thehaunted

1. I was basically Luna Lovegood from 1986-1992. 2. Wit? Wisdom? Oh yeah. 3. Blue. 4. French. 5. Myers-Briggs-wise, I’m like Hermione except that she’s ENFJ and I’m ENFP (Luna is INFP). That J/P makes the difference – the J is why Hermione chose a house that focuses on the Just and the Good, and the P is why I’d rather study why people think things are Just and Good than to become a leader pursuing the Just and the Good. If that doesn’t make me a Ravenclaw, I don’t know what does.

I read the Menolly trilogy when I was about 13, an age at which I had not yet met other kids who felt as strongly about fictional places and people as I did, and at which I had not yet met my first mentor figure. After reading about Masterharper Robinton, though, I went on a temporary study-of-music binge and a permanent quest for a mentor. Since then, two real-world Robintons have helped me to pursue my goals – a high school literature teacher and a college rhetoric professor – and so I thank Robinton for inspiring me on that quest, and Menolly for reinforcing my hope that a kid can overcome a childhood among not-kindred spirits, a hope that went a long way toward making me confident enough to pursue the dream I have.

I happened to be in Atlanta for a conference – can’t remember now whether it was CCCC or NCTE or which – at the same time as the American Physical Society conference at which Stephen Hawking spoke. I could never get enough of Hawking; he’s so funny and personable, even when explaining extremely difficult concepts, plus he was still excited about his Simpsons appearance. So, fun. Explain this to me, though… how could it be that we saw SIX people who could have been my twin, none of them related to each other or to me, in that audience?!

My middle name is Aran. I had to know what that meant. As I had only about thirty euro left, I walked to Connemara from Galway to catch the ferry, was too tired to duck the salt spray, and barely staggered down the road from the dock to the Tigh Fitz. Despite my bleary appearance, they were all kindness and gave me a quite posh room for the night, and I spend most of the evening in the attached pub, gratefully drinking whatever the locals were buying for me and genuinely enjoying the conversation of an ageing accordonist.

Next morning, I felt a little sore but up for a lookabout, and so I set off for the old ring fort at the top of the great island. It’s a strange place – half the fort appears to have fallen into the sea, and there’s no source of fresh water, so why did neolithic peoples carefully fit three rings of stone together up here again? I looked over the cliffs a while, watching waves crash up and through the stones below, then wandered on.

Can’t remember which of the fifty gazillion ruined churches it was that I found several hours later and found myself oddly at home there. No wood, no glass, no metal, no ornaments left save what was carved in the fitted stones themselves, which have probably been standing these twelve hundred years; but when I knelt down on the pebbled floor and looked out over a thin altar and through a tall and narrow window, I saw three things: a stone bearing a carving of a halved circle, a sweep of green beyond a low stone wall, and a horse, standing quite still. The sky was the royal blue of evening, except where some gilded clouds hovered low on the horizon. The horse tossed its head, and I felt for my notebook and pen, but not to draw it – to make a note to myself. Found. One name. I know what it means now.

Of course later things got silly, as they always do when I travel. I helped a group of islanders with a historical preservation project; somehow I ended up with a tweed cap; there was a bit with a blackberry bush and a London slogan that reduced four German students to helpless laughter; Tyrone won the all-Ireland cup, and since for some reason Irish people always think I’m from Tyrone (some fluke of my accent?) I was treated to a few pints, interrupted twice – while everyone else went to mass (I was invited, but not being Christian, I don’t feel I ought to go), and when a rough and wiry fellow took me out in his punt. You know, the usual.

But seriously – I would go back to Inis Mor in a heartbeat. I would live there if I could. It wasn’t just the call of my name, and it wasn’t just the sight of the stone and the horse on the green. I can’t rightly tell you what it was. But I can tell you that in the little ruined church, I put a folded bit of paper on the altar, even though the altar was once consecrated to someone else’s god. There were no words on the bit of paper – just a sketch of a spindly tree that looked as though it were trying to stick a root into rocky soil. It was a sort of portrait of myself, to commemorate the moment when the geographical center of my heart shifted six thousand miles.

Is there room on the island for a crazy bookseller? Tell me and I’ll go….

