Prompt 7

 What have you learned about yourself, about your relationship to the physical world, about yourself as a writer over the term? How might your experiences affect your future writings?

Well, I've found that I like nature just slightly more than I thought I did when I began this class. I still much prefer to view nature through my windows, but when I do interact with the outside world, I am able to see connections I never noticed before. One thing I've done with all of my writing this semester (and not just for this class) is explore how fear and anxiety color the way I see and interact with the world. For the most part, I've enjoyed looking at how my antagonist relationship with nature is actually due to my fear of nature. At the same time, I've found niches that actually comfort me, rather than worry me. It was illuminating and rather unexpected, as I thought I'd spend most of the blogs writing about how nature was ruining my life.

That being said, I'm not so sure that I feel any closer to my particular place, or to any one natural place. I'd say I'm more open to finding the good things in a particular place. I found that the prompts got me thinking about place, something I often forget about and take for granted. I'll be more likely to pay attention to particulars and description, and look for the little things that I can connect with (like a camelback cricket becoming my nemesis, for example). The small things can do a lot of work if you let them. :)

Place #7

It is hot outside today--82 degrees!--and I am sitting in my back yard in my swimsuit, trying to tan after doing some laundry. The empty house next door got its grass cut today, so the air smells like gasoline and grass. It's dry, too, and the grass is prickly on my bare feet.

Sadie came out with me, and sniffed around for a few seconds before plopping down in the sun--something she rarely does in the back yard, usually preferring the softer carpet inside. I put some water out for her, but she just sniffs at it and walks away, panting. I've laid out a blanket for my feet (protection against the pricklies), and I've set my beach chair to lean me back just a bit. I'm wearing my sunglasses, and it is hot enough that they are already sliding down my nose, and sweat is lining my face, even though I've really only been out for about three minutes.

I'm suddenly aware of screaming from the yard behind mine. I cannot see over the fence I have, but it sounds like two young kids, one definite girl. The screaming couldn't have just started, but I don't remember hearing it before. Surprisingly, I do not hear any lawn mowers or edgers or leaf blowers.

The tree in the other neighbor's yard keeps moving in a wind that I cannot feel. The leaves are flipped a bit at the top of the tree, a sign I always took to mean it was about to rain. This morning it looked like it might, but now the sky is full of fluff and blue and I'm not too sure we'll get rain.

Sadie makes a noise somewhere between a grunt and a yawn and gets up. She keeps looking up at the sky, and I wonder why. Is she hearing something I don't? Is she amazed at the sun? Are there birds circling that I cannot see? I can hear some, the usual songbirds, I guess. She wanders around for a while, and keeps going to the water bowl without drinking anything. She'll go to the shade and stand, and then go to the sunny spot and stand. This bothers me. I am trying to relax, but every time she moves the lead she is on wraps around my chair, and then she cries because she is tangled up. I unhook her.

Every few minutes a small breeze comes through. It feels cool and good and I take a deep breath each time. The air doesn't smell any different. I was hoping someone would be having a cook out, or grilling something up, but the air is just grass and heat.

Now every time Sadie moves I get nervous she is going to take off and run. We cannot win, and it looks like my plan to sit and relax is not going very well. I snap my fingers and call her over; she comes languidly, moving in slow motion. The heat is slowing her down. This is good. If she takes off, I will be able to catch her. Hopefully. She finally plops down in the sunny grassy spot and seems content to sit for a few.

It is nice to not have the annoying lawn mower and leaf blower sounds as I sit here. There aren't many cars going by either, so all the noises I hear are natural--the wind in the leaves, the kids screaming across the yard, the birds tweeting and singing around, the chair scrunching each time I move one way or another. A big bumblebee comes near my head every so often, and I prefer to watch its shadow dance around my head than look up at it and be blinded by the sun. The hum makes me nervous--it's awfully close to my head!--but I keep it cool and manage to stay in my chair.

We sit like this for a while, Sadie and I. Every so often Sadie moves and I tense, but she settles herself back down--sometimes in the shade, sometimes next to me--and we both relax again. When I feel the raw skin on my knee start to tingle, I decide it's time to go in. Sadie, usually running from in to out or out to in, ambles to the door and stands with her front paws right on the door track. She yawns, and goes up to my bed to lay in my fresh-from-the-dryer laundry.

