Author: anitaderouen

I’m supposed to write about restaurants today, to provide a review of one. Not going to happen–some days some things happen that make writing about nothing seem worse than writing nothing at all. So, instead, I’ll just say on this full moon of a Valentine’s Day that love is all we have to give and all we need to live. Until tomorrow…

V
Athens, GA, 2008

Item: A receiver and speakers. A gift from my mother on some graduation from some place somewhen in the 90s. The technology seemed quaint in 2008 for someone with an iSomething and a virtual stack of CDs. I kept the five-disc changer. I hardly use it now: the CDs skip when I dance in the living room.

I miss the radio, though. Didn’t expect that.

IV
Natchitoches, LA, 2001

Item: Mah Jongg. We played, my girls and me, most Sunday afternoons when their kids were quiet and the table was laden with forbidden treats and the tiles gently clicked and clacked on the smooth wood of a dining room table. I found other groups in other spaces—women and men with whom I formed a sort of surrogate family—but you were the first of my adult life.

I keep the sparrows you gave me at my kitchen window, though. Thought you’d want to know.

III
Birmingham, AL, 1997

Item: my best friend. I didn’t get it, not really, not until I was in a new (to me) home with a long wooden porch and tall, tall trees that cast long shadows over the whole place and kept it oh-so-cold. I could never get warm, and there was a day when I felt such great loss and emptiness that I lay on the bed and wept and missed your strength and wisdom.

We still keep in touch, and you’re still my best friend, and I miss you.

II
Houston, TX, 1994

Item: insane street layout and impossible traffic.

Enough said.

I
Lafayette, LA, 1993

Item: a small wooden box. I think I left behind so many of these, peeling off so many layers of so much skin. I don’t know if you kept them. I just know that I gave them—freely, openly, lovingly—and I trust that you did with them what they deserved.

I suppose that’s all we can ever expect when we leave.

for those who think they are not good enough for _____

Just do it because
everyone can
live better
eat fresh
make believe

we are all of us
stronger
than
dirt
and
worth “it”

knowing (that)
is half
the battle
of living life
fully

so
let your fingers do
the walking over
oceans of whatever
diamonds are (your)
forever.

success
is a mind game
and a mind is, well,
terrible
when wasted.

Writing is never done.

I tell students this constantly, and I encourage them to start the journey early and to keep returning to the well as they work. You’ve got to be willing to challenge everything you think you know at every moment lest you miss out on something that you really don’t know and need to learn.

But, as anyone who’s finished a dissertation will tell you, at some point you have to stop and say “done.” Even if it’s just “done…for now.”

So today I’m supposed to be thinking about what I would have done differently were I beginning this blog today and not in November 2008, and I think that’s a somewhat productive thing to think about. I am not now in February 2014 the same person I was in November 2008, and in the time that this blog was dormant (which is to say most of the time between its inception and the very end of 2013), I was writing in another space as I tried to figure out who, exactly, I was. I suppose that I was preparing to return here, trying to find the courage to just be in this place, to find a way to be more transparent while still maintaining the opacity necessary to negotiate in analog and digital spaces. Today I feel more like a whole person becoming even more whole as each day progresses.

Which is to say: I would change nothing about this blog. Nothing at all. At some point you have to stop and say “done.” Even if it’s just “done…for now.”

and “still doing.”

Writing is never done.

I was supposed to write about Expat Syndrome yesterday, the experience of seeing only the best (or the worst) of your new/old homes. I guess I don’t live that sort of life. Sometimes Louisiana feels like it’s oceans away, and I miss it dreadfully, but I’m not one to romanticize what is. Mississippi, for all its faults, has its beauties too, and I remember distinctly remarking when I first came here in January 2008 that it immediately felt like home.

This is one of those moments where the prompt list I’m using for the month is a bit beyond me. Sure, the feeling of “home” is universal, but I think there’s something much deeper at play when we talk about changing nationalities. I’ve only made small geographic shifts in my life, and while the differences exist, they are so subtle as to sometimes be imperceptible. So that’s that for Day 40.

Still hate the flag I live under, though. That has to change.

The state flag of Mississippi. Never going to get used to that.

I’m supposed to be writing about food today; I had this whole “harder to fill the larder” thing that I was cooking up in my head. Last week I went out into Jackson looking for Savoie’s Roux (not the dry one). I came home empty handed, which was frustrating. Don’t judge me on the roux–I can make my own from scratch if I want/need to, but sometimes you just want to get to the gumbo…

Anyway, I was going to write about that, about how close I am to Louisiana and yet how very far away I feel–from the foods, the smells, the sights, and, most importantly, the people I love and care for. The prompt was meant for expats who have traveled a far greater distance than I, but not being in the place you call home is…well, not being there.

and that’s what I have to say about that.

I watch your
receding shore
the train station
a dot on the pilot’s horizon
where some one
or two or twenty
wave me home

I dream
soft palms
swaying while
wolfish whistles blow
and wings
golden downy
sing me soft
and low

I wake
I take my first steps
on new sands
the gravel under my feet
and hazy lazy clouds
I long for home

but that was no country for me

I set myself
afloat

Today’s prompt: I would/would not move to another country after this?