the list.

Today this blog celebrates the humble tool of many a brilliant mind:  the list.

To demonstrate, here is list of lists I like to make:

• grocery lists
• packing lists
• to-do lists
• movies to watch lists
• books to read lists
• books to teach lists
• books not to teach lists
• people to e-mail lists
• reasons I love you lists
• things I’ve vacuumed lists

And a list of lists I’m currently in the midst of crossing off:

• things to purchase/get (lens cloth, etc.)
• things to do at school (e.g. fax visa to Frances)
• things to do at home (take crap to salvation army, for example)
• things to write (like write this blog post)
• money I owe and or owed to me ($50 to j)
• things to pack  (socks x2, panties x4)
• thoughts about packing (do we want to bring lamps?)

By calling the list a “humble tool of many a brilliant mind” and then demonstrating my very capable list-making ability, you may think I’m being a bit of a showboat.  You  may find yourself thinking, “that Mandy sure is impressed with herself.”  Well maybe you’re right.  Maybe I can put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard as the case may be) and make lists with the best of them.  I hesitate to toot my trombone too tenaciously, but come on, folks, we’ve all got our gifts.  (and perhaps it goes without saying that mine is not alliteration)

 

In my home there is an ongoing debate about the value of the lists–as in, does the act of making a list consume more time and/or energy than the actual completion of tasks on the list?–but this blog is interested celebration, not criticism, and as such we will not consider this debate further.  What we will instead consider* is the greatest joy of listmaking: the cross-off.  I can think of few acts more gratifying than putting pen to paper and, with vigor and delight, making a swift, straight line through the completed task.  I’ve even been known to write an item on my list after it’s completion just for the joy of then crossing it off.

 

So, friends, if you noticed all that “packing” nonsense on my list, it’s because I’m outta here in the morning.  I’m hitting the road (or the air, actually) for a long-awaited vacation.  I’ll go ahead and apologize for how, over the next four weeks, this now vibrant blog post will begin to dwindle, it’s sparkle a sequin short, it’s humor rather stale on second, then third, glance.  But it’s the best I can leave you with, ’cause it’s an hour and a half past my bed time and my pillow is calling.  I’ll miss you, though, and I promise, I’ll come back with something worth writing.

 

 

*We may also consider, at a later date, why a discussion of list making seems to enable one to use to “royal We” with abandon.

Update: Even Kristi Yamaguchi started somewhere

Erin says, “I would like, however, to see a picture of a miraculously agile giant skating anime sasquatch mascot. Because your anime link is fine, but what?”

Well, Erin, as destiny would have it, our paths crossed again.  Your wish is my command (although, this time, he’s not wearing skates):

words of wisdom from canada’s youth

Back in September, I wrote about the first day of school.  And just this week, we had our last day, or, I should clarify, the last class meeting of the semester.  Final exams and more classes await most of us (though not everyone–happy no more school, Matti!) in January.  Things haven’t changed dramatically over the past three months, but there are some signs of the passage of time:

(left: week one; right: week thirteen)

I always feel a little relieved and a little sad at the end of the semester.  Maybe it’s because I’m still too young and inexperienced to be jaded, or maybe it’s that my temperament is a bit on the sentimental side, but I get attached to my students.  It’s just circumstance that puts us all in the same classroom.  But once there, we start interacting with people we’d never get to know otherwise, and whom we were previously unlikely to feel any real affection for.  There’s a metaphor in here, I think, about human compassion… because vulnerability is inherent in the learning process, and it’s hard not to like people who are willing to be vulnerable.

Okay, okay.  Don’t worry, I’m not reaching for the Kleenex box here.  But I’d like to take a minute to share some of the things I’ve learned from my first year students’ writing, things that you, too, may find interesting or useful, depending on your circumstances:

According to Nigel, five hours of sleep in a 72 hour period, is all it takes to unbind  the human mind from sanity.

Bo asserts that thinking about sneaking into the ladies restroom after hours in the engineering building, “was not a very exciting experience,” but it was “a lot better” than reviewing his notes again.

Melissa says that if you’re in the mood for a bonfire jam session, there’s a man named Phoenix who lives at Wreck Beach and plays a mean guitar.

When shark diving, according to Cari, the great whites will not attack the cage, but instead they circle curiously.  And there is no feeling comparable to lowering yourself into the shark-infested waters.

Will, who has perfect pitch, notes that his door creaks at a high A, the drilling outside his dorm room window is B flat, and I often lecture in C sharp.

Clyde warns that when playing table-tennis, one must not underestimate Taiwanese opponents dressed in matching white shorts.  If they “do not use spins,” or “chase after balls hit at critical angles” during the warm-up, they may be sharking you.

