above and beyond.

i am so thrilled with the prospect of this:

http://www.newportfolkfest.net/

thank you jord. you are the BEST.

so happy, i'm singing la la la

oh, pokey!

most beautiful weekend, for all reasons.

western meadowlark
mallard
common raven
red-tailed hawk
american kestrel
european starling
horned lark
turkey vulture
mountain bluebird
spotted towhee
barn swallow
brown-headed cowbird
red-winged blackbird
norther harrier
norther flicker
american robin
mourning dove

all of which i am very excited about! but my mind was blown by:

white-faced ibis (large shiny flock in a farmer's field)
osprey (carrying a large fish)
burrowing owls (!!!) (my first sighting!)
sage grouse (lek with around 100 males doing their mating display. the sound echoed over the clearing, and we watched just as the sun rose. such a beautiful moment!)

among other things.

happy birthday mom!

amy is always right. always.

instructions:

watch this,
the mountain

but mute it and listen to this:
like spinning plates

dedicated to pm, who reminds me regularly that i am stardust.

being forever/in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

last night beth and i attended a poetry reading.

this was my favorite:

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, by Galway Kinnell

souvenir

i'm wearing the socks i wore at Actun Tunuchil Muknal.

i like that my best souvenir from our trip to belize is a dirty pair of socks.

the revolution will not be live-blogged.

started the day with a wedding, a family, a lovely girl in a lovely dress.

continued the day with yoga, yerba mate and a new bombilla.

ended the day with desert plans.

yes, i took this quiz.

and yes, the results are correct.


Omar Little... As one of Baltimore's most notorious stick-up artists, Omar Little brings another element to the game: the hunt. With his long duster, battle armor and the sweep of his shotgun, he adds an additional element of risk for Baltimore's dealers. Uncomfortable with profanity and careful to rob only dealers and others in the game who can have no complaint to police, Omar shows particular pride when taking off the stronger organizations.

remember this.

i am so happy.

swans

my!

beautiful (mostly bird) fotos from around the state of utah.

brother.

happy birthday jason!

we all have our pet ideas:

zim: second law of thermodynamics
dickie: string theory
andrea: occam's razor

i love working at the museum!!

we are all nerds.

a short joke from the bus

as told by a couple of fourteen-year-old boys:

q: what's worse than finding a worm in your apple?

a: finding an apple in your worm.

ponder that.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

 wealth distribution and america's weird priorities:

article here

(thanks for the heads up, jordan)

featherful

white pelican
red-winged blackbird
yellow-headed blackbird
western meadowlark
mallard
canvasback
northern shoveler
american coot
great blue heron (with babies!)
pied-billed grebe
canada goose
nothern harrier
american avocet
black-necked stilt
bufflehead
killdeer
cinnamon teal
california gull
american robin
american kestrel

a hairy woodpecker and a turkey vulture at the garden,

and a mourning dove sits outside my window cooing.

such a great morning with the birds.

the eyes

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.

Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past

sleepstate

i've been working on the old laptop the whole afternoon (hence the blog overactivity).

zim is here by my side, sleeping.

he twitches and growls in his dreams.

facebook miracles.

now i know.

and now it all makes perfect sense.

sugar and salt. salt and sugar.



enjoy!

imperfect.

i only played one april fool's prank this year.

bon hiver.

i love this kind of crap.

http://www.sembeo.com/media/Matrix.swf

today in nirvana

warm homemade granola and greek yogurt.

The Tallest Man On Earth - Where Do My Bluebird Fly (Live on KEXP)

to make myself laugh at a later date.

ptarmigan'd!
i woke up in the lion's mane . . .
mom!
tacopelli
sage grouse
don't drop that egg! there's a baby in there!
joe biden.

a cold day in the garden

and you're trying to sew together the pieces of your heart.

yoga
friendship
birthday party
frog feeding
granola
zim

wishing on spring.

and i see losing love
is like a window in your heart

this week in silence.

the shrike.

vernal equinox.

i'm balancing.

one related to the one before. thanks amy.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.



