saturday mornings in the wilk

don't mind if I do ...

poem-trees

refound this poem of a couple months ago
I actually neglected to date it
but it came after the poem of february 19th
and before the poem of may 7th
so it must be somewhere in there ...

~

one hand in the trees
one hand on your heart
it's a long stretch across this vast unknown
my fingers traverse mist and cloud
through my tomb and shroud
and stream
until they reach that quickening beat
your gentle skin heat
beneath your breast pocket.

one hand in the trees
one hand to the east
where the birdsong happens to call my name
on the weary wind's last protest
an ancient caress
and sigh
until it eases into my lungs
a breath that beckons
with each quiet exhale.

one hand is reaching
the other's in yours
my joints can't take the pressure much longer
over this still-widening crack
that never goes back
to smooth
but lingers like harsh words or a song
that doesn't belong
whose notes still hang in the air.

~

a snippet:

is that really me, that whirlwind
that flies in the wind
and flings to the ocean
and trails in the field
- her joy?

john wayne gacy jr

his father was a drinker
and his mother cried in bed
folding John Wayne's t-shirts
when the swingset hit his head

the neighbors, they adored him
for his humor and his conversation
look underneath the house there
find the few living things, rotting fast
in their sleep all were dead

twenty-seven people, even more
they were boys, with their cars
summer jobs
oh my god
are you one of them?

he dressed up like a clown for them
with his face paint white and red
and on his best behavior
in a dark room on the bed he kissed them all

he'd kill ten thousand people
with a slight of his hand
running far, running fast
to the dead

he took off all their clothes for them
he put a cloth on their lips
quiet hands, quiet kiss
on the mouth

and on my best behavior
i am really just like him
look beneath the floor boards
for the secrets i have hid

john wayne gacy jr.
sufjan stevens

it's a creepy song, filled with so much sadness, and it's been on my mind.

you think it's so baffling, so impossible, how someone could do such evil. how do you go from a sweet little boy to a serial killer? how can he have changed so much?

but we all have seen it, in milder terms - the change in someone that happens so gradually you barely recognize it until there's a moment, down the road, when that person says or does something and it jars with who that person was to you and it becomes profoundly clear - you realize, with a pang, that person is gone. they chose, a little bit at a time, to become someone else. and you cannot bring them back.

this conversation makes me happy

gregoryh40: hey christina

moi: hiya

gregoryh40: guess what

moi: what?

oo oo i know

you're not a robot

gregoryh40: dang it how did you know

moi: i'm skilled like that :)

gregoryh40: we get the haight's dog Sadie for THREE WEEKS

moi: when?

why?

jealousss

that little pooper is adorable

gregoryh40: yup and mom says she can sleep with me but dad says she can't

moi: she can sleep with ME!

cause i'm not allergic

or we can take turns, how bout that?

gregoryh40: are you coming home?

---

moi: mbye

gregoryh40: wuz that a maybe or a bye

moi: it was a mmm

and a bye

together!

at last!

gregoryh40: okay BYE!! :D

hep hep hep

friendly friends that frequent my blog - (because the people who zip in, mostly from foreign countries, for only 5 seconds, or even milliseconds at a time, I love you and wish you would stay but I'm going to be realistic here) -
...
please take my survey!! https://byu.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_cwti7dmUab0pIQA
I took a training class in qualtrics survey making for work and I need some results so I can analyze them all cool and proper. also, I made a survey that actually interests me, so I'd really like to know what you think.

I flood the interwebs with my pleas for survey participants. hopefully the overload of gmail, facebook, twitter and blog doesn't break something ...

a poll! how exciting!

more recent musics

arcade fire - funeral
beirut - gulag orkestar
esperanza spalding
the flaming lips
frightened rabbit - the winter of mixed drinks
jonsi - go do
the national - high violet
of montreal - the sunlandic twins
olof arnalds
she & him - volume one
sondre lerche - faces down
sufjan stevens - illinoise
loney, dear

I'm not writing a review - I'm just making you watch it

hey, friends.
you might not know about my neighbor totoro.
but you really should.
I promise.

now you have to go watch it.

no. really.

