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There is the time of newness in a fresh place where you’re all ungrounded; nothing is stabilized, you feel hollow and lost. You don’t remember which box you packed your coffee supplies in. You don’t have an easy to remember hook for your keys. There are no comforting faces yet. Thankfully, that time has passed for me.
On bike I saw a large letter “P” in the gutter, blown off someone’s sign likely, and this made me realize that now I am into the time of Promise and Prospect. Where the newness isn’t unnerving, but instead exciting and inviting and inspiring exploration.
That is my intro to say that tonight I am gleeful as three, because.....
….because I went for a bike ride and was able to find roads that weren’t all clogged with cars. I even passed farms with horses, something I didn’t even think could exist in this land of plaza plaza plaza.
…..because I have FOUND AN ORGAN BENCH!!!!! I’ve found a church and they need a substitute organist this summer! And they are Episcopalians! I met with Pastor David Sedaris But Happier this evening, and he explained the expectations, that the congregation was small, and older, bluecollar, not singers, but “they are very welcoming and non-judgemental.” He seemed very flexible for the organist, “its ok if you run over or short with the prelude. Music is a gift, not a filler.” I liked him very much, all hand-motiony and enthusiastic and chirpy. “You can think about this and get back to me,” he said. Um. duh. There’s no thinking to do! YES! After we shook hands goodbye and thank you I ducked into the loo and did an arm pumping happy dance.
…..because as I biked away there was a huge ribbon of rainbow stretched through the sky.
….because I had the frugal fun and discovery of exploring a little discount grocery store in the neighborhood with all the smoke shops and “Save-a-Lot” store. I’ve missed little grocery shops like this (no suburbinite Leopard Print Mothers here); it was like being back in the crowded, hand-written-labels tiendas in Puerto Rico.
Now, lists can be bad form in writing, but I must share with you what I have bought: Five apples, a massive child-shaped yam, 3 mangoes, a chocolate bar from Germany, a bag of Ghiradelli white chocolate chips, and two Powerbars. All for $7.27. My Wayman genes are thrumming.
Today was a good day here: developing a better sense of place and relishing some great serendipity. The sense of place was because I hauled back a delicious gourmet load of morning market shopping: beef salami, goat cheese, wild-flower honey, round bread, Cabernet Sauvignon, and asparagus. If all that cannot appease the god Epicurious, I don’t think anything can. I also enjoyed chatting with Mrs. Honey, Mrs. Goat Cheese, and Miss Wine. I then availed myself of the library, a delicious cappuccino, and the park for a sprawl in the sun.
Then I cycled to Tacoma, the third largest city in WA, and this is where I enjoyed the serendipity. I happened to pass a bike shop and so I piled in there to buy a Very Reflective Vest, to increase my likelihood of surviving the rampant traffic around here. Meanwhile I surveyed the Very Expensive Jackets quite discouraged, but more helpfully, got the inside scoop from Mr. Bikeshop about the hip district in town, the “I wouldn’t be caught dead district” in town, and explicit instructions to ride through a glass exhibit. (which was lovely) And he pumped up my bike tires and gave me a map.
After puttering around Tacoma a bit, I became cold. I was half-heartedly thinking about going back and purchasing one of the Very Expensive Jackets just so I could unclench a bit and enjoy the ride home. But the thrift-store angel was out for me: I happened to pass an urban clothing exchange and paddling through the racks I leapt up because there was a florescent yellow Not Nearly As Expensive As It Was New cycling jacket! Oh my! All of $15 later I was warm and smug. Although, it is a men’s medium, so I was luffy and flappy on the way home.....but it will hold me off till I splurge on a Perfect Jacket. And, oh, was I visible. Put a potted plant near me and it would probably increase photosynthesis, I was so bright.
