Princess Valium-Tales From a Broad

hellish chemistry...

2006-06-13T23:40:00.001-06:00

This was hanging up on the door at my second job...and it is *far* too good not to share.

"...The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so profound that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entereing Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilites:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why last night Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

This student received the only 'A.'"

hellish chemistry...

2006-06-13T23:40:00.000-06:00

This was hanging up on the door at my second job...and it is *far* too good not to share.

"...The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so profound that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for haow many souls are entereing Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a memberr of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilites:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why last night Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

This student received the only 'A.'"

noo hoose.

2006-05-22T21:03:00.000-06:00

Spring has finally come to my ickle mountain village, and since I've not updated in a very long time indeed, I thought I'd sit down and do so tonight.

It's lovely here tonight...we've had some afternoon-into-evening rainshowers that have left the air smelling particularly sweet and clean. This afternoon we had some incredible booming thunderstorms that echoed through all the canyons, and made me aware for the first time in a long time why it is I've lived in this town with no good shopping, nightlife, art scene (that doesn't involve paintings of cowboys or howling coyotes), or indie film house for nearly a decade.

It's the mountains.

For example:

I took that photo last night.
I've moved house since my last posting, and the preparations and drama that goes into a move were multiplied about tenfold with this one. I won't go into any gory details about it because, quite frankly, I'm sick of trying to explain it at the moment, and every time I do describe it I just get pissed off.

And I don't want to be pissed off.

So, I've moved into a new-to-me house. I've come to find out that it was one of the first houses built in the valley (by white folk, anyway), constructed in 1892 or thereabouts. F.O. Stanley reportedly stayed in this house before he decided to build the Stanley Hotel, and it *does* have a certain quirky rustic charm that immediately appealed to me when I went through it. In the living room (that I'm calling 'The Lincoln Lounge') you can still see the original lodgepole pine logs and mortar of what was probably the heart of the cabin, if not the only room in its early years.
The slightly wonky horizontal-ness of the room made it feel much smaller when I went through it and it was devoid of furniture. Now even with some pretty substantial furniture in it, it still feels effing huge. I've put up my thin wavy mirrors in an attempt to counterbalance all of that horizontal orientation:

The cabin has a great porch, with a superb, unobstructed view of Longs Peak, Mt. Meeker, Mt. Otis and the Ute Indian vision quest site of Oldman Mountain. It was built up against the mountain, so my backyard consists of perfect scrambling-around-on boulders that quickly and easily put you about 50 feet taller (at least) than the roof of the house (depending on how far up you feel like scrambling).

The first night that I moved in, I was standing in the kitchen unpacking one of many boxes, when a motion outside of the window caught my eye. I turned to see a fox about the size of a freaking *labrador retriever* prancing up to the side of the house and then behind it, in full view of the eye-level windows that span the length of the building in the mudroom. I completely wigged out. I don't know if i've ever seen a fox that big. I have decided to call him Reynard.
A couple of days later, I saw his girlfriend. I haven't thought of what to call her yet.
Sadly, no pictures of the couple as of yet. :-( but keep an eye on the Flickr account, I'm determined to get a shot of R. and his g/f at some point this summer.

Also, the house has.....presence. I won't say its haunted, because nobody has blown in my face in the middle of the night or called my name or anything like that. But it's an old sodding house, and what was it I read on Utata today? ....oh yes, it was perfect: ..." I've come to learn a few things over the years: notably that brick and wood are porous and the human condition is somewhat gaseous, able to permeate even the largest of spaces." (An amazing photographer, whom I admire a great deal, Catherine Jamieson wrote that).

Anyway, in order to afford this place, I've taken a second job at the local glassblowing studio. You can peruse their lovely products here: www.garthsglassworks.com. It's an ace second job, because it's bright and cheerful and full of gorgeous color everywhere you look. It's a really nice treat to go to work there after spending 9 (and sometimes more) hours a day in an office that was built to resemble a nuclear bunker but without the cool signage (remember those? My elementary school had a bomb shelter in the basement where the art teacher put her kiln. I remember hanging out down there to get our little fragile sculptures out and always being kind of freaked out by the space itself).

here's a photo to give you an idea of what kind of stuff I get to look at when I go to the other job:

not bad, huh?

right, as I've been writing this, another thunder/lightning storm has moved in, and I should unplug the computer and make everything safe, seeing as how I *am* near the top of a mountain. So enough for tonight, boys and girls. I've got the newish Peter Ackroyd bio on Shakespeare to start reading, and I can't wait to dive into it.

good night. *

spring changes lead to sea changes

2006-04-18T19:42:00.000-06:00

T.S. Eliot was right, April IS the cruelest month, but sometimes it has to be in order for positive changes to happen.

Lots of changes on the horizon for me right now...I've picked up a second job, am currently packing to move to a new house (an historic cabin, actually) here in town, and am making long term plans that are going to be kind of tough to stick to.

Just so you all know, those things, along with the fact that I have two MASSIVE deadlines looming at the end of the month, is the reason I'm either not around physically or virtually at the moment. If I'm fortunate enough to have the chance to post some snaps to Flickr, I'll do so to justify paying for the re-up of the pro account.

Hope you are all well and enjoying springtime.
Loves!

class in session

2006-03-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

It's friday, and on fridays I generally only have to go into work for a couple of hours. So this morning, I staggered out of bed, made a cup of tea, and turned on the local news.
Apparently some teacher in Denver has gotten himself into trouble by saying the names "Hitler" and "George W. Bush" in the same sentence.
Here's what the Denver Post had to say about it:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3564246
This, readers, disturbs me deeply.
I'm listening to the recording of the lecture in question. The teacher's delivery sucks, he sounds like a wacko preacher, but at the same time, there's one section of the recording where the kid who recorded the lecture can be heard asking some questions.
That's fine, ask away--school is all about that. But shortly after his question, you can hear him snickering with his friends. It just sounds like this kid is baiting him.
And this student was "threatened?" by a lecture enough to record it, but felt the need to egg it on?

It all makes me cringe.

The teacher says, "I'm not in any way implying that you should agree with me, I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in-depth, and not just take things from the surface. And I'm glad you asked all your questions, because they are all very good, legitimate questions, and hopefully that allows other people to begin to think about these things too."

During the lecture, the teacher nearly froths, giving all good liberals everywhere a bad name. This kind of tirade from anyone who considers themselves vaguely to the left of the political spectrum of the current administration is self-defeating. Yes, it is important to raise these points (specifically when the kid is talking about 9/11-- "they attacked us first"--and the teacher asks him to really look deeper into that statement--multinationalism, the United States' involvement with that part of the world historically), but his delivery needs a LOT of work. It does seem, because of his delivery, an awful lot like a sermon.

Listen to it and make up your own minds...but I can't imagine what it would be like to be a teacher in this day and age.
It's tricky enough to keep your school's scores up to No Child Left Behind Act so your school won't get penalized, kids taking guns to school (still a verrrrry sensitive subject in the State where Columbine happened, and quite right, too), the long hours, and poor pay, without having to worry that your lessons are going to get you fired because you're asking your students to use CRITICAL THOUGHT.

It seems like it's getting more and more dangerous to have an opinion that differs from the flock. This teacher is lucky he hasn't been branded a hostile combatant and hauled off in the dark of night.
I'm not saying he's wrong, nor am I'm saying he's right. Whether or not I agree with his politics is not the point. I just believe that you'd catch a lot more flies with honey than vinegar...

Homesick whilst at home

2006-02-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back in Colorado.

I didn't manage to blog at all while I was in the UK...Dave and I were incredibly busy the whole time I was there.
I've been back about two weeks and I'm swinging between every emotion on the scale. It feels like I was just there for a heartbeat or two, even though I was gone for six weeks. It's good to be back and see my kitty, and spend time with my friend who has just had a gall bladder surgery, but all in all, I don't particularly want to be here....I'm missing Dave with a constant ache and being 5,000 miles away from him isn't too fun at all.

Thank goodness for technology. Without it, we never would have met, and would not be able to stay in touch. I'd be going about twenty five different kinds of mad without it right now.

So. Rather than soft London skies (or Edinburgh ones), I'm surrounded by snow and it's not supposed to get above 20 degrees Farenheit for several days. I just keep telling myself that it is beautiful (and it is!) to keep my spirits up and my heart from sinking at the knowledge that I'm separated from the one I love.
This guy here:

Hopefully not for long, though. He's coming to see me in September (which seems like AGES away), and I can't wait!

tickets, money, passport, musesings: 2005 in review

2005-12-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

I'm all packed. In a few hours I'll be leaving for Denver International Airport to catch a flight back to the UK for my annual adventure. This is one of my favorite annual traditions, and it's a fairly newish one.
Since I won't be home until the beginning of February, I am feeling a little introspective this morning as I sip my tea, spend time with my kitten (who I am going to miss *terribly!*).

It's been a decent year. really. I've counted up all my blessings and I'm really very fortunate. Compared to last year at this time, I'm light-years ahead of myself. That is due, in large part, to David Goodman. It's amazing what a little love will heal in your life.

I discovered at Thanksgiving-time that my family had no clue that my mother and I were beat up for 13 years, and inadvertantly "outed" this info to them after telling them about what it was like meeting my ex-stepsister for the first time in ten years, and what we talked about. Rough news to break on people, and I didn't break it gently, because I thought they knew. I'm discovering things about my mother all the time that I didn't know, despite knowing her better than most people in my life. I just assumed that she was as open and honest with everyone else as she was with me. Now I see that wasn't the case, and it makes me terribly sad to think that she didn't have that closeness with her own mother.
Re-connecting with the stepsister has been interesting, as well. although we were never very close as kids or teens, we did grow up together, and shared many experiences. I'm finding that the more time I spend with her, the less I dwell on the pain of what my mom and I went through in my youth. She has been sharing with me all the ways my mom touched her life, and how big an influence she is having on how she is raising her own daughters, and that is really nice to know. Julie (the stepsister) apparently also was given daughters that are really similar to how she and I were as kids. Her eldest is precocious and bossy,ready to go at a moment's notice, the younger is bookish and stubborn but compassionate. Our next step is me going to Denver to meet her husband and kids. Should be interesting. That will happen in early 2006, after I return from the UK.

