried a number of things to get myself more, I don’t know, more alive.

One of these things was that, during the spring of 2003, I read poetry every single day. I found those cool little Pocket Poets series books at the Harvard Bookstore (no relation to the school) for like $4 and built a stash. Perfect for taking on the subway, when I was underground with no people and spring to look at. I read Whitman because I always liked his work. I was enjoying Rimbaud’s younger verses, perfect for April and May. I got into Baudelaire at the recommendation of a friend, and I found something very moving.

I’ve talked about Baudelaire before.

One day, I swear I will learn French. I have that software; you know the one. I will tell everyone that it is for my eventual trip to Paris. But it will largely be so that I can read Baudelaire in French. Rimbaud, too. And watch Amelie.

Anyway, my favorite passage from this book made it’s way into my dissertation, during the chapter on enemies bringing out the best in us:

A man goes pistol-shooting, accompanied by his wife. He sets up a doll and says to his wife: “I shall imagine that this is you.” He closes his eyes and shatters the doll. Then he says, as he kisses his companion’s hand, “Dear angel, let me thank you for my skill!” [Baudelaire, Intimate Journals, pg. 37.]

With spring coming, you might want to pick up some of the books I was talking about and which I wrote about very shortly after I began blogging. Read it here. You can sometimes find them cheaply at the physical locations of Daedalus, if you’re in the Baltimore area.  My stack has grown to around twenty volumes these days, though I don’t get to read much poetry lately. Don’t get to because I’ve been reading a whole lot of fiction. I’ll dig into my tiny poetry books soon, though.

By the way, my blogging history turns four tomorrow. Make me a cake please.

On the bottom, the manuscript from my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. It’s in a binder I found in my closet now. I’m working on editing it. So much red ink!

Apologies for sparse posting. Been a weird week. A weird two years, truth be told.

Bit of a health scare with two friends of mine this week, but all’s well. Thirtieth birthday party for my friend Dan Saturday, for which I am spending tomorrow making my increasingly famous vegetarian chili. I know some people might contend that chili is not chili without meat, but, well, whatever. Taste the gorgeousness of my chili and tell me that. I have some Habanera peppers I’ve been saving, along with two other kinds of chili pepper. It’s got more flavor than meat based chili I’ve had. Though, to be honest, I didn’t really like chili very much until the trip I took to the mountains in October. A hot meal after twenty miles of walking will do that to you. Anyway, if you need meat for the base flavor of your chili, your chili sucks. I said it.

Anyway, unless you live under a rock (or just don’t live in Baltimore, and that sucks for you, lol), we are getting a new single-stream recycling program. Best of all, all plastics are being accepted now, not just numbers one and two. On that, the new recycle bins are being sold at places like Poly this Saturday, the large ones for half price. I’ll be there strapping the smaller (but still pretty large) one onto my bike rack. You should come by and see me and the cool new German bread bag on my rack. What? Yeah, you’ll have to see it. It’s awesome.

Especially with my little snowflake pin.

I did it. I wrote a 50,000 word novel during November. I’m fully aware that being unemployed made that much easier than it was for some people. I’d only respond that the vocation-less-ness kind of sadness is its own obstacle. And I’d leave it at that.

I needed to prove that I could do it one day. Hemingway talks so much about the discipline of writing that I thought I could never write anything not school related, because I’m not exactly a disciplined kind of guy. But I did it. I created a world and people and let them do their thing, then reigned them in to do my thing and explore what I wanted to explore. Now we’ll see if I have the gumption to edit it and try to find a literary agent. And, and if it’s any good at all.

Writing something of that length (officially longer than my dissertation) was a strange experience. I started with the idea of wanting to write about a lot of men I know who wind up with crazy partners, and how they ruin each other’s lives. Yeah. I was going to title it Crazy Bitches. But I really wound up exploring the notion of responsibility. Whether we are responsible for who we wind up with and if everything they do to us really is our fault because of the amount of control we give them. If it is even possible to give someone control over your life, or if that’s just Sartrian bad faith. How much we owe someone to keep them from ruining their life. The nature of “tough love.” And there’s a wedding shooting, so that’s always fun. And two giant helpings of local Baltimore flavor, including a sort of upcoming-utopian version of the city that could totally happen in five or ten years. And a love affair involving the Mayor. The entire book is very dirty. You have no idea. I think it would make a cool movie.

But I’m glad I finished the draft, at any rate. It’s good to finish something hard. And I can always say I have an unpublished novel now.

I wrote a scene today which was set in a fictional strip club in Baltimore called Squiggles. That was weird, when I have never even been to one. Describing body parts was strange, too. Naturally, however, comes the sailer language. And the narrator’s preference for, shall we say, “good” bee.

I’ve been cooking a lot, too. I’m trying to master vegetarian chili, which usually takes like bland beans. I have some homemade pasta sauce simmering, too.

I need to find a job.

The weather for Saturday (hike day) looks gorgeous. Not too warm, definitely not cold. The last time I was there was this same weekend in 2000. I was still a senior in college and hadn’t lived anywhere but Maryland before. I said “Goodbye” to the mountains and valleys there that time; I suppose I knew it would be a very long time before I would return. I was on journal hiatus in those days and instead wrote bad poetry and played a lot of music for staying sane during my grad school applications. And I liked to take a lot of walks. That was my other car-free period, before my three cars in two years while I lived in Carbondale.