The serendipity continued when I became hungry. I poked my head in the window of one of those roadside barbeque places, asking if they had anything less substantial than one of their mongo sandwiches, which if eaten before the right home would exceed my carry-on baggage requirements. Mr. BBQ seemed willing to negotiate a half serving of something...ah nachos!...actually, here, let me just GIVE these to you because I’m almost out anyway. Boy did this make me happy. Free food. I think the universe is looking out for me.
Visible and fed, I pedaled home under a peachy keen sunset. This day will need to support me for a while because tomorrow, and all following tomorrows, there shall be rain.
The grand perks of being a grad student. I just returned from the credit-awarded “state tour” yesterday: 40 crop and soil and horticulture grad students, 1 bus, 3 days, all expenses paid! The objective is to appreciate the diversity that is Washington state and its food production.
Oh and what diversity there is: desert central sagebrush to coastal salt grass to cascades ferny lushness. We stood on the pacific ocean in the salty wind in Long Beach and learned that it takes 4-5 years to raise an oyster and we held baby oysters and I ate a raw one. Walking along in the tour pack, chatting with a massive dude from Oklahoma about thunderstorms and how they are not here and he misses them so much. Spotting wild horses in the bunch grass and sage brush from the bus windows in south central WA. Sweating in the dusty sun in an experimental cherry orchard, learning about UFO’s (Upright Fruiting Offshoots) and the potential for stemless and pitless cherries. Wearing hairnets and beardnets and padding through a behemoth of a juice processing facility (a quarter mile long!), through windowless horror-film rooms with towering frozen storage or claustrophobic steaming juice-concentrating systems. Wine tasting on a hill at a stunningly sophisticated (oh what novelty for us grad students) winery in the dry (8 in/year rain!) central basin. Leaning into an aridisol (“arid”=desert soils) cut-away pit--oh I was excited as twins! a desert soil; I’d never seen one before!--17 feet deep of wind-deposited material from ancient glacial floods. Watching documentaries on wheat production and breakfast cereals in the bus, totally nerding out and taking notes about the tooth-breaker of a breakfast cereal in the 20’s: “Flaked-N-Baked: Corn-O-Plenty.” Feet hanging down into a cranberry field, learning how its flooded for harvest, and berries corralled at an end. Poking around raingarden trials as WSU researchers talk about grass species and infiltration. Waking early to pedal a hotel bicycle up over around the salt grass dunes on the pacific coast. Eating pizza in a frenzy of young-people hunger, our cacophony of conversations ceasing in a silence of the feeding. Zooming paper airplanes up the bus aisle, laughing about Einstein’s relativity.
Oh traveling and life and experience. Thank you state and university!
Prosser desert, Vinus vinerifera, and sage brush.
Glowing poppy glowing morning. Central basin.
On the Oregon border.
You can smell the oysters and the salt water. Long Beach.
Cranberry research trials. Coast.
I was making shortbread. Unlike my usual cooking experiences when I live alone, which involve various amounts of unfettered dancing and singing and uncontained mess-creation, I was being fairly staid in this here communal kitchen.
I had just returned from a totally self-indulgent bike-ride to the bulk foods store. Self indulgent because it wasn’t efficient or reasonable at all: I wanted to have white chocolate and cranberries in my shortbread, and I wanted to buy them in bulk, and I wanted to bicycle to them. I just wanted, so I indulged myself. Except it was 16.4 miles of biking through Suburbia, with suburbinites driving Suburbans: one McDonalds plaza after another. Basically a continuous Henrietta, for you people in NY. I was pining for my wheat fields. Why must there be so many people? So much pavement? I’m all for cities...they are compact and vertical....but horizontal sprawl, no thanks. But, it wasn’t all whiney: there were gorgeous flamboyant rhododendron trees and a sherbet sunset.
Anyway, so my burgeoning bike bags are strewn all over the table and I’m making short bread, and Mr. Housemate India comes in and sits amidst all my mess. Obviously intent on my baking. I explain I’m making shortbread, which needs more explanation, because he hasn’t heard of shortbread before. He’s still sitting amidst everything, variously poking on his phone and watching me. We chat about gyms and spices and I'm enjoying his thick accent. Eventually he asks, “when is the smallbread ready?” tee hee. He shared with me some beautifully spiced curried chickpeas, and I shared with him some "smallbread," and we shared a good laugh. I think its going to be alright living with all these people.
