20 Jan 2017

Dream Girl, Hamburg.

by | posted in: Luv, Travel | 9
On the world's longest escalator. That's Claus, who is almost pathologically averse to having his picture taken. (He's very handsome, so this makes no sense.) Photo: Me.
At the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. That’s Claus, who is almost pathologically averse to having his picture taken. (He’s very handsome, so this makes no sense.) Photo: Me.

 

Most of the time, if you ask someone, “Hey, what were you up to Sunday afternoon?”, the answer is not going to be, “I was in Hamburg, Germany.” That would be my answer, though, if someone were to ask me. It’s a very specific thing to ask — “What were you up to Sunday afternoon?” — but it could happen.

The entirety of my trip to his country, Claus was a superb tour director; this cannot be denied. He asked me a month ago if I was interested in leaving Berlin for a day to visit Hamburg. The decision was not to be made lightly. With only a week’s worth of time, leaving Berlin explore another city might be best saved for another trip. “Next time,” right? There’s always “next time.”

It’s true that I wanted to focus my energies and get deep impression of Berlin. But when I thought about a train ride through the German countryside and how heaven on Earth is snuggling on a train; when I thought about seeing another city in Germany that would then give me perspective on Berlin; when I thought about adventure, ultimately, my answer could only be yes. “Let’s do Hamburg,” I said to Claus. So we did. Claus bought train tickets and we were out the door early, greeting the cold.

You know how you go to certain places and you’re instantly like, “Wow, get me outta here!” The place could be a party, a neighborhood, a city — even a whole country. But then there are other places that just zap you and you go, “Okay, well, I’m moving here.” That was Hamburg for me.

The aesthetic harmony. The harbor. The jaw-droppingly gorgeous new symphony center that has only been open two weeks, which made it extra exciting to see. Hamburg is called “the Venice of Germany” for its canals and channels, but I think it beats Venice with an oar; the winding streets and bridges were downright seductive.

The food was incredible (e.g., pumpkin soup, fresh fish, chocolate from the chocolate shop, micro-brewed beer.) I didn’t buy anything — hello, spring semester tuition bill — but the window shopping was great; there were many shops that offered German-made goods and if I could’ve spent lots and lots of money and checked nine suitcases, I would have come home with an entirely new wardrobe. Le sigh.

It was a dream day. Start to finish. Am I punishing myself, reliving it? Or is it giving a gift back to the day to describe it all? There’s a fine line between honoring and wallowing, I think, but damned if I know where the line is or where I’m falling on it now.

Being an adult feels lousy, sometimes. This is due in part because all the beauty of a city like Hamburg can be laid before you — even in memory — and all you see is a rain cloud.

4 May 2016

What’s In a Year, What’s Not In the Next One.

by | posted in: Luv | 3
Me, Death Valley, 2015. Photo: Claus
Me, Death Valley, last summer. Photo: Claus

 

A year ago yesterday, I was doing the feature performance at the original Uptown Poetry Slam at Chicago’s legendary Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. I was up there at the microphone saying poems at the Mill to a packed house. There was no way that night wasn’t gonna be awesome.

In the audience that evening was a person named Claus. He didn’t know much about poetry slams, he didn’t come for me. He was at the show with an acquaintance of mine. His friends told me later they elbowed each other during my performance because when they looked over at Claus, they could see “he was clearly smitten.” What can I say? He had been smit.

I got offstage and made the rounds (and had a round) and soaked in the pure magic and vitality of that place on a Sunday night; at some point I spotted my friends and sat down in their booth. They introduced me to this tall, German person, a visiting scholar, here to be paid to think about philosophy and write a new book.

“You’re a philosopher,” said Claus. “Your poems. This is philosophy.”

What can I say? I was smit.

That summer, we took a roadtrip west. I took a break from PaperGirl for the first time in ages in order to focus on that experience in a macro way, i.e., rather than wash clothes in a river and write about it that evening, maybe just wash clothes in the river and see how that feels.

In fifteen days, Claus goes back to Germany. His time as a visiting scholar is over. I don’t know what’s going to happen, how it will feel, what we’ll do. I hate Skype. I detest long-distance relationships. I have a talent for winding up in them and it is a damnable curse. All I can say is that tonight I sleep in Beaver Dam alone and the quiet is curious. It’s big. But it’s calm, too.

 

10 Apr 2016

The Farm, The Weariness.

by | posted in: Family | 3
The bus stop my dad made for me and my sisters so we would have shelter waiting for the school bus each day. Photo: Me
The bus stop my dad made for me and my sisters so we would have shelter waiting for the school bus each day. Photo: Me

Claus came over from Chicago for a visit while I’m here. Aside from the interest he has in seeing where I grew up, it’s objectively great for him to see a quaint Midwestern village. It would be the same for me if I were in Germany; I’d probably travel miles to see a “real life” German village. I’ve shown him the theater; we went to see some covered bridges; we’ve eaten several meals at the local Northside Cafe; we checked out the high school football field.

And this afternoon, we took a drive into the countryside. But it wasn’t just any old Sunday drive; we drove seven miles south-ish and west-ish of town to the farm where I grew up.

Lord Almighty, all our old pains. So precious, so deep, so white-knuckled. Our most blinding pains are woven into us and the older we get, the older the pain gets and don’t you dare pull that thread. It’s the first tragedy of my life, leaving that farm, and the story of it — mythic, epic, now — has been squatting on my heart ever since, despite hours of therapy, true love, art. Despite travels to Chicago, New York City, Washington, DC, to the far reaches of the galaxy, to Florida. I’d love to say it was different, that I’m resolved and actualized and enlightened by age if nothing else, but I see that farm and it all comes back. Blah, blah, blah.

I was little. My sisters were little. My mom and dad were getting divorced. My sisters and I got on the school bus one day. We never went back to the farm. We didn’t know we wouldn’t go back, we just never did. We never slept in our beds again. We never saw our toy box again. We didn’t say goodbye to our cats. We were country kids, then we were not. Cry me a river. Amazon.

Why go out there? I don’t know. One may select from a variety of Sunday afternoon activities and ghost-hunting is an activity one may choose to select when you’re me, in Winterset. It’s all out there, just seven miles out, south-ish and west-ish of this particular and particularly quaint Midwestern village. The acreage looks a lot different from when I was eight, but it’s the same. It is exactly, exactly the same and I would know because I know every inch of that place.

There’s a long drive to the property from the road. It’s not possible to get to the house without making a big production of it: you don’t visit my farm by accident. I don’t know the people who live there, so Claus and just parked the car on the road. That was for the best. I wouldn’t be able to handle touching the yard, the doorknobs. I just know I couldn’t. Squinting at things from far away was plenty.

Claus took pictures of the landscape and of me. Of all the pictures he took, there’s one that truly works. It’s a closeup of me. I’m wearing my Iowa Hawkeyes hooded sweatshirt. The wind is blowing my hair around and I’ve got one hand up to hold it back. My nails are lacquered red because I got a manicure for TV taping tomorrow. The sun is glinting off the gold baby ring I never take off. I’m squinting because the sun is behind the camera. I look every day of my thirty-six years. I’m not smiling. But I’m not crying. The farm is behind me, blurry.

*There’s more about all that right here.