This is August, Y’all

So…the beach photos? They like to drag their feet. Walking in sand, you know, is very slow going.

However, this happened:

Then I had a brief love affair with a bag of potato chips. Or several. (The relationship may have been polygamous.)

Returning, I became an at-home professional in a new “office”:

The world ended.

Just kidding. It’s August, y’all. I’m not in school. This is weird.

That’s all.

This is August

I’m back.
This is me.

(This is also an open letter of apology to any human being who encounters me today.)

My beverage of the morning is a venti dark roast from Starbucks. Black.

Kindly ignore the fact that I haven’t shaved my legs. I moved yesterday.

My nose is blue, and I’m not a Smurf, nor am I being abused. I play Ultimate Frisbee. The sequence of a committed, if unsuccessful, dive is this: knees, hips, elbows, nose. My injuries correspond.

I spent the evening listening to Bon Iver and alphabetizing my books. That’s how I unwind. (English major.)

So buy wine from me today. The wine will be excellent. My ability to form a cohesive sentence about it may not be. Have pity.

Thank you.

Beach photos to follow.

Blogging Hiatus

Apologies, blogging friends, for the recent dearth of posts. In all likelihood, I will return to the blogging world in August, full of random ruminations on the raucous risibility of all things beach-related.

Until then, I leave you with this reminiscent sonnet by dear W.S.

–Adieu

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked elipses ‘gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. (Sonnet LX)

In Shakespeare’s Company

I’m sitting in a narrow hallway outside a coffee shop and bookstore called Shakespeare & Company. The door of this coffee/beer/wine/book/cooking supply shop has not one but five Christmas jingle bells hanging from the knob, to be certain the proprietors don’t miss a guest’s approach. (The bells’ effectiveness is undermined somewhat by the fact that the other half of the double doors is propped open.) They needn’t have worried.
This endearing spot is located in Kernersville, North Carolina, in a delightfully confusing building that once housed the Hooker Furniture Factory. The outside of the complex (so named in a most literal sense) is rustic, variegated brickwork with cast iron balconies, climbing vines, and a selection of succulent bushes lining the base. A fountain, surrounded by white rose bushes, trickles over moss-covered stone in the center of a small courtyard paved in meandering circular patterns.
The inside combines industrial brick and heavy steel supports with renovated woodwork and matte cast iron. Vague signs direct you to one boutique shop after another, with descriptive names like Not Just Teapots, Splurges, and Paper Sassy. Sadly, for every occupied storefront there are four empty ones: some actively under construction and giving off a powerful odor of sawdust and hot drill bits, others dark and quiet.
But for the music playing in the eerily empty halls, I would expect to see Scooby Doo and the gang sneaking around a corner in pursuit of a masked villain. The scene before me has the same muted palate of colors that characterized the old-school version of the cartoons I watched as a child. The low-ceilinged hallways and odd assortment of levels, staircases, and exits only adds to the air of mystery about the place.
In the time that I’ve been sitting here, I have seen perhaps three or four people pass by, each with the same wondering look in their eyes. Like me, they are explorers venturing into the unknown: somewhat baffled in the absence of a map, oddly reverent of the echoing corridors, and generally uncertain what they will find around the next corner.
Granted, it is 1:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. Not everyone has the freedom to carry her job with her. Besides, this isn’t really a place for laptops and power cords, WiFi hotspots and Bluetooth. Here, there should be nothing but battered paperbacks, poetry recitations, craft classes, and farmers’ markets.
I sit back and take another sip of my Midsummer’s Frap (caramel, hazelnut, and cinnamon)* as I turn to page seventy-five of Metalogicon, John of Salisbury’s twelfth-century treatise on logic. He’s quoting Vergil now, from the Georgics: “Happiness comes from understanding the causes of things, / And nonchalantly treading under foot all fears”. Treading under foot all fears. I like the sound of that.
The more I think about it, the more the combination seems appropriate. Shakespeare’s formal education, what there was of it, would likely have been informed by John’s ideas about classical learning, Latin, and logic. As the saying goes, it’s all connected.
After a brief and self-satisfied pause in honor of my own epiphany, I wander downstairs to a dimly lit wine shop affiliated with a local North Carolina winery. While I sample Semillon and Malbec, the manager and I chat for an hour about viticulture, wine judging, economics, the job market, age discrimination, retail service, grape varieties, merchandizing politics, education, and health care. We don’t resolve any of the world’s problems, but when I leave I feel the sense of pensive well being that only comes from establishing a genuine connection with another human being.
All in all, a productive afternoon? Perhaps not. A soul-satisfying one? Without a doubt.
*The cinnamon must be Puck’s doing; the first sip of reddish powder sends me into a coughing fit from which it takes a good ten minutes to recover.

