nevermind cellar door

I think "kitchen door" is the loveliest phrase in the English language. I think of all the people I have ever loved leaning against the doorframe of my kitchen(s) as the heady smell of garlic snaps up from the stove. I think about all the times I've leaned against the kitchen door in friends' houses, listening quietly for the gentle hum of their lives running -- picturing the food stocking their cabinets, the photographs and little notes papering the fridge -- before stepping in to absorb it all. The kitchen door is space between the ribs where the heart is visible. It's cool and wooden and the floor underneath supports your weary body and cinnamon, bread, soup are all within reach.

"K-k-k-Katie, k-k-k-Katie, you're the only one that I will ever adore. When the m-moon shines, over the mountain, I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door."

cave ceilings are so pretty

cave ceiling
Originally uploaded by equinoctial.

like popcorn ceilings made of mud

is this where popcorn ceilings came from?
Originally uploaded by equinoctial.

the longest underground river in the states

runs through bluespring cavern.


people in the midwest really are just different

The insurance agent. His name is Lance. He is gregarious. He fields multiple phone calls during our talk and refers to me on the phone each time as a "young lady." Once he makes a joke about how he's not supposed to refer to the estimate as a "quote" but as a "proposal," and how he wouldn't want to tell his wife he'd had an attractive woman in the office and he'd made her a proposal. But the thing is, and here's the midwestern thing, it's not gross. He's so effusive about the online arts and music course he's taking, about maybe going to law school and about how much insurance he sells compared to the old guys in the office, that it's just part of this whole "earnestness" thing he's got going on. And it works. I like him in spite of myself.

The woman at the DMV. Like Lance, she asks what I'm doing here in Bloomington. You'd think what with the university they'd all just default. When I tell her I'm studying creative writing, she tells me how she got kicked out of her creative writing class because she got mad when the instructor criticized one of her characters. She was pregnant. She threw something at him. I know the teacher, it turns out, he's just graduated. He's a tornado chaser. Someone in a Vuarnet t-shirt walks by, and I think about 1989. Later the DMV worker tells me about how she got pulled over for speeding once but got off with a warning because of her big boobs. And you know, as much as I try, it's impossible to picture a Massachusetts DMV agent discussing her big boobs.

the writers try to be astronomers

Tonight, after the reading, we walk over to the Kirkwood observatory. The stairs are rickety but we climb them; the upstairs floor is a dark wood, the cracks between planks barely visible. David Lazar wears a shiny black shirt and black leather shoes with white stitching: a cross between Lou Reed and Foucault. He is slight and his shirt picks up the light. Because of this he looks a little like a stingray. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni leads us, her jeweled bindi also twinkling, and in her excitement, the rest of her is twinkling too, and so between them, Chitra and David, it is as though we are bringing the constellations with us to look at the stars. There are a dozen of us, or so, and we take up all of the octagonal room. Nadine asks about the history of the building; I slip outside to watch the clouds move over the sky from the circular deck. The banister is ornamented. It distracts a bit from the view. Inside again I take my turn at the telescope. There in the scope is Saturn, a pale yellow marble, striated with gold. A runny egg. As I search for the fourth moon, Martha Rhodes begins to sing, “When the moon is in the Seventh House/And Jupiter aligns with Mars/Then peace will guide the planets/And love will steer the stars.” I turn away, back into the intimate crowd. This would be a good place to hold a small dance party. A waltz night. Couples turning, the roof turning, and, above, the heavens in rotation as well. Maybe someday I will write about all of this more, better. The writers looking at the stars, how Martha jokes that the poets just gaze while the fiction writers ask questions, how this fact is a secret revealed. Revealed here. In the woods of Indiana. It is a small secret, I think, like turning up a rock and finding, underneath, a snail shell.

on the bike ride

Lilac, burnt rubber, manure. A motorcycle pulling something in its wake: a casket. Neither rider seems to be in mourning.

television oddities

I don't watch that much TV. Really I don't. But in the last month I've seen three people I know on television. Is this one of those odd consequences of getting older, that one's circle becomes wider, that its components become more widely known?

