NaBloPoMo 30: Each Single Day

Back on Day 15, I said I was looking forward to writing this post but, in honesty, I didn't actually think I'd get here. After my 50% success rate last month, I was sure I would crash and burn. But each day, I would feel all those posts already written, looking expectantly from my face to the keyboard until I got the hint. Admittedly, some days have been cheap shots, but I can't help it--I'm damn proud of myself. Thirty days, thirty posts, done and done.

I'd like to write a nice, blankety post about what this exercise has taught me, but I feel like this is one of those times I haven't been taught new things so much as rediscovered old. When struggling to write (or wishing I was struggling to write when instead I'm avoiding writing altogether), I frequently find myself thinking of the high-school- and college-era me, who had a constant, nearly physical need to write. Assignments, sleep, maternal ordinances, potential social engagements--all would be delayed in the name of writing. Sometimes the subject was only my mug of coffee, but inevitably I'd be writing about something, and that little something was really a bigger something I could only scrape at. (The coffee cup, I remember--it was something about hands curling around the warmth, and looking for a different kind of curling warmth, and knowing it but not having it... Or something...)

And I remember, too, a night senior year of college, working late at my job in the library and setting aside entry books to scrawl out words about laboring over a poem, birthing it, with effort and hurt and a  sense of loss. And while this was nowhere near the last thing I wrote in college, when I come across it in my journal now I wonder if I was marking a shift, when writing would become less involuntary, when I would need to work at it, scratch out time and room and headspace for it.

I hope that's what I've experienced a bit this month--learning that while I don't always have "something to write about," the writing can still be there like it used to be. But like any practice--like gratitude--it will take work, still, always, and that doesn't lessen its value or importance. After an injury, breathing is difficult, too, but no less necessary.

So here is where the NaBloPoMo train ends, for this year, anyway. I laughed aloud last night to see that BlogHer is extending the challenge to December--even I know my limits! But I hope and plan to practice this practice still, even (especially) when I don't have a plan, when I don't know what the thing is that I'm scraping for below the little things. I'll keep writing, keep scrawling until I find it--and then curl around it, like a hand around a hot coffee cup.

In the name of unearthing the old to pair with the new, I dug up aforementioned poem. It's nothing great, but there's something about it I still love. Written circa 2004, likely a couple pages behind the notes I should have been taking for British Writers...

Contemplating Cavalier’s Tuesday Morning Coffee

I hold my hand to a hot coffee cup,

touch my face

and feel the warmth

of someone else’s love,

hiding somewhere.

Their as-yet unheard

craving for me

heats the dark of my caffeine

and the resulting feeling almost

makes getting up so damn early

worthwhile.

NaBLoPoMo 29: Gratitudes

I've spent most of this month perfect the art of being busy: two work conferences (one of which I was sick for), a mini-vacation with friends, a holiday, moving work spaces, blogging daily (for real though) and now nursing an injury that looks like it'll be with me for a while.

What I have not spent much of this month doing, this month marked by a day of giving thanks, is being thankful. Taking a minute. Reflecting. Practicing gratitude.

I like that last one: practicing gratitude. Because isn't it just--a practice. And like anything, you might never get perfect but you can always get better, do more. So in lieu of using my Facebook to post a daily gratitude all month, I'm taking a moment here. I've hit pause on my Big Dumb Action Movie I got from Redbox, I've shooed the cat off my lap, and I'll actually take some of my downtime tonight and do something with it, even if it's just for me.

In the order in which they come...

