Alluding to Field of Dreams there, if that wasn't already obvious.
I actually meant to write this post before my trip to Hawaii, but didn't have enough time, and this post definitely would have been more timely if I had.
So, maybe because I'm a writer, I believe in the power of written words, but not necessarily in the typical way, like that people can read something and be affected by it. Yeah, that's a huge thing, but I also think there's a much more invisible power, something ethereal and unseen, subtle.
Alice Sebold (author of novels The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon) talks about this in her book Lucky, a memoir which is essentially about being raped at the end of her freshman year of college, and how it all changes her life irrevocably.
I want to detour a second here to say this book is sooo excellent. I think it's hard sometimes to write well about something so violent and devastating, and somehow Alice Sebold does it. This book is raw, so candid, so deep. There were times reading it, and actually more in parts about the aftermath, that I just wanted to cringe, or cry, because I was so there, the writing was so vivid, so insightful, so wise, and though my life has had different tragic experiences, I could relate to a lot of what she said. There are parts where the book is so poignant it's crushing. There are other parts that made me laugh out loud. The book is very intelligent, in the regular smart way, but also emotionally intelligent. Mostly, it's just so honest. She writes about how the attack changed her, affected friendships, relationships, her interactions with her family, especially her sister. She writes about post-traumatic stress, hyper-alertness. She writes about doing heroin in NYC after dropping out of grad school. She writes about the power of telling her story. It's a great book.
So, back to my original train of thought here, in the book, Alice goes back to college the semester after she's raped, and at this point, the guy hasn't been caught, she hasn't seen him again, she has no name, nothing. She's taking a poetry class with Tess Gallagher, who gives her thee assignment to write a poem starting with the line, "If they caught you..." and Alice writes the poem, and exactly a week later, she sees the guy on the street, and he's talking to a cop, so by the end of that night, she (and the police) know his name, and thus begins the arrest and trial. It could be coincidence, of course, but I think it's just as possible that hte writing of that poem started a ripple in the universe somehow.
I've experienced a similar thing in my own writing at times, where I'll write about something and it'll sort of come to life. There was a time, a long time ago, that whenever I wrote about a particular person, I would somehow hear from them. It got to be almost funny, like clockwork. I wasn't trying to conjure this person, in fact I think if I ever sat down to write simply in the hopes of doing so, it wouldn't work. Still, it was totally uncanny. I stopped writing about them after awhile, because it was freaky. Another time, after writing about this girl I knew and liked very much during my last semester of college, she emailed me. We hadn't spoken in years, and the email came literally the day after writing about her, and revisiting that time in my life. Again, freaky. And again, I don't think it would have happened if I had sat down and said, "I miss Liz, maybe if I write about her, I'll hear from her." I think intention has to be pure in a way, if that makes any sense. I feel I'm treading some real esoteric territory here. I just really do believe there is a silent, invisible power in putting something down in writing. Something different than the typical powers - storytelling, catharsis, connecting to other humans through the writing - I believe there's soemthing almost psychic in it.
And recently, it happened again. Remember when I wrote on here about living in the dispensary at camp and how magical it was in this post? Well, three days later I was supposed to meet some girls after work, and it never worked out, but in looking for them, this guy I work with told me he thought they were in the dispensary. This other guy who I work with was going to give me a ride home if I didn't find the girls, but had to go do some stuff at his place first, so he said he'd meet me on the road behind the dispensary. So for the first time in almost three years, I walked to that building I love so much. The path there isn't lit, and it was dark, dark, dark, so I walked along the path, using the patches of bare sky up above as a guide to know where the trees parted and to follow the path, which is something I had also written about in that blog entry.
No one was in the dispensary when I got there, which was disappointing because I never met up with the girls, but in a way, was kind of nice. I knew my ride guy would be a bit, so I just walked around inside and soaked up the niceness of being in there, the particular smell that house has. I peaked into my old room, watched the way the yellowy light landed on the wooden walls and floor, enjoyed the house. I also walked past a locked closet which I suddenly remembered was full of medical supplies, which only made me love the place even more, lol, because I am, at present, soooo fascinated by that shit.
I went outside and waited for my ride. In the dark. In the woods. Listening to the soft rumble of the Sound. Watching the waxing moon among the trees and branches. Feeling so deeply, serenely happy, inspired, full, in touch and joyous for the moment
Currently Listening:
"In My Life" - The Beatles - Oh, how I have loved this song for so many years. I think it's hands down my favorite Beatles song, though, oddly enough (embarrassingly enough?) I first heard this song performed by Bette Midler! Way before I discovered rock music, I used to listen to my dad's copy of Experience The Divine in our living room, while everyone else was somewhere else, in the dark, and croon along to every word, and her cover of this song always vied for the position fo favorite. It was the last song on the album, and it always made me think of Camp Marcella, which was the blind camp I went to growing up. I know the song itself is more about a person, but I often love places as much as I love people.
Another strange coincidence is that the same day that I had my visit to the dispensary, this song (the Beatles version) came on the radio at work, and it's maybe the only time I've heard it ever at work, at least it's definitely the only time I've heard it since last March when I returned to working at camp, I'm sure of that. You notice when your favorite songs are played. So hearing it that day is what prompted me to download it, and thus how it came up randomly on iTunes just now. All these "currently listening" are random iTunes picks, by the way.
Anyway, I think the song is more than apropos.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Moonbeams Over Paradise
So here is my totally unconventional Hawaiian vacation. I'm calling it that b/c when I think of Hawaiian vacations I think of big resorts or scenes from MTV's Maui Fever, and thankfully, this was nothing like that.
Tallie and I left the island super early last Wednesday morning and talked the whole ferry ride and the whole drive down to the Seattle airport. We'd both had kind of shitty/crazy weeks, so we got it all out of our systems as much as possible. We flew to Oakland first, which surprisingly wasn't that warm. Then we flew to Lihue. The eclipse took place when we were on the plane and so I didn't see it at all. They had us fill out questionnaires on the plane, mostly about whether we were carrying any fruit, plants, amoebas, bacteria, viruses, etc. I guess sometimes they actually will come on and spray the planes with pesticides, freaky!
So we landed and got out at Lihue and the airport there is sooooo open. Way before we walked to baggage claim there were large open windows and the air wafting through. It was in the low seventies, and it was about ten at night. It was so nice to be outside at night and warm. We rode through the island of Kauai out to Molawa'a to where Emily was staying. She was house and car-sitting for her boss, who lives in a little structure out on a farm out there. It was interesting, b/c on the ride I kept thinking (and continued to think throughout the trip) that Kauai is more like mainland America than Orcas Island is. It surprised me a bit how built up it was, but then again, it's a pretty big island.
As we got closer to Molawa'a, it got way less populated, nicer, woodsier. The moon was out and the wind was blowing through our hair, it was awesome. We met up with Emily, smoked some Hawaiian grown pot, and hung out at the wooden structure, which had no electricity or running water. We had lanterns for light and stayed up talking and being happy to see each other. We went to sleep hearing the sound of the ocean in the distance. I'd forgotten how loud it is b/c here on Orcas, it's the Sound, not the unadultered ocean, so here the waves are much smaller and quieter. Out there, they were a distant rumble at all times.
I will never forget that first night. Some nearby rooster started crowing in the middle of the night, hours before sunrise. It was soooo fucking loud. Then, the minute the sun rose, all these songbirds started. It was awesome. I don't think I have ever heard so many birds at once. It was really pleasant to wake up to. As the sun rose higher, there was about a half hour where everything around us had a golden glow, kind of like autumn, but then after the sun got higher, everything was its nomral green. It was so lush. The structure was nestled in trees and then there was this huge field. We had to walk across it to use the composting toilet in the morning (mostly we just went in the trees though, lol). I have to say that was my first time using a composting toilet and it was glorious, lol. It was in this grove of banana trees, letting some mottled light through, and it was like sitting in this gorgeous jungle or something.
