Kira

Amissos

hage0243@umn.edu — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:41:29 GMT

[singlepic id=59 w=593 h=400 float=]

The English Club visited Amissos on a cool November afternoon. The the wintry sunlight was fading fast, and slid golden over the twin tumuli atop the hill above the old harbor, slowly fading to twilight blues as it sank behind the coastal mountains. The air was cool, a faint breeze blowing in from the sea. Situated to give panoramic views of the Westwards from Samsun, the city seemed, for once, tranquil in the Black Sea dusk.

Amissos is the name of the ancient settlement which preceded modern Samsun. It was a trading port in Hellenistic times, and famed as belonging to the homeland of the Amazons. Samsun’s modern citizens use the name mainly to mean the site of two tombs and a modern cafe somewhat East of the city, and also to denote the otherwise invisible historic forebear of the ramshackle modern town.

The tumuli are named Kalkanca and Baruthane, according to the Directorate of Culture and Tourism’s Samsun handbook, and may have been used as lighthouses; from a certain angle the two mounds align and only one is visible, apparently indicating an ancient harbor entrance. Claims have been made that the hills were used as temple spots for Roman dieties as well.

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Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Just moved to Samsun, Turkey

hage0243@umn.edu — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:26:26 GMT

Long time since I posted anything on here. A wordpress upgrade broke the old “Options” theme I was using, and I’ve been fiddling with making the blog presentable again since then, on and off. Mosty off as I was spending a lot of time job seeking, then getting ready to move, and finally moving from Minneapolis to Samsun.

Samsun is a small city on the Black Sea Coast of Turkey – friendly, middle class, full of observant Muslims, and a bit dull. I’m teaching English at a private girl’s school outside town, and my husband is doing the same at a boy’s school under the same management. People are friendly, the food is *great*, there’s nothing to spend money on, and a year here should let us recover economically from the debacles we’ve had to deal with since leaving Moscow.

I’m going to be posting a lot more travel writing and catching up on older photographic work, so do want to find a good way to present all this material… which I guess means fussing with Wordpress more. I’ll try to post more often, anyway.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Facebook

hage0243@umn.edu — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:23:07 GMT

Well, first off apologies for not writing much lately. Been paying more and more attention to Facebook and neglecting LJ... not that I like Facebook more; it's a very shallow level of communication there! It is faster and easier though, and more of the people I know face-to-face are using it now. I've made my page public and it can be read at http://www.facebook.com/kira.hagen .

And so it goes...

hage0243@umn.edu — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:36:47 GMT

Sorry I haven't been posting much; been using facebook more and more lately and neglecting LJ. Life is muddling along. Put some more job apps in today, wrote a Craigslist ad looking for governess work and had the damn site lose it after I spent almost an hour getting the wording right... hate that.

Spring's coming along slowly. About half the seeds I've planted are up now. I'm getting better at harping. Got my bike back from home but someone's lost the lock and I can't afford a new one yet. Might meet up with Dave and walk over to Dinkytown later, if the weather stays okay. He's dieting and trying to get more exercise.

Guess I don't really have a lot to write.

Happy Equinox

hage0243@umn.edu — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:24:24 GMT

Happy Spring, everyone!

About flippin' time. Arg. Imbolc actually means something in other areas; here it's just an excuse to go sledding or have a barbecue in the snow.

Been feeling a bit down lately. This winter just drags on and on and on, the snow won't melt and it's warm one day then frigid the next and have I mentioned I AM SO SICK OF WINTER.

All Snakes Day/ St. Paddy's was okay, had some people over, lots of food and bad movies... missed the old crowd, missed my parrot that died five years and a day ago, missed being employable and having money...

Been fighting depression, my own and my husband's. Feeling ineffectual and confused a lot, indulging in avoidance behaviors, working on creative projects unlikely to go anywhere, trying to get up to speed with some computer design languages like PHP and CSS, which is an exercise in frustration anyway. Arg. It's winter's rotting end, when the dog shit and dead things surface.