Welcome to the world of a Crop and Soil Science graduate student! Today was a day of Anthers. As a plant person, I want to write about this so it’s accessible to non-plant-people, so let me tell you that anthers are, and please excuse me here, basically the penises of plants. They are the male flower parts that come out at a certain growth stage to provide pollen.
They’re so funny, those anthers, when you accustom to thinking of a grain head, which is all tight and organized with its pre-pubescent grain kernels aligned. But then when its puberty time, as it were, you have all these unorganized pell-mell anthers hanging out all over the place, no orderly fashion. The little things are like some sort of Christmas tree ornaments.
Part of my master’s soil science project is to evaluate the developmental stages of the grain cover crops (this determines the best time to turn the standing grain into a cover crop mulch), and this involves going out amongst all those tall wavy barleys and ryes, peering at their grain heads, and determining when they’ve hit monumental stages, like graduating kindergarten and going to their first prom.
Of course academics have developed an elaborate assessment scale so all this grain growing-up can be quantified, so I’m in the midst of learning the names for stages. Baby barley looks just like a lawn, not much going on yet. But it grows into middle school, where it enters the “Boot” stage and its little self-conscious head has yet to poke out from its hoodie of a curled leaf. Then there’s “Anthesis” which is what’s happening now, and hormones are raging, and anthers are everywhere, and people are sneezing because of the pollen, but blessedly the worst that befalls me is finding anthers cradled in my bellybutton. Then there’s “Milk” and “Watery Milk”, where, when squeezed, the little fetal grain kernels releases a milk-like (duh) liquid. There are more stages, but nobody has reached them yet over here.
So I’m out in the field, learning how this is done, admiring all the test-plots as quilt squares, and the stunning Mt Rainier all snow-capped overlooking us. Really, I can’t be looking at this mountain if I’m trying to talk to anybody because it makes me fumble and stammer and become incoherent. It is that grand. And I’m also that unaccustomed to mountains. So I return from the mountain back to the field and you’ve got all these grown men, really smart scientists, bent over a single grain of barley in someone’s palm, going, quite excitedly, “yes yes! this is the poster child for the anthesis stage!” but then someone else counters, “oh NO! I have THE poster child!” "We are certainly anesthetized," said Professor Cover Crops, and its sentences like these that make me all grinny to have him as MY advisor.
Its quite interesting how focusing so intently on one thing infiltrates the rest of your life. Squinting into a plot lush with breeze-swaying grain, and zooming in on anthers, this made me totally attuned to the anther concept the rest of the day. I noticed a coworker’s nose-hairs, and before I could stop myself my brain registered: “check out his NOSE anthers!”
Here they are.
I traveled by lego spaceship yesterday. Well, not quite. But just humor me for a moment here.
As a child I used to build lego spaceships and fly them round the living room. One of my favorite designs was a large ship with a little dock on it for a smaller ship. The large one was for going greater distances--maybe buzzing out to the garage to visit Dad--and the smaller one was for little zoomy side-trips under the coffee table. And then the little ship would dock back on the bigger ship and be flown out to the kitchen. There was something about the versatility of this arrangement of stacked traveling machines that I just loved.
I came up with this memory after brain-digging for sometime yesterday, trying to figure out why I was so toe-curlingly pleased with my traveling. Destination Bainbridge Island.
Yesterday I rode my bicycle 30 miles from Puyallup to the light rail train station, rolled my bike onto the train, and arrived in Seattle to pedal around again. Then I pedaled my bike to the ferry, and bike and boat and I plowed to Bainbridge Island. Then bike and I climbed into friend's truck and we all went to the island home and to bed. The notion of my bike on a ferry just tickled me pink. Plus I knew G and G would be very pleased.