Last year I made the decision, after losing my mom, to go out and make her proud...accomplish my dreams, live up to my potential, achieve what I want to do with my life, and do it with love and enthusiasm. Part of that goal involves leaving the country. To that end, I've enrolled at the London School of Journalism, where I soon will be a student.
I never imagined myself being a journalist (always fancying myself instead as a *serious writer* locked up in my library, being cerebral and interesting), but I've fallen into a journalism job, and I love it. I've seen silly little things I've written help to change people's lives for the better, and now I've got a new mission. News journalists often by nature of their subject matter, have to deal with some of the worst aspects of humanity. As a features writer, I can choose to focus on the best aspects of what it means to be alive and experiencing life on earth. Recently, a story I wrote helped raise around $20,000 for a local home for women and children in recovery that is in danger of being shut down. When I think of the power we have, as journalists, to touch people's lives, and make a positive difference in them, I'm really humbled. I want to meet this challenge with integrity and help be a vehicle for change in the whirled.
I've only been back to journalism for nearly two years. But I know now--for the first time in my adult life--what I want to do with myself, and how I can help others with the gifts I've been given. Right now I'm at a small paper, with full creative license to do whatever I want, and I know that will change when I go out in the whirled and get a jobby-job. But that license has done more for me than any press pass ever has. Its given me the confidence to write without boundaries, and that in turn has provided an awful lot of positive feedback.

So I'm off for forty glorious days and forty glorious nights to Londinum to see the man of my dreams, in the city of my dreams, in pursuit of my dreams. I'll post here occasionally to keep you all up to date on my international shenanigans and revalations.

Best wishes for a peace-full, prosperous 2006. Thanks for reading.

crimbo wishes

2005-12-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

Feliz Navidad! ¡Boas Festas! ¡Bones festes! ¡Eguberri on! Merry Christmas !! Frohe Weihnachten!! Joyeux Noël!! Buon Natale!! Christmas Alegre!! Καλά Χριστούγεννα! Веселое Рождество! メリークリスマス!! 명랑한 크리스마스 ! ! 圣诞快乐!

strength.

2005-12-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

this is an old story of mine, resurrected for some Flickr friends to read. all rights reserved and all that.
Strength: n. 1. The state or quality of being strong; power; force; vigor. 2. The power to resist strain, stress, etc.; toughness, durability. 3. The power to resist attack. 4. legal, moral, or intellectual force. 5. a) a capacity for producing an effect. b) potency or concentration, as of drugs, liquors, etc. 6. intensity, as of sound, color, etc. 7. force as measured in numbers. 8. vigor of feeling or expression. 9. a source of strength or support, based or relying on. –Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second Concise Edition, 1983

~ One ~
“You come from a long line of strong women,” is a chant in my family that I have heard endless times when we are immersed in difficulty. It also happens to be the meaning of my name, and the corresponding tarot card to my astrological sign. I cannot escape strength. I enjoy strong coffee, strong flavors like garlic, vinegar, and horseradish, and strong colors like red and orange. I feel cursed by this strength at times, the stoicism of my family imposing itself on my relationships and my world-views. Sometimes I wish I could set strength down and slowly back away from it, because it feels like a foreign thing that has imposed itself on me. I would like to be able to experience vulnerability without fear…that seems to me the greatest strength a person could have.

~ Two ~
My father died when I was eleven months old. My mother was a month away from being twenty-one. We moved back to Colorado from Louisiana because mom wanted the strength of her family around her. She says she doesn’t remember much about this time in our lives because she was on a lot of Valium and was grieving. When I was three, she remarried. My stepfather had been married twice before, and had a daughter from each marriage. He was a “disciplinarian.” For the next thirteen years I got beat up if not daily, at least weekly. Mom did, too. He wouldn’t let her work or go to school. She felt that she didn’t have the strength to leave, and after awhile his abuse became normal to me. I knew that something was very wrong with our situation, but there was nothing I could do to fix it. Sometimes I would get furious with her for keeping us in that situation, but deep down, I understood that she felt powerless and was afraid that she couldn’t support us if we were to leave. I adjusted to the violence at a terribly early age. By the time I hit puberty, I provoked him every chance I got. I figured that if I was going to get beat up, there should be a reason for it.

~ Three ~
When I was twelve, he and my mother were fighting. He pushed her off the second story balcony of our living room. She was knocked out from the fall, and he ran. I sat with my crumpled mother’s head in my lap until she came to. The police were never called. Ever. While we were enduring all this violence, she would tell me that “this is not love,” and to do as she says, not as she does. Shortly after this, she began sending me off to Washington, D.C. every summer vacation to visit my real father’s brothers and sister. She said it was “to catch up with family.” We both knew it was to get me away from my stepfather and the beatings.
~ Four ~
I got good at avoiding home, and my mother was indulgently understanding about me being away. We didn’t have any locks on the doors of our house, aside from the doors that led outside, and one on the bathroom. I never had a feeling of security or safety at home. When I wasn’t away from the house, I was getting beat up for being away from home. I became quick at ducking under his swings, and at getting in the first punch and retreating when attacked. I never felt guilty or ashamed about the violence I was now participating in because in my mind it was a matter of survival. If I didn’t fight back, I was convinced that I would die a bloody teenage pulp, a scrap of discarded flesh. I wished I could worry about things like acne and who I was going to go to the prom with.
~ Five ~
With a restraining order in place, finally she served him papers. I was sixteen. My mom had worked out a deal with the lawyers that we would be out of the house by a certain date and receive extra cash for doing so because the mortgage of the house was in my step dad’s father’s name. We were moving stuff into a storage unit and into my grandmother’s house in Loveland. My mom, aunt, and grandma were making a run of boxes, and I was at the house with some friends of mine still packing up. My step dad pulled into the driveway, and I ran around the house, locking the doors to keep him out. The phone had already been shut off, and I couldn’t call the police to tell them that he was violating the restraining order.
What happens next comes in flashes. He got into the house and I was instantly hysterical. I remember screaming at him to get out. He was calm and didn’t raise his hand or his voice, and it terrified me. I ran upstairs to try and get away from him, and he followed me. In the hallway leading to my bedroom, he caught me again, and grabbed both my wrists in one hand. He told me to calm down, and called me “baby.” This was the breaking point for me. In the thirteen years that they were married, he had never said anything more horrible to me. Never once before had he used a term of affection such as this with me. I screamed at him to get away from me, that I had never been his baby and wasn’t about to be one now. With his free hand he now hit me. This was a method he had used often over the years. I kicked him hard in the shins, and he let me go as he doubled over. I ran into my room where my friends sat wide-eyed, and slammed the door behind me. I heard my mother, aunt and grandmother come in the house, and there was some screaming coming from downstairs. I sat on the floor and cried. I was ashamed that my friends had seen everything. My aunt came to the door.
“Valerie, sugar, unlock the door, he’s leaving,” she said.
There was no lock on the door. I had slammed it so hard that I had smashed the door into the frame, and my aunt had to kick it open. We moved.
~ Six ~
I swore I would never let anybody touch me like that ever again.
At twenty, I started dating a friend of mine who was a year older than me, and was going through a divorce. We started just going out for coffee, then dancing. He was a chef, and one night he made dinner at my apartment. We had been drinking, and as we were standing at my tiny sink doing the washing up, he cupped my face with soapy hands and kissed me. The kiss deepened and went a little further. We didn’t leave the apartment for three days.
He was intense and passionate, but also deeply wounded. He also came from an abusive family, and his divorce was bringing up abandonment issues for him. We decided that we would just be lovers, but not let things get serious.
Of course, it became more serious.
We dated on again, off again for three years. At one point we decided to move in together. This was not brilliant thinking on my part, but I was in love (insert chirping birdsong and violin music here). We both drank a lot, but didn’t think much about it, as all of our friends did too.
He started dealing pot after we moved in together. I objected to it, and he started burying it in the backyard between the tool shed and my foxglove plant. We were both stubborn and hotheaded. He asked me to marry him on several occasions. I always laughed at him because he was always loaded when he asked me. My response was always the same, “Ask me tomorrow when you are sober.”
One night after work, we were at a bar listening to some friends of ours who were in a band. We were dancing and drinking and having a great time. He asked me again, this time getting down on his knees in front of God and everybody, in the middle of the dance floor, in between songs. I pulled him up off his knees and whispered, “Ask me tomorrow, when we’re sober.”
We went home a bit later and there was a fight. A big fight. He threw me into our bedroom wall and pushed me to the bed, putting a pillow over my face while sitting on my chest. I managed to throw him off when he moved his hands to my throat and I began to see stars. I fought like a girl, scratching a deep gash in his forehead.
Within a week, his stuff was packed and waiting for him on the front porch. He and his mother came to get his things and move him into his sister’s house. Nobody was ever going to touch me like that again.
~ Seven ~
I went through a period of huge depression and shame. I didn’t tell anybody about it for months. After everything that I had already endured, I had let someone hurt me again. I was no different than my mother. I quit my job and moved from our house into a seedy rooming house. I took jobs in questionable establishments, and did things I never in my right mind would do. I tried very hard for a long time to stop living, but lacked the courage to actually take my own life. Instead, I drank too much, put myself in dangerous situations, and spent a lot of time writing trying to make sense of it all.
~ Eight ~
I finally told my mother what had happened and it was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. I knew she would internalize the situation and feel guilty about it. My grandmother knew in the spooky, intuitive way that only Irish grandmothers can know. She would pick me up from my hovel and take me to the greenhouse that winter to look at orchids, to smell lavender, and be surrounded by warm, green life. She would show up at other times and cook huge amounts of food without saying a word to me about my condition. She would always bring art supplies and plants, and tell me stories about her time as a pilot, or how she dated Tyrone Power and dumped him for my grandpa. She would tell me stories about my father. She saved my life.
My best friend would come over with her young daughter. She would do my nails or cut my hair and I’d play with Elizabeth. She would take me out and force me to be social even when I didn’t feel I could bear to look people in the eyes. She saved my life.
My mother would call daily, my aunt weekly. They saved my life.
Strong women saved my life.
~ Nine ~
Now I am on the far side of that madness. For the first time in my life, I am deeply satisfied and feel like I’m finally steering my own boat. There are still times that the darkness creeps in and I feel the mad blackness seep through my brain like an ink stain. But I can conquer it.
I know that this stoicism sometimes works against me and isolates me from others. I’m working on that, too. For a long time the only way for me to feel completely safe was to shut others out completely. I try and remind myself when I feel myself reverting to this mindset that I’ve got a support system. I’ve allowed myself to accept help when I need it, from whoever is willing and able to offer it.
I’ve discovered that the greatest strength any person can have is the capacity for love, and the knowledge to share it. Because I have learned that all strength grows from love.
At least the only kind that matters.

the wall (and standing on writer's block to scale it)

2005-11-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

day three of the NaNoWriMo challenge and I've just come off a kind of writing frenzy for work, so I'm not especially motivated to sit down tonight and crank out 1,500+ words for my next installment.
So instead of sitting down and getting to it, I'm sitting down here blogging to vent before I get the next chapter written.

I'm good with deadlines. I can handle deadlines. I deal with them all the time as an editor at my town paper, cranking out ridiculous volumes of work on a monthly basis. Due to the size of our paper, and our limited resources, we also do all our own layout, proofing, and design, and we do it five days a week.

Today I trudged through one of the most difficult stories I've written to date, and my muse is having a tantrum now that I've got space and ability to let her dictate whatever she wants.

