... from lj to a (relatively) daily photo blog on blogspot combined with a google map so you can track the pitcures geographically.
... from madison to austin, with a month layover in portland.

times are changin'

this weekend is summed up by how i finished my friday night.
riding my bike down the capitol trail, in the rain, soaked to the bone, all bones, singing mates of state lyrics:
"this is the blood that we're made of"

have returned to madison from olympia. 
am slowly settling into the east side house.
loved washington, sad to see it go.
drove back over seven days - 3300 miles - 10 states - WA, OR, ID, MT, ND, SD, NE, KS, IA, WI
saw a bear, bison, antelope, mountain goats, big horned sheep, and learned about bear dogs, tiny camels and paleocastor.
camped camped camped camped camped and camped.
touched base, recentered, rejuved.
jazzed.  for about 10 reasons.

i fell today.

also, this is nice.
Carlyle Lake - Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche

"Oh, stop thinking of tomorrow
Don't stop thinking of today
You're not getting any younger
You've got nothing to explain
You've got resolutions
Fastening in your wake
Take instead the high tide
At the man-made lake
It may take a while
It may take all day
All the implications
At the man-made lake
Oh stop thinking of tomorrow..."

there are raccoon prints on my cooler,
and i have to hold on[, hold on].

me: what are you doing up there? trying to get noticed?
hh: absolutely, if you mean noticed in the broad sense, by everyone, everywhere.

the fruit stand is back.
so is the fruit.

the most watched video on cnn.com right now has the following description:

"The owner of the salon where Britney Spears shaved her head talks about the experience."

let me highlight a couple of segments.

"Britney Spears" - i don't care.
"where Britney Spears shaved her head" - i don't care.
"The owner of the salon...talks" - i don't care.  also, not the stylist who shaved her head, but the boss of the person who shaved a person's head which i don't care about.
"the experience." - i don't care.  also, like it was an experience.  an event.
"The owner of the salon where Britney Spears shaved her head talks about the experience" - i don't care.

sometimes, i'm sad.

it's cold lots of places.  it's also cold here.  since everyone seems to talk about the cold, i thought i should too.  i'm a joiner.
today, it was so cold that (1) i grew an ice mustache in my 10 min walk to the law school, (2) my cellphone turned itself off, and it was in my pocket, (3) there's ice on the inside of my windows even though it's like 78 degrees in my apt.


also, i've never worked this hard in my life.  it feels good, for now.

tony: "dave, are you hungry like the wolf?"
dave: "no."
tony: "then i think maybe you should go."

t: "so, is he cute?"

k: "well, he's tall."

here's the track list for my best of 2006 mix i've been slinging around -

1. Please Visit your National Parks - Oxford Collapse
2. Trouble Son - Working for a Nuclear Free City
3. I Wanted you to Feel the Same - The Radio Dept.
4. Glad to Be Scattered - Track a Tiger
5. Thursday - Asobi Seksu
6. Hold On, Hold On - Neko Case
7. Everybody Daylight - Brightblack Morning Light
8. Like U Crazy - Mates of State or Think Long - Mates of State
9. To Go Home - M. Ward
10. Chemicals Change - The Lovely Sparrows
11. The Important Thing is to Love - +/-
12. Pink by White - Songs of Green Pheasants
13. No One - Trespassers William
14. To No One - Daylight's for the Birds
15. You Never Got Me Right - Frida Hyvonen
16. If Looks Could Kill - Camera Obscura
17. One More Try (Vocals by Antony) - My Robot Friend
18. Talking in Code - Margot and Nuclear So and So's
19. Into the Sea - The Album Leaf
20. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Susanna and the Magical Orchestra

this collection bounces between painfully intimate, inaccessible, and achingly beautiful.

a sample:
"'Ma, can't you see me? I can see you.  I can see everything, Ma.  Sometimes I feel like I can see through skin, through bone, through the surface of the earth.  I can see cells doing their work, Ma - I can see thoughts as they form.  I can hear everything, everything that's happening.  Don't you hear the giant footfalls, the marauder coming, cracking the earth, shaking the roots of the giant trees?  What can we do, Ma? We can't hide.'"

