Stay of Execution

The Blog Party Starts Tomorrow

(But you can peek at who's already arrived, and the yummy food that's on the buffet table.)

Please, if you read this blog, send me a picture from your life, and join us at the party (more about the party here).  Let me know a name you'd like connected with the picture, and if you'd like I'd be pleased to include your URL. 

And if you want to bring a recipe, that's welcome, too.  If you send a picture of food, the recipe will go with the picture of the food; otherwise, the recipe will go with your picture....

One Morning In Maine

It's warm for late November, a mild milky 50s, and the bay is thick with a lazy blue-grey mist.  The foghorn is going off, steady and unobtrusive, so after a while you don't hear it any more.  There's a breeze, stronger than you'd expect, and more west than south.  Three black ducks float just offshore.  Two more fly past, toward Mackworth Island.  The highway noise hums along behind you, and the tide is in almost all the way, with little waves making small hushy lapping noises along the rocks and the grass.  You can pick your way around the point, a dog running along and snuffling in the damp oak leaves ahead of you, and as you step over rocks and look for a driftwood stick to throw, you might feel very much at home. 

Stay of Execution Fiction Contest: Why My Roommate Moved Out

This will be fun, and we haven't done any real good audience participation projects around here in a while.  Remember the Buick Contest?  Let's have a Why My Roommate Moved Out Contest. 

Send me a paragraph or two with a dramatic but believable tale about why my roommate moved out.  I will include a true, dramatic but believable true story about why a roommate of mine has moved out (no guarantees that it will be the story about why THIS roommate moved out). 

Form of the story: It must begin with this sentence "I'm a little bit sheepish to admit this, which is why I haven't written about it before, but my roommate moved out at the beginning of the month." Go on from there. 

Second (or third) paragraph: "Now that she's out of the house, my plan for my living situation is ____________"

I'll post the entries on Thursday morning, including my own, and we'll vote for the one that's the most plausible, or the most entertaining, or howsoever we wish to vote.   Winner will be crowned during the blog party, which is shaping up to be pretty fun and which will start on Friday, so don't forget to bring a picture and a recipe to that.

Why I'm Not Writing Much

How come I'm not writing on the blog?

Maybe it's because I'm still off kilter.  Maybe it's because the thing I'm paying most attention to, this relationship with NBT and what it feels like and what it means or doesn't mean and what it's doing to my head and my heart, is off limits.  It's off limits because it doesn't seem prudent to write about it (what if it changes, and it's not what I've described, or what if I do a bad job writing about it and he reads it and by my words I create a misunderstanding where none existed, or what if I make assumptions explicit and they turn out to be wrong or misguided, or what if I screw it up or embarrass myself here in front of all y'all, or what if by writing about it I reveal all of my neuroses and bizarre thinking patterns and everyone realizes how nuts I am and stops loving me?), for myself, and because even if I were feeling reckless and imprudent and heedless of the possible implications for me, it feels kind of disrespectful to him, now that I've met his family and his friends and know that some of them read it. 

Everyone living has an audience.  We know that because we gossip about other people, and we speculate about their relationships.  Maybe you don't do this, but I do, and everyone I know does, to some degree or other.  At my best I'm kind hearted about it.  I reserve my cattiest gossip behavior for a person in my neighborhood who I don't know very well, and crane my neck from across the kitchen to get a glimpse of her coming or going, monitoring what she's wearing and who she's accompanied by and whether she's gained or lost weight or is wearing her hair differently.  Also the people in my gym get this sort of ungenerous speculation from me.  If you're a friend of mine, I tend to be much more generous and approving of the various developments in your personal life. 

Anyway.  That's how we all are.  But I have this extra layer of having an audience, that makes me a lot more aware of a particular aspect of identity and presentation and boundaries.  I'm really interested in intimacy and friendship and what is private and what is public.  That's probably why I have a blog. 

But it's kind of strange to have to think about someone else on here, knowing you people, with your beady eyes [my roommate moved out! and I didn't write about it!  there's surely a fascinating hidden drama there....] and your human interest in gossip, are out there.  I know what I'm willing to say about myself, and even about my own relationships.  But it's probably not the same as what NBT is willing to say, to strangers or to his family and friends. 

