And when I awoke, it rained.

It is the middle of January. We are supposed to be hemmed in by snow. We are not. We got a little snow -- about a foot -- right before we returned to New York, but today the rain came and washed too much of it away!

Still, I only complain a little bit for now. The rain cleared the roads, and the temperature was so warm that it didn't freeze. The meant I could drive to Cape Vincent, pick up the Wedding Guest, bring him here and hang out for a few hours. We didn't get much accomplished, research-wise, but we did catch up on each other's lives and, as he so often does, he brought deer meat with him! And cooked it in butter. We had rice with broccoli and seedless green grapes and, of course, iced tea. Outside, the rain fell little but constant, uncovering the muddy green grass and making my snow gray. But that's okay. I was glad to have an easy drive back to Cape Vincent later and a very nice one home, checking out the countryside and small towns I haven't seen in almost a month.

And now...here in the evening...the storm-blast comes, and he is tyrannous and strong. He strikes with his o'er-taking wings. The wind is big and gusty. It is not like Oklahoma wind at all. Even when it is big, it never seems to last very long. And it very, very seldom swirls into a tornado. I don't fear it. I find it an exciting change of pace, and I wish I could walk down to the lake with my coat-tails flapping and see what it does to the water.

I'm so glad to live here. I hope winter is riding back in on this wind, like a big, bearded biker roaring into town to take charge.

Snow Selfishness

None of my friends from New York love the snow as much as I do. That's natural; you seldom love what you've always had too much of. I, of course, grew up with piddling Oklahoma snows that lasted a week at most but were usually just a few inches that melted at noon and turned to ice in the evening.

So I am constantly wishing for snow, celebrating snow when it comes, and wishing for more snow no matter how much we already have. I want whipping winds of snow through which I cannot see. I want giant slow flakes or curtains of tiny sparkling flakes. I want it now, and more.

It is selfish, when so many of my friends and co-workers hate snow and/or have Seasonal Affective Disorder, to wish so hard for more of it -- for grey skies and gusty wind and so much snow that we can't remember what it was like to see the ground. It is selfish, but I can't seem to stop it.

But then I find myself in this kind of bind: I have a very dear young friend here in New York who lives about half an hour from me on the St. Lawrence River. He is my Wedding Guest, the one to whom "my tale [I must] teach." He's also my research assistant when I do metal projects, so beyond enjoying his company, I benefit from his patience with internet research. I have been in Oklahoma the last few weeks, so we haven't seen each other in about a month. Beyond needing to get truckin' on the research (which is due in MARCH!!!!), I just really look forward to visiting with him -- and, of course, butting into his life with nosiness and advice.

I was going to announce that the thought of this visit made me for once unselfish about the snow because I am hoping it will hold off for a day so I can drive out there and get him...but now I realize that I am STILL being selfish, asking it to stop because something better has come along.

The nature of snow is not to care about my plans, which is one of the things I love about it, but I just had to write this entry to commemorate one of those rare times when I kind of hope the snow (or even worse, ice) will not come down for one day. But just one day. After that, I hope we get a blizzard.

Dog Walk

My first winter here, my husband was deployed. We had one dog, Tula, she of the crooked teeth and dubious breeding (we got her from the animal shelter). We had no fence around our yard. So every morning I got up 30 minutes early in order to layer on, over pajamas, the following: snow overalls, fleece scarf, fleece jacket, puffy ski jacket, hat with ear flaps (lined with fleece), $40 North Face ski mittens, and fur-lined snow boots...all so I could walk Tula to town. Upon returning from a day teaching college, I put all the same on over my work clothes and walked her to town again -- before dinner, which if you know my Hobbit eating habits, is a huge sacrifice. In the middle of the day, a dog walker came and walked her again. She was in good shape.

But I always felt bad that our little dog was only ever outside on a leash. (For Tula runs away and does not come back when called. Or chased.) And, we thought, it would be so nice to just let the dogs out in the morning instead of having to walk them before breakfast. So, just before he came home, we had a fence put up around the yard -- and, in the meantime, got a dog for Tula, Nikki -- a Tibetan spaniel also from the shelter, whose teeth and breeding are even more questionable than hers.