Being able to get to Seattle with public transportation and pedal power is just the ultimate in personal resourcefulness, sustainability, and efficiency in my little brain. I didn't have to sit in traffic, or pay $9 for parking, or $4.29 for gas.
Seattle was sunny. Pike Market was bustling and invigorating. Spanokopita was lemony and flavorful. Gypsy Jazz and happy hour brew were synergistic combination.
"Who is that new tall girl with the short hair?" --Mr. Plumber Guy
"Oh, that's Worm Bin Girl." --Mr. Maintenance
I've been here all of 1.5 days and already I seem to have titles. The worm bin thing happened because I was in enthusiastic favor of a compost option here; Mr. Project Manager used this to help bolster his petition for one being built.
This morning I was out in the field with Mr. Project Manager, a solid man with no neck and three hairs growing out the ball of his nose (a very interesting growth habit indeed). He is straight-foward, hard-working with enjoyment of it, efficient, and very practical-smart. We had good conversations about spices, bicycling, and efficiency as we laid out measuring tapes, stabbed flags into the ground, and cut bundles of barley for biomass assessment. I like working with him. I also liked being out in the sunshine today.
I carpooled with India, Romania, and China today to Tacoma for Thai food and it was a long drive through traffic and it made me miss the small town in the wheat field I had left behind. Although the Thai basil almost made it worth it in its deliciousness. This dinner of "so where are you from" conversation and long pauses also brought home the stark difference between having friends and making friends. Having friends is comforting and effortless and affirming and natural. Making friends can be awkward and exhausting and disheartening. "So besides research and Thai food, what are your hobbies?" I asked Tall Thin Romania next to me. She is very sweet and laughs easily, but had no reply for me.
When I'm with friends I have (or with new people who impress me very much), I find myself bubbling out with some sort of personal anecdote or story or joke to share with them--almost involuntarily--, because I want to see them laugh and be engaged. And maybe to have the personal satisfaction, as odd as it seems, that this amazing affecting impressive person is engaged by me. Its almost like I can watch myself be social; I don't need to do anything for it because there is so much natural drive. Tonight though, I found myself wholly uninspired to talk, and this was uncharacteristic and unaccustomed.
Today I moved out of my charming little nesty house, that house where I could sing and dance unabashedly and cook smelly things and take up countless kitchen shelves with odd little spice jars and pad around in two types of plaid because I was ALONE and had my own SPACE.
Now I am uprooted and replanted into the WSU student guest house at the research station hour south of Seattle. I have all of 3 cramped shelves to call my own in the shared kitchen, a dark room overlooking a loud road, and 4 other international students to share bathrooms with. I'm feeling like I've gone through a wash and dry cycle. am raw, and overwhelmed with the newness of everything. I hefted boxes up to my new room all alone, and reflected on past living situations. This is a study in observing my condition and stepping back and knowing I will be resilient, simply based on previous data points. I managed in a damp shared cabin in the Australian rainforest where my clothes got moldy and everything was mud. I adjusted to sleeping through blasty Costa Rica road noise in a tiny house that often didn't have water in the evening. I slept in a tent in Puerto Rico, tuning out the cacophonous froggies to reach sleep. I lived in a student house where dirty dishes colonized the sink. I stayed in a sloped-roof little attic of a room and slept on a box spring in Pennsylvania. I survived living with a grouchy housemate who had stopped speaking to me except to announce rent was due. And through all of them I made it.
There's something about this that lets one tune into the base human satisfaction of getting by and making the best. Its a chance for creativity.
On the bright side, the rent is highly subsidized by the grad school and its on the research campus so I will be close to my office. And my room has real solid furniture instead of my usual meager flimsy thrift store numbers. And I think a stint of community living will be good for me. Even though I cannot pronounce any of my housemate's names.
