i hope i'm not frightening you

stella & o'connell, oberlin oh. 3.2009.




because i hope you hang up your coat and stay a while

really

hüzün

hudson river, manhattan 1.09.




somehow there seems to be a word in every language for that feeling no one has quite the right word for



hüzün in turkish
ennui in french or college



i want to know every word for that particular feeling we just can't understand
if you know,
please,tell me

a good place's love

self, madaket, nantucket. july 2006.




old halcyon days hurt like healed bones, telling the weather.

memory happiness lingers around in the people with the same skeletons still in my life
their new faces speak the old life-saving words in times when i don't need saving, when i can just smile and know that they would
and i can thank them before anything happens at all

never have i ever

matt and sam, rose's web camera. oberlin oh. 3.2009.



ohio is keeping me up deeper into the morning than manhattan usually does.

the nearest 24 hour diner is a twenty minute ride away. the road looks like route nine. the restaurant looks like a Restaurant. the clock looks like it has bad news.

we woke up in the morning and went to the oberlin market, drank tea and sopped our sorry stomachs with bread that still had oven heat. gray sky came into the window. this town knows how to pull all my heartstrings, make me homesick for massachusetts-

three go-to towns for the night, for not-our-town.
parties with people you already know and mostly love.
bottle rockets
roofs
blades of grass snapping in half underfoot in the 4-am cold frost
five-person-cars.
all of us standing in the middle of an intersection because it's okay, because roads just turn to giant sidewalks after this town's bedtime.
big sad star sky.
sleepy loving saturday breakfast for lunch.

but most of all,

friends leaving one by one, every day a goodbye, okay, alright, be well, have a great time, catch your bus, there's always one leaving when there's more than one of us.

i guess i forgot that part of small town life, that people don't stay. they'll all come back, of course. oberlin's spring break is next week. but that doesn't keep oberlin from feeling like a stop on the way to somewhere. for better or for worse or for better. for everyone.

i will miss it. i already do. one of the most familiar and reliable talents of small towns, that longing

ohwowio

no photographs. they are all film. so here is an old postcard that feels exactly the way this town feels.
lunch at the black river cafe this afternoon with rose's incredible kin. life here is too good. it's one of those places where you hang your hat. and you never. pick it up. again.

i'm writing too much to write here. but in short,
this is so thorough a vacation it's reaching into the deepest wrinkles of my gray matter. every day has tiptoed a little closer to 70 degrees and i have my first blush of an almost-sunburn. people are so kind here. they've swallowed me into their porch life and we drink and eat on the veranda and roof, having spitting contests and working our smile muscles. my stomach is full of co-op food and my heart is full of ohio. and my hugs are full of rose!

i am so lucky to know the people i know. they are too good to me.


wait: do this with me.

Breathe in big. In yr stomach.
Now:


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

isn't that better?

love, elise

on rose's painted roof (via telephone)

the tank, oberlin OH. 3/16/2009






my favorite poem is about ohio.
my favorite song is about ohio.
my second favorite book is about ohio,
and the main character was overeducated at a place called Oberlin, in ohio

and now here i am 16 hours on train tracks behind me at a co-op called the tank sitting with rose on wood that has been painted and repainted longer than i've been alive

it is 60 degrees fahrenheit
sunny with a chance of early dinner
spring break 2009
party in the flatlands
with only the best

love elise

old timey cathode ray nites

matt's chinatown, manhattan. 3/09



the diamond sharp night eyes of old have returned. i can stay up all night. forever again. broken sneakers slap comfortingly block crosswalk block crosswalk block corner block. night guard is familiar. waves a familiar hand. and the few dreams i have in the few hours of sleep connect with where the night left off. it takes hours in the morning to separate them from what happened-

when i recall that he turned into a dog and ran home with me, or that she was made of terra cotta. the oh-wait, the that can't happen: that must have been where the real stopped. thank god we know. thank god this is the sort of loopy that i welcome.

the kind of happiness that could drive a person completely insane.

the kind of interest that could keep me listening to your words until i died of exhaustion and a gigantic otherworldly hemorrhage of knowledge and the sounds of the ecstatic

thick in the fog of americana

the miss freedom ferry, hudson river NY. 3/09




good morning, new spirit.
new spirit came back to me
when i wasn't thinking of him,
same as always...
-j.i.



some people have loved me for so long and it makes me want to cry how kind they are, i'm a person that doesn't water and sun others' faith in me, but tough and loving roots survive and i'm still held by the sweetest of branches somehow, soft as the youngest, holding me as if i was kind, as if they confused me with them,

just have to keep afloat these last few days of work and then i'll be free to go back to the homeland, to new england, and then go to the state that my favorite song and poem are about, since i've never, ever been there, to see one of the loveliest women of all time, to see what my ohio life could've been, had i chosen to grow my knowledge there instead, instead of here, where the air means a short life but a full life.

the wait

self, manhattan 2.09.


waiting on the one-hour-photo machine to be fixed. for once i have more writing than photographs. just waiting on it. it's as if i don't have to strain to hear or know anything anymore. it all greets me all good morning elise, nice to see you today. let me tell you about myself. i'll make it easy for you to listen. and i say thank you