It's been about a month now since my epic journey Eastward.
What's that? WHAT journey Eastward, you ask?
My path laid itself out - not by itself, mind you, I made many decisions that set the road before me - and pointed toward the rising sun. Plans were set, arrangements made, reservations called in, and packing done. Oh, so much packing. I knew I didn't have very much, all things considered. (When I found myself suddenly homeless and single a year ago, I discovered I had pretty much no furniture at all.) But surprisingly, when I made the decision to take ALL my things with me, I discovered I had more than I remembered. I had received some wise advice to get the bigger size trailer, even if I thought I could make do with a smaller one... and thank goodness I had listened. The larger trailer was packed to the brim.
The plans had been laid out dependant on school acceptance. Then, when those narrowed down and pointed my feet to the lands beyond the mountains, they became refined based on seasons. I had originally planned on leaving around the New Year, to stay for the birth of my newest nephew, but the weather would almost certainly render travel over the mountains impossible with a trailer. After some consideration, a new date was set for mid-October.
I had compatriots, company to keep me sane on what would be no less than a 25-hour drive. drivers to switch me out and give me a shot at a mid-road nap. Distraction to keep me awake and lucid in the middle of the night. Shiko, for as well as she travels, isn't much of a conversationalist, and I was glad for the companionship.
It went a little like this.
A week prior to my departure date, I started training my replacement at work. I showed her everything I knew and hoped she would take good care of the business and its patients when I left. Still, even after a week of training, I felt a pang of guilt - I knew the system like the back of my hand. I had been there since the business opened. I was leaving it behind, and could only hope the new girl would take as much pride and care in her work as I did. Then, the morning of, I gassed up the car, picked up the trailer, and set to packing. I had help from some very experienced packers; my folks have moved so many times they're masters at Box-Tetris. Then, collecting the cat as the last step, I cast a tearful wave goodbye as I climbed the driveway one last time.
I had a long drive alone to Sacramento. It was largely uneventful, and I found the countryside strangely hospitable. It was a shock to see how much of Clearlake had been recently burned, and a strange pang hit me at how much of the town I recognized. Old memories, there. I made it past the mountians by nightfall, and wandered into Sacramento proper.
And came to hate the city with a fiery, burning passion.
You see, there's a Hwy 80, and then there's a Hwy 80 Business. But Hwy 80 Business is also Hwy 99, but they don't SAY that on the sign, and... well... I got horrendously lost. With a trailer. After nearly eight hours in a car. With an exhausted cat. I stopped to ask for directions to Hwy 80 Business from a gas station, and he had no clue how to get there. How the heck do you live in a city and not know how to get to the freeways? I shook my head, tried to follow the directions of the nice biker, wound up further lost, stopped at yet ANOTHER gas station, asked for directions there, and she had trouble figuring out where the heck to send me. Not because she didn't know the roads, but because the roads are damn confusing and she didn't want to send me to Reno by accident.
Eventually I found my way to where I was supposed to stay. I managed to scrape the top of the trailer on an underhang, and that was basically the last straw. I despise being lost, particularly when I'm already tired and cranky, and on top of that every extra mile was more gas money wasted on a tight budget. I was two steps away from screaming, and then I hit the underside of the building with the trailer, scratching it. I railed against my stupidity and raged ineffectually in the dark, before collecting myself finally and finding a place to park. After that, I honestly was not surprised by the urine-covered elevator floor, the hideously stained carpet, the enormous burn-stains in the bedcover. It was a place to sleep. It would have to be enough.
I woke the next morning and left quickly, stopping by the airport to pick up my travel companions. From there, ecstatic to finally see them and know I would no longer be alone, we struck out Eastward. (With a quick stop at In-N-Out, of course.)
The day was long, and the road varied. We had many mountains to cross, an we wound our way through the passes to the everlasting flatness of Nevada. We joked and laughed, debated and discussed, traded stories and caught up as we trekked across the endless expanse. Night fell and we crossed into Utah, and I was struck suddenly by the fact that I had never driven so far Eastward before. Flown, sure, but never driven. It looked like the day would pass uneventfully.
But, like the night before, the dark seemed to bring misfortune with it. Shortly before we reached Salt Lake City, my relief driver found himself needing to quickly sidestep a sizeable hunk of deer carcass. He avoided it neatly with expert timing... only to find himself faced with an impossible task of avoiding the other half of the deer. There was nowhere to go, no way of dodging it this time - not with a heavy trailer. With a sickening crunch-clunk, we straddled it as best we were able. By the time we reached the hotel afterwards,the shock had mostly worn off, but a quick cursory inspection showed us that the deer had left a reminder of the encounter,with blood and fur and worse splattered up the front of the trailer and the back of the car. Thankfully, this hotel was considerably better and we slept well enough to counter the day's excitement.
The morning came, and we headed out early to try for Colorado by nightfall. Utah came and went with little to note, and then Wyoming. I was unprepared for the enormous vastness of it all, the sheer expanse. The horizon just seemed to keep going in all directions, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the old Wild West and those who attempted to tame it. How lost they could become, and how easily. But soon it grew tedious, and I was all the more thankful for the presence of my compatriots.
Miles stretched ever onward, and I found myself quite restless by the time the sun sank to the horizon. It was just after sunset when we hit Colorado, and it was actually a reasonable time of night when we arrived at our destination. The relief was palpable. Exhausted, we left the unloading for the next day.
I've always fancied myself a child of the West. I've lived there all my life. No place I've ever called home was terribly far from the ocean. But now, perhaps, I know that I was a child of the New West. The West Coast was settled in the latter part of the movement West, and here in the sight of the Rockies... here is the Old West. Sure, I'm East of everything I've ever really known. But does that make me an Easterling? Or still one of the Men of the West?
I think it's the latter.
With that, I set about becoming a new resident of Denver.
November 17, 2012
September 22, 2012
Fragments
I live in a world of lyrics.
Conversations. People speak, and a word, a phrase, some key unlocks the memory in my mind, and the sentence finishes in my mind with the song. Thoughts are fleeting, touches of memory interlaced with present (or is it the other way 'round?).
... just follow your eyes... just follow your eyes...
They say I'm haunted. I say everyone is, I just don't bother hiding it. The voices in my head won't shut up. You have them too, I can see it in your eyes. They whisper to you in the darkness, your self doubts, your sins, your rage telling you to just... let... go...
I get into the car, iPod on, and hit random. Boys of Summer. Clear as crystal, the association ignites a fire of thought. (Your face is always there... [never forget...]) Immediately, I pass some unfortunate creature on the side of the road (this time it's a possum) and the scent of death hits my senses. It's sharp, but old. I know the scent of dead things. It's the blood that does it - a cadaver without blood is mostly dry and barely carries a scent at all. No, it's the blood. (... he had no blood left when I saw him... none of them did [they did that on purpose.])
The faces come unbidden, the words unwanted. The Litany remains in blood and tears, even though I tried to put it down. Bricks. So many bricks in a giant burlap sack that I carry like a cross down an old dusty road. But I hide it, see? Nobody wants to see what's in the bag. Everyone has a bag. Some big. Some small. Everyone hides it. If you don't, you're a "complainer" or "just looking for attention". Sure, some people wear their suffering on their sleeve like they're a martyr. But then the ones with legitimate pain can't come forward, for fear of being branded. Mine? Mine is survivor's guilt. I know it well. It's an old friend, like that neighbor that keeps borrowing your things and then never giving them back. I don't like it much, and it keeps reciting the Litany to me, but it's a part of my life. I put on a nice smile and deal with it. It's either that or fight it, and fighting it accomplished nothing.
What's the Litany?
... what if everything around you... isn't quite what it seems...
The names of the dead. The faces. The ages. How they died. The story. (... the story [a man is never truly dead...]) I heard once that a man is never truly dead until he is forgotten. I remember. I feel like I have to. Like someone must. That if I bear witness, they won't really be dead. Not really. Not gone. Not entirely. (These burdens aren't MINE! [stop fighting it, struggling makes it worse] It's not fair!) I tried to put it down. But it's a scar. You can't put scars down. They'll heal over, you can nurse them until they get better, but they never really go entirely away.
...what if all the world you think you know... is an elaborate dream...
I think the hardest job in the world has to be a military doctor. I used to think it was being an ER doc, dealing with the absolute worst of humanity in the most feral state of pain, bleeding, dying, pus and vomit and bile and insides on the outside. Bones poking through the skin. And at the same time, half the people are crazed, drugged, just insane - and may try to actually hurt you. The stories. The stories make my hair stand on end. THIS is humanity? Then I thought being a soldier was worse, being far from home and under fire, far from help, watching your friend die beside you from a gut shot. But what about the field docs? The ones handling both the screaming bloody death and the gunfire?
How do you survive that?
Ever stop to think about how difficult it is for a doctor to tell a mother her child's dead, or a husband his wife was DOA? And it's somehow their fault, for not trying hard enough to save them, for being incompetent, they get the blame... but they're human. They don't want the patient to die. They don't give up just because it's too hard. And then they get blamed. Can you imagine that? How do you wake up the next day and go into the same damn room the next damn day (all cleaned up, of course [the blood washes away, but not the memory]) with a new smiling patient with stomach cramps.... every day, you keep getting up and going back... over and over... and over... (to repeat the same steps [and expect different results] is madness...)
Madness is tempting.
... wish I was too dead to cry...
I've brushed it. Tasted it. The dance down that path is dark and close; it seems comforting enough at first (how hard could it really be? [it's so much easier to just let go... let go...])... easier, lighter. That's how it captures you. But too far and it becomes hell. You're no longer in control. What you're saying comes out differently than what you thought. Soon you question reality. Sleep and wakefulness blur, nightmares follow you into daylight. No. Madness is not easier. But once it sinks its claws in... (I want out! [stay with us, precious one... you cannot leave] LET ME OUT!)
...wish I was too dead to care... if indeed I cared at all...
But that is not here. Neither here nor there. Yet everywhere. They say I am haunted. My thoughts are fleeting and indistinct, more peripheral glimpses of sensory perception than actually fully-formed beings of their own right. I write, and they manifest. I float from one to the next.
I hit the treeline. A Forest, by The Cure. A particular mix. Instant recognition. Faces. Scents. I live in a world of senses, like I live in a world of lyrics. I taste the words, I feel the sounds. Sights invoke a scent. Criscrossed like so much wiring gone awry to make strangely beautiful music. The melody hums in my ears as I focus on harmony, I catch what others don't. The deer in the pasture. The hawk in the tree. The fish in the stream. "Good eye," they say. But it wasn't my faulty eyes that caught it. I heard the heartbeat through the ground. I smelled it before I saw it. Except motion. I'm all instinct then. Motion - just a flash from the corner of my eye - and I've caught a snake in my hands. (not terribly smart [just a racer snake]... what if it had been a rattler?) Emotions mix with music like water and wine and I'm near to tears. They've started to not ask why.
... mad world...
But you'll read this and think I'm crazy, or sad, or angry. Depressed, a danger to myself. None of these things are true.
Every day a thousand thoughts run in rapid succession through my distracted mind. Triggered by a thousand little associations, linked irrevocably to the faces of loved ones and times gone by, I cannot help it. A river is full of water it gains from a thousand little rivulets, as I am full of memories from a thousand little events. Each one carries with it the scents and emotions and thoughts and fears and melodies from a million seconds I can't recall with any clarity but come rushing back where the river meets the sea.
This world that I live in, the world of lyrics, the world of senses, the world where thoughts emotions collide as violently yet beautifully as galaxies crossing paths... they tell me no one else sees this world like I do. ("That's one of the reasons I like hanging out with you".) My perspective may be through a stain glass window, but sometimes the colors bleed together and become a mosaic of beauty where others only see the broken glass.
... I'd like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly...
Perhaps you think I AM mad. But I know better. Only those who have gotten lost and found the path back know what it looks like. Sounds overproud, maybe? True. Some have travelled much further down the path, seen things I haven't, known horrors I can't even imagine. But they know I am not mad. Haunted, yes. But not mad. (The voices are real [you have them too] I'm not imagining this [you never were] but that's okay, they're my friends [with friends like that...]) And the inspiring thing is that someone ordinary, like myself, can GET lost, and MAKE it back alive, covered in thorns and burrs and scratches and dirt, but knowing the way out of the dark hole they fell into. Because now not only will they not fall in again, they can help others out of it, too.
... by the hallways in this dining-room, the echo there of me and you, the voices that are carrying this tune...
So when we speak, and my eyes skirt the edges of the room, if I mutter a strange phrase under my breath far removed from my normal way of speaking, if we're out in the sunlight and I stare at something overlong, if I talk to an inanimate object like an injured child or greet some strange little animal like a friend, it's not because I'm insane. It's because I'm dancing through the thoughts in my head, trying to see the world around the filters, hearing a constant stream of music accompanying me even as I try to listen to what you're saying. I'm trying to recall the memories without associating them with your face (the faces always come unbidden) and trying not to see the look of shock when I blurt out something I probably ought not to have said aloud.
... I want to exorcise the demons from your past...
I'll be okay, I promise. I've made it this far. A seed, planted in a crevasse, will be battered by the elements, starve for nutrients, yet manage to eke out enough to survive. My cliff wasn't as steep as some, my crevasse wider than some, the wind perhaps not as persistent. Yet challenges came, and I surmounted them, many and more and those coming I face down with teeth bared. The tree that takes root and survives becomes a bonsai, twisted by the elements into something other than its intended shape, but beautiful nonetheless, hardy, persistent in its own right. I am tenacious, capricious, and nothing if not absolutely resilient.
I live in a world that is not like yours. But yet I live in your world.
Be patient with me.
Nightmares come, but the morning always follows.
... it's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep, because my dreams are bursting at the seams.
(You think I'll cry? I won't cry. My heart will break before I cry...)
(... I will go MAD.)
... Tilt your head back, and howl.
Conversations. People speak, and a word, a phrase, some key unlocks the memory in my mind, and the sentence finishes in my mind with the song. Thoughts are fleeting, touches of memory interlaced with present (or is it the other way 'round?).
... just follow your eyes... just follow your eyes...
They say I'm haunted. I say everyone is, I just don't bother hiding it. The voices in my head won't shut up. You have them too, I can see it in your eyes. They whisper to you in the darkness, your self doubts, your sins, your rage telling you to just... let... go...
I get into the car, iPod on, and hit random. Boys of Summer. Clear as crystal, the association ignites a fire of thought. (Your face is always there... [never forget...]) Immediately, I pass some unfortunate creature on the side of the road (this time it's a possum) and the scent of death hits my senses. It's sharp, but old. I know the scent of dead things. It's the blood that does it - a cadaver without blood is mostly dry and barely carries a scent at all. No, it's the blood. (... he had no blood left when I saw him... none of them did [they did that on purpose.])
The faces come unbidden, the words unwanted. The Litany remains in blood and tears, even though I tried to put it down. Bricks. So many bricks in a giant burlap sack that I carry like a cross down an old dusty road. But I hide it, see? Nobody wants to see what's in the bag. Everyone has a bag. Some big. Some small. Everyone hides it. If you don't, you're a "complainer" or "just looking for attention". Sure, some people wear their suffering on their sleeve like they're a martyr. But then the ones with legitimate pain can't come forward, for fear of being branded. Mine? Mine is survivor's guilt. I know it well. It's an old friend, like that neighbor that keeps borrowing your things and then never giving them back. I don't like it much, and it keeps reciting the Litany to me, but it's a part of my life. I put on a nice smile and deal with it. It's either that or fight it, and fighting it accomplished nothing.
What's the Litany?
... what if everything around you... isn't quite what it seems...
The names of the dead. The faces. The ages. How they died. The story. (... the story [a man is never truly dead...]) I heard once that a man is never truly dead until he is forgotten. I remember. I feel like I have to. Like someone must. That if I bear witness, they won't really be dead. Not really. Not gone. Not entirely. (These burdens aren't MINE! [stop fighting it, struggling makes it worse] It's not fair!) I tried to put it down. But it's a scar. You can't put scars down. They'll heal over, you can nurse them until they get better, but they never really go entirely away.
...what if all the world you think you know... is an elaborate dream...
I think the hardest job in the world has to be a military doctor. I used to think it was being an ER doc, dealing with the absolute worst of humanity in the most feral state of pain, bleeding, dying, pus and vomit and bile and insides on the outside. Bones poking through the skin. And at the same time, half the people are crazed, drugged, just insane - and may try to actually hurt you. The stories. The stories make my hair stand on end. THIS is humanity? Then I thought being a soldier was worse, being far from home and under fire, far from help, watching your friend die beside you from a gut shot. But what about the field docs? The ones handling both the screaming bloody death and the gunfire?
How do you survive that?
Ever stop to think about how difficult it is for a doctor to tell a mother her child's dead, or a husband his wife was DOA? And it's somehow their fault, for not trying hard enough to save them, for being incompetent, they get the blame... but they're human. They don't want the patient to die. They don't give up just because it's too hard. And then they get blamed. Can you imagine that? How do you wake up the next day and go into the same damn room the next damn day (all cleaned up, of course [the blood washes away, but not the memory]) with a new smiling patient with stomach cramps.... every day, you keep getting up and going back... over and over... and over... (to repeat the same steps [and expect different results] is madness...)
Madness is tempting.
... wish I was too dead to cry...
I've brushed it. Tasted it. The dance down that path is dark and close; it seems comforting enough at first (how hard could it really be? [it's so much easier to just let go... let go...])... easier, lighter. That's how it captures you. But too far and it becomes hell. You're no longer in control. What you're saying comes out differently than what you thought. Soon you question reality. Sleep and wakefulness blur, nightmares follow you into daylight. No. Madness is not easier. But once it sinks its claws in... (I want out! [stay with us, precious one... you cannot leave] LET ME OUT!)
...wish I was too dead to care... if indeed I cared at all...
But that is not here. Neither here nor there. Yet everywhere. They say I am haunted. My thoughts are fleeting and indistinct, more peripheral glimpses of sensory perception than actually fully-formed beings of their own right. I write, and they manifest. I float from one to the next.
I hit the treeline. A Forest, by The Cure. A particular mix. Instant recognition. Faces. Scents. I live in a world of senses, like I live in a world of lyrics. I taste the words, I feel the sounds. Sights invoke a scent. Criscrossed like so much wiring gone awry to make strangely beautiful music. The melody hums in my ears as I focus on harmony, I catch what others don't. The deer in the pasture. The hawk in the tree. The fish in the stream. "Good eye," they say. But it wasn't my faulty eyes that caught it. I heard the heartbeat through the ground. I smelled it before I saw it. Except motion. I'm all instinct then. Motion - just a flash from the corner of my eye - and I've caught a snake in my hands. (not terribly smart [just a racer snake]... what if it had been a rattler?) Emotions mix with music like water and wine and I'm near to tears. They've started to not ask why.