So then we drove all over the island, and a lot of the roads we drove on made tree tunnels, meaning the trees kinda covered the road, so we couldn't exactly see a sky gap between the trees on the right side and left. There are a few spots where it gets close to that on Orcas but not quite. I loved driving around. Kauai is really beautiful. There were fruit trees, fields, valleys and sooo much green. The sky was cloudless. We drove to Hanalei Bay because Emily had to work there. She wokrs at this natural food store called Papaya's and apparently, she's seen Anthony Kiedis there a bunch of times. So while Emily worked, Tallie and I hung out at the beach, just reading and sleeping in the sunshine. I went in the water. I wanted to go swimming but I had forgotten how rough real ocean can be. The waves were big and fierce, and this wasn't even at a real roughwater spot on the island. Still I got knocked over a few times (and loved it). I'm kind of scratched up from it, but it was just soooo awesome to be in warm saltwater, flowing with the waves. I smiled anytime I saw a huge one coming on, like bring it on baby. I fucking love the ocean.
Then we decided to drive around some more, see other parts of the island. We got out, walked around on other beaches and explored some caves, which was really cool. It's pretty awesome to see caves and think about the history of it all. Tallie majored in ecology so she was an amazing wealth of information about everything we saw. One interesting thing about the trip in general was that it felt in some ways like a blast from the past, things kept reminding me of other things for some strange reason, and this part reminded me of the time I went to the Oregon coast with my friend Kelly seven years ago, probably because of the similarity in the beaches, and because there was cave exploration in both places. Walking around Hanalei sort of reminded me of Northern Arizona, because of the way there were big mountains in the distance.
I ended up getting sunburned. I wore sunscreen but I guess I missed a few places, like right behind my right knee, which got burned pretty badly from laying out in the sun. My lower back was also burned, as well as the place where my watch was when I put on sunscreen, lol, a vaguely watch-shaped sunburn.
So we met Emily after she got off of work, hung out, went back to the structure Emily was staying at and stayed up talking again. We were pretty zonked by that point.
The next day, Emily's boss was returning and so we were going to have to return the car and also move our stuff over to where Emily was moving, to another structure, this one at an organic farm where she was going to start doing a work-trade to live there, so a lot of Friday was spent moving our stuff. The farm Emily moved to is really cool. The woman who owns it is awesome. She's about sixty, and partially disabled (kind of wild, she actually got her injury while doing yoga), and she runs this whole farm year-round, mostly by herself, a very strong woman. She's also a very key person in starting a seed exchange that was happening on Kauai later this week, a way for farmers and others to exchange seeds so they don't go extinct. It's funny b/c a few days before the trip I was talking with the guys I work with about that same issue, the loss of biodiversity in seeds b/c of huge corporations and all that.
So anyway, Marie gave us some fresh fruit to try, guavas and something else that sort of looked like a seedless grape with a big pit in the middle, and she collected the seeds from the fruits we ate. Then she also told us where we could pick some Aloe plants for our burns. That was cool, squeezing a leaf onto my skin, it was like the aloe gel you can get at stores but more potent. I never felt my sunburn after that (though it still looks nasty).
We also spent part of that day trying to rent a car. Emily and Tallie are both 24 and since I can't drive, my age didn't help. We went around forever until we found someone who'd rent a car without "young driver" fees, so that kind of killed part of the day, but gave us a way to get around.
We decided to have a picnic on the beach for dinner. It was awesome, no one was there, and we got all kinds of fresh food, so we were just sitting there in the sand eating avocados (one of my all time favorite foods), peppers, cucumbers, oranges, etc smothered onto baguette bread with goat cheese, and drinking wine. The water was calmer here, and it was just after sunset, and this part actually reminded me of early childhood, when I lived in CT, right by Long Island Sound. I'm not sure exactly what the connection was, it was a strange feeling, like it reminded me of something I couldn't quite remember, something maybe before language. It was a good strange feeling. I had to walk in the water, kinda frolic around a little bit. I can't stand seeing the ocean and not going in somehow. So then we went back to Emily's new structure on the organic farm, got high and stayed up doing tarot readings and having really deep discussions about our lives, our struggles, and so on.
We only had candlelight to see by and so when I was doing a reading, I pulled the Queen of Cups and Emily wanted to see it clearer, so she put the candle right by it and accidentally dripped wax on the card. I didn't really mind, but it was kind of funny. Emily said, "At least there's a story for why it looks so disheveled now," and now I can never forget that particular reading.
On Saturday morning we drove around some more, went to a tiny Farmer's Market. I drank coconut water straight from a coconut there, and they gave me the rest of the edible part of the coconut to take with me. It was really cool, very different. Emily had to go to work again, so Tallie and I explored some more. We went to the Botanic Gardens, where we learned about the different kinds of plants, and which are native and which aren't, saw low hanging palms and visited a lotus pond. Then we went to this place called Spouting Horn, which was this natural rock thing where when waves crashed into it, water came spouting up out of the rocks. It was cool.
We went back to Emily's work, and she gave us all this food - chili, all these salads, smoothies, etc, so we sat outside and ate it. I felt like I ate soooo well in Hawaii. One of my goals was to try new things, and I totally did, especially fruits. Along with the guavas and the things that looked like seedless grapes and the coconut, I also ate papaya, fresh mango, apple bananas, a burrito made with fresh ahi fish, and also a brazilian style dish called pancaqua (or something like that, I don't think I spelled that right) which was rich with squashes, purple potatoes (soooo fucking good, I've had those before too, excellent), and a pumpkin stuffed crepe.
Night was pretty much the same as others, we went back to Emily's structure, drank, got high, talked. There was this cat there, manakitty, who was the most annoying cat ever, constantly whining and following us everywhere, every second. In the mornings, the moment she heard us moving, she was there, rubbing up on us, trying to be let in. When we walked she wound herself around our feet. She literally almost got peed on many times. It got to the point where if one of uf had to go pee in the woods, the others would keep the cat inside the structure. We thought the cat was in heat but Marie said she's always like that. The roosters at Marie's place also crowed all night long. In fact this one rooster there was louder than the one at the other place. It was like it was trying to hit some note but kept failing, so it was pretty funny to listen to but also like shut up already, lol. We were joking that if the cat went and hunted the rooster we'd like the cat again, lol, but we were just kidding around obviously.
On Sunday we went to Waimea Canyon. We were having trouble finding the trailhead and there were these rangers, Native Hawaiians, who told us where to go, and asked us if we wanted to get high with them before we started out. We declined, which was good, b/c the hiking definitely took some concentration. We hiked for hours on different trails. The Canyon was amazing to look at, and the hiking was invigorating. It was elevated by a few thousand feet so the air was cooler, and felt so fresh and good. We actually saw some trees and plant life that reminded me of Flagstaff. We got to this lookout over the Kallalao (sp?) valley, which is twelve miles of undisturbed wilderness that people can hike into. Apparently people live in that Valley too. I wish we could have done that, but I hear its really treacherous, like people die out there. Anyway so we were hoping to at least look at it, and instead came upon a complete wall of fog, the only we ever saw on Kauai. It was still awesome. We hiked some more, did another trail, saw the Canyon some more.
After that we opted for a bit of civilization and went into town for some pizza and then saw a movie, which none of us had done in ages. Then afterward, we went to this super long bike path along the shore and walked it. It started out in a town called Kapa'a, and there was a lot of light pollution there, but as we got further out, we were just walking along the shore, listening to the ocean, watching it at night. It reminded me of this time I was with my friend Tara in late summer 02, when she invited me to go with her family on a trip to Wildwood, NJ. We walked all the way back from the boardwalk to the hotel late at night, walking by the ocean the whole while.
On the bike path, we saw the moon coming up behind some clouds, so Tallie, Emily and I sat down on the edge of the bike path and waited until the moon emerged from the clouds and shone over the water. We saw the moon every night we were there, through the trees by Emily's structure, streaming through the screened sections of the structure, reflecting on the water.
THe next day, we helped Marie harvest lettuce, kale and cilantro, mostly lettuce. Some of it had gotten infected by some bug, so we spent a few hours kneeling in the soil, harvesting and sorting through it all. Then we washed it, bagged it and labeled it then drove it to Papaya's where Emily works, b/c Marie delivers produce to them regularly. Then Emily had to work and so Tallie and I went back to the beach for our last day in Hawaii. We mostly just read on the shore, but me being me, I decided to take a super long walk by the waves and ended up getting completely soaked. It was awesome.
