What I'm Reminiscing About

Childhood blanket forts.

Check out these Where the Wild Things Are forts at Booooooom.com. I kind of wish I'd taken photos of us inside the tent at my 26th birthday. Pitching a tent in the living room can transform one's understanding of place entirely, especially when the harsh living room light is filtered through a layer of silky tent walls, and a sleeping bag and camping snacks await you.


Seeing these forts reminds me of my wildly imaginative childhood. Beginning when I was about 9 years old, I used to pedal my red Schwinn bicycle down past the city park and the Quick-Stop, up Main Street (and it truly was the one main street in town) past the lone diner, the post office where I loved opening the tiny gold gilded box - number 324 - to check the mail during the summer months, past the tiny town library and the Upper park to my friend Sarah Johnson's house on the edge of town. On the way over, my horse and I might pass through a medieval village in England, a rustic Irish lane, and a Tuscany hillside before arriving in front of a yellow house with brown trim.

Once there, Sarah and I might become mothers traveling with our babies, or college girls traveling home for the holidays. Her small, quilt-covered twin bed jutted out from the middle of Sarah's bedroom between a small desk and a set of mirrored closet doors. One one side was Fairfield, Washington; on the other, our destination. The "train" would take us all over the world. We'd sit calmly, feeding or hushing our children, until the train stopped. Walking down the basement stairs, notes of Exclamation! perfume wafting behind us courtesy of Mrs. Johnson's closet, we would swing open a gate (made out of a clothes dryer with a rug thrown over it) and enter into a new country. Sometimes it was a store, other times, a cottage or a friend's home.

We played like this for hours on end. The tiny ditch of water that ran behind the Johnson home became a river with bridges to be built. The tree became our treehouse, complete with the white picket fence "penthouse" in the furthermost branches. We created layers upon layers of worlds on that one acre of property.

Remembering these imagined places reminds me of the fluidity of childhood - a time when a single geographical space could stand in for multiple places, when one might try out ten different personalities or occupations in the span of a few days, hours even. It's something I am forever trying to capture and recapture in my daily life - in my mind, I throw open the windows and let my imagination rush through the rooms of my brain, flooding my senses, allowing me to see the world through a variety of windows, ever changing, ever fresh.

And when I'm feeling the stale air of complacency, when Pullman seems so small, so combed-over, so ordinary, I take to the Chipman Trail in search of those ditch-rivers, those tree fort-mansions, those bed-trains. I seek the fluidity of childhood and let my soul enter into the places that I inhabit, turning them into foreign lands awaiting my discovery.

I hope I never lose my ability to imagine, to create, to explore new worlds between a few bedsheets and chairs.

Of course, it's always encouraging to stumble upon a collection of photos taken by other "grownups" who still build forts, who embrace whimsy and reinvent their world using only a bedsheet, some clothespins, and a little imagination.

Current Obsession

The 2010 Moleskine Daily Planner Box Set


















Who can resist that rainbow of colors sitting neatly atop one's desk? The anticipation of a juicy new color at the end of each month? The petite, yet expansive size (one full page for each day)?

Their marketing department is genius. Realizing that the Moleskine market is mostly writers and artist, the company offers this delicious morsel:

Moleskine (mol-a-skeen'-a) journals are truly legendary, possessing a minimalism, style and quality that literally has centuries of experience. To the initiated, there is no substitute. Moleskine journals - and rest assured, they're not made from the skin of a mole - are the legendary notebooks used by artists and intellectuals who defined 20th century culture, including such luminaries as Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Matisse.

Sandwich the ad between linguistics and Hemingway and this writer is eating it up.

But the piece de resistance, the reason I discretely open the plastic on any journal, notebook, or planner that I am considering purchasing, is the paper. Moleskine paper is so creamy, so smooth under the fingertips, it showcases the fluidity of any great pen.

The paper is the ultimate recommendation for a writer who still revels in the tactile senses.

The Ultimate Christmas Wishlist

Dilemmas of a 26-year-old student: what is truly important, food, or poetry? Utility bill, or books? Tuition or jacket with elbow patches? Read books or build a personal library?

Tough decisions, these.


I've always loved being a student. The intellectual challenge, the comradery of fellow English nerds, the excuse to purchase more books in one day than I can reasonably afford in a year, the permission to spend an entire weekend reading writing reading. I live for these things. What I don't live for is an empty bank account.

And for this reason, I always look forward to the Christmas season. While Santa makes his list of naughty and nice, I pen my list of wishes and delights.

Oh, I understand the core of Christmas ('tis the season of giving, Oh Come, All Ye Faithful to Bethlehem to witness a miracle), but I still believe in Santa Claus, The Nutcracker, in waking up on Christmas morning at 5 a.m., too excited to sleep. Because believing in the magic of the season, having a few special gifts to look forward to, giving and receiving gifts...for me, all of these things represent hope. Hope that humanity is inherently good, that the goodwill of Christmas will spill over into January, February, July. Hope that I will always be able to come home. Hope that my parents will always be there, conspiring with Santa Clause to fill my stocking with a DVD, Applets and Cotlets, and chap stick. Hope that there is a benevolent God who is willing to forgive my mistakes. Hope that I will always hold on to childlike things - imagination, laughter, amazement, humility.