It wasn't difficult because it was emotionally charged subject matter, it wasn't politically heated, it wasn't anything extraordinary. It was difficult because the man I interviewed--although a fascinating fellow, a gifted storyteller, and a very nice man all around--spent roughly 29 minutes of a 45 minute interview telling me unnecessary things that had nothing to do with what I needed to write the story. He's retired, and it is certainly a testament to his life experience that he has done so many things, and I admire him for it. But it made my job more difficult than it really has to be.

I'm not complaining.

I just usually get done at least an hour before my deadline and have my pages sent off to the printer with plenty of time to spare, and room to stretch my legs.

Not today.

I still did make my deadline, and everything was kosher, but it was a little like pulling teeth.

All day long I've been looking forward to having the pleasure of NaNoWriMo writing to do, but since I've come home, I've avoided it.

I did the dishes, fixed myself some dinner, tidied the kitchen, did the dinner dishes, and drank a couple of beers. I went for a quick drive in the dark and wind because sometimes the act of driving puts me in a good place creatively (so does taking a bath sometimes). I've put on some music, and set up my desk so that all of the necessary gris gris for good writing juju happens.

And I still don't feel like doing it.

The wind is throwing rocks at my windows and making the stovepipe rattle, the cat has the crazies from the wind, my eyes don't want to look at a computer screen anymore, and I just feel like whining.

I've hit the wall, I suppose. Two days into it.

As a journalist I don't have the luxury of writer's block. I know as soon as I'm done writing this post I'm going to probably do a little yoga and then sit back down and put on my glasses and start my writing and mean it.

That's the beauty of the NaNoWriMo process, I've heard it said. Just sit down and make it happen.

So I suppose the next post you'll be reading, if you read these, will be chapter three.

two

2005-11-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

Two
Harlan, Galen, Julie and The Baby live next door. Their mommy is Sheila and their daddy is Dave. Sheila has long hair that she always wears twisted in a bun on the back of her head and wears dresses. Dave has a big dark beard and is a big man who is quiet. Harlan is my age and since he’s next door he is my friend but he doesn’t go to school, Sheila teaches Harlan and his brothers and his sister.
Harlan has yellow Tonka trucks and fills them up with dirt and rocks from one pile. Then he drives them to another pile and empties the dirt and rocks in another pile.
Sometimes we play at my house on the green thick carpet in the living room or in the kitchen where the carpet is thinner but has a pattern in big circles that look like vanilla and chocolate cookies.
Sometimes we play at his house in the basement where there is a toy box and they have a train set. I like it when we put the tracks down all around the room and in and out in circles and through the tunnel around the little trees. It’s like playing with dolls without dolls and we build tunnels over the train tracks with blocks that are yellow, red, and blue. Sometimes the train goes off the tracks and into the water tower. I bring my dolls sometimes and they sit by the station and watch the trains go by.
I ask for a train for Christmas but I don’t get one because they are boy’s toys. I get a microscope instead and it’s good too. I press leaves in between two pieces of glass and look at them through the viewer. I see veins and little circles in the leaf that my grandpa says are cells.
Harlan puts my dolls in the back of his Tonka truck and drives them around; sometimes he dumps them on the piles of dirt and rocks. He likes it when we play that way, but I don’t like it because their white dresses get dirty and then mommy doesn’t like it when we have to put their clothes in the washing machine. I like it when they go in the washing machine because they smell good when they come out of the dryer warm and sweet.
It is spring and Harlan and I are on my front porch.
My house is made out of red brick and it has a white trim. My mommy has brick planters in the front of the porch. On one side of the porch there is a rosebush that climbs up a white fence and it smells nice but the roses stick in your fingers when you try and pick them. If you do pick them they don’t like it and even if you put them in water they are droopy.
The planters don’t have flowers in them yet. My uncle came with his big green truck full of dirt in the back where sometimes I get to ride if there is a grownup with me and we aren’t going very far.
The dirt was dark brown, like the color of our front door or like the baking chocolate that is bitter until you put sugar with it and make it nice.
Mommy is going to put petunias and geraniums in the planter. But I’m allowed to play in the dirt until she does. She has saved the tins that pot pies come in and they are good for putting paint in or sometimes Play-Doh and I pretend I’m baking a pie.
Harlan and I turn on the hose, because I’m allowed to and sometimes I get to water the plants in the yard because I’m a big girl and know how to now. Not like last year.
I have the tins and there’s dirt and water and we are going to make mud pies. Harlan has his Tonka trucks in the planter. He’s driving the trucks over the soft, dark dirt. We put the hose in the planter and some of the dirt floats on the top of the water before it sinks down into the planter and mud starts happening.
Harlan drives the trucks over the dirt and the water and there are deep grooves in the mud like when I ride my bike after rain. I put the water on the dirt. Harlan dumps dirt on the puddle and then drives the truck over the dirt and there’s mud and a couple of rocks from the back of the truck from his dirt and rocks in his backyard. We do this in each planter. The mud is creamy except for a few pebbles. He drives the truck back and forth and says vroooom vroooooom and makes rumbling sounds in his throat like a big dump truck would.
He moves from planter to planter and I’m still standing at the first one where we started the mud. It is just right. It isn’t runny, it isn’t like clay, and it is just right, creamy like pudding on the spoon after dinner and all your vegetables eaten. I cup my hand and scoop it down in the mud and then over to the small pie tin. Just like when I help my great grandma Lora make pies, I push the mud all through the tin so that it is even all the way through. I do this until it reaches the lip of the tin.
I set it aside and make another one.
There are three tins and I make one for each, one on the top of each planter. Harlan is driving his Tonka trucks and not making mud pies.
He drives to the end of the planters and turns around to look at what I’m doing and asks why I’m being so quiet.
“I’m busy,” I say.
“Doin what?” He asks.
There is mud on his white and blue striped shirt, on the collar, and there is a smudge of it on his cheek where his hand touched it. His mom will put it in the laundry and it will come out with beige instead of all white but it will smell sweet.
“Putting pudding in the pie tins,” I say.
Before I know it he has one in his hands and he is scooping it out with his fingers and then in his mouth. I know that it is mud. He knows that it is mud, doesn’t he? Didn’t he see me doing it?
“It tastes funny,” he says.
He keeps scooping all the mud out of the tins and into his mouth. It is brown all over his mouth and I think he’s good at pretends.
He goes white under the mud on his cheek and he leans over and barfs in the grass.
It is brown and there are some Cheerios in it probably from his breakfast. I lean over the planter and look at him. There’s barf, mud, Cheerios and there are some other things in there too. It is on his brown sandals and on his legs and in between his toes.
There are some rocks in the barf, too.
I bet that hurt.
I tell him to wait and I go inside and pull my little red step stool over to the kitchen sink. I like my step stool. It is red with a poem on it where I put my feet.
It says:
This little stool is mine
I use it all the time
To reach the things I couldn’t
And lots of things I shouldn’t
And I get the blue plastic tumbler that I have juice in down and fill it with water and go back outside and Harlan is fine now.
He’s playing with his Tonka truck in the mud.
It looks like he tried eating one of the other two mud pies. They have started to dry and one of them has a wound in it like fingers dipped down into the mud.
“Here, Harlan,” I say. I hand him my special juice glass. I like it because it has a seahorse on it and I like seahorses. I have a red plastic seahorse that I play with when it is time for my bath at night. I like to hold it by its tail like a question mark and make it go through the bubbles that smell like the gum I get when I am good at the store.
He takes the plastic cup from me and drinks the water. He drinks all the water and gets some more from the hose that is still going under the rose bush.
He goes pale again and he bends over and barfs in the dry ground on the other side of the hose.
There are more rocks in his barf.
He says he thinks he should go home. I think he should go home too but I don’t want him to because Harlan is my only friend besides The Camel and Raggedy Ann and the cat who brings me mice when she’s happy but it makes mommy mad.
I am afraid that if he goes home and he’s been barfing I will get in trouble and we won’t be allowed to play anymore.
Harlan wipes the bottom of his sandals on the grass where there isn’t barf to get the barf and Cheerios off of them, and he picks up his Tonka truck and sets it down on the grass and points the hose at it to clean it off.
There is still barf on his legs and in between his toes. There is some barf on his blue shorts, and his mouth is still all brown with mud.
He picks up his Tonka truck and walks across my driveway to his house next door.
His house is brown brick with yellow trim. He has a tire swing in the willow tree and a downstairs.
My house is smaller and we don’t have a downstairs, but my house is prettier colors. We have great big lilac bushes that smell sweet and mommy cuts them and puts them on the kitchen table and in the bedrooms.
I fight the rosebush and turn off the water and go inside. There are thorns in my yellow sundress. I go inside and mommy is ironing.
“Did Harlan go home for lunch, honey?”
There is steam and the smell of the starch that she uses on shirts. She sprays and it makes a sound and then she pushes the iron and then it sighs and gurgles like my cousin after she’s been fed.
“Harlan barfed, mommy.”
She asks me what happened as she hangs up the clothes, turns off the iron and walks into the kitchen to fix us lunch.
There’s the mommy plate and there’s the little girl plate. We have sandwiches and grapes and cottage cheese. She lets me have grape Kool-Aid and she’s drinking iced tea that tinkles in the tall green glass when she picks it up.
We sit down and eat and I tell her what happened. I thought I would be in trouble, but I’m not. She just covers her mouth but her eyes are smiling and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh and I’m glad she’s not laughing at me because I’m sad that my friend is barfing.
After lunch I have my nap.
I don’t really sleep, but it is quiet time and I can get books down from my shelf and then read them in bed with Camel and Raggedy Ann and sometimes the cat if she is tired from playing all morning.
I think hard.
I think that I won’t ever feed anyone I like junk.
Because when you do that, they throw up rocks and Cheerios and go white under their cheeks and people laugh behind their hands and it isn’t right.