Then we went and helped Emily clean up at work, did dishes so she could get out of there sooner. Then we went out to eat, dropped Emily off at her structure, said goodbye and drove out to Lihue to get on our late flight. It was insane about the fruit stuff at the airport. I mean, it's so spacious and open in that small airport, so you'd think it'd be all chill and relaxed, but before you even check in and get boarding passes, they have to scan the baggage you're checking in some x-ray thing, checking for any fruit or plants. Then we checked in and Tallie realized she had an avocado in her carry-on so we had to eat that (and some more food from Papaya's that Emily had made for us) before going through regular security. So we did that and then we had to put our carry-ons through ANOHTER x-ray machine for the US Dept of Agriculture. It was nuts. So our flight left close to midnight, and we flew to Phoenix (sooooo out of the way), waited there for hours for our flight back to Seattle, got Tallie's car and drove up to the ferry and came home.
I had an awesome time in Hawaii, and I was extremely glad to be home. It was a great place to visit, but I could never live there. I think the sunshine would get to me, lol. I would miss the rain, the dreariness, the clouds, the winter, the fog (though we did see that the one time). Also Emily said a lot of the people she runs into are just kind of either too stoned to care about anything, or just kind of shallow. When she first saw us, she was like, "You don't know how glad I am to see people of substance," which felt really awesome. After spending some time there, I could see what she meant. So yeah, I was really glad to get home.
I came home exhausted, filthy, burnt, bug-bitten, scratched up from getting knocked over by waves, with aching sore muscles from the hiking, and sand and soil in and on all my clothes and god knows what else, and it was soooo worth it. I also felt like my headspace completely changed from when I left. I always do a lot of thinking and reflecting when I'm away, and I did tons, which was really good and necessary. Somehow, being away really clarifies things at home, at least it always does for me, and this time was no different.
I thought a lot about how in some ways I've gotten away from what really matters to me in the last while, which is something I've thought and blogged about lately, and this trip gave me more time to reflect on that. I definitely want to get back into actually writing, generating new stuff, and my thought was that I need to get up early to do that, because otherwise too much of the day gets away from me. I felt inspired to write again. I also felt more vibrantly into music. I go through ebbs and flows with that. There were so many times I wanted to just burst into song. I also gave a lot of thought to how much fucking time I spend doing things that kind of take away from my writing life, or my deep feeling self, mainly watching TV and spending too much time chatting online, two habits I really fell into big time after Mr O left, I think mainly b/c I was lonely. Well that was April, it's getting close to a year now since that point, and I feel ready to let those habits fall away. I think I went through a really long process with that whole thing, and I think it's fading, I'm getting over it.
I also felt like my trip totally affirmed how glad I am to have that relationship out of my life, because in hindsight, and especially in the company of awesome good friends, it's really clear to me how destructive it all was. Spending time with Emily and Tallie made me also realize how important good friends are, and also that in some ways, I missed out on getting to know some great people who worked at camp this past year. Some of that was totally out of my control, being in the kitchen and working part-time and all, and always having that dog to come home to, and I just started thinking that I definitely want to make more of an effort this coming season when the new staff arrive in the next week or so. Really, one thing I thought about so much during my trip is the preciousness of good friends, and not at all in the acquaintance type way, but in the way where you can really share your soul and say anything to someone, appreciating the differences and just totally be who you are without worry. I haven't had that too often with people my age, and that made this trip pretty special.
Eating all that excellent, healthy, natural food also affirmed something I had already decided about a month ago, which is that I want to do a CSA this summer. I also feel so in love with where I live, which is funny because in the fall, I wasn't feeling that way at all, but it's been a great winter here, and somehow being away just made me love Orcas even more. I kinda feeling like I'm getting unstuck in a way, and it all feels really good. Earlier tonight I was sitting in my apartment eating dinner, just looking around and thinking how much I love my place.
Basically, to sum up, internally, I feel like my trip confirmed and deepened a lot of what I was thinking and feeling before I left, like I was already turning in a certain direction, and this was just another push in the right direction.
I have to say that during all that hype about security and fruits/amoebas/virus, I was sooo tempted to say some smartass answer like, "You mean I can't take my vial of anthrax/aids/avian flu with me?" I had all kinds of phrases like that running through my mind, waiting to spill out of my mouth, but somehow I don't think they would have appreciated the sarcasm. I guess next time if I want to shock people on airplanes, I'll bring my portable DVD player and start watching porn or something, just kidding. Speaking of, Tallie told me that there is some woman who's famous for trying to unionize sex workers who lives on Orcas, cool.
Currently Listening:
"I Miss You" - Bjork - I love her voice. It's funny, I am such a rock girl at heart, and yet lately I've found myself listening to music with a bit more of a hip-hop type bent to it, probably because of my undying love for Fiona Apple and her geniusness, because seh sometimes leans that way. Anyway I've just found myself attracted to that style more, and Bjork, and this song, definitely fit in with that, at least this version I have, Bjork with Rodney P. This song also reminds me of these sisters Karla and Cristina, who I hung out with a lot in the beginning of my last year of college, because they LOVED this song and first introduced me to it.
Tallie and I left the island super early last Wednesday morning and talked the whole ferry ride and the whole drive down to the Seattle airport. We'd both had kind of shitty/crazy weeks, so we got it all out of our systems as much as possible. We flew to Oakland first, which surprisingly wasn't that warm. Then we flew to Lihue. The eclipse took place when we were on the plane and so I didn't see it at all. They had us fill out questionnaires on the plane, mostly about whether we were carrying any fruit, plants, amoebas, bacteria, viruses, etc. I guess sometimes they actually will come on and spray the planes with pesticides, freaky!
So we landed and got out at Lihue and the airport there is sooooo open. Way before we walked to baggage claim there were large open windows and the air wafting through. It was in the low seventies, and it was about ten at night. It was so nice to be outside at night and warm. We rode through the island of Kauai out to Molawa'a to where Emily was staying. She was house and car-sitting for her boss, who lives in a little structure out on a farm out there. It was interesting, b/c on the ride I kept thinking (and continued to think throughout the trip) that Kauai is more like mainland America than Orcas Island is. It surprised me a bit how built up it was, but then again, it's a pretty big island.
As we got closer to Molawa'a, it got way less populated, nicer, woodsier. The moon was out and the wind was blowing through our hair, it was awesome. We met up with Emily, smoked some Hawaiian grown pot, and hung out at the wooden structure, which had no electricity or running water. We had lanterns for light and stayed up talking and being happy to see each other. We went to sleep hearing the sound of the ocean in the distance. I'd forgotten how loud it is b/c here on Orcas, it's the Sound, not the unadultered ocean, so here the waves are much smaller and quieter. Out there, they were a distant rumble at all times.
I will never forget that first night. Some nearby rooster started crowing in the middle of the night, hours before sunrise. It was soooo fucking loud. Then, the minute the sun rose, all these songbirds started. It was awesome. I don't think I have ever heard so many birds at once. It was really pleasant to wake up to. As the sun rose higher, there was about a half hour where everything around us had a golden glow, kind of like autumn, but then after the sun got higher, everything was its nomral green. It was so lush. The structure was nestled in trees and then there was this huge field. We had to walk across it to use the composting toilet in the morning (mostly we just went in the trees though, lol). I have to say that was my first time using a composting toilet and it was glorious, lol. It was in this grove of banana trees, letting some mottled light through, and it was like sitting in this gorgeous jungle or something.
So then we drove all over the island, and a lot of the roads we drove on made tree tunnels, meaning the trees kinda covered the road, so we couldn't exactly see a sky gap between the trees on the right side and left. There are a few spots where it gets close to that on Orcas but not quite. I loved driving around. Kauai is really beautiful. There were fruit trees, fields, valleys and sooo much green. The sky was cloudless. We drove to Hanalei Bay because Emily had to work there. She wokrs at this natural food store called Papaya's and apparently, she's seen Anthony Kiedis there a bunch of times. So while Emily worked, Tallie and I hung out at the beach, just reading and sleeping in the sunshine. I went in the water. I wanted to go swimming but I had forgotten how rough real ocean can be. The waves were big and fierce, and this wasn't even at a real roughwater spot on the island. Still I got knocked over a few times (and loved it). I'm kind of scratched up from it, but it was just soooo awesome to be in warm saltwater, flowing with the waves. I smiled anytime I saw a huge one coming on, like bring it on baby. I fucking love the ocean.
