ancient Japanese poetry: topic unknown

why have I begun
to love so recklessly    like
one lost in the night
Middle Mountain of the Night
on the road to Azuma


could I forget him
even for the brief instant
lightning flashes
above the ripening ears
of grain in autumn fields


last night the moonlight
in the broad skies was so bright
that the waters which
reflected it have frozen
to translucence     first of all

some opinions about the media and literature I've been getting into lately

Miami Horror –  Here is my favorite new Australian indie-synth-pop band. The electronic sounds on MH’s Illumination (their recently released first album) sometimes inspires my hips to commence shaking.  Other times, I end up lying on the floor (maybe with a friend, maybe even a boy…), a little tipsy on any number of substances, entranced, letting the psychedelic rhythms take me away. The mood and energy pre-existing the music is always a factor, which is fun, because who doesn't love possibilities?

Vetiver – To Find Me Gone came out in 2006, but it’s fairly new to me. I love low-key folk music with easy, simple melodies, so this band, especially this album, is perfect for me. Sitting by the pool, reading in the sun, I’ve been queuing up TFMG with high frequency. It’s also great as background music when I’m chilling with my friends. I recommend their other albums too, but something about TFMG (it has a more wispy, interesting sound than the others, perhaps) has hooked me. I’m looking forward to listening to Vetiver’s latest album, The Errant Charm, which was released in June.  I guess I’ve been a little behind on new music these days, in this busy, busy life I live. (haha)

Breaking Bad – I’m going to be brief, although I could gush for pages about AMC’s genius television series Breaking Bad. No synopsis from me, although if you’re interested, by all means. I want to recommend this series to anyone who has a thing for great writing, acting, and production—this show is the WHOLE package. It’s smart (but not so complex that it becomes a chore to watch), and the character interactions and development leave me feeling anywhere from wholly heart-warmed to outright empty and devastated. Best show since Six Feet Under.

Curb Your Enthusiasm – I took a break from this show for awhile. It wasn’t a planned break, but I watched through season five and then just stopped. Why? Graduate school maybe, or because I always used to watch it with an exboyfriend and was ready to start my life anew, or because it was getting a little over the top for me. Over the top? Yes, the humor no longer making me laugh, only causing me to turn away cringing in disbelief at Larry David’s absurd behavior in the show. Now that the buzz about Season 8 is sweeping Portland, and I needed a new fix of humor in my life since catching up to Californication and Bored to Death, I have picked up where I left off with CYE, Season 6. Sure, the absurdity is occasionally too much for me, but overall, this is a damn good, laugh-out-loud hilarious series. And I love it when I’m laughing by myself (seemingly out of nowhere), and Luna looks over at me with her tragically big, beautiful dog eyes like I’ve off my rocker.

**a quick aside. I am impressed by the overall quality of television in the past decade. No longer can a person categorically call television a mind-numbing waste of time. These shows I’ve been mentioning, among many others, are thought-provoking & emotionally acute, serious ART.

Source Code -  This flick was recently released on DVD, and let’s be real: Jake Gyllenhaal is so hot I’d watch truly horrendous films just to get a good look at him in action. Source Code is far from horrendous. While not exactly the deepest or even interesting film I’ve seen, it’s interesting enough, and the creativity in ideas is there. The characters are somewhat flat, and the plot loses momentum as it progresses, though, so I’d give it a 6/10 for overall quality and a 10/10 for hotness factor.   

I love to see poetry books
with awesome covers,
because it's a bit rare.

Lucifer at the Starlite by Kim Addonizio – This collection of poems is good. Not as good as Addonzio's Jimmy & Rita (a great novel-in-poems) or my personal favorite What Is This Thing Called Love, both collections able to hook me into the complexities of the human condition with their bold and expressive use of language, especially where the heart is involved, more than Lucifer at the Starlite. The structure of this book feels forced, and while Addonizio is a master of the List Poem, there are too many in this collection, which make certain ones stand out as being clearly lesser. Still, L at the S has some true gems (Yes, Storm Catechism, My Heart, for example) which play off the book as a whole for their power. This isn’t to say those poems don’t stand alone as Gems, but reading them within the context of the book will always provide the richest experience.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz –I love that this book calls itself the story of a person, a boy, Oscar Wao, but is in reality the story of one Dominican/Jersey-an family.  The chapters alternate between family members (Oscar, mother, sister). Oscar’s roommate (a somewhat intimate figure to the family) is even given a chapter. These shifts in perspective from character to character work to tell the story of a family, using history and culture as backbones, in a way that’s constantly compelling. And talk about tone. The language of the narrator (colloquial and contemporary as hell) makes it so that the readers know that the narrator is obviously SOMEONE, calls attention to itself, providing just a touch of suspense and curiosity without overshadowing the actual story. Superb book.

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – So, it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Big deal. Just kidding! It is a big deal, and it deserves every prize it gets. Here’s a book that alternates characters from chapter to chapter in perhaps the most fluid way I can imagine. The shifts are not jarring, despite the fact that the characters are not explicitly linked (and we only figure out their often loose links as the book progresses). A story unfolds, one story, through there are a dozen different characters given their own chapter over the course of twenty or thirty years in non-chronological order. And it’s a pretty emotional story that has a lot to do with aging, or maybe what it’s getting at is just living (being alive), and the whole package that comes with it. I’m intrigued by how much I can connect to every single character, no matter how diverse their backgrounds or decisions, and how the book works within its structure to create just one story that feels natural, and honest, regardless of how a structure like this would seem to contradict that outcome. If you love literature, and especially if you think about craft while you’re reading, you should read this book. Probably start today. 

