Are finals getting you down and you need a witty 5-line poetic pick-me-up? Are you a senior and need something to calm you down before you are thrust into the horribly frightening abyss of terror that is grown-up-ship? Hate your roommates and want to finally tell them in rhyme before your lease is up? WELL! Very Merry Vogel is here for you!
Order a limerick and you will be as happy as these 2011 grad nerds.
For a very limited time, you can get your own customized limerick for you or a friend for only $4. 2 for $8, 3 for $10. In case it’s unclear, THAT’S A FRIGGIN STEAL so buy now and start laughing! I’m even waiving the rush order fee – you will get your limerick within 48 hours of order, no extra charge. WOW! And a witty cartoon costs $2. COOL!
Post on my wall, tweet me @vogelian, email kvogel.esq@gmail.com, or call me, or anything. Get these limericks while you can! They are gems that last a lifetime! And I’m a writer/sailor/gardener now so translation any extra income is welcome and you would be supporting a great cause which is me!
Also if you’re not at the end of a semester and just want a limerick you still get the sale.
I was not alone on my solo journey across America. While I enjoyed air conditioning and iPod tunes inside my car, my bike, Cooper, got the unmitigated madness of the top-car journey along the interstate.
Just one week ago today, I was sitting in my suburban Minnesota home after a lovely afternoon spent teaching a How-to-Write-a-Limerick lesson to a most wonderful 4th grade class via exploding marshmallows in microwaves.
I have come far in one week! Tuesday found me driving from St. Paul, MN to Evanston IL; Wednesday was Evanston to Chicago to Dayton, OH; Thursday saw Ann Arbor, MI, then back down to Ohio for Bowling Green; Friday was a long haul from Bowling Green to Ithaca, NY; and Saturday was the finale, finishing strong with a drive from Ithaca to Boston; Boston, which is now my home. A total of 1,770 miles driven, spread over a gorgeous, weeklong solo all-American roadtrip.
Besides catching up with Gramma (who is still, in her own words, “the busiest little bitch on the block” in south Chicago), I got to see a smattering of other friends and family members that I see far less often than I would like, and they kindly let me stay on their couches, and I gladly got to learn how life goes for them these days. Thank you to Tracy, Tyson, Gramma, Uncle Butch, Uncle P, Aunt E, Elizabeth, MK, Jimmy, Megan (and Charlie), Todd, Mary, Erin, and everyone else (including my parents and also the nice man in White County, IN who helped me fix my car) who made that cross-country trip successful as well as pleasurable.
Wisconsin Sun
It’s no great secret that I love driving long distances. Listening to Tina Fey’s Bossypants on audiobook mingled with some NPR “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s the Thing” podcast and the occasional Billy Joel song while a beautiful midwestern countryside sunset appears in my rearview mirror is nothing short of the best moving experience a girl could ask for. I love the expedition lifestyle. Every day was a challenge – new roads to navigate, new territory to be discovered, a new life waiting for me on the other side of the Appalachians.
That was the good stuff – the traveling. Traveling to me is life itself. It’s movement, mistakes, recovery, quick thinking, double backing, and ultimate discovery – of place, of self, of sound mind, of simple living. Now that I’m here, it’s the hard part – the waiting. I could not have asked for a better welcome to my new-old home. One hour after arriving in Boston on Saturday, I attended a belated Seder with my faux-Jew (and some legit-Jew) Tufts alum friends in Fenway then schlepped over to Tufts itself to revel in the glory that is the Tufts Dance Collective spring show. It was a rather phenomenal night and a healthy reminder of everything that is to be loved about my old Boston lifestyle.
A mysterious tower I found in the woods in upstate New York.
But it’s been two days and I’m restless already. The sounds of the city aren’t sweet like the Costa Rican rainforest to which I had become accustomed. The rev of the garbage truck engine outside my window doesn’t have the same heartening roar as the mighty Río Pacuare. Hauling ass on my mountain bike through the cobblestone sidewalks of Cambridge is thrilling, but not filling. Squinting at the Charles River through the T window as it crosses over Longfellow Bridge symbolizes everything I want to leave behind in my old life: sitting passively in machines built by men and letting the world spin me to sleep while my guts rot from understimulation.
This is the life of a poet? I thought this afternoon as I sat, dejected, on the couch, admiring the gracelessness of everything around me. No, this is me stutter-stepping through my life like I’ve never done it before, because I haven’t, and laughing when I can and crying when I can’t and writing in between.