These are all gifts, in various forms.

And so, I have organized this year's list. With absolutely no expectations for the fulfillment of this list, and, with no further ado: the ultimate chocolate-and-sprinkles-covered, twinkle-light adorned, gingerbread scented, not-to-be-fulfilled-in-its-entirety, perhaps-consumer-minded-but-always-good-intentioned Christmas Wish List for one Emily M.:

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People who Love Books... by Francine Prose
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
More Nitty Gritty Grammar by Hope Edith Fine
Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, & Style into Writer's Workshop by J Anderson
The 2010 Moleskine Daily Planner Box Set
Oodles board game
Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork Trekking Poles or Leki Luau Aergon Women's Trekking Poles
Polartec Powerstretch Tight
Maori Crew Neck Top
Pink Zensah arm sleeves
Mizuno winter running top OR Brooks LTD Fleece 1/2 Zip (oooh, purple) or Lillehammer 1/2 zip
Flip MinoHD Camcorder
Shrek the Third
new throw pillows for our couch

For a future Christmas: a personal library. Because there's always hope.

What I'm Dancing To

Yes, I realize that the title to this post is grammatically incorrect. I also realize that I wrote this post on October 7 and never published it.

So what.

This post is about Miley Cyrus. There. I said it. Judge away.

I am too busy dancing to Party in the USA, a song introduced to me by my technology professor. He is quite possibly one of my favorite people - unabashedly, unapologetically himself, even in the face of teen pop music.

And yes, certain fellows have pointed out the annoying enunciation of U. S. A. And yes, the song is vapid, meaningless, annoyingly catchy, not to mention sung by the 16-year-old daughter of Billy Ray, queen of the Hannah Montana franchise. And yes, I can only dance to it once or twice before becoming incredibly annoyed by the name dropping.

I don't care. It makes me want to move.

Here's to you, GW.

The View from My Room

The songbirds are hungry. Watching them line up on the balcony railing, waiting for the store to open, I can't help but feel I am doing my part as I fill the feeder with seed and wave away the greedy magpies.

They show up around 7 a.m., wait until I am occupied indoors, and then, like elderly men at the local donut shop, they wander over to see what's for breakfast. Chattering about the cold night and their arthritis, no doubt, they take turns nibbling at the seed and sitting on the railing, the bicycle seats, the patio chairs, the deck. These are the locals, the grizzled veterans settling in for winter on the Palouse.


The grouse represent the natural order of things, the changing seasons, ancient migration patterns; they momentarily give me hope and reassurance that we have not entirely destroyed the planet, that balance is within our grasp.

But the tiny songbirds - the house finch, the song sparrow, the American pipit - are perched on the feeder as I type, nibbling and fluttering their wings softly, chirping at one another from the drive-through window before taking off to do whatever it is that birds do. These birds offer their own quiet inspiration. They will return, each day, and I will watch them feed and go about their routines. There's something comforting about the song of a tiny, rounded finch that says It's a fine day to go outside and enjoy the world!

The Art of Racing

It's Cross Country season, but I had to share this photo from last year's track season. I love the way the angle captures the light in the stadium, the sound, the speed. For track runners, it's all about the speed.


But this is Cross season, autumn, when the soft tapping of cleats on rubber gives way to tearing grass, and three days of heats and varying distances give way to two stampeding torrent of runners: the women's 6k race and the men's 8k.

Today the Cougars will run a grassy course at the Sky Links Golf Course in Long Beach, CA.

I love the way that cross country courses create a map over and within an existing map. They change the boundaries, bend the rules of the 18-hole game to fit their needs. It becomes a game of both speed and agility, with risks not associated with track season: one twisted ankle on the 9th hole, one hundred uphill meters, one patch of torn up grass, one slip in the mud of a rainy day could end the race for a runner. Like a pack of wolves, teams traverse the rolling terra firma, skimming past trees, both together and competition.

Some people say cross country is boring. Speed won't necessarily win you a cross meet, and the finish often isn't as exciting. But it is unpredictable and messy; it brings running closer to nature, to man's primal running instinct. For that, I find it fascinating.

Found Poem for a Day that Smells Like Winter

From last winter...Dec. 20, 2008.

A woman gently lead her husband
down a snowy sidewalk,
shuffling
beside a line of sliding idling cars,
one hand reached out
to steady his frail arm,
smiling
like holding a delicate Christmas rosette
in a shower of powdered sugar,
she moves with him through
a glittering gold dust of snow,
laughing as though nothing in the world
could keep them from
this beauty.