Portland is the best city in America

To hear little jokes made at Portland’s expense is relatively common. People say, “Oh, you live in Portland? Why don’t you put a bird on it (it being anything from your bicycle messenger bag to your personal checks to mowing a bird into your front lawn)?” or “How’s your retirement going?”  The savvy youth know these references began with the popular IFC tv series Portlandia, which the youth probably also realize is widely available for streaming through various internet outlets. (Big ups to free media!) During the opening credits of the show, one character states: “Portland is a city where young people go to retire.”  

I’ve been living in Portland for almost four months, and I see where the jabs at Portland are coming from. Youth culture is alive and well. It is not uncommon to meet someone (age <40) who’s seriously underemployed. If you don’t care about recycling, getting into everything LOCAL and ORGANIC and  GREEN, you’re a minority, perhaps an outcast. If you don’t have a bicycle, you’re a minority. Hipster dive bars and coffee shops exist on nearly every corner. Bird art is HUGE (although this may have more to do with the tv show than anything inherently Portland).

The jokes are usually funny, in which case I will laugh, because I laugh at funny things. Self-deprecating humor is good for the ego, after all. But now that I’m becoming a Portlander, experiencing it all from the inside, I’m realizing that all that PDX humor is a lot more complex, less surface-level than I’d thought. The thriving youth culture, who could complain about that? (Not me, I’m 26, and I want to live it up as much as possible.) Yeah, there are hoards of people under forty who are underemployed, undereducated (formally, anyway), and don’t seem to care to do a damn thing about it.  Or at least, that’s how it might appear from the outside. I see it another way, having met handfuls of Portlanders since I’ve been here. Lots of people are underemployed, but many of them are engaging in projects and activities that they actually care about more than they care about money. They make enough to pay their rent and eat and buy tallboys of PBR or Olympia at the bar, they ride a bike so they don’t have to worry about gas prices and car maintenance. What I’m saying is they are saving time for what is actually important to them—art, music, welding, poetry, bicycle events/races, hiking, zines, or whatever. I don’t think this ideology is given enough credit, really. There are people in this world whose passion is more important to them than money??! They don’t lack ambition, they just lack ambition for getting rich. And to be honest, there are plenty of people working fulltime jobs and still making time for a 60 mile bike ride to the coast to camp for a few days, or dj at a bar/club once in awhile, making time to work on their comic strip or short story collection.  Maybe someday, the evils of capitalism will catch up with Portland, but not yet, and I’m grateful for that.

When I was living in Buenos Aires, I met people from Australia and the UK who were in their mid-twenties, and were just about to start “university.” Much different from in the US, where if you’re not finished with college by your mid-twenties, something went wrong. The reason for their delayed school track, I think, has a lot to do with the way their versions of western culture have adapted to changes in youth perception and development over time (which I bet has a lot to do with our prolonged lifespan and projected length of employment in the course of a lifetime). In other words, what’s the rush? Why push kids (yes, kids) to make big decisions about their future when they know nothing about themselves or the world yet, and when they have so much time to make such discoveries? Why push kids to take a bunch of classes they don’t care about, the information within those classes only to pass quickly through their brain, never retained? While I love my life, and I’m happy with the outcome so far, I am a little jealous of my peers who only now, at my age, are taking classes and actually learning things in them that they will remember forever, not doing it for a grade, but for the genuine betterment of the self. In Portland, this is exactly what’s happening. People in their mid-twenties and thirties are working on Undergraduate degrees, and obviously getting a lot out of it. When they graduate, they’ll have more knowledge and skills than they know what to do with, and it will probably be easier to get a job, because they ACTUALLY LEARNED SOMETHING by going to college. Portland, with its youth that are passionate, ambitious about their passions, making good decisions about education (not paying six figures for a useless degree in which they crammed for every exam and forgot all the information the next day), living modestly and earnestly and aware---these people aren't retired, they're just living the dream, and loving it. 

What else? It goes without saying, I think, the benefits of living in a place where people care about the production of local, organic food and products. (Health benefits, large-scale economic benefits, quality of life benefits).

And I mentioned earlier that I’d met handfuls of people since I’ve been here. I don’t want that phenomenon to be missed. It’s easy to meet people in Portland. All you have to do is go out and be friendly, and suddenly, you have friends! Every time I go to a pod of food carts, or a bar, or an indie show, or an organic beer festival, or to hang out in the park, the opportunity to meet new people is seriously aplenty. This is probably true in many cities, but it feels easier in Portland. I think this is because young people who act like young people see the advantages in being open to new experiences, which often starts with meeting new people. While the stigma is that Hipsters are too cool to talk to you, new to Portland, standing in line (alone!) for a savory crepe at your favorite crepe food cart, you'd probably be surprised by what happens. Talking to strangers is a Portland pastime. One of my BFF’s in Portland (a girl I met here in May), goes out by herself at night and always ends up with a bunch of new potential friends. At the very least, they’ll be inviting each other to cool events, and maybe if they hang out once or twice more in the next few weeks, they’ll form a more intimate friendship that progresses beyond acquaintanceship. I always thought that life after college would make it difficult to meet people, given that in the world at large, there are less built-in social networks, but I love Portland for proving me wrong.

I could probably go on forever about how Portland is the best city in America right now.