After reading that fabulous sentence back to myself, I realized that, in fact, that is EXACTLY the life of a poet. Internally twisting external grossness and slag into beauty and courage, recording it, and projecting it in the hopes that the internal change may someday inspire an external one. The life of the poet is disheartening, disgraceful, thankless, awkward and as confusing as trying to find a parking spot in Cambridge (the street signs ALL say one-way the way I’m NOT going. ALWAYS).
But to fully appreciate the view from the top of the mountain, you have to start at the bottom. And that is what I am doing. Certainties in life are few, but this one I guarantee: I am a poet, and if it takes making a few sideways moves to uncover startling truths, I’ll go there and I’ll do it and I’ll have the time of my life – until I become overwhelmed by the weight of things and sink into a horrible depression, at which point I will watch an episode of Friends, which will lead me to watch an episode of 30 Rock, which will lead me to watch this clip of Brian Williams pretending to be a lizard-person on 30 Rock:
which will remind me of the day I saw Brian Williams speak at Tufts (which was TODAY and he was AMAZING and is my HERO and is AMAZING and DREAMY and also SMART and WITTY and BEAUTIFUL), which will remind me of how I once moved to Boston and wasn’t quite sure of my path but made it in the end because 1) I have wonderful, supportive friends and family that don’t understand what I’m doing but do their best to encourage me anyway and 2) that this twisted If-You-Give-a-Moose-a-Muffin logic sequence is not quite the planetary norm, but it is MY norm, and I make it work, and I create great thoughts and books and other things, because I am a poet, and one week ago I was in Minnesota teaching limericks, and one week from now – well, no one quite knows!
A great mentor of mine (Brian Williams) once said (today) to me (and the 300 other people in the auditorium): “I chose the only career where if you can travel for 36 hours straight, arrive in a hostile environment, and sit down and write – you’re in.” He was speaking of journalism and broadcast news, but it struck a chord with me, a traveler/writer of a different sort. I can’t explain it to you (or, most times, to myself either), but something in me knows what’s up – where I’m headed, what it means, and why. It just takes some time for the story to unravel. Two weeks ago I decided that the next Vogelian Adventure story would unfold in Boston.
12 hours til launch to Boston! Much to do, and I was feeling slightly daunted by all the tasks before me. THEN I received some extremely wise words from my best friend Allison:
“Goooooodbye! have fun. be safe. always have peanut butter with you. drive safe. don’t get too lost. don’t spend all your money because i don’t want you to live in a box. do things i wouldn’t do. tell people about me. don’t forget that MN is cool even though it doesn’t have an ocean. good luck!”
That is the best advice I have ever received so sweetly and succinctly and just at the right time. My wish for you, whoever you are, is that you have someone in your life that is wise enough to know that stuff and loving enough to say it, because while it’s nice to go off and have adventures, they’re not worth much when you don’t have brilliant, inspiring people with whom you can come home and share them. Thanks Allison, thanks Friendz, family. Armed with wisdom and peanut butter, here I go!
Lest it’s been underemphasized, Scuba diving is really cool. Breathing under water is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced – nothing. Scuba diving for the first time was like living my whole life looking at rainbows and suddenly seeing a new color – maybe the one between green and blue. I never could have imagined the experience before doing it, but once I was down there, FEELING it, I couldn’t imagine having ever lived without it in my palette.
These are the colors of the sea. On a barge. UNDERWATER.
When you’re underwater, you’re alone. There’s nothing else for it. You have a tank, your fins, and your breath. That’s it. You can’t touch anything – it’s dangerous. You touch something and it will sting you or bite you or make your limbs feel like fire. You can’t talk. Well you can but it just sounds like Darth Vader with a head cold. So all you do is… breathe. And float. And listen. And watch. It’s wonderful.
That’s my favorite fish. If you know his species name, tell me, thanks.
I’m moving to Boston in 36 hours and I’m very excited to sail the sea there. But I do believe I’ll be moving to warmer waters come winter so I can commune with the underwater world once again. This land life is nice, but being underwater, looking up and seeing the fiery sun through a dense layer of liquid sound – well, why would I choose to be anywhere else?
Katie Vogel doing a crazy nighttime rappel with her new rappelling gear, courtesy of Midwest Mountaineering, thanks for the gear and good advice, guys!
And now I rappel off trees in suburbia, Minnesota. My life has changed a lot in the past 2 months! I went to Costa Rica to do the Leadership Semester at Costa Rica Outward Bound , where I earned 7 phenomenal certifications, including and limited to: Waterfront Lifeguard, Scuba diver, CPR/First Aid/AED for the Professional Rescuer, Wilderness First Responder (/backcountry badass), Technical Ropes Rescue Operations, Whitewater Rescue Technician, and Raft Guide Level I-II. Wow pretty cool, eh?