chapter one, NaNoWriMo 2005

2005-11-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

One
Mommy and I are at Alco. She is shopping and I let go of her hand because mine feels clammy. My white leather sandals slap along the highly waxed floor.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
It is hard to keep up with her because she walks fast, and my shoes are slippery. I keep looking down at the shiny floor that I can see the lights in.
There are turquoise blue and red flecks in the beige tiles. They look like the tiles at the grocery store and at my preschool where we have snacks and there is a big red slide that looks like a rocket and a tree that I climb. Sometimes there are sparkles in the tiles. Like how rocks have sparkles.
My sundress is white and blue striped and there are red cherries on them. There’s a ruffle along the bottom of the dress that makes me twirly.
It smells like the lotion mommy puts on me when it is sunny outside in the shop. And like big bouncy balls that are swirled with blue and white or red and white or green and white. The balls are in a tall pen, taller than she is. I wonder if the balls have been bad to have to stay in a cage. The hula-hoops are right beside them and people can play with those whenever they want to. But the balls have to stay in the cage unless you are going to take one home with you. How do you know you want to take one home with you if you don’t play with it first?
My knee has a band-aid from my purple tricycle. There was gravel and it stung. I went home and there was blood, I cried. She picked me up and carried me inside. She smelled good and I put my face in her neck and I didn’t like the way my tears felt between my face and her shoulder. It made my cheek stick there kind of. She set me on the counter in the bathroom next to the yellow sink and she knelt down under the yellow sink and pulled out a white bottle with a big red circle on it and green writing, a big word that starts with a B.
I can’t see any more of it, her hand is in the way. She shook the can and ran cold water on an orange washcloth. She held it to my knee where the little rocks were black in the red, wet scrape. She picked out the little rocks and I screamed. She blew cool air kisses on the ouchie.
Then she took the green cap off the white bottle with the red circle, and sprayed it on my ouchie and it was like a burn on my leg and I grabbed kicked screamed. Cried.
She made cooing noises at me that were soft and made me stop crying because I wanted to know what she was trying to say to me. They were just sounds because there were tears in my ears and they were hot and wet.
She put the cool wet cloth back on the ouchie and it felt a little better. We aren’t going to use the stuff in the white bottle with the green cap and the red circle anymore. It smells like when I go to get a shot but without getting a lollipop.
But at the store there’s books and I like those. Sometimes I get to have gum if I’m good at the store. I want to be good so I can get the gum, they come in a long wrapper and they are hard at first and make you slobber but then they get soft. I like the red ones best but there’s only ever one of each color. There are books on the shelf by the floor here. But these are baby books they are just pictures with one word in them. Dog. Ball. Apple. They are just baby books and I don’t like those anymore. I like books with stories. Books where kids and their teddy bears get ready to go to school like the one last night mommy read me. The bear’s name is Willy and the little boy told him not to be afraid to go to school because he would make friends there and learn things.
They don’t have those books here. These are books for babies. Around the corner and the corners are sharp and hard, around the corner there are dolls. There are baby dolls and their eyes shut when you hold them like a baby but babies don’t always close their eyes when you hold them. There are dolls in pink boxes that look like grownups and they look like you can’t play with them or they will break. There’s a doll that is like a baby doll but she’s taller and has on a ballerina dress and a crown with red and gold on it. I like her, she spins around when you hold the ruby on her head and her hair is dark like mine. Dolls always have hair like my sister, not like me. Even the dolls in pink boxes do.
There’s stuffed animals, too. There is a big orange caterpillar who has stripes on him. He’s fuzzy and looks like the one I have in the jar at home before he built the nest and hid in the pod. There is a twig with a leaf on it in there where he’s sleeping. It smells funny in the jar.
There’s a blue camel. Like in the movie we went to see, with Raggedy Ann, it’s the camel with the wrinkled knees and he’s sitting all by himself in the corner of the metal box with sharp edges. I can’t reach him standing on the floor. He looks sad, and I want him to come home with me. I have Raggedy Ann, and they can play together. And my cat, and then I’ll have three friends before I go to school and then I’ll have a million friends to play with not just dumb Harlan from next door who just wants to play Tonka Trucks.
My tiptoe sandals on the edge of the box and I can reach his ear. He’s soft. He doesn’t look so sad when he’s not sitting in the corner all by himself with the mean caterpillar on the other side ignoring him.
I hear mom. Her shopping cart has a noisy wheel and she is calling me. I hope she lets me take him home.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
“There you are. What have you found?” Mommy is tan and she has her hand out for me to put mine in hers. My hands are holding the camel though.
“Is that the camel with the wrinkled knees?”
I nod at her and hope that she thinks he would be a good friend too.
She picks me up and puts me in the cart and I don’t like it there. I want to walk. Babies sit in the cart. Next to purses, playing with keys.
I am being good so the camel can come home with us and I can have the red gum.
I am good so I get the camel and the red gum.
She puts a towel down on the back seat of the car because it is hot and it burns when you sit down. This way your legs don’t stick, either.
The red gum makes me slobber and then I get the hiccups. They don’t stop, even when she tells me to hold my breath and tries to scare me. It gives me a tummy ache. She makes me spit out the gum because she says I could choke on it. I spit it into her hand; she puts it in a Kleenex.
When we get home I want to play with the new camel, my new blue friend, and raggedy Ann, and the cat, but the cat is outside and she says no, the kitty is eating. She says its time for my nap and when I wake up my tummyache will be gone.
It is dark and cool in my room and my camel is soft and my hiccups don’t go away but when I wake up my grandma is there and she and mommy are sitting at the kitchen table drinking iced tea in tall skinny glasses. The ice makes twinkling sounds when they drink.
Hiccup.
“Where did you get those hiccups?” grandma says. She picks me and my camel up and puts me on her lap. She smells like bread, garden, and face cream.
“Alco.”
She thinks this is the funniest thing ever and I don’t understand why. That’s where I was when I got them. Grownups are funny sometimes and maybe its better if I just have camel, Raggedy Ann, and the cat to play with. They don’t laugh so much.

the important thing is to begin

2005-11-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

Henry Miller, one of my favorite writers ever, said that. And to that end, I am participating in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
I started last night and managed to chuck in 1495 words. I will do this for the 30 days of November and hopefully when it is all said and done have some kind of document that I can slap the label "novel" on.

We'll just see about all that.

Howl turns 50.

2005-10-05T13:51:00.000-06:00

Fifty years ago, in a smoky club in San Francisco, a literary/political movement was born.
Oct. 7, 1955 saw the world premiere reading of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl.” This is perhaps Ginsberg’s most well known work, which begins “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…”
It would go on, with Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” to give voice to a generation that felt disenfranchised with their world, the Cold War, and Eisenhower. These writers were dubbed “The Beats.” The Beat poets hold a special place in my heart. I remember finding them quite accidentally when I was in high school in Fort Collins, and was immediately hooked. Several years later when I moved to Boulder, I fell in love with what would later become the school where I would study. Back then it was called The Naropa Institute. Now it is called Naropa University, where they offer master of arts degrees in writing and poetics at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, founded by Allen Ginsberg and several other beat poets. Colorado has had beat ties from way back.
Why should anyone care about what a bunch of beret-sporting, bongo-playing, non-washing beatniks had to say about anything? How is it relevant to what our world is like today?
These creative people have inspired legions of artists, filmmakers, authors, musicians and even the odd accountant or two worldwide.
The beats, through their creative works and their loose-knit philosophies, asked people to look beyond the stodgy consumerism of the day, and to question the validity and necessity of the atomic bomb, McCarthyism, the Cold War, The Korean War, and the rise of corporate conglomerate America.
I think we need more of these people to stand up and be counted today. We need new beatniks. They need to set down their PSP game stations and their BlackBerries and get to work. We need them to get organized.
Artists have always been catalysts for change in the world. They are the mirrors that reflect society back at itself, pointing out beauties and flaws alike, showing us all our potential for growth, change, and betterment.
Now, having been a student at the famed Naropa University, I can tell you that for the most part, in my opinion, the great Beat Spirit that once lived there is dead…which is unfortunate. That frenetic energy, that wild abandon, that living life by the seat of your pants and digging in and experiencing ‘everything in from under’ way of life has given way to a lot of people talking about their ‘process,’ and trying to find the ideal tofurkey recipe for the Community Thanksgiving vegetarian co-op pot luck.
Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t at all what I expected. Still, I’m thankful to have been a small part in the rich literary and peaceful legacy of that school.
Ginsberg died aged 71 in 1997, long before I managed to get the finances together to attend Naropa and take classes from him. But those classes and lectures have been recorded and are now being made available to the public.
Ginsberg was a man that defied classification. From the Six by Six reading (where “Howl” premiered), he went on to co-found Naropa, champion human rights, speak freely about politics he disagreed with, write numerous books of poetry as well as compose songs and travel the world. Ginsberg’s book “Howl and Other Poems” brought publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights to grips with obscenity charges for “willfully and lewdly print(ing), publish(ing) and sell(ing) obscene and indecent writings, papers, and books, to wit: Howl and Other Poems.”
I wonder if this book of poetry was published today, if the same thing would happen. We like to think we live in a nation where free speech is still protected constitutionally. I wonder how much of that same puritanical fear pervades the public now, at the beginning of the 21st Century, as it did in the 50s. It seems to me that we are just as scared now, if not more so, than we were then. We are just as scared of terrorists as my grandparents were scared of communists.
I say we need more beatniks. We need more people to challenge our beliefs, so that we may refine them, as gold is tested by fire. We need people to ask us to challenge our government, while we are still able to do so. We need people to be incendiary, passionate and enthusiastic creators of art. We need to be reading banned books at every opportunity, and buying them from small, independent booksellers. We need these people.
City Lights bookstore is keeping track of 50th anniversary events relevant to “Howl,” and will be publishing a fully annotated edition of the classic poem later this year. For more information on events, visit www.citylights.com. For more information on Allen Ginsberg, visit www.allenginsberg.org, the official site of the Allen Ginsberg Trust.
And if you’d really like to treat yourself to hearing the man himself read the poem itself, go to www.archive.org, where Naropa University has begun uploading lectures from their Summer Writing Programs for digital posterity.
I’ll be in the park with my bongos and my black turtleneck if you need me.

Soul Food for Thought: Nourishing More Than Bodies

2005-09-24T14:02:00.000-06:00

So, some conversation with a friend of mine who is hails from Southern Colorado brought me some food for thought.