-cost of living is low (especially for the best I mean west coast)

- thriving art/music scene

-brewpubs per capita

-dog-friendly as hell (most restaurants/cafes allow dogs on their patios, some even allow them inside)

-bike-friendly as hell (SHARE THE ROAD is for real)

-summer weather

-winter weather, for that matter

-open-mindedness of inhabitants (I don’t like the phrase Keep Portland Weird, though)

-food-carts!
-food-love in general (taco fusion, especially)
-mountains, rivers, Pacific ocean, beaches, it’s all here

Ok, that’s enough. But where do I fit into all of this? What better place for a self (me, myself), a mid-twenties, dog-loving, overeducated server working 30ish hours a week at a fancypants restaurant that grows veggies and herbs in its garden out back and gets all of its meat and cheese and produce as locally as possible, also a writer, with an MFA even, still working on getting my first book ready to send out for publication(and only a few days ago I submitted some poems to a contest with a huge cash prize, that I could afford to submit to because of my awesome job), also in the whirlwind of the quarterlife existential crisis at times (I’m STILL a server, shouldn’t I have a REAL job???) but thanking Portland immensely for showing me that I have lots of time to pursue MYSELF before I need to worry about that REAL job in this horrendous economy, and I’m single, and did I mention how easy it is to meet people, lots of wonderful, interesting, passionate people in this city, and soon I’ll have a bicycle, because I’m moving to the Mississippi neighborhood on the east side of the river, out of the unbikefriendly West Hills which are gorgeous but useless to me in every other way, and I can’t forget about the friends I’ve made here, I love them already, and I can’t wait to keep meeting more people and loving some of them too.

Portland is the best city in America right now, and I feel so lucky to be living here, experiencing it, becoming a part of it, putting a bird on it, even. 

i didn't take this picture. 

spreading the good words (aka poetry)

The Love-Hat Relationship

by Aaron Belz
I have been thinking about the love-hat relationship. It is the relationship based on love of one another's hats. The problem with the love-hat relationship is that it is superficial. You don't necessarily even know the other person. Also it is too dependent on whether the other person is even wearing the favored hat. We all enjoy hats, but they're not something to build an entire relationship on. My advice to young people is to like hats but not love them. Try having like-hat relationships with one another. See if you can find something interesting about the personality of the person whose hat you like.

For the love, comes the burning young/ From the liver, sweating through your tongue

What do I think of the new Bon Iver album? I know you’re curious. It’s a brilliantly floaty, dreamy, melancholy story. Every so often, the tone lifts enough to leave a break for breath amidst all the grief, because despite itself, this album is not desperate. There seems to be hope. Maybe it’s the way Justin Vernon’s voice goes up with the crescendo of the melody and rhythm sometimes, which is reminiscent of church music. I’m thinking particularly of “Towers” when I say this. Not that “Towers” can be called a happy song. It’s just got some hope. I don’t know about anyone else, but when you’ve got a hole in your life, a lovesickness that keeps you up at night, a propensity to (delicately) use substances for some kind of relief, hope is good. My only issue with the album is the last song. It sounds like it was stolen from the GAYNGS record (one of Vernon’s other bands). GAYNGS’ music is a bit too close to cheesy 80’s synth-pop for me. Why end the album this way? It’s already a short listen, and to leave the previous, beautiful wistfulness of the earlier songs is a mistake. When I listen to the album straight through, which I, so far, have done every time, namely in the dark, on one or more of aforementioned substances, a body floating in a small yellow raft through the Pacific, looking up at all the fucking stars and feeling so alone, so lonely, so captivated by this aloneness that it almost seems right, that there can be nothing else at that moment, despite who I might be missing or the subsequent emptiness that enters, which feels like a kind of cleansing at least, when I listen to the album straight through, the last song doesn’t fit, and suddenly I am back in my bed, getting up to change the track back to one and start over.  

Also, just in case anyone is wondering, I watched an old chick flick last night, called Under the Tuscan Sun. This is not a good movie, but I enjoyed it, like I am apt to. Somewhere in the middle, the main character reminded me of something true, something I have been overlooking, despite how true it is. Heartbreak doesn’t kill us (even though maybe it should, to avoid the agony that comes after). Not only am I not dead, but I am living in a new city, making new friends, still growing, still learning, still keeping it together, sometimes letting the wildness (that’s thank fucking god still there) inside me out, and it’s gradually getting easier, like it always was going to. 

did i need to know?

The World At Large

Ice-age heat wave, can't complain.
If the world's at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan. 
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand. 
I move on to another day, 
to a whole new town with a whole new way. 
Went to the porch to have a thought. 
Got to the door and again, I couldn't stop. 
You don't know where and you don't know when. 
But you still got your words and you got your friends. 
Walk along to another day. 
Work a little harder, work another way. 

Well uh-uh baby I ain't got no plan. 
We'll float on maybe would you understand? 
Gonna float on maybe would you understand? 
Well float on maybe would you understand? 

The days get shorter and the nights get cold. 
I like the autumn but this place is getting old. 
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast. 
It might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most. 
The days get longer and the nights smell green. 
I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave. 

I like songs about drifters - books about the same. 
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane. 
Walked on off to another spot. 
I still haven't gotten anywhere that I want. 
Did I want love? Did I need to know? 
Why does it always feel like I'm caught in an undertow? 