Then we decided to drive around some more, see other parts of the island. We got out, walked around on other beaches and explored some caves, which was really cool. It's pretty awesome to see caves and think about the history of it all. Tallie majored in ecology so she was an amazing wealth of information about everything we saw. One interesting thing about the trip in general was that it felt in some ways like a blast from the past, things kept reminding me of other things for some strange reason, and this part reminded me of the time I went to the Oregon coast with my friend Kelly seven years ago, probably because of the similarity in the beaches, and because there was cave exploration in both places. Walking around Hanalei sort of reminded me of Northern Arizona, because of the way there were big mountains in the distance.
I ended up getting sunburned. I wore sunscreen but I guess I missed a few places, like right behind my right knee, which got burned pretty badly from laying out in the sun. My lower back was also burned, as well as the place where my watch was when I put on sunscreen, lol, a vaguely watch-shaped sunburn.
So we met Emily after she got off of work, hung out, went back to the structure Emily was staying at and stayed up talking again. We were pretty zonked by that point.
The next day, Emily's boss was returning and so we were going to have to return the car and also move our stuff over to where Emily was moving, to another structure, this one at an organic farm where she was going to start doing a work-trade to live there, so a lot of Friday was spent moving our stuff. The farm Emily moved to is really cool. The woman who owns it is awesome. She's about sixty, and partially disabled (kind of wild, she actually got her injury while doing yoga), and she runs this whole farm year-round, mostly by herself, a very strong woman. She's also a very key person in starting a seed exchange that was happening on Kauai later this week, a way for farmers and others to exchange seeds so they don't go extinct. It's funny b/c a few days before the trip I was talking with the guys I work with about that same issue, the loss of biodiversity in seeds b/c of huge corporations and all that.
So anyway, Marie gave us some fresh fruit to try, guavas and something else that sort of looked like a seedless grape with a big pit in the middle, and she collected the seeds from the fruits we ate. Then she also told us where we could pick some Aloe plants for our burns. That was cool, squeezing a leaf onto my skin, it was like the aloe gel you can get at stores but more potent. I never felt my sunburn after that (though it still looks nasty).
We also spent part of that day trying to rent a car. Emily and Tallie are both 24 and since I can't drive, my age didn't help. We went around forever until we found someone who'd rent a car without "young driver" fees, so that kind of killed part of the day, but gave us a way to get around.
We decided to have a picnic on the beach for dinner. It was awesome, no one was there, and we got all kinds of fresh food, so we were just sitting there in the sand eating avocados (one of my all time favorite foods), peppers, cucumbers, oranges, etc smothered onto baguette bread with goat cheese, and drinking wine. The water was calmer here, and it was just after sunset, and this part actually reminded me of early childhood, when I lived in CT, right by Long Island Sound. I'm not sure exactly what the connection was, it was a strange feeling, like it reminded me of something I couldn't quite remember, something maybe before language. It was a good strange feeling. I had to walk in the water, kinda frolic around a little bit. I can't stand seeing the ocean and not going in somehow. So then we went back to Emily's new structure on the organic farm, got high and stayed up doing tarot readings and having really deep discussions about our lives, our struggles, and so on.
We only had candlelight to see by and so when I was doing a reading, I pulled the Queen of Cups and Emily wanted to see it clearer, so she put the candle right by it and accidentally dripped wax on the card. I didn't really mind, but it was kind of funny. Emily said, "At least there's a story for why it looks so disheveled now," and now I can never forget that particular reading.
On Saturday morning we drove around some more, went to a tiny Farmer's Market. I drank coconut water straight from a coconut there, and they gave me the rest of the edible part of the coconut to take with me. It was really cool, very different. Emily had to go to work again, so Tallie and I explored some more. We went to the Botanic Gardens, where we learned about the different kinds of plants, and which are native and which aren't, saw low hanging palms and visited a lotus pond. Then we went to this place called Spouting Horn, which was this natural rock thing where when waves crashed into it, water came spouting up out of the rocks. It was cool.
We went back to Emily's work, and she gave us all this food - chili, all these salads, smoothies, etc, so we sat outside and ate it. I felt like I ate soooo well in Hawaii. One of my goals was to try new things, and I totally did, especially fruits. Along with the guavas and the things that looked like seedless grapes and the coconut, I also ate papaya, fresh mango, apple bananas, a burrito made with fresh ahi fish, and also a brazilian style dish called pancaqua (or something like that, I don't think I spelled that right) which was rich with squashes, purple potatoes (soooo fucking good, I've had those before too, excellent), and a pumpkin stuffed crepe.
Night was pretty much the same as others, we went back to Emily's structure, drank, got high, talked. There was this cat there, manakitty, who was the most annoying cat ever, constantly whining and following us everywhere, every second. In the mornings, the moment she heard us moving, she was there, rubbing up on us, trying to be let in. When we walked she wound herself around our feet. She literally almost got peed on many times. It got to the point where if one of uf had to go pee in the woods, the others would keep the cat inside the structure. We thought the cat was in heat but Marie said she's always like that. The roosters at Marie's place also crowed all night long. In fact this one rooster there was louder than the one at the other place. It was like it was trying to hit some note but kept failing, so it was pretty funny to listen to but also like shut up already, lol. We were joking that if the cat went and hunted the rooster we'd like the cat again, lol, but we were just kidding around obviously.
On Sunday we went to Waimea Canyon. We were having trouble finding the trailhead and there were these rangers, Native Hawaiians, who told us where to go, and asked us if we wanted to get high with them before we started out. We declined, which was good, b/c the hiking definitely took some concentration. We hiked for hours on different trails. The Canyon was amazing to look at, and the hiking was invigorating. It was elevated by a few thousand feet so the air was cooler, and felt so fresh and good. We actually saw some trees and plant life that reminded me of Flagstaff. We got to this lookout over the Kallalao (sp?) valley, which is twelve miles of undisturbed wilderness that people can hike into. Apparently people live in that Valley too. I wish we could have done that, but I hear its really treacherous, like people die out there. Anyway so we were hoping to at least look at it, and instead came upon a complete wall of fog, the only we ever saw on Kauai. It was still awesome. We hiked some more, did another trail, saw the Canyon some more.
After that we opted for a bit of civilization and went into town for some pizza and then saw a movie, which none of us had done in ages. Then afterward, we went to this super long bike path along the shore and walked it. It started out in a town called Kapa'a, and there was a lot of light pollution there, but as we got further out, we were just walking along the shore, listening to the ocean, watching it at night. It reminded me of this time I was with my friend Tara in late summer 02, when she invited me to go with her family on a trip to Wildwood, NJ. We walked all the way back from the boardwalk to the hotel late at night, walking by the ocean the whole while.
On the bike path, we saw the moon coming up behind some clouds, so Tallie, Emily and I sat down on the edge of the bike path and waited until the moon emerged from the clouds and shone over the water. We saw the moon every night we were there, through the trees by Emily's structure, streaming through the screened sections of the structure, reflecting on the water.
THe next day, we helped Marie harvest lettuce, kale and cilantro, mostly lettuce. Some of it had gotten infected by some bug, so we spent a few hours kneeling in the soil, harvesting and sorting through it all. Then we washed it, bagged it and labeled it then drove it to Papaya's where Emily works, b/c Marie delivers produce to them regularly. Then Emily had to work and so Tallie and I went back to the beach for our last day in Hawaii. We mostly just read on the shore, but me being me, I decided to take a super long walk by the waves and ended up getting completely soaked. It was awesome.
Then we went and helped Emily clean up at work, did dishes so she could get out of there sooner. Then we went out to eat, dropped Emily off at her structure, said goodbye and drove out to Lihue to get on our late flight. It was insane about the fruit stuff at the airport. I mean, it's so spacious and open in that small airport, so you'd think it'd be all chill and relaxed, but before you even check in and get boarding passes, they have to scan the baggage you're checking in some x-ray thing, checking for any fruit or plants. Then we checked in and Tallie realized she had an avocado in her carry-on so we had to eat that (and some more food from Papaya's that Emily had made for us) before going through regular security. So we did that and then we had to put our carry-ons through ANOHTER x-ray machine for the US Dept of Agriculture. It was nuts. So our flight left close to midnight, and we flew to Phoenix (sooooo out of the way), waited there for hours for our flight back to Seattle, got Tallie's car and drove up to the ferry and came home.