45 Minutes of Airtime Later

Point 1: Don’t tell Viki, but she is being replaced.

Point 2: “Free”, my foot.

Point 3: Mumbled Customer Service lines designed to inspire confidence:

  • “If this screen would just quit wobbling around…“
  • “Where’s the continue button? There it is. Finally.“
  • “You’ll just hear some brief silence…”
  • “And that will be…let’s see…two and forty-nine…“
  • “I knew it was going to do that. I knew it would.“

Point 4: If you need to reach me, leave a message on my personal Morse telegraph key.

Her Logic Is Undeniable

I’ve put this off for a long time, but I think it’s time to introduce you to my phone. No matter how short-lived her remaining days may be, she’s starting to act a great deal like Marvin and Linus, a fact which entitles her to be anthropomorphized.
She’s like a grouchy great-aunt who is staying with you for the holidays and glares at you for talking on the phone, however quietly, for more than fifteen minutes at a time in any place wherein your face is visible to any other human, then peremptorily walks over, snatches the phone, and hangs up without waiting for you to finish your conversation. 
To begin with, she has recently instituted a ten-minute phone conversation limit unless I am restricted to the length of a charger power cord. Furthermore, she decides (arbitrarily and with finality) which text messages I am allowed to receive and discards others at will or confiscates them indefinitely.
She’s quite a charmer.
I named her Viki. 

Alas, the Flame

Proverb

A flame is always a double-edged sword.

Example

When putting out the ember of multiple candles by pinching the wicks between two damp fingers,  the first candle may leave soot on one’s forefinger and thumb, encouraging the use of an alternate, clean finger for subsequent candles. However, the structure of the human hand is such that the thumb is uniquely necessary to the motion of pinching. These facts being what they are, an uncompromising individual who does not wish to imbibe soot may consider it viable to dampen only the clean middle finger while reusing the sooty (dry) thumb. Unfortunately, embers are not single-edged; both sides of the wick are equally capable of burning human skin.

Consequences

Although the burning glow of the wick may be extinguished, the unlucky thumb will continue to register protest until it is placed in contact with an ice cube.

Lesson learned, proverb. Lesson learned.

I Lied About the Vertigo

Road trips abound in opportunities to contemplate identity. 
The right music helps: Antje Duvekot’s “Vertigo”, John Gorka’s “Broken Place,” and Sarah Jarosz’s “Edge of a Dream.”
“oh the view from this height
high above the ferriswheel lights
might cause me to sway
but i am teaching myself to be brave”
“That beautiful broken place
you could not outshine your twilight
your demons were not outpaced”
“Smiling face, that no one really knows
Singin’ bout the passion in my soul
Playin’ it safe, move in time with the beat
Take a chance, learn a new dance”
If that isn’t enough, you can contemplate the unlikely coincidence of traveling for two out of six hours while neatly closeted on a two-lane road behind one or more dump trucks. The view doesn’t change much behind one of these guys. Seeing what lies ahead is all but impossible, and instead of glorying in the mountain scenery, you find yourself fixating on the grimy brown shade of the truck’s back panel and wishing that it would move faster. 
Road trips also reveal unmistakeable truths about your shifting identity.*
A simple license plate is enough to strip you of Bible Belt citizenship and reaffirm your status as a penniless student. Like a red-green color blindness test, the way you interpret cryptic vanity plates produces a more accurate representation of your psyche than does a Meyers-Briggs typology. Eight characters: 4EVRAMEN. The Bible Belt citizen reads, “Forever Amen!” and gives a pious nod. The penniless student sees the word “Ramen” and ignores the rest, suddenly seized with an intense craving for that 33-cent delicacy.**
There is no limit to the powers of self-discovery unleashed by acceleration. Lighting out for the territories is sounding better every day…
*Even if you drive an automatic. 🙂
**On second thought, the Jesus fish, family-sized van, and location near Lynchburg, VA ought to have been a giveaway.  Just saying. Ramen. You cannot escape its magnetism.