And now, for something different.

Alright, the plan is officially hatched; hence, the blog is being revitalized, if for the benefit of a select few or only myself, no one knows yet, but either way I might finally have something interesting to write about soon. I'll also (note previous post) probably continue to post poems randomly, because I like having them more or less in one place. So there's that.

Right, The Plan: On November 19th, I'm leaving town again, this time for something completely different. I've been back in Tacoma/Seattle/Olympia (from Jackson Hole) for a couple weeks now, and have managed to finally solidify plans that have been brewing in my head for quite some time now. Meaning, I met with a woman about volunteering in Guadalupe, Peru, found that the idea and the location seemed like exactly what I was hoping to do (idea: volunteering in a center for kids, in a very small town, location: Spanish speaking, hot climate, not far from the coast) and a few days later, my plane ticket is bought.

I'm flying into Quito, Ecuador, will stay there for two nights, and then get on a bus to Guadalupe, Peru. On the map above, you won't find the town listed, but it is north of Trujillo and south of Chiclayo, about ten miles from the coast. I'll be staying with a family (thanks to the woman I met with, who works with my mother, if you're curious about that connection...) for at least the first couple months, while I learn enough Spanish to get around, and then may or may not rent an apartment (apparently it's pretty doable.) Evergreen students tend to come to the town to volunteer, so they are used to Americans and I'm told very helpful when it comes to helping outsiders learn their language and get acquainted with the town.

Why am I going, you might ask? I want to learn Spanish, and I want to contribute to the community that helps me get there. I also hope to return to teaching (somewhere...) this next fall, and might not have the flexibility of an entire year off again for a while. Ha, not that teaching doesn't offer a super flexible schedule already. I'll be back April 13th, or that's the plan as of now ;)

And so ends a really dry, but informative post. If you're reading, it's probably because I've given you the link, so thanks for checking in, more to come in November!

Stuff up there

Sitting high in the air
Baffled as ever
After lift off, you
envision you
minus the tin:
In air thin (not thick)
you sit
not falling,

floating,
feeling fine

separating into the midst
of sheer see throughness,
a clouded space where

flocks blast by
in a rush
or maybe a race
herding past themselves
along the speedway of the
up here high
milk white splashed prairie
sky

Imagine you
Without false wings
weightless, suspended:

would time suspend too?
is it silent up here
beside the buzzing cage?
or do the clouds rage
in roaring whispers--
laughing loftily
and nodding
to each other, to the sun
to those below and those above
shoving shoulder to shoulder
by mountain tall boulders
loving life and yet

wondering sometimes,
philosophically speaking,
what it's like
not to float,


Pondering the grounded experience
or the solid
dreaming sometimes
of being concrete,
effortlessly sticking to the ground
giving in to gravity,
for a change,
though still mist-ified,
as always,
do they wonder
how to succumb
to heavy seduction
for once?

Do they
frolic and run
fantasize
fret the future
fill their days with
weighty thoughts despite
their weightless nature?

or are cares not
in the non lives
of fluff like floating stuff--
untouchable whisps of
nothingness that barely exist
and yet at once are
densely compacted clumps
of condensational ambition,
incubating snow
in its embryotic stages,
looking so solid, so inviting it's
impossible that you
would just fall through,
and yet—you do…

this stuff
surrounding you up here,
in your momentary counter intuitary
defiance of heavy life,
on your way from there
to there to here
as you wander,
you wonder,
about them,
what it’s like,
if they have cares
or not, and either way,
just before the rubber
tugs you down to earth--
to meet the road--
and gravity again
busts into your being

you wonder what it might be like

to wonder, weightlessly,
nothing at all?


-In flight, 6/9/09, to Jackson, WY

back and gone

Well, it's been a while, that's true. I won't lie to you, I'm over the blog. I will still feel the need to write about something and post a new poem on occasion, I'm sure, but really, summer is here and while writing is still cathartic for me, my main relief comes from so many other places lately.

Still, I'll try for a brief update before signing off indefinitely again. The music festival this weekend was too great to try to sum up. Even the Tool show was great, in that it made me realize that yes, this band appeals to a target market that I have absolutely nothing in common with, except for when I'm more in touch with my dark side, and that does occasionally happen, so I can sort of even relate to them. Sooooort of.
I also go to see my soulmate up close and personal (one of them) and as usual, he got away. I could have actually introduced myself, but I figured that wouldn't be good for my already semi-obsessive personality, so I abstained, and am able to move on with my life. So that's good. To sum up the unsummable, I saw a lot of other absolutely mystifying musicians, including but not limited to John Butler and Robert Randolph in the hot hot sun (pretty much my version of paradise) and danced my body ragged, which is always a good sign, so it's official, the best weekend of the summer so far has come to an end and fully satisfied me. I can't wait for the next one...