Thus it was that when the next winter came, we could -- and did -- just let the dogs out in the mornings...and, after awhile, also sometimes in the evenings when we just didn't feel like going outside after working all day.

You know where this is going: Even though my dogs are AWFUL to walk, I miss the walks. I miss knowing the snow levels and how many ice fishermen are on the frozen lake. I miss the orange streetlight glow on the snow. I miss the moon sparkling on it. I miss knowing its sound. I miss knowing whether the cold that day will take my breath away or just feel fresh and clean.

We walked the dogs this evening, and I hope to get back into the pattern of walking them. It's better for them, and of course, us also. I'm going to start with the evening walks for a few weeks and just do the morning one when I feel like it. I know myself: If it feels like punishment or an unnecessary obligation, I won't do it. After awhile, I'll add the morning walk back in regularly and see how that goes. I did it before, so surely I can manage it again. And my little dogs will feel more like dogs, perhaps. My lungs will feel more like lungs. My winter will feel longer, bigger, colder, closer.

Return to the Land of Mist and Snow

Well...It's been awhile, again. And again, I say I will try to do better. And I will not even TRY to catch you up on goings-on. Anyway, if you are reading this, you are probably my father and know everything anyway. We all know you, Daddy, are the real audience for this blog. And so, as I used to do on carousels as my horse came around to where you were standing, I will wave at my first and most loyal audience.

This year, the land of mist and snow has been the land of 60-degrees and sun all winter. No snow on Halloween. No snow on Thanksgiving. No snow on CHRISTMAS. So we went home to Oklahoma for a few weeks. Now, we are at the home of my husband's sisters in Lockport, a suburb of Buffalo. We had a nice sunny drive here...decided to spend the night and have been snowed in for two days now. Hurray!

Except not quite hurray because we have to drive home in it today, as my husband must sign in from leave today. (In case any of you are NOT Daddy and don't know, my husband is a soldier.) Still, I am so glad to see snow. Real snow. Big snow.

Except Alaska has so much snow that their cars are buried. They can't open their doors. And so I have snow envy. I hope once we do get home to our beautiful blue beta fish, Li Ning, and our incredibly pricy heating oil we will get dramatic snow as well. I hope it never stops. I hope it is still snowing in May.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

I last wrote in October. The season of mist and snow (but still not enough to satisfy me) came and went. In October, I said I'd write tomorrow, but I lied. Around that time, everything became too much, so I trimmed whatever I could from my life, and this blog was gristle. But here I am now, in April, the day before Easter.

It's a windy, rainy day. I call this Research Weather because the first day I ever did official, formal research for a class was on a day with weather like this. I wore a white knitted shirt I'd inherited from my glamorous Aunt Mary and a satiny tye-dyed orange/yellow/red skirt I'd sewn together myself. It was full and came to the floor, and the waistband was sewed on wrong-side out. And I wore brown gladiator sandals I'd inherited from my cousin, Mary's daughter, Cinda, who had decided they weren't her style. That became my favorite outfit because it always reminded me of that day.

I was in high school, working on my junior English research paper about Andy Warhol's Factory. My thesis sentence used the word "microcosm." I used the paper as an excuse to buy The Velvet Underground + Nico, which was life-changing. My father bought me a huge, heavy coffeetable book full of black and white pictures of people and happenings at the Factory. I was immersed. I wished and prayed and begged God to bring me to New York. (And, as you can see, he answers prayers.)

Back in the olden days, research was conducted using real, live, wooden card catalogues, microfilm, microfiche, hardbound periodicals on the second floor of the NSU library. I remember standing on the shaky round stools to reach books on the top shelves. I remember how my eyes would blur, watching the microfilm whirl by. I remember how cool I felt when I could use both microfilm and microfiche without a librarian's help. I remember opening the coffeetable book and finding a picture of Edie Sedgwick dancing with shadows at a Velvet Underground show, listening to them while I looked at it, putting on make-up and cooler clothes, trying to feel what it might have felt like for them, knowing I couldn't quite...that research can only take you so far, but farther than you could go by just casually observing.