I remember coming across a page on the Sierra Club’s site about keeping “nature journals” the way that John Muir did. It’s still there, so I downloaded and printing the template, hand-cut some paper and bound some little nature journals for the boys with red ribbon. If not for poems and notes, they can always be used for rummy scores and keeping track of things seen for future use. It’s as much something for them to think about as to actually use, if that makes sense.

We’re roughing it much more than usual. No kitchen or showers or toilets or electricity. I’m bringing my own food because I don’t want to be one of those pain in the butt vegetarians who gets too vocal about it. And, I like to cook.

Instant coffee in a camp cup. The smell of my musty sleeping bag with the ducks inside. My trusty daypack. Penlights. New hiking shoes. My shortwave radio. Fire. The stars that I took for granted when I live in Southern Illinois. It’s going to be a nice weekend.

There were weird things about the whole event. There were a lot of people doing the walk (not the run) who were wearing brand-new track clothes and stretchy things I don’t even wear for 10 mile bike rides and 20 mile hikes. I could not tell if they were congratulating themselves for doing the “race” for a good cause or if they really thought that walking for a whole hour was a serious physical undertaking.

One thing that I thought was weird was how many people had their photo taken next to the one mile marker during the walk. The whole walk was three miles, and there were far less people getting their photos taken at the three mile mark.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that I’m no explorer. I don’t walk for Thoreau’s famous four hours a day. I never jump the back fence armed with tea, bread and a blanket like John Muir. No one’s arrested me for being in the wrong country during a coup like Chatwin. But I walk more than the Komen’s three miles in a normal day, usually even a day that involves cycling.

What I mean to wonder is, are my fellow Marylanders so sedentary that they need to prove to their family, friends or themselves that they actually in fact definitely walked a whole mile at one time? I wondered that as we passed the other mile markers and noticed less or no people getting their photos taken. And when scores of people collapsed at the end, perfectly young and/or apparently reasonably fit people, I did feel a little, I don’t know, awesome because I was ready to walk all day.

I hope this is not all true because we are taking 5-10 young men on a 20+ miler in the mountains this coming weekend. They are very good kids, but they are a lot less…active than even I was at their ages. My first 20-miler at age 14 wrecked my feet (I was stupid enough to wear new boots), but I made it. I know these boys can do it, but yesterday’s Komen walk has me a little nervous. I have not the upper body strength to be carrying anyone.

Speaking of Muir, I have something neat in mind for the youngins this weekend, which I’ll share later.

I was going to subject you to another long narrative post (and I still might), but for now, we have to pack and get out of here! We are playing hooky and going to Washington DC for the day. Taking the 61 bus, the MARC train and the subway all day. I love mass transit. Have a Moleskine City Notebook for the city with some stationary stores, book stores and Ben’s Chili Bowl marked off. Camera batteries charged. Now I have to charge mine with the coffee I shunned yesterday.

This is a bench that is usually not underwater.

The water was very high, and there were parts of the beach I’ve never seen underwater before. There was a lot of rain in the days before our visit. The sky cleared as the commuter rail train got near Concord.

For Photo Friday: The Beach.

This is the view from my kitchen window the other night. Monday was a crazy day, as I had a difficult application for a job somewhere I would love to work. So I snuggled up with a good book, and I did the same thing last night.

I’m reading The Namesake (which was a film this spring, but I missed it). It’s fantastic. It keeps having me run to the kitchen for tea between chapters. Even made chai latte’s last night. The author talks about tea a lot. When a certain person in the book died while I was reading last night, and I had to finish the chapter and stop reading. It was very sad.

It’s going to warm up for a week starting tomorrow, but that’s Okay. Late September 82 is not the same as July 82. It’s much cooler than where I used to live right now (and save your anonymous comments — it’s a fact; I checked). I am hiking to Pennsylvania Saturday (not from the city, though) to practice for a larger and longer hiking weekend next month, in the mountains of Western Maryland. It’s supposed to be 87 Saturday, but I don’t care. Eighties for the first day of fall on Sunday would have pissed me off in the past, and not just in Illinois. My first fall in Massachusetts was disappointing, too.

I had a nice bike ride with my bike buddy yesterday to and through Druid Hill. We are seriously thinking of founding a modest bike club. I think I’ll buy a wheel truing stand to make it official. If you live in North Baltimore and want to be a part of our sissy gang, email me.

[Also for Photo Friday: The City.]

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden..

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own under­standing of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstacy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran.

If you’ve read or own the book, you can read it and see why I did not read the speech on marriage, but the one on love. I like this passage very much.

Women conceive more readily, if taken
As animals are, breasts underneath, loins high,
So that the seed reaches the proper parts
More readily. Wives have no need at all
For loose and limber motions, pelvic stunts,
Abdominal gyrations.

But my wife said it was too dirty. And, really, the end of it implied that the bride was ugly. And I didn’t want to say that at all.

Another toast I thought of involved a prop. I was going to use my mother’s father’s old marble bag, which is round and brown. I was going to put two heavy rocks in it. Hold it up. Say, “Don’t worry, Tom! I’ll never let her have them!” He thought that was funny when I rejected it and told him about it.

Still another potential toast I carried around in my pocket that day as a joke. It read (and pardon the language):

Tom:
It sucks to be you.
Cheers.
Fuckers.

It’s obvious why I didn’t give that one. I did lose that index card. I hope whoever found it realized it was a joke.

But I settled on a long but beautiful quotation, which I will share when I find it.