Do not go gentle into that good night.

She was the Irish girl with a lilting step she inherited from her father. The talkative tomboy with a reckless smile whose eyes lit up at the first sign of mischief (still do). Born a fighter. When she was 10 she filled page after page of construction paper with drawings of Air Force jets that she hoped to someday fly. When she was 13 she borrowed Carl Sagan from the library and mispronounced infrared but loved his poetry of possibility. She didn't understand when the mother of the kids she babysat laughed at her answer to what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up; an astrophysicist or a blue angel.

She had no conception of what could not be accomplished.

Lately I've been thinking of that kid most every day. Running lap after lap at too fast a pace just to keep up with the boys, to make the men's time. Needing the amazement and the congratulations and the whispers and the stares from the others when I finish above the men's average. Scoring 100% on every test or not being satisfied. Drawing my sidearm and firing 2 rounds into the preferred area in 1.14 seconds and still thinking of ways I could do it faster. Reading ahead, researching weight displacement and muscle control to not permit my size to be my limit; pushing, lunging, grappling my way to unquestioned competency.

Accepting no limits.

I can still see her, when I look in the mirror. She's in my eyes somewhere, and in my smile when some thing's afoot. She reminds me to be stoic, steadfast and unquestioning in my ability, and I offer her an unflinching resolve and the spirit of a warrior. There is nothing we cannot do.

They called me Annie Oakley.

I took the twelve-gauge and he said, are you going to show them how it's done, in that joking way that is meant to be demeaning. My fingers fed four rounds into the hot metal of the gun, my hand pumped the action and I stood ready. My blood pounding with hate and the will to fight. He gave the command and I worked four huge holes into the unfortunate paper silhouette 50 feet down-range. I locked the action open and passed the shotgun on to the next shooter and ignored whatever derogatory marks he was making, still had my "ears" on and the wind carried his words away with it, away from me.

Later we were examining the the red welts on our shoulders, the texture of the gun's butt impressed upon our flesh from the sheer force of its discharge. He caught one or two of them and told us that it was an excess level of estrogen that caused the skin to turn red. Shit-eating grin on face the entire time. Me being the only female in the crowd. Me shooting daggers and him never making eye-contact.

All the others were looking at me though, like they always do, wondering (I'd like to think) how I can take it, why he doesn't know it's wrong to say, (hopefully not) why don't I say something back.

My blood burned and my mouth tasted like bile. My brain was only capable of processing the need to fight, the need to win, the need to be better and better and better. The next qualification I was all this-is-no-fooling-around-I-mean-business and I nailed each and every shot, each and every move, and I was one of only two to pass it the first time around. The others congratulated me and even one of the other teachers told me it was nice shooting, but when I glared at him he was looking away.

When I was the only one to nail two shots from 75 feet he approached me. He said some crap about me being a chick gunfighter and from there it developed into bullshit about gender and how women are mostly incapable. The shark circled away again and my boss, who had been standing there the whole time, looked at me and said, he has never liked women, he's gotten better lately though. He's just a grumpy old man.

As if that could possibly make it acceptable. As if that could even come near to explaining any of it.

I am one of the best shots in the class. I pass the academic tests with flying colors. I can PT with the best of them. I take this shit seriously because this is my calling and I have a mega-fuck-ton of natural ability. But damn if that guy making some statement about how the female newborns in his family are smothered at birth because they have no need for women doesn't make me feel like I'm not cut out for it.

Like a Tumbleweed.

She once wrote,
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all,
And I thought of it today, after he left the note for me to find.
She left a note and our grandmother found it
under such different circumstances
but the spaces between the lines are still full of parting,
and a quiet sadness.

The advice of my mother and the strength of St. Michael;
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.

I was not born a warrior and the inside still has places that are soft and weak and insecure. When I go to bed instead of prayer I offer up the Code of Ethics and when I wake I remind myself that it's a choice I've made to be a sheep dog and not a sheep. That it's a choice and to not ever get complacent.

Moxie, grrrl

It wasn't what I thought it would be. She seemed nice, intelligent, strong. And then she looked at him and said, I feel for you, I know where you are coming from. All I got was a blank stare and a warehouse load of guilt. And confusion.

I went in with expectations, but you can't help it. We deal with new situations by trying to put them into a familiar context. We assume.

This whole time I've been convinced that my actions have been reasonable. That the root of the problem is our shifting view of life, not that I'm asking too much. That I'm not a bad person for knowing what I want and being determined to acheive it. That it's not outlandish or sinful to want to live near my family.

Maybe she'll quit, maybe she won't like actually doing it as much as watching it.

I thought about my dad, and my mom, and how much bs mom put up with on the force 20 years ago. And still she loved the job.

Maybe he has problems with the thought of his wife getting shot at.

I thought about Nate and how he said he wanted to be a Ranger, or a Seal, the high hopes he had and how he just always knew. How it seems that some people are called with such undeniablity that it's not even a choice.

How would you feel about not starting the Academy right now? Maybe that would make him feel better, lessen the tension.

And I thought about Pittsburgh, and how small life can become if you're not vigilant, if you sell yourself too cheaply.

In the end it's shadow and dust. You do what you can to be true to yourself before the winds claim your ashes. You don't regret, you don't compromise your integrity, you are always honest with yourself, and death finds you smiling.

You lie to yourself and may the gods help you.

I won't set aside an hour a week to meditate because I can't betray myself like that. I won't delay the Academy because that would be death, and would breed contempt. I will keep an open mind, I will be honest, but I will not sell myself cheaply. That would be unreasonable.

Praetorian!

The sun beat upon the worn concrete road in waves and washed over the car, heating the steering wheel and forcing my eyes into a fierce squint. The sun retreated back from the street in mirages; at first like water pooling and then like heat lines from an oven. My gaze swept from the approaching intersection on the left back to the street and past the police badge dangling from the rear-view mirror.

Dad told me once about Joe and his wife almost crashing at that intersection, about how his quick thinking and faster reaction time saved their lives. My eyes drifted to the rear-view, checking for the ghost car they avoided more than two decades ago and I thought about how many times in a life fate, or the gods, or whatever guidance that might exist intervenes on our behalf, keeps us traveling towards our destinations.

Like Marcus Aurelius said,
Nature has provided for us all that we need.

I was baking inside the car, waiting for the light to change, when that particular feeling began to well in my solar plexus and radiate out towards my extremities: you are doing what nature intended for you, nothing could ever be wrong. It was like laying on a warm beach after swimming in the ocean, the salt drying on your skin and hunger beginning to register in your brain. It was the feeling of not being sated, but of being satisfied, there is no way you could mis-step.

I thought about the community that I am a part of and the Praetorians of Marcus' day and about all the generations of warriors that existed between then and now. I thought about how easy a decision it was to make, how I didn't actually make a decision at all, I just knew. I just knew. I thought about the bagpipes at the funerals and the stories and all of the "choir practices" and the brotherhood.

I thought, What we do in life echoes in eternity.

The light turned green, I shifted into first gear and made my way back home, grateful for my last name and this sense of purpose.

My Monkey Suit.

My twin is the greatest photographer ever. Look at how cool she made me look in my uniform!

Night Shift

It's four o'clock am and you begin to hit the wall. Your vision takes on that quality of a cheap flourescent light, where it flickers just slowly enough for you to feel like you might lose consciousness; your body trying to conserve its resources. Sitting in your chair you worry that, would it be required of you to stand up, you might just fall down instead. You think about the road home... and your bed... and how good it is to sleep.

Four o'clock am is when you really have to wait and think out your phrasing before you press the transmit button. Otherwise it'll just be broken sentences and breathing. And then the embarassment of listening to yourself on the recall radio. It's also the beginning of a two-hour window where you pray that no one on your shift comes into dispatch because it would be too hard to be coherent. Six o'clock is better because you're so slap-happy you'll laugh at anything, and the others will be too.