Elizabeth Bishop

dickie is a yogi

at this moment he lowers himself into plank pose.

was born to

let it go


let it go--the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise--let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go--the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers--you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go--the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things--let all go
dear
so comes love



E. E. Cummings

neither here nor there.

listen.

today, i love you, but you aren't so kind to me always.

dad's birthday (it's muslim for Insha'Allah)
international womens' day (revolt)
mardi gras (i ate a donut that looked just like a simpson's donut)
the little fat boy (is a sad young thing)
a friend pulls through (if a year had a million days, i'd thank you every one)
mozzarella (and cherry tomatoes)
lake salt great (two friends remind me what i love)
snow (we don't know who to believe)

(no subject)

where'd you went to?

Mavis Staples + Jeff Tweedy - "You Are Not Alone" Acoustic

woke up with this in my head.

open up.

thanks jord.

in the great salt lake.

Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed, and swim without effort, rocking and heaving up and down, in delightful rhythm, while the winds sing in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fiber of your body.

John Muir

curious about delicious food.

we are in the process of revamping the curious blog into a seriously curious about food blog.

if you read spooky and peek-a-boo, and would like to contribute to the food blog, let me know.

http://curiousquestionsforum.blogspot.com/

also obsessed with this.

Two Dancers II // Wild Beasts

home.

tell your feelings.

we are in the last few days to submit comments regarding the bridge plan for utah lake.

let them hear you, asap.

click here to submit comments

so many good things this year!

so many good things this year.

the fog is heavy and quiet.

i love my family very, very much.

of course it's carl.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Recuerdo

Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

albums i liked this year.

10. Clinging to a Scheme--The Radio Dept.
9. I'm New Here--Gil Scott Heron
8. Genuine Negro Jig--The Carolina Chocolate Drops
7. Brothers--The Black Keys
6. Be Brave--The Strange Boys
5. Age of Adz--Sufjan Stevens
4. The Suburbs--Arcade Fire
3. Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows--Songs of John Prine
2. Phosphene Dream--The Black Angels
1. High Violet--The National

Here's some listen:

for the love of our lungs.

please consider riding the bus, carpooling, riding your bike, you know, whatever.

http://airnow.gov/

forgive me my naïveté.

bobbing along.

consume this!

the best things about going to costco were:

1. being with my mom
2. seeing timp's white glory in the alpenglow.

i am not the bread and the knife.

i love this so. still.

in the fake plastic earth

chris jordan's artwork

Il faut être absolument moderne.

rimbaud, 1873.


in rebellion,

nap,
a cat,
friends,
my crochet,
debussy,
a book,
soup,
tea.

lifted from npr tumblr, now i must read it.

“The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off too. But before I did, it occured to me, looking around at all your things, and all your work, and going through all the years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still the most beautiful, the most beautiful work of all.”

patti smith, just kids

crane your neck.

listened to rosalie winard talk about her fotos tonight. beautiful.





(i don't know what they want from me. it's like the more birds we come across, the more birds we see)

how do you get into the duck club? sounds prestigious.

first and foremost, one must be a duck.

tundra swan (numbering in the thousands)
common merganser
american avocet
marsh wren
northern shoveler
eared grebe
common grebe
american coot
nothern harrier
gadwall
canada goose
sandhill crane
red-winged blackbird
black-billed magpie
american kestrel
ring-necked pheasant rooster and hen

much to be learned.

futile devices by sufjan stevens

make it big.

Sufjan Stevens - Futile Devices Music Video from Freddie Paull on Vimeo.

worthy 18 minutes

Jared Diamond on why societies collapse | Video on TED.com

every full day.

the last week or so has been full of people who remind me to live every day at top enthusiasm.

effervescence.
joie de vivre.
vitality.
passion.
raison d'être.
vibrancy.
zeal.

poetry slam with Michael Dimitri and the other poets (why AREN'T we here?)
Terry Tempest Williams (her article on the BP spill)
Katie Lee (91-year-old sticks it to the man)
Sufjan Stevens (sincerity, and a song i am loving)
Subhankar Banerjee (exuberance)
Alexandra Fuller (you never know who you're waking up)

day of the dead.

i feel like i'm going through a breakup.






ps i love my dear friends.

in true halloween spirit

zim woke me today by sneezing in my face.

