In which Miss Wozniak is invested as Lady Wellington

I have settled in at the university's field camp, and am quite pleased to find that the rustic surroundings are punctuated by a delightful potbelly stove, Korean art from the researchers' travels and a clawfoot tub carried in on the backs of indentured graduate students. The quality of the tea has suffered, however, I am finding that coffee, though so dreadfully American, is perfect for stirring the humours in the morning. We set out from the base camp every daybreak for a rambling bird walk. The list of sightings thus far is included below. Morning is concluded with a scanty breakfast of pancakes, sausages, Portuguese Clementine's, Nicaraguan coffee, fresh bacon, muffins, and eggs from the Amish, but this is one of the many sacrifices one must make on expedition.
The new pair of Wellington boots I procured in London before departing is a lovely compliment to my field bustle, though the khaki Belgian lace of my bolero is far too bland for my complexion. We have set out traps that we might collect our precious beetles and bring them back to the laboratory. The chill is too much for their weak forms, still being nearly a frost in the late hours, and the little creatures are hardly tempted by the rotten chicken liver we have set out for them. Only one brave soul has dared to venture into our pitfall.
I find the company of these philosophers of the vital sciences refreshing, and in all the discussion of the natural place of Man and Beast, I have forgone my corset in the heat of the noontime, feeling like an Emily Davies or Josephine Butler!
American Cousin: Helping with Purdue Calumet's Field Biology class in lovely Big Falls, Wisconsin this week. The bird list so far: Purple finch, Blue Jay, American Goldfinch, Scarlet Tanager, Yellow Throat, Catbird, Ovenbird, Blue Bird, Yellow-headed Sapsucker, Nashville Warbler, Caledonian Tea Sipper, Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Wood-Peewee, Eastern Bluebird, Chipping Sparrow, Wild Turkey, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow.
Hopefully more exciting sightings to come.
The beetle collecting has been far less successful. We've only caught one of the species we need.

Moped Diaries

One of the benefits of staying in your hometown is getting to reinterpret the memories of your childhood through a finer lens. I just hung up the phone with Maripatrice, my big blonde-haired, Irish beauty best friend from growing up, and after the requisite "How's your husband" banter, we started laughing about some of the stupid-crazy shit we pulled as kids. I started with "Hey, 'member that one time...?" and she runs off with, "Oh, the tacos?" and dissolves into a pool of giggles. It's one of my favorite memories, but God, how could I have forgotten?
Me and Maripatrice were smoking friends. We'd get high in high school, or swallow a few NoDoze from the gas station after a shift at Conde's Fine Dining (somehow we managed to have the same waitressing jobs together for like, six years) and drive out to Kimmel Beach to watch the sun rise and bitch and moan and rave about waitressing, spinning wildly in the sand and kicking up wavelets until the hems of our aprons were wet. One time we just drove back to the restaurant and slept in the parking lot until our morning shift, digging up a wrinkled piece of looseleaf from my schoolbook to write "Wake us up at 7:30!!!" and sticking it in the windshield of my Nissan. Turns out the cook who opened the restaurant the next day couldn't read English, but his bright, shining, staring mug was enough to wake us up anyway. Even as we went back to serving pancakes, we still smelled like beach.
My parents went out of town for a week every February, so this one time me, Maripatrice, and...two guy friends who I can't even remember, one had a crush on her, but we all sat around in my parents living room, smoking a bowl. This was back when Taco Bell sold a package of fifty regular, soft-shelled, beef tacos for maybe ten dollars. All I remember is Maripatrice sitting Indian-style in my stepfather's recliner, wearing cute, plaid pajama pants, a pile of paper-wrapped tacos in her lap. She carefully counted each one, then looking up at us in a panic said, "Oh my God, you guys, there's only nineteen tacos left!"
Before that, back in sophomore year of high school, we had a severe addiction to Tandoor of India and their kheer dessert. It's basically a mind-blowing version of rice-pudding, but every time we'd light up, that would be the first thing we'd think of. We ate it by the quart, one for me, one for her. This was before we had cars, though, so we'd hop on my moped and putter eight miles to the restaurant.
Now that I think about it, even though it seemed like the ideal solution to what appeared to be a very important problem, we probably looked like refugees, two full-grown girls, piled on this teeny moped, one hunched over driving and one strapped to the back with two ungainly grocery bags of takeout. If I had gotten a yearbook, I bet she would have signed it with the phone number to Tandoor.

From The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1: 1931-1934

"Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of eating Jesus's flesh and drinking His blood that I couldn't swallow the host well, and I dreaded harming the it. I visualized Christ descending into my heart so realistically (I was a realist then!) that I could see Him walking down the stairs and entering the room of my heart like a sacred Visitor. That state of this room was a subject of great preoccupation for me. . . At the ages of nine, ten, eleven, I believe I approximated sainthood. And then, at sixteen, resentful of controls, disillusioned with a God who had not granted my prayers (the return of my father), who performed no miracles, who left me fatherless in a strange country, I rejected all Catholicism with exaggeration. Goodness, virtue, charity, submission, stifled me. I took up the words of Lawrence: "They stress only pain, sacrifice, suffering and death. They do not dwell enough on the resurrection, on joy and life in the present." Today I feel my past like an unbearable weight, I feel that it interferes with my present life, that it must be the cause for this withdrawal, this closing of doors. . . I am embalmed because a nun leaned over me, enveloped me in her veils, kissed me. The chill curse of Christianity. I do not confess any more, I have no remorse, yet am I doing penance for my enjoyments? Nobody knows what a magnificent prey I was for Christian legends, because of my compassion and my tenderness for human beings. Today it divides me from enjoyment in life."
p. 70-71

"As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness. By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents dramas in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot grasp the core of June. Everything Henry has said about her is true."

I wanted to run out and kiss her fanatastic beauty and say: 'June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existance. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childlike pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses"

Touché

Well played, good sir, well played.

Upward Mobility