The moths beat themselves to death against the lights. 
Adding their breeze to the summer nights. 
Outside, water like air was great. 
I didn't know what I had that day. 
Walk a little farther to another plan. 
You said that you did, but you didn't understand. 

I know that starting over is not what life's about. 
But my thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth. 
My thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth. 
My thoughts were so loud. 


(modest mouse)

welcome to purgatory.

Losing that kind of love is a death, but worse, because you have to die again day after day until there is nothing left to die.  Then you are sentenced to walk around numb and utterly dead inside for a while, a kind of personal purgatory, until you are able to lift your head above the ground and breathe again, and of course, you will . . .

Loneliness feels so slow & alone no matter what, until someone says the right thing that lifts everything just enough. Thanks Sean.

Suicide and Everything After

May 17, 1999, my best friend killed herself with a shotgun in her mom's bedroom.  Or at least, that’s what I imagine. I don’t know where she shot herself, if it was that room, or her bedroom, resting her back against the wood paneling of her water bed, or with her bare feet pressed into the smooth tile of the kitchen floor. I guess I’ve always imagined it happening in the room where the gun came from because I know she was scared. She had to work up the guts to go through with a Decision like Suicide, at age fourteen, before her life had even begun to take shape (what we don't know when we're fourteen...fuck). And if she pondered it, in that moment, long enough to wander through the apartment, holding the cold neck of the gun in her small hands, with the thought of something as big as Life also in those small hands, she might have chickened out.

About two weeks earlier, Nicole was on the other end of the receiver, choking between sobs. She told me she wanted to die. The reasoning was complicated regardless, but for a couple of fourteen-year-olds, I felt for her in this particular mess of circumstances. She had not long before come out to her family, maybe not as a lesbian, but at least bisexual. She wasn’t sure. Her Christian mother and stepfather were of course completely shocked and unreceptive to reason. No, was their response. No you are not gay, and no more slumber parties, so you can forget about your weekend social escapades. On top of that, her girlfriend had broken up with her, the girl who she’d recognized her own complicated sexuality with had just abandoned her for someone else, a BOY. What the fuck, was all that came out of her mouth. What the fuck, and I want to die. This is never going to feel better. I’ve never been happier than I was then and now I will never feel worse. This is it for me, I can’t make it. It genuinely felt like this was the End of the World, her world. And that afternoon on the phone, I’d calmed her down, somehow made the world seem at least a bit more worthwhile so that she promised me she wouldn’t kill herself so long as I didn’t tell anyone. I promised.

A couple weekends later, we were going to go shopping for eighth-grade graduation dresses. But I was busy with my boyfriend, so I kind of blew her off, said we still had time to go during the week or the next weekend. She yelled at me, telling me I was so caught up in my own life and Josh and that I wasn’t being a good friend. Couldn’t I live without seeing him for just one day to hang out with my best friend? Well, I was fourteen, and I didn’t like anyone telling me I was doing anything wrong. So, I told her to just chill out and we would go next week.

I’m sure you can imagine where this is going. On Monday, when Nicole wasn’t in school, the second I got home I ran to the phone (the age before cell phones) and called her. Her stepdad answered. It’s hard for me to remember exactly what he said. I know he called me “sweetie” and I could hear a lot of crying in the background. I know I slumped to the floor and started screaming, bawling, dropped the phone as the realness of that pain rushed into my body and all around me. My mom ran in, confused, and by then, I’m sure the receiver was beeping.

I have never been a person who is huge on anniversaries. I don’t set aside time every May 17^th to reflect. To be honest, I don’t pay attention to the date all that much. Today, it was late afternoon before I looked up at the calendar and registered the date in my head. I texted Brandon about it, and he asked me if I was ok. Yeah, I’m ok. It’s been twelve years since I wept next to the cabinets on the kitchen floor of my parent’s house in Milwaukee, struggling to breathe, wondering if it was my fault, if my actions had led to my best friend’s suicide. 

What I think about now is all the time that has passed, the person I am now, the person I was then.  I was at the cusp of adulthood— adult emotions, adult situations, adult decisions. I’d experienced almost none of what I would now consider to be BIG life events. In fact, that was the first. I think about everything Nicole never got to do, all the wonderful and horrible things that happen to us in our teens and twenties that make us feel on top of the world, or at the bottom of it, or ingloriously in the middle. I think about the fact that twelve years ago, I was a person that I still can recognize as myself, a more naïve and inexperienced version of me, but not a child (which seems separate). I feel both old, (twelve years and my memory of that day still comes back instantaneously), and young, knowing that in another five, ten, twenty years, I’ll be looking back at where I am now and where I was then in completely different ways.

seventh grade, we were so cool.

I remember the winter night, it must have been 1997 or 1998, I was sleeping over at Nicole's when she closed her bedroom door, whispered that she had to tell me something. She said, "If you want to go home after I tell you, I understand." And then she told me that she was pretty sure she was gay, and she had been recently experimenting with this newfound discovery with someone. Maybe I was a little surprised (we'd been boycrazy for awhile by this point in our lives), but I didn't want to go home. OF COURSE I didn't want to go home. I laughed that she'd even thought I would react that way. "Well, we do share the same bed when you sleep over, so I didn't know if you'd be uncomfortable," was her response. Then we probably put on Hanson, or Silverchair, or Third Eye Blind and danced and put makeup on each other and talked and talked and talked before eventually falling asleep. Livin' the dream.

Yeah, I’m ok, but heavy and nostalgic and wise and confused and melancholic and calm. I scratch Luna behind her ears as she lets out a big, sleepy sigh--it feels especially meaningful, and I don't know why.

