The Basics

I know I never really write here anymore. I guess I just produce so many footprints in emails and articles and assignments and more formal blogs that I'm all out of words. Or maybe I've just grown passed the age and time of wanting to write everything down in a bizarre, semi-private, semi-public space. But here I am, so here's what's up:

- My parents are getting divorced, and it's not pretty.
- I've somehow ended up in grad school.
- I'm not sick of Columbia, Missouri but I am kind of sick of writing about (and photographing, and recording, and editing) Columbia, Missouri.
- I'm not sick of living poor, but I am kind of sick of being poor. I love my shoebox apartment and paying my own rent/utilities/tuition/food money but I'm kind of sick of mooching and knowing I couldn't handle my dentist bills, my car insurance, etc on my own yet.
- I'm finally ready to enter the ordinary human workforce, at least for a few years (and then I can always reevaluate and if I'm bored or miserable, try something else.)
- But first, I have to get through a year of grad school classes and a thesis/project.
- For my thesis/project, I'm doing something really unusual: a journalistic-style ethnography of the Faroe Islands.
- So now I'm trying to learn Faroese and everything about the Faroes.
- Everything else is kind of feeling like a distraction.
- Friends/family are a welcome distraction (but still kind of a distraction).
- Classes and work are not-as-welcome distractions. ;)
- Life is good and peaceful and the world is beautiful.
- This fall was the most beautiful ever. I say that a lot, but this time I think I mean it.
- If this is to be farewell to Missouri, then it has been a good farewell. 

Missouri Summer

The leaves were long, the grass was green

The Queen Anne's Lace tall and fair

And in the glade a light was seen

Of a thousand fireflies shimmering

We crossed over a gate, walked along a high rocky ridge and down into a river vale, frightened a flock of deer, sat on an old railway bridge looking down at the river.

Nights like this I think I love Missouri too much to ever leave it.

Groceries and a Heart Split in Two

Time for summer foods, away with the heavy curries. But now my heart is torn between the sunny flavors of the Mediterranean and the light fresh delights of a Scandinavian summer...

So of course I buy:

- Hummus
- Olives
- Pita Bread
- Italian Bread
- Chevre
- Tomatoes
- Salmon
- Sour Cream
- Fresh Dill
- Tiny Shrimp
- New Potatoes

Change

Becoming an adult is a curious mixture of happy and sad events, mundane accumulation of experience and dramatic accumulation of experiences. In a way I've grown from winter camping in Norway, from canyoning in Spain, from mastering the German public transit system like any native. And I've grown from the day to day tasks of paying rent, and filling prescriptions, and studying, and balancing, and I'm actually looking forward in a way to staying in this summer and working and saving. And in a way I've grown from graduation, from that beautiful 17th of May, from standing underneath the Miyajima gate, from watching the Missouri river freeze. And I've grown from fights and heartbreaks and what's going on right now.

And then there are moments, checkpoints where you realize things have changed a lot, and you make real choices for yourself beyond what you could have imagined before. When you 'casually' book a last minute plane flight no one told you you needed to take, which won't be easy and won't be fun, but it's the right thing to do and in a way, it's where you need to be.

And you realize things have changed quite a lot. And half of you says its good, and half of you says its bad but it really doesn't matter, it's just inevitable. Because childhood had its charms but also its chains, and we can't just live in a fairy land of fjords and fjells and fantasy forever. The process is painful. But there are always beautiful moments. To think only of the good or the bad is a mistake. Don't forget, you had sad days, even in paradise. Don't forget there was joy, even in the darkness. There will always be people to be there for you, and there will always be people who let you down. Sometimes, usually even, they are the same people. With some of them I'd like to say that I passed the love, passed the pain, passed the poison and now I see it all clearly, but we always think we see clearly from the place we're standing, don't we? And you see, they don't realize how inconsistent they're being, because they are, all of them, consumed by their own infinite complexity - just as I am. It's a weird sentient thing.

And choices are still ahead, and they stretch wider and wider as all the old structures, restrictions, safety nets are all breaking down. Funny how its the same things in life that hold us close, keep us safe, keep us down. And when they start to break down, wear out, fall away you start to see the world in that sort of terrible beauty they always called sublime, and realize that, really, all that's stopping you is the frailty of your body and the inflexibility of your mind.

Driftwood

Everything is open
Nothing is set in stone
Rivers turn to ocean
Oceans tide you home

Home is where your heart is
But your heart had to roam
Drifting over bridges
Never to return
Watching bridges burn

And you really didn't think it would happen
But it really is the end of the line
So I'm sorry that you turned to driftwood
But you've been drifting for a long long time


- Driftwood, Travis

Just East of Nowhere

"A Missourian gets used to Southerners thinking him a Yankee, a Northerner considering him a cracker, a Westerner sneering at his effete Easternness, and the Easterner taking him for a cowhand." -Blue Highways

You want a movie set in a city, you set it in New York. If you really want it in the Midwest, then, fine, Chicago. Never St. Louis. Never Kansas City. And forget about ever setting a movie in a city like Columbia. You have to go Wilderness, Super Rural, Stereotypical Small Town, or BIG CITY. Those are the choices, that's how it feels anyway. The in-betweens are not as poetic, not as interesting, not as archetypical.

