Vocal Impressions

On my drive home today, I heard a great segment on NPR called Vocal Impressions. Listeners wrote in their descriptions of famous voices, and the host read them aloud over the airwaves. I was driving down the highway, and I was sleepy, and I was smiling. Each one was a complete scene, beginning, middle and end. I'm a sucker for a story, even if it's only one line long, and I loved this segment.

This month's famous voices were mid-century jazz and folk singer Odetta, actor Sean Connery, actress Mae West, and musician Bob Dylan. A few of my favorite descriptions are below. But before you read 'em, go have a listen over at NPR.

Odetta
A locomotive, just as it starts to creep forward on a long, burdensome journey
Her voice is the moan of drought-ridden soil after the first summer shower

Sean Connery
It's a warm, rough cat's tongue licking my spine
It's a voice that makes every girl feel like good looks and crime go hand in hand

Mae West
A poodle skirt, bubble gum pink
Mighty Mouse's Missus

Bob Dylan
Sand and glue (a description borrowed from David Bowie)
Simultaneously the itch and the scratch
A cross-country road trip in a car without air conditioning

My Visual DNA

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Spring Become Summer

Warmer weather is short sleeves past dusk, bare feet on wooden floors, salads for dinner, open windows and night skies. Warmer weather is sweet breezes through an open office door, driving home the long way to watch the river and the sun, sun burns on shoulders and picnics for lunch. Lazing in the yard, planning the garden, naming imaginary pets we'll own one day, spontaneous hikes just up the hill from here. Warmer weather brings potted winter plants outside and onto window sills, Bob Marley and green grass, sandals, bare skin. Pedicures, sweaty brows, flushed cheeks, grill parties on porches, summer bags and fresh produce. Warmer weather is long summer weekends closer, plans for Maine and hiking on the Long Trail, swimming holes and river dives, fishing and biking, mosquitoes. Warmer weather is lighter thoughts, optimism, smiles and laughter, barbecues, burgers, babies in strollers and dogs basking in the afternoon with tongues wagging. Playgrounds, kayaks, frisbee, skirts, blooms, watermelon, air for breathing, freedom from layers, cool pillows and light sleep.

Days like this jump from spring to summer and back again in the blink of an eye. Days like this are timeless yet marked, stocked with memory and anticipation, chock with hope for a summer like when I was a kid, carefree and long as time itself.

Domestic Goddess

Today I spent hours, hours! cleaning my pretty little house and now, my friends, it sparkles. My aching back attests to the swept, vacuumed and mopped floors, the dusted corners, polished furniture, and scrubbed windowsills. Dust bunnies no longer exist in this house, and after a very long winter of dirt and grime accrual, they filled two vacuum bellies-worth in a very short time.

Heaps of clothing were folded and properly stowed. Beds were made. Mirrors shined. Lampshades dusted. Laundry done. Hoo boy, what a day. All that, and I didn't even get to the bathroom or office. I didn't wade through the piles of papers overwhelming my desk. I didn't clean the stove properly or even discard old refrigerator items. This house-keeping business is hard work.

I don't even want to think about what living in a real house would be like. And when you own a home, you're responsible for the outdoor parts, too. Eeks! I'm gonna rent forever.

To make up for this rather un-fun (but oh-so-satisfying) morning, I spent the late afternoon tossing the frisbee and simply frolicking in the GORGEOUS weather with friends. Hello eighty degrees, please don't ever leave.

Groceries, or The Week of Deliciousness

I went to the store, and went crazy. What resulted was a taste explosion in my kitchen. I share this with you to offer delicious and nutritious ideas for your own shopping basket. Please to share yours with me? Don't be like me, though. Don't forget the milk and eggs when those were the reasons for going to the store in the first place.

Purchased
Waffles and Vermont maple syrup
Soysage (soy + sausage=soysage)
Crunchy chow mein noodles
Brianna's Poppy Seed Dressing
Crunchy taco shells
Fair trade bananas
Romaine lettuce
Mandarin oranges in a can
Local tomatoes (2)
Organic yogurt-- on sale!
Ginger snap granola
Zesty alfalfa sprouts
Lemon ginger tea
Cranberry apple juice
Sugar snap peas
Cabot horseradish cheddar
Honey nut Os
Veggie hummus
TLC crackers
Golden potatoes
Avocado (2)

Seat of the Pants Menu
Parmesan Crusted Avocado Sprout Sandwiches
Potato bean casserole with broccoli
Pasta primavera
Tofu tacos
Pasta with tempeh and balsamic vinegar
Thai pasta salad
Asian Poppy Salad

Sagess

In the three years since finishing college, I've learned many of the same lessons, in turns obvious and painfully impossible, over and over again. At this moment, I'm feeling balanced and wise. At this moment, I'm surrounded by friends at the same stage in life who are learning these lessons too. For future reference, for next time you or I forget, here's a brief list of the most important things I've learned and relearned since entering the world as a pseudo-adult.

1. No one else knows what the hell they are doing, either.

2. When you have no idea what you're doing, there are no mistakes. Do what you want to do. The results and consequences come later. Deal with them later rather than worrying now about what they might be.

3. You must not compare your plan, decisions, path, experiences, or life to anyone else's. Their version of life won't work for you. Yours won't work for them. We each get to figure it out for ourselves. That's the damndest bit.

