3 am

I've taken some kava kava to help me sleep. When I wake, I realize the sounds have been going on for awhile. Voices and thumping. The upstairs neighbor watching television? His footfall always heavy. A particularly loud thump, then just the voices. Did he going to the window to see people talking on the street below? I get up, don pajama pants, crack the door to see if I can discern the nature of the sound and where it is coming from. I can. The neighbors downstairs are fighting what may be their last fight, though I have never heard them argue before. Her voice is just a sound, but his words are clearly audible. Go then. Just go. We're over. He says her name, which I have not known until this moment. I close and lock the door. Lying in bed, my heart pounds. I take deep breaths. And do not sleep.

**

We’ve reasons, we have reasons, so we say,
For giving love, and for withholding it.
I who would love must marvel at the way
I know aloneness when I’m holding it

from "Snow Melting" by Gjertrude Schnackenberg.
Read the rest of the poem here: http://teaandbooks.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/gjertrude-schnackenberg-snow-melting/

Departing, Arriving

I am getting on a plane for the first time in 3 and a half years! Also leaving Washington State for the first time in the same.

Going to visit a friend from graduate school and her family in Grass Valley, CA.


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Listen

Cuz I depend on me

Lake Lahan, near Stevens Pass, WA

Where in the world went 2009?

2009 went to graduate school and work and teaching and many walks, bike rides, outdoor and indoor parties, coffees, dinners, swims, dances, yogas and (I admit it) posting to Facebook.

As for any travel, I know there wasn't much. I will look at my calendar.

• Port Townsend, WA (twice a year, for school, Feb and July)
• Camano Island, WA (a tiny cabin with 7 ladies in Jan)
• Marysville, WA (does that count?)
• Tacoma, WA: Point Defiance zoo
• Index, WA (nestled in the mountains by river and sky. performed at the art festival)
• Edmonds, WA
• Duvall, WA (poetry reading)
• Rattlesnake Lake, WA (hike with a view)
• Bellingham, WA

In December, I canceled a trip to Iceland.

I have been planning on traveling this summer as a graduation present to myself, but am not sure finances and circumstances will allow. If not this year, next year, I hope.

Cookie Monster Coat

When I was little I had a Cookie Monster coat, with eyeballs on the top of the hood, and matching Cookie Monster mittens attached via a string that ran through the arm hole of my coat. See my profile pic on this site.

Walking to the bus stop yesterday morning - 17 degrees! - I put my hands in my pockets to find...only one glove. That's it. The next pair of gloves I buy I am attaching with a long string and running it through my coat.

Bitter wind blew through me as I waited for the bus. Twenty degrees is cold for the PNW. It is currently unfathomable to me that I lived in Ohio and survived 10 winters in the Midwest.

Demon Possession

My cat has been possessed by the spirit of the printer. Day and night she tries to learn its secrets, dig them out of its interior.