today was a good day.

on the bike ride back from minneapolis, i spontaneously stopped by the elouise butler wildflower garden in wirth park, one of my favorite places to geek out about/commune with plants.

bushwhacking along the steep steep banks of the mississippi, on a plant walk. summer sun filtered through maple leaves, a carpet of water leaf wit,h the occasional solomon's seal and columbine. dirt, bruises, heat, life, big water, a reprieve in the city eve if you can still hear the hum of the freeway.

i biked home from minneapolis at ten, with no lights. the city was sleeping, and i felt pleasantly safe and alone inside of it. the waxing moon watched over me, and i serenaded the shadows, singing as i went. it was a sultry summer sunday night. the loveliest part was the cottonwood chaff illuminated by street lamps, blowing.

i watched this video, and it turned my day around.

i crouched under a bridge as a slow train passed, screeching and grumbling and wailing like some unsatisfied american god. the sad songs of metal on metal, disappointed dreams. sometimes i find melancholy to be deeply enjoyable. my friend had laid quarters down on the tracks. one got flattened and came out shiny and irresistible, smooth and sharp, good to hold, transformed.

i made a glorious improvised shepherd's pie - potatoes and sweet potatoes with walnuts on top of ground turkey cooked with onions, ancho pepper, chipotle powder, thyme, and a tiny bit of cinnamon. i am grateful that food is delicious. it's so much better this way than if we just ate because otherwise we'd die.

whizzed past traffic on my bike during rush hour!

i love bike commuting.

the best thing i did today was restart this blog.

this time i mean it!

at true thai in seward, i reunited with two of my best friends from high school - the first time the three of us were together since we were sixteen. we had the world's most thorough waiter, who catered attentively to my many obnoxious allergies.

i biked to minneapolis wearing bright blue leggings with my baritone ukelele protruding my backpack. some kids in the back of a pickup truck were very amused.

we went to the elouise butler wildflower area in wirth park, and i swear i started to cry at the feeling of being back in real woods again.

i sat on astroturf and enjoyed a picnic while wearing a child's foam zebra mask and catching up with a friend from high school i hadn't seen in seven years -- surreality at its very best at the happy show at the bedlam theatre. if you are looking for a dynamic and fully-engaged theater experience, i really recommend this "choose your own adventure" piece by live action set.

a late night trip intended to be urban exploring ended up as a frigid walk along the mississippi, where mist ghosts obscured the shore. a shadowy flap descended over the water: a heron landing near us on the shore to fish in the shallows. the world was beautiful and still, visible breath and the freeway hum beneath a few pale stars.

back on the wagon

the best thing i did on sunday was march in the may day parade!

and i've been recovering all week. you know that slump that follows an event you've been anticipating for a long time. well, i'm in it, and that is my excuse for not updating this blog.

here i am, though.

the best thing i did today was walk the four and a half miles home from work when i unexpectedly got off early. nothing makes me as joyous as walking. i felt all of the anxious thoughts and work-week neuroses dissipate after about the third mile. something uncurled, unfolded, and i sang, and i moved, and i was

i met up with a fellow from okcupid and we went on a lovely off-trail ramble through elm creek park in futile (but fun) pursuit of morels.

a midnight stroll along the mighty mississippi, serene and gleaming beneath a bright moon, was the perfect way to welcome the month of may!

today i applied for this job, and the level to which i am excited about it defies sense and reason. do i really want to live in minneapolis? what am i thinking? yet i find myself gleefully fantasizing about designing filing systems for the seward co-op. that's the kind of dork i am: a secretarial one, and my shame is deep.

i also helped my sister paper-mache an enormous bone. may day is coming - spring is bursting forth out of decay. we are renewed and renewed and renewed. tomorrow is friday and that makes everything seems good.

oh! and the best thing i did yesterday (which i also did today!) was get paid to write poems. training lag time at work is awesome.

kale yeah!

i'm clearly becoming lagging and lackluster in terms of this blog, perhaps because of the zero readership, and perhaps just because my enthusiasm waxes and wanes at warp speed.

the best thing that i did today was pot up some little kale seedlings. they're just getting their first little cute true leaves! life is happening!

i made carrot-sweet potato chicken curry while listening to a pandora station based on etta james' "in the basement." divinity.

today at the may day parade rehearsal, i was overflowing with gratitude that people are bringing the spirituality into art and politics here in the city. inspiring, and fun to wave a flag and run around, even if it was a blustery day.

today i smelled lilacs. so sweet and heady, spring is here!

i finished my owl at heart of the beast! so psyched for may day! so psyched for bread and puppet this summer!

working girl

i became a bicycle commuter! praise be for the twin cities' amazing network of bike trails.

i started a new temp job. that wasn't the best thing. the best thing was doing yoga on my lunch break! and getting paid to read a book i brought in - training down time is cool that way.

the best thing i did yesterday was talk about culture while watching the mississippi river.

ghosts of industry

sang melancholy songs about the end of civilization in a highly resonant and fairly forbidden place.

after a bike ride around como lake, my friend nick and i made ceviche - red onions, shrimp, tomatoes, cilantro, limes, orange, fried plantain on the side. it was colorful and sensuous. we made a huge mess in the kitchen and then scrubbed it spotless. all in all, very satisfying.

