I never really did get into the rhythm of life in a college town, not the whole time I was here.  In a college town, people come and go so brutally that you resist and resist, then make a friend that matters just as they go off to Arizona or LA or another country altogether, back to their parents or to a new job or off with a partner.  In a college town people don’t settle down in the same way - they aren’t making friends for the raising of their families, or the steady blossoming of their careers. It isn’t like a city, where you see people through stages and out the other side.  But all that alienation I felt when I first came to Ithaca, when I thought, uncharitably, these people are not gonna see each other through: that alienation was wrong-headed, I think.  

Sitting in the Cornell graduation reading today, watching a member of my semi-muggle writing group read her poems, I was suddenly moved to secret tears.  I was moved not just because she’s such a talented poet or because I like her so much, but because she addressed poems to specific people: one to each sister, one to her parents, and one to her cohort.  I got it in a flash, the point of all this: life in a college town is special because it’s a stage.  Because there is something fruitful about the fall, something dug-in about the winter, something hopeful about the spring.  Because in early summer, when the wildflowers start to riot, you can dedicate the work you did to whoever you like, and the summer hovers warm and empty in front of everyone, and things will change.  I wish I had known that when I arrived and not just as I’m leaving, though perhaps that’s also the thing about a college town.  

If you’d have told me 5 years ago that I’d be sending my mum an email that read “You are just like Angelina Jolie!  You both have no boobs!”  I’d have thought you were a crazy person.  If you told me 3 years ago that I’d still be able to email my mom at all I’d have fallen on my knees and given thanks.  Three years ago my mom was recovering from a double mastectomy, about to undergo about a year of extreme chemotherapy, and we were all living on hope, beet juice (my Dad is a solutions-based animal) and coffee.  I am so grateful for the science that means I still have my mum around.  

When she had her operation, my mum did a strange thing:  she and her friend Antonia took a bunch of pictures of her chest pre and post the operation.  She didn’t show them to anyone or anything, but for her it was a way of witnessing the change to her body with a direct, unblinking gaze. During her treatment it was that act above all that was so her.  She has spent her whole professional life thinking about the way women interact with their own bodies.  It is one of the reasons, in fact, that she has been such a great mum, and such an amazing woman altogether.  

Oh you guys, I got such, such lovely writing news yesterday. It made me so happy that my heart actually thumped faster. More on that later.  Unrelated, right now I am trying to write a review of the best poetry collection I’ve read in years and it’s so much harder to do than if you sort of like something.  Why IS that. 

1. Waterspotted US Vintage copy of Where Angels Fear To Tread
2. Unwieldy neon green hardback of Christ Stopped At Eboli
3. Cheap paperback of the 1,000 page Abruzzo Trology by Ignatio Silone, weighs as much as a baby
4. 1 Copy Hello! Magazine commemorating the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton
5. Walking to Greenham - Ann Pettit
6. Signs and Wonders, poems by Charles Martin
7. The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land - Diana Wynne Jones
8. Mussolini’s Italy - R. J. Bosworth
9. The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh.  Gift.
10. 1st Edition of The Pale King, unread.
11. Warlock, by Oakley Hall. Gift from boss.
12. ‘Four Plays’ - Eduardo di Filippo
13. Returning the Serve Intelligently, by Sterling Lord.  Gift from first ever publishing boss.
14. Reeds in The Wind/Cosima by Grazia Deledda
15. 1968 Folio Edition of Four Quartets, in which my Dad has written in the front “And all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well”
16. Mexican Miracle Paintings Postcards (why?)
17. More Home Cooking - Laurie Colwin
18. Copy of Dark Horse Magazine with an Interview with Sharon Olds
19. The Viceroys - Federico Roberto
20. 1st Edition of In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
21. A Key to Chinese Speach and Writing, by Zhang PengPeng, bought in Kunming, Yunnan.  Annotations on the 1st 3 pages. Nothing on the rest.
22. Small Blue Hardback of the Essay ‘Positano’ by John Steinbeck.

In keeping with Austentranslation’s ‘Happy Things’ mantra, I am reminded that I once kept up a correspondence (and a blogspot) called ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ with my girlfriends, in which we found, amongst the rubble of our twenties, small reasons to be cheerful about our day.  Most of the reasons involved the word wine, but it was a good thing to do.  You get 5 reasons to be cheerful, and one reason to be morose.  herewith, today:

Morose: Moving out of the Treehouse is as much of an ass-pain as we thought it would be, especially getting rid of books. 

Cheerful:

1) Ithaca is, right now, covered in wildflowers and blossom and looks like the Shire.

2) Wegmans.  That is all.

3) Going back home to England in the summer for over a year.  Oh thank god.

4) Good strong Gimme Coffee in white mugs at the Shop

5) Merle Haggard tickets, nearly booked. 

Done!  It wasn’t so badddd.  No, it was good, I think.  I always wonder if I’m all like “Here’s a thing I think about your work…no?” and writers go “Yep, pretty much” but I don’t think there was too much of it.  Anyway he read the beginning of his story Something Rich and Strange so beautifully that we were all breathless by the end of it, and not just because it’s about drowning.  Then we talked about Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, being a weird kid, fishing, and why the line ‘There’s a wonder to it yet’ is the most important line in the book.  He was a charmer.  And now I’m drunk.  

I always, always get nervous when I’m about to interview an author, especially in front of an audience.  I thought it was just Jennifer Egan because my unending love for her made me worry I might cry or spill water on the floor or somehow try to hug her, and the fact that I got through that interview without doing any of those things was a huge triumph.  But now with Ron Rash I worry that I will unconsciously try to imitate his accent, reveal my lack of knowledge about short story writers and/or southern writers or simply make a bunch of jokes he doesn’t laugh at.  Remember he’s here to sell his book, he’s here to sell his book, water off a duck’s back etc.  Gargh.