detail #2 - slightly late

A couple months ago I submitted some poems to Dash Literary Journal. And they took one! I've never submitted anything for publication before, and I've never taken a creative writing class, and I haven't written a poem since Mrs. Julian's class in the 7th grade. So this was a big, wonderful, exciting surprise. The launch party is tomorrow in Fullerton, California, but I can't be there. So I'm celebrating by posting about it. As a side note, the wedding reception I mention was Ashley and Mike's, and they just celebrated their second anniversary on the 5th. Crazy.

Chained to a Pole

Driving to a wedding reception in Inkom, Idaho
I saw a buffalo chained to a pole.
Like a 2,000-pound pit bull, it stood
in the middle of a perfectly manicured lawn.

It had strayed so far from its pre-Columbian ancestors
who freely roamed the plains by the millions.
How humiliating to stand alone, trapped by a chain link fence.

I wondered who had begged whom for a pet buffalo.
Had the wife finally submitted to her husband’s pleadings
when he made empty promises to always clean up
the mounds of buffalo crap that would inevitably follow?
Or if they had been driving through Yellowstone
and little Tommy had been under the impression
Western Wyoming was one gigantic pet store. His
overindulgent parents hadn’t been able to refuse,
“Aww, can we keep him?” Whatever the scenario,
there the buffalo was, and I imagined they called him
something deeply poetic, like Beauregard.

I thought, on family outings, children in pale blue jumpers
would hold his leash, ride their tricycles between his legs,
and wrap their arms around his car door-sized neck.

Suddenly, playing Frisbee with man’s best friend
paled in comparison to the joys of having a pet buffalo
named Beauregard. And coming home to my yellow lab
named Gus felt completely prosaic.

abundant confectionary details

I haven't had anything on the coffee table dream for a couple weeks. This is mostly because I can't find a single overarching theme in my life. I feel a teeny bit all over the place. Rather than try to force a theme, but still wanting to keep up the dream, I've decided to fill the space with all the V-day Love candy that is now on sale. I would, of course, have to have cool glass jars. Here. are. some. options. I'm thinking:

• chocolate dipped cinnamon hearts
• those cherry balls I grew up eating with my mom
• long red/white peppermint sticks
• pretzels covered with white almond bark and red sprinkles
  
• Valentines peanut M&Ms
  

To be clear, I'm not going to keep tiny portions of pretentious food on my coffee table. I have very strong feelings about generosity and hospitality. There will literally be pounds of cinnamon hearts available. You will be able to walk into my living room and eat so many freaking M&Ms you want to throw up. That is the dream.

scientific details

My sophomore year I took a Philosophy of Food class with James Faulcner. It was amazing. Completely changed the way I feel about food and eating and gathering and intimacy and taste and basically everything. I have raved about this before. I think about it all the time. I'm writing a paper related to all this right now, and as I was researching in the library I found this book. It helps my paper in... no way, but I checked it out because it is such a compelling paradigm. There is an actual chapter on how chewing food changes our experience. It takes all the squishy, yummy, fascinating psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and gives it a cold, hard, beautiful, scientific approach.

For example, when you make a recipe and accidentally forget to add an ingredient, you think "Oh, I'll just add it now..." when you discover the oversight. Sometimes this can really change the outcome of the recipe because adding different ingredients at different times change the polarity of the molecules! How amazing is that?! Cooking = a science. And I love this book. I read it until I fell asleep last night.

On my (theoretical) coffee table... Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor by Herve This.

details of "other pens"

So I'm in a Jane Austen class taught by Nick Mason. Obviously, I love Nick Mason, I love the stuff we read, I love the people in the class, it's just a fabulous experience. But one of my favorite little details about this class are the covers of the books (I hate it when I have to buy ugly books). The 2008 Oxford World's Classic editions of Austen's novels are absolutely beautiful. So on the coffee table would go some of my texts for the class.

Because I love my Jane Austen class:

• Northanger Abbey
• Sense and Sensibility
• Pride and Prejudice
• Mansfield Park
• Emma
• Persuasion

We just finished reading Mansfield Park, and I wanted to include one of my favorite parts. I think it would be cute to engrave on a journal or something. "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

detail = registering

one detail of voting = you have to register

I'm now adding to the "dream" factor in coffee table dream by adding another conditional. If I had a coffee table, and if I had money, I would have:

• A bunch of children's books (i.e. Duck for President and If I Ran for President)
• I would suplement those with magazines highlighting the candidates (i.e. Times and NewsWeek)

more details than you realize

I am so exctied to have this book on my dresser! A few weeks ago, Whitney emailed me about a post on black*eiffel (a blog we both know and love) about a photography book on libraries. As soon as I saw it, I wanted the book but didn't want to pay freaking £50 for. Fortunately I have access to one of the best libraries in the United States, and I promptly dropped everything I was doing to go check it out. But that Saturday night, the library was closed. So I went the next Monday morning and looked for it, but it wasn't there. I talked to the Humanities Reference desk and they couldn't find it either. They told me to check back in a couple days to see if it resurfaced. But it didn't. The next time I returned they told me I could use interlibrary loan, but when I did that, I got an email a few days later telling me I couldn't use interlibrary loan because our library "already has this book." Finally, I had to do a trace. The Informations Commons people filed all the information and told me they would email me if they ever found it - but it would probably take a couple weeks. But yesterday, I got an email telling me they had found it! So I rushed up to the Circulation Desk, they told me to go to the General Information desk, they told me to go to the 5th floor Humanities Reference desk, and the 5th floor Humanities Reference desk was closed. So after a lot of effort on my part, I finally got the book this morning.

If any of you actually read that, I'm impressed. It's very dull, but serves to prove a point:

You know how sometimes you work really hard for something, and then when you actually get whatever it is you're working towards, you are disappointed? This book is nothing like that. This book is one of the most beatiful things in the world, and I am so glad I tried so hard to find it. It was totally worth it.

postal details

I am going to start posting my coffee table dream posts so they can be saved on my blog

the beginning of my life-long postcard collection:
- Brit's postcard from Texas
- Brynn and Hilary's postcard from Montana
- My postcard from Vancouver
- Hilary's postcard from Banff
- Mom's postcard from the Mediterranean
just so you all know, I love getting mail of any kind. *hint*hint* but I am going to keep the postcards.

details on my drawers

I've always wanted to have a coffee table in my living room where I could keep the books that A) make excellent conversation and B) tell a little bit about what's going on in my life. Since I don't have a coffee table, I thought that this dream would have to wait. But in lieu of the ideal, I have a lovely dresser from Ikea. I've decided this will be where I live my coffee table dream. On the side of my blog, I'm going to update whatever I keep there. In my mind, I've always imagined photography books, histories, magazines, flowers, comic books, poetry anthologies, and so on. I'm excited to start this new tradition.

This coffee table is from Pottery Barn.