I had an awesome time in Hawaii, and I was extremely glad to be home. It was a great place to visit, but I could never live there. I think the sunshine would get to me, lol. I would miss the rain, the dreariness, the clouds, the winter, the fog (though we did see that the one time). Also Emily said a lot of the people she runs into are just kind of either too stoned to care about anything, or just kind of shallow. When she first saw us, she was like, "You don't know how glad I am to see people of substance," which felt really awesome. After spending some time there, I could see what she meant. So yeah, I was really glad to get home.
I came home exhausted, filthy, burnt, bug-bitten, scratched up from getting knocked over by waves, with aching sore muscles from the hiking, and sand and soil in and on all my clothes and god knows what else, and it was soooo worth it. I also felt like my headspace completely changed from when I left. I always do a lot of thinking and reflecting when I'm away, and I did tons, which was really good and necessary. Somehow, being away really clarifies things at home, at least it always does for me, and this time was no different.
I thought a lot about how in some ways I've gotten away from what really matters to me in the last while, which is something I've thought and blogged about lately, and this trip gave me more time to reflect on that. I definitely want to get back into actually writing, generating new stuff, and my thought was that I need to get up early to do that, because otherwise too much of the day gets away from me. I felt inspired to write again. I also felt more vibrantly into music. I go through ebbs and flows with that. There were so many times I wanted to just burst into song. I also gave a lot of thought to how much fucking time I spend doing things that kind of take away from my writing life, or my deep feeling self, mainly watching TV and spending too much time chatting online, two habits I really fell into big time after Mr O left, I think mainly b/c I was lonely. Well that was April, it's getting close to a year now since that point, and I feel ready to let those habits fall away. I think I went through a really long process with that whole thing, and I think it's fading, I'm getting over it.
I also felt like my trip totally affirmed how glad I am to have that relationship out of my life, because in hindsight, and especially in the company of awesome good friends, it's really clear to me how destructive it all was. Spending time with Emily and Tallie made me also realize how important good friends are, and also that in some ways, I missed out on getting to know some great people who worked at camp this past year. Some of that was totally out of my control, being in the kitchen and working part-time and all, and always having that dog to come home to, and I just started thinking that I definitely want to make more of an effort this coming season when the new staff arrive in the next week or so. Really, one thing I thought about so much during my trip is the preciousness of good friends, and not at all in the acquaintance type way, but in the way where you can really share your soul and say anything to someone, appreciating the differences and just totally be who you are without worry. I haven't had that too often with people my age, and that made this trip pretty special.
Eating all that excellent, healthy, natural food also affirmed something I had already decided about a month ago, which is that I want to do a CSA this summer. I also feel so in love with where I live, which is funny because in the fall, I wasn't feeling that way at all, but it's been a great winter here, and somehow being away just made me love Orcas even more. I kinda feeling like I'm getting unstuck in a way, and it all feels really good. Earlier tonight I was sitting in my apartment eating dinner, just looking around and thinking how much I love my place.
Basically, to sum up, internally, I feel like my trip confirmed and deepened a lot of what I was thinking and feeling before I left, like I was already turning in a certain direction, and this was just another push in the right direction.
I have to say that during all that hype about security and fruits/amoebas/virus, I was sooo tempted to say some smartass answer like, "You mean I can't take my vial of anthrax/aids/avian flu with me?" I had all kinds of phrases like that running through my mind, waiting to spill out of my mouth, but somehow I don't think they would have appreciated the sarcasm. I guess next time if I want to shock people on airplanes, I'll bring my portable DVD player and start watching porn or something, just kidding. Speaking of, Tallie told me that there is some woman who's famous for trying to unionize sex workers who lives on Orcas, cool.
Currently Listening:
"I Miss You" - Bjork - I love her voice. It's funny, I am such a rock girl at heart, and yet lately I've found myself listening to music with a bit more of a hip-hop type bent to it, probably because of my undying love for Fiona Apple and her geniusness, because seh sometimes leans that way. Anyway I've just found myself attracted to that style more, and Bjork, and this song, definitely fit in with that, at least this version I have, Bjork with Rodney P. This song also reminds me of these sisters Karla and Cristina, who I hung out with a lot in the beginning of my last year of college, because they LOVED this song and first introduced me to it.
Monday, February 18, 2008
On the Today Show
So, remember that reading I did in NYC in November? The woman who organized and put that together, Kim Brittingham, has done another reading at the same place, The Bowery Poetry Club, and she is being interviewed on The Today Show about an essay she wrote (and I believe, the essay she read at the subsequent show). It's going to be on Weds morning, from 10-11am. Sadly, I will miss it, because I'll be in the car with my friend Tallie, on our way to the SeaTac airport for our flight to Hawaii. I'm really bummed to miss it, because this woman is really awesome. It was really great to meet her in November.
For those here who were at the reading, this is the woman who read about regularly playing hooky and taking clandestine trips to NYC. I think she's just such an excellent writer, and person. She's also extremely innovative, always coming up with ideas to help writers. She is the brainstorming queen.
So, if you can, watch it!
Kim's MySpace
And here are some links to some of her blogs that rock:
A Writer's Life
The essay and the Fallout
Whatcha Thinkin, Houdini?
Party Pooper
A Writer's Life Continues
And the chapter Kim read at the Best Memoirists Pageant Ever
Hooky
Currently Listening:
"On the Steps of the Cathedral" - Mark Lanegan
For those here who were at the reading, this is the woman who read about regularly playing hooky and taking clandestine trips to NYC. I think she's just such an excellent writer, and person. She's also extremely innovative, always coming up with ideas to help writers. She is the brainstorming queen.
So, if you can, watch it!
Kim's MySpace
And here are some links to some of her blogs that rock:
A Writer's Life
The essay and the Fallout
Whatcha Thinkin, Houdini?
Party Pooper
A Writer's Life Continues
And the chapter Kim read at the Best Memoirists Pageant Ever
Hooky
Currently Listening:
"On the Steps of the Cathedral" - Mark Lanegan
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Adding Imagery
Okay, so here are some pictures to go along with my last post about living at camp and how magical it was. I thought the visual imagery might help create the full picture.
Here is the road going into camp.
This was my view from the Dispensary.
This is the mythical Dispensary. I wish I had pictures of the inside.
This gives a more full view of the shoreline at Camp. Just look how freakin' lush it is.
Here, my friend Leo and I are walking in the woods where I used to walk all the time when I lived there.
All these pictures are taken by Diane Richter, rock photographer extraordinaire.
Currently Listening:
"Mary" - Tori Amos - Very appropriate in a way, because the winter before the one I wrote about, which I also spent living in the Dispensary, this song was very significant to me. I can't remember if I heard this song just before or just after reading The Da Vinci Code. I got real excited when I heard the line "Even the wind cries your name," and realized it was a Jimi Hendrix reference. Then I read the liner notes of the album this is from (Tales of a Librarian), where Tori has every song categorized, like in the Dewey Decimal system, and this one was filed under "Abuse of the Earth" and "Mary Magdalene." It was like everything coming together and connecting in a way that made total sense to me. Leo and I even formed a "Mary Club of the Sacred Feminine," lol. Now I am really tripping down memory lane.
Some lyrics from "Mary,"
"We got her armed as we buy and sell
Her rivers of milk running dry
Can't you hear the dolphin's cry?"
Here is the road going into camp.
This was my view from the Dispensary.
This is the mythical Dispensary. I wish I had pictures of the inside.
This gives a more full view of the shoreline at Camp. Just look how freakin' lush it is.
Here, my friend Leo and I are walking in the woods where I used to walk all the time when I lived there.
All these pictures are taken by Diane Richter, rock photographer extraordinaire.
Currently Listening:
"Mary" - Tori Amos - Very appropriate in a way, because the winter before the one I wrote about, which I also spent living in the Dispensary, this song was very significant to me. I can't remember if I heard this song just before or just after reading The Da Vinci Code. I got real excited when I heard the line "Even the wind cries your name," and realized it was a Jimi Hendrix reference. Then I read the liner notes of the album this is from (Tales of a Librarian), where Tori has every song categorized, like in the Dewey Decimal system, and this one was filed under "Abuse of the Earth" and "Mary Magdalene." It was like everything coming together and connecting in a way that made total sense to me. Leo and I even formed a "Mary Club of the Sacred Feminine," lol. Now I am really tripping down memory lane.
