Monthly Archives

January 2010

It’s time for a new carrot

The past few days have been the most extreme tides of the year–the water so high that it’s barely possible to paddle under some bridges, then the water so low that the Back Bay is mostly mudflats. This has also resulted in HUGE amounts of debris being pulled into the water–some chunks of it are large tangled island masses of branches and trash that are 4 or 5 times the size of my boat. Much of it is just random floating crap–so paddling through the channel is a bit like a slalom race. Yesterday I veered around something that looked like a tree branch, only to learn seconds later that it was a huge log (most of it submersed under water) and it made a loud thwack it collided with my outrigger. I was afraid that I’d cracked something and might even be taking on water. But the next few minutes went smoothly and I forgot about it until I brought my boat up to the deck for cleaning. I found an ugly gash on the ama (the outrigger float), exposing the carbon fiber shell under the gelcoat finish. Fortunately, it seems that the damage is purely superficial. It was still discouraging, though.

The scratch on the ama was on my mind when I went out again this morning. I work pretty hard to keep my boat in good condition–taking good care of her so she’ll do her best for me. I hate to see her get dings and scratches. And then I had this ‘aha’ moment: the best way to keep my boat in ‘pristine’ condtion would be to keep her stored away safely. She can’t help but show some wear if I keep taking her out on the water. And it was right then that I decided to wear out my boat–by paddling regularly and hard. Of course, I’ll still be on the watch for floating tree trunks…but I won’t stop getting out on the water just because I’d like to keep the pretty paintjob.

The other thing that was foremost in my thoughts as I paddled this weekend, was the news that I got on Friday: our division was canceled at the World Champs because too few teams could afford the trip to New Caledonia. I knew this might be a possibility because several teams had already pulled out. But the final news was pretty disheartening. I’ve used that upcoming race as a “carrot” to keep up my practicing and cross-training all winter long. And I was so looking forward to paddling the waters in the South Pacific in May. But of course I still aim to do so…someday.

So now I need a new carrot, a new goal to work towards. It might be a special race or reward for reducing my per-mile speed by a specific amount. I’m not sure yet. But if you have any good ideas, I’m all ears. (oh, and I’m also looking for a new way to ring in my biggest birthday yet now that I’m no longer planning to win me a shiny medal that week).

And just like the inevitable scratches on my boat, I’m sure I’ll continue to encounter a variety of bumps as I continue paddling–canceled races, bad weather, damaged boats, etc. But if I was gonna let the challenges stop me, I’d never have gotten back in the canoe on that memorable first race…

January 31, 2010

making history

My blogging life

Cross-posted at History Compass

Three years ago I outed myself as a blogger–to both the folks in my department and beyond, as I started using my real name online in places that could link back to my identity as a graduate student. Prior to that, my blogging was something that I did on the side, pseudonymously. However, for a variety of reasons, it seemed time to meld my online and real-life identities.

Two years ago I wrote a post on my History blog about the “seduction” of the blogging life, and how it was an asset to my work as a scholar. I explained,

Yet what I find the most seductive about blogging is the continued experimentation. It’s a challenge to find something new to say every day and to find new ways of saying it (especially when my life is just a mundane mix of grad school, parenting, and spiritual seeking–it’s hard to imagine more boring story fodder). So I have to think about how best to ‘hook’ my readers, how to provoke a response, and how to write with such skill that my posts are linked by larger blogs.

Now that I’m addicted to blogging, I wonder how it will affect my professional life. Though I’m a few years from facing the job market, I can’t help my think that search committees might be put-off by my flower photos and rambling observations. Often I vow to stop blogging and focus my time on more legitimate academic pursuits (just think, people, of all the book reviews I could be writing instead of blogging!).

But then I consider this: Blogging lubricates my writing muscles. Pounding out a two-paragraph post during my morning latte primes me for a day of historical inquiry…

Now, I’m finding myself in a place where I’m a bit weary of blogging. Certainly that’s a strange confession in a blogpost! But it seems as though blogging doesn’t carry the same excitement for me that it once did. It might be because I’ve become an avid tweeter, or because I’ve been at this blogwriting gig for nearly a decade and I’ve run out of things to say. Or maybe it’s because I spend so many hours at the computer with my academic work, when I have some moments of discretionary time I want to do something wholly different (like read poetry). Surely it’s a phase that will soon pass. But it feels fairly odd to me right now, knowing how enthusiastically I blogged in years past.

