It wasn't a bad year, but an exhausting, absorbing one---one I'm having a hard time putting back. In a lot of ways, I think 2012 used me up and spit me out. Reflecting on the spent pieces of it in the hazy afterglow, I feel all like the chorus of a shitty Natalie Imbruglia song. This was a year that left a dreamy afterburn.
So with much ado and thinking too much about this and some tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation, I give you:
January
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January was a listless month, a month of self-imposed exile. I spent a lot of it in the frozen woods which isn't a bad way to spend it, all told. I found myself with sudden vast quantities of free time, which I spent exploring local running trails, writing a little, cleaning house, but mostly curled up in my room. I left my stable, vaguely regular shitjob to find a new, better one. In retrospect, I can't believe this decision took me so much deliberation and hand-holding by my wonderful support-type. It was obviously and completely the right choice, and now it seems impossible that I couldn't see that for so long.
Augusta Springs, on the upper highland trails
February
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I know this doesn't seem like anything worth recapping, but it felt significant somehow, not so much the end of a phase as the beginning of another one. We went to Travis's farm for the last time. I almost wish we hadn't, and left the last time to be June of 2011, which had been special and perfect and drenched in honeysuckle and fireflies. The farm in February was realistic, soggy, and lifeless. I'd found out my dad was back in the hospital right before I was supposed to go down there, and only went at his personal request. I left early to go home and see him, and I remember well driving alone up the dirt road for the last time, ice over the red clay and large, wet flurries falling all around me.
I like this picture of myself, because in the background you can see that I'm packing for Legends and so my expression of love and dull masochism makes more sense.
March
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March.. lucky old crow moon, I did like March. When I think of March, I think of getting up early on a particular Sunday morning and coming downstairs to have a cup of tea (I did Lent) and then walking out in only a light jacket to my garden and looking at what was coming up. I remember thinking I should be cold, but not being. Lots of unlooked-for blessings in March, including my garden having a very good time with the unseasonable warmth. All my annuals came back. I had snapdragons higher than my knees. I think I did a lot of cooking.
April
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April begun with unexpectedly getting a job teaching college English at a little school in Lynchburg. I surprised myself by being good at it, and not nervous and faltering like I was teaching at Hollins. All my students were adults, all sort of going back to school later in life, but they were so earnest and enjoyable to teach. I had a lot of fun with it. The pay was abysmal and the commute untenable, but at the least I learned that teaching is something that fills me with energy and purpose, and something I ultimately want to end up doing.
Toward the end of the month I heard back about a full time-salary-grownup job in Harrisonburg that I needed to take instead of this piddling, insurance-less adjunct position. I felt really guilty about leaving teaching, because I seemed to be making a difference and I sincerely felt I doing what I was supposed to be doing. But it was really good that I took the grownup job, because a week in, Josh got laid off.
First day teaching outfit self-portrait with a broken camera
May
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I realized something rather profound just now when I was looking over my thready, earnest, stroked-out little entries for May. And because this isn't quite a tell-all, instead of getting into that, I will instead describe two particular moments that defined certain other things for me that month.
One at Ben's farm and setting up my camp alone in the complete darkness. There would be a moon later in the night but early on, it was pitch black. It had stormed right before my arrival and so everything was utterly soaked. I remember walking out into the woods, groping to find dry wood in the trees with my hands. I eventually got a good fire going by feeling my way. I sat back for a moment to admire my work. I couldn't hear anything but my own movement and that of distant, small animals and water dripping from the tall trees in the woods. Everything was a little misty. I could smell the great dark presence of the lake a few feet from where I was sitting--a lake I would willingly let close over my head the next day.
I realized suddenly that I was completely terrified and fled up to the cars.
The second is a moment right before a bad storm, when I was sitting in a patch of mayapples at my parent's house. I love mayapples. They bloom right at the end of May--secret little white flowers on the underside of the umbrella-shaped leaf, and if you leave them be and don't pick them, they turn into little apples, which taste a bit like a tart banana. And here is a picture of that.
A tart banana. No, actually, me in mayapples. Also, you can see my little acorn charm that my mom got for me.
June
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If some months were gentle to me, June was savage. I realized I have some untapped fear of deep, opaque water and that I am more than willing to run away like a child when confronted.
If we camped, if we went to South Boston, the event of the month was probably still the wedding at Smith Mountain Lake. I tried to keep to the edges of everything. The photos I have are oddly yellow in the dead bug filter of porch lights and that's how I remember everything. I remember sitting in my long dress with my feet in the water. I wrote like a crazy person that weekend and toward the end of June but it was all useless, desperate lines, like these, which will go into no poem I ever finish:
too hot to make anything of it
cork oak, blue ribbon of mountain
July
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Just when I thought I could take no more nonsense, July arrived, bringing with it a land hurricane. I rode the storm out alone, drinking silly strawberry and honey beers, and this was quite to my liking. I spent the next day cleaning the gallons of torn leaves and branches out of my yard in happy solitude. I felt tended to.
