Thanks to all of you who've stuck around despite my disappearances! I've just returned from the long awaited Danube adventure with my mother, and amazingly, both of us are still alive. I suppose we understand each other better than ever, though that's not always the key to getting along. A large component is knowing when you don't need to understand, and just dropping things. By the end we could have a little spat and not need to resolve it; it's the beauty of family, really.
And the beauty of the river.
We started in Budapest, then traveled down through Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. I swam in the mucky river every day, and finally in the Black Sea at Constanta, Romania. It's more green than black, shimmering with algae and iridescent sand, flecks of lime and gold churning under the gentle waves.
I could escape there, forever, perhaps.
Yet it is good to be home, unlike my last little visit. I feel more comfortable in New York as a settle in for the long-haul, and the air has cooled to bearable. Last weekend I escaped to the Catskills for a hike up Giant's Ledge to watch the sunset over our little mountains, followed by a day of romping through woods and bathing in waterfalls. It's amazing what you stumble upon just by following streams.

Ahh, it's been months now, hasn't it? I'm home, in The City, at last. But I miss Oregon terribly, and find things greatly changed here. It's not MY city anymore. I'm not sure what to make of it, or me, or my place in it. I need a a job, but am reluctant to return to the old waitressing gigs. More meaningful work is harder to get and often pays less, and I don't feel qualified.
However, I'm working on publishing an article from the thesis. It won an award, a check, and the opportunity to publish, so I could hardly pass that up. It's more than I could have hoped for.
Only if I had one wish right now, I might waste it on asking for a cool breeze, or an air conditioner.

Hah! DONE! Well one final left, but I did turn in my 108 page thesis for binding yesterday, only 25.5 hours late. I defended a week ago, in front of my panel and a room full of friends, and it was an amazingly enjoyable experience. It was FUN! Weird. But I know the stuff so goddamn well, and my slides were lovely and I just talked, no notes, for 30 minutes. The advisors threw some tough questions at me, and I've been contemplating better responses ever since, but I did fine, apparently, even though I don't remember what I said. I don't remember much that happened after my talk was over; I was in a warm and fuzzy daze, but I do remember the panel's deliberation period being incredibly short, and the three of them walking out smiling, one giving me a high five, and the last telling me I'd passed with distinctions, the highest option.
Bragging now. I had to.
And how are all of you? It's been a while, I know.

A shiver of rainswept wind brushed past me just as I ducked inside. Another long night of editing awaits, but I'm nearly there, at 90 pages and counting. I defend on Thursday in front of a panel of three. Wish me luck? I'm not too nervous. I do know it damn well. And then, and then...I won't know where to go from here, from being done. What does one do in real life?
Perhaps upload a new set, among more exciting endeavors. I've got this one I took last winter, but I'm not going to put it up until I hear back SOMETHING from SG on my review set. No word? Two months?? At least reject it...
Here's a sliver of the other though. A bit of a departure from bike grease and pull up bars, just for a change. I think I must have done it partly in response to some of the comments people have left about being naked up here, and therefore honest. "Bearing it all." But there are more and less honest ways even to present yourself naked. And I am not a girly girl. Or perhaps I'm not a bike-girl. You'll never know, eh?

Raaar, another blissfully sweltering sunny day. I made a resolution on the first of these distractingly perfect evenings to banish fear and master slacklining and hand-standing. I can't get very far on the slackline yet, but today I had a breakthrough in headstands. Still using the head, but even so, it's a glorious, idiosyncratic feeling! To take a study break upside down. As soon as you figure it out, you can just tuck your head, stick your butt in the air, and...pop up! My neighbors have been seeing a lot of suspended feet through the window today.
I hate to do a 'pitch' sort of thing, but I'm not very good at advertising myself, and I think that's what you're supposed to do when you've got a set on review. It's been over 5 weeks and still no word, and at this rate...well I've realized that this is a fun side-project, but no way to pay the rent. Anyway, if you haven't seen my hopeful set, it is up for your viewing pleasure

Any ideas for the next one? I'm hoping to do some multis soon, but in the meantime...something sweaty, I think. With mud.
Thanks, for all your thoughtful comments!

Sweat beads between skin and jeans and I think of the benefit of vitamin D and the danger of UVB and the clamminess of my clothes and sharp blades of grass between my toes and I want to feel burnt tomorrow so my skin is hot to the touch even in a cool dark room, so my face is flushed like I'm blushing, so my head clouds with humidity and banishes thought, thought, worry, analysis, intellect, all seeping out of my ears in a soggy downtrodden mess, and Yes they return and Yes I invite them back I thrive on them I consume thought, worry, analysis, intellect, my own and others and I can't consume enough but they're gone now, they'll be gone tomorrow when my skin is warm and flushed and damp and my ears are wet with clouds and my eyes are squinting wrinkles out of their edges like tears running down the sides of my face but I'm laughing, or I wish I was laughing, or I will be laughing, I think, sometime, when all this wells up and overflows in clouds and tears and wrinkles are running, streaming, cooling, my sunburnt skin.

This morning the air was balmy before the sun had even begun to bake down. It was the perfect opportunity to listen to Panda Bear's 'Person Pitch' while biking up a steep and winding hill across town into a shimmery sprawling park, which I believe una shot a set in.
At the top were a stand of oaks and horse chestnuts, the perfect trees for crack-climbing between the fused trunks, until they spread apart to allow for chimneying. I monkeyed around alone for a long time and decided that early morning solitary springtime hilltop tree climbing is...unspeakably good. "It's a good thing." If you don't know the origins of the quote, THAT's a 'good thing.'
Then the boy joined me, a climber himself, and we were able to document the event.
However, I wasted half the day...honestly really the whole day just kinda having fun, scrambling around in the rare bit of sunlight, climbing, biking, sneaking into buildings, sunbathing on roofs...