I should go to bed. This is just self destructive, staying up this late and...

So anyway. Planning on getting out to one of the river parks Saturday, do some observance, hope not so much for a "sign" of some kind as for a bit of perspective. Or at least a reminder I won't always be stuck in a stuffy house with all the blinds pulled so that would-be robbers can't see inside.

"Wealth is Well-Being"

hage0243@umn.edu — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:33:48 GMT

Just read this article on Truthout, and wanted to quote a bit from it:

Wealth is Well-being

Wealth is seen as the well-being of individuals, society and the earth. Wealth is already present in nature; it is not "created." Clean air and water, strong communities and fertile soils are inherently valuable because our well-being depends on them - independent of markets.
In this view, to "do good" is a form of wealth preservation. We can see this with a form of common wealth that we all depend upon - the air we breathe. The logic works like this:
1. Wealth is anything that creates well-being.

2. Clean air increases well-being, so it is a form of wealth.

3. Dirtying the air reduces well-being, so it is a loss of wealth.

4. Keeping the air clean is preserving wealth.
Put another way, as progressives we recognize that even the hardest working person will starve if there is no food. Conversely, we believe that the Good Life is about more than money (beautifully depicted in this video by Free Range Studios).

Nice. That definition of wealth suits me a lot better than "wealth as material accumulation" - especially given how much having things anchors you!

"Sad Brown Eyes"

hage0243@umn.edu — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:46:47 GMT

Sad Brown Eyes
Originally uploaded by BBMaui

I think this photo is just extraordinary. Saw it in a list of good wildlife photos.

Tonight's shoot, various thoughts

hage0243@umn.edu — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:43:44 GMT

Please excuse a bit of stream of consciousness here... I just finished a somewhat uninspiring shoot and am feeling a little fried...

Tony's at work, Adrian and Carus are off playing vampires... I'm sitting around, guess I could download tonight's pictures... drinking wine - got a bottle because it's the civilized thing to do when you're doing a shoot, but the model barely drinks, was driving tonight anyway, and her makeup artist was (sigh) underage and some sort of straight edger. Oh well. More for me! It's good wine, too - "Releaf" organic cabernet sauvingnon. I recommend. It's full bodied and spicy - a little more like what I think of as being good merlot traits; I tend to find cabernets somewhat thin sometimes.

Charisma is the thing that really sets out good models, I think. Charisma and vivaciousness. Actual looks don't matter nearly as much. Clear skin is really important, though - I don't want to spend 20 minutes on each picture cleaning up zits, moles, and scars. And knowing how to move a little - tonight's model was a nice girl but had no idea how to pose. Also, it sounds like the other photographers she's worked with were skeezy guys, so no wonder she wasn't terribly good at moving. I asked her if it was okay to move her hair and she said she's had guys "rearrange" her breasts without asking. Yuck.

Of course, I get those semi-regular requests from 50-odd year old gentlemen asking me to shoot them in the nude... I tell them fine, but it'll cost and my husband is going to be assisting me on lights. No "okay"s on that yet, thank the gods.

I think I'm coming to the end of doing "trade-for" work, other than the Photo-Op stuff - doing that again on the first, mainly to network. It's a good networking event. I'm pretty happy with my portfolio - need to update it a bit, but I've got the shots I want to update it with already.

Oh gods, going through these prints... Ok, anybody reading this who models: if your face is badly broken out, just don't try doing a shoot. A couple spots, no big deal. Half your face crusty with concealer? Dear gods, how much photoshopping am I supposed to do? This is photographer abuse.

