This weekend, the awesome Gina, a former house-mate and the girls’ younger sister, came to visit. After an afternoon of retail therapy, we made our dinner reservations at La Tasca, a little Spanish tapas restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had that many dishes on one small table before, but each of them were delicious.
Two particular favourites of mine that night were a vegetarian paella and a stuffed eggplant dish. I also admit, a few of the non-veggie dishes looked appetising, as well. I scraped or picked off the meat bits, and licked my fingers afterward. I wouldn’t have minded having a few more of those bleu-cheese-stuffed dates. They were wrapped in bacon, but the girls helped me remedy that.
Other dishes included a cheese platter, grilled asparagus, garlic mushrooms, several lovely salads (one of which was a big hit for all of us – an apple, almond, with tetilla cheese and a lemon quince vinaigrette). The girls’ meaty dishes included a seafood selection: calamari, salmon paired with spinach and mussels, and what I believe was a shrimp version of the paella.
I’m not much of a drinker, but I delighted their Autumn Harvest Sangria – apples, cinnamon, hazelnut liqueur, a light white wine, and it went down so warm and smooth. Add that to my list of fall favourites. I don’t remember eating this well when I went to Spain. In fact, I don’t remember much of the food at all in Spain. Then again, I was only 15 when I went. Youth truly is wasted on the young.
We had little time left before we were to meet our 8:00 pm reservation to go on a haunted tour of Old Town, but we decided to certainly not skip dessert. Gina ordered a sampler for the four of us: flan de huevo, torrijas, pastel de chocolate, and churros. Gone in just a few seconds. For all that food, I had expected to be stuffed way beyond comfort. Instead, I feel I could have sat there for hours, enjoying everything all over again.
Afterward, in frenzied hurry and a fight to get a new parking space off King Street, we raced to meet our paranormal investigator tour guide. He marched us to a few quaint “haunted” hot spots and gave us the run-down on some building and zone history. Many tid-bits involving Civil War infirmaries, surprisingly close to one another, and many of them sorted by geographic region of its soldiers.
One of the locations also included on the tour was the cemetery of Christ Church, of whose congregation many of the mighty U.S. forefathers were members. I caught a few dust particles in a photograph, which I’m sure I could pretend are “orbs.” You know, just for kicks.
At the end of the night, I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get a thoroughly creep-tastic vibe, but it was definitely cool to learn about a bit of the area where I now live.
Obviously, Keats didn’t live in the DC area. The sun’s maturity, I fear, may be in retrograde. Instead of waning into cooler temperatures, it remains a heavy heat here. And as it remains in the 90s, temperature-wise, I’m longing for a bit of “temperate sharpness,” as Keats described it. Each fall, I start off with reading this poem, To Autumn. Each year it reacquaints me to the joys of this, my favourite season.
This new season has also brought with it a new task to add to the list: organizing a small writer’s workshop. I’ve contacted a few fellow Hope College alumni in the DC area and I am now resolved to set up this writing group. When moving to a new city, it helps to have a few reminders of what holds you together. Right now it looks as though we’ll have a good group, mostly made up of us former students of the great and glorious Jack Ridl.
I’m not sure yet what our first session will entail, but I am inspired to be inspiring. I want to have a few plans to go in with. Nothing big – no large, cumbersome, anal list of rules and regulations or anything like that. Merely a simple introduction to what we hope to be to each other as writers and readers. I don’t expect a campaign speech or third-year law school opening statements to the jury. My over-active imagination would enlist me as the Abraham Lincoln figure, rousing the troops to be steadfast in their cause. Where the Gettysburg address was one of the greatest historic speeches of this country, I believe “the world will little note, nor long remember” what I say in our fist meeting.
The possibilities for embarrassment are vast. However, I may look to Keats to sort it out for me, even though I often feel more jealousy than inspiration from him. After all, why couldn’t I have been such a fine writer before I died at the age of 25? I’ve got two years’ life on the man, and I doubt if I’d ever churn out lines as perfect as his. Nevertheless, I may share and pass on my annual tradition to get things going. In any case, it may lead to a writing exercise…
I wonder if my former alma mater friends remember autumns at Crane’s Apple Orchard in Fennville, Michigan, driving up the 31 to spend late-September Saturday afternoons in earthy sweaters and our grandmother’s scarves, picking bushels of apples for crisps, pies, jams, and butters, braiding ourselves through the rows of apple trees, filling up on Jonagolds, McIntosh, Ida Reds, Braeburns and Galas…
Right. I think I’ll lead with that.
I should begin with something profound. Instead, I’d like to merely make a list of things I want to write about – projects I hope to complete in the next year (or so):
- Finish my current collections(s) of poetry:
- Down from the North – poems on the Southwest
- Half a House – revamp my MFA thesis into something more publishable
- Scientific Exiles – book of poems dedicated to the idea of extinction
- Player to be Named Later – baseball poetry, for my dad
- Write my way through “The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms” by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.
- Finally put forward my first book of poems for publication.
- Read Hemmingway’s complete works in 30 days and write about it along the way.
- Finish writing my poem for Ernie Harwell.
- To possibly get some non-fiction/travel-writing out there for publication, beginning with Twenty-four Hours in Brooklyn (a post-college-graduation fiasco tale).
- Perhaps more cowboy poems, just for fun.
- And, as always, to just read more poetry every day.
It’s a weighty list. And there are sub-lists and goals within goals among the bullet points and bigger projects. But the simple acting of writing lists down always helps. Therefore, I’m hoping that actually making this list public will motivate me to be more diligent. Writers need deadlines, you know.
I recently read a great page on the interwebs via Twitter, which listed a great number of truisms regarding writers, called “Offended by Rank Objectification of Writers.” Read it. All writers want you to be aware of these things. Particularly number 10. And any writer who claims these assertions are false is not jannock.
After having returned from a struggling year abroad in China, I have moved to the Washington, DC area. Being a writer, I have plans and projects I hope to accomplish, or at least maintain a steady method of writing.
The long list of projects increases daily. This blog will explore where I am, both geographically and intellectually, even if that changes, and hopefully will aspire to be simply a self-indulgent whining of the struggle of writing. You know, something all writers tend to do.
I have made a list of writing goals I’d like to achieve sometime before I get too distracted and disheartened to even pursue them, which I’ll post later. However, I feel there should be two separate lists; and this one particular list has something of a time lock on it.
I’m sure the list will grow and morph into something slightly less manageable than it seems right now (or maybe not), but it’s a start:
- Narrow down a list of grad schools for which to apply for next fall. A second master’s, then hopefully on to the PhD.
- Decide once and for all what my research will entail within the Medieval, Early Modern, and/or Poetic fields (and possibly whether or not that will also include the contemporary use of film).
- Explore more of D.C. and write about it.
- Experiment more with my camera and always strive for the perfect photo… and write about it.
- Get a job that pays the bills, whether that means teaching or waitressing (Heavens, please, don’t make me waitress).
I suppose the last bullet point should be first, if my priorities were straight. For now, though, we’ll leave burning the job bridge for when we come to it.
Poet Abroad 