Some lyrics from "Mary,"
"We got her armed as we buy and sell
Her rivers of milk running dry
Can't you hear the dolphin's cry?"
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
On not writing (Or, Of Fear and Fond Memories)
A few winters ago, I lived with my friend Tracy in a house at camp, and I've probably written about this winter before, and I'm sure I will write about it a million more times because I was so freakin' happy that winter.
The house at camp where I lived (called The Dispensary because in the summer, the medical staff lived there) looked like a cabin, with wood walls and this real "old" feeling to it, like living there was actually a time warp, in a nice way, back to something ancient, even though we did have modern conveniences there. I also loved the lights, they had a soft glow that on the wood walls just somehow reminded me of something primal. It actually had a feel that brought to mind my grandmother's house, probably the only other house I've loved as much as I love the Dispensary. Something about that house was just like IV nutrition for my soul.
It was winter when we were there, which meant there wasn't a lot going on at camp, so it was quiet and expansive. Camp has almost 300 acres of some of the most beautiful land I've ever known. I remember laying in bed in my room in the Dispensary, listening to owls calling and cedar trees creaking as I fell asleep. During the day, I took loooooong walks over acres of forests and shoreline. I had a favorite (huge) tree stump to sit on and think. I had a favorite path to walk out to this back road that wound around. It is my belief that that kind of connection to nature does wonders for the mind, the heart and the soul that nothing else does quite as well. I felt really at peace in some ways, even when I was full of despair (I mean, Bush had just been re-elected, for fuck's sake) or going through some tough stuff, I still felt connected to the world.
I started feeling more and more like an atheist, in the middle of feeling overcome with deep spiritual connection and a sense of the sacred. It was like who needs any kind of God or supernatural force when I have THIS? That's not to say I didn't believe in any supernatural things (though I definitely did not believe in the traditional idea of God and hadn't for years), but it just seemed like it was much more right in front of me than something "out there" and distant. It was glorious, everything about it. I remember walking under trees at night, figuring out where the path was without a flashlight by looking up and seeing where I could see sky (and winter stars on clear nights) between the branches. Or watching the moon reflected on the ocean. Going skinny-dipping by myself on one of those moonlit ocean nights, in inky blue water that was ice cold. Walking in the woods and feeling like I had a keen sense of the numinous, the magical, the sacred, the ancient. I have loved A LOT of places in my life, but I don't think I have ever loved any as fervently.
There are so many images from that time that are tattooed on my mind for all time. It was one of the simplest times of my life. So many nights, Tracy and I just sat around reading, reading tarot cards, eating really hearty and natural soups and breads that Tracy made, talking about the world, having deep conversations about everything imaginable. There were a lot of times we'd sit in silence, Tracy knitting, me writing. I could go on and on about how fucking awesome that winter was. Like how along with everything serious we also listened to David Cross and David Sedaris and laughed hysterically. It was like we could go from talking about what was deeply wrong with the world and feeling it so completely, or talking about the sacred feminine and the phases of the moon, to cracking up over something in The Onion's book Our Dumb Century. The way I've always thought of it was that humor was our way to deal with the sadness of the world without collapsing under it, a way to still have the capacity to care.
Part of what made that time so special was that there were lots of times we'd be reading individually, quietly, and then one of us would look up and share some thought about what we'd just read, and that could spark a whole conversation. I remember Tracy reading me Rumi's The Guest House, and how we discussed that. We both read Mists of Avalon and had all these conversations about that book (which still to this day is one of my favorites, and I always think of it as a winter book) and about the priestesses in the book and the natural magic they used.
It was that winter that, thanks to Tracy, I started reading Derrick Jensen, who I just fucking adore. He has such a great sensibility in the way he writes which is hard for me to describe. He has a very analytical mind and yet brings suuuuuch a depth of passion and emotion when he writes about the horrors that civilization is wreaking on the world, he gets to the heart, and he's also side-splittingly funny (anyone who can write about atrocities so unrelentingly and then actually make me laugh later on, is unquestioningly awesome in my book). A certain comment about porn and wanting to hit on a girl by talking about the unsustainability of the infrastructure of Las Vegas comes to mind. That was one of the moments that I stopped reading, laughed, and then read it aloud to Tracy.
Our living room was just littered with books - on history, on the occult, on politics, on the environment, memoirs, novels, poetry, graphic novels. I felt like I was always learning something, developing ideas in the discussions, connecting ideas together, exploring. But it wasn't all intellectual, what I loved is that it wasn't all abstract, I felt like the conversations also really encompassed the HEART of things too, the caring, the depth, the empathy (even if it was something difficult, and often it was). We also talked tons about boys, life, family issues, people we knew, our job, and everything else, but somehow always with that same kind of real depth and realness. Oh and we had music, always music.
In so many ways it was idyllic, my un-American American Dream - to live in a homey little place that looks like a cabin, on LOTS of land and feel the total contentment that comes with feeling so connected to the natural world, and have someone who's deep and smart and funny and REAL to share it with (though in my daydream of a future, said person would, along with those other attributes, be a gorgeous guy, lol). I feel like my words are not justifying how truly happy and satisfied I felt at that time in my life. And not just in a self-absorbed sort of way either, there was too much caring for the world to feel that.
Since that time, I haven't really felt that kind of fulfillment, in fact in some ways I have sort of shied away from a lot of that and haven't felt quite myself - and me being me, I've tried to analyze the why behind that shift. Is it that I don't have anyone to share it with, which makes these things a lot harder and more difficult to hold? Is it because I'm not so connected to nature now that I live off camp in my apartment (which I do love, let me say)? Is it because I routinely abandoned myself, my real feelings, my real interests, my self-worth, and etc. ad nauseum in my relationship with Mr. O? Is it because the state of the world just continues to get worse and there's only so much one person can handle thinking about when there's no one to share that with? Is it because I had to focus too much on survival, making sure my heat didn't get turned off and that I had enough money to eat and the dog was fed and everyone was happy? Is it because I got TV? In all likelihood, it's all of the above and then some more.
Whatever it is, I have felt kinda distant from myself for awhile, it's something I've struggled back and forth with in my journal for about the last ten months, because I feel like I'm on avoidance mode sometimes. And I know it, I see it, I have so many entries sporadically throughout the last year, where I try to figure out what I'm avoiding and why, hoping that'll do the trick, and yet I keep avoiding. I sit up at night watching mini-marathons of Without a Trace instead of writing, writing scares me. I hate that I feel that way. I mean sure, I've edited stuff, worked on it, but generating new writing scares me, even writing in my journal. There was even a while back in late summer and fall where I really didn't feel like myself at all. I wasn't even listening to music, which for anyone who knows me, is a red flag for "Chrys' brain might have been taken over by aliens." I also haven't been doing much reading in the last few years, which also is pretty unlike me. That's not to say all was for naught, I think I've grown a lot in the last few years, sometimes through very miserable experiences, and I think I've had positive changes too, it's just that I feel a certain something is missing. It really bothers me that I'm not writing. It's not that I feel blocked, more like I have an allergy to sitting down to write anything.
I do feel like things have been swinging back around in the last few months. I've made some really good friends who are just great, deep, feeling people who I can really share with, saw some old friends who are the same way, on my trip. I have this theory that people can either encourage you to be more yourself or less yourself, and I've been spending more time with people on the "more" side of that, which is just great. I've also felt a little inspired spiritually. Now that my apartment is all organized and set up the way I want it, I've been thinking more about decorating, bringing my own style out, which was partly sparked by something my friend Leo sent me for my birthday. I also started reading again on the day before Christmas Eve. One of my favorite people, a woman from my writing group who is just so awesome and real and all the good things, was staying over here and I slept on my couch and decided to read before bed and am now on my third book, so in that way, and a few others, I'm starting to really feel like myself again. The writing will probably come in time.
I have a writing residency coming up in a few weeks, and it'll basically be a retreat of sorts, at a B&B where I'll really have all day to write and do nothing else, and I hope that will jump start me.
I'm also going to HAWAII a week from today, with an awesome friend, to see some awesome friends, and I think that could definitely spark some creative juices. I often think of travel as a really good way to get clarity about current life, so I'm looking forward to that too.
I also became an alternative delegate for Obama, which should put me back into the political realm. Thats not exactly my ultimate goal of what I'd like to be doing to help the world, but it's a start, and I have to start somewhere.