My First Time

Last night, I went to a strip club for the first time in my life. My friends have friends visiting from out of town, and because Portland is so “open-minded and free-spirited,” strip clubs are aplenty and come in lots of crazy varieties. Finding a good one is often high up on lots of tourists' Portland-Things-To-Do-list. Portland does everything WEIRD; Portland prides itself on this. Why should strip clubs be the exception? The weird strip club we went to last night was called Devil’s Point, and Sunday’s at 9pm they host stripper karaoke, or Stripparoke (not sure of the spelling, but that’s not really the point, is it?).

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Is the focus going to be more on karaoke, or strippers? Amateurish, or the real deal? Is it primarily a bar, do they only have strippers for this one event, is it going to be kind of creepy like I’d heard rumors about from friends who’d been to strip clubs before? I didn’t even know what it was called, so I wasn’t able to prepare by looking at the website. Not that a website can answer these sorts of questions, necessarily.

Here are the answers. The focus was on the strippers, OBVIOUSLY. The karaoke was integral to the night, sure, but singers went up to the stage (a stage fully equipped with a pole, because it is in fact a strip club) and stood in the back corner singing while a dancer did her thing. These were not amateur dancers. There were four of them, and I thought the bar did a nice job of showcasing a variety that could appeal to any taste by choosing these four dancers for a particular night. What I mean is that their body types varied—big boobs and super curvy on one end and stick-thin, small-chested on the other end. Two were covered in tattoos, two with long hair, two with short hair, and different styles of dancing so the audience wasn’t watching the same thing all the time. The skinny-skinny one had some amazing acrobatic moves on the pole which were entertaining. One girl with lots of a tattoos and a punk-rock blue hairstyle was doing hand stands, as well as balancing her legs on some lucky shoulders, then flipping back up. Not that anyone would have cared what kind of dancing was going on, really. These girls were all attractive—not just their bodies, but cute faces, too. And they looked like they were having a good time, which makes for a pleasant atmosphere, as opposed to creepy and weird. I didn’t feel dirty being there because the dancers didn’t seem to feel dirty doing their job, and I think that’s important. Also, most of the people there were with a group of friends out to have a good time. Not saying there weren’t some guys who’d obviously come alone…but they were heavily outnumbered by the rest of us. I can’t speak for what this place is like the rest of the week, but for karaoke, it was a fun time in a semi-crowded bar. I call it a bar because aside from the stage with a pole in the middle of it, it looked like a regular, maybe even cool bar. Pool table, some walls were red which gave it a sort of rock ‘n’ roll feel, reasonably priced drinks ($2 pints of PBR, for example). Overall, just a chill place.

Something strange happened to me while I was sitting in this strip club, taking in the whole experience. The girls were so pretty and fit (ok, HOT) and confident, not to mention entertaining. I was watching all these guys ogle the dancers, and I think my instinct was to feel jealous. Not that I didn’t find them attractive and entertaining myself. And not that any of the guys, was my guy. But everyone knows that guys have fantasies about these types of girls, and what girl doesn’t want to be the subject of fantasies? Sometimes, I get carried away overthinking things, analyzing until I come up with some kind of logical sense. Never know when it's going to happen really, and amidst the sexy red glow and half-audible karaoke singers, I was lost in thought.

I thought about where my jealousy was coming from. For the last couple of years, I was in a relationship with someone who wouldn’t even call it a relationship. It follows, of course, that he never told me he loved me ( because he probably didn’t). That doesn’t mean that he didn’t act like he loved me, though. We did everything together, talked about everything together, like a couple, and it was amazing, enlightening, fun. We even moved to another country together for almost half a year, spending all of our time together acclimating, learning about ourselves and the world and each other. So, what then...? Why is this relevant to my strip club story?

I was totally in love with him. Imagine being in love with someone who won’t even acknowledge feelings for you, despite lots of actions that would seem to contradict that. Actions speak louder than words, right? Well, not exactly. I often felt uncertain, irresolute, maybe even scared. That uncertainty led me to a kind of overwhelming jealousy of every other girl he talked to, looked at, even the occasional sexy pic of a movie star as his laptop desktop background drove me crazy. I’m a confident person, so this jealousy that was growing in me felt so foreign and wrong. I hid it, I tried to fight it, reason it away, but it was still there. It wasn’t until last night at the strip club, as a superhot, tattooed & black-lace gartered dancer made eyes with me, pulled me against her, that I finally had the epiphany that I needed to wake me the fuck up. I wouldn’t feel jealous with someone who loved me, not only acting like it but saying it all the time, really being IN the whole god- damned beautiful thing, with someone who I could trust with those incredible and overwhelming love feelings.

This isn’t even about jealousy, but existing within the confines of an emotion that up until this point has been mostly vacant from my life, one that makes me feel neurotic and unhealthy, sucks, and isn’t worth it. Not for love, nor for anything. (Easier said than done, I know, but I’m trying…) At my best, I’m confident, I’m easygoing, I’m open-minded, I’m adventurous and warm and loving and well-rounded and fucking healthy. I don’t act like a psycho about some picture of a hot girl on your computer. If you love me, and I love you, we can do anything together. Including, but not limited to, going to Devil’s Point to sit at the rail and gawk at the girls together, giving them all our dollars before we go home and love each other some more.

