Lifting the spirits

Pyrrha, rolling around in the yard.

Pyrrha has found an excellent remedy to lift the spirits: Roll around in the grass! Preferably on a slug or something equally stinky! It will do wonders for your complexion and countenance!

Hope you have a peaceful, productive, and relaxing weekend. I’ll be spending mine with Guion, the dog, the yard, Proust, and D.H. Lawrence. Oh, and doing lots of calligraphy. Lots and lots of calligraphy. I need to stop overbooking myself with these calligraphy jobs; it makes my evenings so busy that I am tempted to follow Pyrrha’s dubious method of stress relief…

The Midwest and our second anniversary

We spent the Memorial Day weekend trekking to the great Midwest for my grandfather’s memorial service. While the circumstances were sad, we had a wonderful time with Dad’s side of the family, remembering Papa John.

Rest in peace, Papa John.

On our last day in Indianapolis, we stood around his new headstone and talked about what we remembered. Remember that time he landed a helicopter in a tiny patch of grass in front of a Hilton, or in Aunt Shelly and Uncle Sean’s backyard, to the amazement of all the neighbors? Remember how he used to evaluate a car, running his hands along the sides, as if it were a racehorse? Remember how calm he was, how he never yelled at us?

Guion, excluded.

The weekend was blazing hot, but we managed to distract ourselves with multiple games of deck tennis and lots of unhealthy food.

Wrangling the family.

We don’t get to see this side of the family very much, so this was a cherished weekend. How nice it was to be reminded of where you came from, the qualities and predispositions that you bear, silently and mysteriously inherited.

The Farson siblings with their mother.

We came home the morning before our second anniversary. To celebrate, we went to Ten for dinner. I’ve been waiting for two years now to go to Ten, and it did not disappoint (even though it made me miss Japan and my host mom’s cooking more than ever). We sat across from each other and smiled, marveling at how quickly time has passed. Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were dragging luggage into a hotel, still decked out in our wedding garb?

This sushi is not messing around. Anniversary dinner at Ten.

And now we are happy to be back to our new home, reunited with Pyrrha and our sprawling garden and out-of-control lawn. I am looking forward to doing nothing in particular all summer.

Stuff Guion is good at

Guion!

As we near our second anniversary (!), I’ve been thinking about how fun it has been to be married to this dude. Here’s a list of stuff Guion is good at:

• Smiling.
• Making great beer and great music.
• Dreaming big.
• Not complaining when Pyrrha wakes him up to go out at 3 a.m.
• Fixing stuff when it breaks.
• Reading my mind.
• Cheerfully taking care of all the little mundane, sundry errands and household tasks.
• Remembering to pay bills.
• Singing. Guys, he wakes up in the morning singing. No other human does that. No other human is that internally happy.
• Having the best name that no one can pronounce.
• Making friends.
• Being THE calmest. About everything.
• Defusing fights.
• Hanging out with babies.
• Finding something to appreciate in things that I would deem “low-brow” or “stupid.”
• Telling stories.
• Encouraging me to try new things.
• Improvising marinades and sauces in the kitchen.
• … and many other things that I can’t include here, because grandparents read this blog sometimes.

Guion! Man! You are the best.

And then we moved and got a dog

This weekend:

We moved. Guion’s generous and sweet parents came and helped us move, unpack, clean, and bid farewell to good Belmontonia.

We gardened. We planted a host of seedlings from our new landlords, mowed the (huge) lawn, tended our crops, and harvested snap peas and strawberries.

Mowing around the new garden.

We got a dog. (OMG WE GOT A DOG.) Meet Pyrrha (*pronounced “peer-ah”), who is on trial with us from the amazing people at Southeast German Shepherd Rescue. I’ll continue to write all about her on my dog blog. She is a totally sweet and shy little lady and we love her already. (The name comes from Greek mythology and from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which we recently read and loved.)

Pyrrha!

We ate out and relaxed. (Windy and Mike, below, at Blue Mountain Brewery.)

Our super-awesome moving team: Mike and Windy!

We looked at our sweet dog some more.

Pyrrha at Blue Mountain Brewery.

We unloaded more boxes.

We napped.

This past week, in four photos

Guion’s final poetry reading.