In Costa Rica, we saw things like this:
And did things like this:
WFR Class - Litter made entirely of whitewater equipment, including lifejackets, paddles, and rescue rope throwbag.
And slept in places like this:
Hut over the sea, Bocas del Toro, Panama - we slept in hammocks and sleeping bags while a gentle sea breeze cooled us in the tropical nights.
Overall a good time. I will be putting all the pictures on photobucket soon and will send the link along.
Now the eternal question: what next, Katie?
Well now that I have 200 ft of rope and I’m selling all my other worldly possessions at the Vogelian Adventure Sale this Thurs-Sat April 12-14 (see previous post), it only seems fitting that I move to Boston to become a sailor and – perhaps even more excitingly – become a writer and WRITE MY BOOK!
Yes. The VOGELIAN ADVENTURE ATLAS is officially in production! I learned a lot at Costa Rica Outward Bound – technical skills, leadership skills, how to encounter a sloth skills. But I make a bold posit that the most important thing I learned in the past 2 months is that I am stronger than I know, wiser than I think, and capable of creating great and miraculous changes if only I believe I can do that sort of thing.
At Outward Bound, I learned that interactions with other humans and nature bring out the best and worst qualities in you, and you grow from recognizing those qualities, discarding the ones you don’t need, and developing those that serve you and others around you. I learned that I am a great teacher. In fact, everyone is a great teacher – even the people I thought I would never EVER get along with (spending 24/7 time with 9 people for 2 months is a TRIP) became my closest friends and advisors, and the fact that we started with little in common means I learned all the more from them.
This mysterious picture, along with many other mysterious pictures, will appear in the Vogelian Adventure Atlas
I have collected many stories of all the teachers I have encountered in the past 5 years, and it is high time they were published, because they’re hilarious and heartwarming and beautiful and wise, and of course humble and ever confident, as is the Vogelian tradition. Many maps, many poems, many stories of crocodiles, broken spirits, pirates, Mississippi River vagabonds, and ultimately redemption of human folly by the undeniable beauty of – as so eloquently stated by my good fellow John Steinbeck – “man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit” in spite of great opposition from a world burdened by fear and doubt. Should be rather a good read.
I will leave you today with a rather haunting and inspirational poem I wrote while listening to my friend from Costa Rica speak about his experience of being caught up in a drive-by bicycle shooting. Thanks for reading, be in touch.
Motion and Light
It’s candles on faces, voices in places,
A shadow, a door, a movement, a choice,
A string or a shell or a bell in the air,
A flare in the night, a luminous stare.
A leaf falling softly from tropical trees,
A jaguar that cuts through the brush like a knife,
A martini glass with three olives, a twist
Of the corkscrew alone brings dead soldiers to life.
The look of the wanderer through windows and walls
As she walks into nothing with wings open wide,
The tails of her speeches wash up on the beaches
And swirl with the pearls of the tears she has cried.
Wild wise words echoing down hallways and spaces,
Old stories that spin and appear on the walls,
Water towers so tall they send rain like the clouds
Down to earth toppling tyrants wide-eyed as they fall.
The flow of emotion through hands and through hearts
That conjures the best, draw a line in the sand,
The actions that dash thoughts of doubt from the masses
And waste no time proving feats of woman or man.
And we sit here the ten, confined by the circle
Of fear we created and soon will destroy,
Eating our words, never quite feeling sated,
As motion and light filter sound from the noise.
If you have any questions about the Vogelian Adventure Sale, my travels in Costa Rica, buying a website or limerick, employing me as a personal assistant or otherwise helping me fund my endeavors, my plans to be a sailor and to invent new forms of adventure transportation, or anything else, please don’t hesitate to comment here or email me at kvogel.esq@gmail.com
Hello! I’m back in Minnesota, United States after some great adventures in Costa Rica (pictures and poems coming soon). I’m moving to Boston in one week to be a sailor and a writer. Before I go, I’m hosting a Vogelian Adventure Sale, which is a lot like a garage sale except it has all my adventure stuff that won’t fit in my car. Notable items include Marge the electric yellow moped ($300), windsurfer package ($100), a pogo stick (price tbd) and a lovely little gem featured in this commercial. Sale in Shoreview, MN, Thursday Friday Saturday April 12-14. This commercial is pretty funny.
This most excellent windsurfer package (Bic Samba 1995 board, foot straps and daggerboard; 2 sails: Bic 5 and Energy Sails 4.7; boom, mast, fin, and a free lesson) is for sale for $100. Buy it!