In other news, last week I went rock climbing, pretended to play volleyball (it didn't work out), actually played four-square (actually it was twelve-square, and much more complicated/fun than the playground game you remember), danced with a fat guy named Stew out of the goodness of my heart (apparently it's in there), and started to learn how to dance Flamenco, and made friends with the local vagrant (Jackson only has one), who refers to himself as "an old shit-ass" and thinks I am stalking him (I am.) Oh it's been a good time. Stay tuned for news on plans to venture down to South America to learn Spanish. "Stay tuned," meaning, I'll tell you about it a few weeks from now if you really want to know/when an actual plan materializes (note to mother: stay calm, nothing planned yet.)

love.

katie

how could it be any other way?

It's crazy how some ideas seem to swirl through our lives in sort of a motif-fashion. This seems to happen to me anyway, like when in school subjects start to overlap and your education seems to start taking on meaning. (Ha, weird.) This happens with ideas, at least for me. I start thinking of something, some sort of philosophical opinion, and all of a sudden it's everywhere. Right now, in this case, I'm talking about the idea of rejecting existence (or accepting the non-existence) of various life what-if's. It's a simple concept, but it's been on repeat to me lately, probably only because I've chosen to see it. For example, that newest song on the playlist to the right has come to me recently via a mixed c.d., even though it's not a new song, and is an example of that idea repeating itself to me, seemingly serendipitously (how ironic). Lil Legs and I also talked about it several months ago when I visited her in San Francisco--it was something her father had made relevant for her and somehow came up in conversation--and it has been a theme in the book I'm reading now as well. I'm sure it's been everywhere my whole life, just like most ideas, and for some reason right now I am choosing to zone in on it; I have been known to boggle my mind with agonizingly endless consideration of possibility--which is endless too, you can imagine the headaches. In other words, I'm indecisive; I consider my options too carefully, give them all too much weight (or agonize later that I didn't give one enough), and it can be stressful. Perhaps my mind is waking up to the possibility (hehe) that it's time to stop with that sort of agonizing thought process. Maybe it's self defense. Of my mind, versus, itself. Who knows. Anyway:

So I'm still reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera. I know, I'm slow, whatevs, I got other stuff going too. Getting on toward the end of the novel, the narrator breaks (true to form) into a brief monologue about time, history, and infinite possibility. This is what I found really interesting, one of those things that tweaks your mind out if you try to really understand it, like eternity, a picture of a picture of a picture..., or outerspace: so he repeats an idea from the beginning of the book, about what-if's being impossible (basically), because the choices we make are the only possibility, since our lives are only lived once, and we get no practice round. He's also mentioned more than once (through a main character, Tomas) the idea that "what happens but once might as well not have happened at all," with particular reference to history, and "mankind's fateful inexperience." This is an interesting thing to say, and at first seems like he's suggesting that everything that we do is meaningless, because it doesn't have any real lasting impact, because humans don't seem to learn very well from past humans' mistakes. Despite some occasional evidence to the contrary, I am ever the optimist, so I like to disagree there, and hold out that the good stuff that happens has more staying power than the bad, is more likely to be repeated, and in the end will "win". But I do really like that phrase, "mankind's fateful inexperience, " as if the meaningless is meaningful by virtue of mankind's one shot only existence--inexperience being fateful, in my opinion, in a good way. That's not even the point though.

This is the interesting part:
He goes on to present the idea of an infinite number of planets that people are born onto after this one. I'm sure other kids have thought of this before, but I pretty much haven't. That is, this planet earth that we all know now, is the "planet of inexperience" on which we are not able to experiment with choices because we lead such a linear, one-shot-only sort of existence, our first existence, and are unable to hypothesize scientifically, keeping an initial life choice as a control group, which variables would lead in the "best" direction. What if at death we were born onto a new planet though, with the same choices and the same potential life to live, but with complete memory of our first life. So, we could use our first life experience as a practice round, and try again. And what if this were to continue to happen endlessly, with each life building as experience for the next. Could we end up leading the perfect life? Or would we go insane? What gets really trippy is when you start thinking about all the people that each of us influence, just by way of crossing paths, and how any changes in our life choices change the rest of the world in a ripple/domino sort of effect by way of the people we interact or don't interact with. This whole idea started me wondering, would our second world be one in which everyone else was also in a second world? That wouldn't be possible, especially once changes in original choices started happening. I think it could only work if you are the only person on your second (etc.) life. But then you'd go crazy knowing things you shouldn't know and anticipating people or events in your life that you really shouldn't be able to anticipate. So the details really murkify this whole idea, kind of like any good movie's plot is influenced by the thread of time-travel--if you think too much about it, it just doesn't make sense. But I did start to wonder, would I live my life exactly the same? Would that simply be too boring? Are there certain experiences and encounters that I wouldn't be willing to give up, even for the possibility of something better? In the end I've decided, I'm glad we've only got one shot. As far as I know anyway...

