Live Oak Grove

You are old men,
pointing with crooked fingers,
telling long stories.
Wispy beards
pointing down
to heaven.

How often
i am told to not pay you
any mind,
Grandpa.

that strange little house in dragonwood

You will wander up to an abandoned house, small with odd angles and chipped-off paint. Approach cautiously. Yell hello? Nothing. Sneak quietly around the back. You will find a small door with a padlock. Another building off to the side, rectangular with two more doors, side-by-side with similar locks. You step carefully onto the creaking porch, testing a patch slightly darker than the rest, littered with miniscule oak leaves. The old wood will bend under your foot like a tall tree in the wind, and you will step back and find a safer route.

Continue. There is one small, fogged-up window, but keep going. Another follows, clear and large with an open shutter, inviting investigation. You peer inside and see a large plastic child's pool, inflatable and still inflated. Then, a pile of rope, some illegible publication draped over the edge of a small table. Then one long yellow piece of fly paper, mottled with insects. It is as if this place sits waiting for its owners to return. The pool is ready to be inhabited by both water and child, and the flies are carefully preserved for the caretaker to dispose of. The porch groans in anticipation.

A Midas of Sorts

I read somewhere once that over the course of human existence, we as a species have significantly and single-handedly altered the landscape of the entire planet. That there are very few spots, save the ocean floor, that are without some evidence of the human touch. I am thinking about this as I near the summit of the mountain, and when I poke my head above the tree line my first instinct is to dismiss such an extremist notion. Just look at all these trees, these rolling hills, these jagged rock faces, this horizon! I think, for a moment, that its a bit arrogant to consider the entire earth as reshaped by our existence. Look how much has been left untouched! Look at what we hasn't been subdued under our axes and plows and bulldozers! Lets be grateful!

And we should be, of course. We should thank our lucky stars that the valley isn't a dust bowl at this point. But nonetheless, as the minutes pass, I can see and hear humanity coming back into focus. Kind of like when you first turn off your bedroom light -- at first its pitch black but then gradually you start to see the outlines of furniture. But instead of bureaus and bookshelves, its roads carved into the new-growth trees, hacking up the forest like a farmer butchers an animal. The constant whirr of wheel on road drowning out the whoosh of leaves on wind. The graffiti vandalizing the cliffs, leaving permanent records of stoned-out teenagers partying stupidly close to the edge. "Dude, where's the beer?" "Smoke up! 6-28-95" "Haj hearts Jamie" "Can I feel your twat?"

(A modern day Lascaux. I wonder, despite the importance we confer on them, those famous stylized horses were equally trivial and frattish. Or maybe I'm diminishing the significance of these latest paintings and twenty thousand years from now arhcaeologists will discover these remains of a culture obsessed with sex, love and drugs and will use them to make theories about our relative intelligence.)

So I take back my original skepticism. Of course we have reshaped the landscape. In fact, we can no longer escape ourselves. Everything we touch is left with the residue of humanity, for better or for worse, and we have our hands in all manner of pots. Since we've chosen to to play the role of mini-gods, however, continually remaking the world in our image, maybe we should think twice before touching. Economist William Nordhaus once famously recommended minimal action on the problem of climate change, since the only sectors that would be noticeably affected were farming and forestry which contributed little to GNP. In the meantime, we have constructed a landscape divorced enough from the natural world, in which we can effectively produce our own climates (shopping malls, office buldings, etc.). So no need to worry. Touch all you want.

Bill McKibben, though, responds with a warning ominously reminiscent of greek mythology. "Well, its true that not many of us make our living as farmers anymore," he writes, "But its also true that, first thing in the morning, before we go to work in the software design cubicle, most of us prefer to eat breakfast." In other words, even if we think we've got the gift of transforming dirt and grease and blood into something precious, we should be mindful of the ways this is simultaneously a curse. I read somewhere once about a guy who thought he was King Shit for having this power, until he touched his dinner. You can't eat gold, he quickly discovered.

Do you feel full?

I found this on a metafilter page in which someone -- presumably considering quitting grad school -- was asking others about the reasons they quit and whether they ever regretted it. I thought it was pretty smart, so I decided to repost it:


"MasonDixon writes:

I am completely serious: Do you feel full? You know deep down if you are full or not.

When people ask me why I quit I I tell them: "I was full so I got up from the table and quit eating," and that is what it felt like to me.

The prospect of cigars in the parlor with those who finished dinner was not a strong enough lure to keep me sitting there stuffing my gob --even though the food was fine. I said, "Thank you, Good Night and Goodbye."

I decided that if I want to learn more about "X", I'll do my own snacking later. I have yet to have any regrets about it."


I'm starting to full pretty full myself, but it varies. Some days I feel incredibly hungry and love every piece of food I put in my mouth. The next day it all tastes like dog food and it makes me nauseous. An apt metaphor, since I've recently started studying the sociology of food. I'll keep y'all posted on my unfolding quarter-century crisis.