Wish Tony wasn't working. Maybe I'll go downstairs and work on the jacket I'm sewing. Bored...

getting ready

hage0243@umn.edu — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:43:55 GMT

Pretty much set up for shooting Saturday. I'm going to the Mukluk Ball in Ely, put on by Will Steger to benefit some global warming project. And their regular photographer canceled so I'm going to be handling that, which ought to look pretty good on a photographic resume... I've got my lights, I got a roll of dark green paper for backdrops, and today I got 100 business cards with the "charging horses" photo on them printed up. Need to make a paper up for people's email addresses; I'm going to be shooting for free and then offering prints for sale via my web gallery, I think.

Missing Tony a bit, though, feeling a little bit lonely. Well, this is a good opportunity, and fun, and spending a week at Mom's place means halving the food budget for Tony and I... and a bit of time away from each other periodically - especially when we're both largely unemployed and seeing far too much of each other day to day - helps our relationship. Or at least reminds me that he doesn't ONLY make me crazy. Also, he puts off lots of body heat, and the room I'm sleeping in isn't so warm. Sigh. Of course when he gives me grief I like telling him that my very cold toes are missing the backs of his knees.

Anyway, I should hit the sack. Got to do laundry and track down a swimsuit tomorrow, charge batteries and so on and so on...

Insomnia

hage0243@umn.edu — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:08:59 GMT

Had a little bit of a January thaw today - it actually got up to about 50F/ 10C (ish. I'm really not that great at converting.) Michael and I went over to Dinkytown and had chai lattes. We both wanted to go down to some park and bask in sunlight but we didn't get together until three, so wasn't going to work out as the sun's still setting before 5 and I'm recovering too slowly from this flu. But it was nice to go out with an open jacket and no hat - a reminder that there is life and promise beyond the cold. Have I mentioned how little I like cold weather? Going outside and not having the air bite you is pretty sweet.

That said, I think I'm going up to Ely. Mom got tickets for the Ely Mukluk Ball for her and Dad, and a hotel room, and it's looking like Dad's not going to be in the country long enough to go with her... I would really love to get up that far North, anyway. The trees are amazing, all covered in bearded lichen - swamps of tamaracks and hills of 4 billion year old stone, the roots of glacier-scraped mountains long since ground away. Waterfalls, icefalls, and Lake Superior in all her crystalline winter glory... The North Woods are really deeply wilderness, and beautiful.

Really ought to go to bed. Only half packed though. My mind's wide awake and my body's exhausted. Annoying. Bloody flu. Guess I'll hit the sack anyway.

Rock on.

hage0243@umn.edu — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:03:20 GMT

"Wanderlust's avatar"

hage0243@umn.edu — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:02:57 GMT

So my friend Dave used a mobile phone with video to take a clip of Jesse, Rachel, and I to show off his real life friends to his Second Life friends. And he introduced me as the avatar of wanderlust...

I'm trying, I'm really trying. I'm avoiding travel websites and magazines and mainly just working on model photos. I'm barely glancing at the ESL boards. But it's hard, and Jesse went on at length about Korea's charms at the little Midway restaurant he met us at, and it would be so easy to move there... schools even offer free airfare most of the time.

Missing Moscow... not the city itself exactly, certainly not the air or weather, but very much the feeling of being valuable and valued. Of having skills that were in demand. Missing Berlin... sitting on a summer evening in the park across the street, drinking strawberry porter and listening to the happy people and the wind in the trees... Tallinn, damp winds and golden leaves on medieval cobbles, the warmth of the little cafes with their mulled wine and cheesecake... Paris, where even the ugly things are touched with grace; Reykjavik, where it feels like the old gods wrap their arms up around you and everything feels so safe; even Bucharest, with her dilapidated but luscious charms... The road, stretching out to a world full of pain and beauty and potential, where anything might happen and often does.

But I do have things I want to do here, even though I don't know where I'll get the money, and I've told people I'll stay through the summer. How this is going to work out when we're making almost exactly the same amount of money as our rent costs, I don't know. At least here we're not alone in being broke, and we have family and the wonderful camaraderie of old friends here.

And there's a part of me that still feels exhausted from the last few years' stress, and doesn't want to go seeking all that again quite yet.