Four o'clock the voice of the younger guy from the water department flows out of the phone's receiver like someone standing close, whispering. Their breath warm on your ear. You wonder what his name is, what he looks like, and how he fills the hour and fifty-nine minutes between calls.

Four o'clock begins the unexplainable pains and fevers, your body carrying on with its purification despite your lucidity. A twinge starts in the abdomen and spasms down your thigh and into your knee. Your sternum has a dull and hollow ache. Your skin goes from flushed to chilled and clammy. Your eyes burn like the fire of a million candles.

Four o'clock actually lasts seven-and-a-half hours, the rest of the shift is like an easy walk on a nice day.

***********************

Yesterday morning on the drive home I found myself by the county airport, surrounded by vast expanses of corn fields and soybean farms, oak trees and weather-beaten homesteads. The eastern sky was cloudy and as the sun crested the horizon the whole thing lit up like an outrageous watercolor painting. Red, orange, purple, magenta, pink, blue. It was the first day of spring and the earth was showing off. It was marvellous.

Book Ten

12. Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. (The best goal to achieve, and the one we fall short of when we fail.)

Book Nine

28. The world's cycles never change -- up and down, from age to age.
     Either the world's intelligence wills each thing (if so, accept its will), or it exercised that will once -once and for all-and all else follows as a consequence (and if so, why worry?).
      One way or another: atoms or unity. If it's God, all is well. If it's arbitrary, don't imitate it.
      The earth will cover us all, and then be transformed in turn, and that too will change, ad infinitum. And that as well, ad infinitum.
      Think about them: the waves of change and alteration, endlessly breaking. And see our brief mortality for what it is.

No fate but what you make.

We were talking in the truck, on the way somewhere, and he told me, "you can't let someone trick you into thinking that their happiness is dependent upon you, because it's not." It's not, and I know it, but damn if it isn't hard to remember that sometimes. He comes home and it's a son of a bitch to not feel responsible. The sadness that comes with failure, the depression of something that is broken and you don't know how to fix it.

And there is my dad, and his truck that smells like safety, like nothing in the world could ever be that bad, and me feeling guilty for being angry but not worried. I know that no matter what happens there will be corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day, a warm fire in the shop every New Year they own that house, there will be a great hullabaloo on every birthday, and thousands of celebrations and congratulations along the way. I know, without question, that no matter what happens, each and every one of them will be there for me and would even give me the shirts off their backs if needed. And that I would, too.

And then I think, does he have that kind of unflinching support? When his brain tries to get him down, of whom does he think, which spirit offers his soul some comfort? And my corny neurons fire up the image of Linda Hamilton, alone in her cage and doing pull ups on her over-turned bed, and I think no fate but what we make... every one of us has taken each step down the path which has led us to where we stand in the present. If we are in need of people to support, nurture, inspire, comfort us, then we need to seek them out.

The only constant is change. Always, always, always.

**********************

I had a dream last night, I don't remember much of it but Emily and I were trying to get somewhere in a very old car. It was some old manual racer and I was driving and we came to this very steep, very muddy, very terrifying section of road. The farther up we made it the more I down-shifted until we were in first gear, barely crawling. I was afraid the car would tip over. But she knew we would make it, I remember looking over at her and she wasn't worried at all..... so we crested the hill and kept driving.

Poor Isaac.

I was anxious because of the formality he was trying to force, and so I blurted it out. "Okay, but I don't believe in God." My mouth is my worst enemy when I am embarassed. It is a mutinous bastard, completely liberated from any inhibition that would like it to just shut-up.

And he looked at me for a minute, processing. Looking for the right slot to file away the new information. He teased me about it, my face went as red and hot as a matador's cape, and after awhile he went back out. Left me alone with my thoughts, feeling insecure as ever about my doubts, about my weaknesses.

Later he came back, and I could tell he had been thinking about it and that part of him felt bad for the abuse I had suffered by his taunts. (Didn't stop him from twisting the screw just a little more though, but only at first.) He wanted to relate to me, wanted to understand, and so he tried by explaining the foundation of his beliefs to me. He said, "I just think about shit like waterfalls. There is no way that man could ever make something like a waterfall."

Mercifully the phone rang, and when I hung up the subject had changed.

But I can't get the vision out of my head. I can see him contemplating the holy beauty of nature while he's sitting in his pew Sunday mornings, arm around his wife, everything being right with the world. I can imagine him giving thanks for the mountain bike trails, the getaways to the ocean he takes every year, for his daughters and for a life that is honest, good, whole. The picture I have of it makes my joints weak it is so convulsively beautiful. I lock it away deep inside, in the hopes that some of his faith might leak into my bones, like some kind of divine osmosis.

But the doubter knows it won't. The doubter dwells on the story of Job and Abraham and wonders who the hell would want to believe in such a petty, insecure God. The doubter thinks about the paganism of a Catholic service and how it is a sin to not believe that the communion wafer is actually the honest-to-god flesh of christ. The doubter is too occupied with her skepticism to notice the small miracle that is a waterfall, that is the silence of a dense and lonely forest.

So she invests her faith with Marcus Aurelius and waits for some kind of sign, some kind of proof. She is almost completely convinced that it will never come.

Thank you, Owen Meany

He said,
"IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT,"
and I earmarked the page.

It is one of the most beautiful books I have picked up in a long, long time; I will be sad to lose the characters when it's over. And it has thrown my head into a tumultous fit. Anxiety. This is good for the soul, I keep saying to myself.

I suffer from a profound lack of faith. This has been true of me at least since confirmation class in the ninth grade, and was probably true of me before then, I just didn't have the vocabulary to realize it. In truth, my agnotisticism is unassailable. Perhaps doubt is a form of a priori wisdom, perhaps some of us are just born with it. I remember being very young --still sleeping in a crib-- and waking up early one morning wondering why I was born, "what was the point of it?" When I was older I prayed for boys to like me, and for us to win softball games. I never took it seriously.

But I imagine how comforting it must be, to have the ability to believe. To know that God exists, the way you know that the walls are full of electricity, even when the lights are off. How much of a sense of belonging there must be, to have a moral code completely spelled out for you, to even have a book to refer to when one's mind gets clouded with desire! And I'm not talking about your average "weekend christian" or "sunday catholic". I am talking about holding fast to a faith so deep and nourishing that it changes the entire shape of one's life, a faith along the lines of Alyosha Karamazov or Guy Fawkes.

But I just can't make the leap.

----------------------------------------

Maybe I am being too naive about it. But my fatalism knows no bounds. And my beliefs are not completely without christian influence.


One must approach life with an unfailing sense of virtue; in all things strength and honor.
You will encounter many ignorant people who would like to harm you with their words and actions--treat each occurence as a way to build up your humility and compassion.
Be wary of anyone who has a subjective sense of right and wrong.
The object of each day is to be truer to your sense of justice than you were the day before; a static morality is one that has atrophied.
Remember that your name is priceless, let it be devalued by no action.
Do not succumb to anxiety about the future; you will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

You are O-town's pride!

He said it on the show, and I know it's sappy and lame and for chrissakes it's a spoof anyway, but damn didn't it make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Didn't I want to be running down the street, gear over the shoulder, fighting the good fight. We were born under an obsessive star, possessed of the need to lay ones' self down at the feet of justice, to sacrifice everything for the moral and the good. We are happy just to give and give and give.

So we make our decisions accordingly. For the first time in my life I feel focused. My energy is channeled and I spend my time eating up road and iron and information as quickly as it can be metabolized.

I have this picture of us in my mind. We are knights, we are glorious, we are the knowledge of all of the men of the family who went before us, and we are fueled by the strength of all of the women who sought out a more daring fate than their peers. We are strong, we are smart, and we have a killer instinct. There is nothing that will stop us.

All I want in life is to be happy.