My mother dropped me off at the library that morning. It was a Saturday. She picked me up around lunch. I changed into a red and white tie-dyed shirt and leather skirt she had made in the 1960s, and we went out to a gathering of artists and art-lovers who were eating and philosophizing and generally having a good time as they waited for a bust of potter Anna Mitchell to be fired.

It was not a time that I thought my mother was cool. She was the Maker and Enforcer of Rules. (Not that I had many...I had incredibly liberal parents who raised us with a minimum of interference.) But I talked to all kinds of people there who thought she was, and their praise began to convince me. And, best of all, I had something to talk about with all those art people: My research.

It was on a day with weather like this that I discovered how to dis-cover the mysteries of the world, to gaze at them, touch them, listen to them, put them into my own heart and mind, find they are even more mysterious than I originally thought. Research Weather is almost as good as mist and snow. Almost.

Time for mist, not yet for snow?

It's been awhile...It was summer. It was hot. I was in Oklahoma all summer, and even the land of mist and snow had neither, and still doesn't...but I miss writing, not to mention my main audience, Daddy. And so, even though it's just autumn, I'll write.

It's been a very hectic and tiring semester so far, but I'm not ever here to talk about work. I am here to talk about the very bright red, yellow, orange and multi-colored trees that are everywhere...except I'm nearly missing them for spending all my time in the office or at the library table at home, grading papers. It was thus last fall as well.

It's strangely warm, and I hope that means we will have a big, giant, long winter. My New York students tell me their grandparents say so. That's what happens when it's weirdly warm in Oklahoma too, so I hope it's true. I want snow so high I can't open the door.

I wanted to write this, but now I can't seem to write. Alll the words I know seem like the wrong ones or the boring ones. This is not an auspicious return to my blog. But here I am. I will try to be more excited and exciting tomorrow.

Death Angel

On Thanksgiving of 1989, my cousin Eddie and I were hiding in a bedroom from our giant extended family's loving but overwhelming gathering. We were 14-year-old burgeoning metalheads with black clothes, long hair, and a bleak outlook on the world. We could only be pleasant in short bursts, and our bursts for the day were over.

"Listen to this," he said.

Things move slowly in Oklahoma, and we were too young to keep up even then, so Death Angel's album (which was on cassette tape for us) The Ultra-Violence had just now reached him. And that Thanksgiving, it reached me as well. We sat there on the bed, and I loved each song more than the one before it.

We were already Metallica and Slayer fans, so of course we liked the style of Death Angel, but there was something else. They were a little more melodic, perhaps. Mark Osegueda's voice was more beautiful. And there was something good-natured and positive about them, even when they were singing about violent or scary topics. Normally, we wouldn't like that, but Death Angel did it in a way that made us believe they could possibly be right.

And of course, like many bands at the time, they sang about the unity of the metal community. At that time, it did feel unified. Yes, we spoke with disdain of "false metal" and "poseurs" and all that, but ultimately, we took care of each other and believed we were part of something monstrous and mysterious that could pull us through anything. For many of us, it was in our nature to find life shallow and disappointing, but this music reminded us that there was more to it than we could touch or see. So when I was sitting in Pre-Algebra, and people were passing notes about whose boyfriend was seen with whose girlfriend, and the Oklahoma sky was coming in the windows annoyingly blue and cheerful, and the teacher was talking about something I didn't understand and didn't care about, I would write metal lyrics in the margins of my notebook and tell myself this would not always be my life.

Metallica, Slayer, Testament and Megadeth were big bands. They were all larger than life to me -- Big, strong men who made music that helped thousands of people survive. The music was big too, and commanding, and far away, like God. Death Angel's music was powerful, but it was also more personal somehow. When I needed to feel like I was enough to be part of the whole thing, it was Death Angel who reassured me.

I've been trying to write that last sentence for awhile now. It's still not quite what I mean. But I'm going to just skip ahead.