p.s. Jackson's great, lots of mountains, river, good friends. Decided to learn Spanish. And how to Flamenco.
p.p.s. to comments from last post: thanks for the flattery, friends. also, because I'm a little bit of an asshole, I gotta mention that the 'painting' is actually not. it's oil pastels. close enough.
p.p.p.s. Happy Fourth! Crack some fire!

Invasion

I've been told it takes a while to adjust to Al Titude. He's one of these abrasive personalities, you don't think you like him at first, he seems too desperate to be the center of attention, a constant talker, you know? Makes you wonder how any oxygen is left for anyone else to breathe. In fact, Al DOES hog all the oxygen, don't go for a run with him. Not until you've known him a while, and have adjusted, i.e. learned how to breathe without air. But if you do go before then, then make sure you relax with a nice long stretch in front of your apartment on the lawn in the sun. And who knows, you might meet a new friend:


Head down
Music up
Breath abated
(Slated to return
In about an hour,
or never, you're not sure)
Run is done
Stretch is on
And sudden friendly assertion
Interrupts
A sunlit sit.

World invaded.
A slime-goo-engrossed
Gloppy mound of goodness
Has been strategically placed
In front of your face
Startled, jumping a bit
You look up to find said strategizer
expectantly staring,
eager eyes gaping, goofy grin
Patiently waiting,
certain of at least one thing:
you will know what to do
(people are born to play throw,
it’s instinctive)
With this pile of goo
in front of you
That used to be
A tennis ball.

You want me to touch that,
Don’t you?
You ask of the innocent cuteness
Who knew exactly what she was doing,
Setting that there.
You look for the dog’s actual pet,
(i.e. not yourself)
but find no one.
Slobber still dribbling,
Eager eyes still eager,
Waiting still patiently waiting,
With confidence she knows
the answer to one question:
How can you say no to this face?
Your decision was made
before you were born.

Your hand becomes one with the slime.
Well, two fingers at least,
And a meager toss
Finds the blob promptly
right back
At your feet,
Lickety split.
other plans? Nope
Too late now,
Since you’ve engaged,
This furry fetcher knows
You will have to play throw
until she decides not to go
anymore.

So, probably forever.

on the horizon!

I need a word for the opposite of anniversary. Actually, the opposite of monthiversary, which already isn’t a word. As in, today I am celebrating not what happened exactly one month ago, but what will happen exactly one month from now. Maybe that’s more like an inverse monthiversary. A minthiversary, if you will (I will, will you?). Can you tell I’m a little insane with anticipation? The music festival Julia and I have been looking forward to for four months is only one month away, as of, now. The heat, the music, the best friends, the heat...I can't hardly wait. They’ve also introduced some new names that will be there, although the lineup was already pretty great. So, I have attempted to add some music in honor of that occasion to the player to the right, and was mostly successful. Couldn’t find any Davy Knowles, the twerpy skinny looking kid from Isle of Man that belts the blues in the most surprising soulful sexy voice you could imagine, given his appearance. So I’m excited to see him, and also Joe Pug, who I’d describe as a recent, better looking, less malnourished, not quite as good but still similarish lyrics wise, better sounding Bob Dylan. Don’t take that as betrayal, that’s just my opinion so far. Besides, it never worked out with me and Bob, him being born a little too early. I think Joe and I might be soulmates though. I’ll let you know how it goes when I get back a month and two days from now. I also just noticed that the song of his that I added to the right cuts off, and now I’m curious about the rest of them, but that thing gives me such a headache for some reason (I know I know, it’s simple. Blah blah blah) that I’m not going to deal with it. It’s not going to ruin my minthiversary. You’ll just have to take my word on Joe.

