An Unexpected Party -- Queer Lodgings

In May Zach and I were trying to decide how we could stay in England through September. My reasoning was that I really wanted to focus on writing the dissertation. I also wanted to travel England in the summer while reading classic novels. None of that was to be. 

In June we ended up flying to Denver via Chicago. Zach got a job interview in Seattle on July 12 and departed on the 11th. I stayed in Denver to see my visiting sister and spend some more time with my dad and my second sister, Laura. While there, I wrote daily and tended my dad's corn and squash plants- nothing else took to the sandy soil. On July 25th I joined Zach in Seattle. We fully intended to stay there and write. His parents were heading to Thailand for three weeks for LST. We thought the big empty house and beautiful Seattle summer would be perfectly conducive. We didn't count on extreme heat spells or the alluring temperate rainforest on the Olympic peninsula. 

Yesterday morning, after a sleepless night in a 92 degree house, we threw clothes, books, and papers into his mom's car and headed for the coast. We had a few hostels written down on a subway napkin and a cooler full of ice with exactly one bottle of water and three bottles of beer. As we passed through Port Angeles and Forks, we remembered taking the same journey almost exactly four years ago. In 2005 we took a magnificent hike up through the Hoh rainforest to Cape Alava. 

We ended up spending last night in the Rainforest Hostel 22 miles outside of Forks, WA, home of the Twighlight books/movies/and paraphernalia, and much much more. Couples' accommodation is a well-kept RV. Our host is a Vietnam-Vet with passionate pacifist convictions and respect for the native populations and traditional gardening. He's asked us to run the hostel for him next week while he attends the 2009 Tribal Journeys festivities in Suquamish. We have a ton of writing to do but I don't think we can pass up the opportunity to spend a free week on the cusp of the rainforest. There is nothing like hiking through a couple of easy miles of rainforest and stepping out right on the Pacific ocean. We'll spend one more night here, try to catch the sunset on Ruby Beach, and return to Seattle for the weekend. Its there and back again beginning Monday. Someone up there likes us. 

Puget Sound

From behind the many desks- mostly library desks- at which I've sat during the past five years, I've met a lot of people with smoldering ambition to start over or move to a new city. My frequent relocations seem to get people excited. They talk about their family living in the west, or the northwest. They talk about their young adulthood, when they had the opportunity to live out of boxes and suitcases. At the time, I always feel a pang of loneliness because I'm leaving the little close knit groups of circulation workers and librarians, of urbanites who know their cities like I might have known them had I chosen to stay. But I also feel a certain lightness. Like I'm passing through and am therefore ultimately untouchable. And consequently, when I arrive in a new place, there is a romantic period of intrigue, as I learn the streets and visit the trendy coffee and sandwich shops, that will eventually give way to vagueness as the shops and streets blend together. 

I met another group of people this past year. These are permanently-temporary people, those who spend a season in Stehekin and then move on to another mountain park, as well as urban professionals who retreat to the seclusions of the mountains for a year or two. And I met a lot of global students in Leeds, those who have lived in the middle East and Africa and western Europe in the span of two or four years.  

So the goal, I think, as I enjoy the beautiful Puget Sound, Cape Alava, and the North Cascades, just a few perks of my new town, is to live like this is home. Hopefully Vancouver will be. 

Films and Historical Fiction

Over the past month or so I've been reading some historical fiction. It's a bit of a relief from the sort of high-art post-modern mass I've been reading this year. 

David Gutterson's classic Snow Falling On Cedars is impressive for the sheer bulk of research and imagination that obviously went into the novel. The novel borders on genre (mystery or romance) once in a while, but its deep investment in the representations of place pay off. The result is that it succeeds in transporting the reader wholly to the communities inhabiting the islands in Puget sound in the first half of the last century. The book leaves a lasting and honest impression. It also speaks strongly to beliefs about American masculinity and nationalism, perfecting its picture of the laconic, war-haunted frontiersman. 