... mad world...
But you'll read this and think I'm crazy, or sad, or angry. Depressed, a danger to myself. None of these things are true.
Every day a thousand thoughts run in rapid succession through my distracted mind. Triggered by a thousand little associations, linked irrevocably to the faces of loved ones and times gone by, I cannot help it. A river is full of water it gains from a thousand little rivulets, as I am full of memories from a thousand little events. Each one carries with it the scents and emotions and thoughts and fears and melodies from a million seconds I can't recall with any clarity but come rushing back where the river meets the sea.
This world that I live in, the world of lyrics, the world of senses, the world where thoughts emotions collide as violently yet beautifully as galaxies crossing paths... they tell me no one else sees this world like I do. ("That's one of the reasons I like hanging out with you".) My perspective may be through a stain glass window, but sometimes the colors bleed together and become a mosaic of beauty where others only see the broken glass.
... I'd like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly...
Perhaps you think I AM mad. But I know better. Only those who have gotten lost and found the path back know what it looks like. Sounds overproud, maybe? True. Some have travelled much further down the path, seen things I haven't, known horrors I can't even imagine. But they know I am not mad. Haunted, yes. But not mad. (The voices are real [you have them too] I'm not imagining this [you never were] but that's okay, they're my friends [with friends like that...]) And the inspiring thing is that someone ordinary, like myself, can GET lost, and MAKE it back alive, covered in thorns and burrs and scratches and dirt, but knowing the way out of the dark hole they fell into. Because now not only will they not fall in again, they can help others out of it, too.
... by the hallways in this dining-room, the echo there of me and you, the voices that are carrying this tune...
So when we speak, and my eyes skirt the edges of the room, if I mutter a strange phrase under my breath far removed from my normal way of speaking, if we're out in the sunlight and I stare at something overlong, if I talk to an inanimate object like an injured child or greet some strange little animal like a friend, it's not because I'm insane. It's because I'm dancing through the thoughts in my head, trying to see the world around the filters, hearing a constant stream of music accompanying me even as I try to listen to what you're saying. I'm trying to recall the memories without associating them with your face (the faces always come unbidden) and trying not to see the look of shock when I blurt out something I probably ought not to have said aloud.
... I want to exorcise the demons from your past...
I'll be okay, I promise. I've made it this far. A seed, planted in a crevasse, will be battered by the elements, starve for nutrients, yet manage to eke out enough to survive. My cliff wasn't as steep as some, my crevasse wider than some, the wind perhaps not as persistent. Yet challenges came, and I surmounted them, many and more and those coming I face down with teeth bared. The tree that takes root and survives becomes a bonsai, twisted by the elements into something other than its intended shape, but beautiful nonetheless, hardy, persistent in its own right. I am tenacious, capricious, and nothing if not absolutely resilient.
I live in a world that is not like yours. But yet I live in your world.
Be patient with me.
Nightmares come, but the morning always follows.
... it's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep, because my dreams are bursting at the seams.
(You think I'll cry? I won't cry. My heart will break before I cry...)
(... I will go MAD.)
... Tilt your head back, and howl.
August 27, 2012
The Length of the Road
Sometimes, I wander.
Often as not, it's for no reason. I don't need one, usually. The redwoods are welcoming enough in their own right to not need a purpose. Sometimes the sunlight just beckons, whether or not there's a chill in the air, and sometimes the crashing surf is less like a pounding froth and more like a waving hand. Sometimes the hill looks just inviting enough to climb to the top, the curiosity strong enough to see... exactly what's over there, anyway?
But this time - as occasionally does happen - it was with a purpose.
I have worn many mantles; of late, I have found myself very comfortably wearing the moniker Vagabond like a well-worn coat. It keeps the weather out, though it may be shabby, and it certainly has a few stories to tell. This time, the Vagabond had a mission. No other sane person would undertake it - leastways, nobody I know - for surely there were better, more efficient ways of accomplishing what I had my mind set on. Truth is, I had plenty of reasons to do it the way I chose... but nobody else would understand.
So with plans that only reached so far - and got more than slightly tentative as the map reached its mark - at least two places to stay set as waypoints, and a fast-and-loose schedule, I packed my bags, emptied my trunk, and got enough money to get me there and back again, plus a little extra. Just in case.
A Vagabond ALWAYS plans for Just In Case. Hell, that's why I packed enough fluid and food to sustain me a week (not happily, nor nutritionally, but enough), as well as a warm blanket and a pillow. You never know. Point in fact, you come to count on it. The unexpected - while nebulous - is a certainty. Something inevitably comes up. Nothing ever goes perfectly to plan (if plans were ever perfect in the first place). A true Vagabond comes to count on it, almost rely on it. Countless unknowns and variables become just a matter of what's on today's menu, what kind of condition the road's in, who you meet in the supermarket. Pretty soon, roadwork, delays, traffic, the occasional attempted robbery, roadkill, flat tire, or random screaming guy down the block become as familiar as faces in a local supermarket. A trip isn't complete without a Wrong Turn, at least one Douchebag Driver, and a Forgotten Item. They become markers. Road signs. Little stones on the path.
I went about the start of it in a most peculiar manner. I had directions printed, a few contingencies planned, and an extra set of clothes. Just in case. But I bid goodbye to my cat that morning not as I hit the road, but rather as I left for work. I wouldn't depart 'till late afternoon, during what this town calls "rush hour". I always half-smile when I even think on it, because "rush hour" here is considered a smooth weekend where I had been living the past several years. But with several hours left of daylight to burn, I aimed to be out of the mountains by dark. Set my teeth, turned on my music... and the journey began as the wee sleepy town I call my residence slipped from view, and the 101 became my new home.
The familiarity of the drive was ever-present. Hills gave way to views of the bay, and those were swept aside by curtains of forest. Shades upon shades of greens and browns - pastures dotted with cattle, rickety houses standing lonesome by the stands of berry vines. Soon even the pasture land faded, and the Mountains began. I know the turns, I could do them in my sleep, but I dare not take them lightly. Especially as I passed Confusion Hill.
There are ghosts that never die. Echoes that never fade. One of those lives on the 101, near that place. It's a little slip of a curve, so slight you might not even notice it with the beauty of the river beside you. But you see, that's the terror of it. My brother and his wife were very nearly killed there. And whether or not I was there made no difference: that curve carries with it a gray image of high-impact twisted metal, screaming tires and wet asphalt and broken glass. Into the curve... and out of it. When one wanders, one must be prepared to face the ghosts of the places they wander through.
I still love the smell of the California Redwoods in the summer...
Even in the dead of winter, even in the rain, I roll down my windows through Richardson Grove to inhale the scent of the loamy earth, the damp redwood bark, the sweet leaves of the giant sequoias. Massive, imposing, sturdy guardians so close to the road you could reach out and touch them.
And then the deep, rocky descent of the Mountains. Into the region they call Wine Country. Vineyards as far as the eye can see, nestled in valleys and cresting hills, broken by stands of oak and dry golden grasses. Just outside of my first stop for gas and I catch a glimpse of Old Uncle Yellowsides. He and his harem are grazing in the same place as always. He's in no danger this out in the open... yet. Not 'till autumn. For now he gets fat on the rancher's lands. Perhaps in the fall his rack will adorn someone's hearth. But not this day.
Through cattle lands, and the cities are getting bigger, coming on faster, the traffic getting thicker. By Marin it becomes a race -
... packed like lemmings into shiney metal boxes...
- and I veer left to take the Richmond Bridge. MY thoughts wander off to my left, and I send out love to my family nearby. I cannot stop, not yet. Many miles to go before I sleep. Night is falling fast and hard. Through Oakland, past the blinding lights of the Stadium where the Raiders rule, and the blur of cities after. I've already broken into my granola bars, the Doritos, and a Poweraide besides. I have plenty to last me through the trip; I've no need to conserve too stingily. I drive through cities better at night.
I find that techno makes cities zip by, where only Alice in Chains makes the forests fly...
Familiar territory. Good thing, too, I'm about out of energy. I arrive at the first waypoint, check in with loved ones, and sleep. The next day brings a drive twice as long.
I wake early, and my host sends me off with breakfast. It is by the kindness of strangers and grace of friends that a Vagabond thrives. Rested enough, I snake my way through the morning drive, managing to somehow miraculously NOT be going the same direction as the commuter traffic.
I love mornings. I wish they weren't so early.
I know the way. The 85 to the 101 to the 152. Into the valley where the air is thick with the scent of garlic. Here, too, I roll down the windows to revel in the smell, and I salivate unashamed. But my enjoyment here does not last. Past the little city known as Gilroy, there is a terrifying road known to the old locals as Blood Alley.
It's still a good idea to drive carefully through Blood Alley.
Next stop: Casa de Fruta. Midmorning, I'm in no hurry. I'll be in the car all day anyway - why rush? Take a moment to savor the kitschy little novelty place, and cock my head at the echoes of memory, how the road that runs along side used to be the actual freeway until they decided entirely too many truckers were being killed trying to cross the road. With two bottles of wine, I ride on to meet the Pass, and weep at the shallow San Luis. Truly, never before have I seen it this bad. In all my time as a little girl, I would cheer the deep waters, hoping somehow it would fill more if I loved it. Perhaps, in my absence, the lack of love caused it to wither and dry up... for now there are stands of trees where even the shallowest water marks once were.
I reach the true beast of the expedition - I5. It's a cool day, only 84 degrees. But alas, I spoke too soon. By midday it's 98. The long, flat, bland expanse of the Valley shimmers in the heat, and I pass the time by singing constantly and counting the dead coyotes. So many. Raccoons, also, and skunks. But mostly Coyote's children. I guess their luck really is running out after all.
Hours bleed onward. A stop in Lost Hills, and I find that the old Arco I knew so well is gone. I shrug. Times change. Places change. Many things stay the same, but not everything. It can't. A little further, and the Grapevine swells into view. A last stop before I head up, and I casually mention my mission to the cashier. She's shocked. I smile. Nobody understands.
All fires heal with time. All snows melt.
The scars of old fires I once knew are faded and gone. The grass has regrown. There are no traces left. Up and over the wild race, and I descend into flatlands again. But here my hackles rise, for I'm approaching L.A., a place as much an antithesis to myself as ever a place could be. Here they maddened herd bumps and shoves and curses, falling upon itself like a rabid pack. But fortune favors me: I have hit the narrowest of windows and manage to miss both the lunch-rush and the afternoon traffic. By early afternoon, I catch my breath just south of San Onofre. I'm there before dark: a place I once called home.
... inside - you'll never hurt me...
My mission accomplished, mostly. It takes a bit of wrestling. Apparently I'm more of a packrat than I remember. But at last, all of my possessions are my own again.
... we're hidden by the moonlight - we shift between the shadows...
I KNOW THIS PLACE.
It's muggy, and overcast. I might as well be back at the house, for all the sky shines gray. But there at least I can step out of the shower and not feel sticky. It's awkward to be in a place where I'm no longer welcome, that so very obviously did not fit me, no matter how hard I tried to force it. I didn't belong in the first place. I feel like an interloper, a thief.
But I am a Vagabond. A wanderer that means no harm. I help a little old lady with her cell phone, and we chat about knitting. Strangers have the most interesting stories, even in the heart of a hot-tempered and cold-mannered city. I am tolerated at best, and sent on my way.
I like this city better at night. It hides the ugly parts...
Left in my rear-view mirror, with memories and gifts that cannot be measured nor bought, there is a tiny part of my that is sad to see it go, but the greater part of me rejoices that I am that much closer now to Home.
... I've been searching the planet to find Sacred Love...
The city melts and I am over the Grapevine before I know it. I have eaten all my pudding (hard to eat pudding in a moving car, while driving; applesauce too, for that matter), drank half my Poweraide, and three of my six pack of Coke. Most of the Doritos are gone, the granola too. But I still have plenty. I burst into the Valley, confident, bored, and wishing I was Home.
I can still tell how long something has been dead by the smell...
The slaughter is on. I can smell it passing Coalinga. The wet smell of warm raw meat, like hamburger left out too long. It isn't pleasant, it's too warm to be right. The roadkill, too. It's the blood, that makes the scent. Blood makes the cadavers smell.
I see the wing catch the air, and I'm pulling over before I'm even thinking. Part of me feels sick, like I'm wrong to do this. But part of me realizes I am right, for one cannot take pleasure in death. Even so, in death, a thing can be useful. I feel like I am in violation of respect, that I will be seen as grave-robber. I am repelled. But even so, what I am doing is for Sacred Work. It is Wakan. I wait until there are the fewest to see, and I apologize to the hawk as I harvest its wings. Would that I could give it a sky-burial, but that would likely set the Valley ablaze, as dry as it is. So I give the poor animal - headless from its demise, shamefully left on the scorching pavement, killed for no reason and left dead in vain - a proper respectful burial. I take no pleasure in the work, but it is not an Evil. Better for his wings to serve Wakan Tanka in death than to be left to dry shamefully on the asphalt, killed to no purpose or end.
I despise grave-robbing, but am apparently not above corpse mutilation.
The difference between the Valley and the Coast is immediate and drastic. Buffeted by the winds, I make my way back to the Bay, where the Mist Dragons still live on the ridgeline between the San Andreas fault and Half Moon Bay, and take my last repose before the last journey home. Grey follows me; the only sun I have seen has been in the sun-baked Valley. I wind my way up the gloomy coast over Devil's Slide, into the heart of the fog-laden city, but I still manage to catch my breath when the sun catches the Golden Gate. Over the bridge, through the tunnel, and I speed my way through Marin as quickly as possible.
... haunted... by the hallways in this dining room, the echo there of me and you - the voices that are carrying this tune...
I know California.
... pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel like you're less than fucking perfect...
And California knows me.
... what if everything around you isn't quite as is seems...
In Willits I helped a little old lady figure out how to put cash in the little gas-station kiosk. She blessed me for my troubles. I sharpened a pencil with my skinning knife and poured the last Poweraide into my water bottle. My supplies weren't even close to spent, but I wasn't hungry. My metabolism changes when I travel that much, and I find myself needing less food but more sleep. I'd written my thoughts with a broken pencil on the directions I'd printed out, the little things that changed, the unexpected obstacles, the delightful surprises, the strange and eerie moments. I couldn't help but lament that many were lost, despite my notations, and wished that I could have shared them more vividly.
That's where the true sadness comes from. Being a Vagabond has its perks, sure. Taken in as a wastrel, being high-fived by a gas-station attendant for declaring that nothing of my old life now remained to collect, the random conversations that lead me to believe someone had tried to rob my hotel room. But there is a deep abiding sadness, a loneliness that eats away in the quiet moments between songs -
... look closer and see... see into the trees - find the girl, while you can...
- and makes sleep seem uninviting.
The redwood curtain parted without much to say, no welcoming embrace from the land, no sigh of relief. But I am glad of the journey, and the things I learned, and the things I gave away, and the things I took. I would do it again if I had to.
Why?
You wouldn't understand.
Often as not, it's for no reason. I don't need one, usually. The redwoods are welcoming enough in their own right to not need a purpose. Sometimes the sunlight just beckons, whether or not there's a chill in the air, and sometimes the crashing surf is less like a pounding froth and more like a waving hand. Sometimes the hill looks just inviting enough to climb to the top, the curiosity strong enough to see... exactly what's over there, anyway?
But this time - as occasionally does happen - it was with a purpose.
I have worn many mantles; of late, I have found myself very comfortably wearing the moniker Vagabond like a well-worn coat. It keeps the weather out, though it may be shabby, and it certainly has a few stories to tell. This time, the Vagabond had a mission. No other sane person would undertake it - leastways, nobody I know - for surely there were better, more efficient ways of accomplishing what I had my mind set on. Truth is, I had plenty of reasons to do it the way I chose... but nobody else would understand.
So with plans that only reached so far - and got more than slightly tentative as the map reached its mark - at least two places to stay set as waypoints, and a fast-and-loose schedule, I packed my bags, emptied my trunk, and got enough money to get me there and back again, plus a little extra. Just in case.
A Vagabond ALWAYS plans for Just In Case. Hell, that's why I packed enough fluid and food to sustain me a week (not happily, nor nutritionally, but enough), as well as a warm blanket and a pillow. You never know. Point in fact, you come to count on it. The unexpected - while nebulous - is a certainty. Something inevitably comes up. Nothing ever goes perfectly to plan (if plans were ever perfect in the first place). A true Vagabond comes to count on it, almost rely on it. Countless unknowns and variables become just a matter of what's on today's menu, what kind of condition the road's in, who you meet in the supermarket. Pretty soon, roadwork, delays, traffic, the occasional attempted robbery, roadkill, flat tire, or random screaming guy down the block become as familiar as faces in a local supermarket. A trip isn't complete without a Wrong Turn, at least one Douchebag Driver, and a Forgotten Item. They become markers. Road signs. Little stones on the path.
I went about the start of it in a most peculiar manner. I had directions printed, a few contingencies planned, and an extra set of clothes. Just in case. But I bid goodbye to my cat that morning not as I hit the road, but rather as I left for work. I wouldn't depart 'till late afternoon, during what this town calls "rush hour". I always half-smile when I even think on it, because "rush hour" here is considered a smooth weekend where I had been living the past several years. But with several hours left of daylight to burn, I aimed to be out of the mountains by dark. Set my teeth, turned on my music... and the journey began as the wee sleepy town I call my residence slipped from view, and the 101 became my new home.
The familiarity of the drive was ever-present. Hills gave way to views of the bay, and those were swept aside by curtains of forest. Shades upon shades of greens and browns - pastures dotted with cattle, rickety houses standing lonesome by the stands of berry vines. Soon even the pasture land faded, and the Mountains began. I know the turns, I could do them in my sleep, but I dare not take them lightly. Especially as I passed Confusion Hill.
There are ghosts that never die. Echoes that never fade. One of those lives on the 101, near that place. It's a little slip of a curve, so slight you might not even notice it with the beauty of the river beside you. But you see, that's the terror of it. My brother and his wife were very nearly killed there. And whether or not I was there made no difference: that curve carries with it a gray image of high-impact twisted metal, screaming tires and wet asphalt and broken glass. Into the curve... and out of it. When one wanders, one must be prepared to face the ghosts of the places they wander through.
