J and Erica.

House I am staying at in El Cerito.

From my room.

View into the yard in El Cerito.

Publish Post

they weren't kidding about the fog.

Friday morning I waited, scared to move. Nothing happened, no pain. So, off I went to San Francisco! And it was a much better day than the day I prayed to The Lady of Guadalupe.

Things about San Francisco: people are mostly nice (except the ones who are mean and won’t let you use their washroom). In San Francisco holding a map makes for the most comical interactions. I started to write about them, but I couldn’t keep up; I could write a whole book full of sketches of all of the characters I’ve met the last few days. Let me just give you an idea: I’ve eaten pears in the yard with hippies at a Berkeley woman’s collective, nearly cried over a Turkish woman telling me about the children of incestuous marriages, ran away from a cab when the driver who didn’t know how to drive his cab insisted that he did, and raced some old dude in a wheelchair. Yup. Good times.

I’m going to post some of my poor and scanty selection of travel photos, then back to the house hunt.

Lady of Guadalupe

So Tuesday I began developing this head/jaw ache thing. Though by day I haven’t been anxious, by night someone must be chasing me again, or I'm just not in denial in my dreams, because I have been grinding my teeth at night. Wednesday, by the time I reached California my head was throbbing and I was heavily medicating with little result.

Thursday, I went to San Francisco! And hurrah! it was great and all, but really, I didn’t care- I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t see straight- it hurt. I’m sure I walked five miles that day gazing at all the Victorians, and really they were beautiful, but no matter, it was a terribly bad day. I had a burrito (day three of burritos) at Mariachi’s at Valencia and 16th (I am keeping track for myself). It tasted wonderful, but I felt horrible. I was in stuck in the heart of The Mission and I wanted my mommy. On the wall was The Lady of Guadalupe. Beneath her, a plaque saying in both English and Spanish not to worry about health but to pray to the lady and she would take care of me. I was desperate. I tried it. Nothing. I walked around the rest of the afternoon further overmedicating to the point of concern, deep down, cursing the Lady of Guadalupe and questioning the basis of my current future profession. That afternoon I had bought a bite plane, but it only seemed to make it hurt more. Though maybe only on my own meager scale, I was in a quite a bit of pain.

By the time Thursday night arrived I was scared because if it hurt more I didn’t know what to do and there is no one to call who is close enough to come bring me a bowl of soup and rub my back or carry me to the doctor if that was what I needed. I was scared because you can’t take a break from pain; it is like a cage and I quickly and easily get claustrophobic. If I freaked out and wanted to just cry like I’ve been wanting to for months, but I knew it would just make my head and jaw hurt more- making me further claustrophobic. I knew I could call home, but what’s the use of worrying people when all that calling does is highlight that there is nothing anyone can do. So I just curled up in the fetal position, poured water down my throat, tried to sleep and when I couldn’t tried to read Sputnik Sweetheart to distract me alternately throughout the night.

Late morning the pain was gone. Suddenly I was all praise for The Lady of Guadalupe.

Well, well.

I like Portland. The night I arrived and was pulling baggage out of J’s car a man biked by and said, “Good evening. Welcome home!” This has pretty much been my experience of Portland. People are laid back and happy to be here, so much so that even though the job market’s oversaturated they are willing to work in coffee shops until they are thirty. The air is crisp here. There are some interesting varieties of plants. You can get a pretty sweet Vietnamese sandwich and coffee sold to you by a wheeling and dealing ten year old girl for three dollars. The local beer is good. The houses have big porches. There are a disproportionate amount of strip clubs, but because its Portland, even the strip clubs have bike parking.

Monday I explored by myself. That night dined and rode around with J and Erika and went to a bar that had PacMan. Several times this past few days I’ve felt the urge to say “Welcome to the USA.” Once was definitely when a round came to $6.75. Yesterday morning J and I rode down by the river and to old China town. Sunny afternoon we took tubes, sandwiches, and a six pack of tall boy PBR’s down the Sandy River. So spectacular and tiring I passed out on a patch of dead grass and forgot where I am. Last night J and Erika cooked some delicious tacos. Erika’s place is so cute reminds me of a little sailboat hatch. I hope I can fine one a quarter as sweet. Last night we drove toured the city and went to a couple of bars. All I wanted was icecream so instead of beer I got icecream in scotch. Brilliant. I’ve had an unequivocally nice set of days.

Up until now this has mostly just felt like a vacation to see friends. This afternoon I head off alone to Oakland/El Cerito all by my lonesome. Last night I started feeling a wee bit tumultuous, but overall I am optimistic. I found an old map of San Francisco yesterday and I plan on coating it with a review and record of all of the taquerias I visit.