Before a trip, the one where we borrowed her car, she left the song cued in the cd player so that it would be the first thing we heard as we headed out onto the open road. The spot in my solar plexus that burns when I think about the Alf Christmas Special lit up and everything felt right with the world. Reminded me of mom and dad hiding notes and candy in our suitcases when we or they had to go away for any length of time. Reminded me of staying up late in to the night, drinking coffee and pontificating while our inebriated peers filled the bars and staggered home, hours later, us still awake, trying to spot Orion.

A few seconds later I was back in the car and he had turned off the song and was grumbling about it being too early for music. I finished my coffee and watched my breath put fog on the windows.

It's just not the kind of thing you can learn. This is what I'm figuring out. You either get it, or you don't. Ranger in Arizona either makes you die from the weight of all the beauty in the world, or you don't notice him at all.

Tonight I'm dealing wolf cards.

I am a real bastard sometimes, I can be selfish and cruel and horrible. I have this ability to smell out weakness and exploit it when I feel necessity dictating.

Sometimes I am not good. He is running scared, and I can see it inside of his eyes when I look into them deeply. There is a hesitation not in the word, but in the look. A small resistance when he looks back into mine, the fear of what might be there. That was the first drop of blood. And the silence, the reticence, the walls made out of stone to try and keep me out. Keep my bastard brain out.

It's always midnight and I've always got a pack of wolf cards in my pocket. Stalking, tracking, I fight for what I want, for what I think is my own like a wild animal. I am no longer kind, the coldness of night fuels me but it's wrecked a part of me. I am leaner, stronger, but now there's also a fierceness who wants no ally.

Sometimes I am just not good. But I stopped apologizing.

Take it if you want it.

Burning in the solar plexus, heat behind the eyes, last time I looked in the mirror the wrinkles were looking back, I looked so tired. Forty-five minutes ago, mid-morning.

There is an emptiness inside, I can feel the gravity like a black hole pulling in solar detritus from nearby galaxies. I haven't slept well for a week and the tiredness is dragging me down, exposing the emptiness to harsh elements.

So many thoughts pulsing through my weary head, it makes it hard to think. Perhaps at this point action is better than forethought anyway.

I know what I need to do. I can feel it, every time I think about it I know it's the right decision. But I'm scared. Or maybe intimidated. Afraid, unsure, weak. I wake up and look at those wrinkles and think of the daylight that all of this indecision is burning and I tell myself to give a hard tug on my bootstraps. Pull yourself, up, out. Jump in because you know you can swim. Hell, you even know how to fly.

In April, if you care for me, be sure that I am enrolled in the academy. Actually, check on me March. Tell me "1939" and I'll remember.

And in the sea there swims another thought, or maybe it's just an emotion, and it sucks me up into its salty swirl and occasionally I am absorbed by the undertow. Sometimes I don't surface for hours. And it's a face, with a name, and a look and so much potency. And its my mind that, when I do resurface, imprisons me with the agony of what if and how and what does it all mean. And all I want is to go back, go back, go back, if just for one more small piece. One more something to cling to while I'm back here in the present.

There is an epic battle going on inside. I hope I win.

The devil in blue.

Hard-faced glass reflects lines etched with makeup and dark circles under eyes. The light comes down from the ceiling in all directions and is a sickly blue-green. Makes white walls look yellow and skin appear jaundiced. The profile is more angular now than it's been, but certainly just as insecure. The flourescence casts deep shadows into so many scars left behind, never quite out of sight. And hair, like wheat, and as untame as its reflection's spirit.

She is a solid block of steel on the inside, encased in something soft and vulnerable. She still cries when it hurts but still bites her lips to fight it down. She is smart but afraid to show it, and keeps far too much inside the steel, away from daylight. She craves acknowledgement, acceptance, recognition, but thinks the need for it is her biggest weakness. She wants to function independently of the approval of others. She hasn't yet realized that she can't. Hopefully someday she will.

It would make things a lot easier for me, on the other side of the glass.

Open the vents.

You wake up at the butt crack of dawn, but not even because the sun won't be up for another two hours. You swill your coffee, go through your routine and go to work. It's a damn good job, too. Sure, a lot of the people that you work with are totally nuts and some of them should probably seek out counseling, but what you're doing is making a difference in a very tangible way and also, you really love it. It is regimented, it has protocols that you follow, each cause has its own effect. There is a very black and white meaning there. And it fits you. It feels familiar in a way that nothing really has before.

But the thing is that it's really draining. Especially now because you still don't know exactly what you're doing. Keeping all the dashes and dots together in your mind to form a coherent overall picture takes up a lot of your brain's CPU, which in turn takes up a lot of your energy. The day is long and you don't really get any breaks. Which is fine, it's great, it's kind of relieving to always be counted on, but it is tiring.

Eight hours are over and it's time to go home, except you're not, you're going to your second job. This one is a bit more frenetic. This one is like the opposite of the first one, there's no structure, your supervisor is a very loosely woven group of loosely put together people, and they've not given you a very good sense of what your responsibilities are. They seem to change every day, and as the paperwork that you were told wasn't yours to work on piles up, the stories change, job functions shift. It makes you crazy and you want to rip out your hair and throw things.

And by this point you have no brain capacity left anyway. You're tired, your face feels all oily and you are fucking hungry. Your eyes burn. You want to go home and watch tv or read or do abso-fucking-lutely nothing, but you can't. You will be here trying to connect invisible dots until after the sun goes back down. You don't even get to see your husband all that much, let alone do anything as novel as cooking.

And then you find yourself hoping that a permanent slot opens up in your first job, by hook or by crook, that you can fill. And you hold onto that hope like all those times you prayed to God that so-and-so would have a crush on you back in grade school. Even if it means that someone else would be fired. And you look at your shoes and you don't know what to think. Did something on the inside change?

People, I am burning at both ends right now.

touch down

Circling down over the city, the sky is a familiar grey and clings halfway up the horizon. I know that when we land the air will feel brisk and the wind will try to burrow its way into zippers and down coat collars. I know that it will smell like jet exhaust and oak leaves and I know the bittersweet taste of returning that will be thick on my tongue, in my throat.

We bank widely over the lake and swoop back over the subdivisons, neatly lined with trees now orange and yellow and red. In the distance you can make out dense pockets of land that have not yet been defeated by progress. And acre after acre of autumn-colored farmland. The sun sinks lower and everything is golden.

And in my heart I can feel it, between the pulses, coarsing through the veins. How I am woven and nourished and attached to this fifty-mile scrap of land just west of the old steel mills, just south of the lake. I can see the beater cars in winter, salt stains clinging to rust, I can see the endless grey of concrete and sky, I can see the roads covered with snow, the only sign of life being the tracks you make down lonely roads towards home. And I can feel the first sun of spring drenching my skin, smell the magnolia and lilac and honeysuckle. And the heavy humidity of summer and the languor that such unrelenting heat draws out. And fall with its musky evenings of decaying oak leaf and wood smoke.

I close my eyes and realize that more than anything I need the changes to keep me sane. That strength comes from winter and creativity from summer and passion, perhaps, from fall. We touch down and everything in the entire universe is again in its right place. There is a dinner waiting for me and I am, completely, comforted.

Already wiped.

It's funny. I am typing this from a vantage point that I was similarly inspired by during the lazy summers in between years of high school. I used to watch the bank ladies take their smoke breaks in the alley across the street. I would sketch their likeness in my notebook, write about the struggles of a tedious life, answer the phone occasionally when it would ring. This was before the internet, before blogs.

More than ten years later, here I am, again. Same office. Different job, but it is amusing that here I am, sometimes answering the phone, writing about life, still mostly about the struggles involved therein. And didn't I always know, somehow, that I'd be back?

So, yes, I did get the job that I interviewed for. I also found out that my dispatch training will start next week. So for the next month or so my life will be anything but tedious while I try to maintain my sanity while balancing a 60-or-so hour work week. It hasn't started yet but I am already tired.