Last night, I met some friends at the bar for drinks, and we ended up in this big discussion about books and ideas and about the origins of civilization and religion and how affected a society is by how it gets its food, which led to all kinds of tangents, and bringing up other books. It was fucking awesome. It was like, my soul soooooooo needed that, being around people who are passionate and active and intelligent. It was so great. Then we went and smoked pot on the roof of the organic food store, lol. It was fun.
I just keep trying to tell myself that the writing will come. A friend has the book Writing Alone and With Others, and the first part of that really struck me. It's about fear. Pat Schneider says:
"The first and greatest fear that blocks us as writers is the fear of the truth we might discover. The world, dressed in our habitual interpretations, is familiar to us. It may not be exactly safe, but we know how to walk in it. We can get from sunrise to sunset."
and later:
"The act of writing is a tremendous adventure into the unknown, always fraught with danger. But the deeper you go and the longer you work at your art, the greater will be your treasure."
I believe that. I have seen it as true many times on my writing journeys, and I sometimes sense that I'm on the brink of a pretty big one, digging deep into that unconscious, and in theory, the idea actually excites me massively, the adventure, I mean in a way it's the most basic mythological story, going on that journey for something meaningful and slaying the dragons along the way, or at least facing them. So maybe I just need to be a warrior and kick some ass and sit down and start writing. I think there has to be a point where you think, okay fear and resistance and procrastination and housework and whatever else are always going to be there, might as well walk into the darkness anyway and embark on that adventure of the innermost heart.
Currently Listening:
"Self Evident" - Ani DiFranco, a very contraversial spoken word piece she wrote in response to 9/11 with some real zinger lines. One that struck me as I was listening and typing this was, "Give back the night, its distant whistle/Give the darkness back its soul/Give the oil companies the finger, finally, and re-learn how to rock and roll." You have to love a song that starts off, "Us people, we're just poems/We're 90% metaphor/With a leanness of meaning approaching hyper-distillation/And once upon a time we were moonshine..."
The house at camp where I lived (called The Dispensary because in the summer, the medical staff lived there) looked like a cabin, with wood walls and this real "old" feeling to it, like living there was actually a time warp, in a nice way, back to something ancient, even though we did have modern conveniences there. I also loved the lights, they had a soft glow that on the wood walls just somehow reminded me of something primal. It actually had a feel that brought to mind my grandmother's house, probably the only other house I've loved as much as I love the Dispensary. Something about that house was just like IV nutrition for my soul.
It was winter when we were there, which meant there wasn't a lot going on at camp, so it was quiet and expansive. Camp has almost 300 acres of some of the most beautiful land I've ever known. I remember laying in bed in my room in the Dispensary, listening to owls calling and cedar trees creaking as I fell asleep. During the day, I took loooooong walks over acres of forests and shoreline. I had a favorite (huge) tree stump to sit on and think. I had a favorite path to walk out to this back road that wound around. It is my belief that that kind of connection to nature does wonders for the mind, the heart and the soul that nothing else does quite as well. I felt really at peace in some ways, even when I was full of despair (I mean, Bush had just been re-elected, for fuck's sake) or going through some tough stuff, I still felt connected to the world.
I started feeling more and more like an atheist, in the middle of feeling overcome with deep spiritual connection and a sense of the sacred. It was like who needs any kind of God or supernatural force when I have THIS? That's not to say I didn't believe in any supernatural things (though I definitely did not believe in the traditional idea of God and hadn't for years), but it just seemed like it was much more right in front of me than something "out there" and distant. It was glorious, everything about it. I remember walking under trees at night, figuring out where the path was without a flashlight by looking up and seeing where I could see sky (and winter stars on clear nights) between the branches. Or watching the moon reflected on the ocean. Going skinny-dipping by myself on one of those moonlit ocean nights, in inky blue water that was ice cold. Walking in the woods and feeling like I had a keen sense of the numinous, the magical, the sacred, the ancient. I have loved A LOT of places in my life, but I don't think I have ever loved any as fervently.
There are so many images from that time that are tattooed on my mind for all time. It was one of the simplest times of my life. So many nights, Tracy and I just sat around reading, reading tarot cards, eating really hearty and natural soups and breads that Tracy made, talking about the world, having deep conversations about everything imaginable. There were a lot of times we'd sit in silence, Tracy knitting, me writing. I could go on and on about how fucking awesome that winter was. Like how along with everything serious we also listened to David Cross and David Sedaris and laughed hysterically. It was like we could go from talking about what was deeply wrong with the world and feeling it so completely, or talking about the sacred feminine and the phases of the moon, to cracking up over something in The Onion's book Our Dumb Century. The way I've always thought of it was that humor was our way to deal with the sadness of the world without collapsing under it, a way to still have the capacity to care.
Part of what made that time so special was that there were lots of times we'd be reading individually, quietly, and then one of us would look up and share some thought about what we'd just read, and that could spark a whole conversation. I remember Tracy reading me Rumi's The Guest House, and how we discussed that. We both read Mists of Avalon and had all these conversations about that book (which still to this day is one of my favorites, and I always think of it as a winter book) and about the priestesses in the book and the natural magic they used.
It was that winter that, thanks to Tracy, I started reading Derrick Jensen, who I just fucking adore. He has such a great sensibility in the way he writes which is hard for me to describe. He has a very analytical mind and yet brings suuuuuch a depth of passion and emotion when he writes about the horrors that civilization is wreaking on the world, he gets to the heart, and he's also side-splittingly funny (anyone who can write about atrocities so unrelentingly and then actually make me laugh later on, is unquestioningly awesome in my book). A certain comment about porn and wanting to hit on a girl by talking about the unsustainability of the infrastructure of Las Vegas comes to mind. That was one of the moments that I stopped reading, laughed, and then read it aloud to Tracy.
Our living room was just littered with books - on history, on the occult, on politics, on the environment, memoirs, novels, poetry, graphic novels. I felt like I was always learning something, developing ideas in the discussions, connecting ideas together, exploring. But it wasn't all intellectual, what I loved is that it wasn't all abstract, I felt like the conversations also really encompassed the HEART of things too, the caring, the depth, the empathy (even if it was something difficult, and often it was). We also talked tons about boys, life, family issues, people we knew, our job, and everything else, but somehow always with that same kind of real depth and realness. Oh and we had music, always music.
In so many ways it was idyllic, my un-American American Dream - to live in a homey little place that looks like a cabin, on LOTS of land and feel the total contentment that comes with feeling so connected to the natural world, and have someone who's deep and smart and funny and REAL to share it with (though in my daydream of a future, said person would, along with those other attributes, be a gorgeous guy, lol). I feel like my words are not justifying how truly happy and satisfied I felt at that time in my life. And not just in a self-absorbed sort of way either, there was too much caring for the world to feel that.
Since that time, I haven't really felt that kind of fulfillment, in fact in some ways I have sort of shied away from a lot of that and haven't felt quite myself - and me being me, I've tried to analyze the why behind that shift. Is it that I don't have anyone to share it with, which makes these things a lot harder and more difficult to hold? Is it because I'm not so connected to nature now that I live off camp in my apartment (which I do love, let me say)? Is it because I routinely abandoned myself, my real feelings, my real interests, my self-worth, and etc. ad nauseum in my relationship with Mr. O? Is it because the state of the world just continues to get worse and there's only so much one person can handle thinking about when there's no one to share that with? Is it because I had to focus too much on survival, making sure my heat didn't get turned off and that I had enough money to eat and the dog was fed and everyone was happy? Is it because I got TV? In all likelihood, it's all of the above and then some more.
Whatever it is, I have felt kinda distant from myself for awhile, it's something I've struggled back and forth with in my journal for about the last ten months, because I feel like I'm on avoidance mode sometimes. And I know it, I see it, I have so many entries sporadically throughout the last year, where I try to figure out what I'm avoiding and why, hoping that'll do the trick, and yet I keep avoiding. I sit up at night watching mini-marathons of Without a Trace instead of writing, writing scares me. I hate that I feel that way. I mean sure, I've edited stuff, worked on it, but generating new writing scares me, even writing in my journal. There was even a while back in late summer and fall where I really didn't feel like myself at all. I wasn't even listening to music, which for anyone who knows me, is a red flag for "Chrys' brain might have been taken over by aliens." I also haven't been doing much reading in the last few years, which also is pretty unlike me. That's not to say all was for naught, I think I've grown a lot in the last few years, sometimes through very miserable experiences, and I think I've had positive changes too, it's just that I feel a certain something is missing. It really bothers me that I'm not writing. It's not that I feel blocked, more like I have an allergy to sitting down to write anything.