Expect phonecalls soon.

ok. so i left halifax. left dartmouth. hugged and kissed some family and some friends. ambivalence. packed me two suitcases one hundred and fifty dollars overweight and took them to seattle. smooth sailing fairly enough except for on my first flight there was a medical 'situation'-trained not to say emergency- and so we emergency landed in montreal and good thing i had a long layover because in the end it was tight but i made it.

seattle. pretty, though unexpectedly, claustrophobically hilly. i liked pike market. liked it when a man tried to sell me chocolate and orange pasta. yum! seattle has a lot of coffee shops, indeed. went past the first starbucks. had some of the original roast. whatever.

wendy's wedding was lovely. wendy of course was a beautiful bride. the dress was beautiful; the beehive was beautiful; the bride was really beautiful. all went off pretty much without a hitch (i don't think we can count minor mishaps like unwanted foliage in the bouquets or complications with the bustle).

it was really good to see the kids again, as i knew it would be. great to see mark and johanna, even if only briefly, and anne. lots of fun to see tim- who drove 33 hours from chicago- and his lady who was really nice and sweet. great to see zachie. really great. i'm happy he's gonna come visit. great to see cate though i didn't get to talk to her as much as i would have liked it doesn't matter because i am going to see her in a month! and i forgot how great to be around mark. we went to his parent's house yesterday and it was funny to see him with all of his tall little brothers. i like how i can not see someone for over a year and then when i do it is as if no time has ever passed. i haven't been called d_mmons so much in my life.

i'm with j and erika in portland now and it is a beautiful day.

i'll write more about it and if i can find my camera cord i will post some pictures.

expect more from me in the future. i plan on keeping this thing better updated.

i haven't figured for what purpose but i want it.

run to the forrest.

learned new trick tonight. when the boyez try to touch your hips too much not playing basketball any longer too long and you trying to dance and they trying to get you drinks you say i gotta pee or i gotta go to the maitland bridge strawberry supper in the morn and you just bolt out the door in your silly lavender floral home away to safe because god knows you just want to dance and like some other boy and you feel pretty good home eating nacho chips alone.

My bridesmaids dress makes me feel like I’m on Titanic.

Apparently in Afghanistan everybody is so enamored by the movie that dire risks have been taken against the Taliban just to have ‘Leo hair.’

The new Get Smart sorely disappointed my childhood memories. Why do I go about things that I know can only end badly?

The cottage was so lovely this weekend it nearly broke my heart.

Three seasons of The Wire down, two to go.

Upon Devon's recommendation I read a good story yesterday. Symbols and Signs by Nabakov.

The boy in the story had a case of ‘referential mania.’ “In these very rare cases, the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence... Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing, in some awful way, messages that he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme. All around him, there are spies. Some of them are detached observers, like glass surfaces and still pools; others, such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses, lynchers at heart; others, again (running water, storms), are hysterical to the point of insanity, have a distorted opinion of him, and grotesquely misinterpret his actions. He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being.”

Ever feel that way?

Last week James macerated apricots and bathed them in cream. Apricots and lots of things move from my hate to love list lately.

OK. Even with daily little joys and distracting tasks I can no longer deny that I move far away for a long time in no more than three weeks. It’s as if someone spun me around ten times and plopped me down. The future is thoroughly abstract and feelings I once trusted, thoughts and reasons, separate within me like the jewels within a pomegranate.

Last night for first time in as long as can be remembered I had a dream where no one tried to kill me or lock me up. Though I began a pauper, and chased as usual, instead of awaking to gunfire, there were secret portals, magic passageways, and someone carrying me away on their shoulders holding my hand down a country road to set me down to a mug of icecream. I’m going to choose to hope in this, even though I forget his face and always wake before I get there.

last night dreamed i was knocked up and left for dead or at least it felt that way. got some beautiful fireball flowers when i was in the country this past weekend. work and bonfires lately. life moves on and i struggle to keep pace.

took pictures on mother's day to send to tracy who is alone in afghanistan. pale ghosts.
but as per usual, i didn't get around till doing this until now, and now tracy is in a hospital in scotland. life is so precious. i am trying to get better.

birthday letters. to darcy lynn on her twenty fifth birthday.

cupcake tier concept compliments of martha stewart living.
cupcakes by evan. flowers by myself.
lanterns compliments of k sinclair sowerby
and the dollar store, dartmouth.


birthday girl and erin.
happy new year!

krista smoking a big birthday horn-j?
bonfire, compliments of grant and the elliot-doucete's.
entertainment by nicole.

photographs comliments of tiffany atwell.