It's strange not to be writing here.  There's a lot going on with me, exploring an unfamiliar physical and emotional and social landscape.  There's homesickness and excitement and gratitude and restlessness and confusion.  It's good for me, in the way that weightlifting is good for me -- sometimes it feels good and sometimes it makes me sore and trembly, but in either case it makes me tired and stronger.  But I have to figure out a way to write about it that doesn't feel like I'm walking on thin ice. 

Actually, writing this post helps me feel a little bit unstuck.  Another thing that will help me is if you don't offer too much advice about my relationship with NBT in the comments.  Getting advice in the comments almost always makes me feel misunderstood.  Sometimes it makes me feel good, and always it gives me something to think about.  But I don't believe that I've given you as much information as you would need to give me good advice, so when I get advice on the weblog I often feel like you think I'm stupid, and like you think that my situation is a great deal more transparent and simple than I think it is.  Of course the possibility that I'm stupid and things are very transparent and simple is one that I consider often, and is probably true.  But in any case, the possibility that if I write something here it will be interpreted as an invitation to opine about my life and my decisions and to fill in what I don't tell you with assumptions and then advise me based on those assumptions, that makes me hesitant to write, at least about anything that's not solely an individual thing. 

There's A Difference

There's a difference between being busy and being purposeful.  I've been very busy here, and not very purposeful.  And without a sense of self-directed purpose I feel superfluous, listless.  I've learned this at various times in my life.  Maybe I'll start to remember it one of these days.

Thankful

When I walked out into the living room this morning the view of the mountains across the valley took my breath away.  A small cloud, pinkish-blue-grey, moved fast, west to east, across the peak.  I can see how you could watch the mountains change all day long. 

I ate warm cornbread with butter and cherry jam for breakfast this morning. 

I got a cut on my foot, a little bit deeper and longer than I could ignore, and I had a doctor and a nurse clucking over me and ministering to me. 

The midday sun is spreading across the white carpet, and I'm wearing wooly purple socks, and my feet are warming, and outside there's an army of grey trees shivering and swaying in the breeze.  The drop down to the valley is steep and across the way the mountain is a hazy violet. 

On our run this morning we saw big mossy boulders, and a stream that split and pooled and dove down rocky narrows.  Up high here I got out of breath easily.  There was frost on the rhododendrons and an icy puddle or two, but as we ran I warmed up enough to take my thermal top off and run in just my tank top.  It felt brisk and terrific.   

I talked to my parents on the phone and heard all about Lila's morning -- an early walk, tangling with her cousin Cody (a Great Pyrenees mix of some kind), chewing up some stuffed toys and scattering their stuffing around the living room floor, stretching out in front of the fire, and finally retreating to her crate to eat a fat marrow bone while my parents head down to Uncle Ben's for the feast.  I heard about what they're bringing to Thanksgiving and told them about the landscape here.

There's a fire in the next room, and three dogs, and two energetic children, and excellent smells are beginning to emanate from the kitchen.... 

Being Here

I'm sitting indoors, with the kettle on, while outside a raw grey wind rages around, scattering leaves off the trees.  It's cozy in here.  I've spent the morning reading and writing and packing for our next trip.  There's a sleeping dog at my feet, although it's not Lila, who I miss moment-to-moment with a surprising strength. 

I miss a lot of things about home.  My dog, my family and my friends.  My ocean, my city.  Even the clothes I didn't pack.  I miss my routine, too -- the daily set of things I do, at the times I do them.  The people I see and the landmarks I drive past without particularly noticing them. I miss knowing where to find the vinegar at the grocery store, and where the hipsters hang out drinking coffee.  I miss knowing whether it's high tide or low tide, and seeing the direction of the breeze on the water.  I miss the salty smell of the ocean, and the musty brown-green smell of seaweed at low tide.  Yesterday, on a walk around the NC State campus, I saw a place selling Dunkin Donuts coffee and nearly bought some just for the familiarity of a ubiquitous New England brand. 

