bird by bird

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.” --Mary Oliver

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I just read an old interview with Anne Lamott on Salon.com about one of her recent publications at the time, the novel Imperfect Birds . She was asked about the title, and specifically Lamott's connection to birds, and I just love love love what she says... Q: And, of course, you wrote “Bird by Bird.” Why birds? A: I said in “ Grace (Eventually) ” that if birds were the only evidence that there is another side, or a deeper, bigger reality, birds and bird song would be enough proof for me. We are so bound, and they are so free — and yet so vulnerable. The little ones you might crush, and the big ones might peck your eyes out or dive-bomb you. They’re such alien creatures, so exquisite and yet springing from dinosaurs. And you can never look a bird in the eye — their eyes are on either side of their heads, and they’re so quizzical. They have to be — they are prey, and yet so hungry. Just like teenagers. Just like us.

Three days until flat lands, open spaces, fresh air.  Three days until I hear more cows mooing than horns honking.  Three days until I have to make a conscious effort to put on shoes and lock the door when I leave the house.  Three days until I run into old neighbors at the grocery store and they ask me what life is like "in the big city." Three days until I get to be "the girl who lives in the city."  Three days until I get to sit at kitchen tables with people I love as we drink warmed up coffee and eat peanut butter on toast.  Three days until I get to go where I came from. Three days until home.  

By Katrina Vandenberg When I think of what it means not to marry the high school sweetheart, but to find each other as we did at ages thirty and forty, I think of John and I singing along to an old cassette of Jackson Browne on car trips, and how, as we sing, a part of me is hearing the song for the first time in Detroit, on WRIF with my first boyfriend in his truck as he took curves, shifting hard and fast. And probably John is making love with a black-haired girl in the carpeted back of his van in 1979, out west, the cassette new and popular, draining the battery. How unlikely that we ended up traveling together singing a song we each learned with someone else. Neither of us minds that, the way we might have then.

I moved! It wasn't pretty or fun or really efficient in any way, but I did it. The whole experience wasn't close to being as traumatic as my move from Harlem to BK two years ago.. but it was still pretty awful. Backstory: I'm moving in with a cool chick (a friend of a friend) who is moving here from DC. We found our new place a few weeks ago with the aid of the craziest broker in all the land , and I've been so excited for a fresh start, new walls, and.. wait for it.. a dishwasher! The thing is, my new place is only 5 blocks away from my current apartment. This is.. close enough for me to think that I can plausibly move all of my things alone, on foot, with the help of my bike and rolling luggage, yet far away enough for this to be a GIANT pain in the ass and huge time sucker. I make two trips from my old apartment to my new apartment with my bike. I put bags on the handlebars, and I have to push the bike because the load is too heavy to ride. This results in two