I still love the smell of the California Redwoods in the summer...
Even in the dead of winter, even in the rain, I roll down my windows through Richardson Grove to inhale the scent of the loamy earth, the damp redwood bark, the sweet leaves of the giant sequoias. Massive, imposing, sturdy guardians so close to the road you could reach out and touch them.
And then the deep, rocky descent of the Mountains. Into the region they call Wine Country. Vineyards as far as the eye can see, nestled in valleys and cresting hills, broken by stands of oak and dry golden grasses. Just outside of my first stop for gas and I catch a glimpse of Old Uncle Yellowsides. He and his harem are grazing in the same place as always. He's in no danger this out in the open... yet. Not 'till autumn. For now he gets fat on the rancher's lands. Perhaps in the fall his rack will adorn someone's hearth. But not this day.
Through cattle lands, and the cities are getting bigger, coming on faster, the traffic getting thicker. By Marin it becomes a race -
... packed like lemmings into shiney metal boxes...
- and I veer left to take the Richmond Bridge. MY thoughts wander off to my left, and I send out love to my family nearby. I cannot stop, not yet. Many miles to go before I sleep. Night is falling fast and hard. Through Oakland, past the blinding lights of the Stadium where the Raiders rule, and the blur of cities after. I've already broken into my granola bars, the Doritos, and a Poweraide besides. I have plenty to last me through the trip; I've no need to conserve too stingily. I drive through cities better at night.
I find that techno makes cities zip by, where only Alice in Chains makes the forests fly...
Familiar territory. Good thing, too, I'm about out of energy. I arrive at the first waypoint, check in with loved ones, and sleep. The next day brings a drive twice as long.
I wake early, and my host sends me off with breakfast. It is by the kindness of strangers and grace of friends that a Vagabond thrives. Rested enough, I snake my way through the morning drive, managing to somehow miraculously NOT be going the same direction as the commuter traffic.
I love mornings. I wish they weren't so early.
I know the way. The 85 to the 101 to the 152. Into the valley where the air is thick with the scent of garlic. Here, too, I roll down the windows to revel in the smell, and I salivate unashamed. But my enjoyment here does not last. Past the little city known as Gilroy, there is a terrifying road known to the old locals as Blood Alley.
It's still a good idea to drive carefully through Blood Alley.
Next stop: Casa de Fruta. Midmorning, I'm in no hurry. I'll be in the car all day anyway - why rush? Take a moment to savor the kitschy little novelty place, and cock my head at the echoes of memory, how the road that runs along side used to be the actual freeway until they decided entirely too many truckers were being killed trying to cross the road. With two bottles of wine, I ride on to meet the Pass, and weep at the shallow San Luis. Truly, never before have I seen it this bad. In all my time as a little girl, I would cheer the deep waters, hoping somehow it would fill more if I loved it. Perhaps, in my absence, the lack of love caused it to wither and dry up... for now there are stands of trees where even the shallowest water marks once were.
I reach the true beast of the expedition - I5. It's a cool day, only 84 degrees. But alas, I spoke too soon. By midday it's 98. The long, flat, bland expanse of the Valley shimmers in the heat, and I pass the time by singing constantly and counting the dead coyotes. So many. Raccoons, also, and skunks. But mostly Coyote's children. I guess their luck really is running out after all.
Hours bleed onward. A stop in Lost Hills, and I find that the old Arco I knew so well is gone. I shrug. Times change. Places change. Many things stay the same, but not everything. It can't. A little further, and the Grapevine swells into view. A last stop before I head up, and I casually mention my mission to the cashier. She's shocked. I smile. Nobody understands.
All fires heal with time. All snows melt.
The scars of old fires I once knew are faded and gone. The grass has regrown. There are no traces left. Up and over the wild race, and I descend into flatlands again. But here my hackles rise, for I'm approaching L.A., a place as much an antithesis to myself as ever a place could be. Here they maddened herd bumps and shoves and curses, falling upon itself like a rabid pack. But fortune favors me: I have hit the narrowest of windows and manage to miss both the lunch-rush and the afternoon traffic. By early afternoon, I catch my breath just south of San Onofre. I'm there before dark: a place I once called home.
... inside - you'll never hurt me...
My mission accomplished, mostly. It takes a bit of wrestling. Apparently I'm more of a packrat than I remember. But at last, all of my possessions are my own again.
... we're hidden by the moonlight - we shift between the shadows...
I KNOW THIS PLACE.
It's muggy, and overcast. I might as well be back at the house, for all the sky shines gray. But there at least I can step out of the shower and not feel sticky. It's awkward to be in a place where I'm no longer welcome, that so very obviously did not fit me, no matter how hard I tried to force it. I didn't belong in the first place. I feel like an interloper, a thief.
But I am a Vagabond. A wanderer that means no harm. I help a little old lady with her cell phone, and we chat about knitting. Strangers have the most interesting stories, even in the heart of a hot-tempered and cold-mannered city. I am tolerated at best, and sent on my way.
I like this city better at night. It hides the ugly parts...
Left in my rear-view mirror, with memories and gifts that cannot be measured nor bought, there is a tiny part of my that is sad to see it go, but the greater part of me rejoices that I am that much closer now to Home.
... I've been searching the planet to find Sacred Love...
The city melts and I am over the Grapevine before I know it. I have eaten all my pudding (hard to eat pudding in a moving car, while driving; applesauce too, for that matter), drank half my Poweraide, and three of my six pack of Coke. Most of the Doritos are gone, the granola too. But I still have plenty. I burst into the Valley, confident, bored, and wishing I was Home.
I can still tell how long something has been dead by the smell...
The slaughter is on. I can smell it passing Coalinga. The wet smell of warm raw meat, like hamburger left out too long. It isn't pleasant, it's too warm to be right. The roadkill, too. It's the blood, that makes the scent. Blood makes the cadavers smell.
I see the wing catch the air, and I'm pulling over before I'm even thinking. Part of me feels sick, like I'm wrong to do this. But part of me realizes I am right, for one cannot take pleasure in death. Even so, in death, a thing can be useful. I feel like I am in violation of respect, that I will be seen as grave-robber. I am repelled. But even so, what I am doing is for Sacred Work. It is Wakan. I wait until there are the fewest to see, and I apologize to the hawk as I harvest its wings. Would that I could give it a sky-burial, but that would likely set the Valley ablaze, as dry as it is. So I give the poor animal - headless from its demise, shamefully left on the scorching pavement, killed for no reason and left dead in vain - a proper respectful burial. I take no pleasure in the work, but it is not an Evil. Better for his wings to serve Wakan Tanka in death than to be left to dry shamefully on the asphalt, killed to no purpose or end.
I despise grave-robbing, but am apparently not above corpse mutilation.
The difference between the Valley and the Coast is immediate and drastic. Buffeted by the winds, I make my way back to the Bay, where the Mist Dragons still live on the ridgeline between the San Andreas fault and Half Moon Bay, and take my last repose before the last journey home. Grey follows me; the only sun I have seen has been in the sun-baked Valley. I wind my way up the gloomy coast over Devil's Slide, into the heart of the fog-laden city, but I still manage to catch my breath when the sun catches the Golden Gate. Over the bridge, through the tunnel, and I speed my way through Marin as quickly as possible.
... haunted... by the hallways in this dining room, the echo there of me and you - the voices that are carrying this tune...
I know California.
... pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel like you're less than fucking perfect...
And California knows me.
... what if everything around you isn't quite as is seems...
In Willits I helped a little old lady figure out how to put cash in the little gas-station kiosk. She blessed me for my troubles. I sharpened a pencil with my skinning knife and poured the last Poweraide into my water bottle. My supplies weren't even close to spent, but I wasn't hungry. My metabolism changes when I travel that much, and I find myself needing less food but more sleep. I'd written my thoughts with a broken pencil on the directions I'd printed out, the little things that changed, the unexpected obstacles, the delightful surprises, the strange and eerie moments. I couldn't help but lament that many were lost, despite my notations, and wished that I could have shared them more vividly.
That's where the true sadness comes from. Being a Vagabond has its perks, sure. Taken in as a wastrel, being high-fived by a gas-station attendant for declaring that nothing of my old life now remained to collect, the random conversations that lead me to believe someone had tried to rob my hotel room. But there is a deep abiding sadness, a loneliness that eats away in the quiet moments between songs -
... look closer and see... see into the trees - find the girl, while you can...
- and makes sleep seem uninviting.
The redwood curtain parted without much to say, no welcoming embrace from the land, no sigh of relief. But I am glad of the journey, and the things I learned, and the things I gave away, and the things I took. I would do it again if I had to.
Why?
You wouldn't understand.
June 20, 2012
Oh Rats!
Classes are winding down. It's Hell Week, and we're clearing through the inexorable schedule of exams, one at a time, quiz after final after practical. Notebooks are turned in, the last finishing touches placed, the last-minute cramming has already started. The summer is hot, the sunlight bakes the air and makes the cool grass smell like the most inviting place to nap that ever was.
Last class of VT51 - the Intro to Vet Tech class I'm in - they brought out rats. The week before, they'd introduced us to a couple snakes. Beautiful beasties: a Rainbow Boa, a couple of California King Snakes, a Burmese Python, even a little Eastern Hognose which - up until halfway through the explanation - the professor did not know was classified as venomous. The entire class laughed as she blanched a little, given that she was suddenly aware of the fact that she was holding this potentially deadly creature. Safely enough, it turns out - Hognoses are rear-fanged, and it's VERY difficult for them to envenomate humans. Beautiful animals, and they let us come up, hold them, say hello... it was fantastic.
I knew people had problems with snakes. I do not. I love them. The feel of them, the look of them, the softness of scale and the coolness to touch. The patterns and brightness and fluid grace. Some people, however, could not stand to be near them. I shrugged, knowing a fear of snakes was pervasive.
For some reason, however, it surprised me when girls actually had to excuse themselves from the room entirely when the rats were brought out.
I know, peripherally, that some people dislike rodents. Again, I do not. I find them to be adorable little beasties with fantastic personalities and curious natures. Friendly, social, intelligent... what's not to like? But, like snakes, these creatures are terribly misunderstood and often maligned because of their wilder cousins. The misconceptions - perpetuated by Hollywood in its worst cases - leave us believing that rats will gnaw your face off as you sleep, carry every disease under the sun, and are vicious, vindictive monsters that have a taste for human blood. Nothing could be further from the truth. (Special effects guys have to coat actors with peanut butter to get the rats to even consider licking them. Rats LOVE peanut butter.)
I'm not sure why I found it more strange that people were weirded out by rats. Snakes, sure, I understand. Many are venomous, and if you don't know how to tell the difference, it's best to just avoid them altogether. But rats? Rats are usually just pests at the most, and on their worst wild days they can be vectors for disease. But then, so can cats, dogs, foxes, guinea pigs, and half a dozen other things people almost universally find "cute". There are people who absolutely cringe when they think of bats who think foxes are cuddly, when the truth is that there are more reported cases of foxes transmitting rabies to humans than any bat or rat could ever manage.
I've heard people say it's the tail. What about it, really? Many of these rat-haters still think mice are cute. They look nearly identical to the untrained eye, with the obvious difference in size, which has led to - I'm not kidding - the perpetuated belief that mice grow into rats eventually. So how can you adore one but despise the other?
I watched the girls leave. If anyone had departed when the snakes were out the week before, I never noticed it, and they were exceptionally discreet, and never came back. It's hard to leave the classroom without being noticed. But several girls - all girls, to my shame - left the room when the rats were introduced.
Apart from my shock and confusion ("really? you can't tolerate rats?"), I felt a pang of scorn. Here were were, in a class - the last WEEK of this class, mind you - where we were purposefully staring down the career wherin we would take in every variety of pet for medical care... and they were grossed out by a common domestic species. How on EARTH did they expect to pass the course? Just conveniently skip all the rodent classes? All the small-animal nursing labs? Or perhaps the Animal Care Course, where we're supposed to take care of the facilities rescued dogs, cats, horse, sheep, goats, rabbits, and - yes - rats and mice? You know, those little absolutely critical classes to passing the course? How on EARTH did they think this career was appropriate for them?
I'm not sure why I found it more strange that people were weirded out by rats. Snakes, sure, I understand. Many are venomous, and if you don't know how to tell the difference, it's best to just avoid them altogether. But rats? Rats are usually just pests at the most, and on their worst wild days they can be vectors for disease. But then, so can cats, dogs, foxes, guinea pigs, and half a dozen other things people almost universally find "cute". There are people who absolutely cringe when they think of bats who think foxes are cuddly, when the truth is that there are more reported cases of foxes transmitting rabies to humans than any bat or rat could ever manage.
I've heard people say it's the tail. What about it, really? Many of these rat-haters still think mice are cute. They look nearly identical to the untrained eye, with the obvious difference in size, which has led to - I'm not kidding - the perpetuated belief that mice grow into rats eventually. So how can you adore one but despise the other?
I watched the girls leave. If anyone had departed when the snakes were out the week before, I never noticed it, and they were exceptionally discreet, and never came back. It's hard to leave the classroom without being noticed. But several girls - all girls, to my shame - left the room when the rats were introduced.
Apart from my shock and confusion ("really? you can't tolerate rats?"), I felt a pang of scorn. Here were were, in a class - the last WEEK of this class, mind you - where we were purposefully staring down the career wherin we would take in every variety of pet for medical care... and they were grossed out by a common domestic species. How on EARTH did they expect to pass the course? Just conveniently skip all the rodent classes? All the small-animal nursing labs? Or perhaps the Animal Care Course, where we're supposed to take care of the facilities rescued dogs, cats, horse, sheep, goats, rabbits, and - yes - rats and mice? You know, those little absolutely critical classes to passing the course? How on EARTH did they think this career was appropriate for them?
The professor had stated at the beginning of the course that this was not a "pet the kitty" career, and yet every year she had applicants who couldn't stomach surgeries, had objections to euthanasia, and yes, could not deal with certain species. Being a vet tech isn't all about Little Timmy and his new puppy coming in for boosters. Sometimes it's about Ms. Jane with her aged Guatamalan Monitor with a prolapsed colon, or Mr. Smith with the family cat half mangled from being struck by a car. There will be limbs that cannot be saved, insides conspicuously outside, rotting flesh and smells that will turn the stomach of even the strongest tech, pus, blood, and feces ALL the time. Hell, my second day as an extern as a vet assistant, we lost a patient who was constantly vomiting, evacuating his bowels, his bladder, and salivating all over himself. If you can't handle a healthy rat being in the room, what the hell are you doing in the course?
We didn't get to handle the rats, sadly. The assistant professor walked around the room, showing off various points of anatomy, explaining how social they are, how to train them, and so on. The males were Kraven, King, and Koontz, where the females were Godiva and Hershey. They rode comfortably on her shoulder, venturing an inquisitive nose into the air as they passed by.
I shake my head sadly, and hope dearly that the professor noted the people who couldn't handle the species we'd been introduced to. I would hate to think that the class would be too full to give me a spot with folk like that getting a place. I don't begrudge people their phobias, even if they ARE misplaced (a phobia being an "irrational fear" to begin with), hell, I have a few of my own. But I'm never going to be asked to do a physical on a spider (and yes, I asked). If you can't handle what the job WILL entail, you shouldn't even be in the class. Go be a groomer, or a trainer, or a breeder, or a sitter, or a walker, or whatever you like. But you cannot reasonably expect to be successful in this field with that kind of block.
Last class of VT51 - the Intro to Vet Tech class I'm in - they brought out rats. The week before, they'd introduced us to a couple snakes. Beautiful beasties: a Rainbow Boa, a couple of California King Snakes, a Burmese Python, even a little Eastern Hognose which - up until halfway through the explanation - the professor did not know was classified as venomous. The entire class laughed as she blanched a little, given that she was suddenly aware of the fact that she was holding this potentially deadly creature. Safely enough, it turns out - Hognoses are rear-fanged, and it's VERY difficult for them to envenomate humans. Beautiful animals, and they let us come up, hold them, say hello... it was fantastic.
I knew people had problems with snakes. I do not. I love them. The feel of them, the look of them, the softness of scale and the coolness to touch. The patterns and brightness and fluid grace. Some people, however, could not stand to be near them. I shrugged, knowing a fear of snakes was pervasive.
For some reason, however, it surprised me when girls actually had to excuse themselves from the room entirely when the rats were brought out.
I know, peripherally, that some people dislike rodents. Again, I do not. I find them to be adorable little beasties with fantastic personalities and curious natures. Friendly, social, intelligent... what's not to like? But, like snakes, these creatures are terribly misunderstood and often maligned because of their wilder cousins. The misconceptions - perpetuated by Hollywood in its worst cases - leave us believing that rats will gnaw your face off as you sleep, carry every disease under the sun, and are vicious, vindictive monsters that have a taste for human blood. Nothing could be further from the truth. (Special effects guys have to coat actors with peanut butter to get the rats to even consider licking them. Rats LOVE peanut butter.)
I'm not sure why I found it more strange that people were weirded out by rats. Snakes, sure, I understand. Many are venomous, and if you don't know how to tell the difference, it's best to just avoid them altogether. But rats? Rats are usually just pests at the most, and on their worst wild days they can be vectors for disease. But then, so can cats, dogs, foxes, guinea pigs, and half a dozen other things people almost universally find "cute". There are people who absolutely cringe when they think of bats who think foxes are cuddly, when the truth is that there are more reported cases of foxes transmitting rabies to humans than any bat or rat could ever manage.
I've heard people say it's the tail. What about it, really? Many of these rat-haters still think mice are cute. They look nearly identical to the untrained eye, with the obvious difference in size, which has led to - I'm not kidding - the perpetuated belief that mice grow into rats eventually. So how can you adore one but despise the other?
I watched the girls leave. If anyone had departed when the snakes were out the week before, I never noticed it, and they were exceptionally discreet, and never came back. It's hard to leave the classroom without being noticed. But several girls - all girls, to my shame - left the room when the rats were introduced.
Apart from my shock and confusion ("really? you can't tolerate rats?"), I felt a pang of scorn. Here were were, in a class - the last WEEK of this class, mind you - where we were purposefully staring down the career wherin we would take in every variety of pet for medical care... and they were grossed out by a common domestic species. How on EARTH did they expect to pass the course? Just conveniently skip all the rodent classes? All the small-animal nursing labs? Or perhaps the Animal Care Course, where we're supposed to take care of the facilities rescued dogs, cats, horse, sheep, goats, rabbits, and - yes - rats and mice? You know, those little absolutely critical classes to passing the course? How on EARTH did they think this career was appropriate for them?
