Atlanta!

Holy bloody hell! I'm in Atlanta!

Happy Anniversary

Thirty six years ago today (I'm on Euro time, apparently), the Apollo 11 mission made history and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

And the computer I'm using now is more powerful than any computer NASA used in 1969.

Last year, SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize, paving the way for private space flight.

In the next thirty six years, I want to not only travel to the moon, but to teach there.

Hot Pants

I am currently soaking my favorite pair of jeans in lamp oil.

Why? Because the Internet told me to. I must admit, I am a bit dubious about the whole thing, especially since I doubt that my source was scholarly. However, I am determined to remove the oil-based paint from the seat of my pants.

Besides, I had to empty out my oil lamp to pack it up. =) And it gives me the opportunity to say that I have the most flammable pants in Richmond. Which is quite the accomplishment, really.

Moving

I'm leaving Richmond.

In less than a week.

And I grew up here. On Jahnke Road. I used to climb the trees in the front yard and sit there, all summer, reading. I hid in the shrubbery that circled our driveway, and read among the leaves. I ate jelly beans while lying on the top of my swing set, late at night, after my parents were asleep, and I re-named all the stars and constellations after books that I had read.

On afternoons, I walked to Lake Paige and pretended I was an explorer. Since Lake Paige was a man-made lake, there wasn't a great deal to actually explore, so I created my own obstacles to overcome. Of course, the time I encountered the copperhead was an actual obstacle, which I overcame by screaming, freezing, screaming, and running like hell.

A duck once bit my brother at Lake Paige. That was pretty funny.

And I discovered the Gulch because of Lake Paige. And because I discovered the Gulch I discovered myself. Sitting there, afternoon after afternoon, growing older, smoking cigarettes, falling in love. I walked there from my house, after school--a mile down the street, thru the woods, across the creek, down the train tracks, take a right into the forest before the overpass--it was the journey that mattered, almost as much as the sitting.

There are so many hidden places in this city. The old pumphouse, behind the Nickel Bridge--I haunted that place for a summer. Or two. Or three. Who pays any attention to the old pumphouse, in the shadow of Dogwood Dell and the Carillon? I never saw more than a handful of people there during my haunting. I saw some ghosts, though--they were mostly mine. And I wonder if they're still there, dancing with the fireflies and listening to the cicadas, somewhere on the second floor of the pumphouse.

I hope so.

Randomness about Magical Realism

I am absolutely fascinated by it. I don't know of a more perfect mode of writing. Magical realism seems to catch all the things in my peripheral vision, giving me a more complete idea of the world around me. I'm not sure that it's possible to get at the truth by looking directly at it. It's like the sun--if you stare at it, you'll be too blinded to see anything else. And I feel that since there are thousands of truths, it's important to be able to see the peripheries.

And to marvel at them. I feel that one of the most beautiful aspects of magical realism is its invitation to marvel--at the fantastic, the grotesque, the ordinary. And this marvelling seems also to contribute to the overpowering sense of "yes" that I feel when I read.