In many ways, teaching is like performing, only your audience is kind of required to be there, and they have a built-in incentive to pay attention at least part of the time.  Still, when I thanked them for a good semester and my literature students actually clapped (!) on Thursday, I felt that glowy red-cheeked embarrassment I used to feel in theater.  It was pretty neat.

bookworming

Liberated from my heavy pack by the nice folks at the desk, I squirm, poke, lean, winnow, burrow, stretch, and slide between the towering stacks of words. Like the earthworms in my garden, I am aerating these dusty shelves.

I love used bookstores. The higher the ceilings, the narrower the walking space, the more cryptic the organization, the more my hands itch to caress every spine; my fingers are like a lover’s, tracing each vertebra. If only I could live within these pages, pull out my tent and stake it up among the words like punctuation, taking shelter among the disintegrating literary histories of strangers.

Yesterday I took a small break from writing to wander over to MacLeod’s Books. While I was taking photos of the 5pm light stretching across my favorite series of spines–the old children’s serials like “Girls’ Adventure Series”–I looked up to see this:

Justin and I stopped in at Rowell’s gallery in Bishop, California on our summer-long drive to Vancouver two years ago. As we toured the photographs, Justin narrated each one: when and where it was taken, the super-human feats Rowell performed to see just the right light from just the right angle.

When I arrived home with this book yesterday, I learned that these very pages were where those stories were printed. Apparently teenage-Justin had confiscated this book from a friend years ago, and pored over it while first learning photography. I can see it’s influence.

“Someone picked this up from their collection and thought, ‘I need to get rid of this.’ ? !” He was astounded.

Selling such a tome was a crime in the eyes of my favorite mountain photographer, but he’s smitten with his new possession. Books might just be my favorite small things. Books and cookies. I do love cookies.

Zoom zoom.

Three cheers for high gas prices!

Here in Vancouver, gas is up to about $1.50/liter. I can withstand a swift kick to the wallet if it means some North Americans are making positive lifestyle changes.

Case in point: my Dad.

Bo has given up driving this rig to and from work each day:

for this one:

At six-foot-four, my dad is no small fella. In fact, I’ve never known him to drive any vehicle that isn’t capable of hauling a pop-up camper or a trailer full of mulch or a couple of four-wheelers. Despite the very American need to corrolate car size (or perhaps size in general…) with masculinity, my dad seems to have embraced his new ride.

Just last week, his coworkers duct-taped a giant cardboard key to the back window, in an admittedly clever attempt to suggest his little blue Yaris was a wind-up car. But Dad just laughs it off. After all, when they give him sass at the golf course, he can give it right back at the gas pump.

Even the pup loves it!

I’m so proud! Now if we can get all gun-owning, football-tailgating, southwest Virginians to do the same…

(notice Chevy Tahoe is still in carport…perhaps in case of emergency?? one never knows when he might need leather seating for seven.)

I am a cat.

At the corner of 4th and Macdonald is an empty lot, my favorite place for finding odd small things. The few square feet of sidewalk in front of the chain-link fence has become an unofficial depot for all unwanted but untrashable refuse. Nothing seems to last there for more than a day, but almost every day there is some unloved item (or collection of items) sitting on the concrete or hanging from the fence. This particular collection of small things includes the classic book “I am a Cat,” a CD rom of sim-game “The Conquerers,” a home-crafted copy of the Roger Moore Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me,” a fuzzy bathmat, a votive candleholder…likely the flotsam of a Kitsilano yard sale.

I wonder about the people from whose lives this debris has washed ashore. Are they moderately tech-savvy animal lovers who enjoy bad American beer? Looking at the detritus of my own life–the dusty boxes of porcelain dolls my mamaw gave me each Christmas for most of my adolescence come to mind–I reason that it isn’t quite fair to judge someone on their unwanted things.

These black lace panties were hanging on the chainlink in April. I’ve since wondered about who took them home, but stopped blazing that trail of thought before it went too far.

This nice young man in the boots scores big with a free, possibly working boombox:

(he did not take the jacket)

I am not a poet.

I am not a poet, but I’ve written poetry. And what I love about poetry is the space it allots to small things. Last year I decided to write a poem called “Ode to the Mundane” (ode to moss, ode to new ink pens, ode to chairs on wheels, ode to cutting toe nails). I never actually did it. Still, I think there is something there in the muck.

Every semester my students write small writings: one and only one page about anything. Each small writing must begin with an epigraph. The rest is up to them. They are posted online and asked to comment, with specificity, on one another’s writing. When I log on and read them all, I am unfailingly surprised by their honesty, the common themes that emerge, the gushing comments they leave to the other writers. Suddenly an anonymous room of students becomes a conglomeration of people with lives and interests and funny ways of phrasing things.

I’m writing a book, a project so big I sometimes feel I can’t see the trees for the forest, the clouds for the sky, these small things for the muck of life. So in a seemingly-paradoxical effort to become more fruitful, I’m taking on a side project. This is my small writing. I hope you like it.