She's from a place called Pueblo. If it hadn't been for the railroad and the founder of The Denver Post newspaper, Pueblo would have been the capitol of CO, but that is a different story.
Pueblo has a very high hispanic population, and everybody of every color pretty much gets along there. Apparently, there is a christian-based aid agency there called "The Pasada,' supposedly run by the wives of the Mexican mafia.
They raised a whole bunch of money from the citizens of the town of Pueblo, hired a whole bunch of busses, printed up fliers in both English and Spanish, and sent them to the South. The fliers pretty much said that they were a non-governmental aid agency, and they would offer these people displaced from the hurricane(s): jobs, shelter, food, clothing, and in some cases vehicles, but they would have to come to Pueblo to live. The busses filled up in less than three hours, and they returned to Pueblo.
Well. My friend's mother and her husband have a rental property that they have opened up in this way. One of their new hurricane-displaced tenants was a chef in a French Quarter restaurant. He is a single father of several young children, and lost his wife prior to the hurricane.
These people don't really want to be given handouts, they want to work, they want to earn their keep. Until getting caught up is a reality, they have started trading.
This gentleman made a big pot of gumbo as a gesture of thanks. My friend's mother took him over a whole bunch of green chiles, as it is chile festival time in Colorado. If you've never had proper homemade green chile, or proper homemade Mexican food, I am very sorry for you...it is one of life's great delights to have fresh tamales, steamed to perfection in corn husks, mellow and rich and delicious, and made my several pairs of loving hands generally around Christmastime. Nothing like them in the world. Unbelievable.
Anyway, this man had never seen a green chile in his life. He made another pot of gumbo and included it in the mix of cajun delight.
He was blown away, told my friend's mother that it was the best gumbo he'd ever made.
She enjoyed it as well, and asked him if he would be interested in meeting some of the women from The Pasada, to experience some of the other delights of Mexican cooking. He did.
Now they are trading food, recipes, experimenting with vegetables, styles of cooking that are new to each other, and most importantly, building relationships.
He and many of the people brought up from Louisiana are African-Americans. Colorado doesn't have a lot of African-Americans (because in the 30s-50s Colorado had the national headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan), and most of the "minority" population of Colorado consists of Hispanics.
My friend's mother made the rather astute observation that this is an occurance that will change America forever. The way to American's hearts is through their (rather well padded) bellies, and once the food of America changes, Americans change.
I for one, fully support it. Considering the American contribution to world cuisine is the cheeseburger (Denver, CO is the birthplace of the cheeseburger), and Cloaca-Cola (Coke), I can totally get behind the idea of green chile gumbo, and the two cultures they encompass. Is it served with tortillas or cornbread?
Maybe served with corn tortillas.
Tamales with okra, pork, chiles, cilantro, and a roux-based sauce? Sign me up.

"The Man" has been keeping African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and any other non-white ethnic groups under their thumbs for long enough, and separating them geographically means they don't have the strength of numbers. I say put us in the mixer, make a gumbo in the "melting pot" that we as Americans are *supposed* to take pride in.

I am trying to see if we can get some of that green chile gumbo sent up here to the hills. The very thought of it fills me with unreasonable gastronomic (and political) glee.

Comfort me with apples

2005-09-17T16:53:00.000-06:00

It is all of the sudden autumn.
I haven't felt like I've done much of anything this summer, but summers are usually screwed for me anyway because of the nature of the town I live in. I've always preferred the cooler days and longer light of this kind of year.
As I write this, I've got the doors open and there is long, golden sunshine coming in my back door. The aspen trees on far hills, a couple of thousand feet higher up, are starting to yellow a bit. There is a massive bull elk with a 6-point rack asleep in the shade of a pine grove in the field beside my house.
Nights this week have been cold. Today I've mulled some cider and baked some banana bread, and my house is now full of the comforting smells of clove, apples, and sweet baking bread. I've also painted two pieces today and done the laundry and the washing up. Its a good day.

This time of year makes me reflective and I remember late summer/early autumn afternoons when I was growing up. There was a church about a mile away from my house and on Sunday afternoons there was a group of bagpipers that would practice. The weather was still warm enough to have the windows open and the music would drift in through the open windows. This sound still strikes a deep chord (pun absolutely intended) in me.
This time of year makes me remember being a little girl with brand new shiny mary-jane shoes for school.
This time of year the smell of woodsmoke and the sweet rot of leaves makes me long for a home at a lower elevation, where there are more proper leaves, and not just pine needles on the ground.
This time of year makes me crave apples, and the smell of sharpened #2 pencils.
This time of year makes me want to harvest squash and play hopscotch with skinned knees.
This time of year makes me feel like I'm bracing for something.

I've bought my ticket for my annual trip to the UK...and I'm beside myself with excitement. I won't be leaving until the day after christmas, but it will fly by, and I'll be there for more than a month, staying with a wonderful man that I'm completely bonkers about, writing a lot, taking a lot of photographs, and enjoying the crap out of the City of London....

so i suppose the excitement that feels like going back to school isn't too far off.

The Crescent City's Basin Street Blues

2005-09-02T08:37:00.000-06:00

In light of the horrible devastation in the gulf coast states left by Hurricane Katrina, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the city of my birth.

We left New Orleans when I was 11 months old...Colorado is really home, not New Orleans, but it really struck me the last time I was there how deeply its influence has been exerted in my upbringing and how it has lodged itself in my blood.
I still have family that is down there...fortunately they have been in Baton Rouge since the beginning of the week and are all safe and accounted for.

The last time I was in New Orleans was in 1998. It was my first vacation in more than 5 years and I was really in need of one. I had traveled there to see if I wanted to move back down south after the summer season was over here where I live. It was a significant trip for me in other ways, too, as I was 25 years old at the time, and that was the age my father was when he died driving drunk. We lived in New Orleans then. It was a kind of pilgrimage.

I discovered pretty quickly that there's no way I could ever live there again. I don't have the kind of self control it would take to live in a city like that. I would have been dead within a year. If my vices wouldn't have gotten me, the sticky heat certainly would have.

I'm remembering the Aquarium of the Americas where I retreated to cool darkness to escape the opressive heat one day. The albino alligator that followed me from one side of his tank to the other. There was a strange recognition between us, I remember his little fingers like white plastic armour and his bright blue eyes. He was beautiful.

I'm remembering the Quarter. I'm remembering the decomposing beauty of the entire city, its history and unique soul. Its beautiful buildings, its rogueish charm. You can get anything you want in the Quarter, anything.

I'm remembering the people most of all.

Now. NOLA is an interesting place. There are very wealthy people there, as well as people living in third world conditions well below the poverty line. Now that the storm has passed, and we are seeing images of looters and riots and hearing reports of rapes and corpses floating in the open water, people without drinking water, food, and basic sanitation, I am becoming more and more infuriated with the way the 'relief efforts' have been carried out.

Its never been a secret what would happen to New Orleans if a hurricane this size would hit. When Hurricane Georges was tracking for the city when i was there last, every channel had news flashes on about what would happen, and that it would take at least 3 days to completely evacuate the city should such a disaster happen. There is ONE major highway out of town: Interstate 10. there is no reason whatsoever that the emergency services shouldn't have already been prepared to mobilize after something like this happened.

The leader of our country was on another vacation on his Texas ranch. And he sure does have a stunning tan.

The mentality of most Louisiana residents who are used to hurricane season has always been: bring in the booze, make a big pot of food, bring in the family, get the generator fired up, and wait it out all together. For most of them, the idea of leaving the city for a storm is as absurd as a Londoner leaving because there is supposed to be a heavy rainstorm, or a Coloradoan leaving because there is a blizzard on the way. Now that bon temps rouler mentality has come back to bite a bunch of people in the ass. Now the images we're seeing on TV and in the papers of the displaced people, the refugees, the poor. Hungry and dehydrated and completely at their wits end.

People are looting because they have no choice in the matter. I don't blame them. They have been waiting for their fearless leader to come and rescue them, they are waiting for people to rally and contribute the kind of aid that they did for victims of the tsunami.

And its not happening.

Why isn't it happening? Where is the coordination?
People were told to go to the Convention Center to get help and there's no help there. There's no water, no food, no medicine and no sanitation. Now, in the wealthiest country in the whirled we are going to lose citizens to diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, malaria, dysentry. It is SHAMEFUL.

But they've made sure that some of those oil refineries in the Gulf are up and running already. We've got a big holiday weekend ahead of us as a nation, and people like to drive their cars. Gotta keep that machine going.

New Orleans has always been a city on the edge. The gaps between rich and poor are vast ones.
These people are dying, and I strongly believe they are being left to die because they are black and they are poor. These people barely make it from paycheck to paycheck, if they are fortunate enough to have work.

It is another reason that I'm so terrifically ashamed of the president. Harry Connick fucking Junior is getting more accomplished for New Orleans than George Bush is. Its perfectly horrific that an entertainer who has no access to the information and resources than the president of the United States is getting more done.

Shameful. Horrific.

It will take at least 100 years for some of the trees to recover, for the trademark Spanish Moss to drip so bewitchingly from the oak trees that are older than most of the states in the nation. The city will never be the same. The people will never be the same. I'm thankful that I've seen it as it was, its glory, its beauty, its decadence, and now, in what seems like its innocence.

I just want to go down and cook collard greens, red beans and rice, and cornbread, and hand them out. If any city ever needed its soul food, New Orleans needs it now.

tempus fugit

2005-08-08T20:19:00.000-06:00

i'm musing tonight about the passage of time...thinking about how much has changed for me in the last year alone. Maybe it is because my 32nd birthday is coming up. I always tend to get a little reflective/introspective around this time of year.

A year ago, i'd just lost my mum after a weeklong coma following complications from an asthma attack. I was shattered in teensy pieces all over the place. I'm still not over it...how can it be done in the space of 12 months? but I'm better than I was this time last year. I'm about to be 32 and have made a lot of changes in my life from when I was 22, thank goodness. although there are some things I miss about being 22--like being able to function on 2 hours of sleep a night and not looking like someone has run over my face with a motorbike. But i'm willing to gracefully surrender that kind of thing to a good night's rest and a cup of tea in the morning fresh and bright.

well there's other things that have changed. and more than a little bit of it has changed because I've lost my mom.

sorry to keep waffling on and on about it, but it has been a monumental experience.

which makes me think about the title of this blog. Tempus fugit always sounded to me like 'a fugitive of time...' and i reckon in a way we all are. we all want more time, to write a novel, paint a picture, take that trip we've always wanted to take. we want more time at home, more time with the family, time to take a class, time to spend rather than time to waste.

one of the things i've realized in the last year that time is exactly what you make of it. you've got to create the time to do the things you've always wanted to do because you just never know when your time is up.

so get to it. I'm sure trying.

mother memorial

2005-07-15T04:54:00.000-06:00

It is ungodly early. I went to bed at half seven last night and crashed through the night without having my dinner or even brushing my teeth. There was a fantastic thunderstorm booming through, and I like to nap during them. So I lay down thinking I'd have a little shut-eye and conked out through the night. I didn't even get out of my work clothes. Now it is before 5 in the morning and I'm realising that I have been sleeping a lot this week and why I've been sleeping a lot this week.

This last week was the anniversary of my mom's death. I've not been exceptionally weepy or felt overly sad. Just unbelievably tired. Work has kept me very busy this week and my little brain hasn't had a lot of time to obsess over it.

A lot has happened in the last year. I am still kind of numb about losing her. I got an email from my grandmother, her mom, last night, and it made me ache for the loss that she must be feeling. She's lost her two daughters in the last three years and I can't imagine what it must be like for her. I mean, although my mom was very young, I still knew at the back of my mind that some day I would see her die. Not like my grandmother who is nearing eighty and probably never expected it.

I've been very lucky in a lot of ways. I still have both my grandmothers although I've lost my mom and my dad. I have a pretty large extended family who fuss over me often, calling to check and see that I'm alright, sending me cards. But most of them live on the other side of the country. Quite honestly I couldn't have made it through this last year without my friends and the fact that my coping mechanism is art. That was probably the biggest gift my mother ever gave me, after life. The ability to cope with it through expression of some kind. She drew and painted on occasion but never really was obsessive about how she created art. Her thing was needlepoint, something I don't have the patience for. But she always encouraged me to make art, always surprised me with a new box of crayons when I was a little girl, and proudly displayed my works on the refrigerator or on the walls of the house.

