Aw, dammit.

Despite sweet talk, tough talk, careful removal and replacement of batteries, using a different kind of battery, looking online at the manual, consultation with an expert (my brother-in-law) and blah blah blah etcetera, my camera steadfastly refused to heal itself. What the hell. This apparently means that now, I have to wrap it up and send it off to some service center where they may charge me as much as my camera is worth to fix it . . . and what's more, in the chaos of my stuff, I can't find any of my documentation for it. Is it under warranty, you ask? Well, who knows?

What do they call this? poetic justice? the chickens come home to roost? bad karma? born under a bad sign?

Feh, I say. I hate when stuff doesn't work.

Time to read my young adult novel by a celebrated author, featuring baseball, ferishers, bridges between worlds, and two kids who are, I'm guessing, gonna help each other out, be heroes and save the world. But who's gonna save my camera?

Plan B.

If I had won the Amy Lowell Travelling Scholarship, I would have

• figured out a way to live someplace in France,
• become fluent in French because I would have been living there,
• bought vegetables at a market every other day,
• had the life-transforming experience of living abroad for a whole year,
• received visitors as they came to see me living in France,
• written poetry as gorgeous and ornate as that of the Provencal troubadours.

But I did not win the Amy Lowell Travelling Scholarship. Alas. So instead I will

• live in West Jordan,
• continue to speak English (albeit fluently) and perhaps listen to some French music,
• buy vegetables at the farmer's market and from Chad,
• have the life-transforming experience of writing and making small films every day,
• receive visitors as they venture into the wilds of West Jordan,
• write poetry as gorgeous and plainspoken as that of the . . . what? cowboy poets?

It was a beautiful dream while it lasted.