January 31

January 30

January 29

January 28

I can finally say to my children...

that when I was 30, I had to walk through the snow in my pajamas to do laundry!

It's been snowing all night. It still is. Everything is covered in this beautiful, virginal blanket of white (a good 5-6 inches thick)-- my car, the streets, the sidewalks. I have been walking to work the last few days. I was going to drive today, as I have equipment to take with me. Now, the question is-- will I drive or walk? In both cases, I will tarnish the landscape (although I can hear someone scrapping the sidewalk right now). On the one hand, I will be protected from elements, as will the camera equipment, but I will have to dig the car out of the snow and let it heat up a bunch. On the other hand, I will be more environmental, get snowed on a bunch (so soggy and cold when I get there), and will be carrying increasingly heaving bags on the walk. I predict they will take the same amount of time (digging/heating vs. walking).

What to do.

Oh, and no one ever talks about how snow isn't white when it snows. It's blue. The clouds are thick, and diffuse so much llight, the world is icy blue. It looks like a job for color film!

Iron Skillet

I wanted to write more about this, but haven't had time. This is my favorite Christmas present this year. I knew I was getting it (though not as a gift). It cost a bunch of money to ship to myself. It is a family heirloom, though I think they are common enough old and new.

It is an Iron Skillet.

I directed a play once (written by my high school english teacher) of the same name. The adult children give their mother a similar skillet for her birthday, and she ends up blugening them with it. There was a 'moral' at the end of the story: Don't give your mother an iron skillet for her birthday. I thought it was about the presumptuousness of giving a cooking tool when I was 17. Now I wonder if my teacher was thinking more of her mother and the danger of giving her such a heavy, potentially dangerous weapon?

The skillet made me think of that, even though I don't respond to it the same way. This one belonged to my great grandmother. It was given with a new book about skillet cooking (and care-- I had to coat it in Crisco, then cook it for an hour).

This meal (pictured above) is the first time I have used it. I had been on a cleanse (more on that later), so this is the first flour, tomatoes, cheese, wine, or turkey I had had in two weeks. That made digestion a little surprising, but it was so good. This skillet has lasted me three lunches and two dinners so far.

January 27

January 26

January 25

Moving

I have moved into my third home in Indiana. Each of the three I have lived in have had their quirks, and obviously, I felt two of those places had quirks beyond my tolerance. It is painful to move, expensive, time consuming, mentally debilitating. And yet I do. I have. I will. I know I will again. It is a rental after all, and although this very cluster of buildings has faculty from my own institution who have lived here for decades, I am not that kind of pessimist. I want to find a home base I can call my own, my own to invest in, my own to destroy. Yes, destroy. Part of creating a home is its very destruction and rebuilding. Over and over.

Somehow, in moving, I made the poor choice of packing a library book that had been sitting on my desk, into a box I assumed I would be quickly opening again. The box and book have vanished, and the urgent emails from the library remind me it is time to return it. Part of being a faculty-person is having the elite position that a librarian wouldn't dare charge a fine for a late book, and procrastination and laziness are making me take advantage of this perk. If that weren't enough, somehow the other two books I checked out at the same time, that sat all through the holiday on my desk in my office, suddenly vanished. I cannot recall if I 'put them away,' or returned them (thus having them mis-shelved or whatnot). In total, three books missing, and not the faintest idea where they went to. It is a problem I can ignore, but it also fills me with such anxiety, I can't tell you how I cope. I go to my office and stare at my bookshelves, expecting the missing tombs to suddenly leap to my eyes, at which time I will laugh and announce the cliché, "at least a snake would've bitten me!" It hasn't happened yet.

I just emptied three and a half boxes in my extra bedroom. There were a number of boxes moved into that room when I wasn't looking. I don't really know what-all is there. I did find my missing harddrive, my tax receipts, a number of lost ideas and doodles on paper. But no books. Where have they gone? With the missing socks? (I haven't had any go missing lately.) With the lost ideas, the wasted days, the used kitty litter? How does my life so quickly descend into a chaos, bathing in unintended neglect, denial of adulthood (while everyday firmly asserts I am there)?