And the bank ladies must have found a new place to smoke. Either that or they've given it up.

I stuttered

It's the largesse that we picked up along a dusty stretch of road in Colorado this June. The way we brightly festooned each naked spot to fill the emptiness, the nagging isolation. But you can't ever get enough. Or so I learned, later, down a different highway in Montana. Just like that snap your fingers it can all go away.

It was a slow fog that settled on the place, and perhaps is the off-gassing of the fresh paint or the humidity which clings even in the corners of the closets. It descends heavily after Patrick leaves for work and grants me a reprieve when he comes home again. It is at its thickest when I am left alone with my thoughts, nothing to distract me. Recently I have (for the third time) picked up MacIntyre in an effort to soak my mind in something else, but the book actually seems to make it worse. I light candles for myself, markers to navigate throughout the halls when the fog envelops everything, totally.

And I am always looking for the one box which didn't seem to make it to the apartment. Inside it contains my identity, and I think I've misplaced it. Of all the things I could have lost. Then again it could be on a chilly beach in California.

Come down, come down, come down.

In eight days I will be 27!

The fiery truck

The lonliest feeling. She told me it was a fatal car crash and I went down the checklist in my head. She was the only one I came up with who would be driving there at that moment and she was the one who told me about it, so everything was okay. Turned off the panic. Switched into the grief of placing myself in the driver's seat of that car, wondering what it was like, was it painful, how long did it last? Half seconds in and out of the fantasy, wondering if maybe there was something wrong with me for even wondering.

Thoughts of Nick. There are some journeys that we can't prepare ourselves for. They just come one day and you do your best.

When I got home I looked at the news and the car had been driving the wrong way on the highway for about a mile when it slammed head-on into a semi. Smoke and flame and violence but the driver of the car was the only one who didn't walk away. I caught my mind hoping that it was an old person who had settled his accounts and had lived a full life. And I stopped wondering if there was something wrong with me, of course there is.

It could have played out so differently. If she had left a few minutes early where would she have been on the highway? I hate how fucking tenuous our grasp on all of this is.

been awhile

I haven't posted for awhile because I haven't had access to the internet. I also haven't showered for a week. Life's been a little rustic lately. So, anyway, after Patrick and I left San Francisco we headed south to Santa Cruz and Monterey. Both were kind of horribly yuppie-ish and spendy places but they were on the ocean, which is always a plus. Deep down I'm just not a city person.

But we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in, duh, Monterey, and it was amazing! Except for the hordes of people. California has WAY TOO MANY people. I managed to get some photos though, florescent jellyfish!


Patrick being completely mesmerized by their buoyancy:


Then we headed inland to Yosemite. We are slowly learning to not hit major tourist areas on the weekend. Fortunately we arrived at Yosemite on a Tuesday, and it was still totally crowded! Like I said, California = aggoraphobia. Too many people. But it was still beautiful in that angsty way it is when you have to keep dodging people who stop in the middle of the f**ing sidewalk to pick the underwear out of their ass. (I'm a little burnt out right now, need a shower and some fresh vegetables.) But seriously, the views were amazing, I would highly recommend going to Yosemite, just go any time other than summer.

The grand vista:


The falls:


And of course, the huge ass redwoods that are older than Jesus, seriously.




Then we decided to hike out into the back country and go camping for a few days out there. We ended up hiking about 18 miles, with a total elevation gain of 4500 feet! All that with a heavy pack on my back. (Every muscle is sore right now.) You can't go into the wilderness without a bear canister to store everything that smells like anything, which added a ton of weight and bulk to our packs. The views were great, it smelled wonderful out there (as long as you were upwind of me) but damn it was a lot of work!

Here's me resting along the way:


The waterfall we camped near the first night:


Our second campsite, see how our tent blends in with the rock!


We watched the sunset from our lonely cliff last night, it was beautiful:


We were both feeling pretty barnsour this morning, so we woke up at six and jetted down the trail back to the car and civilization. 9 miles only took us three hours, woot! Except I fell a couple times and once I fell off a tree I was trying to climb over and bloodied my legs pretty good. I'm all scraped up now and bruised. And I got all pissed at nature too, you know? Like every rock I fumbled over and that tree limb that broke, they were all put there on purpose to slow me down and mess me up. Yeah. Time to get to a hotel and unwind a bit. :)

So now we're in Redding, CA and the thermometer outside says 104 degrees Farenheit. The woman at the front desk told us that it was unusually cool for this time of year, last week it was 119. Man, and I was looking forward to soaking in the jacuzzi, too. Oh well. At least there's running water here.

Tomorrow we're heading to the coastal Redwoods, then up the coast through Oregon. More pictures later, now it's my turn in the shower.

=D

No one says "Frisco"

After leaving Pullman we made a bee-line for Northern California and camped at Mt. Shasta (we had to go through Weed, CA to get there). Apparently, to the hippies, Mt. Shasta is this huge energy mecca where healings and things of that nature take place. I didn't have any kind of miraculous experience there, but it was beautiful:


Then we headed towards the coast and San Francisco. Being in a city was some serious culture shock after camping and sticking to the back roads. Lots of homeless people, bad smells, bad moods and crass consumerism. But it was also full of culture and color and trees, flowers and ocean. This was our hotel room:


On Friday we braved the mass transit system and jumped on the side of a trolley car and rode all the way down the line to Fisherman's Wharf. Too bad this one's not still moving. ;)


At Fisherman's Wharf we caught a boat out to Alcatraz Island and took a tour of the prison, which is maintained by the National Park Service, strangely. Alcatraz from the boat:


Me in a jail cell, jesus they were small:


Can you see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background? We drove over it on the way into town.


So now we're outside of Monterey and are going to head to the aquarium tomorrow and find a campsite on the beach somewhere. We had breakfast with my friend in Berkeley (and her dog!) and drove down to Santa Cruz to hang out, which was sort of disappointing. Lots of yuppies and kids and over-priced shit to buy with your disposable income. Kind of depressing in the plastic way. I'm a little burnt on cities so the forests and beaches are calling. I'll post more pictures of Yosemite after I get a chance to take some.

Paradise Found

We spent last night at my mother-in-law's newly acquired land in Idaho. She has 20 acres on which exists two cabins and a pond and nearly a million pine trees. It was beautiful, and I hope that all of you can at some point come out here and stay there. There's no electricity so at night we lit candles and kerosene lamps and I remembered how beautiful candlelight makes everything. There is a propane stove so we had pancakes and tea for breakfast!

The cabin with me in the pond:


The little guest cabin where Patrick and I spent the night, it's big enough for a bed and a chair, but what else do you need?!


Here's another view of the main cabin.


And Patrick by the fire. Dry pine needles are amazingly effective tinder.


The moon, a few Ponderosa Pines and the smoke from our fire.

The desert is haunted.

So after the Rocky Mountain National Park we drove to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Awesome name. It's this huge gorge in an otherwise fairly flat stretch of Colorado. It's like a 2000 foot knife cut. Hard to capture digitally or otherwise. Anyway, here are a few photos:



We took a long hike up to the top of a mountain for a better vantage point, this is me halfway up.



After camping there for a night we drove to Utah and to Arches National Park. My favorite!! Could I have, I would have pitched my tent and stayed there forever. Sadly, the campsite was full so we only got a day to enjoy it. Seriously though, this place is magical. I will return here someday no doubt, want to come?!



and



and



Check out the signage in Utah:



Yikes!

postcards from the road

We woke up early Thursday morning and hit Trail Ridge Road through the Rocky Mountain National Park. I don't know if I've ever been on a more beautiful road. The highest elevation on the road is something like 12,000 feet but the Honda (I've named it Jack) climbed the hills like a champion! The mountains were hard to capture on film, you just can't get the sense of vastness.... anyway, here's what it looked like, sort of! (Patrick took these photos.)