Our Wave Washed Empire. The Family Business.

We caught glimpses of the wild ponies…brown, black, bay, and piebald, trotting barefoot over the sandy dunes, sometimes singly, more often in little herds marshaled and guarded by small shaggy stallions. Rabbits, too, swarmed across our track. And there were birds without number, seabirds and land birds, as though the island were a convention-center for the feathered tribes. As we drove along gaunt bleaching ribs protruded from the sand, like tombstones in a cemetery. Some, the driver told us, were the bones of stranded whales. Others were the timbers of dead ships. Some were weedy with submersion by every tide, others were white with sand and salt and took on rose tints in the rays of the setting sun. Wrecks, wrecks, wrecks; here a solitary spar, there a while ship. It truly seemed an ocean graveyard – a place where ships came to die and be buried; yet not a mournful place. We children were too young to feel that way about it, when there was so much life among the ponies and the bunnies and the birds.

James Farquhar, Farquhar's Luck

Recent exhibit on the ponies of Sable Island.

If I don’t think forward or back my days are perfect. If I do not have expectations I cannot be disappointed. Monday I fell off the work wagon and rode my bike to nowhere. Returned home in a sweat with a package of rice paper wraps and a couple sweet potatoes: a happy woman. Today, I don’t know exactly. It involved reading family history, a song that reminds me it’s alright to not be alright, a fumbling awkwardness, and coffee with fresh maple syrup. I’m further convinced that happiness and sadness are versions of the same.

when it is winter in can forget how beautiful nova scotia really is. seafoam is the original lace.

1. Are you in a relationship? Not the kind you wanna know about.

2. If no, would you like to be? Yup, but only if it’s a good one.

3. How often do you visit MySpace? If I’m expecting something, often, if not, not often.

4. What is your favorite candy bar? Skor/Health, Cookies & Cream, or anything of the Lindor/Lindt variety.

5. What are your favorite shoes? Deck shoes are nice.

6. Have you ever tripped going up steps? Yes. It traumatized me in highschool.

7. Where did you go on vacation last summer? Does Connecticut count? The cottage, I guess.

8. Would you bungee jump? If I were trying to prove I was cool or if I were having an early mid life crisis (probably yes).

9. Do you own a Fall Out Boy CD? Nope.

10. Do you like amusement parks? Yeah, though not as much as some people I know, and much less so since the Six Flags feet decapitation incident.

11. Do you ride rollercoasters? Yup. Even the superman. Though, I dare not take my hands off of the bar or even smile much.

12. What is your current favorite CD? AC Newman “The Slow Wonder” has accompanied me well this week.

13. Can you touch your tongue to your nose? Nope. I can’t do anything dexterous.

14. When was the last time you were in the ocean? Too long ago. I can’t remember. My feet went in today accidentally when I didn't get away from a wave in time.

15. Do you like flowers? A great deal. Though, I think I’d rather be picnicked in a garden than given cut flowers that die. I don’t understand why people dry roses. Dried roses creep me out.

16. Would you kiss someone of the same sex? I did a couple times by accident playing suck and blow at a student counsel retreat. Kissed a girl bartending at a fundraiser as part of a dare. I think there was one more, too, but I can't remember. For real though, like with tongue? I don’t know. Probably at a price.

17. Where were you tonight? This is tonight. I am in bed. Last night took it out of me.

18. What are you listening to? Black Mountain.

19. Is there anything you can't wait for this summer? Making lists of things to do in the summer is one of my only hobbies. Getting hobbies is high on my list of summer priorities. Garden parties are greatly anticipated. So is seeing Wendy, the Chase, Mark and Cate and Zachary.

21. Socks and sandals? Definitely both together is very hot this season. I’ve been trying to convince Darcy, but she will not be convinced.

22. Who was the last person to go to the movies with you? Either Kate and Darcy or my mom. My memory serves me poorly.

23. What's one thing you really hope to do this spring? Relax. Learn to write.

24. Do you like to go Mini-Golfing? I used to think I hated it , but I think that's just because my little brother loved it.

25. Are you moving this spring? Not till late summer.

26. Are you going to be starting a new job this spring? Hopefully not. Starting three was enough.

27. Have you ever slapped someone? Yup. Allison Leek and Gerry Hubley.

28. Did you get poison ivy? Never, surprisingly.

29. Do you plan on going camping this summer? I always plan on it, but we’ll see. I always plan on a lot of things, only a quarter of which happen. I liked the summer I went camping in Chester with the couples and got smashed and refused to communicate in anything but drunk French. Maybe it is time for history to repeat. It wouldn't be the first time history did that lately.