I'm not sure why I found it more strange that people were weirded out by rats. Snakes, sure, I understand. Many are venomous, and if you don't know how to tell the difference, it's best to just avoid them altogether. But rats? Rats are usually just pests at the most, and on their worst wild days they can be vectors for disease. But then, so can cats, dogs, foxes, guinea pigs, and half a dozen other things people almost universally find "cute". There are people who absolutely cringe when they think of bats who think foxes are cuddly, when the truth is that there are more reported cases of foxes transmitting rabies to humans than any bat or rat could ever manage.
I've heard people say it's the tail. What about it, really? Many of these rat-haters still think mice are cute. They look nearly identical to the untrained eye, with the obvious difference in size, which has led to - I'm not kidding - the perpetuated belief that mice grow into rats eventually. So how can you adore one but despise the other?
I watched the girls leave. If anyone had departed when the snakes were out the week before, I never noticed it, and they were exceptionally discreet, and never came back. It's hard to leave the classroom without being noticed. But several girls - all girls, to my shame - left the room when the rats were introduced.
Apart from my shock and confusion ("really? you can't tolerate rats?"), I felt a pang of scorn. Here were were, in a class - the last WEEK of this class, mind you - where we were purposefully staring down the career wherin we would take in every variety of pet for medical care... and they were grossed out by a common domestic species. How on EARTH did they expect to pass the course? Just conveniently skip all the rodent classes? All the small-animal nursing labs? Or perhaps the Animal Care Course, where we're supposed to take care of the facilities rescued dogs, cats, horse, sheep, goats, rabbits, and - yes - rats and mice? You know, those little absolutely critical classes to passing the course? How on EARTH did they think this career was appropriate for them?
The professor had stated at the beginning of the course that this was not a "pet the kitty" career, and yet every year she had applicants who couldn't stomach surgeries, had objections to euthanasia, and yes, could not deal with certain species. Being a vet tech isn't all about Little Timmy and his new puppy coming in for boosters. Sometimes it's about Ms. Jane with her aged Guatamalan Monitor with a prolapsed colon, or Mr. Smith with the family cat half mangled from being struck by a car. There will be limbs that cannot be saved, insides conspicuously outside, rotting flesh and smells that will turn the stomach of even the strongest tech, pus, blood, and feces ALL the time. Hell, my second day as an extern as a vet assistant, we lost a patient who was constantly vomiting, evacuating his bowels, his bladder, and salivating all over himself. If you can't handle a healthy rat being in the room, what the hell are you doing in the course?
We didn't get to handle the rats, sadly. The assistant professor walked around the room, showing off various points of anatomy, explaining how social they are, how to train them, and so on. The males were Kraven, King, and Koontz, where the females were Godiva and Hershey. They rode comfortably on her shoulder, venturing an inquisitive nose into the air as they passed by.
I shake my head sadly, and hope dearly that the professor noted the people who couldn't handle the species we'd been introduced to. I would hate to think that the class would be too full to give me a spot with folk like that getting a place. I don't begrudge people their phobias, even if they ARE misplaced (a phobia being an "irrational fear" to begin with), hell, I have a few of my own. But I'm never going to be asked to do a physical on a spider (and yes, I asked). If you can't handle what the job WILL entail, you shouldn't even be in the class. Go be a groomer, or a trainer, or a breeder, or a sitter, or a walker, or whatever you like. But you cannot reasonably expect to be successful in this field with that kind of block.
June 08, 2012
Memories: Installment 6
Final installment for now. But I thought I'd part with one of my absolute favorites.
Try to read it along with "Good Life" by OneRepublic.
-----------------
When I was a kid, we had two sets of neighbors, one on each side of our house. In front of us was a wide yard, then an irrigation canal, then a bit more land, then the road, then a huge creek. Behind us was an expansive back yard, a fence, and then a wide open field that was the park. Surrounded by trees and gardens and water, my home might as well have been what heaven looked like to my young eyes.
The creek was wide and mysterious, deep and fast, and its banks were the home of huge snakes and mischievous raccoons, blue-bellied Western Fence Lizards, bold possums and countless rats and mice. The air was positively filled with the sounds of birds, everything from Scrub Jays to Red Tails, Common Crows to Cedar Waxwings, Sparrows and Starlings and half a dozen more. In the canal were the bright-red crayfish, the absurdly loud bullfrogs - half as big as a dinner plate, and thousands upon thousands of tiny singing Tree Frogs. Tadpoles every year numbered beyond count. Dragonflies as wide and as long as my hand darted through the air, along with the honeybees, ladybugs, Tiger Swallowtail and Monarch Butterflies, and even the incredibly beautiful Gypsy Moths at dusk. They bobbed in and out of mom's garden, the dancing heads of crocus, freesia, flox, lantenna, and roses, half-hidden in the soft light of the birch forest mom had planted, all protected by the enormous guardian White Ash tree in the center of it all.
Summer, and everything green and bright. I was twelve.
I'd spend half the morning lying on my back in the front yard, staring at the deep-blue sky through the leaves of the guardian Ash, watching it dance with the blessedly cool summer breeze. It was hot, just the way I loved it. Mid nineties, I think. There would be swimming later, and I'd spend a ridiculous amount of time in the pool, until my fingers and toes were pink-white prunes and my voice cracked from the chlorine. But it was still mid-morning. Dad was working on his brand-new bike in front of the garage. Beyond him, our neighbors' apricot tree hung over our seven-foot redwood fence, bobbing in the wind with its heavy burden of overripe fruit.
The S family had this tree, but never tended it. Didn't care to, I suppose. It was enormous, far bigger than a stone fruit tree should ever get, and it seemed perfectly happy to grow wild. It produced fruit like nobody's business, and the ripe golden orbs would drop to the ground, spent. I don't know what possessed me on this day... but I have never regretted it.
I went inside, and grabbed an old costume from a ballet recital some time prior. I'd been a Pastoral Girl/Maypole Dancer in "La Fille Mal Guarde", and the costume was simply a blue dress with a green apron. I put it on and ran outside barefoot... across the cool grass, the searing pavement in front of the garage, and - true to my tomboy nature - proceeded to climb the fence in a dress. Like the cats often did, I scampered along the top of it like a highway. I often used it to climb up on the roof, or into trees, or really just for whatever reason felt right at the time. This time, it was to the apricot tree.
I know now that I probably should have asked first. But to my twelve-year-old mind, if they'd wanted the fruit, they wouldn't be letting it drop to the ground to rot.
I reached the tree, its burdened branches stooped like old men over the fence. Without a worry of falling whatsoever, I kicked my legs over, and sat on the top of the fence like a normal person would sit on a park bench... and picked an apricot. Without so much as a moment's hesitation, I bit into it, and instantly the juices ran down my fingers, wrists, arms, to drip from my elbows like liquid gold. The sun shone brightly through the leaves as the wind stirred them, and a hawk cried overhead. I finished that one, and had another.
That moment - the warm air, the cool breeze, the hot sun, the sound of life all around me, in the welcoming green embrace of the apricot's leaves, my hard-as-horn bare feet dangling off the side of the fence, dressed in a tattered blue dress with a little green apron, pale and skinny and all arms and legs, covered in apricot juice as I stole the fruits right from the trees - that moment is frozen in time for me. In a strange sense, it felt like I was tasting the very heart of Summer itself, with all the innocence and wonder and fearlessness a child alone can have.
For the record, no - I never got sick.
A part of me clings to that moment in time, when everything was perfect, and worries were for other people. That moment in the summertime is as sacred to me as my own body, and I hold it truly dear. Even now, when I can, I eat apricots - nectarines will do in a pinch - and think of that day.
If you ask me why I'm smiling, I'll tell you it's because apricots taste like summer.
Try to read it along with "Good Life" by OneRepublic.
-----------------
When I was a kid, we had two sets of neighbors, one on each side of our house. In front of us was a wide yard, then an irrigation canal, then a bit more land, then the road, then a huge creek. Behind us was an expansive back yard, a fence, and then a wide open field that was the park. Surrounded by trees and gardens and water, my home might as well have been what heaven looked like to my young eyes.
The creek was wide and mysterious, deep and fast, and its banks were the home of huge snakes and mischievous raccoons, blue-bellied Western Fence Lizards, bold possums and countless rats and mice. The air was positively filled with the sounds of birds, everything from Scrub Jays to Red Tails, Common Crows to Cedar Waxwings, Sparrows and Starlings and half a dozen more. In the canal were the bright-red crayfish, the absurdly loud bullfrogs - half as big as a dinner plate, and thousands upon thousands of tiny singing Tree Frogs. Tadpoles every year numbered beyond count. Dragonflies as wide and as long as my hand darted through the air, along with the honeybees, ladybugs, Tiger Swallowtail and Monarch Butterflies, and even the incredibly beautiful Gypsy Moths at dusk. They bobbed in and out of mom's garden, the dancing heads of crocus, freesia, flox, lantenna, and roses, half-hidden in the soft light of the birch forest mom had planted, all protected by the enormous guardian White Ash tree in the center of it all.
Summer, and everything green and bright. I was twelve.
I'd spend half the morning lying on my back in the front yard, staring at the deep-blue sky through the leaves of the guardian Ash, watching it dance with the blessedly cool summer breeze. It was hot, just the way I loved it. Mid nineties, I think. There would be swimming later, and I'd spend a ridiculous amount of time in the pool, until my fingers and toes were pink-white prunes and my voice cracked from the chlorine. But it was still mid-morning. Dad was working on his brand-new bike in front of the garage. Beyond him, our neighbors' apricot tree hung over our seven-foot redwood fence, bobbing in the wind with its heavy burden of overripe fruit.
The S family had this tree, but never tended it. Didn't care to, I suppose. It was enormous, far bigger than a stone fruit tree should ever get, and it seemed perfectly happy to grow wild. It produced fruit like nobody's business, and the ripe golden orbs would drop to the ground, spent. I don't know what possessed me on this day... but I have never regretted it.
I went inside, and grabbed an old costume from a ballet recital some time prior. I'd been a Pastoral Girl/Maypole Dancer in "La Fille Mal Guarde", and the costume was simply a blue dress with a green apron. I put it on and ran outside barefoot... across the cool grass, the searing pavement in front of the garage, and - true to my tomboy nature - proceeded to climb the fence in a dress. Like the cats often did, I scampered along the top of it like a highway. I often used it to climb up on the roof, or into trees, or really just for whatever reason felt right at the time. This time, it was to the apricot tree.
I know now that I probably should have asked first. But to my twelve-year-old mind, if they'd wanted the fruit, they wouldn't be letting it drop to the ground to rot.
I reached the tree, its burdened branches stooped like old men over the fence. Without a worry of falling whatsoever, I kicked my legs over, and sat on the top of the fence like a normal person would sit on a park bench... and picked an apricot. Without so much as a moment's hesitation, I bit into it, and instantly the juices ran down my fingers, wrists, arms, to drip from my elbows like liquid gold. The sun shone brightly through the leaves as the wind stirred them, and a hawk cried overhead. I finished that one, and had another.
That moment - the warm air, the cool breeze, the hot sun, the sound of life all around me, in the welcoming green embrace of the apricot's leaves, my hard-as-horn bare feet dangling off the side of the fence, dressed in a tattered blue dress with a little green apron, pale and skinny and all arms and legs, covered in apricot juice as I stole the fruits right from the trees - that moment is frozen in time for me. In a strange sense, it felt like I was tasting the very heart of Summer itself, with all the innocence and wonder and fearlessness a child alone can have.
For the record, no - I never got sick.
A part of me clings to that moment in time, when everything was perfect, and worries were for other people. That moment in the summertime is as sacred to me as my own body, and I hold it truly dear. Even now, when I can, I eat apricots - nectarines will do in a pinch - and think of that day.
If you ask me why I'm smiling, I'll tell you it's because apricots taste like summer.
June 02, 2012
Memories: Installment 5
This is the second to last installment of this series. I have to put a stop to it eventually, or this place will become nothing more than a collection of anecdotes and cease to be a part of my forward momentum. It's good to reminisce, but it's important to acknowledge that the past is over, and we move on from there.
Today I made a comment about my eldest nephew growing quite so tall that reminded me of something a important to me, which is the moment that I realized that - even though he wasn't necessarily related to me by blood - he might as well be. I knew in that moment I was willing to offer my life for him.
---------------------------------------
There is a sacred place in the mountains. Few ever travel there. It is nested deep in the wilderness, inaccessible to vehicles even if motors weren't forbidden. It sits quietly along the length of the South Fork of the Stanislaus River, several miles in on horseback. It is peaceful, quiet, pristine. The grass grows a deep green, the trees surround it like guardians, and the water runs as clear as crystal. In mid-June, there is often still snow clinging to the nearby peaks. It is, in my mind, what heaven truly looks like. This place is called Hiram Meadow.
I went with my family there a few times. We would camp at the mouth of the river where it meets the reservoir, and wrestle the gleaming trout from the snowmelt-waters as they raced and jockied to get upstream. We tossed the females back... we would want fish in the next years too, after all. But those fish bite anything. ANYTHING. I've seen people catch a trout with a bass lure. Bait. Dry fly. Wet fly. Salmon eggs. Worms. And bless his heart, my nephew caught one using nothing for bait at all. Just a hook. Those fish were starving on their route upstream, and we'd cheer them on when one lept the eight-foot waterfall.
Every trip, we would venture at least once to Hiram Meadow to let the horses graze a little and to bask in the sacred beauty. This trip was no exception. We had more people with us than most times, including a lady I didn't know hardly at all, but she claimed to know horses, and so she came with. I was on Cloudy, the soft-mouthed snaffle-trained plush-coated quarter horse that somehow decided I was worthy to ride her. (Snaffle-bits are used on horses with VERY sensitive mouths, and using it wrong is a big problem. Her owner trusted my reputation in horsemanship to not harm her, and I did not disappoint. Ever since then, Cloudy was my steed on these trips. She developed this weird kind of kinship with me, but I did NOT complain.) My nephew - being still quite wee at the time - rode with the lady I didn't know on a strawberry leopard-appaloosa.
I rode behind her, keeping an eye on the wee one, and pointing out things to him as we rode past them, like a set of fresh cougar-tracks at the edge of the river in the soft wet sand, or a hawk soaring overhead. I wanted him to come to know and love nature as my father and brother did, as I and my mother do, to really bring him into the family. My brother and his future wife were very serious about one another, and I had this strange need to pull her son into the family and envelop him in a way. I needed to make it known that - blood or not - if he was to be a part of the family, then we would accept him with everything we could offer. And so I hovered a little, I'll admit. Needing to include him. Wanting to show him things. Hoping to make him see, so that he would never doubt.
Hiram Meadow was beautiful as always. It was a sunny day and clear, and the air was that perfect temperature to counter to warmth of the sun so you couldn't get too hot. The water was running swift and glassy over the well-worn stones.
I don't remember all of the details of when it happened, but I remember it happening, I don't remember if it was before we let the horses graze, or after, or during, or which. But I do remember it vividly.
I was on Cloudy, and facing the river, about 20 feet away from the bank. The river ran swift enough through the semi-granite-clay that it had etched the banks into the earth a good three or four feet before hitting water. The water itself was at least three feet of freezing-cold snowmelt, and travelling at a good clip. And that's all I could think about when the strawberry appaloosa decided she wanted to go into the river.
All I could see was the woman's back as she yanked ineffectually on the reins, and my nephew's little legs dangling off either side of the saddle. I didn't have time to think of anything else. All it would take would be a stumble and he would go plunging into the icy water. I don't remember doing it, but somehow I got Cloudy to understand the urgency. She doesn't like to go fast normally (the one time I spurred her into a gallop we were halfway across the meadow before she complied), but as a pair we sprang into action. We came up on the other horse's left side just as its front feet splashed into the water, and gripping the reins in my right hand I reached out with my left to grab the stunned (and now slightly damp) little boy by the ribs and pulled him bodily onto my saddle before turning Cloudy away from the splashing ruckus that was the appaloosa.
In retrospect, I realize now I hardly gave a thought to the woman on the horse. She was kind of one of those "Gee, My, Ain't Nature Grand" kind of people my dad dislikes so much. She had no respect for how deadly even the simplest things could be. No concept of how fast hypothermia can set in, how cold snowmelt really is, and how easy it is for little boys to be swept downriver. Three feet of fast-moving water is nothing to sneeze at. It can kill a grown man, to say nothing of little boys. Hell, I was in danger getting that close.
But I didn't care how dangerous it was to me. It didn't matter. What mattered was the boy, helpless and unaware. He didn't come out of it completely unscathed - his pants were soaked through. But I shudder to think of the misery he might have suffered if he'd gotten completely engulfed by the river, or what might have happened if he'd come loose. In that moment, I didn't give a damn about whether I was risking myself. I needed to get my nephew out of there.
I wouldn't let anyone else take him from me. He rode with me the whole way back to camp, a good solid hour in his little soaked jeans. I kept him tucked into my core to keep him warm; even the warm sunlight couldn't dispel the chill of the water when the breeze kicked up, or when we passed under the shady canopy. All I could think of was how close a call that had been, and how I didn't trust anyone else - anyone else - to keep him safe. And then it hit me.
Blood or no, I'd give my life for this kid.
Scrawny, feisty, full of sass and imagination, wonder and curiosity, this wee lad was Family already. I didn't have to try to welcome him in - he was already there. Protect the young, safeguard the weak. Watch each other's backs. Pick each other up when we fall. "I've got your Six." I'd done it without hesitation. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat, probably without thinking about it.
I'm not sure if he remembers it, though I'm sure he remembers parts of those trips. He'd been on a few of them, riding horses, catching fish, building fires, taking the boat out with dad. It doesn't ultimately matter, I suppose. All that matters is that he's one of us.
Today I made a comment about my eldest nephew growing quite so tall that reminded me of something a important to me, which is the moment that I realized that - even though he wasn't necessarily related to me by blood - he might as well be. I knew in that moment I was willing to offer my life for him.
---------------------------------------
There is a sacred place in the mountains. Few ever travel there. It is nested deep in the wilderness, inaccessible to vehicles even if motors weren't forbidden. It sits quietly along the length of the South Fork of the Stanislaus River, several miles in on horseback. It is peaceful, quiet, pristine. The grass grows a deep green, the trees surround it like guardians, and the water runs as clear as crystal. In mid-June, there is often still snow clinging to the nearby peaks. It is, in my mind, what heaven truly looks like. This place is called Hiram Meadow.