On Wednesday night, Guion–who is extremely sexy–gave his final poetry reading at UVA. It is hard to believe that we’ve been here two years and that he’s already finished his coursework for his MFA. He did a wonderful job, as always, and we had a beautiful evening in the gardens celebrating these five great poets:

The graduating poetry MFAs: Melissa, Guion, Marielle, Juliana, and Austin.

I am so very proud of him!

With my accomplished husband.

Saturday afternoon, we celebrated Leah’s 1st birthday at the park! Watching a baby have her first taste of chocolate is a glorious, intense experience.

The Montgomery family at Leah’s 1st birthday party.

More photos from the MFA readings and Leah’s birthday on my Flickr.

This is our last full week in our beloved Belmontonia, so I will be thoroughly consumed by the task of packing and preparing to move. My posting here will be a little more sparse than usual. But I still love you. If you’re looking for something sweet to read, you should check out Granddad’s memories of his mother’s German shepherd. OK. Talk to you again soon.

Your uncertainty is God’s will

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Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.

– Tinkers, Paul Harding

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A long quote, but a very good one: How uncertainty can be God’s grace to us. (I saw so much of Marilynne Robinson, Harding’s former professor, in that book.)

I haven’t been around here much lately, and my postings will probably be more than usually sporadic, since the month of May is pure madness for us. But everything in May will be good and new and exciting, even if just looking at my calendar makes me break out in a cold sweat.

I am trying to read many things, even though I feel like all of it is skimming over my head. I am spending a lot of time with Eudora Welty, one of my all-time favorites, in preparation for next month’s book club. I have missed you, Eudora. When I was about 14 and said I wanted to be a writer, Dave gave me a copy of her collected short stories and told me to read them closely. It was very, very good advice. I am so happy to return to her.

I also just started Susan Sontag’s On Photography, which is powerful and mind-opening. I think Guion would like it a lot. And Grace. Most people, for that matter. Anyone who’s ever looked at photographs before.

Talk to you soon.

Choosing the given

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“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular–shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?–but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.”

– Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A little more on my animal theme this week. I also have sad news: We learned that dear Aoive, Guion’s parent’s springer spaniel, had to be put down last night, after an excruciating cycle of non-stop seizures. She was such a sweet, affectionate girl. Rest in peace, Aoive; I hope you are stalking birds to your heart’s content in heaven. Happy weekend, everyone.

Feelings: Oh, I have those

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The Red Poppy
Louise Glück

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Have a nice weekend, friends. I am looking forward to some quiet time with my husband, who has had a very busy week. Peace!

The loneliness of the web and the lines that need to be drawn

I feel like I haven’t had a lot to say here lately. We have been having very busy weeks and there seems to be no end in sight. I find myself retreating to books more often, to experience the reprieve of listening to someone else, instead of dredging the internal well for something to spit out here.

I never want to be online when I am home; it makes me feel lazy, pathetic, lonely. The Internet often makes me feel like that, as I’ve mentioned before. I feel like I am wasting my entire life and then that I am incredibly far away from real people and that I will never be close to them again, that artificial ties are all that we have at our disposal. (I was extremely upset when Guion showed me Google’s promotional video of their prototypical glasses, so you can wear your computer on your FACE and never have to talk to a real human again. Super Sad True Love Story is becoming an imminent reality.) I am as dependent on the Internet as the next person, of course; I love the opportunity of keeping multiple blogs, of pinning every damn dog I see on Pinterest, of the immediate accessibility to every conceivable source of information… but it makes me very tired.

I crave Guion’s company when I come home. A human! With a face, hands, words coming out of its mouth in real time! How refreshing. His daily life/work requires less of constant computer usage than mine does, so I am positively crazy for him, that flesh-and-blood connection, right when I get home from work. He’s used to this by now and accustomed to my grumpy face if he sits down on the couch to read Pitchfork when I’m around. I’m possessive of his human attention. His is a far nicer screen to stare into.

There’s not much more to say on that front, except that I am thankful for this outlet, which does not make me feel guilt or pressure. We are moving in three weeks and six days and it’s basically all I think about, because that house, that sprawling garden, that promise of a dog of my own, will give me infinitely more reasons to avoid my laptop.

 

Blue House Family Easter

We had a beautiful Easter in town and celebrated with a cookout at the Blue House. It was a perfect afternoon.

More photos on Flickr.

That is all.

Love,
A.