Lux Lisbon, where are you?

She gone, boys. She gone.

Tucson, here we come.

Back to Tucson today; this time we found a place. It's this bitchin' old, small, house on 2nd ave one block from the university. It's really close to downtown and all that great crap. I'm pretty sure we scored pretty well. The area we'll be in has character, but character as in dopesauce, not character as in who the hell is shooting outside in the alley?



Lindsey and I scored a babysit and drove down ourselves. After the house thing, we went to the Mission San Xavier del Bac because Lindsey hadn't ever been, and I didn't remember it. Awesome. I mean, it's kind of this evil fortress in the middle of a depressed rez. that's been there since 1692, dominating the valley by the river, and judging from the surrounding housing conditions, it doesn't seem like it (or the people in it) have done much to better the lives of those around it. I'm sure it is more than a little profane, but I couldn't help my amazement in seeing this stark white, huge, mission in the middle of this little valley, just totally dominating the landscape. It was beautiful in many ways. One thing that was also interesting, though, was this interactment between three cultures in the parking lot in front of the mission. Most of the tourists there today were Mexican Catholic a man-fact reading of the parking lot would suggest like 80%. There were a few euros around and there were of course the land owners there selling fry bread, or "popovers" if you like. It's just kind of weird to be on a reservation looking at this prototypical European landmark of... a lot of things, but you're there as this dude who lives on land that the people building this sort of crap took from all these tribes, and we're there looking at it saying, "oh, man, that's beautiful." I wonder what Pima people think of it still sitting there on their land. Especially as it is being restored and millions of dollars are being put into it while there are homes literally 100 yards away with bedsheets holy from sunrot making due as windows. I'm not placing blame or trying to make a sob story out of the trip, because it was actually a lot of fun. But, man, it really did feel like there were a few different worlds bumping into eachother in that parking lot. I didn't feel like I fit into any of them, but it was kind of wild.

Everything's better in blistering weather

Ah yes, home. We came into Phoenix on Thursday night and were in Tucson Friday morning looking at houses. There were a few prospects that may take extra consideration, but as of now we're still houseless. It looks like we may have to wait until the school starts shucking dollars our way before we can actually move in, such is the torrent. I'm exhausted, but it's so relieving to be able to be myself without having to worry about a V8-salsa-attack-revenge. It's kind of stupid to feel like you need a vacation after a vacation, but I think I do. That doesn't sound very good. OK friends, see you soon I hope!

All this great wine and nowhere to drink it.

Lindsey's folks live on this foresty hill just above a huge expanse of pinot noir vineyards. It's in the Willamette Valley, one of the primer places in the world for that varital, and you can just go to all these small vineyards and they'll taste you on their wine, let you walk around the place, and buy their booze on the cheap. Last summer we did just that, and came home with some really great wine, but Lindsey's mom decided she had to come along with us, and she had a dead cow fetus when we bought and tasted wine. It was by her looks that I knew I'd be in hell for sure. So this time, although we've had plenty of time to hit it, we have bowed to the pressure of the in-laws. The closest I've come to tasting good Oregon wine is fingering a wine magazine in the grocer the other day while Penny decided to get tomato sauce instead of enchiladas sauce for our spinach enchiladas Lindsey and I made that night. (She thought the proper sauce would be too spicy, eventhough they only stocked the mild one.) That night we also made "salsa" for the dinner, but as I'm pulling out the chilies she stops me to say that they don't put chilies in their salsa. But she doesn't say, "hey, do you mind not putting any peppers in there?" She looks awkwardly, half-smiling, half-wincing, and says, "oh, you're not going to put those in the salsa, are you?" All I could do is stuff the whole anaheim in my mouth, eat it, and shake my head at her. When I was done with it, the "salsa" had tomato, red onion, and cilantro. I put it in the fridge and took a little walk while the enchiladas were baking to cool my head. I came back to Penny pouring V8 into the "salsa". She's like a ambitious mobster; gotta have a finger in everyone's pie.
Matt, here's the promised rip-off pube-beard. Lindsey thought it was pretty lame that I was taking a picture of myself--like it was for a myspace account or something.
I'm making a wallet for myself out of an old tablecloth Penny had in the laundry room. It's the sort of cloth that's gaudy and thick, just like one you'd expect to see in the home of my mom, i.e. lots of flowers and gold/champagne color scheme. Should be a pretty good one while it lasts, but it ain't Louis Vuitton or anything.