No one is hiring...

hage0243@umn.edu — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:11:54 GMT

So, yeah. It's not like I do "stable employment" that well anyway.

And most of my skilled and talented friends are also unemployed right now, so here's a general outline of what I'm thinking about: we have photographic, CMS, web design, and marketing skills together. I can do headshots, real estate, and product photography; I also know Wordpress fairly well and have a basic familiarity with Joomla and Drupal. So on my own, I could set up basic promotional websites for people or small businesses. A lot of people are trying to sell themselves or their skills online, one way or another, and doing it with some pretty lousy pictures of themselves.

I can do photographer's websites, with full photoshelter integration if they want/ can afford it. I can do artist's websites, or model portfolios. I could do a small business' e-commerce site on a wordpress installation. I'm working on a networking portal for my dad's sustainable development work right now, and a page for my mom's music services.

My living expenses are really low right now. I don't need to charge standard rates - I could do promo prices for a few months until I can get a studio, at least, preferably for cash.

I'm thinking $25 for a photo shoot aimed at some decent headshots for online profiles. For product photography, probably $50 for the shoot plus $5 per item? That's less than half what I've heard recommended to photographers looking to get into product photography, but again, my costs are very low right now and I want to get some actual business going. I could set up wordpress for someone for about $50 for a basic site - more if it needed extensive galleries or integration with other sites.

So pretty much just brainstorming here - what do you guys think? Anyone have any collaboration ideas? What do you think of the prices I mentioned? Too low? Too high? Thoughts please!

Random stuff

hage0243@umn.edu — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:15:21 GMT

Feeling sort of low today... Dad's in Haiti on an agroforestry project and I'm trying to help figure out a couple things for him. Wishing I was out doing interesting things in interesting places now. Right now I'm just stagnating.

Anyway, the soil there is badly depleted of phosphates and I'm trying to figure out useful permaculture solutions. This is going to be a big agricultural issue for the whole world before too long unless we start composting all our toilet wastes, btw - a solution that has its own set of problems (most medications that people ingest go right through them, don't break down easily, and are not at all good for the environment).

So... this is me more or less thinking out loud... it looks like phosphate uptakes from depleted soils are done mainly by mycorrhizal fungi, which live symbiotically with plant roots and help in nutrient and water uptake. Biochar as a soil addition has been known to increase mycorrhizal fungi by over 500% in the soil, *but* excessive charcoal harvesting is already one of Haiti's big problems. Now biochar doesn't have to be hardwood charcoal by any means - peanut hulls and crop wastes are probably the best choice there. Any organic matter you can dry and then burn without oxygen, and if you collect the gases coming off the burn you can use them to cook with or generate power.

Need to figure out an income stream. Starting to give up on employers - wonder if there's something all my talented and underemployed friends and I could do together.

"About me"

hage0243@umn.edu — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:11:46 GMT

Just signed up for the "Creative Job Agency" discussions on Facebook, supposed to be networking for people in creative fields. I've been using Facebook a lot more recently, btw, so feel free to connect to me there if you want to.

Anyway, there was a open discussion for photographers to post a link to their websites and a brief bit on their works, and I think what I wrote is my most succinct profile bit yet, and since it amused me I'm reposted it here.

"http://kirahagen.com

Historical sites and environmental photography; travel photography: Russia, Estonia, France, Italy, Tunisia, Latvia, the Seychelles Islands, Romania, Germany, and USA (Minnesota); model portfolios; portraits; headshots.

Willing to chase Russian rioters and be charged by wild horses in pursuit of good photos. Already done both - what's next? Love to travel.

Based in Minneapolis. I speak English, French, Russian, and some German and Italian, in that order of fluency."