I do feel like things have been swinging back around in the last few months. I've made some really good friends who are just great, deep, feeling people who I can really share with, saw some old friends who are the same way, on my trip. I have this theory that people can either encourage you to be more yourself or less yourself, and I've been spending more time with people on the "more" side of that, which is just great. I've also felt a little inspired spiritually. Now that my apartment is all organized and set up the way I want it, I've been thinking more about decorating, bringing my own style out, which was partly sparked by something my friend Leo sent me for my birthday. I also started reading again on the day before Christmas Eve. One of my favorite people, a woman from my writing group who is just so awesome and real and all the good things, was staying over here and I slept on my couch and decided to read before bed and am now on my third book, so in that way, and a few others, I'm starting to really feel like myself again. The writing will probably come in time.
I have a writing residency coming up in a few weeks, and it'll basically be a retreat of sorts, at a B&B where I'll really have all day to write and do nothing else, and I hope that will jump start me.
I'm also going to HAWAII a week from today, with an awesome friend, to see some awesome friends, and I think that could definitely spark some creative juices. I often think of travel as a really good way to get clarity about current life, so I'm looking forward to that too.
I also became an alternative delegate for Obama, which should put me back into the political realm. Thats not exactly my ultimate goal of what I'd like to be doing to help the world, but it's a start, and I have to start somewhere.
Last night, I met some friends at the bar for drinks, and we ended up in this big discussion about books and ideas and about the origins of civilization and religion and how affected a society is by how it gets its food, which led to all kinds of tangents, and bringing up other books. It was fucking awesome. It was like, my soul soooooooo needed that, being around people who are passionate and active and intelligent. It was so great. Then we went and smoked pot on the roof of the organic food store, lol. It was fun.
I just keep trying to tell myself that the writing will come. A friend has the book Writing Alone and With Others, and the first part of that really struck me. It's about fear. Pat Schneider says:
"The first and greatest fear that blocks us as writers is the fear of the truth we might discover. The world, dressed in our habitual interpretations, is familiar to us. It may not be exactly safe, but we know how to walk in it. We can get from sunrise to sunset."
and later:
"The act of writing is a tremendous adventure into the unknown, always fraught with danger. But the deeper you go and the longer you work at your art, the greater will be your treasure."
I believe that. I have seen it as true many times on my writing journeys, and I sometimes sense that I'm on the brink of a pretty big one, digging deep into that unconscious, and in theory, the idea actually excites me massively, the adventure, I mean in a way it's the most basic mythological story, going on that journey for something meaningful and slaying the dragons along the way, or at least facing them. So maybe I just need to be a warrior and kick some ass and sit down and start writing. I think there has to be a point where you think, okay fear and resistance and procrastination and housework and whatever else are always going to be there, might as well walk into the darkness anyway and embark on that adventure of the innermost heart.
Currently Listening:
"Self Evident" - Ani DiFranco, a very contraversial spoken word piece she wrote in response to 9/11 with some real zinger lines. One that struck me as I was listening and typing this was, "Give back the night, its distant whistle/Give the darkness back its soul/Give the oil companies the finger, finally, and re-learn how to rock and roll." You have to love a song that starts off, "Us people, we're just poems/We're 90% metaphor/With a leanness of meaning approaching hyper-distillation/And once upon a time we were moonshine..."
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Getting Older
On Monday, I turned 27, which somehow feels a lot older than 26, but not in a bad way. I was sort of always eager to grow up in some ways, I think because I always felt like I was treated as soooo much younger at home that it just felt so incredibly claustrophobic. Even just thinking about it and remembering is making me tense up, like that feeling of claustrophobia is still stored in muscle memory.
I don't know if it's because of my albinism - perhaps paleness makes people think of innocence - or because of my disability, or because I sometimes have trouble standing up for myself, but for whatever reason, I get that a lot. One time I was at the Seattle airport, my first time there, and I couldn't find my gate, and so I asked for help, and so this woman led me to my gate, and at some point during the conversation she asked me about high school, and I told her I was in college, and she told me she thought I was fifteen. I was soooo insulted! Another time, Mr. O told me that he thought of me as seventeen or eighteen, and I was soooooooooo upset. I mean, this was someone who knew me well, often told me how independent I was. I was beyond pissed and hurt. Sometimes I even get it from friends, where I feel dismissed or bossed around, and it just makes me nuts.
In a lot of ways, I have always felt older, even as a little kid and a teenager. I wanted to think for myself, make my own decisions, be treated as an equal. I usually tended to get along better with adults, and even now, most of my friends are older. Sometimes I think that social isolation I experienced growing up forced me to look inward more, really get in touch with that inner landscape and contemplate things on a deep level at an early age. It was either that or all the reading I did. It has often made me feel like a stranger to my age.
Which has sometimes made it hard. In a way in all this lusting for adulthood and independence, I never got to be a kid. Or, to put it another way, I got the crap parts of being treated like a kid - treated like I couldn't make my own decisions, told what to do at every point, got my opinions dismissed at every turn, had rules and restrictions that would have applied better if I was five to ten years younger, and just generally disregarded - and missed out on some of the more pleasant things that traditionally come with being a kid. And in some ways, though I hate to admit it, I am young for my age, mostly socially, though I'm working on that. That's sort of what I wrote about in that piece that's in The Sun.
So though I know I should be happy when people think I'm younger (isn't that what every woman wants?), I'm usually not. It just doesn't register for me that way at all.
As an independent person, I so vehemently hated being treated as younger, and I guess always had the idea that if I was older people might treat me better and wouldn't be able to get away with treating me like a kid, so I actually feel a new measure of relief from that old claustrophobia every time I circle around the sun again. So I'm glad to be 27, and that it feels, for some strange reason, a lot older than 26.
It's like, who can mess with 27?
Currently Listening:
"Fix You Up" - Tegan & Sara
I don't know if it's because of my albinism - perhaps paleness makes people think of innocence - or because of my disability, or because I sometimes have trouble standing up for myself, but for whatever reason, I get that a lot. One time I was at the Seattle airport, my first time there, and I couldn't find my gate, and so I asked for help, and so this woman led me to my gate, and at some point during the conversation she asked me about high school, and I told her I was in college, and she told me she thought I was fifteen. I was soooo insulted! Another time, Mr. O told me that he thought of me as seventeen or eighteen, and I was soooooooooo upset. I mean, this was someone who knew me well, often told me how independent I was. I was beyond pissed and hurt. Sometimes I even get it from friends, where I feel dismissed or bossed around, and it just makes me nuts.
In a lot of ways, I have always felt older, even as a little kid and a teenager. I wanted to think for myself, make my own decisions, be treated as an equal. I usually tended to get along better with adults, and even now, most of my friends are older. Sometimes I think that social isolation I experienced growing up forced me to look inward more, really get in touch with that inner landscape and contemplate things on a deep level at an early age. It was either that or all the reading I did. It has often made me feel like a stranger to my age.
Which has sometimes made it hard. In a way in all this lusting for adulthood and independence, I never got to be a kid. Or, to put it another way, I got the crap parts of being treated like a kid - treated like I couldn't make my own decisions, told what to do at every point, got my opinions dismissed at every turn, had rules and restrictions that would have applied better if I was five to ten years younger, and just generally disregarded - and missed out on some of the more pleasant things that traditionally come with being a kid. And in some ways, though I hate to admit it, I am young for my age, mostly socially, though I'm working on that. That's sort of what I wrote about in that piece that's in The Sun.
So though I know I should be happy when people think I'm younger (isn't that what every woman wants?), I'm usually not. It just doesn't register for me that way at all.
As an independent person, I so vehemently hated being treated as younger, and I guess always had the idea that if I was older people might treat me better and wouldn't be able to get away with treating me like a kid, so I actually feel a new measure of relief from that old claustrophobia every time I circle around the sun again. So I'm glad to be 27, and that it feels, for some strange reason, a lot older than 26.
It's like, who can mess with 27?
Currently Listening:
"Fix You Up" - Tegan & Sara
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