November 30/First Quarter Moon

Biding my Time in Grand Forks.

My work brought me to North Dakota this week and while I have been here, the snow descended on Minneapolis. So I was unable to travel home. I hear that there is weather everywhere, snow on my family in the Pacific Northwest, snow on my family south of Minneapolis in Mankato and tornados in Mississippi. Here it is a windy frozen tundra. Today I will travel by car into Northern Minnesota where the school I will visit has been untouched by weather and then drive home.

Here is the uninspiring view from my hotel window where my new underwear and bra lay out to dry. I took a cold walk to a nearby Target to buy dinner and something to wear into the pool .

This fall I have been more busy at my data collection job than I anticipated. I enjoy it. The social-ness. The privilege of breaking the bubble of such necessarily insulated places as schools. And yet, last week, the week of the Thanksgiving holiday, was tinted blue with melancholy. I have many reasons to be so, but it’s the faltering from my intentions that is hitting me right now.

Anyway I had already been planning to step back from the writing this lunation because keeping up had brought stress into the process. And that can threw off any such delicately calibrated infrastructure as creative process. Instead I am pulling together some of my body of work and doing administrative stuff around here. Hence last week’s post and now today’s effort is the link below. A week or two ago, Bill pulled out from mom’s saved papers an old undergrad creative essay I wrote for Chicano Studies. It is about my time in Nicaragua in 1996 and the experience of that literature class upon my return. We are halfway to the full moon and when I get home again, I will add some 1996 photos to that piece of writing. In the meantime, take care of yourself and thanks for following along on this moon journey.

Much love, Tina

identity advances as the shoes wear their path