I’m not completely blaming him for what happened between us, and what happened to me as a result. I have control over what occurs in my life, and I let it happen. For awhile, it really did make me happy to feel so much love for him, regardless of anything else. He was never dishonest with his words, but it’s hard to leave someone when you are so effing in love with him AND you have everything in common AND you spend ALL your time with him, when he still acts like he adores you, too.

Love is tricky business.  Some combination of the general strip club environment, watching some of my best friends, recently engaged and so in love, interact in that environment, and maybe sexy Sydystyc , too, dancing like a goddess above me, brought me to this long-needed epiphany. Life is so weird. 

Home, yet?

I’ve been in Portland for a week and this is what’s on my mind. It’s effing difficult to move to a new city. I have moments of despair and moments of elation. I have freaked out a couple times simply from all the stress (sorry Brandon). That said, if you’re going to move to move to a new city without a job (but at least with a small network of friends!), and feel kind of bipolar in the process, Portland is perfect. It’s kind of like Hawaii in that it rains on and off most of the time, but in between rains, the sun makes everything warm and bright. The city itself is beautiful—mountains, tall trees and green everywhere. It smells like a forest pretty much all over the place. Even driving the interstates through downtown is breathtaking, cruising over ultra-high bridges that cross the Willamette River with panoramic views on all sides. And that’s without even getting into the many cute neighborhoods, the thriving art scene, the amazing local food/beer/wine that is available everywhere.

My nights have been pretty boring/lonely, because I don’t know too many people here yet. Cute Portland guys are around, but I’ll get to that in time. I’ve been plowing through episodes of Californication, which I will admit is on the cusp of soft-core porn, sure, but it’s a quality show. I know it’s good because it makes me think about some larger issues that surround my own life. The main character is a writer and in one episode, he talks about the evolution of language, and his reluctance to accept certain aspects of of what that entails. Using internet-speak, saying “lol” or “omg” or “brb,” is this actually the evolution of language, or is it a temporary cultural modification that will fade out as quickly as it came? This is something to think about as a writer, or as any person, really. Succumb to the influx of contemporary speech patterns, or stick with what I’ve been using my whole life? Whatever, I don’t really have to Decide. Yet, it is important to be aware of these shifts, to consider them and their uses within writing, what they add or take away from language on the page and how it will affect readers.

shelves and cinderblocks are the best.

Luna is happy that I’ve unpacked my life here. She started to relax once I sorted through the boxes, fashioned a homemade bookshelf, and hung up all my clothes in the closet. If only it was that simple for me. I need a job, friends, a life. I know it will come in time, and that struggling builds character. Of course those things are true. But in the process of the struggling, sometimes I just want to curl in a ball and watch twelve episodes of Californication in a row, with a bottle or two of wine, and wallow in a drunken pile of myself with Luna on my bed. Good thing that instead of doing that all day, I swallow it, take Luna to these abundant, gorgeous parks, nail an interview for a server position at a fancy restaurant (called back to meet with the chef tomorrow, just ten minutes after the interview was over!), and make use of the amenities at my West Hills apartment complex—gym, sauna, hot tub. It’s a wonder I’m able to do it sometimes, because it can be so difficult, and my motivation dwindles when I’m having a particularly bad moment/day. I guess I owe it to everyone and everything in my life that has molded me into a person who is too self-aware to think those lows won’t pass, who knows how to make them pass more quickly or easily (thank you to my most wonderful dog, and hiking, and bouts of evening drinking, and the few friends I do have here, and reading a waterproof book in the hot tub, and endorphins for kicking in after a gym session, and my family for listening to me complain, and my long-distance best friend who usually knows better than to take anything I say seriously when I’m in one of my worst moods).

Alas, the wonders and woes of relocating. I’ll get back to you when I have a job.

"Back home to the escapes of Time and Memory"

I’ve never read the book from which I take this quote, Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again.  I only know the saying, “you can’t go home again.”

one of my favorite homes, the BsAs terrace.

Buenos Aires was never my home, or so I thought. It wasn’t any less of a home than anywhere else that I wasn’t home. My current location, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, feels like it should be more home than Buenos Aires, because I grew up here, my family lives here. I know how to get around the city without thinking about it, I know that spring is never as early as anyone wants it to be, I even know which stoplights are timed and which aren’t.  But having built something of a life in Buenos Aires, even though I knew it was temporary, Milwaukee isn’t giving me the warm, cozy home-feeling that a home typically would. I’m sure some of that has to do with the REALLY temporary-ness of my stay here (6 weeks), and going from spending all of my waking and nonwaking hours with Brandon to spending the majority of my time by myself. And the relentless cold.

Luna and I are ready to move to Portland. We’re leaving next week! I’m excited for the potential of home for me there. I have lots of friends living around Portland, all of whom I can’t wait to see. I know that I’m drawn to adventure and relocation, and that will probably never change. A stable landing spot though, it’ll be nice to have one of those. 

And what is it about Milwaukee that can't feel like home to me? I don't know.

If you’re traveling with your dog to the United States from Argentina

Traveling with a dog is hard. It’s exponentially harder if you’re traveling internationally. It can be done, though, even if your knowledge of the language of the country you’re currently about to leave isn’t your first language, or even a language of which you have any kind of intellectual authority. Take me, for example. I’m from the US, and five months ago I brought my dog, Luna, to Buenos Aires, to live with me. At the time, I didn’t know how long I would be here, so leaving her with my parents wasn’t an option. Had I known that it would be just five months, maybe I would have parted with her for that (relatively) short time, despite how much I’d have missed her. Then again, I didn’t have a grasp of the combined stress between Luna and myself that would come from the air travel. That alone will be enough to keep me from EVER DOING IT AGAIN.