Prompt #6

A few years ago, my friend British Beth invited me to go with her family to Disney World over Christmas vacation. I went, and we had a blast. It was a tough week, though, and when we ended up at the beach toward the end of the week, British and I were worn out and starting to get snippy with each other, a common problem among people who are born loners and forced to spend a week together is a very small shared space. Our hotel suites were right on the beach, though, so after we were settled in we decided on a walk.

It sounded like a lovely idea. I always remember that the beach smells so good, and that I love the sound of the crashing waves, and the feel of the water going over my feet. I forget that sand gets everywhere, and once I'm wet the sand will then stick to me everywhere, and the sand is hot, and it hurts my knees to walk it in for long periods. I forget that crabs build little nests or something and if you kick one the crabs will try to attack your toes. That wonderful smell is actually salt and decay. The wind can be fierce and kick the sand into your face. There's nowhere to pee unless you go out into the water. There are jellyfish. And regular fish. And sharks. (Well, maybe not sharks).

Luckily, it was later in the day, and the sun was setting, so the sand wasn't too hot. I wore sandals that I could remove, so I was able to bury my feet in the sand if I needed to and not worry about getting sand in my shoes. There was a breeze, but just a light one. There was a boardwalk almost up to the water. It was winter, off season for jellyfish, and our patch of beach was dead-thing-free. Few people were still there, so we had a patch of beach to ourselves.

British and I walked together for a little bit, but we pulled away from each other after a while, looking at shells or just sitting and staring. The sun was really starting to set, and the sky was turning so many different shades of pink and red and orange and blue and purple. I decided to just stand for a bit, and watch the water, and the sun, and listen to the ocean, and breath in the air.

The breeze stayed the same. The air got a little cooler, but it was still comfortable. I stood with my feet in enough of the waves that the water would sometimes crash up to my calves, maybe my knees, but usually stayed down around my ankles. I let my feet sink into the sand, feeling the wet slimy grimy bits get in between my toes and massage my heels. The air smelled like salt, or like Dover after a rain storm. There were very few people on the beach, and it was quiet except for the occasional seagull or jet speeder out on the ocean. The waves crashed in and out in a rhythm that was exciting, soothing, and unpredictable.

I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face. I found a moment of calm.

In that moment, I felt a peace that I only felt once before, at a midnight retreat at my church. Standing in the water I found that I wasn't worrying, or thinking about tomorrow, or what I would order at dinner, or wondering if I had eaten too quickly or too much at lunch, or if I should repack for the third time, or what I should have for the first day of school when we got back from the break, or if my mother was really OK that I was missing her birthday, and if Dad was angry I'd spent the holiday away from home. I wasn't analyzing everything that British said to see if she was upset with her mother, or her father, or me, or trying to find the perfect way to be the buffer between them all, the perfect guest and hostess all in one. I wasn't wondering was Marie meant when she said, "Well, do all Americans take Disney studies at school?" because even though she clearly meant it as a joke, was she secretly saying I was being too controlling in the park, and should I have let us wander around lost instead of finding a map and directing us along? Are the asthma attacks I keep having asthma or am I dying of bronchitis? Should I take the medicine when we get back to the room, knowing that it is going to make me sleepy, but knowing that we have dinner to go to yet? Can I listen to my headphones when I get back without being rude? What if there are jelly fish in this sand and I get stung? What if we get lost on the beach? What if we get locked out of our hotel? What if Mom doesn't like the present I got her? What if Tony and Marie need us while we're out here? What if...?

I was listening to the waves, and feeling the sun on my face, and breathing deeply.

I wanted to find a way to show my appreciation for the moment, but quietly. It wouldn't do to run up to someone and say "I just found peace with my lord and saviour! Come join me!" That's not how the moment presented itself, and that wasn't the purpose of the moment, anyway. It would ruin it to share it in such an ungraceful and unpeaceful way.

