if you want to see chicago...

please click right HERE.
(it may just save your life.)

hey, we need a title here

tonight, julie and i drove out to our friend linda's new cabin for a house-warming. it was nice to see friends i never get to see because i have no social life because i only go to school, go to work, and go buy saddles.

we drank wine. ate cookies.
(we're so nashville.)

on the 45 minute drive to linda's, we listened to patty griffin, which julie has not bought yet. and on our way back, we listened to sarah harmer's you were here cd, whose lyrics i have made into my blogname. anyway, both cds are wonderful driving music, fantastic contemplative music. and julie said that she wished she could write like patty and sarah: outside the nashville rut. neither of these women have succumbed to the predictable, packaged, C-D-G chord boring love songs with drum loop, and that is inspiring to a songwriter like julie. ultimately, julie wishes that she could write from a place of blissful unawareness. you know, without 'the man' watching, listening, taking notes, rewriting...

yeah. i wish that too.
we psych (sike) ourselves out, don't we?

when i trip while walking--even if no one is around--i'll fake like i meant to do that, at the risk of raised eyebrows.
cross your tees...dot your eyes, girl.

i suppose we need to write (to live) as though we're unaware, despite being so obsessively aware.
the great despite. it's always such a freaking mystery.

i am two girls in one.

there are two spheres of anne: the cubicle-working, mild-mannered student who loves good literature and music, conversation, and blogging.
then there is the horseback-riding, boot-clad (how many hyphens can i use in one paragraph anyway?) cracker barrel-dining girl.

i have no phone booth in which to change identities. i simply have a honda cr-v that takes me about twenty miles east on I-40 to mt. juliet, tn. where i board my one-woman horse, dakota. the transition happens somewhere between the nashville airport and exit 226a: you know, the exit with the mapco and cracker barrel. i somehow become this girl with dirt-caked boots and messy hair. my fingernails are hopelessly split and dirty and i add a couple "y'alls" to my vocabulary. i talk horse talk; about the best kind of tack and the controversy of nylon versus leather, sturdiness versus aesthetics.

tonight, i have a saddle in the back of my cr-v. i did not plan this.

i simply needed to go riding after work, since the rain is coming tomorrow, and i have homework to do anyway...
so, at 80 mph down the highway, i became cowgirl annie, unaware that i was going to buy my first saddle.

short version of story: a co-boarder was selling a lovely (and sturdy) saddle for a very cheap price. so, dakota and i tried it out. we rode across the pasture to the creek and back. i was quite content with it. so. i bought it. it's an old saddle--40 years old, actually--and in its immaculate shape, i wonder about its history. who had what kind of adventures with it, etc.

after the saddle purchase, we all went to cracker barrel. descriptions of 'we' will suffice for a story. sitting at the round table in the corner, we were:
jim, aka skeeter. never stetson hatless, except when saying quiet grace over a meal. he wears spurs to dinner and chain-smokes handrolled cigarettes, which he can do while riding a galloping horse. he taught me how to ride. he writes poetry that rhymes about beautiful women and the range. he once rode from east tennessee to amarillo, tx on horseback. calls every horse a pony.
jim and brenda. married. jim is in his early 60s and brenda is in her late 30s. they both board horses. jim is missing 3 fingers. brenda spends more time brushing her horse than riding. they bicker a lot.
dara and her construction-working husband, whose name i don't know, because he never rides. dara bought their 7 year old daughter, sally rose, an old appaloosa horse named chip for christmas. dara rides chip more than rose, who gets quite mad about it. rose is known to say, "cool it, mother" a lot. dara's husband says that dara is 'from the mountains'. i don't know what that means. dara special orders grilled sour dough at cracker barrel. "you have to special order it," she says. "no one knows they'll even serve it because you have to ask for it special." i bought my saddle from dara.

these are cowgirl annie's people.

jim paid for my steak and biscuits.
and now i'm back in my studious environment, with a saddle in the back of my car.
what a night.

SPIDERS!

a spider just ran across my CHEST as i lay in bed, typing!!!

what is this, spring?!?!

i stripped my bed and killed it with my anti-gravity technology slipper. (thank you, peggy, for such useful christmas gifts.)

the spider is dead.
and if you have a problem with that, feel free to comment, right below. thanks. -mgt.
pee ess. please leave no comments about the many babies that spiders carry that could possibly be exploring my room.

jesus stares at me.

still listening to patty griffin. i've moved on past track one (though i often return) to track 4: "making pies". no commentary here. it's too rich for my little words. just click here for your own pie-making experience. (you can listen to "rain" as well, for the record.)

my friend, karen, went to sewanee, tn last weekend to experience the dogwoods. she brought me back a t-shirt.
episcopal and proud it says. the back of the shirt dons a lovely top 10 "why episcopalians are cool" list.

Number six: all the pageantry, none of the guilt.

karen's spiritual director tells her to eat her greens. i had a spinach salad for dinner tonight, and am holding out for some kind of insight.

everything feels like fog. it's not just sight, even. everything is thick. humid. it will pass. fog always lifts, right? and in the meantime, i can see swirling orbs of light around lamp posts. show me that on a clear night.

to homework now.

we gots crickets here.

so. i leave nashville for a weekend and come back to find 80 degrees and crickets. today was balmy and sunny, or so i saw out the corporate window.
as i was parking my car before class tonight, i heard the strangest sound coming from the parking lot bushes: crickets. after months of silent bushes, the first earful of crickets is strange and loud and wonderful, and i'm reminded of last summer and the summer before that; of bonfires and wine and mosquito-bitten conversation.

and it's something like hearing the new green leaves on formerly dead branches for the first time: you stop. you cock your ear. you actually listen to what will be background noise for a season. it's a moment of some kind of awareness or connection in a world of disconnect and boredom. (i heard the season change.)

we gots crickets here.

and now it is about 2 hours past my bedtime and i've just come home from an impromptu visit with my friend, julie. subtle eurekas. silly jokes. it was way better than the homework i should have been doing.

i found 1000 kisses in chicago and have been stuck on track one. 'rain', it's called. it's sadness and grief and hard, hard hearts, with a moment of i'm holding on underneath this shroud. and i can't get past it yet. the melancholy and hope.

i read in the liner notes that patty recorded this cd in east nashville, where i used to live. i smile to think she was singing her songs over and over in a little studio nearly within earshot.

i'm feeling quiet and tired now.
goodnight.