Staggering out of la gare, barely awake after five days in Florence and an all-night gabfest with a gay Nigerian, I spared a glance for Notre Dame on my way to “the poorer quarters where the ragged people go” and… nearly got killed by an octogenarian on a bicycle who was wielding a bag of tenpenny nails. He jumped off his bike, asked me to help him build some bookshelves (!) and welcomed me into his weird world. This was none other than George Whitman, owner of S&Co. Ensued total craziness ranging from bookshelf building to busking to midnight rides with weird cabbies to dancing in the Tuileries to the great climactic moment, a late-night wine-sodden cafe argument with a biographer, an actor, a backpacker, and anyone else who happened by as to whether one could translate “Jabberwocky.” Yeah, I know the usual topic in Paris is the Decline and Fall of Something, but that night we were like necromancers trying to raise the body of Latin and make it dance to Lewis Carroll’s poetry.

I never did go inside the Louvre. I spent a total of thirty minutes on the rive droite. So I need to go back, and preferably in late September or October again. But another weird thing happened to me there… George told me I had better go home and buy a bookshop of my own, and when I came back, one was for sale, just half an hour away from my then-apartment. So I bought it. George, my mythical Leopold Bloom, I owe you, man.

www.legionarts.org This place is amazing. Take a look at the calendar and see names of bands and artists you would never expect to find in Iowa – yet here they are, playing to a small house (120? 150? at most). I’ve seen Richard Shindell here, and Josh Ritter, Geoff Muldaur, Danu, Dervish, John Wesley Harding, Lucy Kaplansky, Peter Mulvey… I could go on and on, and I could tell you how the sound quality is recording-good and the gallery outside the concert area displays incredible new works by artists any hep museum should be falling all over itself to feature, and I could tell you about how it’s all non-profit and how the people there do amazing things to benefit the community, but I’m just saying, go. Go. If you don’t know which five shows to pick out of the 100+ each year, ask. There’s something for everyone, and it’s all incredibly good.

There are a few times in the year when a person might find Mechanicsville interesting. If you’re patriotic, go on Memorial Day and check out the 200+ giant flags at the city cemetery. If you’re one to appreciate a well-kept town, go in the summer so you can check out the beautiful trees (it’s one of the most densely wooded small towns I think I’ve ever seen). But really, you have to live here to appreciate the place fully.

It’s small and quiet. I think one of the bars is still open, but the restaurant is closed. There are only a tiny handful of businesses. But the people – wow. When I lived here, if my car was still parked outside my apartment on a weekday, as many as three different people might show up with chicken soup in case I might be ill. It took me almost an hour to walk three blocks down Main Street because so many people stopped me to invite me up on the porch for cocoa and to ask how I was doing. I never went more than a few hours without a sympathetic ear and absolutely never went hungry. Small town life has its drawbacks too, I’m the first to admit (e.g., date the wrong person and you’ll never hear the end of it) – but I’ve never felt so cared about in any other place that I’ve lived.

In many respects (coughadministrativegoalscough), Coe is just another four-year liberal arts college. In one respect, it is like no other college on earth, and that is THE WRITING CENTER. Coe’s writing center is incredible. With the goal of helping people communicate to their intended audiences (rather than just correcting grammar or spelling), the writing center works with students, professors, and anyone else who wanders in to generate, expand upon, consider, outline, draft, reexamine, revise, reorganise, and/or polish just about any kind of writing a writer can think up, not to mention the essays one has to do for class.

Working there during my college years wasn’t just a highly entertaining course in words and working with words and writers – it changed how I view my life. I can’t explain how he did it, but director Dr. Robert Marrs somehow taught me to be comfortable with the idea that what I do is an ongoing project, what I choose affects my relationships with the world, what I think is constantly under revision – and it’s all cool. The journey is what matters in the end.

Dr. Bob rules. And the CWC staff. And the coffee.

I don’t make it back to Ames very often, but I went a week ago for my sister’s wedding, which took place at a newish? restaurant called “The Basil.” The place is a little weird in the layout, and it isn’t the absolute best food I’ve had in Ames (though I loved what they did with the potatoes), but the service was absolutely excellent.

Meanwhile… holy urban sprawl, Batman. I can’t believe how many new buildings have sprouted in Ames since I lived there just eleven years ago, and most of them are chain stores :( in the middle of the area that was completely under water in 1993 :(