The countdown...

59 hours until I'm on a flight back to Arizona. I think if I don't die in Arizona or New England I'll be pissed. I know I haven't spent enough time in the northeast to justify a death there, but it's a pretty poetic place to die, I think. Matt, I took a good shot of my BJ beard, but it's not on the 'puter yet... soon you'll see all my patchy glory. I shouldn't even show you, you've probably got the best facial hair of anyone I know.
This is a retro-thought, but Lindsey and I saw Drew's band play on July 12th or something in Portland, and it was really, really good. I've been killing folks for their alt-country and americanaesque sounds lately; and while http://www.blitzentrapper.net/ isn't exactly cowboy boots booze'n tattoos, they'd do justice to any twin-reverb you'd throw their way. It was not really anything genre-specific, but it fell well within the "crap I listen to" category for me. And it's refreshing to see a band in a smaller venue who is actually good at being a band.
Lindsey and I have been having a lot of fun with eachother the past week. I'd say that we tend toward fun anyway, but we've really been killing eachother lately. As much as I like to think that I'd be a great recluse, I know that the sentiment is some Waldenesque nostalgia boiling over from sillyland. I probably wouldn't care about life like I do if she wasn't around.

Catharsis Insued

I'm ready to be home. As silly as Salem is, and for as little I know about how to handle the inlaws, I've had a nice time. It has been so refreshing to be able to hangout with L. and O. without having a bunch of crap hanging over my head, but all of us are about ready to be back in the AZ. The more I see poison oak and blackberry thickets and big shady trees the more I just want to see some saguaro or an agave. I'm excited to get on my vespa in mid afternoon and feel the wind bake my skin on the way to the bookstore. We're also anxiously anticipating the move to Tucson. It appears that we may have a house secured for rent just south of campus. It's adobe with blue or purple trim, just as any home should be. It's old and has built-in bookshelves--what else could one want?
I've got a pretty good BJ#2 beard rocking right now. He'd be proud, and although I see how stupid it looks in pictures, I think I'm a little proud too. I haven't been writing as much as I'd like up here, but I think it's been in a good brain-chill sort of way, not a non-productive sort of way. Basho talks about how a poet's job isn't to just to sit down and say, Ok, now I'm going to write a poem. The poet is constantly writing poems in her head as some foundational reaction to life--it is merely incidental that some of them come while she is writing, and those ones get written down. While I am not constantly living one poem-thought after another, I think it's a nice reminder that most of poetry, and I'd guess any art, exists in the backwaters of the mind, under the surface of casual identification, and the expression of good art is the climactic points of the rushing current underneath the surface that others can see and make the deep connection from someone else's art-climax down into the individual's backwaters, touching them and maybe even revealing something new about themselves or challenging themselves in a new and dynamic way.
That said, I've been reading a lot more than I expected this trip, and have had some touchingly passionate moments-of-self. Crush, by Richard Siken has slayed me the most of anything I've hit this trip. It may be the best book I've read this year (People of Paper is pretty tough to beat, however). I reread Jane Miller's August Zero and, for the first time, read her book Wherever You Lay Your Head. I still can't believe I'm going to be studying under her. I read the fun biography of George Washington during his stint as commander of the revolution by David McCullough called 1776, and had fun doing it. I read a crappy book on how the New Testament of the Bible was collected that was sitting on Penny's nightstand. (I should have known better.) Yesterday I finished Marvin Bell's The Book of The Dead Man, and am almost done with a poetry collection by Forrest Gander that I picked up used in Salem, complete with a funny inscription and signature and, most poetically, a spill of red wine on the title page (the spill is why I bought the book). Sometimes his language is a little too abstract for my little mind, but at other times he rocks my world (there are a few poems about having a miscarriage in the book, which have been carthartic).
I made an(other) appointment to get my tattoo started on the 31st. Let's hope.