4. If you feel a light bulb of your life's vision go off in your head, wait a day. If you are still in love with the idea, wait a week. If you're still infatuated, check into it and maybe even try it. More than likely, that feeling in your head was more the result of cell phone radiation or wishful thinking. Don't get bent out of shape when you fall out of love with your momentarily brilliant ideas.

5. God-willing, life is long. If you don't know what you're doing or what you want to do or what your calling is or where you're meant to go or who you're meant to be or what you're good at, it's cool baby. Check back in tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after...

6. Don't take things so damn seriously. Adulthood is just like childhood, except for your own expectations of yourself. And the bills.

Bring the Rain

Today at work we talked briefly about connectivity after a moment of silence and a short piece of news that we are all, by nature of our organization, linked to the tragedies at Virginia Tech. We're in the business of young people, but somehow I'm still surprised at how frequently we receive news like this. An alumna, shot and killed on the streets of DC. A crew member and her mother, attacked in a Seattle parking lot. An intern crushed by a falling boulder in the backcountry. And this, a Corps member quarantined in a classroom with thirty-two others and shot, without mercy and without reason.

It feels overwhelming, like we're bigger than our britches when every tragedy strikes so close to home. We're having to learn to craft the public face of grief and the private offer of friendship, support, and assistance to the families who, at one time, passed their children over to us and entrusted us with their safety. We take good care of them, but we can't promise that the world will follow suit.

In the midst of the tragedy, there was news that another of our alumni was bandaging the wounded and comforting the distressed using the skills he had learned with us. There is news of an outpouring of support from the extended corners of our organization. There's a feeling of family and a reminder that our safe place is something not to be taken lightly.

And it makes me think about safe places, about being in school and just trusting innately, as I did, that I was protected and safe from most real danger in the world. On 9/11, I hovered in the plaza with my classmates, feeling a million miles away from the tragedy in the big city to our south. I mused in hushed tones with friends at the meaning of it all in the safety of my dorm room, of classrooms and dining halls, of hallways and corridors. Safe places. They were home to me, and without question of risk or danger. I realize now with a slight shudder at how naive this seems in retrospect--to live in the world without fear at all.

I will myself to grieve for the families and friends of the victims, but more than that, I grieve for all of us just a little bit more. On NPR this morning, a news anchor remembered Columbine through the words of one woman at a local vigil just after that tragedy eight years ago. She stood amid candles and flowers, notes, stuffed bears, tokens and photos.

"We already know what to bring," she said.

We've done this before, and we'll do it again.

Yes, I Think So

I could tell you all about my weekend, about driving all over the Eastern seaboard and running around Boston with visiting friends and marching in climate protest and eating delicious sandwiches and hugging lovely ladies and watching Derby Dames bout it out and sleeping in my old room and bringing new friends home and taking airport runs and drinking local hard cider and poking through Harvard and watching the seagulls and getting chastised in Chinatown and freezing on the windy pier and slip-sliding through the slush, but wouldn't it be more fun to see for yourself?

Weekend Away

Easter in New Jersey was cold and gray, but we wore spring colors and acted warm as we drove up and down the Turnpike between visits to Grandma and Aunt Carmen's 80th birthday party.

Those Italians, they know how to do it. To surprise Carmen, they rented a room in a small, unassuming Italian restaurant in the heart of Woodbridge, where Ed's parents grew up and where their extended families still live. We arrived late as usual and missed the surprise, but were immediately swept into the party and escorted table by table to meet every last relative and kiss Carmen's friends who were delighted and clapped their hands. We were seated at the kid's table but drank bottomless goblets of wine like real Italian adults, and ate course after course of the best Italian food I have ever tasted. Calamari that melted in my mouth. Stuffed mushrooms. Ceasar salad. Raviolis a la carte. Salmon. Chicken parmagiano. Tiramisu and cheesecake.

At the end of the night (the goodbyes being the most drawn-out portion of the evening lasting nearly an hour) we were introduced to Benido and his cohorts, family relation uncertain. They were the "business branch" of the family, as the Italians like to say, and I know this means that I don't ask questions or smirk assumingly. Benido drove a cement truck and paved his driveway in marble. Benido took six months off every year to return to his native Siciliy. Benido still speaks mostly Italian, but smiled and muttered a gruff hello as he took my hand and squeezed it. He is legendary even to Ed, who had never met him until that night, but who grew up to his mother's stories of when she was a girl and "Bunny-Doo" was a mystery even then.

On Sunday we put on our best and went to church, the early mass, always just barely too early for us. We arrived after the opening prayers and stood in good company in the lobby at the back of the church, listening to a homily on social justice and Catholic guilt, broadcast wirelessly and clear as crystal. It missed the point, as these things usually do, but we were there for the family rather than divine inspiration. Babies in Easter dresses wailed and pranced and squirmed and splashed in the holy water fountain. Parents chased toddlers in circles while old ladies smiled stoically and stood and sat and prayed when prompted.

We brought gifts and dyed eggs and ate asparagus with honey ham and received holiday baskets full of Easter sweets. We booked tickets for Florida in May, and maybe it will be warm by then.

We drove home last night and stopped in to see friends and drink tea on the way. In the car, we talked politics and religion and later, residual fear and moving on. It was good, and I felt happy, and now we're home.