And now, I have the rest of the night to finish MY ENTIRE THESIS!!! AOUI(@#()*()@$!
For those of you who've been hearing about it for a while, thanks for sticking with me, and for the support. Someone please tell me I can write 10 pages tonight. It's the final push, the rhetoric of the 1996 welfare overhaul which played on the politics of fear and disgust. "The Politics of Disgust" is an incredible book by Ange-Marie Hancock, dwelling mostly on the construction of the 'welfare queen' and the raced and gendered implications of the legislation. My thesis is adding "the politics of fear" to the equation. Not only are welfare recipients constructed as immoral and indolent, they're made out to be dangerous, otherwise the punitive legislation would not be justifiable. The authors of the overhaul bills, and conservative contributors to the senate hearings leading up to PRWORA all mention "the growing poor," consolidated within big cities and reproducing at alarming rates. They play on alarmist over-population discourse and a lot of Christian moralizing crap as well. Somehow I've got to tie this all together, sifting through the plethora of bills and hearings I've been reading.

ONE last night. I hope to god I can have this beast done with.
Because I have to prepare a 30 minute talk on it by Saturday for a small convention.
Phew.
And I keep getting distracted by all the beautiful women on this site. Damn suicide girls! Damn fatality and ginary for being so hot.

Last Sunday I wrote to you with a dusting of late snow on the ground; Today I've just snuck back inside from the sunbaked tar roof where I was lying half-naked until the last salmony light slipped down below the buildings and trees. The streets are lined with Doug Firs and Sicamores, Green Maples, Dogwoods, Cherry and Plum, Spring flowers dripping onto sidewalks and beginning to rot now, crushed and brown and sickeningly sweet.
I woke up late again today after a long and drunken night, involving another fight with the lovely boy, out of which we crashed into sleep mid-sentence. This morning he awoke still mad, not at anything really, but just because we hadn't resolved anything, and his anger took on a sexual energy and...well that solved everything. Talk is useless after a point. Sex fixes a lot.

So does writing papers. I've decided in my latest research that the New Deal of the 1930s was not the ideological revolution in viewing the poor its often touted to be. Roosevelt still clung to much of the "rhetoric of perversity" of the 19th century, which described the poor as indolent and immoral. Poverty was seen as a personal failure. The New Deal provided relief on a federal level for the first time, and had no choice but to see that such widespread poverty was caused by economic, not individual, failings. Still, the legislation can't quite free itself from the old assumptions. It's not until the War on Poverty in the 60s that the government finds a more benevolent view of poverty and provides extensive programs to alleviate it which do Not revolve around moral reform.

Springtime dancing! I'm on the right, floating in a shimmery cloud.

After weeks of a self-imposed seclusion, I ventured out determined to experience my weekend to the fullest. A school event provided an open bar, as well as every ex and admirer of lovely-boy. For the most part they are all exceptional women, but I I was on his turf, and resolved not to shrink into the corner as my sober self desired to do. So I stayed near the bar, talking, laughing, dancing with these women, making friends out of acquaintances, and generally having a rollicking good time, pleased with my outgoing nature and complete lack of jealousy.

Am I justifying the massive amounts of alcohol I consumed? Not exactly. Because after my social victory at the event, special-boy walked off with my wallet intending to do me a favor. Mutually drunken miscommunication reigned, and I thought he was preventing me from moving from his domain to my own, to see a friend he's always been jealous of. His actions DID in fact prevent me from doing so, until I biked all the damn way to the bar he was at after wasting an hour looking for the wallet he had all along. I was mad, and he was caught completely off guard, never having seen this odd side of me before. We cleared things up quickly, and once I realized that I was being ridiculous I sank down onto the sidewalk in a fit of sobs. Weird. Really, really weird.
He had never seen me cry in the 6 months we'd been dating; most people haven't. Eventually the mood subsided and I biked off to grab a beer with the friends I'd been trying to see this whole time. I realize now that I probably stumbled in with a tear-streaked face. Jesus. At least I don't wear makeup, so perhaps my state could have been attributed to the cold wind I biked through.

The rest of my time with them was excellent. I scrambled up a good bit of a slippery telephone pole, wearing rainboots and a skirt. I couldn't bike straight, but I could climb poles. That's just me. Then we mowed on cheap Mexican food and by 4 AM we parted ways. Out of nowhere I can remember, I started to cry again, and didn't stop until I fell asleep. Has that happened to any of you? Bits of the night are fuzzy, but I have the distinct memory of curling up beside my heater, finishing the take-out, reading a trashy novel I found in an alley, and just sobbing. Like it was perfectly normal. I don't even think I was terribly sad. I am still perplexed.

The next morning there was SNOW on the ground, which melted under a vicious afternoon of sun, and all appeared to be strangely, surrreally, normal.
Here's to climbing shit.

2:00 AM already, again. I'm frustrated by my lack of progress on this paper, and it's making me edgy, which makes me angry at myself. Alpha boy is being so sweet, but like anyone, he gets annoying sometimes. Normally I brush it off, but these days I jump at the smallest bait. It isn't like me, and amazingly, he knows that and continues to be supportive. But how long can this last? I'm terrified of my image shifting in his eyes into this monster I turn into when a giant stressball swoops down and sucks away my soul. Hopefully I'll eat it alive once I've gotten into the writing of this thing. In the meantime, he's gone to bed having given up on calming me down, and I'm up alone dabbling between research and writing, not quite committing to anything. I think I'll write a paragraph and crawl in with him. There's something wonderfully comforting about knowing that a loving warm body awaits you in bed, but distracting too. I can't last much longer out here. Arrgg.