1) I'm grateful for being swept into stories. The friends I spent Thanksgiving with were commenting on how I raced through a 300-page book in a couple days; the truth is, I'm not really a fast reader, but if I get hooked into a story, I'll plow through just about anything.
2) I'm grateful for a mom who's my friend. Some experiences lately have had me reflecting on the rough times she and I went through in high school (as about any single mom & her teenage daughter will have), and I'm grateful she held tight with me, didn't kick me out of the house, didn't kill me... And that fifteen years later, I call just to chat on the walk home from the grocery store.
3) I'm grateful for the grocery store! A simple thing, but something so many are deprived of--either by geography/society or simply by finances. I'm grateful for the ridiculous piles of options and choices, for the bags full of food (be it healthy vegetables or a tub of pudding), and for a debit card that clears.
4) I'm grateful that food tastes good. I mean, really, it's just fuel. We could just be eating basic gruel, and instead we get candied bacon and salted caramel truffles and 78 colors of peppers.
5) I'm grateful for my love of cooking, which I've commented on before. But sometimes, like tonight, I'm grateful that I was just cooking for me. The fish came out a little soggy, the broccoli didn't carmelize like I was hoping... at least the Texas Toast crisped like it should have...?
6) I'm grateful for my cat. Crazy cat lady here, but after all this busy-ness I've been in need of downtime and she has helped, snuggling up and purring and being nice quiet happy company.
7) I'm grateful for my health & wholeness. After my, really, relatively minor fall on Wednesday and the impaired use of my arm since, I've been hit with the reality of how I take my health for granted. Even something as, again, minor, as a broken arm would have put my life into a level of crazytown. Grateful.
8) I'm grateful for heat in my house. Baby, it's cold outside.
9) I'm grateful for this blogging challenge. I'll write more on this tomorrow, but I'm grateful for the challenge set, and the energy and willpower to complete it.
10) I'm grateful for quilts from my mother. On a chillout day of lazing around the house, they are absolutely the best--one on the bed, one on the couch... happiness.
11) I'm grateful for the restoration of sleep. Coming home from this last show just shaking the end of a cold, I arrived home and got two nights of 10+ hours of sleep, and could have used more. But even that was demonstrative of how necessary that stuff is. (To all those who can't get such respites due to young children, insomnia, etc... I honestly don't know how you do it.)
12) I'm grateful for these sweatpants. They are the most comfortable things ever.
13) I'm grateful for the promise of vacation. I'm sad to be missing Christmas with my local family here, but getting increasingly ready to head out and enjoy some vacation and seeing various relatives out in Iowa.
14) I'm grateful for my odd batch of friends, who wouldn't mind my calling them odd because they'd take it as a compliment. I'm grateful that, no matter the mood or situation, I have a passel of people I can call, text, or otherwise contact--whether it's just to share a joke or get together for coffee or have an emotional breakdown with.
15) I'm grateful for snow. I blogged about this yesterday, and I nearly fell three times on the way to the grocery store, but still grateful.
16) I'm grateful for my location. It's hard not to be when your walk home from groceries involves a harbor, a city skyline, and a sunset.
17) I'm grateful for people who are smarter than me. Coming from an intellectual snob, this might surprise you, but it's true. I'm glad someone else is figuring out the big things I can't wrap my brain around, figuring out the equations that make my head hurt, answering the questions I wouldn't have thought to ask.
18) I'm grateful for, on the flip side, not really caring about the stuff I don't know. I'm not sure how else to put it, but I'm just not the sort who lies awake wondering about exactly how the world was put together, or whether China is going to own all our kidneys by next week, or what a quadratic equation is. I trust those other people who care about these things... And I'm grateful that I get to sleep instead.
19) I'm grateful for pudding. I don't know why I love it so much, but I do, and it's just the best.
20) I'm grateful for my job. I blogged about this somewhat the other day, but it still holds true.
21) I'm grateful for my nice, quiet apartment. For quiet neighbors on a quiet street. For peace.
22) I'm grateful for closed doors. Again, some recent thought trails have taken me down a couple "might have been" paths. There are always a few I wonder/growl at, but on the whole, I'm absurdly grateful for what God protected me from, even when I was trying any which way to get to it.
23) I'm grateful for my obsession with fairy tales. Into the Woods and Cinderella are both on the movie theater horizon, and I can barely stand it.
24) I'm grateful for my godchildren. They are the smartest, most adorable, most lovable kiddos on the planet. #unbiased
25) I'm grateful for second chances and restarts and do-overs--the real kind. This movie plays with a Groundhog-Day-esque scenario, which I'm not looking for, but I'm grateful when the opportunities come to try and try again.
26) I'm grateful for YOU, faithful reader! (Hi.)

27) I'm grateful for... seriously, I'm dragging the bottom of the barrel at 27? LAME, Chandra. You are the worst. I'm grateful for people who hear me talk to myself and don't call 1-800-LOONY-BIN. 

28) I'm grateful for a legacy of strong women and powerful stories. For "I can aim lower boys," and stubborn Bohemies.
29) I'm grateful for the magic of a shower--how I can feel like a completely different person after some hot water and shampoo. What is that about?
30) I'm grateful for the Advent season. Not just a single day of Christmas, but a season of weeks, an attitude and a method of looking forward, of expecting, of experiencing and holding onto a miracle, a gift that could never be responded to other than meekly, with praise and silence and awe and celebration and candlelight and music and joy.

NaBloPoMo 28: Snow on Snow

Well as promised, the snow fell, and what could have passed for September now could pass for March. It is, in fact, still November. But within hours, a little precipitation changed the entire landscape.

I've likely mentioned how much I need my seasons--how I would get bored with the same thing for too long. I don't love one season more than the others so much as I love any shift from one to the other. Much as I crave the crisp, colorful shift in September, I am equally grateful for the first flowers poking through the snow in May, and for this first snow.

(Note: Maine actually had their first snow, in the "few inches" range, a few weeks ago, but I wasn't here for it, which means this real snow counts as my first, per the official rules of such things.)

I sit here in my local family's house, the only sound the light snores from my friend's afternoon nap in the next room, and puzzle through the window glass: Where does my love for snow come from? Stories and books, childhood memories of fort-building and snow days, the way the weather wraps seamlessly in my brain, braiding together with firesides, hot cocoa, Christmas?