i gave a dollar to a bearded man playing the fiddle outside of the wedge co-op. he yodeled, leapt from foot to foot, and prattled a bit in a charming bluegrass way while i sat on a rock eating a piece of chocolate. against the dusky blue sky of impending evening, a thin sliver of newly waxing moon hung jauntily. "you may have already noticed," the man said, fiddling away, "but may i present to you. . . the moon!"

i felt all of the burgeoning promise of a warm night in the city. the breeze swept the secrets of the music out and down past the waiting ears of the blades of grass. we were alive!

simple

for breakfast, i ate rice with hemp milk, maple syrup, half a banana, and walnuts. it was delicious.

after a fairly depressing and thoroughly lethargic morning, i dragged my ass to the local library. going to the library is the best thing i can possibly do when i feel sad and apathetic, because it helps me remember that i'm interested in just about everything, and there are so many things to be interested in! the libraries here are phenomenal. i left with a stack of books and a happier heart.

on the way back from a walk to the witch's hat tower (rumored to be bob dylan's inspiration for "all along the watch tower"), some friends and i picked up an uprooted spruce tree some people were throwing away and carried it back to their house, down franklin and over the mississippi river. if it can't be replanted, it will be either burned or decorated like a christmas tree.

also, i sat inside an enormous beer vat in an abandoned brewery and made wonderful resonant noices to my heart's content.

it was another good day.

special feature: things i did on a bicycle today

• wore my red skirt tucked into my blue spandex superhero leggings and felt a little bit like wonder woman
• rode home with an orange in each pocket; they made a charming "bong, bong, bong, bong" rhythm against my thighs when i biked up hills
• rode over some very rad bridges, including the irene hixon whitney bridge between loring park and the walker sculpture garden and this neat pedestrian/bike bridge, which spirals up and down on each end!
• rode down hills with no hands and felt exhilerated
• felt the poetry of the railroad age in america when i rode over this particular wooden bridge on the luce line that smells like coal and some other thing that reeks vaguely of pollution and industry. i always gag and feel sympathy for people in factories and building railroad lines in the 19th century.
• took a new route home from uptown; luce line the whole way, and it was exquisitely lovely
• saw what appeared to be the first soccer and softball games of the season in a smattering of parks
• rode home with the world on fire through the tree branches. sunset to dusk, and i did my last stretch in the lovely gloaming.

i biked to minneapolis to find that my plans had changed, so i called a couple of friends who live in uptown at the last minute. we picked violets and walked down lynndale. high on endorphins and vitamin d, i stood on my head (with permission) in once upon a crime, a charming bookstore that i highly recommend if you have any inclination toward mystery novels.

after a morning bike lock debachle, i biked to common ground meditation center, my favorite spirituality hub, even though i was doomed to be half an hour late. i missed the meditation, but was just in time for the dharma talk, which, fittingly enough, was on determination and being resolute.

i was unexpectedly taken out to breakfast at the seward cafe, a collectively owned and run restaurant with an emphasis on local, organic, sustainable food. i am now officially in love with the place. anywhere that has a free box and a hand-drawn menu gives me palpitations. i had a gluten-free, vegan rice-millet-corn pancake with blueberries, tahini, and maple syrup! a highly allergic girl's dream come true! hibiscus tea is the ideal drink for a warm, sunny, delicious spring day.

today was so phenomenal that i'm tempted to write about the whole thing. but that would defeat the purpose of the word "best," so that's all i've got.

until tomorrow!

i spent my day at in the heart of the beast's open workshops for the may day parade. few things make me happier than paper mache - warm wheatpaste, meditative concentration, losing yourself to your project amid a joyful hubbub, creating beauty out of lost and discarded things, bringing forth form where there was nothing. i'm making a big ol' barn owl. it's a good time for resurrection.

on part of a fourteen mile bike ride on the luce line trail, i rode through a delightfully cool and dark tunnel, refreshing after sun-drenched, sweaty, singing spring. the bicycle is one of the best inventions of all time.

second day slump?

the best thing i did today was work on a new song i'm writing on my baritone ukelele.

i'm not going to lie, i was inspired to go do it because i sat down here earlier to write in this blog and couldn't think of anything about my day worth typing up.

see? pressure! it's working as a motivator already.

starting strong with a tie

1) you know those enormous corrugated drainage pipes that run underneath little bridges? today i explored one in minnehaha park. i sat inside of the pipe on one end while my friend sat inside of the pipe on the other side. we had an in-depth (and resonant!) conversation from about 50 feet apart. it was like living inside of a tin can telephone!

2) i shook my tail feathers at hipshaker, the monthly old school soul/obscure r&b/funkity funk dance party at the kitty cat klub in dinkytown, which resembles a maze of thrift store-furnished living rooms and intimate conversation nooks; it's worth visiting for its decor alone. the crowd was full of earnest, good-time ass-shakers who were not afraid to get down. i danced my wild and crazy heart out and was in good company. and it was free!

the premise

as part of my campaign to stay sane during a temporary return to the twin cities, i'm jumping on the themed blog bandwagon. here's the plan: at the end of every single day, i will post the best thing that i did during the past twenty-four hours. it can be big, it can be small, it just has to be the best. if i'm feeling particularly enthused, i may even post more than one thing.

this blog is about learning to love the play you're from, becoming reacquainted with minneapolis, getting to know st. paul better, practicing gratitude, writing every day, and maintaining the fortitude to do neat things while simultaneously living in the suburbs.

go!