Fast forward (like I used to do to hurry up and get to "Voracious Souls") about 20 years. At the beginning of this summer, I had a conversation in which I lamented never having seen Slayer. So I went on the internet to see if they would be anywhere near me any time soon. (They would be but alas, I could not go.) Along the side of the website there was a list of other bands who were on tour. Death Angel was on that list. I thought, "Hmm...I love Death Angel. I'll have to see where they're playing."

An hour away. Later that night.

I have responsibilities. I’d stayed up late the night before with a friend kept awake by a broken heart. The next morning, I had to take my father to the doctor an hour away. And drive him home. But this is the age of Facebook. I posted a status update lamenting the fact that I shouldn’t go see Death Angel and questioning whether I should just go anyway. Lo and behold, seconds later came responses from metal friends new and old reminding me that this is what we DO.

So without thinking it over too much, I called my niece and nephew – young metalheads both – and told them to put on their black clothes because we were going to see Death Angel. They did not need to be asked twice.

The Marquee is a small, dark club – just right for metal, I think. We got there early enough to support most of the local bands who opened, and all of them were good. If this wasn’t so long already, I’d tell you about them, but surely you are getting impatient already.

So, as I said before, Death Angel was never that famous, and they are less famous now. But those of us who love them are diehards. We were there with our children – in my case, my sisters-in-law’s children – talking over what songs they might play, how long we’d been listening to them, what we were like when we’d first heard them, who we liked now (Acrassicauda seemed to be the consensus band in that crowd)…It was good to be with family.

And then Death Angel came out.

We were standing right at the edge of the low stage, in the middle. Mark Osegueda was right there, looking even more beautiful than he did when I was 15 and, yes, still wearing a very similar outfit to the one I had on, even though I hadn’t been keeping up all these years. They had a new bassist and a new drummer, both of them excellent. They played every song I love. They reached down and shook our hands in between songs. They ran here and there, and their long hair flew wildly, as did all of ours, in time to the music. I’d almost forgotten how disorienting headbanging is when you begin it, and the trance-like state it becomes after a few songs. But sometimes I had to stop, so I could look at Death Angel and realize we were in the same room at last.

It was my niece’s first metal concert ever. A few songs into the show, the new (young, gorgeous) bassist reached down and handed her his pick. She was the first person for whom this happened that night. She’s at an age when gorgeous guys doing anything is exciting, so it was a big deal made even bigger by the fact that the swirling people, the dark room, the loud music were new to her. I saw all this happen, and I will always remember her blue eyes widening, and the surprise of her smile, and her Gryffindor-colored hair standing out in the crowd. They were that to me: Metal, and guys, and something that relieved the pain of growing up, and it was incredible to see them be that for her too.

Every song was powerful and big and just right. Death Angel succumbed to the overproduction of their time, so some of their later albums were not rough enough for me. Live, the edges were broken off jagged, and all the songs were violently beautiful.

Toward the end of the night, they played a song I love, “Seemingly Endless Time,” and during the second chorus, Mark knelt down into the crowd, right by me, with the microphone the distance between us, so all our voices mixed together. We were so close I could feel the warmth of his skin. His dreadlocks brushed against my face. I closed my eyes. I turned away for a second, because this was too much…but metal is too much. That’s the point. So I opened my eyes again, and sang with him, and he smiled at me…or maybe I imagine he did. Maybe he was just smiling because he wrote that song, because he was making metal, because Death Angel was playing, and even when you’re in it yourself, that’s exciting.

Then when he stood up, he reached for my hand, and stepped back on a monitor, and didn’t let go as he leaned back off of it…didn’t let go until I did, at the last minute, when gravity forced me to.

It’s what they’ve done for me all these years: Not let go until I did. And when I did let go, they didn’t stop. They kept on, and just when I needed them again, they were there. That is Death Angel, in my life.

They are releasing a new album this fall. They played some songs from it. It’s going to be good. I’ll buy it, and when I haven’t gotten enough sleep, when I have too many things to do, when I am worried, I will listen to it and think of being 15, feeling like I couldn’t make it, then being 35 and realizing I did. This music never deserts us, even if we wander away from it. We come back, bedraggled, and it kills the fatted calf. We reach out for it, and it reaches back. It pulls us through.