I went with my family there a few times. We would camp at the mouth of the river where it meets the reservoir, and wrestle the gleaming trout from the snowmelt-waters as they raced and jockied to get upstream. We tossed the females back... we would want fish in the next years too, after all. But those fish bite anything. ANYTHING. I've seen people catch a trout with a bass lure. Bait. Dry fly. Wet fly. Salmon eggs. Worms. And bless his heart, my nephew caught one using nothing for bait at all. Just a hook. Those fish were starving on their route upstream, and we'd cheer them on when one lept the eight-foot waterfall.
Every trip, we would venture at least once to Hiram Meadow to let the horses graze a little and to bask in the sacred beauty. This trip was no exception. We had more people with us than most times, including a lady I didn't know hardly at all, but she claimed to know horses, and so she came with. I was on Cloudy, the soft-mouthed snaffle-trained plush-coated quarter horse that somehow decided I was worthy to ride her. (Snaffle-bits are used on horses with VERY sensitive mouths, and using it wrong is a big problem. Her owner trusted my reputation in horsemanship to not harm her, and I did not disappoint. Ever since then, Cloudy was my steed on these trips. She developed this weird kind of kinship with me, but I did NOT complain.) My nephew - being still quite wee at the time - rode with the lady I didn't know on a strawberry leopard-appaloosa.
I rode behind her, keeping an eye on the wee one, and pointing out things to him as we rode past them, like a set of fresh cougar-tracks at the edge of the river in the soft wet sand, or a hawk soaring overhead. I wanted him to come to know and love nature as my father and brother did, as I and my mother do, to really bring him into the family. My brother and his future wife were very serious about one another, and I had this strange need to pull her son into the family and envelop him in a way. I needed to make it known that - blood or not - if he was to be a part of the family, then we would accept him with everything we could offer. And so I hovered a little, I'll admit. Needing to include him. Wanting to show him things. Hoping to make him see, so that he would never doubt.
Hiram Meadow was beautiful as always. It was a sunny day and clear, and the air was that perfect temperature to counter to warmth of the sun so you couldn't get too hot. The water was running swift and glassy over the well-worn stones.
I don't remember all of the details of when it happened, but I remember it happening, I don't remember if it was before we let the horses graze, or after, or during, or which. But I do remember it vividly.
I was on Cloudy, and facing the river, about 20 feet away from the bank. The river ran swift enough through the semi-granite-clay that it had etched the banks into the earth a good three or four feet before hitting water. The water itself was at least three feet of freezing-cold snowmelt, and travelling at a good clip. And that's all I could think about when the strawberry appaloosa decided she wanted to go into the river.
All I could see was the woman's back as she yanked ineffectually on the reins, and my nephew's little legs dangling off either side of the saddle. I didn't have time to think of anything else. All it would take would be a stumble and he would go plunging into the icy water. I don't remember doing it, but somehow I got Cloudy to understand the urgency. She doesn't like to go fast normally (the one time I spurred her into a gallop we were halfway across the meadow before she complied), but as a pair we sprang into action. We came up on the other horse's left side just as its front feet splashed into the water, and gripping the reins in my right hand I reached out with my left to grab the stunned (and now slightly damp) little boy by the ribs and pulled him bodily onto my saddle before turning Cloudy away from the splashing ruckus that was the appaloosa.
In retrospect, I realize now I hardly gave a thought to the woman on the horse. She was kind of one of those "Gee, My, Ain't Nature Grand" kind of people my dad dislikes so much. She had no respect for how deadly even the simplest things could be. No concept of how fast hypothermia can set in, how cold snowmelt really is, and how easy it is for little boys to be swept downriver. Three feet of fast-moving water is nothing to sneeze at. It can kill a grown man, to say nothing of little boys. Hell, I was in danger getting that close.
But I didn't care how dangerous it was to me. It didn't matter. What mattered was the boy, helpless and unaware. He didn't come out of it completely unscathed - his pants were soaked through. But I shudder to think of the misery he might have suffered if he'd gotten completely engulfed by the river, or what might have happened if he'd come loose. In that moment, I didn't give a damn about whether I was risking myself. I needed to get my nephew out of there.
I wouldn't let anyone else take him from me. He rode with me the whole way back to camp, a good solid hour in his little soaked jeans. I kept him tucked into my core to keep him warm; even the warm sunlight couldn't dispel the chill of the water when the breeze kicked up, or when we passed under the shady canopy. All I could think of was how close a call that had been, and how I didn't trust anyone else - anyone else - to keep him safe. And then it hit me.
Blood or no, I'd give my life for this kid.
Scrawny, feisty, full of sass and imagination, wonder and curiosity, this wee lad was Family already. I didn't have to try to welcome him in - he was already there. Protect the young, safeguard the weak. Watch each other's backs. Pick each other up when we fall. "I've got your Six." I'd done it without hesitation. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat, probably without thinking about it.
I'm not sure if he remembers it, though I'm sure he remembers parts of those trips. He'd been on a few of them, riding horses, catching fish, building fires, taking the boat out with dad. It doesn't ultimately matter, I suppose. All that matters is that he's one of us.
May 17, 2012
Memories: Installment 4
This is one from the vaults. It was something I wrote several years ago when I was in college. I had been to too many funerals in too short a time, too many of them for people my age and younger. I began to suffer from terrible, mind-consuming panic attacks.
Not all my memories are pleasant recollections of starry nights.
I'm happy to say the panic attacks are nowhere near as bad as they were, and come infrequently at best. My faith has become much stronger. That said, the scars remain.
If you have the stomach, I give you this memory.
--------------------------
What the hell?
No seriously. What. The. Hell.
Death didn't use to bother me.
Now it causes me mental anguish every time I even think about it.
I'm used to death. I really am. I mean, anybody who knows me at all knows how many frikkin' funerals I've had to attend. Uncle Cecil's when I was eight, that was my first one. At least, the first I can remember. I don't know whether or not dad brought me to Gramma's funeral. I was really too young then. I do remember him sitting in a chair and when I asked him what was wrong, he said, "Well, sweetheart... my mommy just died."
But I really recall Jonathan's. I remember mom coming down the hallway to tell me that the eleven o'clock news had revealed the second drowning victim's name. I remember crawling, shakingly, out of bed, and walking down the hallway to confirm it for myself. I remember how trance like it felt. I remember the way his face looked swollen, having drowned, at the funeral home. I remember all of it.
I was sixteen.
Kids shouldn't die that young.
In fact, kids shouldn't die. Michelle shouldn't have died. She was only four for fuck's sake. A four-year-old shouldn't have to be buried.
But they do.
I will, someday.
And even though I was "Fearless" when I was three, I am older now, and know better. I know I am mortal, and will die.
And that thought, the thought that someday, my life will end, scares the living piss out of me. Not because I'm afraid of the pain. Not because I'm afraid I'll have lived an incomplete life. But because of what happens after that.
Nobody really knows what happens after that, you know? A lot of people THINK they do, but nobody can agree on it. Ask any Catholic and God is sitting in the Heavens upon his great Throne. Ask a Hindu and he'll tell you that you'll wake up in a whole new body. A Jew will tell you that Abraham will hold you to his bosom, and a Muslim will tell you that Allah will grant you a great reward. Some of the zealots believe you'll have a harem of virgins. Everybody's got their own idea.
But we can't reconcile them all.
I mean, I used to believe that all religions stemmed from the same Source and thus we would all end up going to the same Place afterward. But we just can't. We can't. There are too many stipulations and secret handshakes and hoops to jump through to get to "the Right Place", which differs depending on who you ask. What if we've just made it all up? What if we, as a species, when we discovered our own mortality, had to adapt a means of understanding and justifying life so as not to instantly lose our minds?
What if there is no Heaven, no Hell, no Valhalla, no Happy Hunting Grounds, no rebirth? What if, when you die... that's just... it?
THAT'S what scares me, and keeps me awake at night. It's what gave me a mental breakdown when I was fourteen and has reared its ugly head again to tear at my psyche. It's what has made me look over my shoulder every hour for the past six months, and why I've gotten so short with people. I'm scared. Plain and simple.
I'm scared that I'm not even real at this very moment. I'm so very, very afraid that what I am right now is nothing more than someone else's dream, and that when they wake, I will be gone. As though, and for all intents correctly, I was never here. I can't distinguish reality and dream anymore. Sleep brings dreams that are so real I forget they were dreams WELL on into the day. I'll dream that I talked to someone on the phone, or perhaps bought cereal, and later that day I will be shocked to learn that no, in fact, we are out of cereal or that conversation never took place.
And reality itself has become a dream. I no longer really taste my food, nor my drink. Sensation is so fleeting I can barely call it real. A moment passes and I wonder: was that a moment in which I created a memory, or am I simply dreaming, and that memory that I think I have made is simply made up? What if there is no future to this exact second, and the only reason I'm sitting here RIGHT NOW is because somebody's dreaming that a girl my age, my height and my nature is sitting in front of a computer having a mental meltdown and all of her memories leading up to that point are just filler?
What if that's the case?
Why can't I feel real anymore?
I know I used to. I know I used to smell the grass and taste the popcicles and feel the sunlight and hear the leaves and see... gods, the things I used to see! I cannot see anymore, I have grown blind. And no matter how I strive, I still cannot see. I can't look people in the eye because, in my mind, somehow, they aren't there. They are no more real than I. I am related to dreams, friends with figments, and in love with a phantom. None of the people or things I know and love are real, nor am I.
This is what frightens me.
This is what has cast me on my downward spiral of late.
If you know the way out... throw me a rope.
Not all my memories are pleasant recollections of starry nights.
I'm happy to say the panic attacks are nowhere near as bad as they were, and come infrequently at best. My faith has become much stronger. That said, the scars remain.
If you have the stomach, I give you this memory.
--------------------------
What the hell?
No seriously. What. The. Hell.
Death didn't use to bother me.
Now it causes me mental anguish every time I even think about it.
I'm used to death. I really am. I mean, anybody who knows me at all knows how many frikkin' funerals I've had to attend. Uncle Cecil's when I was eight, that was my first one. At least, the first I can remember. I don't know whether or not dad brought me to Gramma's funeral. I was really too young then. I do remember him sitting in a chair and when I asked him what was wrong, he said, "Well, sweetheart... my mommy just died."
But I really recall Jonathan's. I remember mom coming down the hallway to tell me that the eleven o'clock news had revealed the second drowning victim's name. I remember crawling, shakingly, out of bed, and walking down the hallway to confirm it for myself. I remember how trance like it felt. I remember the way his face looked swollen, having drowned, at the funeral home. I remember all of it.
I was sixteen.
Kids shouldn't die that young.
In fact, kids shouldn't die. Michelle shouldn't have died. She was only four for fuck's sake. A four-year-old shouldn't have to be buried.
But they do.
I will, someday.
And even though I was "Fearless" when I was three, I am older now, and know better. I know I am mortal, and will die.
And that thought, the thought that someday, my life will end, scares the living piss out of me. Not because I'm afraid of the pain. Not because I'm afraid I'll have lived an incomplete life. But because of what happens after that.
Nobody really knows what happens after that, you know? A lot of people THINK they do, but nobody can agree on it. Ask any Catholic and God is sitting in the Heavens upon his great Throne. Ask a Hindu and he'll tell you that you'll wake up in a whole new body. A Jew will tell you that Abraham will hold you to his bosom, and a Muslim will tell you that Allah will grant you a great reward. Some of the zealots believe you'll have a harem of virgins. Everybody's got their own idea.
But we can't reconcile them all.
I mean, I used to believe that all religions stemmed from the same Source and thus we would all end up going to the same Place afterward. But we just can't. We can't. There are too many stipulations and secret handshakes and hoops to jump through to get to "the Right Place", which differs depending on who you ask. What if we've just made it all up? What if we, as a species, when we discovered our own mortality, had to adapt a means of understanding and justifying life so as not to instantly lose our minds?
What if there is no Heaven, no Hell, no Valhalla, no Happy Hunting Grounds, no rebirth? What if, when you die... that's just... it?
THAT'S what scares me, and keeps me awake at night. It's what gave me a mental breakdown when I was fourteen and has reared its ugly head again to tear at my psyche. It's what has made me look over my shoulder every hour for the past six months, and why I've gotten so short with people. I'm scared. Plain and simple.
I'm scared that I'm not even real at this very moment. I'm so very, very afraid that what I am right now is nothing more than someone else's dream, and that when they wake, I will be gone. As though, and for all intents correctly, I was never here. I can't distinguish reality and dream anymore. Sleep brings dreams that are so real I forget they were dreams WELL on into the day. I'll dream that I talked to someone on the phone, or perhaps bought cereal, and later that day I will be shocked to learn that no, in fact, we are out of cereal or that conversation never took place.
And reality itself has become a dream. I no longer really taste my food, nor my drink. Sensation is so fleeting I can barely call it real. A moment passes and I wonder: was that a moment in which I created a memory, or am I simply dreaming, and that memory that I think I have made is simply made up? What if there is no future to this exact second, and the only reason I'm sitting here RIGHT NOW is because somebody's dreaming that a girl my age, my height and my nature is sitting in front of a computer having a mental meltdown and all of her memories leading up to that point are just filler?
What if that's the case?
Why can't I feel real anymore?
I know I used to. I know I used to smell the grass and taste the popcicles and feel the sunlight and hear the leaves and see... gods, the things I used to see! I cannot see anymore, I have grown blind. And no matter how I strive, I still cannot see. I can't look people in the eye because, in my mind, somehow, they aren't there. They are no more real than I. I am related to dreams, friends with figments, and in love with a phantom. None of the people or things I know and love are real, nor am I.
This is what frightens me.
This is what has cast me on my downward spiral of late.
If you know the way out... throw me a rope.
May 08, 2012
Memories: Installment 3
Given that my last post centred around my animal-affinities, I might as well continue the trend. I'll take you back a bit further, so you can see why my dad sort of gave up on arguing with me about the "can we keep it!?" argument.
I was in 5th grade, and it was May. I know this because the school uniforms allowed us to switch to our "summer" outfits, which is to say the particular navy-blue shorts and usual collared shirt. Normally we girls had to wear these - well, very typical for Catholic school - plaid pleated skirts. Skirts suck for kids, unless you like feeling girly, or play a lot in the sandbox. (No seriously. We used our skirts as giant sand-carrying implements. My mother never said a word about the stains, either. I figure because she probably did the same thing, being a tombody herself and all.) Boys were stuck with corderoy pants. In the summer of the Central Valley? They melted. In the winter? We froze. Nobody won. Unless it was the shorts. They were ugly, but we loved them.
I had a bad habit of not changing out of my uniform, either right away or at all. I was just so happy to be home I'd immediately go play in the dirt without changing, which wasn't the easiest for the clothes. On this particular day, I was more focused on my new kitten than I was my clothes. Our cat Tigger had a litter earlier that year, and the kittens were all weaned and most of them adopted out... except the one I kept. Because... well, see previous "can I keep it?!" argument. (I had this discussion a LOT with my father.) Tigger had stayed long enough to wean her kittens, get spayed, and then took off. So all my attention was on my new pride and joy, my kitten, Callie. She was only like eight weeks at this point, but our cats were indoor-outdoor, and, well... she was outdoors at this time.
I came home, dropped my backpack on the floor, and immediately went in search of my fuzzy friend.
There was a creek across the street, and the cats LOVED to hang out there. The banks were steep and pretty deep. I'm terrible at estimating distance, but I'd say a good 30 feet to the water most summers, with slightly more than 45-degree incline in some places. In some, it was a sheer drop. And this was to a creek that was about 30-feet wide as well, and goodness knows how deep. It moved fast, too. But there were frogs and bugs and snakes and berry vines down there, so of course I went down there a fair bit myself. I had no fear of sliding down that steep embankment, and so my search took me to the water's swift-moving edge, calling for my kitten.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, I heard an answering meow.
I kept calling, louder, and got the same echo-location response. I couldn't place it. It was far off, but definitely responding, so I wasn't going to give up. Just then, mom popped her head over the egd of the cliff above me. Ostensibly to make sure I hadn't drowned or done something stupid.
Which I was about to do.
See, as though on cue, in that precise moment, a tiny fuzzy object lept from the berry vines on the other side of the creek. It was a kitten, all right, but not mine. My kitten was a marble-fudge tabby-tortoiseshell. This one was a white ball of fluff with grey splotches. And she was making the heroic swim across this enormous, fast... moving... um...
Mom saw her too. She called down to me, "E, she's trying to swim to you! Can you get her?!"
Some people hear what they want to hear, you know that? I heard "can you" as "go". "Go get her." So I said, "OKAY!!" and lept into the water - still in my school uniform - to swim out and retrieve this tiny kitten, who was travelling dangerously fast downstream.
I say "dangerously" because this area of the creek was just upstream from a bridge. Fun Fact: cities will dump lots of rip-rap (broken cement chunks) under bridges to keep them from eroding too much near the pillars keeping the bridge up. Rip-rap is no fun to go over. At all. Ever. Even in an inflatable raft. And it was only maybe a minute's distance from us to being drawn forcibly over tumbling rapids and very sharp rocks. So I swam like hell to get to this kitten, which was actually pretty easy. We had a pool, you see, and in the searing summer heat, you had to drag me out of the water. I was practically part fish. Swimming out to get her was no problem.
I grabbed onto the soggy furball, clutched her to me, and swam back to... hey, where'd the bank go?
I knew enough to get to the side of the creek, regardless of what the side looked like. But the bank I'd been standing on was far away now. I'd drifted downstream enough to have reached past the point of no return. This was sheer cliff all the way. Mom called to me in a strained voice, telling me to stay put, and ran for help. I clutched some weeds, clinging to the side of the creek like driftwood. I looked around, finally assessing the situation I had bounded gleefully into, found myself in a fast-moving river with no escape route and really nasty rapids not far away.
But also, I found myself cradling a tiny, helpless, 5-week-old-at-best, totally calm kitten. She was only barely applying pressure with her claws, just enough to velcro to my shirt, but not enough to hurt me. She didn't meow, didn't fuss, didn't struggle. It was as though she trusted me to get us out of this mess, that this was the worst it could possibly get and nothing could make it any less appealing than it currently was. And it was looking pretty unappealing. But there, clinging to muddy weeds in muddy water, we were together at least. She looked at me with those violet-blue eyes that kittens have when they're not old enough to be on their own, and she trusted me.
So I sang to her.