then he tried to bury my friend's coffee cup. the cup was sitting on the wood floor.

he then, with flashing eyes, climbed to the top of the ponderosa pine, meowed, and made his way slowly down.

and then, climbed as fast as fast to the top of the ash, meowed his triumph, and made his way down.

and now, he sits quietly in the sunlight, as if none of this ever happened.

he's a brlack cat.

things to remember.

no, you can't only love when you want to.

the strange boys

there's winter all over the floor here.

i like the snow when it is wet and sloshy and the windshield wipers swish it off without scraping. i like the gush gush gush sounds on the ground.

i've listened to the song heartbeats, performed by jose gonzalez, enough tonight, but i'll keep listening. quando m'en vo, heartbeats, repeat. weird combination.

i went to class tonight. there was no class. i locked my keys in the fat boy. a new friend called AAA.

there's an empty space between my sternum and my heart.

returning to high

i dreamt about notch peak last night, walking through the bristlecones, looking straight ahead at the cliff face, nearly falling over the edge.

not distracted.

abstracted.

go see "angels in america" performed by the salt lake acting company.

part one shows through the 31st.

in4mation

warmer longer.

colder soon.

ahora, sí, estoy enamorada

the serviceberry leaves are red.
the oaks are dropping acorns.
the bigtooth maple leaves are sugary and falling.
the male tarantulas are wandering.

today, i found a dead bumblebee clinging to a rabbitbrush stem.

everyday with the garden will be missed.

Por donde fuimos, islas o puentes o banderas,
violines del fugaz otoño acribillado,
repitió la alegría los labios de la copa,
el dolor nos detuvo con su lección de llanto.

Soneto XXVIII, Neruda.

afuera

The brushing of teeth, since he was a child, has always been for him an outdoor activity.

TEP, p. 86

to expose our follies.

i have around 500 fotos in my photobooth application. 85-90% of those fotos are of myself and zim.

success?

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.

David Orr, What is Education For?, 1991

angle of repose

genevieve, a geomorphologist, explained to me last march that the angle of repose is the degree at which rocks and debris rest after mass fail, or erosion.

this weekend, i was down on the staircase, looking at the rocks, comme d'habitude. they are beautiful because they have fallen. they're at rest, but they'll fall again. and something new will be beautiful.

was the quiet i always felt in you really repose? i wish i thought so.
wallace stegner, AofR, 12.

i myself like the porcupine.

fenomenally simple animal fotografs here.

often enough

i wake up to myself rearranging the stacks of books next to my bed.

i should put them on the shelf.

one cannot fathom such things.

if texas was populated by only women, and they had to stand two feet apart at all times, would texas secede from the union?

(8 year old boy)

what are you doing?

i'm kicking my butt.

(i asked the question. a 6-year-old girl answered it.)

if we could.

The boy steadied his breathing and told himself firmly, "You are not afraid of this. This is just a human heart, that's all. Just like in the encyclopedia. Everybody has one of these. I have one."

WUBC, p. 420

i knew i was in for a good week when one of my small ones asked me, "do you want to enter a time and space portal?"

(child, kicking each thistle plant as he walks by)
you're no good at soccer.
you're no good at soccer.
you're no good at soccer, you don't even have hands, you couldn't even be goalie.

why did the chicken cross the road?
because he got ranned over.

why did the chicken cross the road?
to fart.

why did the apple cross the road?
applesauce.

knock-knock.
who's there?
banana.
banana who?
aren't you glad i didn't say banana?

knock-knock.
who's there?
boo hoo.
boo hoo who?
you're crying.

knock-knock.
who's there?
andrea.
andrea who?
don't you know yourself?
why would i be knocking at the door and answering the door?
i don't know.

knock-knock.
who's there?
andrea.
andrea who?
andrea rabbit head.

these children are not afraid to hold hands.

one little sweet babe squeezed my hand twice, and whispered "robin!"

and, walking up the switchbacks this morning, we came upon a rattlesnake. he was just off the trail. i wanted everyone to get a chance to look at him.
i thought we were done when i heard little sweet babe crying. i asked her if she was afraid of the rattler.
"no," she whimpered, "i didn't get to see the snake."