- The Flaw in the Design, in Twilight of the Superheroes, by Deborah Eisenberg.

happy first day of winter.
gah.

in commemoration, my booklist from the fall

it's strange, this was my most difficult, busiest semester.  but i read obsessively, voraciously.

Bodily Harm - Atwood (1981)
     examines the psychological tension of not knowing what's going on inside your own body.  and relationships.  and politics in the caribbean.

Moral Disorder - Atwood (2006)
     short stories of moderate length.  the middle stories become a novella.  entertaining.  well-written.  the prose is not as careful or poetic as in some of her very short works (see Good Bones and Simple Murders), but this is my favorite collection of her short stories so far. 

The Discomfort Zone - Jonathan Franzen (2006)
     i even got to see him read one of these stories.  the first and the last are the best.  these are Franzen's memoirs (like The Corrections wasn't) this collection is not as good as How to be Alone but, like most everything Franzen's written, is worth your time. 

half of A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby (2005)
     i have to seriously dislike a book to put it down before finishing it.  this was the first in a long while.

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (1989)
     examines faith, youth, friendship, politics.   hilarious.  sentimental.  full of Irving's complex characters.  could have been 100 pages shorter.

What to Eat - Marion Nestle (2006)
     this was 10x more accessible than Nestle's Food Politics, but Food Politics was probably a better book.  this was a little too kitchy. 

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan (2006)
     read it, please.  examines industrial agriculture, industrial organic, local food, and food that you can hunt/gather.  food is personal, food is political.  could have been 100 pages shorter.

Giants in the Earth - Rolvaag (1924/25)
     Rolvaag, from Norway, writes about Norwegian settlers in the American Plains during the 1800s.   Faith, prairie, a wife that goes crazy, what more could you ask for.

The Secret History - Donna Tartt (1992)
     made me miss undergrad.  obsessive analysis of college psychology.  and murder.  and friendship.  could have been 100 pages shorter. 

Letting Loose the Hounds - Brady Udall (1997)
     great(!) collection of short stories based around small towns in the southwest.  melancholy.  youth.  loss.  highly recommended.


suggestions for the next round?

i'm not asking your heart to believe me.
i'm not asking for promise or pledge.
whatever the answer, it's yes that's the question.
i am the fool dancin' over the edge.

don't choose me because i am faithful.
don't choose me because i am kind.
if your heart settles on me, i'm for the taking.
take me for longing or leave me behind.

- alison krauss, take me for longing.

"isn't is closer up to down than it is here to there"

h: "i would have stopped smoking years earlier, but i was too busy being drunk."

k: "thanks guy for letting me know now, i guess i could have been high from nebraska on."

"these bodies are only provisional."
- bodily harm, atwood.

between trekking through beautiful rural country on my thanksgiving vacation drive (sw wisconsin, ne iowa), unintentionally stumbling into books with rural plots (moral disorder, atwood), intentionally stumbling into books with plots about the ways that urban life makes you want to kill yourself (a long way down, hornby), constantly thinking about olympia (conveniently located near wilderness), the typical escapism delusions of finals season, and an increasing need for self-reliance, my obsession with moving to the country has reached a near-crisis level.

i swear, i'm one read through walden, one emerson essay, one chapter of silent spring, or hell, just one walk in a field away from slipping far far away.

pending disaster or tragedy, both of which are certainly possible, i'll be in olympia, washington next summer.

d: "was that guy homeless?"
t: "no, a professor."

unrelatedly, history was in town last weekend. serious history.
not history was in town this weekend.

to iowa for thanksgiving.
then head down until post-final [yes, singular].
then germany and spain.
then, slinking back to kansas for the end of december.