The clouds hang low in the air (low being like 10,000 feet) and storms can blow in on a dime.


If you're in Colorado, never go anywhere without a good hat for shade and a camera!


This little bastard wouldn't have lived long if Zeke had been with us! We found him chilling out at a roadstop near the top of one of the mountains.


It's amazing the part elevation plays in temperature. I think I read somewhere that you lose 10 degrees with every 1000 feet you climb. Anyway it was COLD up here but so pretty. The rocks behind the snow are lava! Remnants of a violent volcanic eruption...


Is it a worm or is it me??


So now I'm in a hotel in Colorado because it's Sunday and Deadwood's on. Tomorrow we're hitting up Black Canyon of the Gunnison and then on to Moab, Utah and Arches National Park! More photos to follow, so check back, eh?

Garden of the Gods

Hiking through this amazing rocky park this morning, made me think I should move to Colorado. Everywhere you look there's a trail. Even in the towns.

Me and Patrick at the Siamese twins:


Our hiking companion:


Tomorrow it's Boulder and then the Rocky Mountain National Park. More pictures in a few days.... :)

beauty and lonliness

They bought a round for the sailor
and they heard his tale
of a world that was so far away,
and a song that we'd never heard
a song of a little bird
that fell in love with a whale.
He said: you cannot live in the ocean,
and she said to him: You never can live in the sky.
But the ocean is filled with tears
and the sea turns into a mirror
and there's a whale in the moon when it's clear
and a bird on the tide.
Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes.
So tell me that you will wait for me,
hold me in your arms,
I promise we never will part.
I'll never sail back to the time
but I'll always pretend that you're mine,
though I know that we both must part
you can live in my heart.

Sun and fog

A week ago they offered him the job for another year, with a paid summer off. A week ago we forgot about the boxes on the floor, about the cats on the plane, about what we’d do when we got there. We hopped in the car, I behind the wheel, he filling the space next to me so nicely. A week ago tomorrow we were blessed over and over and over by a voice I’d like to somehow make my own.

And then on to New Orleans, just the four of us (plus one), and the call we all felt to bear witness. There is a stretch of road that goes on, mile after mile, with nothing but rubble and ruin. Poor lives caught up in the politics of tourism, souls smashed like the cheap clapboard siding of their houses. On one cement block foundation someone had spray-painted “Baghdad” in ugly handwriting. Joe, the driver of our limousine, told us that the GI’s he’d been bringing home said the lower ninth ward looked worse than Iraq.

And the Christians will tell you that we are our brother’s keeper. But if I know you, you won’t believe them.

The French Quarter smelled like old beer and mules and cayenne pepper. And we walked in the sun like we were Icarus. She has the cop eye, she looks into your soul. And so do I. And we will always have a home, as long as there exists the other. These shiny bright bits of glass help me to remember that I can never truly be alone. To remember that the sky is giving thanks to the sea every time that it rains.

And she is getting married, and when I think about it long and hard (as you know I do) I can’t think of a better match. He is a child, and so is she, and I mean that in the best of ways. In the way that it’s only children who would take the time to find the beauty in a blade of grass, to know what fireflies smell like. They will never stop questioning, changing, growing, and they will have that in common with each other.

Then I think that we are all growing old together, aren’t we? I have visions of grey hair, floral print dresses, tattoos and piercing poking out from underneath and it makes me grin. The skin may sag but the Jindra remains intact.

Also, everyone, listen, I had this idea. Since there’s this guy in town who does web design but he’s likely to go to prison, I should do web design. Send cards to all his clients and the like. I could do that part-time next year and sell my crafty stuff for the other part time. But I need help thinking up a name for a web design company. I thought of “Zen Design” but it’s taken. Something that conveys a very sleek, artistic, functional, technologically capable design company. Ideas please!

a crack in the sidewalk

There's this great tune that Johnny Cash sings, A Boy Named Sue. The crazy thing about the song is that Shel Silverstein wrote it. Yeah, the guy who wrote all those awesome kids' poems! Apparently he wrote a lot of songs, too. Here are the lyrics, I think they're great:

My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."

Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke
And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,
It seems I had to fight my whole life through.
Some gal would giggle and I'd get red
And some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head,
I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named "Sue."

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars
That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
And kill that man who gave me that awful name.

Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
There at a table, dealing stud,
Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old,
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!
Now your gonna die!!"

Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.

I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile.

And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you "Sue.'"

I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him
Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!

Lucky kid.

A short post today because I can't get the words out of my head right. I tried earlier, it didn't work.

Inside my blood and guts and bones there resides a stone tablet, my own personal ten commandments. I don't have all ten yet, but when I hear a truth that I cannot deny and that will not leave my head I carve it there, with chisel and hammer.

One that I carved while still in high school reads, "the journey is what is important, not the destination".

At the top of the list I have just a word, in all capitals, "FAMILY".

This weekend I carved a new, and to me very important truth. It started as a joke, and there is no better way for a truth to reveal itself. With a laugh. "You will make it home if you remain true to who you are".

Remember, it is when you least suspect it that the universe will coalesce and hand you a lotus flower. I will write more later.

As for right now I'm learning a few Johnny Cash tunes and am actually managing to sing along to my strumming. Also feeling a little depressed but not minding. Feeling mean like the dog who guards the junkyard. Some days you just can't get out of bed on the right side to save your life.

This time from Nana

Had another dream last night. Nana died this time, I don't remember how or if I was even there to be a witness but she definitely died. And then I woke up this morning to the phone ringing. Seven-thirty. The caller id said "Lifeline" and I knew it really was about her, Nana.

She wasn't dead though. They told me she pressed her button because she was weak and couldn't get out of bed. My mom was there. She was calling the ambulance. I think I said thank-you before I hung up.

I called mom over at Nana's, asked for a task, something to do, a piece of the burden she was carrying. I was charged with picking my aunt up (no small task, she's crazier than any of us) and bringing her along with me to the hospital. An hour, two cups of coffee and some second-hand menthol basic smoke later I delivered myself and my crazy aunt to the hospital.

Nana had already ingested an oxycontin, two percocets, and the nurse was emptying a syringe full of morphine into her IV drip. She weighs eighty pounds if she's just eaten, but she was fully concious, lucid even, with all those drugs in her system.

My mom says she doesn't have blood, that it's venom coursing through her veins. She might be right.

For the next four or five hours I watched as Nana yelled at my aunt and mom, smacked their hands away when they tried to help, cursed them, sobbed, and drifted in and out of sleep. She would put her hands to her face and let out a ghostly cry, "it's not fair, it's cruel, it's so cruel".

She was like an 89 year old infant, unable to deal with any amount of stress, emotional or otherwise.

I sat with her for another hour or so after she was finally transferred from the ER to a bed in the hospital. I watched her yell at a nurse, smack my aunt, shit her bed, sob.

I finally left, feeling as though I had lived through two days of not sleeping. And I'm left with so many questions.

This has been going on for almost eight years. At this point, she will probably not ever return home and will finish out her life in a nursing home. She doesn't really have any friends left and she's alienated most of her family. "Quality of life" seems so far away from all of this.

We went out to dinner tonight to laugh about things, instead of isolating ourselves in our kitchens and crying. At one point mom said, "Aunt Fran used to always say that we're more humane with our animals than we are with other people." And it's true, maybe.

As I sit here typing this I realize that I wish my grandmother would decide to die. The amount of medication that she will need to manage the immense physical pain that she's in will incapacitate her. Quality of life. When she gets drugged she gets mean, vicious, the nasty underbelly of her personality is all that's left. Is what my mom and aunt have to try and nurse.

I hope that she goes quietly in her sleep and I hope that wishing that doesn't make me a bad person.

Message from my grandpa.

