Rox

"It's so far... A lot of life can happen while you're gone," my mother always told me. It was true. One step further than Japan, and I'd be one step closer to home. Life 'happening' was a fear we both constantly mulled over every time I got ready to board an airplane. Such knowledge has never made it easier to stomach when it actually does though.

About six years ago, I had a job working in a small English writing center on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. Even though it was just part time, and at a community college, I quickly found a niche--my home away from home, working with this small, yet incredible group of people. Passionate. Unabashed and outgoing. Eclectic and unbelievably intelligent. They taught me the same. Inspired me. To love words, love ink, unrelenting sarcasm and the smell of a well-worn paperback. Together, we reveled in lampooning grammatical idiocy, while debating semicolons, subject/verb agreements, and the occasional proper noun functioning as a verb. If what they say about words being weapons is absolutely true, our tiny four-walled paradise was the goddamn Springfield Armory on Grand Traverse Bay. Three short semesters with them shaped every piece of who I've become today.
And so 8000 miles away, for me to hear tonight that a car accident has left me with one less of an imprint, is nothing short of heartbreaking.
I have a Thesaurus, but I wouldn't even know where to start.
We have lost a friend; the English language, another master, and our armory, a model soldier.


We all know she is peacefully resting in a better place.
I heard that English in heaven is fucking impeccable.

Take my blanket and go

Seems like everybody loves lists. Year-end/beginning lists especially. Be it a bittersweet retrospective, or pathetically optimistic, it's hard to not enjoy a well-conceived and organized list. So, per certain new year's expectations, here is mine, in all its haphazardly compiled glory:

* milk
* eggs
* pop tarts
* ukulele
* cake or death
* Paris
* air guitar
* hot
* kill monsters in the rain
* hump catting
* bear blasting
* ...what the hell?

Ah, I just remembered. I hate lists.
Here's a better idea.

I'm sure by now most of you should be familiar with my smallish gnome friend, Frampton. If not, no big deal--just flash back to my painfully crap** writing of yesteryear, and kindly read about his humble beginnings, before continuing.
While that post fails to actually provide any real information on Frampton, rest assured there isn't actually much to say. A charming gift from my sister, he has since become a strange extension of myself--a kitschy snapshot stand-in, conveniently pausing for photographs at timely major milestones in my life.
So, here he is--in 2007:




** This is not to say the writing is no longer crap, just that it used to be more crap.

"...take my radio to bathe with you..."

Tracing spiderwebs in a cafe mocha.
Not unlike the scars on your wrist.
Trace the outline of an ear.
And an instruction manual to go with it.
Trace the mouth of a rusted firing barrel.
Warm those bleeding fingertips.
Lips of a stranger, the lens on a camera.

Trace anything you want.

I promise you'll find it at the bottom.