I can't say enough positive things about Geraldine Brooks's 2006 Pullitzer Prize-winning novel March. It engages with a so many fascinating topics and ideas: civil war history, transcendentalism, american religious reform, pacifism and tolerance, abolitionists, racial relations in the south during the war, and some critiques of paternalism that are essentially anti-colonial. Brooks also does an amazing job developing March's character as a self-obsessed tunnel-visioned eccentric who none-the-less holds all the right convictions. Brooks's prose is seamless enough to render plot development inconspicuous. Perhaps this is partly because the plot is necessarily contained within Little Women's plot and Louisa May Alcott's father's personal letters. 

Zach and I saw Away We Go last week. I can't decide if the film is an uncanny representation of us, or we are just a typical double-M-Arts couple. The film is funny but we liked best the fact that the characters are committed and in love without any of the typical dramatic complications that usually accompany romantic comedies.  

Early early this morning I saw the sixth Harry Potter movie with my sisters. Fun times, sore necks. 

 

Summer at Last

I realize last week was the summer solstice, but it simply had not felt like summer in Leeds. Somehow cardigans and goosebumps overwhelm 11 pm sunsets. 

Yesterday, Zach and I arrived in Chicago and were picked up by his uncle Steve. Thunderstorms, family visits, and humid heat instantly transported me to summer-thinking. I am really really happy to be back in the states. It's going to be a great, albeit unsettled, season. 

Between gardening, frequenting city libraries, catching films at the Mayan and the Esquire, moseying around parks and trails and city centers, reading Ramona Quimby books, and eating lots of crunchy tex-mex, I do hope to write a good dissertation. At some point. Lifting my sweet iced tea to lazy summers. 

Newz

On friday I gave my first ever paper at an academic conference. The amazing thing was that once I began reading I didn't feel nervous at all. It was like I separated myself from myself. I got some good feedback and met some cool people. (btw- Did you know 'to get' is out of date verb in England?) 

Maynooth is a gorgeous campus. I'll post pictures some time. We stayed in a gothic style white stoned hallway that looked like it came out of a Harry Potter book. The brief time we spent in Dublin was great as well. We saw a lot of street musicians (of which I am a major fan), including a four person band with an electric drum set.  As usual I asked myself, why didn't I try to study in Ireland? 

Discussing postcolonial history, literature, and film in Ireland is different from doing it in Leeds. The Irish experience of colonialism is a constant frame of reference. I also met a PhD student from Michigan who is studying Irish history. Twas an eclectic mix. I'm developing a thing for Irish historians. 

I also had some of my theories about Indian literature dispelled. I met a PhD student from Madras who enlightened me about the Booker Prize, Arundhati Roy, and Rohinton Mistry. 

I met a delightful Parisian and social historian. I also met a fantastic South African MA student who wears dark eye-liner, rolls her own cigarettes, writes plays, and loves Coetzee. 

And one unrelated piece of news is that when finally had access to internet I found that I have been accepted to the University of British Columbia's Library Studies program. What am I going to do? 

 

Priorities

Tomorrow a charity truck is coming by to pick up our used possessions. When we return from Dublin on Saturday we'll have to survive 4 days with minimal living ware. I'm learning more about my mate from the different ways we sift through possessions. 

In the kitchen Zach kept two frying pans, small and large, a cutting board, and silverware. He surrendered all our dishes, cups, pots, and bowls. I traded his large frying pan for a small sauce pan and retrieved one plate and one mug. In the bedroom, I surrendered our fleece blankets and kept our sheets, duvet, and all four pillows. I also kept all of our towels. Zach threw away the wash clothes. 

From our walls I removed and packed away our blanket from Morocco. I placed our pictures between pages in my notebooks. I left a string of Christmas lights. Zach removed the Christmas lights and the double-sided tape from the mirrors. 

Speaking of secret lives.

Have I mentioned that I'm really enjoying reading all these short stories? I have a spark of a career dream. What if it were possible to be a librarian by day and a creative writing teacher by night? I think I'm on to something. 

This weekend I had a temporary but intense fling with Dexter. By season two he's starting to seem like Clark Kent. How is it possible I got roped into this show? It must be the Cuban tacos.