Lauren just posted a summary of 2005 by listing the first sentence of each month’s first blog entry. I haven’t had this blog that long, so I’ll do it with my journal instead.
THREE HOURS LATER: Why did I think I could quickly reread my journals from the past year? That never happens! You end up on floor, surrounded by old notebooks with a glass (or two or four) of wine, and you spend lots of time laughing at yourself, or remembering the great idea that you had like six months ago and totally spaced, and you have to get up and run to the other side of the house and say, ‘Christopher, Ohmigod do you remember this?” and read aloud to him while he’s trying to do very complex design work but humors you by listening and nodding and saying, “Wow!” at all the appropriate moments. In general, I enjoy these moments of self-reflection. An unexamined life is not worth living, Plato wrote, and while I’m not usually your Plato-quoting girl (my quotes stick closer to, I don’t know, Ernest Goes to Camp?), this one makes sense to me. I’ve kept a journal for nearly fifteen years, and that’s served as its most important function. Looking back on what I’ve done and what I’ve dreamed, and how far have I come from where I started out?
So. Here’s something from each month of 2005 (for any new readers, I lived in Prague, Czech Republic for eight months and returned in December 2004)
January (to our friend, Marketa, in Prague):
It's very strange to be home. Everything moves fast in Chicago. Yesterday, Christopher and I were driving through the suburbs. Do you know "suburb?" It's an area outside of a city where there are many houses. People who want to WORK in the city but not LIVE in a city live in a suburb. So, Christopher and I are house-sitting for a friend, and we drove past what's called a "strip-mall". I know you know "shopping mall" (like Andel or Flora), but a strip mall is when the stores are all in one big line sharing a single parking lot. They are very big and very ugly. And we said, “What would Marketa think of our country if she saw this? She would HATE it!" So then we started talking about all the beautiful things we would like to show you. There are many, many, many!
February:
From Cheever’s journals, about a woman he had an affair with: “She is a year older and I think I can see this in her face. It is a year during which she worked very hard and there are new lines around her eyes.” I wonder if you can see this past year on my face. What about the eight months in Prague with their full nights of sleep and mornings of Pilates and afternoons of writing and love, love? What of the past month, with its anxiety, probably so little compared to what I went through PRE Prague yet so intense now, when I’ve gone so long without feeling it that I’ve forgotten how to deal, how to let it wash over me, past me and away? Now, it lingers. I’m out of practice—is this something you can see on my face? In the lines around my eyes? The parenthesis on other side of my mouth?
March:
I saw my puppy. He was the tiniest thing, little and red with floppy ears, and I died like a thousand deaths. I turned to Christopher and we shared this look—yes, that’s him—and I knocked on the glass. Everyone standing there was talking about him, and Tonya (director of the Precious Pets Almost Home shelter) opened the door and said, “Megan?” We went in, and Christopher and I became immediately stupid, immediately oggley-googley. We dropped to the ground and called him, Mojo, Mojo! and he puppy-waddled over to us and licked my face and it was all over. I’d have paid a million dollars for that dog. I’d have done anything.
April:
The basic set-up of 2nd Story (Serendipity’s reading series at the Webster Wine Bar): you come, lounge, drink wine, hang out with your friends. At random times during the night, the lights go down and a spot comes up on a storyteller, who will knock your socks off for the next fifteen minutes and, hopefully, if we do our job, get you thinking about the moments and experiences that have shaped your crazy life, be they giant (when you first saw her, when you moved there, when you lost him, etc.) or seemingly small (maybe, teaching my new puppy to pee outside. That's the first thing that comes to my mind 'cause it's all I've done all month).
May:
All I do is read student work. When do I do my own work? Do I even DO work?
June:
Did I mention I’m going to London on Thursday? To present a paper on Gender and Writing in Education for the National Association of Writing in Education. I told that to someone the other day and said someone replied, “How come you’re presenting at a NATIONAL conference in LONDON?” Okay. I’ve been working hard on holding back the sarcastic comments (I think, in this instance, it was “D’UH!”) that rush up my throat when people say such things because, well, it’s nicer, and I’d like to be the nice girl instead of the sarcastic bitchy girl and also maybe I can help educate people by explaining, in my teacher voice, that the United States of America is not the only NATION in this world, that other countries may also be called NATIONS and therefore Great Britain may have NATIONAL associations as well and, seeing as all of us in this world are interested in diverse points of view, said NATIONAL associations may have people from other NATIONS present at their NATIONAL conferences. Do you think that sounds bitchy? Or should I have just said, “D’uh!”
July:
I should note here that Christopher did an EXCELLENT job (at the 2005 Stielstra Family Reunion). He met some two hundred of my relatives in five days, and not only did he respond remarkably well to all drilling (where are you from/where do you work/where will you be in five years/etc.) but he LIKED everybody. He had FUN. He got his very own Stielstra Family Reunion 2005 T-Shirt. AND he won Stielstra Family Reunion 2005 Nose-Flute competition. For which he played the entire Blue Danube Waltz INCLUDING the high notes. It’s now written in history: “Pete’s grand-daughter Darc’s daughter Megan has found herself a FINE boy and didja hear his Blue Danube? Boy’s got a GIFT!”
August:
My goodness, the closer I get to thirty, the more I wax philosophical. What’ll HAPPEN to me on August 11th? Will I get a corduroy jacket with elbow patches and a cigar? I actually HAD a professor with elbow patches and a cigar. In Boston. I thought he was very philosophical indeed.
September:
A year ago this week, I sat in front of my television in Prague and watched CNN International's live coverage of the terrorist take-over of an elementary school in Beslan. Over three hundred people died in the fall out, mostly little kids. I remember, after three days of my sitting hypnotized in front of that TV, Christopher and our friend Tracy said ENOUGH and took me on a paddle-boat ride on the Vlatava River. I thought, God, I am lucky lucky lucky. I am safe, I have wonderful friends, a home, family to go to for help. Now, a year later, I'm in the same place. Katrina just hit and I'm sitting in front of the TV in front of the TV in front of the TV in front of the TV and I have to turn off the TV for a minute. Have to go for a paddle boat ride on the Vlatava. Have to sit very still, and remember how lucky I am.
October:
I will finish this fucking novel if it takes my last breath. You here that, novel! MY LAST BREATH!
November:
My grandma only ever played hymns on the piano, but she had a record player and crates of albums of Brazillian music that she loved when they lived in San Paolo during the war. She could speak Portuguese fluently, and for a while, so could my dad. Portuguese was his first language. I don’t know if I’m remembering any of this right. I will regret not knowing more about her, I think. I will regret a lot of things.
December:
Snap your fingers—that’s how fast time went.