Had a dream last night that I was one of many underlings in corporate America, working in this four-storey renovated old grade school for some company whose product I didn’t know. I was one of only two disgruntled worker bees, out of maybe two-hundred. We met in the last five minutes of the dream, I had been dispatched by my supervisor, a mid-level manager, to the fourth floor to deliver an important message to the CEO. I took the steps two at a time to the top, and outside the CEO’s very important office doors, there he was, the other disgruntled. He was sitting at a desk in the hall, as if he was in the sixth grade and being punished. We made eye contact and recognized the rebellion lurking inside the other, and laughed. (The most appropriate thing in the world to do.)

I went into the CEO’s office, but left the door open so that my new ally could bear witness to the soul-crushing degradation that is working in corporate America. So that he’d know he wasn’t the only one doing some blood-letting. But I couldn’t remember the message. The CEO looked at me, questioned me with a crisp, “Yes?”, but it was gone. I could remember the ugly face of my mid-level manager, who looked so much like the Dean of Admissions. I could look into the future and see how upset she’d be that I hadn’t been successful on such an important task. But for the life of me I couldn’t remember her message.

Before the reprimand came I ran out of his office, grabbed my new friend by the hand and ran down the stairs with him. They were taking bodies in suits out on stretchers. People were dying and I had no idea why. The two of us threw open the front doors and ran outside together, into the pregnant spring. The corporate lilac bushes were in bloom, the daffodils, the grasses, the tulips, all growing together like a chaotic jungle, as if to make up for the lack of life just inside the building.

We two worker bees inhaled the fragrant air and then took off running down the sidewalk. I woke up thanking the stars that I don’t have a job to go to this morning.

And euc would always say, “Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.” And she’s right.

Woof.

I am so incredibly bored at work today. So, I've been cracking out on internet quizzes and the like. This was my favorite result, by far:




I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world, people.

I got screwed.

I should clarify; I got a nostril screw! That's what the professional body modification artists call it, in layman's terms it means that I got my nose pierced. I have for you, a picture (can you see the little flicker of steel?!?):

I cut my bangs and died them red, also. It's spring, it was time for change. SO, I haven't written for awhile. My computer crashed, this work thing is sucking my soul away, I've been busy designing tattoos to have inscribed on my flesh at some point in the future. The writing thing just hasn't been happening. I will try to jump back into the river soon, kiddies.

I did just discover podcasts though, and the fact that Democracy Now podcasts itself! (Can podcast be used as a verb?) Makes the morning cup of tea and mandatory mundanity of the data downloads that I am in charge of much more palatable.

HONK IF YOU'D RATHER BE HIKING!

cedar sketches

There is a part of us that seeks the suffering out. We look for sadness and anger and jealousy under rocks, in raindrops, out at sea. We need the reactivity to spice up the bland reality of the day to day. We sink our teeth into the rotten parts of our personalities; we don’t let go. We live a life on tenterhooks.

But only on our bad days.

Sometimes we let ourselves rise like valkyries to meet the sky. We can be noble and empathetic and beautiful. Some days all things enter us and recede again like so many waves on an immeasurable ocean. We are earthly gods fueled by all of the hope that ever existed.

What I would like is to walk the road that exists between the two extremes.

**************

We spent whole summers outside in the forest. We got to know the change in weather by the way the trees smelled, by the texture of their leaves. We would have huge adventures building fires, climbing rocks, fording a creek again and again and again. We imagined we were the last remaining soldiers of an egalitarian monarchy. We were noble.

When we got older we’d return to the forest after breaking out of our houses in the middle of the night. We would congregate underneath a huge pine tree and consume what we managed to steal from our parents’ liquor cabinets. We’d watch the stars drift, climb the trees, race each other up and down the trail. We’d play the night game and imagine we heard wild animals chasing us, or convince ourselves that we’d seen the eyes of a madman peering out from just behind the far bushes. We would run until the sharp night air seared our lungs.

Last winter I hiked back in on snowshoes after a snowstorm dumped more than two feet on us. Mine were the only tracks for most of the way, and it was so quiet that I cursed my heavy breath for breaking the silence. I labored for most of an hour to make the bridge, and needed to take rest by the time I reached it. I made a seat in the snow and my breath slowed, my eyes closed, my body relaxed. I sat there for several minutes and let the quiet sink into my bones. A noise to my right caused my gaze to shift and there on a snow-laden sycamore limb was a giant downy barn-owl. We regarded each other for a few long moments, then he turned, and flew away.

I clamped my snowshoes back on and made my way across the bridge and back towards home. The streets were nearly as empty as the forest, but the smell of pine was replaced with wood smoke and the windows of houses softly glowed with the contentment of having a day off from work and school. Everyone together drinking big mugs of tea in front of a fire, safely away from the storm outside.

And if there was a heaven, this is what I’d want it to be. A stone house in a small town filled with family, with a naïve happiness, where you can always hike out to a snow-filled forest to remind yourself that everything changes.

A sketch

We spend Sunday nights around the kitchen table, with the radio on, NPR playing Folk Alley. We make a pot of tea, turn the oven on and crack its door to heat our drafty room. You talk about our plans for the future and I listen. I rant about the world’s problems while you play with the cat, while you listen. We let the conversation wane and listen to some reeling Irish melody. We sip our tea. The windows fog up from the heat of our oven, from our voices.

You don’t look the way you did when I met you. The boyishness is fading and in its place is a steady masculinity. You work yourself up with the “could-be’s” and “what-if’s” and your eyes get that far away focus and your brow furrows. And I think that you are beautiful. And I wonder if it is possible to know someone completely and at the same time not know them at all. My perspective swings like a pendulum; one moment I am sitting across from a stranger and the next moment I am sitting across from myself.

And I forgot to tell you this, I love you.

Rub me wrong.

I feel really mixed about reading Mother Jones. There’s a side of me who wants to be as informed as possible so that I can be a responsible member of this society, and make decisions that will in some small way benefit the planet and the other humans who inhabit this little earth. I mean, let’s face it; we’re basically the most privileged people in the world, and that status has come at an inconceivable cost to our environment and other cultures. But there’s another side of me who wants to react like an ostrich, bury my head in the sand and pretend like all is good and holy. Ignorance doesn’t make the soul cringe, you know?

In the end I read it, from cover to cover, but it usually takes me a long time. I read a few pages and then leave it for awhile, to give myself some time to recover from the grim news it bears.

This month’s edition is chock-full of horrible truth about the environment, specifically the sea and global warming. I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet because it is AGONIZING. If even a small portion of what they’ve reported is true, then you and I are screwed. I think this month has affected me more than other months because I CAN’T TAKE IT when humans fuck with animals. If one human blows up another human, it sucks, it’s regrettable, it shouldn’t happen, but ultimately I get over it. But if we humans endanger the lives of animals it unseats me. I can’t let it go. It makes my heart break and fills me with the anger I’m trying to expunge from my body. (I don’t know why this disparity exists and maybe it makes me a bad person. Whatever, there it is.)

So, not knowing what else to do, I’ve written an angry letter to our president. Here it is for your enjoyment.

Hey, fuckwad!

Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to YOU. If I told you that someone in a position of power elicited advice on global warming from a politically conservative fiction writer, would you think that person in power was 1) mentally unstable, or 2) you? I mean, seriously, asking Michael Crichton about whether or not global warming is actually happening? What the fuck is wrong with you?! Now America is not only evil, we’re also ridiculously stupid in the eyes of the world. So, thanks for that.

Also, I was just wondering, what do you have against animals? Seriously. It seems like you enjoy killing them. But it has to be slowly, right? Reduce the regulation of emissions from coal factories, let the mercury from those factories go unchecked, allow it to blow out to sea and get ingested by algae and krill and work its way (with amazing potency) up the food chain. In a few years the large fish (including dolphins, sharks and whales) will be so toxic that their children will be born with three eyes and not live past their second birthdays. It’s quite a plan, really. It must’ve taken forever to concoct. I’m wondering if you realized that the top of the food chain is, well, us. Have you registered that yet?