There are numerous gifts a parent bestows on their child that really only make themselves apparent when the giver is gone. I guess the thing that upsets me is that I didn't get the opportunity to return the gifts of my adulthood to her. She only traveled outside of the country once, to go to Mexico for a belated honeymoon with my stepdad, a trip that I can't imagine was a good one, knowing my stepdad. She was always so excited for me when I would get ready for trips to Europe and the UK, probably more excited for me than I was for myself. In a lot of ways, my mom lived vicariously through me. Which makes me sad. I flew to the UK last christmastime, for my annual trip, and ended up staying nearly a month this time. While I was there, I dreamt of her more than I had in the 6 months following her death, and the dreams were vivid and clear. She figured in them prominently, and I would wake shaking and shaken...they were more like visits from her than dreams. One of the recurring themes of the visits was a lecture from her about what I want to do with my life.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to live abroad. I never really seriously entertained it until this last trip to the UK because I knew that my mom absolutely would not be able to cope with me being 3,000+ miles away. Well...now I don't have anyone's heart to break. And I'm trying. It seems especially important to me to do this in honor of a life unlived. There were loads of dreams my mother had that she never acted on, never allowed out of the fetal stage. I don't want that to be an issue in my life. I want to have a rich history, and give my biographers something to dig for. I want to have done too much with my life and not too little, with regrets.

My mother was a phenomonal person and never really gave herself the kind of credit that she deserved. She was riddled with guilt for most of her life regarding her parenting skills, and often our roles of mother-daughter, woman-woman were blurry. I was her closest friend and confidante, and I know that most psychologists would frown upon that. But I'm strong in ways that she wasn't, but strangely enough, I'm strong because she made me that way.

Because of this, I want to truly live the life I've imagined. That is the best way that I can honor her memory and her beauty-full spirit.

I miss her.

Grazie, Cheers, Merci, Gracias

2005-07-11T16:55:00.000-06:00

Thank you, Dave, for setting this up for me. It is the sexy red MG of all blogs ever. You're wonderful.

A Dispatch from the Press Pit

2005-06-18T05:54:00.000-06:00

Heller, my friend....I feel your pain... this is for you.

I actually earn my meager keep as a writer. It isn’t a princely sum by any means, and I don’t think many members of the general public are aware of what a writer has to go through to produce something at the end of the day. Some writer, somewhere, is sleeping in late and drinking martinis all day in a smoking jacket, but most of us have to sing for our supper.
These thoughts have been festering inside my head for a couple of months now. I have a friend in Denver who also earns his living by writing, and recently he got a bunch of people’s backs up by saying some things that the readership of his paper didn’t find complimentary or appealing. He’s a nice guy, and he took it personally, as some of the letters that came in to his place of employment were completely juvenile attacks on his person.
Not just his person, but also his craft, his particular talent, and his credibility as well as his sanity were questioned.
This, people, is a shitty thing to do to someone.
He has never gone to any esteemed “J-School.” He considers his job a blessing…that someone is willing to pay him for something that he would do for free because he loves it, and they think he is good at it? How many people get that opportunity even once in their lifetimes? Very few. He’s got a great job that offers a lot of freedom and the chance to meet some pretty astounding people.
Now.
I do the same thing, and have a similar education (or lack thereof), but I’ve been writing long enough to know that going to school “to find my voice” was a crock. The school I went to didn’t do bupkus for Artistic Voice. I fell into my job by fortune’s fine hand, and I am thankful for it every day. I meet some amazing people, get to do some amazing things, and it can be incredibly inspiring to experience the things I do, and meet the fine people I do because of a press pass.
And it is precisely because I don’t hold a diploma—a very expensive piece of parchment with my name on it—that I am a good writer, and a hard worker. I have to prove myself to all the yokels who will throw the fact that I’m a college dropout in my face. I haven’t spoken to my friend about this, but I suspect he may feel similarly.
It is difficult to not become involved with the people or events that you cover as a writer. You live in a community, you shop with these people, get drunk with these people; you know their secrets, their wishes, and sometimes their dirty laundry. Writers have to have a pretty selective memory at times just for self-preservation purposes.
If you are a good writer, this involvement and engagement with one’s community and those who live there is conveyed in what you produce. It can be some wickedly beautiful stuff.
The problem is you are always going to piss someone off.
Someone won’t like what you have to say, or the way you said it. Someone won’t like that you didn’t write a review of their cousin’s shitty band, or that the review was poor if you did write it.
Of course there’s the whole libel/slander chestnut. The article in question was a review. And I may be wrong, but I believe writing a review involves expressing an opinion. And everyone is entitled to an opinion.
Stating, “I think you are a misogynist jackass who clubs baby seals,” is a lot different than stating, “You are a misogynist jackass who clubs baby seals.” One is presented as opinion, one as a statement of fact.
Being in this business is a little like being a diplomat for developing and dependent countries. You need the help of the greater populace but have to be careful that they aren’t going to rape you in the process. You need to be able to have the finesse to tell someone to go to hell on occasion with a smile on your face and hope that they really are interested in taking the journey.
That is just it: we are the media. I personally am not particularly fond of this term because it has a lot of negative associations. I’m not a journalist, and would happily sock someone in the eye for calling me one. I’m a writer. This doesn’t mean I make up fanciful stories. It doesn’t mean that I’m here to steal your children or suck your blood while you sleep. I’m not here to tell you what kind of jeans to buy… that’s advertising’s job.
I’m here to be the mirror of the community in which I live. If you don’t like what you see, give yourself a facelift. Don’t get mad at the messenger.
If I am going to write a feature on someone, I generally have about 45 minutes to get their life story, try and get a grasp on what they are about, how they see the world we all go to work in every day, and essentially crawl inside their heads and look out on life with their eyes. Then I go back to my computer, transcribe my recording of the interview, let those words and thoughts steep in my head like Darjeeling, and then write a 1,500 to 3,000-word story about it. Sometimes I have to get really innovative to make things interesting. But that is also what is fun about this job—working under pressure and meeting those kind of challenges is deeply gratifying.
Because I work for a small paper, this isn’t the last I see of my story. I then proof it, give it to a couple of other editors to proof (there are four of them in our offices), and then do layout on the pages I’m assigned by my managing editor. And do it all to deadline, or it costs us money for every little bit we are late. Add to this the multitude of press releases and special editions that go in to an average newspaper’s year, and it can get pretty exhausting.
Thank god we only publish twice a week.
Now—if we write things that other people don’t necessarily agree with, that’s fine. That is precisely why there are forums like letters to the editor, and it’s great that we live somewhere where this is still (for the moment anyway, although it’s being chipped away at with a frightening regularity) a constitutionally protected right as an American citizen. What pisses me off about this flak that my friend received is this: Who are these people to question his professionalism? His person?
If I don’t like the way a building is constructed, architecturally, I don’t call up the construction company and read them the riot act and tell them how incompetent they are. Why? Because I don’t know the first thing about architecture or construction, that’s why. I don’t presuppose that because the building doesn’t please me aesthetically that the person who built it, or designed it, is a child molesting rabid maniac.
And that is how it feels, quite frankly, to receive that kind of a letter.
But again, because we are members of the press, we have this oblique power. For the most part, those of us who actually give a shit about what we write know it, and are careful with it.
I know I try to be.
And if people decide that they hate what we write, or hate us, personally, for writing it? Then they can apply to their nearest newspaper and try and hack it for a month. Or start their own newspapers, or have a blog site or whatever they like, the possibilities are endless. But don’t make petty, puerile, personal attacks on a guy (or girl) who is just trying to make rent and maybe have some money leftover for a beer at the end of the week. We are really only hoping that 51 percent of you aren’t too pissed off.

Please come back and leave me alone

2005-06-01T04:58:00.000-06:00

My friend Rob sent this to me...and it blew my mind. It is an old record review for Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album...one I grew up with. I was six when it was released. This is one of the most amazing pieces of writing I've read in a long time. Enjoy.

You can say to love the questions you have to love the answers which
quicken the end of love that's loved to love the awful inequality of
human experience that loves to say we tower over these the lost that
love to love the love that freedom could have been, the train to
freedom, but we never get on, we'd rather wave generously, walking
away from those who are victims of themselves. But who is to say that
someone who victimizes him or herself is not as worthy of total
compassion as the most down and out Third World orphan in a New Yorker
magazine ad? Nah, better to step over the bodies, at least that gives
them the respect they might have once deserved. Where I live, in New
York (not to make it more than it is, which is hard), everyone I know
often steps over bodies which might well be dead or dying as a matter
of course, without pain. And I wonder in what scheme it was originally
conceived that such action is showing human refuse the ultimate
respect it deserves.

There is of course a rationale - what else are you going to do - but
it holds no more than the fear of our own helplessness in the face of
the plain of life as it truly is: a plain which extends into an
infinity beyond the horizons we have only invented. Come on, die it.
As I write this, I can read in the Village Voice the blurbs of people
opening heterosexual S&M clubs in Manhattan, saying things like, "S&M
is just another equally valid form of love. Why people can't accept
that we'll never know." Makes you want to jump out a fifth floor
window rather that even read about it, but it's hardly the end of the
world; it's not nearly as bad as the hurts that go on everywhere
everyday that are taken so casually by all of us as the facts of life.
Maybe it actually boils down to how much you want to subject yourself
to. If you accept for even a moment that each human life is as
precious and delicate as a snowflake and then you look at a wino in a
doorway, you've got to hurt until you feel like a sponge for all those
other assholes' problems, until you feel like an asshole yourself, so
you draw all the appropriate lines. You stop feeling. But you know
that then you begin to die. So you tussle with yourself. How much of
this horror can I actually allow myself to think about? Perhaps the
numbest mannikin is wiser than somebody who only allows their
sensitivity to drive them to destroy everything they touch - but then
again, to tilt Madame George's hat a hair, just to recognise that the
person exists, just to touch his cheek and then probably expire
because the realization that you must share the world with him is
ultimately unbearable is only to go the first mile. The realization of
living is just about that low and that exalted and that unbearable and
that sought-after. Please come back and leave me alone. But when we're
together we can talk all we want about the universality of this abyss:
it doesn't make any difference, the highest only meets the lowest for
some lying succor, UNICEF to relatives, so you scratch and spit and
curse in violent resignation at the strict fact that there is
absolutely nothing you can do but finally reject anyone in greater
pain than you. At such a moment, another breath is a treason. That's
why you leave your liberal causes, leave suffering humanity to die in
worse squalor than they knew before you happened along. You got their
hopes up. Which makes you viler than the most scrofulous carrion.
Viler than the ignorant boys who would take Madame George for a couple
of cigarettes. Because you have committed the crime of knowledge, and
thereby not only walked past or over someone you knew to be suffering,
but also violated their privacy, the last possession of the
dispossessed.