1. Bloomington Cable Access shows $100 and a T-shirt about the Portland Zine scene. And there was Eleanor, and there was IPRC, and I tried to open the door on the screen into the next room where the WRAP offices were. I thought, oh, that's the photocopier I used to generate poems to discuss in workshop. Oh, there's the letterpress machine where I made my first project, a bookmark with Piercy's quote, "the real writer is one who really writes." I miss you all, Portland, and it was wonderful somehow to see a piece of you on Bloomington CAT.

2. Another Cable Access sighting. Soft focus, fuzzy lighting, a clearly staged scene around a kitchen table, a fireplace in the background, some fake flowers in a vase. A woman is reading from a book and I pause long enough to hear that it's the Bible. Something about the man beside her, the mop of dark curly hair, must have caught my eye, because no sooner do I change the channel than I change it back. And I have to watch for a while, because the man won't turn his head to me; he stares engrossed with the blonde woman, as if transfixed by her piety. I will him to talk because now I'm certain it's him. And finally, he turns his head and reads, yes, from Science and Health and it is him, he of Big Blue Earth and Words for the World, that children's-theater-voiced art director from MBEL who provided the voice of the owl on the Quest Adventure Game, "Ho, ho! Welcome to Spirit Mountain!" Why is he reading Bible verses in a dating-ad-style vignette on my public access?

3. BookTV on C-Span, basic cable's blessing. A panel of young editors at the New York City Book Expo. In the middle of wondering why one of the young editors' names is so familiar, I suddenly realize that another editor is that girl, Kate, from Bard. From my poetry workshop. Kate of the wonderful poem about the woman with loaves of bread under her arms like wings. She looks older, so much older, and I wonder, do I look that much older too? I must. I don't know what more to say about that, only that it's nice to see someone from that time not famous, not like the Nick Zinners of the world, but, well, clearly successful, working, trying to get people to read more books. Godspeed, Kate.

Barbra Streisand Roses

My Uncle Pat has collected Streisand memorabilia for some time now. I didn't know the extent of the hobby until I visited his new house and was given a tour of the Streisand room, which includes a dress from one of her movies, a hat from another, tickets from the Millenium concert. More items than I can remember. On this trip my Aunt Sharon met us at the restaurant with a present for my grandmother: roses from her garden in a small glass vase. I held them while we waited for our table. The insides were a mauve that shaded to fushia, then maroon. Sharon said they were Streisand roses, she'd designed them. When the first bloom they're red, then they turn pink, then purple from the inside out. When the horticulturists first presented them to Streisand, they had no smell. Barbra would never put her name on a scentless rose, so she worked until they got it right. Dipping my nose into the heart of a rose, I am overpowered by the smell. It's like a distillation of "rose," the platonic smell. Like rosewater, and I have to remind myself I'm holding something living, organic, from the earth.

nasturtiums

are not proliferating yet, but the small yellow and purple flowers in my salad mix are quite lovely anyhow.

Lawrenceburg

Inventory of the trip:

• two cemetaries in cornfields, trussed up with memorial day flowers
  
• three roadkill pets, one roadkill deer
  
• three parking lots toured: two casinos, one Wal-mart (just want to show you how busy it gets)
• two visits to Bob Evans, one visit to Frisch's Big Boy
• eight times past the distillery, every time with the window rolled down to let in the fermenting grain alcohol smell, one of my earliest olefactory memories
• several lengthy stories about shoddy construction work, one lengthy story about asbestos at Fernald nuclear power plant, a moment of silence for Aunt Margaret and Uncle Paul
  
• one amazing story about proposing to grandma: "will you cook chilli for me for the rest of my life?"
• one cemetary; six graves of loved ones, seven if you count the unfilled plot that will someday house my grandparents
• one trip to Rising Sun, past the harp store that ships harps from the valley out across the world
  
• early morning fog rolling in, sunset over Tanner's Creek, the levee segretating the brown girth of the Ohio from the garish fireworks stands that speckle route 50