Anyway, there are a ton of other “little” bands (the black keys, john butler, Robert Randolph, galactic, greyboy allstars, etc. etc.) that I am SO excited to see, but the funniest one that I am actually looking forward to is the big headliner, TOOL. Many things pop into my head at the mention of this word. Mostly things like screwdrivers, hammers, assholes. The band though, I have heard of, and conjures up similar images, only angrier. Which, I admit, is not fair, because I NEVER listen to tool. I had braces for a couple years, but that’s about as close to being a metal head as I’ll ever be. I’ve known that for a while, so I never even gave them a chance. I am going to in one month though, and I will enjoy it. I’m bringing all my black/ripped clothes and piercings/safety pins, maybe a mohawk or some badass shaggy hair to whip around while we headbang, it’s going to be a real good time. Don’t think I’m too much of a jerk, I actually am excited to see them, as there is no way in hell that I would normally, under any circumstances, end up at one of their shows on purpose. Also, one of our good friends (who will be with us) is actually a big fan, so that should make it funner too. Don’t even start on how funner’s not a word, it’s summer vacation folks. (And has been for ohhhh, about a full year now for some of us…)

I barely skimmed the surface there, but I think that’s enough, as the only other person that could possibly be as interested in this post as I am is Julia, who, bless her, doesn’t read this shit.

Ok, off to continue the celebration, by doing other exciting things that are similar in rowdiness/celebratory level to, say, writing on a blog (I know I know, I’m nuts…) Happy Minthiversary!

just a straight-forward one.

Ohhhhh let’s see. It’s been about a week now since I got here, seems like longer though, I have been busy. Which is directly related to having a bunch of friends already in the area, genius that I am. And to job hunting. Anyway, a brief synopsis of the week would include the following, in list format, as my great Thing friend would do, but as I usually don’t. I will call it,
First List:
1) knit a hat (what’s the past tense of knit? Knit, right?)
2) celebrated a 26th birthday (not mine, but someday I hope to be that old)
3) got a library card
4) stole lots of new music from the library
5) applied for 17 jobs
6) got laughed at once, then sort of got one
7) intimidated a drunk girl with three friends by walking down the middle of the street side by side (drunk girl: whoa you’re like the beatles…ha…I’m so wasted. Josh (pseudo-beatle): I see what she means. Me: I get to be George.)
8) Saw some pretty great live music at the Mangy Moose, danced around.
9) Called 911 (know your limit people…)
10) Have finally stopped falling out of our shower, which is an inordinate number of inches off the ground, and very deceiving.
11) Tried (failed) to get a P.O. box. I may never be a real person.
12) Got a tattoo, it’s a life-size image of a butterfly landing on a flower, with the Chinese symbols for “butterfly landing on a flower” down my left ankle.
13) just kidding, my real tattoo will be way cooler than that.
14) Actually I’ll probably only ever wear fake tattoos
15) Was told I’m indecisive. That’s not true, I’m particular.
16) This list has taken a turn for the worse, so I’m going to stop at 19 no matter what.
17) 20 is too round a number to stop at.
18) Saw an owl up close (was perched on a little post), whoa facial feathers.
19) Went for a hike when it was supposed to be raining, drew out the sun. Good God Gorgeous Mountains/Lake.

And that is the semi-concise list version of the week. It’s been good. Speaking of, good day to you.

touch down

So I made it to Jackson. I started a poem in flight that I was going to post in dedication to my demanding readership (that's you lil legs), but it's just not even sharable yet, despite my enthusiasm, and the sheer height of the actual writing. Speaking of, the clouds were amazing (inspiring poetry, and seeming lifelike, as they often do); the entire flight from denver I felt like I was on a sky safari, they were like animals moving in herds, changing shapes, being whispy, being chunky, frolicking, grazing, all the time letting me see down to the mountains and rivers below, which by the way really do look like those topical maps. Then we came shoulder to shoulder with the Tetons, holey moley. They call them grand, but they are the holy moley tetons if there ever were any.
So anyway, probably one of the best flights I've been on. It was one of those little guys (the plane) with two rows of two chairs each, where the flight attendant sits right in front of your face and if you have that front seat, potential for awkward activity gets real high. I didn't have that seat though, which is lucky for Burt (that was his name, he's about 60, 6 feet tall, and from Denmark--interesting accent, couldn't place it so I was glad someone else asked and I eavesdropped) as I can be awkward even not given such a golden opportunity. Captain Bob got us here. I think Spongebob Squarepants sucked any potential for dignity out of that name, Captain or not. But he did an alright job, we flew low enough to the ground to see everything below, and high enough to feel like we were in some futuristic star wars scene involving a city of clouds.

So, I guess the point is, I'm here. and my phone charger is not, which is why I haven't called you yet (you know who you are...) but hopefully that situation will be remedied soon. I have a feeling I might have to break down and buy a new charger, since I do want a job, and phones are a pretty standard form of communication for that sort of situation, but I'm standing my ground to the last...whatever it is that you stand your ground til the last of.

from wyoming, over and out.