This Dream, See

I had this dream, see, that we were
falling off of mountaintops, and this other dream,
see, that you were playing music for me, and often
I see you like that.

And I wonder what kind of place, what shape
I take when you close your eyes and if
I'm even there. You don't say, and I think
that I am but you don't say
so sometimes I wonder

what kind of person you think
I am, but I am
done being afraid of people including
myself, and I am done wondering
what I look like when I look at you.

I had this dream, see, when I was small
that I looked in the mirror and I wasn't there.
I should have learned right then
what I am learning now. I am done
with reflections, see, so I close my eyes and
there I am.

The Trouble with Cars, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Style

Cars had a way of disappointing you. That clunky old beast of a Dodge Aries, year 1989, that often acted like a grumpy old woman: all blue hair, refusing to move when it was cold outside, grunting and wheezing when prodded, and occasionally emitting sparks of rage when pushed too far. Some days you had to hold the door shut while driving because ice had a way of building up inside the latch. Then, the passenger side door stopped opening altogether. Eventually it decided that life wasn't worth living anymore. You agreed, and sent the old biddie off to the junkyard, now $50 richer. A long deserved death penalty for the deer it heartlessly murdered 4 years prior.

Then the devil took the blue dress off and showed its red side. The Jetta blazed into your life and all was good with the world. The car you'd always dreamed of, complete with a CD player just as they were becoming obsolete. For one summer, you felt like you were actually driving a vehicle instead of a continuously malfunctioning Rube Goldberg machine. Then the water heater exploded over 100 miles from home. After that, the Jetta became a fickle contraption, stranding you in the middle of parking lots, highways, bridges; simply stopping and refusing to start up again for what felt like hours. You cried on the phone to your mother. Mechanics were baffled. Finally, a miracle happened -- the death trap was repaired and a nice man from South Carolina took it off your hands for a pretty penny. You even found yourself the next car you'd always dreamed of -- a cute little Saab with a sun roof.

You soon realized, however, that you should learn from your mistakes, and that for some reason you have a strong attraction to completely unreliable vehicles. After pouring hundreds, near thousands of dollars into this new piece of machinery, it came time for inspection. You put it off for months, not wanting to know the extent of the damage -- to your car, your emotional well-being, your wallet. It sat dormant in your driveway, looking like a lost explorer, frozen and buried in the arctic tundra of western Massachusetts. After deciding to be responsible, you drove the sputtering car, illegally, to the repair shop, and were unsurprisingly unsurprised at the cost of owning a shitty vehicle.

But something wonderful had happened over the past few months. You discovered that you didn't need a car anymore. That you were tired of spending your money on things that were continually disappointing you, shooting flames into your face, and trying to murder you by stranding you on public highways, like one of those villains that ties pretty women to train tracks. You knew what you had to do, but weren't sure how to do it:

Do you:

1) Sell your car for whatever its worth, which is probably only $500 or less. Go to page 53

2) Trade your car for a woman's classic cruiser bicycle on craigslist. Go to page 100

3) Just donate the damned thing and try to get some good karma for once. Go to page 84, and probably to heaven

Leaving New Orleans

Leaving this city of
dichotomy, of sin and
goodness, Piety and Desire,
lack and plenty,
black and white.

Leaving today, of all days
when you are arriving,
making promises
of hope and progress.

You, who, I am told
are the living bridge
stretched over these divides,
the Mississippi; you who will
hold the flood waters back.

Leaving this city,
and I wonder
if you will make good.
I wonder if you really will
hold back the water,

or at least care enough
to send it down St. Charles
instead of
St. Claude

New Orleans, Day Four

I have three cuts on my leg. They look worse than they are. One big bruise on my right calf, the origin of which is uncertain. On my right arm another bruise is developing, the shadow of a circular rainbow slowly becoming visible, like a polaroid picture. I am being shaken. I am being battered. I am a battered woman in the best possible way.

They call me honey and sweetheart. But they also don't ask me whether or not I can lift and hammer and demolish. Because of this, these words, these identities, don't seem quite as demeaning as they usually do. For once, it is good to be a honey. Sweetheart has a strength to it, and is covered with dirt and termite dust. I am a woman; watch me tear this roof to pieces. Put a new one in its place.

I have never felt stronger, and in more ways than one.

North Shore in January

North Shore in January.
Masts and old wood litter the coastline.
The ground underneath me comes loose,
Becomes liquid, the air

Swells with the brawling of boat against landing,
Landing against pier.
I am facing my fears; wobbling,
watching the coast guard slide in
Until the snow sinks through my boots.

This place is full of things
I can’t name. I try:
Buoy, fishing net, schooner.
An unfamiliar terrain spotted with
The familiar. You in the kitchen,
This cat, this song on the radio
That sounds like my mother.

I burrow into these things,
Peeking out on the unknown.
I learned to do this from years
Of watching cats on windowsills.