...

going to get some flowers

sammykins

mom called to tell me on thursday that they put sammie down.

she was old - blind and deaf and feeble

skin diseases and incontinence

and she had some kind of stroke a few weeks ago

I guess it was time to say goodbye.

I was sad.

I'm gonna miss you, sammie girl

so much

a hood canal history

the house we stayed at on the hood canal sparked my imagination with its age. kind of like trees, it makes me wonder what the house has seen. I poemed it:

the wooden floors creak with the weight of ghosts
that live on through us, the still-breathing hosts
of an old house history
enablers - or partakers?
as past scenes we replay.

upstairs - a young man lays down his new bride
and oh so gently, to the soft dove's cry,
undoes each pearl button
the whole length of her dress,
down to her sweet skin glow.

below - in the heat of a midnight wrath
a man lashes out at the face in his path -
tender love she spoke but
now he cradles her head,
weeping, bloody & broke.

by the stove - mother pulls steaming warmth
from the heat and stoops to snuggle her fourth -
a quiet, clinging child
who will play just outside
and always comes when called.

out on the deck - a withered woman waits
patient and frail in the arms of the Fates
she gathers her shawl as
the dusk settles in and
her breath ebbs with the tide.

the door handles stick and the hinges squeak
the house spirit will find a way to speak
as our stories combine
with the voices long dead
- imprints we barely find.

outdoor adventures

a few journal-ish notes I jotted down each night of my backpacking trip that I stumbled upon in one of my many many notebooks.

1st night:

- lots of hurt - back, bruising on love handles & hips, precarious knees
- very thirsty
- lots of lovely wind
- sometimes felt like I should be in more authentic clothes, like pants & tunic in a desert in the Middle East or Sahara
- sometimes, with some distance from the group, felt like an individual quest
- more about the endurance, the will-power, the independence
- I find it a forbidding landscape. sometimes it can be strikingly pretty; rugged, ancient, haggard.
- enjoying it as an experience, not as an actual natural communion or landscape
- I think this is the first time I've actually been camping - owp, no, river rafting. but almost. I always knew I loved it.


2nd night:

- ow. very precarious knees. I was seriously worried. and my back is dead. shoulders & hips fine, though.
- feels awesome to drink natural in-the-wild water (filtered, bien sur)
- long long long day. much easier when the distances and goals were definitive, much harder when we didn't know
- frustrating pace of slowness & frustrating when the group would wait up and then take off so we didn't have a break
- loved the narrows - crawling, lots of time in the water, also the point where I knew our goals & I felt so much happier - even sang a few Andrew Bird songs as we went
- Melissa & Abby are hilarious. love being with them
- in the water, with the snake grass on the sides and my pack - felt like Vietnam
- with poncho, felt like a hobbit
- some beautiful sandstone cliffs
- good backpacking experience, having fun despite some crappy situations - would love it MUCH more in the shenandoah.

whoever put this picture on facebook labeled me as 'granola'
... really?

I went camping up American Fork Canyon with andy on thursday night. I think we fared quite well for 2 rather inexperienced campers :) we were going to go with his sister mary and the kids but she decided she needed to get some other stuff done instead. I was so sad at another outdoor adventure falling through that andy said, hey let's go anyway! and we did and it made me so happy.

our plan was to camp on the north side of the alpine loop so we could drive down and hike up to timp cave early in the morning before it got too hot. we planned to camp at granite flat, but the campsites were all full, so we headed over to some more free-spirited camping right next door. we found a great little spot under some lovely trees and right next to the creek (andy informs me that I am not allowed to make fun of people who say 'crik'. thanks to bloomability, I wasn't planning on it).

well, neither of us slept very well in the cold (my joints never do too well with quick temperature changes) so when we woke up in the morning and should've gotten up to go hiking, we didn't. we lazed around and slept some more in the warmer morning. and then it took us like a million years to roll up the self-inflatable pads - true to their REI customer reviews, they didn't compact down to stuff sack size very well.

