Farewell to the Flat

The last dust bunnies are swept away. Lost treasures have been found--my little windup pony prances on the shelf again next to the spinning seal and the waddling robot. (And the ladybug who performs flips.)  My blue hoodie reappeared, to be tossed in the wash, since I have no idea where it's been. The heavy bookshelves were hauled out, the sticky hooks peeled off the walls, sometimes taking drywall paper with them :(  and all the clothes and books trundled through the door and down the sidewalk.

And so we're out.

Lavender Flat, you were lovely, a tiny empty gem we filled with clutter and quiet, strung with computer cords and busied with study. We've outgrown you--we really do need the extra bedroom and larger living spaces our new flat provides--but I will be ever grateful for your peaceful simple shelter.

And with a new home, a new blog! It's called Poised at Taylor's End. More on that when you get there, gentle reader: follow the link from my profile, or go to taylorsend.blogspot.com. I will meet you at my new home.

The writing room at Lavender Flat. Glorious books, fine to own, such fun to move.

Sun-kissed list

Summer break is project time! May was fine for loafing, vacationing and getting approximately nothing done while resting up from a most demanding (but rewarding) semester. June and July will see Ben and I on the move, both by working out at the gym and on walks, and by moving house, down the walkway to a larger flat. But we also need to park our behinds in our chairs and study. He has some coding projects lined up. And for me?

List of Colleen's Projects:

1. Learn a semester's worth of beginning Spanish. (Books, CDs and online resources, check.) Be ready to jump into semester 2 at the U this fall.

2. Work on my rug-hooking project (I do this while listening to the Spanish CDs).

3. Finish and turn in the final projects in the Certified Clinical Musicians' course I began a couple years ago.  Needless to say, that went on a back burner while we moved to Moscow and studied here.

4. Choose one or two of my favorite young peoples' fantasies, such as A Wrinkle In Time, one of the Narnia or Prydain Chronicles, or an Earthsea book, and pick it apart. See what makes it live and breathe. Identify the craft elements and how they create the flow and function in the story. Take lotsa notes.

5. Sort through books we own and household items and get rid of the ones we don't need. Preferably before we move to the new flat on June 23rd.

I got something done towards #3 today: replaced a harpstring, tuned up my harp and the monochord side of my kotamo, a large tall box with dozens of strings on it. Ben bought a nifty tuner app for his nifty new Android phone for me.

Here is the koto/tambura side of the instrument. The monochord ("mo" in "kotamo") is on the back.

The strings were in the slack, G-ish range I'd left them in for the move here, and I needed to pull each one up to D. Thirty-one metal strings to raise a fourth, and any one of them could SNAP-twang and whip me across the face.

By the grace of God, none did.

I don't expect the other projects to wrack my nerves so neatly.

The Art of Housework, or, Art vs. Housework

                         Today we begin by celebrating the work of illustrator Susan Perl.

"Marketing Made Easy: 1. Spot a domestic looking woman in the supermarket and copy her grocery cart."

Some of you (hi, Mom and Dad) may recognize this illus. as being from Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints, a book highly instrumental in shaping my own housewifely habits. (No, really.) Funny as the text is, and even helpful sometimes--"Wear glasses when you're taking something out of the oven. They will steam up and you'll have a few minutes to brace yourself."--the illustrations make the book what it is. Perl, who died in 1983 at 60 of cancer, was fresh and bold in her work, never making preliminary sketches because that destroyed her pictures' spontaneity. She was very popular, her work in high demand for childrens' books particularly. She drew winsome, homely children.

                                                           And hilarious teenagers.

Drawings of The Twist.

I wouldn't mind my house looking like Phyllis Diller's (and it has) if my drawings looked like Susan Perl's. Study and practice! I have not illustrated anything much for ages, and probably won't any time soon. But it's nice to have role models in reserve. Meantime, my little flat isn't in terrible shape. A small space, few residents and no pets make housework feel like playing house.

Next month we will toss everything in the hatch of the car or the bed of the pickup and roll it down the sidewalk to our new three-bedroom digs. Will I take this chance to weed out excess stuff we haven't touched in nine months, or shove it untouched into nether corners of our new cupboards?

What would Phyllis do?

Sometimes you can get what you want

This is Brink Hall, here on the U of I campus. It houses the English and Math departments and is named for former Moscow resident and author Carol Ryrie Brink. She wrote the childrens' book Caddie Woodlawn, which I love. I also love this building.

Ignore the weird stripy distortions, if you see any in this picture.

It's ancient, U-shaped, ridiculously tall and utterly labyrinthine. Miles of identical corridors about sixteen inches wide run down each level, heated by ferocious radiators. Levels and sub-levels and half-levels with unending staircases all through, also identical.

Today was Vandal Friday. It's a preview day for new and potential students. One year ago, as one of those visitors, I eschewed the official tours and conferences with advisers to make my own way around campus and later, build my own schedule online--not without some keyboard-pounding. But that rainy day I prowled the depths of my new home-to-be, this brick behemoth I loved at first sight. I left my coat in one of the many identical bathrooms on a sub-half-level and almost had to give it up for lost. Escher designed Brink Hall.