walkin' you home with a bottle of Boone's between us

Well, this kind of sucks, but Lindsey and I found out while we were camping that we're pregnant. Then we got back and we ended up miscarrying the baby. It's been a pretty crazy few days, but we're both really glad that it's happened while we have time off to spend with eachother and with family. When we found out we were pregs, we were kind of bummed, it would have been the worst possible time; but we got used to the idea quickly. Then to have all that change in a few days is pretty crazy. I'm glad that we didn't have more time to get excited, but as more than a few of my friends already know, it's still kind of rough going down. We really are taking it pretty well so far, just keep us in your thoughts/prayers/etcetera.

shampoo you

It's colder than an Arizona winter up in this place. I'm wearing a sweater and wool socks and drinking hot coco just to stay warm. We've been camping for the last five days and that was pretty lame. It wasn't the good sort of camping in the wilderness where things smell like camping, it was the kind where the whole campsite is sooty powder and all your clothes get that crap ground in and ruined. I felt like one of those thirteen year old kids who get pissed at their folks and throw in the ipod earbuds to tune them out, because that's exactly what I did when Penny would try talking to me. It was famping--fake camping. And, obviously, the pit toilets were about forty feet away from our little spot and the wind blew... yeah, the wind blew.
Now that we're back in the real world, though, things are looking really nice. The three of us went to Portland yesterday and spent the day with Lindsey's brother Drew. We made breakfast and had a little dance party in his new apartment with his girlfriend, Liz, who is really cool. Tonight we're going to see Drew's band play at some little venue in downtown Portland, and that should be a lot of fun. I've never seen them live, and while I've heard their cds and known them for a while, it's always interesting to see how people play music. I'll give a review and maybe a picture.
Also, I got a rejection letter from a literary journal, Shampoo, today. It was one of the encouraging ones, which is nice, but the encouraging rejections are never as good as the ones that say yes.

Laughing with Rasputin, fingering scars over a beer

This is day three of Oregon Trip 2006, aka, deathmatch with mother-in-law. I actually like her, but unless one is willing to buy a ticket into her funbumbmental world, the best one can hope for is scribbling notes on a soccer ball and kicking it over the berlin wall that stands between us. She may physically cause illness in me. Yesterday I tried to tell her that Grover Cleveland was the only President in U.S. history who has not had an affair in office. She couldn't accept that, because most of our presidents have been Christians, right? Riiight.
The pops, however, and the rest of the family, too, are great. They're just as different, besides Drew, but they don't have the Christian Jihad Syndrome-thing going on. I've escaped today into town to drink some coffee, hit their gaunt excuse for a library, and check my email.
Onna is having a lot of fun out here. We're in the woods on a minimountain that sits in the middle of Pinot Noir vineyards in the Willamette valley. Yesterday morning we woke up to a crazy electrical storm like I've only seen during monsoon in Arizona before--Denny said that he'd never seen anything like it in Oregon since he's been here--and while O. and I were looking out the window, lightning struck a tree about 75m. from the house, split this huge tree right down to the ground. A little hunk of wood from the tree hit the house, and it smelled like fresh-cut wood and burning paper. O. loved it, and kept saying, "again, again."
We've also been able to have a bb-gun target-shooting contest (which I obviously won) and O. and I have been keeping tabs on a doe with two fawns that live in the area. The mom comes into a clearing near the house in the morning, and checks us out from a ways away for as long as I can keep Onna from yelling at them to come over to us.
I still haven't been started my sleeve. I fear I may get a bad tattoo up here to tide me over. It feels really nice to be able to relax with Lindsey up here, to play with O, and not have anything to worry about (aside from going crazy from the deathmatch).

My last day of work was yesterday. It feels good to not have a job. I can finally relate to my little brother, except for the whole sleeping in until 1pm thing. For the first time ever he has a job and I don't. We are out of our house, I am officially done with school at ASU, and have the rest of the summer to relax with Lindsey and Onnavah. I'm only bringing a few books to Oregon, and hopefully I'll not feel like I have to do anything but be a husband and dad. I did find out that Lindsey's brother Drew will be gone most of our trip. I always look forward to seeing him and hearing about what he's up to. He's definitely not the same as me, but we have a lot in common and he's an island in the in-law ocean. Anyway, his band, Blitzen Trapper, is going on their first East Coast tour in July, which is really cool for them. It seems like they're getting better opportunities all the time. You guys in the east should keep an eye out for them! I don't know if you can see this, matt, but here's a fading picture of some more ink. If Jason ever ends up slingin on my arm, I might try and get him to touch it up a little more.