What's strange is being in a place where there's no community who cares about boats.  At some times in my life I've pulled away from the world of boats, but I've never lived where there wasn't one.  It reminds me what a niche I really live in, and how completely I've come to think this tiny niche was "real".  Whenever I want to get perspective on how other people must think about sailing and sailboats I think about how I imagine the world of horses and dressage.  I think of horse people as peculiar and privileged, with an obscure if harmless obsession.  Is it a waste of time?  Not to them, I'm sure, and I'm sure there are plenty of good habits and lessons you can learn from taking care of horses.  But it doesn't hold any particular kind of attraction to me, nor am I curious about it in the slightest.  I've known that my own dedication to sailboat racing is similarly fringey and irrelevant, but living and working where I do, it's been possible for me to think that LOTS of people care about boats, because boats MATTER.  Here in Raleigh, boats don't matter at all.  Isn't that strange? 

Stay of Execution Book Report: The Female Brain

I have a few things to say about this book, and mostly they are below the fold.  First, a general gripe.  Why, in this day and age, isn't there a niche for the 80 page book?  Because I am sick of books that have been stretched and extended to make 150 pages.  I would buy an 80 page book (although not for $24.95, don't get me started) and I would be glad to read a compellingly written 80 page discourse.

This book is 164 pages, if you count the 11 page "Introduction" preceding Chapter 1, which the page numbering folks decided to do.  There are various appendices and endnotes and an index that stretch the package out to 278 pages, but really there's about 80 pages of substance here.  The author inserts anecdotes and some handwaving and some editorializing to get this manuscript to book length, and I really wish she hadn't.  The substance interests me; the anecdotes and handwaving don't.

Another bit before I get into the details of the book.  I've read a fair number of books on related subjects: brain chemistry and/or structure, and how evolutionary imperatives created the way we perceive, interpret, experience, feel the sensations and moods that make up reality.  Listening to Prozac is one such book, probably the best I've read.  The Moral Animal is another I haven't reread in years, but that made a strong impression in 1995.  I think it's possible to write a good, mainstream book about brain structure and human experience and behavior that blends science and anecdote.  I don't think The Female Brain succeeds in this endeavor as much as some of those other books. 

Things To Come

Tomorrow I'll have a little time to write, I think, and maybe then I can tell you a little bit about what it's like here.  What it's like, of course, is mostly in my head, and mostly what is occupying my thoughts is what it's NOT like.  It's not much like Portland, Maine.   I'm thinking a lot about context, and how it feels to be out of context, and who I am away from the cozy little web I've spun for myself in my hometown, the nest I've made in a landscape and among people that I am so very, very used to.  Until then, here are some pictures to tide you over. 

I Never Picked Cotton

Until yesterday, when NBT pulled over so I could take some pictures of one of the many cotton fields and see what the stuff felt like.  I suppose it's unsurprising to the rest of  you that it feels exactly like a cotton ball, like what  you buy in packs of 200 in CVS.  Except there are little hard nut-sized seeds in there.  Somehow I didn't expect cotton balls in the field to feel so much like the cotton balls you get in sterile plastic bags in fluorescent-lit drugstores. 

We're driving nearly nonstop, it seems.  Whirlwind visit to the outer banks for about 19 hours, where we ate steamed shrimp and he did a mediation and I visited an English Garden and experimented with my camera.  Today, west to his parents' place (!) and tomorrow to Charlotte for a football game, then back here, for two whole days in a row before we get in the car again and head for the mountains. 

Pictures to follow when I'm back here and can hook up the cables.  I'm no genius with the camera, but I'm starting to learn just how much it can't do.  At the garden yesterday I wanted to take close-ups of a line of ants walking down this huge live oak.  They were four abreast, tiny little black fellas, with the occasional big giant black ant accompanying them, slow and clumsy.  The tiny guys were holding small opalescent white balls in their jaws, while the big guys walked slowly, as if drunk.  The line went on as far up as I could see it and then disappeared down a root and into the leaf debris.  My camera can't get that close to small things, no matter how much I tried.  I also failed to get a picture that could really show you the funky 3-D eye of the tiny gecko I stalked in a garden border, how he could circle the thing around as if it was on a stubby little stalk, and how his tiny ribcage moved in and out with his breath.  I could see all of that, but I can't share it with you, except through words.  Anyway, you'll get what I've got, when I can get it to you.