What else could I do? I couldn't go anywhere, so I figured I might as well just sing. Nothing in particular, just a little nameless made-up melody. Just me, her, the sound of the river, and a wandering song.
My brother poked his head over the edge of the cliff and said he and mom would try and catch me just before the rapids. The bank scoops down at the bridge and for a couple yards before the sharp rocks; there was just enough room to pull me out. If they could catch me. So I waited until they positioned themselves downstream - one grabbing the bridge support, one holding their hand and reaching out. And slowly, slowly, I bobbed downstream to meet them, arresting my momentum with the cliff wall as I could.
I was successfully hauled out of the water without being dashed against the rocks, and mom wrapped me in a towel as my brother held the kitten. He held it by the scruff, a dripping, sorry, sodden creature, and said, "... you risked your life, for this?!"
I did. And I'd do it again, too. I regret nothing. And I don't say that because it's an awesome story or even because I feel awesome about being a hero or something silly like that.
I say it because a year later, I got a picture from the nurse who adopted that kitten, whose name became Cleopatra. There she was, a big, sleek, beautiful cat, with ice blue eyes and smooth coat. She lived for many, many years in a happy, loving home. I made a difference. And that is reason enough.
I was in 5th grade, and it was May. I know this because the school uniforms allowed us to switch to our "summer" outfits, which is to say the particular navy-blue shorts and usual collared shirt. Normally we girls had to wear these - well, very typical for Catholic school - plaid pleated skirts. Skirts suck for kids, unless you like feeling girly, or play a lot in the sandbox. (No seriously. We used our skirts as giant sand-carrying implements. My mother never said a word about the stains, either. I figure because she probably did the same thing, being a tombody herself and all.) Boys were stuck with corderoy pants. In the summer of the Central Valley? They melted. In the winter? We froze. Nobody won. Unless it was the shorts. They were ugly, but we loved them.
I had a bad habit of not changing out of my uniform, either right away or at all. I was just so happy to be home I'd immediately go play in the dirt without changing, which wasn't the easiest for the clothes. On this particular day, I was more focused on my new kitten than I was my clothes. Our cat Tigger had a litter earlier that year, and the kittens were all weaned and most of them adopted out... except the one I kept. Because... well, see previous "can I keep it?!" argument. (I had this discussion a LOT with my father.) Tigger had stayed long enough to wean her kittens, get spayed, and then took off. So all my attention was on my new pride and joy, my kitten, Callie. She was only like eight weeks at this point, but our cats were indoor-outdoor, and, well... she was outdoors at this time.
I came home, dropped my backpack on the floor, and immediately went in search of my fuzzy friend.
There was a creek across the street, and the cats LOVED to hang out there. The banks were steep and pretty deep. I'm terrible at estimating distance, but I'd say a good 30 feet to the water most summers, with slightly more than 45-degree incline in some places. In some, it was a sheer drop. And this was to a creek that was about 30-feet wide as well, and goodness knows how deep. It moved fast, too. But there were frogs and bugs and snakes and berry vines down there, so of course I went down there a fair bit myself. I had no fear of sliding down that steep embankment, and so my search took me to the water's swift-moving edge, calling for my kitten.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, I heard an answering meow.
I kept calling, louder, and got the same echo-location response. I couldn't place it. It was far off, but definitely responding, so I wasn't going to give up. Just then, mom popped her head over the egd of the cliff above me. Ostensibly to make sure I hadn't drowned or done something stupid.
Which I was about to do.
See, as though on cue, in that precise moment, a tiny fuzzy object lept from the berry vines on the other side of the creek. It was a kitten, all right, but not mine. My kitten was a marble-fudge tabby-tortoiseshell. This one was a white ball of fluff with grey splotches. And she was making the heroic swim across this enormous, fast... moving... um...
Mom saw her too. She called down to me, "E, she's trying to swim to you! Can you get her?!"
Some people hear what they want to hear, you know that? I heard "can you" as "go". "Go get her." So I said, "OKAY!!" and lept into the water - still in my school uniform - to swim out and retrieve this tiny kitten, who was travelling dangerously fast downstream.
I say "dangerously" because this area of the creek was just upstream from a bridge. Fun Fact: cities will dump lots of rip-rap (broken cement chunks) under bridges to keep them from eroding too much near the pillars keeping the bridge up. Rip-rap is no fun to go over. At all. Ever. Even in an inflatable raft. And it was only maybe a minute's distance from us to being drawn forcibly over tumbling rapids and very sharp rocks. So I swam like hell to get to this kitten, which was actually pretty easy. We had a pool, you see, and in the searing summer heat, you had to drag me out of the water. I was practically part fish. Swimming out to get her was no problem.
I grabbed onto the soggy furball, clutched her to me, and swam back to... hey, where'd the bank go?
I knew enough to get to the side of the creek, regardless of what the side looked like. But the bank I'd been standing on was far away now. I'd drifted downstream enough to have reached past the point of no return. This was sheer cliff all the way. Mom called to me in a strained voice, telling me to stay put, and ran for help. I clutched some weeds, clinging to the side of the creek like driftwood. I looked around, finally assessing the situation I had bounded gleefully into, found myself in a fast-moving river with no escape route and really nasty rapids not far away.
But also, I found myself cradling a tiny, helpless, 5-week-old-at-best, totally calm kitten. She was only barely applying pressure with her claws, just enough to velcro to my shirt, but not enough to hurt me. She didn't meow, didn't fuss, didn't struggle. It was as though she trusted me to get us out of this mess, that this was the worst it could possibly get and nothing could make it any less appealing than it currently was. And it was looking pretty unappealing. But there, clinging to muddy weeds in muddy water, we were together at least. She looked at me with those violet-blue eyes that kittens have when they're not old enough to be on their own, and she trusted me.
So I sang to her.
What else could I do? I couldn't go anywhere, so I figured I might as well just sing. Nothing in particular, just a little nameless made-up melody. Just me, her, the sound of the river, and a wandering song.
My brother poked his head over the edge of the cliff and said he and mom would try and catch me just before the rapids. The bank scoops down at the bridge and for a couple yards before the sharp rocks; there was just enough room to pull me out. If they could catch me. So I waited until they positioned themselves downstream - one grabbing the bridge support, one holding their hand and reaching out. And slowly, slowly, I bobbed downstream to meet them, arresting my momentum with the cliff wall as I could.
I was successfully hauled out of the water without being dashed against the rocks, and mom wrapped me in a towel as my brother held the kitten. He held it by the scruff, a dripping, sorry, sodden creature, and said, "... you risked your life, for this?!"
I did. And I'd do it again, too. I regret nothing. And I don't say that because it's an awesome story or even because I feel awesome about being a hero or something silly like that.
I say it because a year later, I got a picture from the nurse who adopted that kitten, whose name became Cleopatra. There she was, a big, sleek, beautiful cat, with ice blue eyes and smooth coat. She lived for many, many years in a happy, loving home. I made a difference. And that is reason enough.
May 02, 2012
Memories: Installment 2
It was never any secret that I love animals. Always have. Probably always will. It's ingrained into my identity and personality to such an extent that it may very well be impossible for me to survive as anything else. I save little lives. I save big ones, too, if opportunity presents. I nurse wounds. I cuddle. I pounce. I wrestle and play tug-of-war. I discipline and teach. I call command, I reward good behavior, and I have relied on them with my life. I've even saved other human beings with their help. (That one's for another time, if ya'll want.)
It's not an exaggeration to say I've always been this way. One of my first words - according to my mother - was "bug". There was a fat praying mantis on the wall, just chilling out, right above my crib. I've never been anything shy of obsessed with horses from the time I knew what they were. And of course: cats. Cats forever. Always. There is a cat shrine in my heart. There always will be. Everyone who has ever met me for more than an hour knows it.
So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.
It was a typical day in high school. I was in Mr. T's history class. I loved that guy. He was this eccentric old guy with a great sense of humor, and he had a gift for making history interesting. If my memory serves, both my older brothers had him as a history teacher. I know my oldest brother did. I digress. I'm sitting there in class, watching "Stalin". We were studying the end of WW2. All of a sudden, over the entire school loudspeaker, my name gets called.
"Ms. W., would you please come to the front office? Ms. E. W., to the front office please."
... which of course made everyone turn and look at me wondering why the hell I'm being called in.
Some context: I was NEVER in trouble in high school. The only time I ever got sent to detention was for not having my PE clothes with me. Add to that the fact that this was a small-town - and my high school wasn't exactly huge either - and my reputation preceded me as 1.) being the youngest sister of the Smart Guy at the rival high school, 2.) the kinda scary girl in tie-dye clothes on top of the theatre hill at lunch who hung out with goths and underclassmen, and 3.) the weird chick who got along better with teachers than she did her own classmates. (All true, for what it's worth.) Me getting called into the front office was like someone investigating the Dalai Lama for saying cross words to a small child. The number of faces with the confused expression of, "... the HELL?" was oddly flattering.
I looked at Mr. T with my arched eyebrow and ducked head - if you know me, you've seen it: it's my silent request for permission. His face bore the same, "wtf?" look. I would have laughed if I wasn't so self-conscious. He gave me the nod, and I quietly ducked out of class.
Walking down the eerily empty hallways of the school to the front office, my mind raced with possibilities. I obviously wasn't in trouble... at least, it was obvious to me. Hell, the staff knew me well enough and liked me well enough where even if I HAD done something, I could have gotten away with it. So it was pretty well impossible that I was in trouble. But then why call me in? Questioning? Had I see something recently, or noticed anything out of place? There were fights at school sometimes, maybe they were going to ask me if I'd witnessed one and could place names to faces. But I surely wasn't in trouble. What on earth could it be?
I walked in, a bit apprehensive, and quietly approached Ms. I. She blinked at me kindly through her tiny wireframed glasses and smiled. "Oh good, you're here!" she said happily. This only confused me further.
"Uh, yeah," I said, "what's up?" (Give me a break. I was a teenager.)
"Oh, nothing major, but we have a request."
A request? I thought to myself. I really hope they aren't going to ask me to volunteer for something. Ugh. I hate saying no, I mean I'm not sure HOW to politely decline, but I really could care less about-
"See, Mr. S is getting married, as you may know."
I did know. Mr. S was the principal, and, well... like I said. Small town. Everybody knows this sort of thing.
"It turns out his soon-to-be stepdaughter is terribly allergic to cats. He has a cat. We were wondering if-"
... oh god are you serious?!
"-you'd adopt him, because nobody wants him to go to a shelter and we don't know where else to ask."
Turns out, word around town included that I was a big fat softie. Anyone who had pets knew about the County Shelter. I KNOW those people are doing the best they can with what they have, and as a state shelter they don't have the option of being no-kill. But having been in there... all it takes is one visit, and you'll cry even thinking about that place. The terror, the loss, the heavy sadness weighs down on you the moment you park in the lot. It lays like a blanket over the entire establishment. I don't know how those folks work there. It would break me. I would never allow an animal to go there if I could help it. Stray kittens were adopted out personally. Dogs were re-homed through friends and family. The shelter was never brought up... unless we were going out to adopt a new animal.
So, yeah. Of COURSE they went for an easy target. One who wouldn't let a poor, healthy, no-fault adult male cat with almost no chance of being adopted from a shelter, go to meet his untimely end in the cold confines of the state's cages.
I... probably never told my parents this, so I apologize if you're reading this mom and dad - I agreed before I even discussed it with them.
Did I mention I hated saying no? I must have. Read back a bit.
The relief on Ms. I's face was immediate and genuine. I don't remember the conversation after that, since I was then scrambling to find a way to present a case to my folks that we needed ANOTHER cat when we already had like three at the time. My teenaged brain was going over the scenarios in rapid-fire possible outcomes, first mom (I knew she'd be easier to win over, so I'd start there) and then dad (who thought cats were about as close to useless as you could get). I went back to class, still trying to figure out a way to argue for the cat's life when I'd already said yes.
Going for mom first was the correct choice. She stuck by me when I presented the case to dad and - being dad - relented in the face of two confirmed cat-lovers. I can still see the rolled-eyes, hands-in-the-air capitulation. I think at this point he was kind of used to me bringing home everything under the sun and might not even have been surprised if I'd tried to adopt a stray rhinoceros. And so, my principal came by some while later to drop off "Cougar" (named after our school mascot), whom we promptly renamed Tom Cougar Mellencat.
Oh shut up. It was awesome.
So the next day I was of course accosted by half a dozen people asking about what happened. Most of them actually didn't believe me at first, but then they remembered that this was me they were talking about and DUH they would call in Nature Girl to come adopt out the principal's cat. I mean, obviously. Who else would they call?
It's a fond memory, if silly. It makes me giggle still to think that the staff felt it necessary - appropriate, even - to call me in from class on the PA system, letting the WHOLE SCHOOL know. Tom lived with us for many years, turning from indoor-only to strictly-outdoor by his own volition. He never did learn proper hunting, and eventually developed a nasty habit of biting people. He also had a weird proclivity for running up to people, even total strangers, and throwing his entire weight into their legs in an... affectionate? rub. It was the most aggressive affection I'd ever seen from a cat. It was like he wanted you to love on him but also wanted to knock you onto the pavement to split your skull open.
Weird cat. But then, with a back-history like that... who can blame him?
It's not an exaggeration to say I've always been this way. One of my first words - according to my mother - was "bug". There was a fat praying mantis on the wall, just chilling out, right above my crib. I've never been anything shy of obsessed with horses from the time I knew what they were. And of course: cats. Cats forever. Always. There is a cat shrine in my heart. There always will be. Everyone who has ever met me for more than an hour knows it.
So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.
It was a typical day in high school. I was in Mr. T's history class. I loved that guy. He was this eccentric old guy with a great sense of humor, and he had a gift for making history interesting. If my memory serves, both my older brothers had him as a history teacher. I know my oldest brother did. I digress. I'm sitting there in class, watching "Stalin". We were studying the end of WW2. All of a sudden, over the entire school loudspeaker, my name gets called.
"Ms. W., would you please come to the front office? Ms. E. W., to the front office please."
... which of course made everyone turn and look at me wondering why the hell I'm being called in.
Some context: I was NEVER in trouble in high school. The only time I ever got sent to detention was for not having my PE clothes with me. Add to that the fact that this was a small-town - and my high school wasn't exactly huge either - and my reputation preceded me as 1.) being the youngest sister of the Smart Guy at the rival high school, 2.) the kinda scary girl in tie-dye clothes on top of the theatre hill at lunch who hung out with goths and underclassmen, and 3.) the weird chick who got along better with teachers than she did her own classmates. (All true, for what it's worth.) Me getting called into the front office was like someone investigating the Dalai Lama for saying cross words to a small child. The number of faces with the confused expression of, "... the HELL?" was oddly flattering.
I looked at Mr. T with my arched eyebrow and ducked head - if you know me, you've seen it: it's my silent request for permission. His face bore the same, "wtf?" look. I would have laughed if I wasn't so self-conscious. He gave me the nod, and I quietly ducked out of class.
Walking down the eerily empty hallways of the school to the front office, my mind raced with possibilities. I obviously wasn't in trouble... at least, it was obvious to me. Hell, the staff knew me well enough and liked me well enough where even if I HAD done something, I could have gotten away with it. So it was pretty well impossible that I was in trouble. But then why call me in? Questioning? Had I see something recently, or noticed anything out of place? There were fights at school sometimes, maybe they were going to ask me if I'd witnessed one and could place names to faces. But I surely wasn't in trouble. What on earth could it be?
I walked in, a bit apprehensive, and quietly approached Ms. I. She blinked at me kindly through her tiny wireframed glasses and smiled. "Oh good, you're here!" she said happily. This only confused me further.
"Uh, yeah," I said, "what's up?" (Give me a break. I was a teenager.)
"Oh, nothing major, but we have a request."
A request? I thought to myself. I really hope they aren't going to ask me to volunteer for something. Ugh. I hate saying no, I mean I'm not sure HOW to politely decline, but I really could care less about-
"See, Mr. S is getting married, as you may know."
I did know. Mr. S was the principal, and, well... like I said. Small town. Everybody knows this sort of thing.
"It turns out his soon-to-be stepdaughter is terribly allergic to cats. He has a cat. We were wondering if-"
... oh god are you serious?!
"-you'd adopt him, because nobody wants him to go to a shelter and we don't know where else to ask."
Turns out, word around town included that I was a big fat softie. Anyone who had pets knew about the County Shelter. I KNOW those people are doing the best they can with what they have, and as a state shelter they don't have the option of being no-kill. But having been in there... all it takes is one visit, and you'll cry even thinking about that place. The terror, the loss, the heavy sadness weighs down on you the moment you park in the lot. It lays like a blanket over the entire establishment. I don't know how those folks work there. It would break me. I would never allow an animal to go there if I could help it. Stray kittens were adopted out personally. Dogs were re-homed through friends and family. The shelter was never brought up... unless we were going out to adopt a new animal.
So, yeah. Of COURSE they went for an easy target. One who wouldn't let a poor, healthy, no-fault adult male cat with almost no chance of being adopted from a shelter, go to meet his untimely end in the cold confines of the state's cages.
I... probably never told my parents this, so I apologize if you're reading this mom and dad - I agreed before I even discussed it with them.
Did I mention I hated saying no? I must have. Read back a bit.
The relief on Ms. I's face was immediate and genuine. I don't remember the conversation after that, since I was then scrambling to find a way to present a case to my folks that we needed ANOTHER cat when we already had like three at the time. My teenaged brain was going over the scenarios in rapid-fire possible outcomes, first mom (I knew she'd be easier to win over, so I'd start there) and then dad (who thought cats were about as close to useless as you could get). I went back to class, still trying to figure out a way to argue for the cat's life when I'd already said yes.
Going for mom first was the correct choice. She stuck by me when I presented the case to dad and - being dad - relented in the face of two confirmed cat-lovers. I can still see the rolled-eyes, hands-in-the-air capitulation. I think at this point he was kind of used to me bringing home everything under the sun and might not even have been surprised if I'd tried to adopt a stray rhinoceros. And so, my principal came by some while later to drop off "Cougar" (named after our school mascot), whom we promptly renamed Tom Cougar Mellencat.
Oh shut up. It was awesome.
So the next day I was of course accosted by half a dozen people asking about what happened. Most of them actually didn't believe me at first, but then they remembered that this was me they were talking about and DUH they would call in Nature Girl to come adopt out the principal's cat. I mean, obviously. Who else would they call?
