Hello, 2010.

Oh 2009! 2010 shall be the year of tough decisions, I can feel it. Moving to New York was relatively easy and a nice attempt to procrastinate the impending decisions of my "real" adult life. Oh sweet Charlottesville, city of youth and beauty! City of familiar smiles and inside jokes known by all...farewell.

2010, I hope, shall also be a year of renewing the traveling spirit! Here are some tangible destinations that I hope to visit before my contacts there move on and away.
1. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada = before June 2010!
2. Buenos Aires, Argentina = Easter week 2010!
3. London, England, and Brussels, Belgium = before my NZ friends move away!
4. Maritimes Roadtrip! = summer 2010
5. Spanish language immersion course in Mexico = summer 2010
6. Providence, Rhode Island = spring 2010 for a weekend!

Resolutions, 2009.

1. Be nicer.
2. Smile and laugh more.
3. Stop and converse rather than wave.
4. Learn to knit.
5. Cook a meal at least once a month.
6. Read philosophy.
7. Relearn French.
8. Write a significant paper on Inuit linguistics and submit it.
9. Dress up more.
10. Appreciate others.

remembering.

And as I lay me down to sleep, I felt her spirit rise up through me.
She said, "I got to live a long eighty-six years, dry your tears.
I know it's hard but please let go so I can meet your Grandpa in the undertow.
Chin up girl, you've got to be strong. Know that when you're singing, I'm singing along."

When we're not together, now or ever,
always remember I love you.

Our life is the spelling of an answer.

Maybe if I shut my eyes the trouble will be split between us.

Ease your feet into the sea
My darling it's the place to be
Take your shoes off curl your toes
And I will frame this moment in time
Troubles come and troubles go
The trouble that we've come to know
Will stay with us till we get old
Will stay with us till somebody decides to go
Decides to go
Soberly, without regret, 1 make another sandwich
And I fill my face, 1 know that things have got to you
But what can 1 do?
Suddenly, without a warning
On a pale blue morning
You decide your time is wearing thin
A conscious choice to let yourself go dangling
Hovering
It's an emergency
There's no more "wait and see"

Maybe if I shut my eyes
The trouble will be split between us
People come and people go
You're scouring everybody's face
For some small flicker of the truth
To what it is that you are going through, my boy
I left you dry
The signs were clear that you were not going anywhere
Anywhere
Save for a falling down
Everything's going wrong

Later on, as I walked home
The plough was showing, and orion
1 could see the house where you lived
I could see the house where you gave
All your time and sanity to people
Then you waited for the people to acknowledge you
They spoke in turn
But their eyes would pass over you
Over you
Who's seeing you at all?
Who's seeing You at all?

The Shins' "Kissing the Lipless" always makes me feel as if I'm watching a montage of doorways I've glimpsed in all of the cities I've ever visited. It's like snapshots flickering one after another, sometimes layered, sometimes with the white edges framing the image as if marking the memory like a tombstone in a cemetery. What's surprising is that one of the dominant images is from my middle-school French class's trip to Quebec City. I hadn't even heard of the Shins in 1996! I don't even think they were a they in 1996! (Wikipedia tells me they formed in 1997, so close!)

Anyway, after the doorstep in Quebec City, I picture the many houseboats in the canals of Amsterdam, and then the infamous lampposts that guide one's way through the medieval alleyways of Prague. Even smaller streets abound in Sevilla: I should know as I spent many a drunken eve making my way through the maze of Barrio Santa Cruz trying to find my lodging. During the lifting parts of the songs, I remember racing through the streets of Krakow trying to make my midnight train to Budapest--only to realize that I misread my watch and had arrived with time to spare and was now alone on the platform of one of the more desolate areas of the train station. Speaking of Budapest, it might also be the feeling one gets when one realizes one has just climbed to see the view of the entire city with a complete stranger. And the sun is setting. But then you're riding atop a bus in Cambridge, England, and the wind is blowing and you are with your mother and you are twelve and you think things cannot get any better. And how cool the English teens must think you are, what with your style, which is not actually style in any sense of the word, it's simply the fact that you wear XL teeshirts even though you are stick-skinny and short.

You have to remember about poetry.

You can't say that my soul has died away.

It sometimes escapes you and runs around you in circles, dashes out into the hallway, and screams its head off while you sit in front of, eyes always making contact, face contorted in appropriate facial responses. You must act tired, but not too tired, and not even too energetic, for your energy means you have not been working hard enough. There must be delicate violet circles shading the see-through skin underneath your rose-colored eyeballs. You might squint a bit, cock your head to the side, slowly nod, mouth a slow-motion clip of agreement, or shock, or wonder.

The dress is sloppy, but clean. You for one have just washed your only pair of jeans that fit after three months of consuming vending machines, but when you shift your position in the seat--your right bum cheek always falls asleep--you catch a faint whiff of dirty. Just-washed dirty. It might actually be the scent of your skin. A thousand showers and one hundred thousand steel-wool scrubbers could not remove the grime of stagnancy.

It seems your life is lived in a triangular sitting fashion; actually something reminiscent of Athapaskan classificatory verbs. You would be a grammatical oddity: an upright being that is described in terms of round container lying flat. You move from in front of a make-shift door, clobbered with texts and stray pen marks that stain your right hand when it embarks on the only movement possible in that position. You could transfer to the bed--the right side laden with scrap paper and highlighters and assignment sheets. You sleep next to this mound, wake up to it, kiss it and caress it, and think fondly of it in your dreams.

From Point A you make it somehow to Point B, where you sit in a crowded room ignoring voices. Sitting here you worry about Point C, curse the skies at forgotten periods and long-lost semi-colons, and wish you were at Point A (however it might be), possibly knocked out, or napping; that would be nice.

At Point C, in Point C, with Point C, out of Point C; all prepositions fit with this head. Here you make your way to underground caverns encasing beings living still. You make your way to the spot near the heater--you like to challenge your backpack to ignite, burst into orange glory. Maybe you'll catch fire too.