Lester Bangs
1979

Life in the clouds on a long weekend

2005-05-30T04:56:00.000-06:00

ahhhh springtime in the mountains. We had lovely sunny but mild weather on Friday and Saturday but yesterday and today it has been tipping down and booming with thunder (very impressive as there are lots of canyon walls for it to echo off of)

I feel slightly guilty for having done a grand total of...(drumroll please)......buggerall this weekend. Money is tight so I couldn't get away. I have been working very hard for the last 2 months and so as a result, here's what I did with my three day weekend:

* drank lots of tea

* didn't get out of my pyjamas until noon (at the earliest) all weekend long

* repeatedly went back to bed daily, started my day at least 3 times all weekend long

* worked on a painting

* listened to music obsessively and made some CDs for friends near and far

* talked to lovely friend Dave on the phone for the first time. Also chatted on the phone with my friend Ed who lives in Long Beach, California, whom I am planning to visit in September.

* wasted time on the computer taking stupid, pleurile quizzes i.e. "What kind of pie are you? (peach)" "Which Pinup Girl are you? (Bettie Page)" etc.

* napped in-between feedings

* went for splashing walks through puddles admiring new flowers with my pink umbrella

* watched 'Snatch" 4 times so I could see all the features the DVD had to offer (the pikey subtitles are v. good)

* read stories sent to me by lovely friend Dave

* tried to start reading massive tome my co-worker wants me to read. It is his first book and is larger than the bible.

*slept some more

* Treated myself to a large Dairy Milk bar that so far has lasted the whole weekend (which surprises me)

* listened to rain

*daydreamed a lot

*Taken marathon hot baths.

*napped some more.

Needless to say, going to work is going to be a toughie tomorrow. It will interfere greatly with my rigorous sleeping schedule.

shaky beginnings

2005-05-29T04:54:00.000-06:00

Well. A proper blog.

I've copied a bunch of posts across from my Myspace thingamabopper.

I would like to start off by thanking my lovely friend Dave for suggesting this site. I'll try to not bore you to bits.

At the moment, I'm having a very strong coffee and listening to the latest New Order album. I discovered a few weeks ago that it has magical, curative properties when one has had too much to drink. It keeps one's brain from touching one's skull, which is very very nice.

I'm feeling at a loss for words...

so perhaps I'll try the debut again a little later...when I actually have something to waffle about.

Good Souls

2005-05-24T05:52:00.000-06:00

do indeed make life matter.

Thanks, Eric. Yr book arrived at the most appropriate time humanly possible...even if you seem to think it was "late," it came *precisely* when I needed it.
I was on a break today with the business manager at work. I went off in full auto-rant about how my bullshit tolerance is AT ZERO...

I am approaching some anniversaries that I know will blindside me in the next month or two, and quite frankly, I've been through more in the last year than most people should have to experience in their entire lifetimes. Shit that I wouldn't even dream of wishing on my worst enemy.

The highs have been incredibly high, but the lows have been incredibly low, and daily I run the entire course of emotion that the human body and mind is capapble of without spontaneously combusting (yet).

I had an incredibly creative, productive, inspiring, reflective, decisive weekend (yes I know that is a shit-ton of adjectives..but they are necessary at this point)...and sometimes the ridiculous amount of pressure I put on myself because of all the dead people that I have been loved by gets to me (for new readers...read some earlier blogs). This pressure is magnified due to impending anniversaries. Anyhoo...it was a cathartic weekend.

Suffice it to say, an intense year. I'm through fucking around now. I'm going to be 32 this year, and apparently with the brevity of the lifespan in my immediate family, I don't have a lot of time left.

I wasted most of my 20s being loaded, and don't remember much from ages 17-27, which is abhorrent (even if what I do remember seems pretty fun, pictures from this time are all smiles thru clenched teeth).

So I'm buckling down.
It isn't just a matter of achieving the goals I would like to in my life, it's the people I've chosen to take that journey with me.
Ultimately it is the friends who shed tears and share laughs with you, that make a good life. If you don't believe this, go to a funeral. Anybody's funeral...because knock on wood nobody you care about is going to make an abrupt departure...but any funeral will do (I don't mean to be morbid here...but anyone who knows me really well knows that loss of loved ones from death has always helped shape the unusual creature that I am, and will understand the references).

Life, bless it, is short.

I know I am an unholy mess of a girl. But I am fortunate enough to be able to count my dearest, oldest, most cherished friends on two hands...and still have room for some new ones if I take my shoes off. The time I spend or have spent with them, old and new, has humbled me. It has made me laugh so hard that I've cried, it has made me furious, it has made me sane, it has been the only reason to draw breath in the morning some days.

This blog has evolved into a thank you to those friends.

And I realize the dichotomy of praising authentic friendships on a webshite that seems only a little different from a junior high popularity contest (or, alternately, Saturday night's last call at the bar)...but as I recently said to my (new, and very keepably cool) friend Sam: I did make some good friends in junior high. I just had to dig a little deeper to find them, and separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm still friends with some of them...and that's half a lifetime at this point. There are genuinely good people on this glorified junior high school cafeteria of a webshite. You just have to--as in all things important--make wise decisions.

So...new and old, as Mickey Rourke said in 'Barfly,'

"To my friends!!!!"

Cannibal's Hymn (with booming mountain thunderstorm)

2005-05-22T05:50:00.000-06:00

You have a heart, and I have a key
Lie back and let me unlock you
Those heathens you hang with down by the sea
all they want to do is de-frock you

I know a river where we can dream
it'll swell up, burst its banks babe, and rock you

If you're gonna dine with a cannibal
sooner or later darling,
you're going to get eaten

But I'm glad you've come around here
with your animal
and your heart
that is bruised but unbeaten
and beating
like a drum

I will sit like a bird on a fence
singing songs with a happy ending
Swoop down and tell you that it don't make much sense
to attack the very thing you're defending

Didn't I just buy that dress for you
that pink paper pinafore
that you keep mending?

And you're gonna dine with them cannibals
oh sooner or later darling,
you're going to get eaten.
but I'm glad you've come around here
with your animal

and your heart
that is burning and beating
and burning like a coal

I can see that they've hurt you, dear
here some among like to croak us
but I will never desert you here,
unpetaled among the crocus.

Allow me, my love, to allay your fear
as I swim
in and out of focus

and you're gonna dine with the cannibals
oh sooner or later darling,
you're going to get eaten.
but I'm glad you've come around here
with your animal

and your heart
that is bruised but beating
and bleeding like a lamb
burning like a coal
and beating like a drum

~Nick Cave.

Sylvia Plath said...

2005-04-11T05:49:00.000-06:00

something along the lines of "there was nothing in the world that a soak in a hot bath couldn't fix." She also went insane, put her head in the oven and committed suicide.

Regardless, i am going to take my big smoky glass of whiskey to the bath and have a soak and try and forget about the fuckers I had to deal with today.

Good thing I've got an electric cooker...

Heartcore

2005-04-11T05:48:00.000-06:00

the sky is gunmetal grey and pale this morning and it looks like the sun is going to hide from us again today. The state got hit with a spring blizzard this weekend, so I had to cut my minibreak short and ended up only staying a night in Denver rather than two. Which is fine...because up here in the hills we didn't get hit as hard as they did. We had about 3 or 4 " whereas the front range and the back country got *feet* of snow.

My Nick Cave book gives me strange dreams that put me in a weird place when I wake up. I don't usually need help getting into a strange mood...I usually can get there all on my own.

I've been swaying between bliss and agony where people are involved lately. One part of me appreciates humanity and the other dreads people & letting them get close to me... because most of the time I feel like I am full of scrap metal, broken glass and rusty steel-toothed animal traps. I wonder often at people's motives when I know I shouldn't. I should be more trusting, more open. The truth is...whenever I am trusting and open these traits come back and bite me in the ass. I get taken advantage of...which sucks. Because that is generally how I would prefer to go through life, it is more in my nature to be that way.

The events of the last year have left me with plenty of scar tissue, for sure. And I get up every day and go about my business...I move through the whirled and most people never would know what I've been through (or care, for that matter). But *I* know...and the thing is...on one hand it is incredibly liberating to suffer the losses that I have. Because there is nothing holding me back from anything, nothing keeping me in any one particular place, or tied to any one particular profession. On the other hand...there is the desolate, arid ache of grief and loss that permeates every action and decision. I miss being hugged...but when my friends try to hug me, I feel like I'm all elbows and sharp corners, and am afraid that I will just fall apart at the seams when I am shown kindness.

So which is worse? I'm still trying to figure that out as I go along...

Whirled Travel and True Love

2005-03-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

I interviewed this couple today for work. They are about to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary, and had sent me a press release for the "social pages" about it. Once I started reading it, I had to call them in for a bigger interview.

Harry and Betty sat with me for 3 hours. This is an exceptionally long time to spend interviewing someone for just a little mid-week release article. They turned 80 last year, and shortly after their 59th anniversary, they set out on a 100 day trip that started in London, took them through France, Germany, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, then into Russia, Central Asia, back through Siberia and then back to their little mountain home here.

They had bright, sparkly eyes, and were mischievious as little kids with each other, even at 80. They met during the war, a week before Harry shipped out to the South Pacific with the Merchant Marines. They saw each other every night for that week, even though they were both engaged to other people at the time. Harry shipped off, and they wrote letters to each other. When he was back in the States, they saw each other again, and a week later they got married.

This couple has traveled the world. And when I say the world, I mean EVERYWHERE. The only two places they haven't been are Antarctica and Greenland. When their kids were 17 and 18, respectively, they sold the family home and spent a year in Europe as a family.

Harry said, "We didn't always get along, but in that one year, I spent more time with my family than most men spend with their family in a lifetime. I had never been more happy in my life."

It brought tears to my eyes.

They were a beautiful couple. And, quite frankly, the kind of people that I hope to be when I am 80 (if I make it that long). Choosing one's traveling companion is vital in any trip...I've taken enough ill-fated trips with well-meaning friends to know how important it is. And I guess the thing about this couple that just touched me so much was the fact that they have lived the life that I aspire to. All I want is to find someone that I love (who loves me back) to explore the wonders of the whirled with.

They slid pictures of them in Mongolia across the table to me. Here they are, 80 years old (one of them with a bionic knee) riding in donkey carts and rickshaws in Viet Nam, tanning their elderly veiny legs on the beaches of Oahu, and lots and lots of pictures of them raising a glass of wine or mug of beer to the camera throughout Europe. They talked about the things they have seen in the 60 years they have traveled the whirled with each other, watching Russia go from starving superpower to capitalist society, the friends they have made who they return to see year after year, Israel in the 60s, Turkey "before the trouble started," and on...