It's a fond memory, if silly. It makes me giggle still to think that the staff felt it necessary - appropriate, even - to call me in from class on the PA system, letting the WHOLE SCHOOL know. Tom lived with us for many years, turning from indoor-only to strictly-outdoor by his own volition. He never did learn proper hunting, and eventually developed a nasty habit of biting people. He also had a weird proclivity for running up to people, even total strangers, and throwing his entire weight into their legs in an... affectionate? rub. It was the most aggressive affection I'd ever seen from a cat. It was like he wanted you to love on him but also wanted to knock you onto the pavement to split your skull open.
Weird cat. But then, with a back-history like that... who can blame him?
April 18, 2012
Memories: Installment 1
I've been itching to get these out, so I'll start with the one that's been screaming the loudest to be free.
When I was a child, I was plagued with a variety of nighttime issues. The majority of them were innocuous things brought on by the simple process of growing rapidly, things like bone-deep aching pain in my calves as the sinew stretched and lengthened in the quiet evolving hours. These would send me creeping softly to the corner of my parents' bedroom door, where I would cry barely audibly in hopes that I would wake my mother (and only my mother) for help. She was a light sleeper, dad was not. And dad was much more surly when woken at odd hours. But I digress.
What I liked the most - if I can say honestly that I liked any of these things - was the inexplicable wakefulness that occurred every few months. No reason or rhyme to these episodes: I would be peacefully asleep one moment, then suddenly I was as awake as if it were noon. Sometimes it would happen a few times in the same month, sometimes I would go nearly six months in between. But came it did, without cause or provocation, like an old friend sneaking in through the window to take you out on the town.
In the winter time, there were often fires in the fireplace. I would creep from my cozy flannel sheets to tiptoe into the livingroom, where the soft glow from the dying embers would cast dim shadows to dance on the furniture. I would tuck my knees up inside my long (and usually hideous) nightgown as I sat on the brick hearth, trying to thaw my frozen feet. My feet were always bare, even in the dead of winter, and the fire was always a relief for numb toes. I would dreamily watch as the last remnants of flame snuggled into the coals, not really thinking about anything in particular, simply enjoying the hushed silence of the house surrounded by a sleeping world.
Other times, I might simply sneak to the refrigerator. My family had two growing boys and my mother often bought large quantities of things from Costco, like chocolate syrup, maple syrup, whipped cream, and sour cream. All things I coveted jealously and would gobble up without hesitation or second thought. So, knowing I oughtn't, I would pad lightly to the kitchen as stealthily as my bare feet could carry me, and gulp down highly sugared and fat-laden foods like a giant invading mouse. Nibbling a bit of cheese here, a pastry there, drinking syrup straight from the bottle, and eating sour cream by the spoonful. A can of soda, a half-eaten candy-bar, even a few of my favorite vegetables weren't safe. Then, having gorged myself, I would almost always wash it down with several gulps of cold, creamy milk, and furtively make my way back to bed, half-blinded by the refrigerator light.
But best of all was the summer.
The summer time was hot, even at night. There were days when the lowest temperature of the day was still in the 90-degree range. And sometimes it was humid along with it, forcing us to kick off our covers and sleep with the fans on. On the nights when I would suddenly wake in the summer, it was as though the very air was beckoning me outside. And so - in bare feet - I would make my way through the house to the back door, where I would sneak outside to our enormous back yard. Often as not, the moon was brightly shining, and I would walk onto the wide grassy lawn, often wet from the sprinklers, enjoying the cool sensation on my burning soles. I would look up and wave. I don't know why I waved at the moon. I do it still. And then I would dance.
It was only dancing in the loosest term. It was more like holding my arms out and spinning, face turned to the heavens, dipping and weaving with imaginary music. Sometimes I would hum little tunes, or make up lyrics on the spot to a song that didn't have any flow or rhythm to it at all, but always quietly so I didn't wake anyone. Sometimes the dog would join in the dancing, slowly and sleepily, having been roused by my sudden appearance. The wet grass would coat my naked toes, which was always a challenge to wipe off before going back inside, to avoid arousing suspicion.
But even better than dancing in the moonlight involved the water.
The pool was respectably sized, though not the largest by any means, and deeper than I was tall at its lowest point. If I was awake when everyone else was, and it happened to be dark out, the underwater light would illuminate the whole thing. But for some reason, with the light on, I held this terror that an impossibly-sized shark lived in the deep end and would chase me as I got to the shallow end. As a result, when I went to exit the pool - even if it had been a perfectly relaxing swim to that point - I would race through the shallow end. It terrified me, this irrational and non-existent shark.
But if all the lights were off, there was no threat of an unseen imaginary shark. And so it was that - sometimes, just sometimes - I would slowly wade into the dark waters. I only did this on starry nights, when there was no moon. I would move slowly, secretively, feeling the cool water caress my skin where the hot air kissed it only just before. I played a little game to see if I could get into the water without making ripples, feeling almost guilty about marring the glass-smooth surface. And then I would turn, floating on my back, and fall into the Milky Way.
There are no words to describe proper night swimming. It has to be quiet, soft, and tender. Oh, certainly, there is skinny-dipping and other night-aquatic activity, both innocent and risqué. But there is a sacred art to the night swim, wherein the breath becomes a hymn, and bouyancy a prayer. There is truth beneath the surface that will bear you up, and an echo of the womb sleeps in the depths. The stars would rain down on me in their eternal dance, sheltering me like a canopy and yet being as wide and far and welcoming as only they can manage. There was never a coldness to them, only a silvery journey across the endless sky. It was me, the water, and the stars. Nothing else existed. I might as well have been floating in the constellations myself, just a little speck in a quiet, dark river.
Now, the night sky is often hidden by the harsh glow from street lights, and I seldom have the time to indulge my old night-time habits. But somewhere deep within me, there is a little girl, still floating in the starry sky, still dancing in the moonlight, still sitting by the firelight, and who still loves sneaking foods from the fridge. I wonder sometimes if one of my own children will do something similar. I want to be able to give them that gift. But I cannot explain why I would wake in the middle of the night, and cannot predict that they will also. Perhaps this gift was given to me only.
I feel sorry for the world if I was the only one to share in the joy of the gentle night.
When I was a child, I was plagued with a variety of nighttime issues. The majority of them were innocuous things brought on by the simple process of growing rapidly, things like bone-deep aching pain in my calves as the sinew stretched and lengthened in the quiet evolving hours. These would send me creeping softly to the corner of my parents' bedroom door, where I would cry barely audibly in hopes that I would wake my mother (and only my mother) for help. She was a light sleeper, dad was not. And dad was much more surly when woken at odd hours. But I digress.
What I liked the most - if I can say honestly that I liked any of these things - was the inexplicable wakefulness that occurred every few months. No reason or rhyme to these episodes: I would be peacefully asleep one moment, then suddenly I was as awake as if it were noon. Sometimes it would happen a few times in the same month, sometimes I would go nearly six months in between. But came it did, without cause or provocation, like an old friend sneaking in through the window to take you out on the town.
In the winter time, there were often fires in the fireplace. I would creep from my cozy flannel sheets to tiptoe into the livingroom, where the soft glow from the dying embers would cast dim shadows to dance on the furniture. I would tuck my knees up inside my long (and usually hideous) nightgown as I sat on the brick hearth, trying to thaw my frozen feet. My feet were always bare, even in the dead of winter, and the fire was always a relief for numb toes. I would dreamily watch as the last remnants of flame snuggled into the coals, not really thinking about anything in particular, simply enjoying the hushed silence of the house surrounded by a sleeping world.
Other times, I might simply sneak to the refrigerator. My family had two growing boys and my mother often bought large quantities of things from Costco, like chocolate syrup, maple syrup, whipped cream, and sour cream. All things I coveted jealously and would gobble up without hesitation or second thought. So, knowing I oughtn't, I would pad lightly to the kitchen as stealthily as my bare feet could carry me, and gulp down highly sugared and fat-laden foods like a giant invading mouse. Nibbling a bit of cheese here, a pastry there, drinking syrup straight from the bottle, and eating sour cream by the spoonful. A can of soda, a half-eaten candy-bar, even a few of my favorite vegetables weren't safe. Then, having gorged myself, I would almost always wash it down with several gulps of cold, creamy milk, and furtively make my way back to bed, half-blinded by the refrigerator light.
But best of all was the summer.
The summer time was hot, even at night. There were days when the lowest temperature of the day was still in the 90-degree range. And sometimes it was humid along with it, forcing us to kick off our covers and sleep with the fans on. On the nights when I would suddenly wake in the summer, it was as though the very air was beckoning me outside. And so - in bare feet - I would make my way through the house to the back door, where I would sneak outside to our enormous back yard. Often as not, the moon was brightly shining, and I would walk onto the wide grassy lawn, often wet from the sprinklers, enjoying the cool sensation on my burning soles. I would look up and wave. I don't know why I waved at the moon. I do it still. And then I would dance.
It was only dancing in the loosest term. It was more like holding my arms out and spinning, face turned to the heavens, dipping and weaving with imaginary music. Sometimes I would hum little tunes, or make up lyrics on the spot to a song that didn't have any flow or rhythm to it at all, but always quietly so I didn't wake anyone. Sometimes the dog would join in the dancing, slowly and sleepily, having been roused by my sudden appearance. The wet grass would coat my naked toes, which was always a challenge to wipe off before going back inside, to avoid arousing suspicion.
But even better than dancing in the moonlight involved the water.
The pool was respectably sized, though not the largest by any means, and deeper than I was tall at its lowest point. If I was awake when everyone else was, and it happened to be dark out, the underwater light would illuminate the whole thing. But for some reason, with the light on, I held this terror that an impossibly-sized shark lived in the deep end and would chase me as I got to the shallow end. As a result, when I went to exit the pool - even if it had been a perfectly relaxing swim to that point - I would race through the shallow end. It terrified me, this irrational and non-existent shark.
But if all the lights were off, there was no threat of an unseen imaginary shark. And so it was that - sometimes, just sometimes - I would slowly wade into the dark waters. I only did this on starry nights, when there was no moon. I would move slowly, secretively, feeling the cool water caress my skin where the hot air kissed it only just before. I played a little game to see if I could get into the water without making ripples, feeling almost guilty about marring the glass-smooth surface. And then I would turn, floating on my back, and fall into the Milky Way.
There are no words to describe proper night swimming. It has to be quiet, soft, and tender. Oh, certainly, there is skinny-dipping and other night-aquatic activity, both innocent and risqué. But there is a sacred art to the night swim, wherein the breath becomes a hymn, and bouyancy a prayer. There is truth beneath the surface that will bear you up, and an echo of the womb sleeps in the depths. The stars would rain down on me in their eternal dance, sheltering me like a canopy and yet being as wide and far and welcoming as only they can manage. There was never a coldness to them, only a silvery journey across the endless sky. It was me, the water, and the stars. Nothing else existed. I might as well have been floating in the constellations myself, just a little speck in a quiet, dark river.
Now, the night sky is often hidden by the harsh glow from street lights, and I seldom have the time to indulge my old night-time habits. But somewhere deep within me, there is a little girl, still floating in the starry sky, still dancing in the moonlight, still sitting by the firelight, and who still loves sneaking foods from the fridge. I wonder sometimes if one of my own children will do something similar. I want to be able to give them that gift. But I cannot explain why I would wake in the middle of the night, and cannot predict that they will also. Perhaps this gift was given to me only.
I feel sorry for the world if I was the only one to share in the joy of the gentle night.
April 04, 2012
The Long and Winding Road
This past weekend, I visited a friend in Bonny Doon. I crossed 17 (it wasn't anywhere as narrow and frightening as I remember), and wound my way through the mountains and trees with a strange reflex in my hands and feet. It was as though the corners of the highway still lived in my muscles, the anticipation of the banked curves, weaving through the living mountain like a river that had never been dry.
My heart sped up a little. I was reaching the end of Scotts Valley. A bizarre excitement swept through me. How to describe... but alas, there are no words for it, nothing in this pathetic human tongue to fully encapsulate the lightning that raced through me. Only feeling. A tightness of the throat, a pressure in the lungs, a fatigue in my quads. A shiver down the spine. A twitch of the ears.
There, in full view, burst Santa Cruz.
Some say a bell went off in their head when they first laid eyes on their soul-mate. Some people say that accepting a certain job that later becomes the career they were always called to do fits as comfortably and immediately as a favorite shoe. Here?
My immediate thought, like being smacked full-force with a gust of fresh air... was very simply:
"My god. I'm home."
A familiar buzz surrounded me, an energy with a mind of its own, the shadows shifting between the trees with the little spirits that I once called by name. The air itself was alive, whispering to me in a thousand voices unheard by the human ear. The branches of the redwoods reached out overhead like banners, waving to me as I passed by. The familiar windows, the old houses, the grumpy little shops, all smiling back at me through the rain. I found myself laughing out loud, almost insane, drunk with the feeling I never knew I'd lost, the feeling of being for once and for truly home.
I had reached the conclusion not more than three weeks ago that I could never go home again, for I had no home to return to. My childhood home was long gone, corrupted and changed beyond recognition. My heart broken, my friends scattered, my family living in some remote place that I had no real connection to and that refused whatever roots I DID try to put down. The very land itself rejected me, softly, gently, in that insistent but sad way someone who does not return your sentiments will politely decline your affections. I could almost hear the wind breathing into my ears that I could stay as long as I liked, but I would never truly fit in. And so, it was with a regretful determination that I shouldered the mantle of Vagabond, reasoning that I came from a long line of Wastrels and Nomads, surely this was simply a lesson to learn. And so, setting my jaw, I wandered to the Bay Area again, hoping that at least the familiarity would be some solace, the friends I could find would be enough to sustain me.
The shocks do not stop coming.
Not only are my friends coming out of the woodwork, and not nearly as far from me as I feared, but the land itself seems to rise up to meet me. The sun warms me with a friendly touch, the breezes caress my skin with what I can only describe as the tenderness of a lover, the earth laughs with me as I walk. And the profound loss I felt at being ripped away from the familiar was filled up to the brim and overflowing with a joy that refuses to subside.
And that moment hit me square in the chest, with all the force of a brick but yet with a fluid softness of a sudden deluge.
Home was here, the whole time, waiting for me to come back.
And my god.
Here I am.
My heart sped up a little. I was reaching the end of Scotts Valley. A bizarre excitement swept through me. How to describe... but alas, there are no words for it, nothing in this pathetic human tongue to fully encapsulate the lightning that raced through me. Only feeling. A tightness of the throat, a pressure in the lungs, a fatigue in my quads. A shiver down the spine. A twitch of the ears.
There, in full view, burst Santa Cruz.
Some say a bell went off in their head when they first laid eyes on their soul-mate. Some people say that accepting a certain job that later becomes the career they were always called to do fits as comfortably and immediately as a favorite shoe. Here?
My immediate thought, like being smacked full-force with a gust of fresh air... was very simply:
"My god. I'm home."
A familiar buzz surrounded me, an energy with a mind of its own, the shadows shifting between the trees with the little spirits that I once called by name. The air itself was alive, whispering to me in a thousand voices unheard by the human ear. The branches of the redwoods reached out overhead like banners, waving to me as I passed by. The familiar windows, the old houses, the grumpy little shops, all smiling back at me through the rain. I found myself laughing out loud, almost insane, drunk with the feeling I never knew I'd lost, the feeling of being for once and for truly home.
I had reached the conclusion not more than three weeks ago that I could never go home again, for I had no home to return to. My childhood home was long gone, corrupted and changed beyond recognition. My heart broken, my friends scattered, my family living in some remote place that I had no real connection to and that refused whatever roots I DID try to put down. The very land itself rejected me, softly, gently, in that insistent but sad way someone who does not return your sentiments will politely decline your affections. I could almost hear the wind breathing into my ears that I could stay as long as I liked, but I would never truly fit in. And so, it was with a regretful determination that I shouldered the mantle of Vagabond, reasoning that I came from a long line of Wastrels and Nomads, surely this was simply a lesson to learn. And so, setting my jaw, I wandered to the Bay Area again, hoping that at least the familiarity would be some solace, the friends I could find would be enough to sustain me.
The shocks do not stop coming.
Not only are my friends coming out of the woodwork, and not nearly as far from me as I feared, but the land itself seems to rise up to meet me. The sun warms me with a friendly touch, the breezes caress my skin with what I can only describe as the tenderness of a lover, the earth laughs with me as I walk. And the profound loss I felt at being ripped away from the familiar was filled up to the brim and overflowing with a joy that refuses to subside.
And that moment hit me square in the chest, with all the force of a brick but yet with a fluid softness of a sudden deluge.
Home was here, the whole time, waiting for me to come back.
And my god.
Here I am.
March 05, 2012
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - Why I Do What I Do
One of my favorite books as a kid was "50 Things Kids Can Do To Save The Earth". I didn't really understand at the time, but it truly shaped my perception of recycling. It started out simply: aluminum cans, plastic bottles - both easily identifiable, plentiful considering that our family drank a fair amount of soda, and recycling centers gave out money for them. But I noticed that the centers had bins for newspaper, tubs for tin cans, and several bins for glass. Even if they didn't pay much for them, or even at all, I started to wonder at the waste that could be averted with some careful sorting.
The word "green" wasn't really in use until I was well into high school. Our school - like many newer facilities at the time - was outfitted with receptacles for recycling, particularly bottles and cans. Though my friends sometimes scoffed (or were even just grossed out), I would remove soda cans from the trash and place them in the recycling bin. I realized that, sure, one can might not make a huge difference... but if I saved one extra can a day, that was 364 cans a year. Even one a week was another 52 cans that didn't end up in a landfill. That meant a lot more to me than most people.
See, my parents worked for the Forest Service in their youth. They would maintain trails, repair signs, and clean out fire pits. Sometimes campers left trash everywhere. Even as campers ourselves, sometimes we would find old cans sticking out of the dusty ground, where we could easily step on it and cut ourselves. It was an eyesore, a hazard, and it was certainly no good for the environment. Nothing breaks up the beauty of a sunrise by the South Fork of the Stanislaus River like a floating beer can that some careless fisherman tossed aside. So litter was a personal thing to me, on top of knowing that cleaning up after myself was the proper thing to do. And being fond of the wild places, wanting to preserve them, I knew recycling what we already have in use was the best way to keep the wild places pristine: turning in as much recyclable material as possible meant less waste in landfills, meaning they filled up more slowly, meaning they needed less space and less frequently. It also meant that fewer mines and refineries would be required to acquire new material. There was no drawback. It was logically the correct thing to do.