I’m not going to go into details about my trip down. Lots of formal USDA paperwork, yadda yadda. It’s not too much different to return. The US doesn’t quarantine dogs, in general. If you do all the paperwork, it should go smoothly.

The main reason I’m writing about this is to warn people against what I would consider a scam, disguised as an expert pet relocation company called PetsVentura, or at least the Buenos Aires branch. They advertise lots of services to help a person to relocate with their pet, international relocation included. After emailing PetsVentura with questions about the specifics regarding my needs, as well as costs, I was ready to go ahead and use them, even if they were never quite as clear as I would have liked. I thought maybe that was because English isn’t the first language of their employees, whatever.  

FYI: the necessary documents/actions for bringing a dog into the US from Argentina are:

•  Clean bill of health from a certified veterinarian, written on an Official Certificate (national) within 10 days of travel.
• Proof of Rabies Vaccination within the last year.
• Statement signed by veterinarian that your dog has been checked and is free of Screwworm (Myasis, in Spanish) within 5 days of travel.
• Bring a copy of all of those things, along with a copy of your passport to SENASA (equivalent of USDA), pay AR$20 and they will have an official travel copy ready for you to pick up in 2 days. If you need it the same day, it is AR $90.

 PetsVentura told me the following information after I looked over their site and asked them how much a vet house call plus all the necessities to bring Luna back to the states would be (given that I already had a Rabies Vacc. and Certificate):

 Regarding the examination of your dog for worms,our veterinarian can make a visit to you address in Buenos Aires next week. Are you going to arrange all the travel documentations from Argentina on your own? Or do you need PetsVentura assistance? To issue a document by our veterinarian that you dog is free from worms a sample of fecal will be needed to be ready at the time of the visit. After examination by the laboratory a certificate of free of worm can be issued and post back to you or hand delivered. The cost of home visit, laboratory exam, issue medical certificate and postage back is AR$232.00

 I was ready to go ahead with them at this point. That's pretty cheap for all that convenience (only about US $45. Then, after I copied and pasted the relevant US requirements from the USDA website, just to be sure, they came up with another answer for me:

For your information the following documents are MUST enable you leave Argentina and enter the USA:

1. Health Certificate
2. International Health Certificate
3. Worm free Certificate
4. And most of airlines will ask for Acclimation Certificate.

 So I’m thinking, what the hell is the difference between a Health Certificate and an International Health Certificate? You’d think the international one would trump the other, right? And is there a specific Worm-Free Certificate? Why not just write that information with the Health Certificate? What do any of the health certificates say if not that the dog is healthy, and is fine to fly (aka Acclimation Certificate)? So I decided to do some serious research of my own and I couldn’t find anything except for the website I linked to above. Whatever, though—how much extra could these other forms cost? So I emailed them back:

Alright, that sounds good. I would like all of those certificates, just to be sure I have no problems. Is there an extra cost for the other couple health certificates.

This was their response:

Dear Jessica

First, the veterinarian will have to make the visit and to collect the sample of fecal few days earlier and the reason for this that the laboratory take its time to return the results and we cannot wait to the last moment as sometime some issue can arise such as need for repeated sampling, treatment if the pet found with worms etc. I advise you to have the veterinarian visit at your place on Feb 24 at 15:00 Hr.

 Second, as for your question about the cost of issuing for you the entire travel documents including:  Veterinarian examination, Health Certificate, International Health Certificate, Worm free Certificate , Acclimation Certificate and hand delivery the package is AR$430

An extra AR $200 for a couple of certificates!?  WTF. Still, I tried to be polite and revise my needs to reduce the cost:

So all I want is the Veterinarian exam, a Health Certificate or Acclimation Certificate (whichever is cheaper), and a Worm Free Certificate, as well as hand delivery back to the house. The worm free certificate must state that the exam was done within 5 days prior to shipment to the United States. Also, please let me know the revised subtotal for these services. If you could give me an itemized list of the costs, that would be great.

To which they responded:

International Health Certificate is valid only for ONLY 30 days and you might have great issues in  leaving Argentina . Removing the International Health Certificate as you requesting, means that you will not have Senasa’s approved documents to leave the country , is this clear?

I would like to apology for the value of the last price for the entire travel documents it meant to be in US$ . I feel that is going to be better for you to arrange travel documents by other company. As an IPATA member and responsible pet relocation company the service you ask for might compromise your travel.

Once again, WTF! First of all, going from AR $400 to US $400 is a HUGE difference. That means that it would cost AR $1600, which is absolutely absurd. Maybe I’ve only lived in Argentina for five months, but I’m not an idiot—I know when people are trying to rip me off because I’m a foreigner. Between that cost change and PetsVentura ’s refusal to acknowledge my request for an itemized list of costs, I was effing angry. What a waste of time, and how insulting. To use PetVentura for pet relocation is not only a scam, but a joke. 

So I did what I should have done in the first place, and took Luna to a vet in my neighborhood, San Telmo. Actually, before that, I did some more research about the specific requirements for leaving Argentina with a dog on SENASA’s website. All I could find was in Spanish, so I emailed SENASA asking them if they could direct me to that information in English. Within 24 hours, they linked me to a page on their site entitled: Procedure to export cats and dogs to USA and Puerto Rico. PERFECT. 