In other news, I have awesome friends here. I was feeling really down about losing the first job I'd gotten since April within about a week... arg... and Adrian took me out for French silk pie at 3 a.m. and then Michael took me out for a lovely dinner with wine today. I wrote a poster of Craigslist about a job making djembes and other drums (fingers crossed), priced out some mid-low end flashes, and am generally feeling a lot better than last night.

Unemployed again

hage0243@umn.edu — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:21:36 GMT

I love my husband. He brings me comfort chocolate when I really, really need it. A whole French silk pie would be ideal, but a nice cup of high end hot chocolate is pretty good too.

So, yeah, that nanny job I got last week evaporated already. No fault of anyone's. A school the kids had been on a waiting list for, for over a year, had two openings suddenly. No more job.

There are days I wonder why I ever left Russia. At least there the money was good and there was always a promise of travel.

Moscow was dirty and big and pushy and frantic, but I made a dignified living there and almost never worried about being able to afford groceries. We've been living on eggs, potatoes, pasta, granola, and onions for six months. I want some fruits, I want some greens, and they're unaffordable and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. I just read through gardening catalogs and fantasize now.

I am so sick of everything. Especially this run of "luck" that's been going since about the day Tony broke his leg.

There's photography work on Craig's list that I can't take because I don't have a flash or lights. There's retail work I think I could have had if I'd applied there after I talked to the store manager, but I went for the nanny gig instead and I suspect it's been filled by now. I don't know if my health is really great enough to sell plasma but that's the next thing to look into.

I wish I could just go away from everything for a while.

Chocolate helps. Wish it was Jameson, though.

This makes me want caffeine.

hage0243@umn.edu — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:33:42 GMT

7.5 hours with two small children. Going out for booze now. Sort of feel I need coffee though.

End of the holiday

hage0243@umn.edu — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:39:37 GMT

Feeling a bit out of sorts, again... sometimes I look at the news, especially the really navel-gazing neurotic stuff, and just wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Anywhere, I mean. It's all just distractions and frittering away time and life. Still feeling like I'm in that space between train cars - unstable, unreal, with uneasy footing and the tracks flashing by through the holes in the floor.

The weather was lovely today. Made me want to go exploring. And that ran smack into the wall (and I can hear the protests from my Twin Cities friends already) of the fact that I already know this city and that none of the more interesting places I'd like to go to are in walking distance, or they cost money. So instead we did laundry and cleaned the kitchen while I fantasized about Paris. Some of C.'s (the guy we're all renting from) food was over six years past the expiration date. Our garbage is very full now. He gets home tomorrow... hope he doesn't mind us tossing so much but it was seriously disgusting.

Trying not to think about traveling. At least I've got work again. And we put up a bookshelf in the bedroom so now it feels a little more like the room is kinda ours, instead of just a random guest bedroom. The nanny job will leave me a good bit of time for photo work, since it's part time, and I have such a huge backlog of things needing to be labeled and uploaded. It was really nice having the place to ourselves for two days and pretending we had a place of our own... I haven't had privacy like that since April.

Must go sleep, work in the morning.

The Exiled calls for a New American Pantheon

hage0243@umn.edu — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:00:35 GMT

Up North, killing time arguing with my obnoxious uncle, who thinks Russia is EVIL!!!! and reading The Exiled. Going to head back over for a probably rematch soon, but anyway had to share this:

Now that services have ended at the First National Church of Crawford, Texas, it’s clear America needs a new religion. Not to nitpick, but it could be argued that rule by the most loudly born-again or, as scholars call it, Screechocracy, was not a success.... And a fun pantheon is what America wants right now, to get everyone’s mind off that Visa envelope sitting like an anthrax package on the hall table. That’s why it’s time to drop the whole grim monotheism narrative and go back to polytheism—because if you want fun, you need a bigger, wackier cast of characters.