But past that, I have some poetic, romantical attachment to it. Watching it--it's falling again, ridiculously delicately--I grasp on to that sense of silence, of quieting the world. A couple of my favorite carols, from a musical standpoint, anyway--"Still, Still, Still" and "In the Bleak Midwinter"--center on snowfall, not in a let's-have-another-drink-and-snuggle way, but in this: sitting and watching the world change.

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. 

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter, long, long ago. 

What is it that sees this as good, as comforting, as desirable, to see the muddied late-fall world of grays and browns covered and rounded and washed white and quieted?

In reality, it's dangerous: my city will have seen people die in these last two days--overconfident motorists, homeless people with nowhere to go, maybe an elderly woman who took a bad fall. It means trickier walking and driving, higher heating and electricity costs, the manual labor of scraping and shoveling... But somehow I see it as good. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's just that thing inside me that longs to see things remade. What was dark, damp woods two days ago is now a work of art, each tree's geometry traced and highlighted in white and shadow. What was dead and dying grass is now mounds of cloud punctuated with snow angels and snowmen. Even the longer winter nights are made lighter--my eyes were convinced that 2:30 this morning was pre-dawn.

I don't know my whys on this one--don't even know why I dig for them. But whether it's rooted in Snow White and Julie of the Wolves, in my own personal Alaskan nativity or somewhere else in my history or genetics or culture, I love this moment. Before we've become accustomed--and, shortly after, exhausted--by it, before it is another season I'm eager to see the shift away from, I make this concerted effort to enjoy it. Even with my upped heating bills, with my bruised elbow from the other night, with the promise of snow shovels and extra layers and boots, I will love and work to love this snow.

NaBloPoMo 27: Black This

Still a little laid up, and now nursing a food baby. I promise, a real post tomorrow, but for now:

I'm convincing Julie not to go Black Friday shopping right now. Success.

NaBloPoMo 26: Ow.

Best laid plans!

So I was looking forward to actually WRITING tonight... And then I fell on this gorgeous snow of ours, and my elbow is refusing to cooperate with the rest of my body. Even this texting motion (yes, yes I AM blogging on my phone) isn't terrifically comfortable.

So I will simply say: blog done, and happy Thanksgiving Eve!

NaBloPoMo 25: The Day Before Winter

Like every other seasonal shift in Maine, the calendar has nothing to do with this. And without a glimpse into the next thirty-six hours (thanks, meteorology!), I don't know that I would recognize it, but it's here regardless: the last puff of autumn, the day before winter begins.

Today stretched into the mid-fifties, and though it was cloudy the streets of Portland were more populated than usual, downtown works out for a last easy lunch or cup of coffee. We recognize it for what it is now. Like the breath gulped down before plunging into water, we take our last embrace of weather that doesn't involve "wintry," of walking bootless, of ducking across the street in shirtsleeves.

Not counting the occasional mid-forties day in February or March, which will see locals out in shorts and t-shirts, this is the last of it for six months. The days will only darken for another month, but the snow and cold that threatens tomorrow will be unlikely to break for long, if at all, until May shows its face. Eight years in Maine and I still need to press myself into believing this. Even today, strolling up Congress to grab some Thai with coworkers, you can feel it, winter breathing down your neck like the villain in a B-grade movie, overacted and not as scary as it should be.

The tree is erected in the square, and its lights are up if not yet lit. The familiar metalworks of light sculptures are being erected on a few of the landmark buildings. The Buoy Local signs are everywhere, reminding you to stay independent of the chains and their riots come Friday. Tomorrow's Farmer's Market will see turkeys and cranberries and pies and wreaths rushed into cars as the first major snowstorm gathers in cloud and pressure and wind.

I stayed a little longer outside, as I dug for my keys. I listened to the last gold leaves rattling in the trees, and took a minute to remember the green grass, felt the breeze shift my unhatted hair. These are sensations that will leave like geese in vees across the sky, and I will forget them before they come back. I do every year--by March, a world that is not monochromatic will seem like something from a storybook, and I will hang my hopes on that work trip to Houston to remind myself that somewhere things grow, somewhere--like Oz--color flourishes and bleeds into you like fire warmth, like wine.

And until then, I prepare, and I look forward: to snuggling in as the white piles up outside; to the Christmas music and the need to bake everything, all the time; to the world being a little softer, a little quieter; to soaring over clouds to family; to children squealing and tearing through wrapping paper; to an unknown baby in an unheard-of town in an unclean trough, ever-looking-forward, ever-preparing.

NaBloPoMo 24: Home

Sickness--combined with compounded exhaustion and fitful sleeping--conspires against me again, and I'm fairly sure the little energy I have will be little and less soon. So for today, I'll just say that there is magic in the act of crossing one's own threshold, snuggling into comfy clothes, putting on a comfortable movie and falling into one's own couch. The purring heating pad of a cat. The warmth of a favorite quilt. And the momentary arrival of magical, cheesy food on your doorstep.

The end.