essential ingredients

the bad thing about entering a professional graduate program is that there are a whole set of professional skills that are somehow required.  so instead of talking about how that makes me nervous i'll just point blank state that i don't know how to use auto cad (nor do i know what that is), google sketch-up, or the adobe creative suite.  i don't know how to draw exceptionally well or visually render perspective drawings of space.  but these people let me in, so they get what they get. 

however, on the upside, i do know how to make mac-and-cheese from scratch, a recipe that never fails to make me feel good about myself and my capacity to do anything.  i can make a roux, a béchamel, and delight the senses.  i also know how to politely sever my relationship with an organization where i suffered the angry meanderings of an employee to on a daily basis.  oh, and i get to hang out with some awfully wonderful people this entire weekend in what will soon be my new home.  

life, though more complex, is still very good.

Also, you should try making this: CRACK  If all else fails, this will make you feel like a genius.

the feeling of space

I knelt over the vacant cinder-block border into vacancy, the dirt was iron rich , dark yet empty.  I thought about the day I spent an entire afternoon in her lavender and blush colored button-down gingham.  That was when the grass was potato-greens and the beds were all gladiolas and daisy.  I thought, "he loves me, he loves me not," and she chanted alongside me on the front stairs.  The slam of the gate as he returned from his work just up the hill, that black-iron structure looming in the background.  How's my girl?  Today, who does he mean?  

There is loneliness.  A loneliness much larger and grand than empty flower beds or the loss of a loved one.  There is the ever present reminder of their life, their love, their smell in the foreground and background of everything you see.   It is her sliver-white hairs in bristles of an old silver-plate brush, her finger-print on a measuring cup.  It is the way he sits there waiting to see her thinking nothing about her old grey hairs, but the affirmative daisy petals that flew away in the wind.  And he sits there in his seat, waiting to be carried away with them.

 he loves me.