And since I spent last weekend with a bunch of Asatruar, here's their bit about the Norse pantheon:

The Norse Rednecks

The most obvious candidates for a flyover-state pantheon are those lovable, drunken, violent Vikings. If pickups had been around, all the Norse gods would have been driving them. All of these guys (and most of their women) have done time, probably in one of those mostly-Aryan prison systems of the Northwest. You can see Thor any time; just go to visiting hours at an Idaho prison. He’s put on a few pounds, sure, but he can still wield a bonecrusher like lightning. And he’s not a bad guy, sober and in a good mood. Take Loki: best friend you ever had when you were in junior high. Then he got old enough to try as an adult and the fun sort of went out of him. They’re all like that, endearing but dangerously unpredictable, helping you put in a new transmission one day and shooting your dog the next.

Disadvantages: A little too Aryan for anyplace downhill from the Idaho Panhandle. Good gods for juvenile delinquents or the officer corps of an armored division looking for a patron deity, but their message to supplicants is a gruff, “You know better’n to fuck with me when I’ve been drinking.” And the girls in the family are weirdly dull and plain for Swedes, Clydesdale mares compared to the Nile goddesses or Athena.

Anyway, off for appetizers and inevitable arguments. What fun family holidays are!

Dammit

hage0243@umn.edu — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:28:39 GMT

Just had another job fall through. Turns out the position I was interviewing for today was not a photographer's assistant, but a production assistant - which means general driver/ gofer. And I've got neither a car nor a driver's license, which is all the need.

Oh, and the guy I met yesterday to talk about promo photos for him and his band wrote me after our meeting to say they'd decided not to go with me.

Have I mentioned that I hate this year? From a purely work-based standpoint, we shouldn't have left Russia. If we'd stayed, we could have been looking at buying Estonian acreage by now, not wondering how we're going to come up with $400 for rent, an amount we'd have made in three normal days in Moscow.

Bloody hell.

Thoughts on learning the harp

hage0243@umn.edu — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:31:33 GMT

So, finally healthy again. Should be at the heathen meetup at Diamonds Wednesday evening, btw.

Learning a new instrument seems to involve the same sort of rewiring your brain that learning a new language does. Also, my left hand apparently does NOT have fingers on it, as I had long thought it did - it seems to actually be equipped with floppy useless spaghetti noodles with fingernails. It's perfectly fine at fretting classical guitar! Why can't it keep stretching the right intervals for chords and whatnot on the harp?

Oh yeah, if anyone is wondering how I got a harp, to make a long story short Michael decided he likes fiddle more than harp and gave the one I spent three years carving for him to me (I am just a little bit attached to this instrument, given the time, effort, art, energy, and blood that I poured into this harp). Well, technically to my mother but I got it from her last Thursday, and can now play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "Go Tell Aunt Rhody", "Yankee Doodle", and "Lavender's Blue"... so you know I'm getting the "best of nursery rhymes" down quickly. Sigh. I started working on a "The Water is Wide" today (in a very simplified version) in the lesson book today, too. I hate not being good at things, even when it's _because_ I'm just starting at them and *know* that it's something I'll likely never be good at anyway.

I bash my head against the wall of music, but not hard enough for much to seep in. I am, after all, the artist in a family of musicians. I learn visually, and by doing... not so very much by listening, alas. For instance, Tony was just telling me all about the super dooper things the 2 new character classes in LOTRO do and if I actually caught a fourth of it before glazing over and tuning out I'd be a bit amazed.

I'm trying to figure out a tune out of a songbook (The Gypsy Rover) too, instead of just out of the lessonbook... I found this page and have been making little colored diagrams of my strings (red strings are C, blue are F and I'm figuring it out from there...) of chords, so theoretically, if my left hand noodles ever gain any coordination, I could play a melody line with my right hand while plucking chords or fingerpicking them with my left. So I have to figure out what strings are actually in these chords and then play with variations as to which strings are coming out of which octave until it actually works with the song... not that I can coherently pluck out the melody yet anyway...

What I should probably be trying to learn is something for the holidays. Ye gods.