Let me tell you about my day trekking across the state (and see my photos in previous entry). I had been packing and cleaning from 6am onward this morning, feeling like Cinderella because my landlady showed up before I was done and authoritatively pointing out dirt spots on cabinets and dust on shelves. "How is my place so dirty?" I was thinking. And then: "oh yeah, because a SOIL SCIENTIST lived here."
I wadded everything into my car, plants and spice jars and sundresses, feeling burdened by stuff and wishing I could be a migrating flying goose instead. I imagined the axles sagging under my life, and pulling down the street was like those dreams where everything happens in slow motion. I was driving a barge. But you know, unlike Mr. Basement, at least I didn't need a u-haul, a truck, and a van to fit my life into. Just one barge.
After Artist Friend Meghan read me two poems and I said my final goodbye, I started driving. I just drove. No music. No books on tape. I just wanted to sit with myself and be present with this life change. And then it was quite tormenting because I had all these thoughts and sentences come and I wanted to write and I couldn't. I was brain constipated; I knew more thoughts were coming but they wouldn't arrive until the others were dealt with. So I talked to my plants in the front seat.
I relished the diversity of Washington as I drove. The bread basket wheat region in the east all open and rolling, with patches of piercingly yellow canola where the sun had leaked and dribbled down. The central basin all ragged rocks and sagebrush in the middle of the state. And in the west, the mountains, rearing above, gratefully visible on this clear day. And I crossed the pass and was astounded--like a child seeing a giraffe for the first time--because there were trees! And the trees had leaves on them! This is prairie-girl here. To augment the scenery I was listening to organ music with the base turned up so I could feel the low pedals; they were vibrating in my seat belt on my belly. Then my plants and I reached the suburbia of the west side and I rubberbanded through choking traffic, wishing I had a seeing eye dog to help guide my barge because I couldn't even see out the back. Now there were roads named disheartening consumerist things like "SuperMall Drive" and a little sign with an arrow indicating "Volcano Evacuation Route." How different it will be to live out here!
Well that is my day! And since I've gone through the entire Periodic Table of The Emotions recently, I shall be heading to sleep soon. But I would especially love to hear comments from you, dear readers, this day.
The last supper. An exquisite meal of grilled cheese on sourdough, paired with a fine merlot. Served amongst the melee of packing.
All this is Washington. In the morning I was in the Palouse. How about that yellow canola! And the green winter wheat!
All this is Washington. Midday I was amongst the sagebrush.
All this is Washington. Late afternoon I was chugging through the Cascade Mountains.
This state is astonishingly diverse and I love it.
I played my last church service today. I'm feeling all soulful and particularly inarticulate and overwhelmed with leaving and well-hugged and appreciated and this makes me very very alive.
This church has been so dear to me. People to talk with about things like: Faith and Doubt and Nitrogen In Our Ground Water and Silly Injuries. This church was an excuse to bike to Idaho (accumulated 800-900 miles just from biking to and fro there), and they fed me well, and made me feel good about my music, and let me sleep in their basement, and didn't judge me for wearing tye-dye socks with my skirt.
Mother Pastor brought me forward during the service and people laid their hands on me and gave me blessings. It was very poignant standing there covered in warm hands. "Safe travels." "Paved bike trails." "Dancing." "Adventure." "Coming back to us." Then everyone sang God Be With You Till We Meet Again and I had to dive up into the choir loft after to find tissues. I had no idea I would get so attached to these people. I can't tell if I'm crying from sadness upon leaving them or crying from gratitude for the blessings and the nurturing and the community.
I was flipping through my great multitude of organ music and happened across the piece I had played on my very first Sunday there, a nervous and expectant Sunday. It was a little chipper Bach prelude and I chose it for this final Sunday's postlude....kind of like closing the loop.
The final hymn. The final blessing. And now the postlude. I began the Bach and heard a titter of giggling in the pews. And then a ripple of laughter moving through the aisles.
Why were people laughing?
I had put on a wig.
A frizzy, puffy, ugly yellow-blonde, ridiculous wig. Why not? Tis my last hoorah.
