changing of the seasons

There's been an Indian summer these days, the nights warm with clear skies, everyone outside drinking pumpkin beer before the leaves make their final exit. People wore t-shirts today, lots of them, and there was a man singing opera at Grand Central. Tonight, I'm sipping pomegranate tea and watching Northern Exposure and reading Joseph Mitchell's "The Old Hotel." Everything is beautifully small, and I find myself sad and appreciative of the sadness.
It's strange, when someone dies, and I find myself face to face with that ultimate finality of everything. These constant beginnings and endings, I've thought about them my whole life and they make me want to dance with one hand waving free, waving goodbye to a summer that should have already gone.
"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
-The Sheltering Sky
For those who read this blog, I miss you all and I promise to become better at keeping in touch. (Especially Elaine - I'm going to be writing you a very, very long e-mail soon. I promise!)
love,
Anna

set the sails, I feel the winds a'stirrin'

I write to you by candlelight, the bright lights of Manhattan dancing on the horizon outside my window. Inside our apartment, everything smells like cinnamon and autumn and I drink a beer that tastes like cloves. Everything is warm these days, and I want to live forever under blankets, reading, writing, thinking. Then, when forever is done, I want to take the train for the next forever, riding into sunsets, past the places we have all, regrettably, forgotten.
Tonight I bought a cd by the Low Anthem and it's beautiful, songs about train rides from Louisiana to Ohio and it, as so many things do, makes me want to be wearing gingham and far away from computers and e-mail and all that which I'm not sure has made us a better people.
I loved tonight, watching the new Coen brothers movie (A Serious Man) and drinking tea in the bookstore until midnight and dancing down Broadway to the subway but, ah, what I would give to buy and live out my days in that bookstore in Idaho.

winter: a song, backseat

"Kathy's Song" by Eva Cassidy plays on Pandora and I sip, sip, sip hot chocolate. The back of the package points out it's hot chocolate, not hot cocoa. I think the difference is chunkiness and the pieces swish between teeth, swinging around the front teeth that aren't impressed. What's this compared to couscous by the sea?
I saw a friend from high school today, but she didn't see me and I didn't say anything. Because, after more than seven years, what is there to say? (How shall I recap life? Chewed pens/rubbing feet/your slighted cello/car windows and I've always been afraid of corduroy, what about you?
Today someone told me life for many people is cold and there are no houses and the children call the shelter their home. But, she said, they keep trying; they hope, we hope. Maybe that's more than me, she asked.

year after year what we do is undone

we took pictures with a disposable camera i still haven't developed. after corn kernels in indiana and eating midwest steaks and clinking glasses of not-milk, my mom and i parted ways in omaha after seeing my grandfather and my grandmother one last time before she died from smoking too many cigarettes in the kitchen.
when i pulled into the small wyoming town, it was cold and windy and i wore a black hat and one glove because my '91 honda accord had eaten the other one. there was a christmas tree lighting ceremony that night and my new roommate and photographer at the paper i was about to begin working for ate cookies with me and her dog sadie jumped all over me. we went to faler's and as i walked past the rows of animal heads staring with proud eyes, i bought coffee even though i never drank coffee. it was beer and coffee that night and what do you want in life? and i said this. i think this. snow and wind and the largeness-lostness of it all. van morrison in the kitchen and who do you think you'll be in your next life? me, maybe someone by a campfire, always.

i've spilled the wine

it's all pseudo tequila shots here, here in the dark damp torn corners of a sort-of island. we left for a week, and when we came back, the yellow leaves had all fallen and i can't stop listening to nina simone. what do you say when someone you don't love tells you they love you? something like : this is life, all feet out of windows and chewed up pens. and i'm sorry it can never be you and me.
writing about shitty health care systems, i momentarily like my job. then i lapse back into apathy and wonder when i'll get the energy to start seriously looking in brooklyn. i'm lackluster even about that. what is it about alaska that pulls me? it's the need for the unknown, for people with torn sweaters, for the lack of pretention and the dustdustdust. then you can say, who's that girl flinging kernels of mud into her hair? and i'll say, oh just me.
it's the need to wake up and say, today, today the world hasn't disappointed me. today i remember where i am, and i like it.