31. Favorite pizza topping? Its less about the topping and more about the content, density, and thickness of the crust, the sauce or choice lack thereof, and choice of cheeses. Salvatore’s, Bar, Pepe’s, or Sally’s, please.

32. Pants or shorts? Shorts. Most people don’t know how to buy pants right. Shorts look awkward on just about everybody so it levels the playing field. Pants of skirts? Skirts definitely.

33. Do you smoke? Only when provoked.

34. Do you use Chapstick? Nope. That stuff just makes your lips chapped.

35. What's the last movie you watched? For Your Consideration. It sucked.

36. Are you currently fighting with anyone? Depends what counts as a fight. You could say I am involved in a minor petty feud.

37. Are you too forgiving? I have been trying to figure out how to forgive for years to no avail. Maybe I should write a dissertation on it, or get therapy.

38. How many pets do you have? Max and Jacob are a little bit like my pets.

39. Own any clothing from Hot Topic? I wish.

40. What's your favorite breakfast food? Hash.

41. Where was the last place you drove? I think I drove a car to Starbucks a couple of months ago.

42. Where was the last place you walked? Along the beach.

43. Where will you be in 24 hours? Probably right here in my bed. It is nearly bedtime, after all.

44. What did you do 2 nights ago? Went to sleep at an uncharacteristically early hour.

45. Last time you went to a fancy restaurant? In a sense I go to one every day or so if you count working. My brother took me to Jane’s for fancy eggs benny a week or so back. Does Smitty’s count? I wish I had someone to take me out nice.

46. Last thing you bought? Four scoops of icecream.

47. Have you ever been in a foreign country, if so where? Yes. The US, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands for a couple of minutes, Scotland, England if you count Heathrow, and France if you count St. Pierre et Miquelon, which you probably shouldn't.

48. Anywhere you want to go? So many places I do not know where to begin. As a Farquhar I feel it is my destiny to sail the seven seas. I learned today that great Grammpy Farquhar set world records in numbers of seals killed in a single blood bath, but I prefer not to focus on that part of the history. Markie's carrying forth the Farquhar heritage by gambling. Maybe I should become a lighthouse keeper.

49. What's Michigan? A place that Sufjan sings about.

50. What have you done today? Slept in, roasted garlic and made a delicious white bean dip, went to the beach and had an icecream (see above), watched a crappy movie with my brother (see above), ate some oranges, surfed the net.

51. What time do you wake up in the morning? Around eleven. Had to make up for going to bed at nearly five.

52. Are you thinking of someone right now? I keep thinking of this same someone. I hope that he is happy.

53. Have you ever thrown something out of a moving car? Like to throw jelly filled timbits at speed limit signs.

54. Do you wish you were somewhere else? I have more fun trying to make myself into someone better than I would if I were to actually become someone else. It is part of who I am to always try to become someone else.

55. Would you date someone who smoked cigarettes? Yes. But, if I kept him, I wouldn’t like to think that he would die before me and so after a while I would likely try everything to make him stop.

56. Are you happy with your life right now? Today at the beach I felt completely happy. Lately, out of the blue I’ve been having these fleeting happy moments that are just as equally sad. I think I am afraid to just be happy.

57. What's the last thing you ate? White bean dip with tortilla chips.

58. Whats the next place you have to go? To the hospital (for work).

59. How many hours do you usually sleep per night? Seven or eight. If I sleep less I am a whiney crab. If I sleep more I feel like I’m wasting my life. Though, if I had someone to stay and lay in bed with me, even all day, I’d feel I’m living my life perfectly well.

60. What's the next important date on your calendar? May 9th. Darcy Lynn’s fantastic 25th birthday.

61. Who were the last 5 people to call you? Brother, Matt Klaas, Mom, Dad, Boss.

62. McDonald's or Burger King? Big Mac

63. Who last text messaged you? Driving with Micah from Connecticut to Canada, I sent one last mass text to let everyone know my cellphone would be over. Some people messaged me back with goodbyes and well wishes. I’m not sure who was last. That was such a sad and happy day.

64. Are you closer to your mother or father? I really don’t know. I’m a people pleaser. I try to keep a balance.

65. Do you like to quote things? I prefer to steal things other people wrote or said and, instead of quoting them, pass them off as my own.

66. Are you afraid of the dark? Only if I know something is going to jump out at me.

67. Do you exercise regularly? I try to.

68. What is the most expensive thing YOU ever bought? A master’s degree.

69. What should you be doing right now? Nothing, and I am finding it disorienting and overwhelming.