Travel, their love of people, interest in other cultures and love of each other's company has made them, in my opinion, two of the richest people in the world.

When I finally asked them if they had any advice for young couples with hopes to make it to 60 years together, Harry responded, "Heck no! They don't listen anyway. Just choose your travel companion wisely."

Sound advice. Where do I sign up?

Black Spring

2005-03-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

"Today is the third or fourth day of spring and I am sitting in the Place Clichy in full sunshine. Today, sitting here in the sun, I tell you that it doesn't matter a damn whether the world is going to the dogs or not; it doesn't matter whether the world is right or wrong, good or bad. It is--and that suffices."

I read this story every year on the third or fourth day of spring. I have yet to read it in full sunshine sitting in Paris. Today it is snowing like a rat bastard, it's cold as hell, and I'm getting over the flu. Today I absolutely do NOT have this blissed out nirvanic outlook on the world. Fucking Henry Miller and his ability to wallow blythely in whatever misery he experienced (although, decidedly, it is much more tolerable to be poor and lonely in a foreign country with interesting attractive strangers to look at than it is in one's hometown)...but then he lays this little beauty down on the page a few paragraphs down and I recollect strolling narrow old European streets with a few pints in my skull and the lights going all swirly and my eyes streaming with the shock of cold:

"As a human being walking around at twilight, at dawn, at strange hours, unearthly hours, the sense of being alone and unique fortifies me to such a degree that when I walk with the multitude and seem no longer to be a human being but a mere speck, a gob of spit, I begin to think of myself alone in space, a single being surrounded by the most magnificent empty streets, a human biped walking between skyscrapers when all the inhabitants have fled and I am alone, walking, singing, commanding the Earth. I do not have to look in my vest pocket to find my soul; it is there all the time, bumping against my ribs, swelling, inflated with song."

I feel totally vivisected most days lately, like I'm trying to walk through a razor blade factory without any fucking skin on. Sometimes the only thing I *can* feel is my soul against my ribcage and the song it is swelling with is some kind of fucked up sonic dirge...battling with insomnia right now and having to use sleeping pills. When I do sleep there are frantic, dadaist, freaked out dreams. I hold a knife and the throat that is on the other side of it is mine and is bleeding. Remnants of months-old dreams return in strange form, like a different chapter. We are in Las Vegas with loads of money in our pockets, but it's foreign currency. I am barefoot and trying to hide my naked feet under the cuffs of my jeans. He holds my hand and pulls me in close for a kiss but somehow I get slipped a mickey and poison has been delivered to my mouth instead of sweetness. He bends me over the Blues Deluxe and again my throat gets split open by that cold metal as I get split apart by the warm strength of flesh...very fucking disturbing. Maybe not sleeping would be better than this.

"To recall the dream, one must keep the eyes closed and not budge. The slightest stir and the whole fabric falls apart. In the street I expose myself to the destructive, disintegrating elements that surround me. I let everything wreak its own havoc with me. I bend over to spy on the secret processes, to obey rather than command. There are huge blocks of my life which are gone forever. Huge blocks gone, scattered, wasted in talk, action, reminiscence, dream..."

I did think I found sanctuary. I should not have come home but got a train ticket and roamed the countryside in the soft grey-green days of January. I returned instead to a blinding cold whiteness that has left me hollow and impotent. I question every gesture of kindness, every word that was spoken in the warm circle of arms in the small hours of the morning before the phone would go off and signal the start of day. Something soft and precious within me curls in upon itself, curdles and solidifies.

..."Inside me a terrifying gem which will not wear away, a gem which scratches the windowpanes as I flee through the night."

Fuck, that is what I was looking for. That's it. That madness, that bile, that hard edge that keeps me clenching my teeth all day and all night long. But I can't run fast enough to scratch the windows that matter.

But of course, because it's Miller, he ends it on a laugh...I'm choosing to not regard that last part right now because there is five inches of snow outside my window and at least twenty times colder inside my head than it is in the mountain air that feels like space has leaked down into the atmosphere and sucked all the life and warmth from here...it will be all flowers and Mexico someday. But not yet. No, not for a long fucking time.

Go out and read yourself Black Spring, ye heathens.

Birth Rites and Death Duties

2005-03-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

Okay...since this seems to be the only thing I can wrap my head around at the moment, here is a full explaination regarding my parental units.

His name was Chad Conan Pehrson, and he was a month away from being 25 when he died. He basically committed suicide after returning home from his second tour of Viet Nam. He was a Marine. He drank himself to death because he couldn't cope. His birthday was August 15th. Mine is August 20th. My mom's was August 25th.

My mother was a month away from being 21 when he died. Her maiden name was Jenny Lee Tuttle. I was 11 months old. We lived in Louisiana. My mom and dad had grown up next door to each other in a small town in the foothills of Colorado and eloped on April Fool's Day, 1971. She was a cheerleader. He was a bad boy. They moved to Louisiana because my dad's family is from there, and my mom's dad was hell bent for leather to beat the living hell out of my dad for marrying my mom.

According to the letters I have of my father's at the time, shit was not good. My mom woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night with my dad's hands around her throat, and he was totally asleep and didn't have any recollection of it happening in the morning. He was just that conditioned to being "on guard" all the time. Many years later she would tell me that he would scream in his sleep.

On July 14th, 1974 my dad was on his way home from work and stopped at the store to pick a few things up before coming home. He rang my mom to see if we needed anything at home. They had been fighting because it was a friday, they were poor, and he was going to spend the bulk of the paycheck at the bar. My mother was icy with him and said we didn't need anything. My dad said, "alright, I'll be home in a little while, I love you." And my mom hung up on him because she was pissed off.

Those were the last words she ever heard him say. And she hung up on him.

He was missing for 3 weeks before my uncles found his submerged car in Bayou Teche.

He had been driving drunk, and his '68 mustang had gone off the narrow road into the Bayou. The steering wheel had dug itself into his ribcage and he couldn't get out of the car. He drowned about a mile away from our house.

Shortly thereafter my mom and I returned to Colorado so she could be near her family. She had just lost the love of her life and had a baby to care for. She was in bad shape.

One of my earliest memories of my mother in fact, was finding her on her bed crying with her face buried in a pillow.

I remember walking over to her and she was surprised by my presence. I remember stroking her hair and telling her that it was okay and that she shouldn't be sad. When I asked her why she was said, she told me it was becuase she missed my daddy.

I was maybe 4 years old. My mom was 24. This is completely beyond my scope of comprehension as a 31 year old adult. I can't imagine what that must have been like for her. It twists my melon.

My mom and I were close. We were all we had. When she remarried--to a complete mysoginist jackass--we would band together and defend each other from him. Quite literally, the pair of us were beaten daily for 13 years. She was my best friend, my confidante, and my biggest personal cheerleader. But both of us knew that I was the "strong one," and I knew that she always carried amazingly burdensome amounts of guilt for not being able to provide a "safe" environment to grow up in. She never really made a secret of it. They divorced when I was 15.

Okay, let's flash forward quite awhile...like to last July, in fact.

My mom had been recently diagnosed with asthma, and the high pollen/ particulate count in the air had sent her to the emergency room in May.

In the wee morning hours of July 14th, 2004, my mom had an asthma attack that sent her back to the emergency room. I waited in the doorway in my pyjamas to the treatment area, because they wouldn't let me in. She was the only patient in the room, and there was a team of people working on her for quite awhile. All I could see were their feet because they had the curtains around her bed drawn.

Things got very quiet and the words they spoke to one another were terse and direct. they were commands to get this drug, do this thing to her, etc.

I stood there in the doorway with her boyfriend and a few minutes later the nurse came to update us, while the flight-for-life EMTs were standing behind us with the gurney, waiting to take her to a larger hospital.

One of the nurses came to fill us in on what was going on. My mom had died on the table for 8 minutes before they got her back. They flew her to the hospital.

For the next two weeks I drove an hour a day to go and be with her, her boyfriend didn't leave her side the entire time. I made the drive because I needed the sense of normalcy, to sleep in my own bed at night, to have my cat with me, and have time alone without everyone asking me how I was holding up.

She was in the ICU the whole time, for the first couple of days, doctors had her in a medically induced coma so her body could have time to heal a little bit. When I was at her bedside, I read to her, and played music for her, made jokes with her about her cute male nurses, and washed her hair for her. She looked so frail and tiny in that hospital bed, with all those tubes sticking out of her body. It's a bizarre sensation to look at the only member of your family and your best friend in that condition. To look at the vehicle with which you entered the world in such a vulnerable state. To look at your parent just as that: a vehicle. Because she was in a coma...absolutely not present at all.

There were moments when there was some flicker of cognisance. Her eyes would open a little bit, and I could see them try to focus on me. Her heart rate would change when I was there, as did her breathing. Her vitals responded to my presence, but she didn't speak or emerge from her coma.

Doctors did EEGs every morning to see what her brain activity was doing. They were hopeful, because her body was healing up, but they were concerned, because her brain was showing nothing but seizure activity during the time she was there.

My mom's little sister had died a few years prior to this, and prompted us to have long talks about our personal wishes were. My mom drew up her living will. She asked me to remove life support if she were to be a vegetable her whole life.

After many long days and sleepless nights, meetings with neurologists and my grandmother, we decided to remove life support.

I felt her fingers go cold in my hands and heard this unreal, banshee-like sound for a full two minutes before I realized it was my own voice crying out, keening, over her corpse.

I didn't realize until about a month later that the night that she died on the emergency room table was a full 30 years to the day since my dad died. She'd been without the love of her life long enough.

She was a month away from being 51.

So the last 7 months I've been trying to be as gentle with myself as possible. I promised myself I wouldn't make any hasty decisions because, quite honestly, I'm still reeling with the shock of it all. Most of the time I feel like a somnambulist and make the motions to get through my days like "normal" people do.

I try to be strong. It's fucking more difficult than anything I've ever experienced...mostly because I don't feel as though I *should* lean on my friends--because they all have their own lives, their own dramas and heartaches.
I very recently felt as though I had found someone that I could really lean on, and get the support and caring that I so deeply need right now. It was the first time in the last year that I felt as though I had found refuge, and I was so relieved and felt so safe. I was mistaken due to a lack of comprehension on my part, and the loss of the support that I received has plunged me back into the swirling blackness...and it is my own fault. That doesn't necessarily make me feel any fucking better about the whole thing. And it's devastating to lose one more person that I care about. I am completely sleepwalking all the time, whether I'm awake or not.

...anyway. That's the story of my parents.
I like to imagine them in the great bar in the sky listening to music, sipping cocktails and making out in a dark corner because they are so happy to be together again. If there is a heaven--when I get there, i will be told that my family is waiting for me in the lounge, and drinks are on the house...

Single female seeks solace

2005-03-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

and finds very little.