When I'd visited every level of every wing, and a few I'm not sure actually exist, I found an exit and stumbled out into the light, wondering how much time had passed and if this was my original dimension. The rain had stopped. Across the lawn was a big square newish building with lots of glass. I walked up the hill and in, to find a cafe, where I bought a bottle of strawberry milk and a bagel. I sat in a sunny window and waited for Seri and Ben to finish their meetings with advisers (they're not averse to doing things the proper way) and while I waited, I listened to the bagel-cafe employees chat about Harry Potter books, and thought to myself, I'd like to work here.

And they're even shaped like life preservers

Every weekday for breakfast I grab a bagel I brought home the day before and eat it as I walk to class. At lunchtime I'm at work, so I fix a bagel sandwich or have soup. And a bagel. Sometimes, like now, for an afternoon snack, I eat....you got it. A bagel. And you know what? I'm not tired of them yet.

We bagelfolk at Einstein's wear black t-shirts with little sayings emblazoned on them like, "Happiness is a warm bagel," or "Donuts, shmonuts--Eat a bagel." I am thoroughly on board with this.

Ah, but what about life beyond lunch, you may ask? Well, it's just ducky. I am grateful for every moment. The week after spring break--which was lovely, spent in Newberg mostly--was an intense round of papers to finish and turn in, and papers received back from professors with results ranging from disappointing (but not surprising) to very pleasing. My poetry prof wants to use my craft analysis of B.H. Fairchild's "The Himalayas" as an example for future classes. :)


Yesterday in our window of sunny weather, Ben and I got his Miata out of hibernation--took off the cover, pulled the top down, wiped off the mildew, gassed her up, opened up the throttle, burned out the gunk and blew out the cobwebs. Sunglasses and bill caps. It was a blast.

Three years ago with the Miata in Yachats, Oregon coast.

Then it snowed. Now that's melted, and because that's a repeated pattern around here, Paradise Creek's running juuuust barely under the bridges. A few inches shy of flood stage. Life is exciting, innit?

 

Forward motion

Five weeks through the semester and we students have gained a rhythm. We know what to expect from our classes, and what our profs expect from us. First semester is behind us, we've readjusted and hit our proverbial stride.

Literal, too. In walking to and from the academic campus from (and to) our little flat here at the outskirts, my stride has become quick, strong, automatic. It's a ten-minute walk one way. Some days I make the round trip twice. Back in Newberg, I loved to walk, but then there was no hurry and there were no hills. (I've learned to mince as well: black ice was a real danger for a couple weeks.)

The other strides I've learned to take happen in my brain. Weeknights, Ben and I generally study from about seven to midnight. A great amount of that time, for me, is spent writing. My fiction writing class is the centerpiece of my attention, my dedication, and by far the greatest eater of my time. Unlike poetry writing class which requires a poem a week, fiction class demands short exercises of original writing three times a week.

I have never been a fiction writer. I have wanted to learn how, read about the process, feared that when I finally gave it a try I'd flop.

But now I have no time to think about that, I simply have to sit down and write something every day. At first I stayed close to home, retold events from my life very slightly altered. Now I've begun to stray more into actual fiction.

I seek out an idea, then sit down and begin to write, and find I don't freeze up, I don't fall down: just like when I step out the door and my legs take off, so does my mind and my fingers on the keyboard. It is a satisfying experience. I suspect it would be thrilling, if I could stop to think about it. And weren't so tired.

When I walk, I find myself mentally describing things I pass. (At least, early in the week. By Fridays I'm half asleep on the sidewalk.) Yesterday, I pulled out my phone and used its voice recording function to narrate a paragraph of story as I strode home. That was immensely fun!

Speaking of noticing and naming details, I wish on my walks I knew where to look for future blooms. Back home I'd be checking the crocus shoots every day, looking for hints of purple, gold and white. Do they grow crocuses here? Hope so. I suspect this high up they bloom late. Like me.

Back home.

Like a guest who won't go home

 The snow is slowly wearing off and lifting away, threadbare on lawns, sunken into roots of trees. Where the plows have pushed it, lumpy heaps linger, dirty laundry piles nobody wants to deal with. Maybe this is the vision of snow some people wrap around themselves when they say, incredibly enough, "I hate snow."

Most everyone here at U of I seems to either love it or hate it. I wonder about those who don't voice their opinions: Is the snow almost miraculous to them still, a child's gleeland? Or do they secretly loathe it, but don't want to admit how grown-up and weary of cold complication they've become? Or, most interestingly, are there those who fear they're losing their wonder? Am I one of them?

I'm a Willamette Valley woman. Every day I step outside and think, "Oh look. It's still here! Huh." It's a new feeling: snow's novelty evaporating. Oh, each morning the white land is a little different. Wavy edgings retreat, melted and refrozen, smashed grass gets unsmothered. On my walk to class, the sunshine blinks off thousands of large ice crystals formed over the remaining snowfields. Wonder changes shape. And I think, with our next snowfall, the wonder and joy will start afresh. I hope so.

Ugh. But necessary. Actually, these guys are totally on the ball.

That's better. From McCall's Winter Carnival. I want to go, don't you?