You'll Remember

Jimmy the bartender from The Varsity in Vermillion called twice a few mornings ago at 1:59 and 2:04.

My first year in town was a little rough. Jeremy had just moved out, and wherever I went in town, everyone seemed to know one another. I was a stranger. But I felt less like one when I walked through the Varsity doors. Part of this was because I knew that somewhere in the basement, my dad's initials were carved into one the wooden booths near the stage where he and his band "The Lovin' Blue" used to play. History is always comforting. But part of this was because of Jimmy, who always came out from behind the bar to give me a hug--and then make fun of me for being a vegetarian in South Dakota. For my part, I harassed him for being a murderer and for not offering cheese pizza on the menu.

I'm not sure why I didn't answer; perhaps it has something to do with that feeling of displacement and the fact that I've purposely left it 500 miles behind me. Still, when I went back to teach the workshops not long ago, that same summer of 03 feeling was a weight on my heart and mind. And every time I drove past main street, I made sure to catch a glimpse of the Varsity's familiar neon lights.

Make a pretty memory out of my disgrace

I think wine would have made my high school experience much more enjoyable. I say this only because the last time I was home for this long was when I was eighteen, and every once in a while I feel that old rush of angst that was my constant companion during those years (those? all, I guess). It's sometimes hard to reconcile the discordance between who I was and who I am. Sometimes I feel a little too 1997.

On Moving Home

It's fitting, in a few ways, that my last post was written as I crouched over my laptop in the basement of the canyon house, with the fireplace roaring and the candles burning. Then the displacement was almost a physical pain, a stone sitting hard and round and heavy in my heart. I wrote that I would no longer feel that way--that I would (re)discover home.

And now I have.

I write this to you, dear readers, crouched over my computer, with the fire roaring and the candles burning. I am again in the canyon home, although not my canyon home just yet (there is much work to be done there still).

For the second year in a row, I drove across the state on my birthday, jamming out to Aretha Franklin and admiring SoDak's vast fields of birds. (I saw pelicans outside of Yankton, floating in a small lake, doing their pelican thing and minding their pelican business.) And when I hit the hills skyline, there was no home-but-not-home conflict. I would not be a weekend visitor this time, nor ever again. And that, as Eric pointed out, was the best birthday present I could have asked for.

Starling's New Year's Resolutions

Excerpt from "In the Beginning"

Now only make your offerings to the trees,
to these things that hold firmly to the ground.

And build your house from branches and dirt--
a swallow’s thousand mudbeaks--
because clay can never lead to disaster.

Find a table in the wilderness under which to dream
and your mother’s red shoes will take you home
when the fires in the hills threaten to freeze your blood.

Unfurl your wings,
leave your cardinal dreams to the forest,
and follow the girl whose eyes are sunlight and stone.

You will write your story then
with slate quills that prick the smooth skin of your palms
And I will forever carve the sparrows from cinnamon bark and birch.

***

Inspired by my speaker, I will:

1. not spend another year feeling displaced and unsettled; I will (re)discover home.
2. set aside time weekly to work on the Hills trilogy.
3. attempt to silence (muffle?) inner critic (by way of mental baseball bat, sedatives, or anvil).

and not so much inspired by the speaker, I will:

4. continue to find new and engaging tools and materials to use in the classroom.
5. read one book a week (at minimum) for myself.
6. reduce (substantially) my diet pepsi consumption (as recommended by EH, my mother, and various doctors).

That's it, my friends. Now, what are yours?