I had found some shells earlier on the trip, and I had them in my hand. I took a few steps away from the waves, so the sand was still went but not in the surf. I took a shell and wrote Be still, and know that I am... in the sand, and set the shells around it.

It would disappear in a while, the shells taken back into the ocean, the words filled in when the tide came back. But it was there for a while. And so was I.

Place Entry 6

I've been stuck inside. I had a massive allergic reaction to medication last week, and now I am laid up due to knee surgery. So these last two weeks, I've gotten to experience nature in my favorite way: through a window. :)

Sadie likes it. For the first time in a while, she is out of her crate during the day, during the week, and the sun shines through the back window almost all day. She follows it as it arcs across my floor, lazing around. She almost never sleeps in front of me, and so it is a treat for me as well. She makes little noises every so often, and jerks her legs. I like to pretend she is chasing the rabbits from the back yard in her dreams. I hooked her up to a long lead and let her outside last week, so she could laze against the warm ground. She sat at the door and cried until I let her back in. She promptly curled up on the carpet, in the sun.

The rabbits from the back yard have been enjoying the weather as well. There seem to be more of them now, as tends to happen, I guess. I counted three or four outside by the bushes, and another one was sitting right next to my car in the front yard. I stood at the door on my crutches for a few minutes, and it watched me out of the corner of its eye, little nose twitching. It was getting somewhat late, and was a little dark, and it seemed really chill. We looked at each other for a while, and then I shut the front door and hobbled back to my recliner.

Somehow, Sadie missed that rabbit, but saw the cat two yards over and went nuts at the window for a good 20 minutes. When the cat cut through the back yard a little while later, Sadie leaned on her hind legs and whined.

There was a squirrel that was climbing on my fence for about 20 minutes. It sat there on top, not moving very much, which I think is a feat for a squirrel. It was just kind of enjoying the sun and the view, i guess, since . No birds came to bother it, and Sadie didn't seem to mind it there. I dozed off, and when I woke up, it was gone.

The people are starting to come out of hibernation, too. All week I have heard lawn mowers and leaf blowers going, an almost constant background noise. My lawn, so painstakingly cut two Fridays ago, is almost a jungle again. I can see those purple things sticking up in the dip in my lawn, and some dandelions are sprouting as well. On Sunday someone knocked at my door and offered to mow my lawn for $20. I almost took them up on it, but I noticed they didn't have a lawn mower with them, and decided it was a scam.

I've been woken by birds every morning for the last two weeks. I've slept downstairs, in my recliner, and this morning I got to see the sky change from pitch black to streaks of pink to full on blue with puffy white clouds. Today my dad will mow my lawn. This is my kind of nature.

With sincere apologies

Hi everyone,

I wanted to apologize for being MIA on last Friday's posts and for being so late with this week's blog entry. I am in no way trying to make excuses, but the 3rd marking period ended for me last week and I got confused by what I had done for this class, and what I had done for work, and what I still had left to do. I only realized today that I had missed the week. I'm going to try to catch myself up tonight with the posts on Moodle, and I appreciate your understanding.

Hope all of your papers are going great!

-B

BLOG PROMPT #5

 My brother had a telescope when we were little, along with circular star charts in folds of rectangular paper, an oblong hole cut into it to mimic the odd shape of the sky at night. I would play with it, spinning the star chart through the hole, watching the sky change on the paper before me, never making the connection to the actual night sky.

I loved stargazing, never cared much for finding constellations, enjoyed watching the Pleiades meteor shower with friends. I took an astronomy class to become closer to the sky, like I might study colors to understand da Vinci. I learned that telescopes use two lenses, and I was able to see the rings of a tiny, tiny Jupiter through them.

The sky is constant, in that it is always changing, but will always come back to what it was. I'm not the first to notice this and not the last to romanticize it, but there is comfort there, knowing that someone can change and still be the same at the end of it all.

With the sky, there is no way for me to accidentally step into its territory and frighten it, or disturb its habitat beyond repair.  No one complains about space garbage or makes me feel guilty for not conserving the stardust.

The night sky is a study in extremes--planets cooking in the day, planets freezing at night, stars so far away we don't even have numbers to represent the distance, but moons so small they can fit between two pinched fingers. 