Later in the month, Josh and I took a pilgrimage to Werowocomoco and had a grand time. I would recommend exploring the James by boat to anyone, especially if there is refreshing rain, and Willamsburg, and dark nice beers, and little pagan children to play with, and camping to be had afterward. I liked sleeping on the sandy ground.
It must have been hot, but I never remember the heat like I do the cold.
I do remember in July I made a lot of homemade sangria, ceviche, and tex mex.
August
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Something surely must've happened besides my family reunion/helping out at farm dinners in August, but that was awfully fun. I love my aunt and uncle's farm. Despite being this rustic little sheep and flower farm, it's across the street from the ocean. We slept in the yard because it was warm and crowded in the house, but cool under these ancient oak trees.
My daily routine there was so nice and relaxing. Every morning I'd wake up early, creep over the giant, sleeping white wolf dogs, and slip into the house for coffee. Even though it would be around seven, everyone seemed to have been up for hours. I'd water all the flowers, play with my little kid cousins, and go pick what was needed for the farm stand. I would cross the road and go walking in the bay shallows, gather shells, then come back and eat tomatoes for lunch. About that time it'd be time to get ready for the farm dinner, where this chef from NYC comes and makes these amazing things and all these hundreds of rich people show up. My brother and I would pick and arrange the flowers from the fields, or gather last minute herbs or squash blossoms for dinner, or do whatever needs be done. I'd shower, change into a nice dress, and go down to the party with my family. We'd dance and drink expensive wine and raw fish until 2 am. Then get up and do it again. Pretty good.
But all this fine description being for nothing because I just remembered I lost my mjoilnir this month.
You see that truck in the background? My brother bought and restored that truck and gave it to my uncle. In lesser accomplishments, all those flowers I arranged and re-watered daily. My brother is cooler than me.
September
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I always like the beginning of fall. Cider and fires are novel and the really depressing light-sucking nights haven't crashed down on me yet. I remember September being fairly positive. A particularly enjoyable highlight was being able to read with an old professor friend from LC. Being out of Hollins and the writing community in a lot of ways has been refreshing--it felt a little removed from the real world. But I miss that life sometimes. It's odd to be not writing. And so it was kind of indulgent and easy to slip back into that shell for a night, to be asked questions about my work and then go out to bars and shoptalk and make jokes and basically pretend that I was doing something real with my work instead of just sitting on my ass letting it gather dust.
October
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October, huh? It seemed a month of long waits. Early on I made the decision to go down to Georgia with my mom to take care of some unsettling family issues. I still don't know if that was the right choice. I'm not sure if it helped my mom or anyone. I was lonely and unhappy there. It seemed to take something out of me.
I had a notebook with me, and so I looked in it to see if I had journaled any previously unblogged insights, but it was all just half-completed and unsent letters, as tends to be the case.
At the end of the month, there was a big, fun, otherwise uneventful costume party I enjoyed.
November
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If I had a word for November, it would be atmospheric. I loved how much of November I spent outside.
I realize a lot of my little zoom-in moments of significant realization happen "sleeping on the ground," but I suppose that makes a kind of sense. Being out of doors is always a hard reset for my mind.
One thing I remember with particular distinction is cleaning up Josh's farm and walking through the fields one morning, finding downed trees. The sky was so blue and beautiful it seemed almost like an alien world, and I was so happy. It was good to work hard out of doors and get sunlight and fresh air. I found the cold didn't bother me too much.
December
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I went off the rails a bit in December--though, that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. The holidays are stressful. I felt myself on the verge of some great transition and I wasn't wrong. That said, there was much I loved and will keep. I feel a little odd describing this month because I feel like it just happened and I have no perspective. I spent a lot of time with my family over the holidays. I also spent good time with my friends.
I didn't write regularly, but I did find this. I wrote part of it when I was driving up to Harrisonburg on Route 11 on gloomy night and it's not very good. (After all, I was driving.) There's a better part I haven't posted here about seeing a spike buck walking on the railroad track. I think I was having pre-birthday angst. Oh, and I'm so old. Not old enough, apparently, to avoid coming off as melodramatic.
oh calamity,
oh my December pearl
of dump truck exhaust,
the disseminating moon tidies up
on the horizon,
old clots of light.
So the woods will rust
away for another year,
I must be somewhere in all of this,
and if you feel something
or nothing about it, here,
this is your hour at hand.
Burke Lake.
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