Photography humor

hage0243@umn.edu — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:34:24 GMT

Photography humor:

Thoughts on being back

hage0243@umn.edu — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:03:51 GMT

So, been back in Minneapolis a couple days and have the cold to prove it. Tony and I got SIM cards and no-contract payment plans at AT&T last night - horribly expensive by European standards, but then we're likely to actually be talking on the phone here too. I'll post my number on a friends-locked post and email our families, anyway.

Being back... It's good, but mixed. Having actual time to see friends and family is great, though it's odd to be treated like a local when I feel like a foreigner. I am very glad I left when I did - many of the people who stayed here seem so dour! Very doom & gloom here in the States. The locals think everything is falling to bits - I look at the same things they do and see the country realigning with reality. Yes, tough to go through, but good in the long term.

(Break in writing for an excellent evening out with Michael)

Going to Berlin was a mistake and miscalculation, and I wish we hadn't tried to stay there. I am feeling a bit of sour grapes about that... hate to say it but I think I'm a bit more a Moscow than a Berlin sort of person, as long as the government's leaving me alone anyway! Or no, I don't hate to say it, because I enjoy being successful and professional and the last few months in Berlin pretty much killed any lingering romanticism about Bohemian lifestyles for me. Been there, done that, had enough of it, left. Stoner roommates drive me nuts.

It's a little odd being here and, well, floating, now. Don't know what I'll be doing next. Americans tend to define themselves by their jobs. Not sure what I define myself by anymore... I was one thing, then another, then another, and now... Meh. Dunno. Doesn't matter. One way or another, I get through, and get challenged and love and laugh and leave over and over. It's okay. Do what I have to, like it sometimes and sometimes not, get to dance now and then... life's pretty good.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. Get my harp back tomorrow... another thing to learn. Feel like I've been waiting eons for her.

Morning at Michael's place

hage0243@umn.edu — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:39:06 GMT

So, back in Minneapolis. Grey November, windy... all these little boxy houses, so spread out and sad, the wind drafting through them like that terrible American loneliness. Cars hum down the broad asphalt, hearing only themselves, but the tamed and encrusted hills still sing buffalo. Half moon over the runway, golden wild under the smoky sky, the debris of a life in overstuffed baggage... Guess I'm still in a bit of an odd place.

At least the land here talks to me. Not the land of my choosing, but the land that calls out incessantly and won't let me go.

Tony's still sleeping; he had a harder time of the food poisoning than I did - I had worried we might need to be running to the hospital, not the airport, when he was shaking with fever and freezing and huddled into the corner of our packing-strewn bed - and he didn't sleep as much as I on the plane. I'm sitting in the kitchen eating slices of stale baguette smothered in the rich local butter and contemplating the drip coffee maker. Haven't used on in over a year. I'd rather have tea but there's nothing but (very) oddly labeled loose leaf stuff and I'm not sure where the things to make that would be. The coffee bag says "Awaken your Consciousness!" in big swirly overdone graphics. Ei... I much prefer being places where I can't understand the advertising; it saves a lot of wear on my cynicism.

Michael said we can have either the eggs in the fridge (the only actual meal item) or possibly some oatmeal he thinks we might have left here four years ago. I have one (one!) American dollar and a bunch of euros so going out to get something isn't going to happen. And this kitchen! It's spotless, beautiful, nice new staining work on the cupboards - and almost totally unusable for actual cooking. The fridge has coffee creamer, drink mixes, and olives in it. Hail the erratic domesticity of the gay male. The largest quantity of actual food appears to be for his cat, who presumably actually eats at home.

If Adrian and his roommate, who we're moving in with in December, live anything like this I'm taking over the kitchen and cooking for all of us.

Kieran's at 9

hage0243@umn.edu — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:20:59 GMT

We're in Minneapolis, flight came in quite late, falling asleep now. Tomorrow get together at Kieran's pub at 9 p.m. That's Wednesday I mean. Been awake muuuuch too long. See you soon.