Sometimes, I tell you what, I wish I was more descriptive in this blog. For example, the other weekend, I wish I had said:

This weekend, we went camping on a friend's farm. Friday night we set up along the bank of the Little Otter river and watched the moon rise silvery over the rapids. The smoke of our driftwood fire mingled with the fog creeping up the river and I stumbled around happily to find more. There was sand in my shoes, but I didn't mind. The rocks seemed very old. The following day I painted a porch white. Later, I followed a creek through to conclusion with good company and I saw mountain laurel blooming for the first time in my adult life, and there was more variety in their color, pale pink, white, soft purples, than I knew existed, and it was more beautiful than anything in the world, at least just then, just that day, at dusk.

--instead of just posting a picture of a picnic basket. I've been telling myself for years to be more explicit. So here's an explicit post:

Last night, I dreamed of an owl, which according to my various and sundry online dream dictionaries, could mean life change, wisdom, the unconscious desire, bad news, or financial doom. In the dream, which was otherwise bad, I loved and felt an odd connection to the random owl. He was huge, voluminous, brown, and had a head and beak that was oddly vulpine.  I saw him on a high pine branch and held out my arms, and he flew to me. He wasn't trying to hurt me, but he was so big and feathery, his wingtips brushed my face and neck when he landed. Even though he was perched on my wrists, I felt like my arms were full of him, an embrace of rustling softness and air and pure strength.

I got up and checked my email, breakfast, dishes, coffee. Things have been a little dire and I felt grim and in something of a mood. I decided to drive out for run at Augusta Springs. On my way, I finished my Augustan Burroughs audio book, Wolf at the Table, which is a memoir about how much his alcoholic father didn't love him. This is the third or fourth "memoir about alcoholic father" audiobook I've read since I started driving myself, (I sure know how to pick uplifting material, huh?) and I'm always startled to relate to them. There are certain behaviors that children of alcoholics exhibit, and it always makes me furious when I notice the one or two oddly specific ones I see in myself.. Fear of abandonment/worthlessness, deep anger issues? Okay, but fear of eating in front of another person? That just seems weirdly coincidental, and it bothers me, sticks in my mind.

The audiobook really went off the rails for me, when A.B himself, (it being read by the author) broke down at the end and began just sobbing into the recording. It would've been very moving if I had not been a great deal freaked out. There's something about driving out into the mountains alone to the sound of a grown man's uncontrollable weeping.*

Thus rattled, I ran. It started to rain. I thought about my life, my decisions, and my lack of spontaneous, symbolic owl hugs to make me feel better about all this. When I was done, I stripped down to my running bra and bare feet  and waded into the creek. The springwater was shockingly cold on my feet and legs--so cold that my skin actually steamed. I remembered being in Isaac's creek, down past the mountain laurel, and washing the moss and mud off my legs.

After that, I drove to town. Bought wine, tea tree oil, oyster mushrooms, avocados, and pickled okra. After a month of devil-may-care dietary tendencies, I'm suddenly famished. I go home, eat burgers, shower, and start to write. I'm working on this essay for an old professor of mine who got featured in a big literary magazine, and he wants me to do a little piece on him. When I get close with it, I'll post it here, because that somehow gives me a context for it and makes it seem easier.

I'm excited with what I'm making for dinner: tuna steak with lemon butter sauce, sauteed oyster mushrooms, and cous cous/vegetables. Yeah.





*Although to be fair, when I took my memoir class at Hollins, not a single class went by where there wasn't at least one girl who started crying. Cooky memoirists.