Hear me read my essay "In Which I Move Again," published in the October 2009 issue of The Collagist, in a podcast on their blog.
http://thecollagist.com/wordpress/?p=388
Can podcast be used as a verb?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
lightning on a clear day

It is as if the tree visibly wears its central meridian.
Move your hand in the crevice and feel its heat.
Labels:
meridian,
nature,
outside,
title explanation
Monday, November 2, 2009
embroidery

On my recent trip to my folks' house, I took this photo of the flower arrangement in the guest bathroom. I made it when I was in about the second grade, probably in Pioneer Girls, which is like Girl Scouts, but with God. I learned to embroider and to make a makeshift stove out of a coffee can.
The flowers have probably shifted in all the moving my parents have done. Still, I look at the white and the purple and try to get back into my 8-year-old mind, thoughtfully choosing where each should go. A perfectionist even then, I inflicted order wherever I could. I liked most to arrange and rearrange the knickknacks on my dresser--shells from the vacations, rocks carefully chosen for texture or striation.
Messiness has since taken over the order, over my life. I've learned to relinquish many of my perfectionist tendencies. I often read to my two-year-old rather than do the dishes. Of course, I've also contained most of my perfectionism to writing; perhaps I'm just seeking order in (children's) literature since I know it will never happen in my kitchen.
I'm ambivalent now about my time at Pioneer Girls. I'm bemused that they thought embroidering was a useful skill to teach a girl in the early 80s. On the other hand, I have mostly good memories from the time I spent with the other girls and teachers, and I'm bashful that I don't know more traditionally womanly arts. It took a real woman to teach me crochet in my late twenties. (Thanks, Dewi!) But more on that another time.
Labels:
crochet,
Dewi,
parents,
perfectionism,
photo,
Pioneer Girls
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