i keep referring to the "kids" as "people".

we all know that children don't become people til late in their fourteenth year. we all know it, except me.

no apologies.

allow me to nerd out.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NESTCAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this one i remember.

saturday night, sleeping on a slab of slickrock hanging over fish creek, i dreamt i was sleeping under a blanket made of tufted evening primrose. beth says i startled her when i thought it was floating away.

i'm ok with my decay.

i quit. then i didn't.

but i might again.

in love with this song.

so our end of mabey drive is torn up. i'm living the american dream on a phreeking cul-de-sac.

two days ago, when the street got ripped apart and large machinery started to appear and orange safety signs materialized, etc, it was a beautiful day. i got home from work, drank iced mate and laid on the grass with my guitar and z-flavor. i watched as drivers ignored the road closed sign, tried to power through, and were forced to turn around. if i caught the driver's eye, i couldn't help but laugh.

well, joke's on me. and z. the czar has a weird thing for large machinery. just as beth and i were about to leave on a sunset bike ride, cub cub rubbed his face on the greasiest, narstiest tractor bits. and then he proceeded to let his tail join in the la brea fun.

some people get angry when it rains just days after washing their car. i get annoyed when the chug rubs on tractor tar just days after a bath. who bathes their kitten two times in one week?

and now, shivery kitten, still wet, huddles on my lap. poor fing.

the quiet.

sometimes things should speak for themselves.

the attention economy.

interdisciplinarity. made up, but i'm using it.

funny how when it gets dark you can't see out the windows. only dark reflections.

these glass rooms with kids studying, writing on the glass with markers, so intently.

give me litany or give me death.

michel foucault: a good looking human. archetypal, almost.

yes, i do see you checking yourself out in the reflection.

that stegner quote is bullshit. only being in the desert cures desert desire.

the waitress from indochine, who remembered everything perfectly without writing a word.

times like these, i'd like to be with my guitar.

how the hell did 552 fotos of me end up on phacebook? i have no privacy, and it's my fault.




sometimes the attention lapses into a catatonic informational philandering while one does one's homework in the library.

blood and dust.

i have to fill my tank today, or i will run out of gas the next time i drive.

(and i don't want to live through another "running out of gas" incident. always ridiculously embarassing.)

so here's the problem:

i started working at red butte garden (which is my new boyfriend by the way. i love it/him very much) and i haven't figured out the bus schedule/shuttle schedule/etc yet. so i've been driving. the fatty. fatty fatkins. and though he is a kind and reliable friend, i don't love driving him.

i miss my little walk to the bus stop. i miss seeing my favorite tree on 27th south. i miss my little friends, who wear rain bonnets and say HELLO so very loudly, who discuss the weather with me. i miss zoning out and staring out the window for approximately 15 minutes each way.

absence makes the heart frown, sometimes imperceptibly. i need to figure this out.

but this is a list you want to kiss.

in the garden yesterday.

a pair of red-tailed hawks
a pair of woodpeckers (hairy maybe, but maybe i don't know)
a pair of canada geese (courtship dance and mating included!)
a flocklet of ruby-crowned kinglets
a pair of quail (not california quail, but some big fat quail, maybe chuckar)

i wish i knew birds.

there will be no pictures of you and willie mays pushing that shopping cart

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised- Gil Scott Heron
Uploaded by larsen42. - Explore more music videos.

i am ready

for a barefoot summer.

the takeaways.

i have a crush on 65 year old woman who is deeply enthusiastic about geomorphology.

pleistocene rewilding is not a figment of my imagination and the nine-banded armadillo is a proposed species of the project.

sandbar willow has another name: coyote willow.

and finally, i don't know about this blog.

silence.

play a little.

thermals.

http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/#shaded


reading old blog posts. funny how things change.

date the landscape.

i'm pretty exhausted, but i think the exhaustion comes from returning.

i could stay out another week.

and now i'm pharting around on phacebook.

let's take and informal vote: should i go back to the desert in one week or two weeks, or bolth.

overhead.

The White Mountain (extended) from charles on Vimeo.

i'll take three earths, please.

my eco footprint

So Thoreau.

Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.