Vets are everywhere, and they don’t speak English of course, but in my experience, they were super friendly and helpful. Because of the medical terminology, I wrote out the Spanish version of the travel requirements and brought it to them, so there would be no confusion. I didn’t even need an appointment; they told me to come back on the day (within 5 days of departure) I needed the exam and certificates. So I did, and that cost me a grand total of AR $45. 

**Btw, PetsVentura told me that to test for Screwworm, Luna would need to have a fecal exam done. Screwworm is an insect that burrows under the animal’s skin and lives there, causing a gaping wound. To check for Screwworm, simply look around the animal’s skin. Either PetsVentura is a very unreliable veterinary option, or they were just trying to get more money out of me by saying they needed to do a fecal exam. Either way, NOT GOOD.

That was a Saturday. On Monday, I went to the SENASA office responsible for officializing the documents (all that info is clear in the link above), which cost me AR $20, making the grand total for bringing Luna back to the US (drumroll…) AR $65 (as opposed to AR $1600 with PetsVentura)! And lucky for me, the office is in Puerto Madero, only about a 15 minute walk from my house. I returned to pick it up on Wednesday, and now I’m set to embark on my journey home tomorrow!

I also sent an email to PetsVentura letting them know my feelings about the matter, which were not pleasant regarding them. I'm sure they didn't care, but it made me feel good to do it. :)

a poem by Dean Young

Clam Ode

One attempts to be significant on a grand scale
in the knockdown battle of life
but settles.
It is clammy today, meaning wet and gray,
not having a hard, calciniferous shell.
I love the expression "happy as a clam,"
how it imparts buoyant emotion
to a rather, when you get down to it,
nonexpressive creature. In piles of ice
it awaits its doom pretty much the same
as on the ocean floor it awaits
life's bouquet and banquet and sexual joys.
Some barncles we know are eggs dropped from outer space
but clams, who has a clue how they reproduce?
By trading clouds?
The Chinese thought them capable of prolonging life
while clams doubtlessly considered
the Chinese the opposite.
I remember the jawbreakers my dad would buy me
on the wharf at Stone Harbor, New Jersey;
every thirty seconds you'd take out
the one in your mouth
to check what color it turned.
What does this have to do with clams?
A feeling.
States of feeling, unlike the states of the upper midwest,
are difficult to name.
That is why music was invented
which caused a whole new slew of feelings
and is why since,
people have had more feelings than they know what to do with
so you can see it sorta backfired
like a fire extinguisher that turns out to be a flamethrower.
They look alike, don't they?
So if you're buying one be sure
you don't get the other,
the boys in the stockroom are stoners
who wear their pants falling down
and deserve their own Gulliver's Travels island.
The clam however remains calm.
Green is the color of the kelp it rests on
having a helluva wingding calm.
I am going to kill you in butter and white wine
so forgive me, great clam spirit,
join yourself to me through the emissary
of this al dente fettuccine
so I may be as qualmless and happy as you.

absurdities of day to day life.

Yesterday, my roommate, Andrew, alerted me to the fact that there was some dog shit on his balcony. I thought, that's odd...why would Luna  choose his balcony to go? I was home all day--she would have just let me know she had to go in her normal fashion. Or if anything, she would have gone up to the roof.

As it turns out, there is a bag of shit hanging in the tree over Andrew's balcony. What does this mean? Someone took the effort to throw it up there from the street, wtf. The real question is, WHY? Someone trying to mess with the foreigners? Hmm.

And I thought I was Bohemian.

Twenty-six days in Buenos Aires to go. I wish I could say the way I phrased that is misleading, but it’s not. Slashing the calendar with fat sharpie X’s isn’t what I actually do, but there is something like that going on in my head. During the sweaty, humid hours of the afternoon, I can often be found mentally packing my suitcases, deciding which books to sell to the local English bookstore, which clothes I cannot possibly bear to wear for another summer and will leave in a bag on the curb for the cartoneros to discover, with more dueling excitement and fear than I can handle about restarting my life yet again.

Almost out of money, I think that while I hang out in Milwaukee for a month or two before moving to Portland, I inevitably need a job. Maybe I’ll find a job serving somewhere in the suburbs, or delivering pizza for six weeks. Is it worth the hassle of training and finding a job for such a short period of time? Yes. Aside from money, I’m also bored out of my mind. There is only so much reading and writing a person can do in a day, every day. I don’t think I can take it anymore.  The life that I want to lead outside of writing, full of hanging out with friends and thrift shopping and whatever I want to do at any given time requires not only a respectable bank account, but some contrast. My life as all play and no work has kind of dulled my edges. I want to work seven days a week eight hours a day at some shitty job for awhile until I can fully appreciate time off again. Sheesh. Buenos Aires has done me right on several accounts (great tan, a little self-discovery, writing time, inspiration, good old overall life experience)but now I’m ready to move on. More than ready.

As it turns out, I’m sick of restarting my life. I just want to live in a place and stay there. I want some stability, a car, a dog park for Luna to chase squirrels, a comfortable bed, maybe an internship at a local literary journal on top of the job I plan to have, be it teaching for 13 weeks at a summer reading institute or serving at a posh sushi restaurant.  

En route to all that, I even get some more quality time with my family, which I felt was cut off right when I started to get to know all of them again. I know I shouldn’t be counting down the days left in South America, because who knows when I will be back.   I’m not counting them down, exactly, but I can’t wait to go home.