so then we didn't quite have time to do the hike, take the cave tour, and get home for showers before I had to be at work. instead, we mosied around tibble fork reservoir, skipped some stones, waded in the freezing water, before we drove the alpine loop the long way home. it was lovely :)

the reservoir

on the loop:


of course, andy was adorable in all of the pictures we took
but for some strange reason, I looked like a fool every time
so here's all you get of me:

I love my keens :)

ahhh I can't wait to get my own camping gear!!
I recently got my own climbing harness.
next step, sleeping bag and pad
(pfft who needs a tent anyway? not me)
then ... BACKPACK!

bastille day at carcassonne

one year ago today

I miss france

a lot :(

dreamblog

---

me and dad in a church building, supposedly during church time, but there was a big reception going on, with tables and chairs set up in the cultural hall but also a big set-up in the hallway and some of the other rooms. anniversary celebration for eric and lynne stout. holding plaster masks of themselves, one guy still had plaster all over his face. taking pictures with an old accordion-style camera. I was talking to a black guy about my studies and we were speaking in french, my accent was not very good, and a black boy was sitting around listening.

---

me and andy - we keep diving into this giant aquarium and playing with this smallish killer whale. I would bring a fish in my pocket for him. he was super cute and friendly. last time we dived in to visit, there was a bigger whale, and we could see the bottom of a boat, and a creepy carnivore fish was trying to get the mini fish in my pocket, so I gave it to it. we looked for the killer whale, very worried, and found it attached to the wall of the aquarium, lying on the wall on its stomach, and attached to the wall by two tubes with large round pumps on the ends attached to the wall, like a breathing machine and the whale was ... wheezing? breathing with difficulty. I was very sad. then the creepy fish was kind of chasing us. it wasn't attacking, but it was being antagonistic and aggressive and scary. when we tried to get out of the aquarium, it would go out into the water "hallway" and head us off every time we tried. eventually we got out.

---

some kind of camping thing. I think with some of the people from my backpacking class, including patti, the teacher. measuring dirt into mason jars to take out for catholes, but there were tons of little daddylonglegs in the dirt. I kept trying to get dirt without d.l.legs, but it was hard. for some reason, the d.l.legs kind of swarmed to my right armpit, but only there. there was a gigantic spider, six or seven inches across. turned out to be a black widow, very clearly when I saw its underside when I knocked it down. right about when I was showing it to patti, another student had found another one. patti killed it, but not mine yet - I was paranoid about squishing it and ended up inadvertently stepping on it anyway. there was a little train between our camp and a stop in town. we rode it a few times.

---

in a horse race, I was the jockey, the horse was young and inexperience and fast (of course - isn't this how all jockey stories go down?) on the racecourse. we have a couple of narrow misses where horses around us go down. one in particular, I'm looking behind me and the horse behind goes totally down, in slow motion, jockey trapped beneath. we don't manage to stay on the track the whole time, because I was backwards on the horse or something and turning back around to get back up the right way scared the horse.

at an apartment, mine, living with kristin depalma and lesa. lesa made pumpkin pie - trying to decide if it could be entered in some competition, but she seemed to think it was overdone. kristin broke andy's computer somehow - it was sitting upside down in a blue butterfly chair in her room. but for some reason, this meant his car was broken. did she break that, too? she was supposed to get it fixed, but apparently she ran off for the weekend with a bunch of laundry and not a word about it.

babysitting

I spent 3 days watching the kids last week while celesta was at girls camp

the escapades:

a plane I made for maxwell out of cork wood from a tree in the backyard

it took about 6 tries - I kept accidentally snapping the plane body

it's only about 3 or 4 inches long

the cast! in his favorite colors, no less.

he told me I could draw a dragon on it, but we never got around to designing it ...

maxwell & milo

this pretty much sums up their relationship

victoria & patch

and this pretty much sums up their relationship

severe pampering

okay, I admit

I'm not immune to them either

such cute gatos pequenos

there's a nice shot of my poison ivy here

I spared you a close-up, though it was very epic

we set up the family tent (despite a very windy day)

and of course, it became a place to lounge with the cats

in sum - lots of time spent with cats

also, lots of fun :)