more of more

there are more miles on my car. there are more freckles on my face. more states on the list of states-I-have-visited-or-at-least-driven-through.

more waves of glorious possibility and excitement and hope.

more candy. from this adorable little candy/toy/comic shop in a town called Ypsilanti, Michigan.

more games. Bananagrams and Set and Ticket to Ride and Catan. maybe I'll work on Portal 2 a bit, inbetween studying for exams?

more tofu. like at that Thai place last week, or at the Vietnamese place a few days later, and also that very lovely fried tofu pasta red-pepper garlic thing we made last night. way good. three weeks and three days ago I began a second summer of meatlessness. there will be no excuses for actual haggis in actual Scotland this time, I promise. but I might eat fish every once in a while. cuz sushi. yeah.

speaking of fish though, this is an interesting thing to read, full of research and stories and thoughts. maybe I should learn all the names of all the fish someday. or at least the edible fish. the alphabetical list here doesn't seem too crazy long.

I also want to learn the names of trees. and the names of pasta shapes. why?

so I spent almost a week in Michigan and just got home today. my brain is reveling in that shifting, transient sensation of having recently moved between brand new territory and old, comfortable territory. it's not quite disorienting, and it's rather pleasant to notice that hmm... the windows here at home don't face south, they face west. they are not pretty bay windows with bench seats around the inside. these floors in my apartment are not beautiful hardwood.

and those roads outside aren't Huron Street and Washtenaw Avenue. the river just down the hill is just the Wabash, same curves and mud as ever. the traffic humming and rumbling by is normal, local Indiana traffic tracing its way around all the same roads you trace your way around when you drive from here to anywhere nearby.

but yesterday you woke up somewhere different after a whole string of days waking up there, and it became familiar enough. all those streets and bridges and Michigan license plates. Ypsi is now a little lightbulb on a big, beautiful, mostly blank map.

I should get a large wall map of this country someday, or maybe of the world, and mark all the other places with lightbulbs. places where I know some people, places where I've seen a few sidewalks. places with some important, personal, experiential resonance of some kind.

while I was in Michigan, June arrived. now there are fewer days left of this glorious summer break. fewer days of farmers' markets and fewer days of reading whatever I want. fewer days for figuring out how to prepare for preliminary exams. fewer days left to wrangle a new syllabus together.

let's quit talking in terms of fewer for now, though. more freckles. more smiles. more ice cream. it's still summer for a good long while yet.