New art wall, happy cat

January 24

January 23

January 22

January 21

January 20

January 19

January 18

January 17

How cool am I?

Yesterday, it was -9 and breezy most of the day. That's right. Negative cold. So cold, there can't be clouds in the sky. So cold, that even though it is sunny and blue skied, your fingers freeze instantly if you touch the snow. I tried to use my windshield spray and it froze instantly coming out of the nozzle.

During my class yesterday, the department secretary came running in. She was so frantic, I thought someone was having a heart attack. "The starlings are above the cars. You have to take a break and move the car!" I didn't have time for a break, and this seemed a little over the top. But sure enough, when I left my office at dusk, the car was brown with bird shit. The inside of the windows were covered in ice, and the outsides were covered in shit. Lovely. I waited for them to thaw so I could drive straight to the car wash. Ten minutes later, ice free, revealed I could not actually see through the refuse. I had to get out and scrape it! So gross. The car wash was the best fourteen dollars I have ever spent.

Today is -1. It feels warm by comparison. Brisk, but manageable. I ran errands. I didn't wear my gloves outside (I wasn't walking far). Doable.

The errand I ran today was to buy a new "ponytail" for my drier, so I could actually attack the pile of clothes slowly filling my new bedroom. It is a complicated process, involving positive and negative wires, neutral and ground wires. Kind of like a bomb. The Home Depot guys were stumped as I explained these wires to them. They only understood plug. "Look at the plug and find the one that matches," they said. No, I said. You have to also know what to do with the extra cables, or you will get shocked. They looked at each other. "Go home, and get a piece of paper and draw the shape of the plug, because you only have to match the plugs." I picked up what I needed and left them there. I wonder if they will be scanning the news to see if I burned the town down?

I went into the basement for the first time since last week (when I heard a noise, went to investigate, and promptly fell on the ice), tool box and ponytail in hand. Ten minutes later, the drier was running. How cool is that?

January 16

January 15

First day of school

January 14

I know, more cat pictures. Sad, really

January 13

California lemons

California in winter

Since I spent the last holiday in Indiana, and all of summer, I went to California for the winter break. We drove through LA, through OC, and through the desert. We spent New Year's in Palm Springs, drinking champagne and revealing in having privacy at last. I was struck by California-- all I missed about it and all that made me want to leave. One thing that stood out for me was the desert itself, something I have missed the most.

Last spring, I showed my Indiana students an image by Gary Winogrand, taken in the southwest (not California, but similar landscape). I asked them to describe the image in detail. "There is a child, about two, only wearing a diaper..." would be a typical answer. When they got to the landscape, the descriptions became: "The landscape is barren, lifeless, " "nothing is alive," "there is a storm coming," "desolate," "isolated." And while these descriptions might all be true, they pained me.

I missed that landscape. The barren, lifeless, desolate, isolated landscape. But it is a dramatic landscape. The mountains cut out of the ground like teeth. The sand forms perfect topographical maps of the wind. Going to a place where you can see from horizon to horizon and the road is a straight line. It is tempting to shoot past it, ignore it, turn up the radio and the air conditioning to block it out. But there is a geological symphony outside that window! There is a hardy and hidden ecosystem of astounding age and dexterity! You have to plan to live in the desert. You can't just show up and expect your needs to be handed to you. The desert does not take Visa or Mastercard in exchange for water and shelter. You have to bring them.

Anyway, it was awesome.

New Year's Eve, we stopped at such a spot, on such a road. The land rolled with the washes of water from the infrequent rains. I aimed the camera to the sky, and four minutes later got this. Not long after that, we heard the pack of coyotes and rain back to the car, laughing and screaming into the night where only the stars could hear us.

January 12

January 11

January 10

January 9

January 8

January 7

January 6

January 5

January 4

January 3

January 2

January 1