I like the sky because it is up there. I can see it, and it can be beautiful, but it cannot directly interact with me and I cannot change it. It is inevitable and no amount of effort or lack thereof on my part will stop it. There is no pressure on me. There is nothing and no one compelling me to do anything and the sky doesn't ask me to participate. There's a lot of possibility out there, but it isn't possibility I have to act on or take hold of or grab before it disappears.

I find the few touchstones I know--Orion, the Moon, maybe a Dipper if I'm desperate--and that is all that is required of me. The sky doesn't care that I cannot name all of the stars. They'll burn without all that. 

Place Entry #5: The Grass is Always Greener

I've become the kind of person that is obsessed with grass.

We've had a lot of awfully nice weather this week. And in this very nice weather, I've found that my grass is patchy. As I stepped out into my back yard today,  I saw just how high some of the grass was. Sadie darted out between my feet, and some of the longer stalks came up to her shoulder. Granted, she's only 11 inches tall. She seemed startled by the grass, walking gingerly around the yard, and hopping over a big patch like she was jumping a fence. She ran back inside and I couldn't persuade her to come back out.

The ground is soft and slightly wet, like a damp sponge that had been left on top of the dryer, or in the sun on a window sill. There is a small clump of purple flowery-type things growing over by my fence. As I walk to the middle of my yard, I brush through the grass and little things fly up. I cannot tell if they are bugs or pollen, and I've decided I don't want to know. The rabbit that lives in the bushes on the edge of the property is preparing to run, and I wish Sadie were here to run after it, because Sadie could use the run and there's no danger of her catching it.

My backyard is uneven, I decide. The bits against my house and back porch are higher than the middle of the yard, which often turns into a mini-lake / swamp area during rain. They are the parts that got mowed the least last year, because my mower kept dying. The yard slopes down again on the sides, and there is a tree that is really green because all of the water runs right to its roots. This unevenness is accentuated by my uneven grass. The parts in the swamp aren't growing at all, which at first confuses me, but then I figure they just get drowned out by all the water. The area around the bushes at the property line are eaten down each day by the rabbit, so there are just a few big tufts of thick grass there.

As I've been walking Sadie, I've been paying attention to the grass. This is suburbia, or as close to it as Dover gets, and lawns are a big deal. When my dad was down last weekend, we walked Sadie through the neighborhood. He lamented that no one here cares about their grass. There are brown patches in almost every yard. I pointed out that we were just starting spring, and people weren't really thinking about grass yet. He said, "Well, yeah, sure..." and I got the idea that he thinks we should all always be thinking about our grass, as though it is a symbol of how much you care for your neighborhood.

I am overly worried about my yard. My neighbors on both sides have very nice green yards, with grass that, if not perfectly mowed, is at least at a respectable height. My yard, while not completely sticking out, could quickly become the eyesore of the corner. I measure my house against the abandoned house down the street. I have more tufts of thick green than they do, although theirs is generally less groomed.

It bothers me that I am the kind of person who worries about grass. I had neighbors in high school who planted wildflowers for their front lawn, and never had to worry about mowing it, except for a tiny swath of grass they left in the middle and called the "Art Highway" in honor of the path my brother would take to their front door. These people certainly didn't worry about grass, and they turned out alright.

As I sit here, I wonder how it is that lawns became the way in which we present ourselves to society. I can see from my back yard a nicely manicured lawn with a cute Adirondack chair and a planter in the front yard, and of course that is appealing and welcoming, but it's also silly because I never see anyone sitting in the chair and it will just get all gross when it rains. Behind me, in the house with the dogs that never stop barking, the yard in fenced in and looks like it is mostly dying grass and dirt from the dogs running outside all of the time. That does give a different vibe, I guess.

I've been wanting to hold off on mowing, but I don't think I can anymore. Soon it will be obvious where the property lines are based on the height of the grass. I haven't heard anyone else mow yet, and I don't want the neighborhood to wonder why I am mowing so early in the season. At the same time, I'd hate for them to wonder why the heck my grass is so long.

I guess I'd better go move the newspaper from the front yard first...