You want a book set in the South, you set it in the South. You want a book set in the North, you set it in the North. Eastern settings demand, well, eastern settings. Western settings demand, well, western settings. And if you really want to aim for the middle of nowhere, pick Kansas. Every once in awhile they decide to go colder, and hit Wyoming instead.

Missouri, now? Forget about it. Where's the drama, where are the extremes, where are the easy archetypes? It reminds me of the dilemma of the Madonna and the Whore, the Maiden/Mother/Crone. What's an archetype, really, but a prettier word for Stereotype? But I digress.

Nothing ever happens here, to hear them tell about it. Even nowhere has a name. Superman's from nowhere Kansas, and so is Dorothy. What does that make us, sitting here in Missouri? Somewhere Just East of Nowhere. Less than nothing. Invisible.

There's no legend for me to live on, no story whose plot I can follow. Sometimes at crazy parties across the world, I get laughs telling everyone I'm an Ozark Hillbilly. I can talk about Meth with the best of them and adopt a pretty good hick accent, too. Other times, instead, I play the cowgirl. After all, I am most comfortable in plaid shirts, jeans, and good boots. When none of that suits I, instead, pontificate on the horrors of my childhood, the dangers of my hometown, St. Louis - nevermind, please, that I grew up in a squeaky-clean suburb.

There's no drama in a suburb.

Suburbs are just where people are from.

And I don't even mean the hero.

The hero is from NOWHERE, don't you know that?

The hero is not from a 'somewhere' that lacks a vital confidence in its identity, a some place that's east of west and west of east, north of south and south of north, not a capital, not a cowtown, not a backwaters, just an ordinary, decent place where ordinary, decent people live.

That hero from NOWHERE archetype is pretty old. When they came to America they saw Kansas, and recognized a new NOWHERE.

You know, I'm thinking that growing up in Kansas wouldn't be so dull, after all, with neighbors like those and strange things coming out of the sky every day.

I don't mean tornadoes. We've got those here too. Not that anyone ever notices. 

Look, maybe there's a new nowhere. Nowadays even farm boys get a certain amount of street cred. They're no longer the ignorant peasants they once were.

If you really want an unprepared, unnoticed and unassuming hero, how about sending them out of a new nowhere, not the great NOWHERE of Kansas or the outskirts of the unnamed country where the nothingness is so great it develops a presence and a quality all its own - the roar of the so-called big sky, the infinite yearning of plains that stretch on forever - but the true unsung nothingness of bland, cookie-cutter suburbs and the places that exemplify neither this not that, not even nothing.

How about a reboot of the archetype?

Maybe it's already happening.

I've noticed something interesting, you know. The only thing that ever puts Columbia on the map - this city exports storytellers, wanderers.

I'll be reading a book, any book, and, entirely coincidentally, I often upon certain eerie, all-too familiar references. And I realize that although the story takes place in China's Three Gorges, or the highest regions of Tibet, or the homes of the African pygmies, the author knows where I'm coming from - because he, too, is from Just East of Nowhere.

Impending Graduation

I feel nervous because I'm about to graduate, first in May and then, most likely, again the next May, and then I'm not sure what to do. The dream life seems so far away and the path in between is more confusing than I ever thought. And I'm not sure I have the drive. I'm sad because I miss the mountains. I lack energy; I don't exercise; I've lost my Norwegian muscles. I dream about Norway too often and then I wake up feeling sad because I don't know when or if I'll be able to go back. I miss being able to go on a short afternoon hike and finding the ruins of fortresses and castles or else views over high mountains. I miss sea-breezes and snow and history and learning a thousand new things every day. And I feel like my road map ends here. There's no longer a checklist of how to be a big girl and do well. Its more subtle and complicated and confusing and wide open than that. Just right now I'd like a slightly more linear storyline, or maybe a strategy guide, or you know, maybe one of those silly characters whose only purpose is to give you a hint, point you in the right directions. Because life is simultaneously long and short, too short to try every path before I find the right one. But then, they say the right path is the path you choose, as long as you can be content with it.

On the other hand: I love my classes this semester. They seem hand-chosen just for me, all except Magazine Design. Even there, the teacher is nice, my TA is nice, and its something I need to do, and its far from awful. Then I've got Advanced Writing with a memoir-focused professor, Food and Wine Writing (!!!), and Travel Writing (focused on old dead British writers, but oh well...). Even my Spanish capstone exceeds all expectations. Instead of reading Cervantes or some other dusty dry literature, as I'd expected, I'm learning about the Andes! The Incas! Did you know they had this super-elaborate system of exchanges and roads and inns and oh, it's just wonderful, reading about this huge lost empire. Although I almost wish I had yucky classes so I could be more eager to be done with this whole undergraduate thing!