Of course, when you get bored waiting for this little scheme to come to fruition, you can always fall back on the pleasure that is found in hunting endangered Alaskan wolves with sniper rifles from helicopters. Now that’s a sport! It takes a real man to do that shit. What, with the danger of it and all. The helicopter could crash.

Speaking of global warming (wait, was I?) did you know that the glaciers in Antarctica are melting to the point that Polar Bears are beginning to drown because they can’t swim the long distances between chunks of ice? And when they do manage to make it to an ice patch and find a meal, the seals that they feast on are so full of mercury and other chemicals (I know you have a short attention span, re-read the second paragraph) that they poison the bears, not nourish them. (The same thing is happening to most Inuit cultures.)

I realize that this has probably been an arduous read for you, but there’s one last tidbit I’d like to leave you with. Ice reflects 80% of the sun’s UV rays, whereas water absorbs 80% of the sun’s UV rays. Can you do the math? Do you get the idea? The more ice that melts, the more biomass in the form of water we create, the faster global warming will happen... Do a google search for “exponential” and you may begin to get the idea.

So, please, stop asking Michael Crichton for advice about global warming (or anything for that matter) and find yourself a real scientist. Try one from Canada. Canadians are so much more polite than we Americans are.

Most Sincerely,

Porfiry the misanthrope

Quick and dirty freewrite.

There are some movies that don’t let you watch passively. There are some that reach into your guts, yank around on your heart, upset things deep inside. There are some movies whose turbulence remains with you for several days after the watching. I remember this after seeing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Something about the blue of Paul Newman’s eyes, the intensity behind them, they cut through the pixilated decades and bored straight into the part of my chest that feels heavy when I cry. The word mendacity stuck with me for almost a year after the first time I watched it.

We are so much more than just the sum of our parts.

Some music hits you the same way, too. The first time I heard Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C# minor I cried, the image of everyone I ever knew who had died floating to the very top of my mind. I played it at least five times in a row. And Moby’s My Weakness, I remember they played it at the end of one of the last episodes of the X-Files I ever watched, and it infected me. I was obsessed with the sounds of it, and somehow (god knows how because this was before Al Gore thought to invent the internet) I figured out what song it was, and listened to it over and over until it had become a part of my flesh. [One time euc and my father and I were driving through some god-forsaken stretch of dirt road and forest in the Upper Peninsula, in the middle of the night, and we played that song over and over in a loop until dad made us turn it off because it was too ghostly for such a ghostly place.]

The distillation of perfection. I obsess over the arrows that penetrate my tough outer-shell because so few can. [They are reminders.]

Try again/Fail.

No challenge today, kiddies. Take a break and play outside.

Today has been crammed full of shit, suctioned shut, and filled with more shit. I feel like I am nine knives flying through the air, almost but not just yet hitting their target; was that apparent in the opening?

One thing; I hate it when people give you just enough information so that you can start a task, but just little enough so that you do a bad job of it. (Brace yourselves for some complaining.) I have a temp job. It is quietly beginning to suck the life from the very inside of my bones. The people I work with are nice, I like them as people, honest. However (you knew the however was coming) I posit that spending years in an office job which doesn't greatly challenge the critical thinking skills you developed whilst reading Neitsche in college is BAD in the long run. Okay. This is the thing. We humans, we like to know where we stand in the hierarchical scheme of things. We need to feel like we're better than the people around us so, like Wiley Coyote, we throw grease on the road every chance we get.

So this is what happens. (This is an imaginary scenario, but it plays out about once a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, in my office.) Somebody gives me a task involving contacting people/shuffling through paperwork and logging that contact or paperwork somehow into a database. This is stuff that I'm good at, because I was a monkey in a former life. SO. The task is explained to me and demonstrated. I begin the task, and cruise through the stack of paper on my desk. I take a break and eat a banana, because that's what we monkeys do. Later in the day the task is re-assessed and it's discovered that many of the steps I was supposed to have taken were left out during the explanation phase of the task so now I have to go back and complete all the forgotten steps. But this part of the task is done in a weird "it's kind of your fault because you didn't assume we forgot to explain part of the process" way. Okay, no big deal, I hate feeling like I've messed something up, and I try to throw those feelings off my shoulders because, obviously, I haven't. So I restart the task in earnest, with a new desire to hold myself to exacting grammatical and punctuational (probably not a word) standards, because I enjoy punishing myself for wrongs that I did not commit. Then, usually five minutes later, some other forgotten detail is remembered, and shared with me in the same weird, guilty way.

It is at this point that I lose all propriety and start taking mothafuckas down.

YAR$%@#GHGLYARGH@#$!!!!!!!!!!!

My frustration has been building, and today has been like the culmination of the shit-tasticness of this "interim" period in my work history. Now that I've ranted, I feel better.

Tomorrow I plan on taking out the sailboat I built in my imagination when I was a kid and circumnavigating the globe. There will be so many places to visit and amazing people to meet! Would anyone like to join me?

=/ I feel so very disaffected.

But of all things

truth beareth away the victory. (Engraved on Fairchild Chapel)

************

My father looks remarkably Irish in a suit, especially when he wears his black wool trench coat. The lilting step and mischievous glance stand out against the ridiculous formality of the suit, against the monochromatic backdrop of a frozen Ohio. Walking behind my father and mother, arm in arm, it hits me how important the image is, this silhouette, made stark in contrast with the icy wastes of our northern landscape. He is a study of duality (the man who wears Sponge Bob pajamas is the same man who carried a gun and badge for so many years), and like the long nose and red ears, the duality is one of the traits that he passed on to me and my sisters. I follow him, down the ice-slick road to its end, to the wake of a friend’s father, the impermanence of life sinking in with each carefully placed step.

Someday it will be my father’s wake that we’re lined up for. The thought enters my brain like a dose of poison; my body reacts and forces the image of it from my mind. That day is not this day.

Inside the house at the end of the road there is a huge gathering of people, noise, emotion, alcohol. The day was designed to be a celebration of the life of the father, and most surfaces are lined with years-old photos and memories piled up like so much bric-a-brac. As I look for my friend in the sprawling house I steal a few cursory glances into the pictures that capture him as a child, as the kid I still know, as the only person he will ever be to me. Thin, short and like a fire-cracker, it’s his presence that the film captures, his radiance, not his father’s. I sneak down an empty hall and can’t help but feel guilty for my lack of emotion at his father’s passing. I am not here for the dead, I’m here for the living.

When I find him it strikes me that he’s grown up now, a real man, thick and with a deep voice. When I hug him he fills my arms and squeezes, gently, back. I let go and wonder what it feels like to lose a father who was nothing like my father. I wonder how much the loss hurts him and where. I remember my friend crying behind our garage when Big Kitty died, I remember hugging him, and I wonder where he does his crying now, and whether it’s the girl with all the makeup and hair dye who hugs him. The emotion rises in me now, but it’s not for the father, it’s for my loss – the selfish loss of my place in the life of this friend.

I let myself fold back into the periphery, out of conversation and into the role of observer (which I covet perhaps too much). I scan the enormous room and let my eyes fall on my father, discussing something with a Scotsman, a man who I know he dislikes. There’s the glint in his eye which means he’s passing all kinds of unholy judgment, and there’s that mischievous smile that tells me he’ll give us his comic rendering of their conversation later. My eyes drift left and I see the rest of my family, congregated in front of one of the room’s floor to ceiling windows. Their profiles stand out darkly against the waning sun, lighting their backs with the brilliance of a million lit candles – an image now planted in the most fertile soil in my heart. They are a mountain, I am one of them.

And then the weight of my friend’s loss resounds in the hollow of my chest. Which is the more tragic fate: to lose a family member whom you love intensely, or to never have that love at all?