The only issue is one of effort. Sadly, a number of people find it to simply be too much hassle to separate bottles of glass, take it all down to a recycling center, and wait for someone to parse through everything. The time commitment and effort to maintain a recycling habit is often enough to make some people simply throw out their recyclables. That became even easier as the trend caught on, however, and by the time I was in college many dining facilities, bus stops, and public parks were outfitted with recycling receptacles. For the home-residents, garbage pickup services started offering at-home recycling pickup. Sure, you didn't get paid for it, but it almost eliminated the effort required.
Every time a new method was introduced, I incorporated it into my personal habits. Now I set aside recyclables at home, everything from newspaper to regular batteries; at the office, I help maintain the receptacles by keeping them clean and tidy, and emptying them as appropriate into the outside collections; when I go out on a hike or on a road trip, I make sure to pack out all my trash, and have a separate bag to collect things we can recycle when we get home. I try to help the practice gather momentum as well by educating kids on what can be recycled (my niece was ecstatic when I told her that she could recycle batteries), I encourage my peers to start up the practice, and I also set a positive example by being consistent.
I hope that I will eventually be able to whittle down how much I actually have to throw away to nothing. These days I'm even composting organic materials, so there's even less waste going into the garbage can every week. As time goes by, more and more efficient methods of manufacturing produce less waste, and our methods of reusing material become even more diverse. It is my fervent hope that we will eventually be able to completely self-sustain as a species, and no longer find it necessary to acquire more resources in order to maintain our lifestyles.
The word "green" wasn't really in use until I was well into high school. Our school - like many newer facilities at the time - was outfitted with receptacles for recycling, particularly bottles and cans. Though my friends sometimes scoffed (or were even just grossed out), I would remove soda cans from the trash and place them in the recycling bin. I realized that, sure, one can might not make a huge difference... but if I saved one extra can a day, that was 364 cans a year. Even one a week was another 52 cans that didn't end up in a landfill. That meant a lot more to me than most people.
See, my parents worked for the Forest Service in their youth. They would maintain trails, repair signs, and clean out fire pits. Sometimes campers left trash everywhere. Even as campers ourselves, sometimes we would find old cans sticking out of the dusty ground, where we could easily step on it and cut ourselves. It was an eyesore, a hazard, and it was certainly no good for the environment. Nothing breaks up the beauty of a sunrise by the South Fork of the Stanislaus River like a floating beer can that some careless fisherman tossed aside. So litter was a personal thing to me, on top of knowing that cleaning up after myself was the proper thing to do. And being fond of the wild places, wanting to preserve them, I knew recycling what we already have in use was the best way to keep the wild places pristine: turning in as much recyclable material as possible meant less waste in landfills, meaning they filled up more slowly, meaning they needed less space and less frequently. It also meant that fewer mines and refineries would be required to acquire new material. There was no drawback. It was logically the correct thing to do.
The only issue is one of effort. Sadly, a number of people find it to simply be too much hassle to separate bottles of glass, take it all down to a recycling center, and wait for someone to parse through everything. The time commitment and effort to maintain a recycling habit is often enough to make some people simply throw out their recyclables. That became even easier as the trend caught on, however, and by the time I was in college many dining facilities, bus stops, and public parks were outfitted with recycling receptacles. For the home-residents, garbage pickup services started offering at-home recycling pickup. Sure, you didn't get paid for it, but it almost eliminated the effort required.
Every time a new method was introduced, I incorporated it into my personal habits. Now I set aside recyclables at home, everything from newspaper to regular batteries; at the office, I help maintain the receptacles by keeping them clean and tidy, and emptying them as appropriate into the outside collections; when I go out on a hike or on a road trip, I make sure to pack out all my trash, and have a separate bag to collect things we can recycle when we get home. I try to help the practice gather momentum as well by educating kids on what can be recycled (my niece was ecstatic when I told her that she could recycle batteries), I encourage my peers to start up the practice, and I also set a positive example by being consistent.
I hope that I will eventually be able to whittle down how much I actually have to throw away to nothing. These days I'm even composting organic materials, so there's even less waste going into the garbage can every week. As time goes by, more and more efficient methods of manufacturing produce less waste, and our methods of reusing material become even more diverse. It is my fervent hope that we will eventually be able to completely self-sustain as a species, and no longer find it necessary to acquire more resources in order to maintain our lifestyles.
March 01, 2012
Brain Dead Drivel
(WARNING: Contains Strong Language)
Recently I found myself gainfully employed.
Now, unlike most other jobs I have possessed, this one is neither full-time, nor is it during normal business hours. No, the job I was hired to do is seasonal work that will end right about the time Spring Quarter starts up, which is pretty well perfect. It doesn't pay much, in fact hardly anything at all, but it slows the speed with which I am draining my unemployment claim. It's something, and I'm learning to take what I can with both hands and throttle it until I've wrung every last drop of sustenance from it.
In times gone by, I would have scoffed. I'm earning almost half what I used to, and the hours are well after sunset until just past dawn. It's rough work, with harsh cleansers and sharp things and hard heavy objects with pointy corners. I'm on my feet pretty much the whole time. And everyone there with me is in the same boat, so I don't dare complain. I suck it up, because it's what you fucking do. It doesn't matter what it looks like anymore. It doesn't matter what other people think. It matters that I grab ahold of what life gives me and I never let go, like a terrier will get a rat between its teeth and shake the life out of it. I can't be the prim and proper middle-class lady I used to be. It's time to nut up or shut up, get my hands dirty, and wade through mold and dust and garbage and cardboard (and occasionally bite my lip through the sting of the cleanser when it hits the cuts on my hands) to get the job bloody well done.
I wake tired every time, and with each consecutive shift things seem a little harder. It's harder to get out of bed, harder to rouse into consciousness, harder to stay awake, harder to figure out if I'm hungry. It's harder to fall asleep when I get home, harder to see the goal ahead. But dimly I remember it's there, and I keep getting my ass out of bed, into the shower, into clean clothes, into the car, and down to the store. I think they call it graveyard shift because you feel like a zombie after a while. But I'm embracing it - good, bad, and ugly - with all my might. Others have come before me and done harder work for less. I won't let this beat me down. I just fucking won't. There's too much fire in my heart and too much stubbornness in my mind to let any paltry thing like this own me. I could be jobless, but I'm not. It's kind of a crap job, but it's fucking work, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be ashamed of that for any reason.
I worry a lot. Will there be room in the class I need, will I find more work when this is done, will I find ENOUGH work, can I find a place of my own that I can actually afford, can I make it on my own. The answer to that last one is no, at least for now. There's no way in hell that I could completely support myself in this moment. It's a bare, naked, raw truth, and hiding it doesn't make it less real. I'm done hiding the truth. It wasted a lot of damn time and gained little in return. Smiling and pretending things are all right only makes the wound fester. I need to lance it, let it drain, expose it to the air. I need the sunlight to hit it and fire to cauterize it. This is the truth. This is what's real. I'm fucking poor, can't support myself, but goddamnit I'm working like an honest citizen and paying my bills one at a time.
And that, above all else, makes me proud.
If you asked me what I need to do for school in this moment, the words that would come out of my mouth would be in half-formed sentences that cobbled together in incomplete thoughts. My brain is so tired I can't think straight. But where my brain fails, my spirit picks up the slack, and I carry that spark like a torch. It's my last inch, that last ray of hope. It's that fundamental core of myself that cannot and WILL not be extinguished for as long as I have the courage to keep fighting, the will to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and make something of the day. I may be in a rough spot, sure. Lots of people have been. This isn't new. I'm not special. In fact, a lot of folks have it much, MUCH worse. And yeah, I'm daring to forge ahead and get back into school, AND work, AND dig myself out of debt, AND many other things. But I choose to do them. I am no victim of circumstance. This fate was of my own making, and by god it will be of my own making to get myself out. Will I have to lean on others to make it happen? Yes. Am I grateful? More than I can express. But this is something I have to do for myself. I have to climb this mountain so that when I get to the top, I know for a fucking fact that it was because I bent my will to it and had the strength to persevere.
So yeah. I may be snappish, or short, or groggy. I may be exhausted, weary, and broke. It's an unglamourous life. But it's real, and it's mine, and nobody is going to take that from me.
Recently I found myself gainfully employed.
Now, unlike most other jobs I have possessed, this one is neither full-time, nor is it during normal business hours. No, the job I was hired to do is seasonal work that will end right about the time Spring Quarter starts up, which is pretty well perfect. It doesn't pay much, in fact hardly anything at all, but it slows the speed with which I am draining my unemployment claim. It's something, and I'm learning to take what I can with both hands and throttle it until I've wrung every last drop of sustenance from it.
In times gone by, I would have scoffed. I'm earning almost half what I used to, and the hours are well after sunset until just past dawn. It's rough work, with harsh cleansers and sharp things and hard heavy objects with pointy corners. I'm on my feet pretty much the whole time. And everyone there with me is in the same boat, so I don't dare complain. I suck it up, because it's what you fucking do. It doesn't matter what it looks like anymore. It doesn't matter what other people think. It matters that I grab ahold of what life gives me and I never let go, like a terrier will get a rat between its teeth and shake the life out of it. I can't be the prim and proper middle-class lady I used to be. It's time to nut up or shut up, get my hands dirty, and wade through mold and dust and garbage and cardboard (and occasionally bite my lip through the sting of the cleanser when it hits the cuts on my hands) to get the job bloody well done.
I wake tired every time, and with each consecutive shift things seem a little harder. It's harder to get out of bed, harder to rouse into consciousness, harder to stay awake, harder to figure out if I'm hungry. It's harder to fall asleep when I get home, harder to see the goal ahead. But dimly I remember it's there, and I keep getting my ass out of bed, into the shower, into clean clothes, into the car, and down to the store. I think they call it graveyard shift because you feel like a zombie after a while. But I'm embracing it - good, bad, and ugly - with all my might. Others have come before me and done harder work for less. I won't let this beat me down. I just fucking won't. There's too much fire in my heart and too much stubbornness in my mind to let any paltry thing like this own me. I could be jobless, but I'm not. It's kind of a crap job, but it's fucking work, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be ashamed of that for any reason.
I worry a lot. Will there be room in the class I need, will I find more work when this is done, will I find ENOUGH work, can I find a place of my own that I can actually afford, can I make it on my own. The answer to that last one is no, at least for now. There's no way in hell that I could completely support myself in this moment. It's a bare, naked, raw truth, and hiding it doesn't make it less real. I'm done hiding the truth. It wasted a lot of damn time and gained little in return. Smiling and pretending things are all right only makes the wound fester. I need to lance it, let it drain, expose it to the air. I need the sunlight to hit it and fire to cauterize it. This is the truth. This is what's real. I'm fucking poor, can't support myself, but goddamnit I'm working like an honest citizen and paying my bills one at a time.
And that, above all else, makes me proud.
If you asked me what I need to do for school in this moment, the words that would come out of my mouth would be in half-formed sentences that cobbled together in incomplete thoughts. My brain is so tired I can't think straight. But where my brain fails, my spirit picks up the slack, and I carry that spark like a torch. It's my last inch, that last ray of hope. It's that fundamental core of myself that cannot and WILL not be extinguished for as long as I have the courage to keep fighting, the will to swing my legs over the edge of the bed and make something of the day. I may be in a rough spot, sure. Lots of people have been. This isn't new. I'm not special. In fact, a lot of folks have it much, MUCH worse. And yeah, I'm daring to forge ahead and get back into school, AND work, AND dig myself out of debt, AND many other things. But I choose to do them. I am no victim of circumstance. This fate was of my own making, and by god it will be of my own making to get myself out. Will I have to lean on others to make it happen? Yes. Am I grateful? More than I can express. But this is something I have to do for myself. I have to climb this mountain so that when I get to the top, I know for a fucking fact that it was because I bent my will to it and had the strength to persevere.
So yeah. I may be snappish, or short, or groggy. I may be exhausted, weary, and broke. It's an unglamourous life. But it's real, and it's mine, and nobody is going to take that from me.
February 12, 2012
Adjustments
I was recently asked by a friend how I was holding up.
I didn't know how to answer the question. Not because it was difficult to say how I was doing, but because it implied that I might not be doing well.
Point in fact, the best time of my life has been the recent months.
I get up in the morning when the light streams through my window, painting the wall in golden light. Often as not, there's a particular furball curled up next to my chest, purring softly. I get up, clean up, do my morning chores, then go out to the back pasture to practice my archery.
I was given a number of arrows for my birthday - six carbon-fiber flights with target tips, the exact proper length. I take them from their corner, string up my laminate longbow, and head out to fire no fewer than three rounds of flights into the hay-bale set up for expressly this purpose. Then, arms sore and achy, I gather everything up, unstring my bow, and come back in to clean them all off and put them away. Then I sit down for guitar practice.
The calluses on my fingers are forming, if slowly. I've learned three major chords so far, though "learned" is putting it kindly. If I make a funny face and think hard enough, I can remember how I'm supposed to make the fingers sit on the strings. Dad taught me a song ("song" is again a generous term) that involves all three chords, so I can feel accomplished. Somewhat. It's halting, it's clumsy, it's awkward... but it's music. Then, when my fingers wont take it anymore, I get down to the real exercise.
I nabbed a Brazilian Dance workout DVD with the Amazon.com gift card I got for my birthday, along with a Yoga DVD. I do the makulale-inspired workout, then follow it up with a cooldown stretch of Yoga for fifteen minutes. My spine in particular appreciates this part. It's tough, but I feel so much better afterwards.
After that, the rest of the day kicks in. I might take the dogs out for a run, outpacing them on the bicycle to really run them out. Or I might just grab the ball-thrower and put them through their paces in the pasture. If there's work around the house that needs doing, I'm on it without complaint. Dad might draft me into some construction work, ripping up the deck or getting the posts ready for a new railing. Mom might have me take care of some gardening, or need a hand making some epic meal. I volunteer to chop wood, build fires, stack kindling, and walk to the mailbox down the road. I run errands in town, and I play video games on the computer. I make friends and flirt and have fun. I meditate on the I-Ching wrapped in a Chief Joseph robe. I listen to the chorus of the thousands of frogs, I pick out the stars from the blanket of twinkling lights, and I scan the stream for the Steelhead salmon that spawn there.
... how am I "holding up"?
Yeah, okay. I did have my fiancé tell me he wasn't going to keep going. After six years (almost to the day), he called it quits, leaving me completely adrift. I had no job, no prospects, and no reason to stay... even if I could have afforded to. Before I knew what was happening, my family swooped in like an eagle after a chinook, and carried me back to the nest. And here between the redwoods and the open sea have I found myself, hiding all along.
I never had depression, apparently. They're saying now that it was Chronic Anxiety all along, which was why the meds never worked properly. The instant the relationship was over, the attacks stopped. No more emotional episodes. Terrible as it sounds, I feel... free. The trickle down I've heard has been that he's doing about the same. Perhaps everyone was right, maybe the relationship was over long ago, and neither of us were willing to admit it. After all, I'm a Capricorn, and he an Aries. And I come from a long line of stubborn women.
So - how I'm "holding up"? It's the wrong question. The question is how I'm doing. And the answer is "I'm thriving". I'm about to start a new job, and I'm getting my school applications all squared away, and I'm making new friends. I'll be moving again soon, but this time, it will be where *I* want to go, and it will be for myself.
I didn't know how to answer the question. Not because it was difficult to say how I was doing, but because it implied that I might not be doing well.
Point in fact, the best time of my life has been the recent months.
I get up in the morning when the light streams through my window, painting the wall in golden light. Often as not, there's a particular furball curled up next to my chest, purring softly. I get up, clean up, do my morning chores, then go out to the back pasture to practice my archery.
I was given a number of arrows for my birthday - six carbon-fiber flights with target tips, the exact proper length. I take them from their corner, string up my laminate longbow, and head out to fire no fewer than three rounds of flights into the hay-bale set up for expressly this purpose. Then, arms sore and achy, I gather everything up, unstring my bow, and come back in to clean them all off and put them away. Then I sit down for guitar practice.
The calluses on my fingers are forming, if slowly. I've learned three major chords so far, though "learned" is putting it kindly. If I make a funny face and think hard enough, I can remember how I'm supposed to make the fingers sit on the strings. Dad taught me a song ("song" is again a generous term) that involves all three chords, so I can feel accomplished. Somewhat. It's halting, it's clumsy, it's awkward... but it's music. Then, when my fingers wont take it anymore, I get down to the real exercise.
I nabbed a Brazilian Dance workout DVD with the Amazon.com gift card I got for my birthday, along with a Yoga DVD. I do the makulale-inspired workout, then follow it up with a cooldown stretch of Yoga for fifteen minutes. My spine in particular appreciates this part. It's tough, but I feel so much better afterwards.
After that, the rest of the day kicks in. I might take the dogs out for a run, outpacing them on the bicycle to really run them out. Or I might just grab the ball-thrower and put them through their paces in the pasture. If there's work around the house that needs doing, I'm on it without complaint. Dad might draft me into some construction work, ripping up the deck or getting the posts ready for a new railing. Mom might have me take care of some gardening, or need a hand making some epic meal. I volunteer to chop wood, build fires, stack kindling, and walk to the mailbox down the road. I run errands in town, and I play video games on the computer. I make friends and flirt and have fun. I meditate on the I-Ching wrapped in a Chief Joseph robe. I listen to the chorus of the thousands of frogs, I pick out the stars from the blanket of twinkling lights, and I scan the stream for the Steelhead salmon that spawn there.
... how am I "holding up"?
Yeah, okay. I did have my fiancé tell me he wasn't going to keep going. After six years (almost to the day), he called it quits, leaving me completely adrift. I had no job, no prospects, and no reason to stay... even if I could have afforded to. Before I knew what was happening, my family swooped in like an eagle after a chinook, and carried me back to the nest. And here between the redwoods and the open sea have I found myself, hiding all along.
I never had depression, apparently. They're saying now that it was Chronic Anxiety all along, which was why the meds never worked properly. The instant the relationship was over, the attacks stopped. No more emotional episodes. Terrible as it sounds, I feel... free. The trickle down I've heard has been that he's doing about the same. Perhaps everyone was right, maybe the relationship was over long ago, and neither of us were willing to admit it. After all, I'm a Capricorn, and he an Aries. And I come from a long line of stubborn women.
So - how I'm "holding up"? It's the wrong question. The question is how I'm doing. And the answer is "I'm thriving". I'm about to start a new job, and I'm getting my school applications all squared away, and I'm making new friends. I'll be moving again soon, but this time, it will be where *I* want to go, and it will be for myself.
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