New essay in Tampa Review

I'm delighted to have an essay afloat in Tampa Review issue #41:
A few summers ago my intrepid Peace Corps friend Elaine traveled with me to Romania to gawk at the Bukovina monasteries. Confusion, pine trees, false cognates, and a measure of insight were experienced.

A Room Full of Naked Women (Euro Vision Part I)

“Forgive the analogy,” my landlord said, “but it’s like being in a room full of beautiful naked women.”

A daffy, middle-aged sailing bum, he stood next to the washing machine, chatting with me about Europe. I've just returned from a four-cities-in-two weeks blitz with my kid brother.

The daycare near our hostel
in Paris showcased an awesome
animal jam band.

My first thought was that the naked ladies analogy was kind of weird, given my landlord’s rhetorical situation. But I also saw where he was coming from. So much to look at, and in such a short time.

Given the number of art museums in Europe and the ample representation of nudes alongside waterlilies, self-portraits, and fruit, "a room full of naked women" is a handy metonymical tag for the place.

I know in my last post I promised tales of secondhand Paris fashion. Alas, the exchange rate crushed me, and the vintage boutiques were beyond the reach of my experience except as small museums. 

I'm not sure what's so risque about this
dry cleaner's but I can't resist a
provocative awning.

There was so much to look at on this trip. And a feast for the other senses, too. If I hadn't forgotten my audio recorder in the luggage room on our first day in Paris, I might have recorded: men (only men) jangling half moons of tiny Eiffel Tower keyrings like tambourines, a pack of orange-brown windup dogs barking on a blanket near the Seine, a 7-piece band playing "If I Were A Rich Man" in a metro tunnel, a busker on Champ-Elysees with quite a crowd for his Phil Collins/Sting medley, giggly field trip kids everywhere.

If I had a smell recorder, I would have saved the bakery and the little fish market near our hostel and the lavender at the Jardin des Tuileries near the Place de la Concorde.
Even though three or four days are far too quick a stay to exhaust a city, this trip gave my travel muscles a serious workout. (Travel, like flirting--and here’s my own questionable laundry-room analogy--is a muscle, with the same use-it-or-lose-it urgency). When not drinking espresso, I was reading maps; speaking embarrassed monkey language in the stead of foreign language proficiency; chanting “easygoing and joyful” to myself when the museum/church was closed/hard to find/crowded; shrugging off idiot taxes like the unforeseen extra charge to sit outside in a café; celebrating the small victories of finding a laundromat and achieving clean clothes.

One more analogy (why not): As soon as I finished my first marathon a few years ago, I had the  following thoughts: where are the bagels, that was a crazy experience, and I want to run another one.

Now that I’m home, unpacking, sorting photos, and trying to reacquaint myself with the notion of work, I’m already looking at the calendar for my upcoming breaks. Already I’m making a wish list of guidebooks, angling for the next trip. Someday I'll be one buff traveler.

Who can resist a shot of the Eiffel by night? Emerging from
the metro earlier that morning, I smelled croissants and saw the tippy top of the
Tower in the same moment. Instant Paris!

Depot-Vente

I'm marking up the maps. Tomorrow Thrippie goes international. First stop: Paris.
My colleague Leonard has given me insider info like where the best ice cream place is (Berthillon's, and Lonely Planet agrees). The weather report looks good for three days of walking (with respites, of course, in churches, museums, and cafes).
I confess that I may have squealed when I got to the "Dress for Less" Paris guidebook page. My Francais lexicon is about the size of a petit-four, but I've committed to memory my new favorite word: depot-vente (second-hand). Note: the first "e" wears an ascending accent mark like a quail feather and the "o" a peaked hat. I can't wait to paw through Parisian ladies' castoff vintage wear. As a courtesy to my bro (whom I might start calling Sancho Panza, even though his build is more Don Quixotic), I'll keep an eye on the clock when we happen upon these houses of treasure.
I've been home in West Virginia for a few days, and to keep my thrifting skills sharp, my grandmother and I trolled through our nearby Goodwill last Saturday after we feasted at the Waffle House. I tried on a few light sweaters, but I didn't love anything enough to take it with me all the way to Europe in my pink turtle bag.
The night before our Goodwill outing, I picked Nana up from her dance at the Junior League building downtown. I arrived later than I'd promised (shock) but several dances before the music stopped. I couldn't help but feel self-conscious as I searched the room for my tiny grandmother on the dance floor, veering left at the potato chip table when I should have cut right. There's something about seeing half a dozen senior citizens tearing up the Cha Cha Slide that does a heart good.
As I wrote about in a post from last fall, the prescribed gender roles of dance can be a relief. Nana's friend Jack asked me to dance. He's really good, because even I looked good. I work through my nervousness by asking questions: how long have he and his wife been dancing? How long did it take until he didn't have to count steps in his head?
Jack said he dated a girl in high school, and they'd go out dancing all the time. He broke her sternum once while trying to flip her over his shoulder. Is that why you broke up? I asked. No, he said, I wanted to go to college. I glanced at Patty, his wife, with her blond curly hair and silver shoes, chatting with my grandma. I said it seems like things worked out OK.

Yellowstone essay finds a home in Permanent Vacation anthology

Several summers ago, I cleaned hotel rooms at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Housekeeping was hard, unglamorous work, but I couldn't have asked for a more earthloving/evangelical/burnout/OCD/backcountry trail mix of coworkers who taught me much more than just how to make hospital corners.
I'm honored that an essay I wrote about that time appears in the new anthology, Permanent Vacation, from Bona Fide Books.

Serifs Gone Wild!

Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight in Paris, opened in Spokane last night, so the theme of crashing the party of a past epoch is, well, present in my mind. (The film’s past is a very good-looking past, I must add: Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali! for crying out loud.)

Wilkie knows her place!

The seasoned Thrippie reader will not be shocked that this yellow table tent’s jaunty font caught my eye. 

I’m especially charmed by the attempt to yellow out the official time of the Beer Garden. The little plastic teepee reflects an earlier era, which makes me curious about its past life. What kinds of revelry has this tent seen? Were the Beer Gardens in days of yore so wild that Spokanites were cut off promptly at 8 p.m. and sent home with ibuprofen?

This sign’s imperfection lets us have it both ways. We see the new intention, but we also get a look at its history.

In Part I of “The Interpretation of Dreams,” Freud claims, “Thoughts which are mutually contradictory make no attempt to do away with each other, but persist side by side. They often combine to form condensations, just as though there were no contradiction between them, or arrive at compromises such as our conscious thoughts would never tolerate, but such as are often admitted in our actions.” The stolen table tent is a kind of dream space, a tablet of the unconscious mind where possibilities are open. The Beer Garden is and is not from 5pm-8pm.

Yes, dear reader, I said stolen. It was not Thrippie's finest hour. I and my accomplice, to whom I might or might not be related, swiped it off the table when no one was looking. Maybe next summer I’ll sneak it back into the ArtFest booze corral and return it to its native habitat. 

But for now, ArtFest, I pledge to feed and care for this sign, to love it as though it were my own. It’s a much cooler centerpiece, I might add, than my usual bowl of questionable onions or a stack of papers.

(If anyone from Artfest happens upon this post, I beg of you: leniency! Always leniency). 

Something Old, Something Blue

Summer break has broken! I found these bright and heavy earrings (right photo) on a recent trip with friends to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Their turquoise delights me, as does their Art Deco spirit. They feel about as heavy as two quarters each (it’s been far too long since my last math field day to remember how heavy that might actually be in ounces or centigrams or something). Safe to say, they keep my feet on the ground. At the same thrift store on 4th Ave, I scored a pair of chunky red hoops and silver and green post earrings, too.

I caught these beauties in CDA.

Last weekend was a time for my feather earrings that a good friend bought for me from Wild Honey. I attended the Sasquatch music festival in George, Washington, with my brother and some friends. The younger set paraded around the venue in sun dresses, animal costumes, and gold pants. I was more of a jeans and t-shirt girl, with a hipster-ish hat and, of course, my ear plumage. (I'm no stranger to gold pants, but the Gorge gets cold once the sun goes down, and lame just doesn't insulate very well). 

It was a minor heartbreak when I lost an earring after a day of festing (probably when I was running from the Death Cab for Cutie show to the whomp tent? Oh, troubles!). So from that day forward I decided to take things in an Indigo Girls direction and wear the solo feather. No problem! The surviving earring will work nicely this summer in an asymmetrical pairing.

Faithful blog readers, your correspondent is experiencing some personal upheaval. Suffice it to say that summer plans have shifted from how I’d envisioned them in the winter darkness. All shall be well. But perhaps it’s telling that today I’ve been writing about ears. It’s a recurring theme for me that when someone starts telling me something I don’t want to hear, I just stop listening. 

Spring Things: Part III (Be a Good LeSport)

I have not quite crossed the finish line of the semester, but I couldn’t resist taking the afternoon off.

Yesterday I attended graduation in my robe with velvety chevrons and my droopy hood. This is the third time I’ve worn the gown since my own graduation in May 2010. That last-minute grad ensemble from the campus bookstore turned out to be a good investment. I considered working out the wrinkles with my new clothes steamer (a fine alternative to ironing if you can listen to the user's manual and not put your hand over the steamy part to see if it's hot). Then I read the robe’s ominous tag: Do Not Wash Or Dry Clean. I suppose that when I’m done with it, I should burn it (not unlike a decommissioned American flag)? Readers who sew: could I pay you to make me some pockets in this thing? A girl needs a way to stash a pack of Skittles, especially when she’s sitting through a ceremony.

How could I resist the Atari pull to the heartstrings?

And dear readers, I confess that I haven’t accomplished much thrifting in recent days, other than scoring some graduation wrapping paper last weekend, just in time for a few gifts.

And today, in my glorious afternoon of hooky, I strolled over to Fringe & Fray, where I found this rad LeSportsac bag. I have a boring black bag I bought in desperation at TJ Maxx. It’s better than the ratty tote I used at the beginning of the term. But I fell hard for this LeSportsac (I just like saying that phrase. Is that OK? LeSportsac. LeSportsac. Je m’appelle LeSportsac). The outer pockets will come in handy (keys? Right here! Phone? Got it! Jolly Ranchers? You bet).

New cat Wilkie avoids
LePaparazzi.

But it’s the print that won me over. There’s the nostalgia for my Atari childhood (especially Space Invaders). And then there’s the subtle reward for paying attention. The photo doesn’t do this justice, but for many of the patterns on this bag, there are little surprises. In a row of arches, for example, one sprouts antlers, another eyes. “Repetition makes us feel secure,” writes poet Robert Haas, “and variation makes us feel free.” This bag makes me feel good. Its size and volume assure me it can get to work, and its fun print will be just the thing to usher me into my summer projects.

We’ve had a good stretch of spring-almost-summer weather here until the last couple of days. I have worn sandals and, at last, a floral-print dress from Anthropologie that I received as a birthday present back in March. And, another marker of the seasons, I sat on my roof last Saturday for the first time this year. A couple of friends and I stared at the Spokane skyline, happy to shiver in our jackets or shirtsleeves so long as we got to feel young, hip and urban.