I pick up my now heavy feet and walk over to my father who looks more Irish than ever with his long ruddy cheeks and easy smile. When I approach, the Scotsman turns to another bystander to initiate stale conversation and my father and I drift back over to the rest of our family. Standing with them, in a room full of mourners, on a desolate winter evening I am home, I am safe, I am surrounded. A feeling crashes down on me which is like all of the hope in the entire world, radiating out of my solar plexus, pulsing, leaving, washing back over me again, transfixing me there in a moment of random perfection on the powder-blue shag rug that belongs to my friend’s mother, the widow. We will never be here again, my family, like this. There is so much convulsive beauty in the knowing of that.

Moments later I have sequestered myself next to the window, looking out on an expansive garden that borders a snowy wood. There is a stand of shaggy Hickory trees not far from the house, and perched upside down on one of them is a diminutive blue jay. Digging for a meal beneath the tough outer bark. The last thought that passes through my mind before we head back into the cold together is that this bleakness is not beautiful to everyone. But it is to me.

Who am I?

This is an ambiguous and, well, kind of lame question that I've been struggling with lately. (Lately being the last 15 or so years of my life.) Most recently the question has "cropped up" because of the vast and pending change for Patrick and myself. I feel as though I'll have to (soon) make a decision about what I want my future to look like, but I feel that before I can draw a picture of it, I have to be firmly aware of my foundation... of who I am. Because how can you know where you're heading if you don't know where you are?

So, basically, instead of doing anything proactive that could lead to making an informed decision about my life, I've been cracking out on craftster.org and reading people's blogs. I was perusing Ahniwa's blog today, when I found a link to a personality test. Perfect!

(Although I should mention that I think most personality tests are crap and they ask totally obvious questions like, '1. If you saw an old lady trying to cross a road would you, A. Help her along or B. Push her down' I mean, come on.) So I took the test and it actually seemed to be pretty good. In that it asked random questions and I had no idea what to expect with the outcome. So.....



It then went on to say all kinds of things that I felt were pretty accurate about me. Like, Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self -- and they want to help others make the journey and also The idea of a spiritual dimension to life, the "not visible" or the "not yet" that can only be known through intuition or by a leap of faith, is far more important to Idealists than the world of material things and also Highly ethical in their actions, Idealists hold themselves to a strict standard of personal integrity. They must be true to themselves and to others, and they can be quite hard on themselves when they are dishonest, or when they are false or insincere.

This is me. I mean, as far as generalizations go, you know. I was quite surprised by how much of the four-paragraph description really suited me. It went on to say that Idealists make good healers, teachers, counselors, journalists. That the most important thing to them is that their work provides them the opportunity to help others, and to help guide others towards that elusive "not visibile" in the above description. Yes, exactly! That is the kind of job I'm looking for.

Like spiritual social work. Instead of handing out money to pay a gas bill, I'd like to hand out the inter-connectedness to all beings near and far. Anyone have any suggestions on where I could post my resume?!

But seriously, this has me re-thinking my whole plan. Not that it was much of a plan to begin with. I must not ever put money or security ahead of spiritual purpose. Remind yourself of this post in six months. (And thank you to Ahniwa for posting the survey. If y'all want to take it, go visit his blog.)

Wednesday's challenge!

I had a lot of reservations about posting this challenge. The topic I decided upon turned out to be hard for me to write about because I feel so uncomfortable with it. I never talk about it. I think that’s why I ultimately decided upon it, though. Sometimes shedding light on the dark places is enough to make them dissipate. So, here goes.

Blog Challenge Number Three:
Name the physical trait that you are most insecure about and explain why. To end with some positivity, describe something physical about yourself that you love.

My answer:
My complexion. I had great skin until I was about eleven, maybe twelve, then the acne started coming and things (mostly inside my head) became hellish. When I was in the ninth grade my face was red because I had so many pimples. It was horrible, embarrassing, confidence-debilitating, you get the idea. I don’t remember being teased or anything by other kids (I think my school was sort of amazing in that respect) but I mentally punished myself everyday for it. I would and still do obsess about it. For instance, I know that fluorescent lighting exaggerates bad skin, so if I’m under fluorescent light my insecurity sky-rockets. Also, a person’s complexion is usually the first thing that I notice.

I think I kind of always felt like I was doing something wrong, which was causing the acne. I associated so much guilt with having a bad complexion. Like I wasn’t clean enough, or I had done something bad to karmically induce the pimples. I still think this way sometimes! (When I was little, a member of my family who will remain nameless said, “it will be my fault if you ever have acne”… I believe that was the precise moment that the guilt started!)

Starting in seventh or eighth grade Euc and I had regular visits with dermatologists who prescribed all kinds of antibiotics and freakish sorts of ointments. None of it really worked (and I am afraid of how resistant to antibiotics my body must be now!!) After the ninth grade my skin chilled out, and I would go for periods without any pimples, but I would always have the occasional break-out, and by that time I had scars. And that’s what I hate the most – the scars. They’re like permanent fleshy reminders of so much guilt and self-consciousness and imperfection. I will never not have them. Some days, when I’m feeling especially down about myself, they are all that I see when I look in the mirror. I’m 26 now, and I still break-out sometimes. It can get very frustrating…

Wow, what a hard thing to write. I really don’t talk about this at all. I was inspired to write this after I read something that Rodney Yee wrote. I’ve been practicing yoga more and more lately, which has definitely helped me feel more comfortable in my body. I was perusing his website and he wrote something like, “we have to find a way to accept our bodies for what they are. We were not all destined to be super-models and that is perfectly okay.” I know, it’s obvious, but it’s worth repeating and remembering. In America, especially as women, we’re under near constant pressure to be thinner, to have longer more voluminous hair, to be more attractive, to wear tighter clothing, to not look like our normal selves at all. We have, for years, felt so self-conscious that insecurity has become second nature. It’s unhealthy, and frankly, I’m tired of having a horrible self-image. It’s stressful and takes too much of my energy. Time to try and heal, and it starts with this post.

Something I like about myself:
I love how strong I am. I was lucky to be born into a muscular frame! I have large biceps and triceps and can lift more than your average woman. I love knowing that I can lift/move/shove most anything by myself, and it’s nice to not feel hampered by things that might be heavy. I love to be at the gym, curling more than the guy next to me!

Okay, now it’s your turn. Believe me, if you get it out, you’ll feel better. If you respond on your blog, tell me that you did in a comment. Or, if you don’t have your own blog, just respond in the comments below.

Random scraps.

I have ingested far too much caffeine today. I feel, kinda, wiggy. Last night I slept like crap, I kept waking and tossing and turning and over-heating. Should not have had two cups of coffee during the game last night, but, I think I'm some kind of caffeinated super-hero, like the chemical doesn't affect me, like coffee is the deisel to my mack truck, like life doesn't taste as good if it's not covered with a caffeine-induced fog. Yeah, well, I'm wrong on all counts.

(But I kinda like to suffer for the over-indulgence.)

Okay, you guys, here's the deal. I'm going to post a challenge every Wednesday afternoon. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to respond to it, I figure anything to get our collective creative juices flowing is a good thing. (Although you better finish it at some point during the week, 'cause I keep a crowbar under my desk and I'm not afraid of smashing...!) Anyone is welcome to participate in the challenge, especially the three of you who read my blog. =D It's cool, and it'll keep us reading each other.

I have this quote that keeps running around in my head, Most people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire. Here's my salient distillation of the above: If you want it, make it.


Final memory for the quickly diminishing day: When we were in second grade, Euc and I used to make a fort underneath the jungle gym at school, call to what few close friends we had, and power-up Thundercats' style. (Do you remember this ritual, Euc?) Then we'd branch out, and beat up whatever boys we could find. We'd yell, "Thunder-ho!" and "Sword of omens, give me sight beyond sight!" and I swear to god, those mantras gave my eight-year-old frame more power. I must try to reconnect to that inter-connectedness that I had.