January 28, 2010

Random

Thaw

in love, in spring, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

From Audre Lorde’s “Thaw”
(for those of my friends in colder climes who are ready for spring)

The language of past seasons
collapses pumpkins in spring
false labor slides like mud
off the face of ease
and whatever I turn my hand to
pales in the sun.

We will always be there to your call
the old witches said
always said always saying
something else at the same time
you are trapped asleep
you are speechless
perhaps you will also be
broken

Step lightly all around us
words are cracking
off we drift
separate and syllabic
if we survive at all.

January 27, 2010

Random

Mary Monday: and hold it up to the light

sweet peas, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

A friend recently posted this poem to her Facebook page, and I just love it…(and as for the picture, I am dreaming of sweet peas a lot these days–because mine are not yet flowering…)

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

January 25, 2010

outrigger

harbor mouth

the harbor mouth, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

The picture above is what the harbor mouth looked like a week ago, when I was headed out solo in my one-man canoe. Since then, two canoes have been destroyed on those rocks ahead (though, fortunately, all the paddlers were safe) during our recent storms. Here’s what the harbor mouth looked like two days ago (via daily hotshot):

January 24, 2010

mary monday

Mary Monday: Now or never!

geraniums, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

Some salient thoughts from Thoreau:

Take time by the forelock. Now or never!
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.

January 19, 2010

outrigger poetry world

let it splash…

When the ocean surges, don’t let me
just hear it. Let it splash inside my chest!
~Rumi

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world – (song is Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

via worldhum

I can’t even express how deeply it thrills me to realize that these creatures are swimming below and around me when I paddle on the ocean–thus, I need poetry (and photography)! The ocean itself seems a kind of creature, its cycles and rhythms are at both completely regular and completely unpredictable. Added to that is the beauty of all that finds home within its depths…

On Saturday, for the first time, I tested out a waterproof camera setup to take out with me on my outrigger canoe. I snapped pics of pelicans and shorebirds, and the various landmarks that are part of the Newport channel. And here’s me, on my boat*:

I wish the ocean was as clear and blue in the Newport area as it is in the Japanese aquarium captured above. I rarely ever actually “see” anything swimming in the water except for the trash floating on the surface. So that’s one reason I’m really thrilled to be headed to the South Pacific in a few months–to see some really clear blue water. Of course the other reason for my excitement is that I’ll be competing in my first international outrigger competition. And that, my friends, is as amazing and unbelievable as life can be…

*We rigged up a sweet steering system for my canoe so I can maneuver with just one foot pedal.

January 18, 2010

making history

the conversation

Came across this quotation on a humanist listserv this morning and just had to share:

From Kenneth Burke’s,”The Conversation of History”:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar [or, your padddle]. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941)

January 15, 2010

deep thoughts world

You will survive

When I was 13, I was struggling to survive, too, so the message of this video resonates with me even though I have no experience with human trafficking. And…I am so pleased to be part of it–you can see me, along with others from Orange County Friends Meeting at 2:12.

January 14, 2010

songs/poetry

Mary Monday: “Hum”

This seemed an appropriate poem for the 80-degree days that we’ve been having here in Southern California. My rosebushes are putting on so much new growth!

From “Hum” by Mary Oliver

it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. and the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us

January 5, 2010

songs/poetry

Mary Monday: "Hum"

This seemed an appropriate poem for the 80-degree days that we’ve been having here in Southern California. My rosebushes are putting on so much new growth!

From “Hum” by Mary Oliver

it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. and the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us

January 5, 2010

songs/poetry

a quiet clapper

This morning I am creating space with the poetry of Margaret Hasse.

Being Still

She’s a quiet clapper in the bell of the prairie,
a girl who likes to be alone.
Today, she’s hiked four miles down
ravines’ low cool blueness.
Bending under a barbed wire, she’s in grass fields.
She’s at the edge of the great plains.
Wise to the openness, she finds it a familiar place.
Her clothes swell like wheat bread.

When she returns to her parents house,
the foxtails and burrs have come home, too.
The plants seem intent on living in new ground.
[…]
The stiller she is, the more everything moves
in the immense vocabulary of being.

January 3, 2010