Tuesday, November 7, 2017

politics on the road

I wrote a post on Herding Cats about the trauma I am experiencing from a distance, but I only touched loosely on the political scene.  I don't know if that is a Nomad post or a Therapy post.  Maybe it's a little of both.  Being on the road, I find myself talking about American politics with a lot of people, and I usually revert to their own politics. That would be a Nomad post.  Libraries are shutting down in England and Ireland, Brexit is a mess from both sides, Spain has put Catalonia in a military lockdown, etc.

But American politics...gawd it's awful.  I receive daily emails from the Democratic party and from environmental groups.  They talk about elections, about the gutting of the EPA, about the other daily and hourly attacks on all I hold dear.  Sometimes I go through and remove myself from the mailing lists, but I am sending monthly contributions, so it's a temporary fix.  Despite the contributions, I still get messages:  WE NEED YOUR HELP, WHERE ARE YOU?!  I push the trashcan icon without reading, but meanwhile it's another assault.  Trump and his minions are at war with me, and I'm doing nothing to fight back.

This traumatic situation is not a function of being on the road: since I moved to NM,  I've been doing most of my activism from long distance, so this is just a continuation.. In fact being on the road is little different from being in Taos.  My social and personal life has mainly been online, where I share bits and pieces of my mostly-solitary daily routine.  I also got get my news online, and that's where the trauma comes in, and the need for a Therapy post.

But, as I said in my other blog, what can I do, how can I respond?  Only through words, it seems.  So, words were my response when Puerto Rico and Santa Rosa were both devastated by natural disasters, and Trump not only did nothing, he displayed his total unfitness.  He ignored the fires, and didn't know that Puerto Rico was an U.S. territory, filled with U.S. citizens deserving of aid.  And, he cared more about the personal criticism than the huge amount of suffering.  Don't even get me started on the climate change issue.

In tragedy's wake,
Why expect empathy from
A sociopath?

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Fascinations

I was talking with R about a possible writing project. She asked me what I feel passionate about, and I realized that I don't feel passionate. I am fascinated by many things, but passions are beyond me. That's actually an ongoing angst/regret. It's part of my Jack of all Trades personality to be interested in many things, but unable to produce an excellent product. Still, as I age and I begin to become a little expert in various areas of fascination, I find that there is a product of sorts. I have songs and origami patterns and fudge recipes at my immediate disposal, for example. And I know a bit about wines, enough to buy or order something that I'll like. To my surprise, I realize it no longer bothers me that I remain a dilettante in all areas. I think I like it that way. In fact, I know I do. It's so much less work.

M thinks we fuss too much about things like passion and purpose. In her opinion, the activity of the moment is the passion. Looking at today, my passions have been eating toast and coffee, throwing a ball for Pekoe, cuddling the dogs, knitting, tutoring, listening to music, doing laundry, watching bad TV, and writing. Hmmm.

Facetiousness aside. I do get what she means. It's like the old adage: if you want to be a writer, write. Or, to be more psychological, your choices indicate who you are, what is important to you. The energy you put into a person or project is what gives it the meaning. "It is the time you waste on your rose..." in fact. I could take that silly list of activity/passions and say that my purposes are living a comfortable life, learning, creating, teaching, sharing and caring. It's a more generic list than the list of passions, but it's more encompassing. And the purposes can remain steady, while the passions change.

So, I make lists of my passions, or rather fascinations. I can choose to waste time on them, or I can be chosen by them. I deliberately don't say that I can be obsessed by them, because, again, obsessing is not what I do. Repetition, maybe. Many show up in blogs or Facebook posts: they have not been researched or developed, because that would be work. But if one can write about sheer observations and sound bites, here's the current list, which I shared with R.
  • Details in art: feet, patterns, fashions
  • Clouds and the desert SW Sky
  • Pterodactyls and other fossils
  • Ra Paulette: Cave digger
  • Waterfalls.
  • Columbia River Gorge.
  • Wild fires. Climate change.
  • Zozobra festival and burning Man and other traditions of burning
  • Dia de Los Muertos, marigold parade, etc in New Mexico
  • The tradition of the luminarias /farolitos: making them, setting them out, walking the paths.
  • Chimayo and other pilgrimage destinations
  • Stone circles
  • Andy Goldsworthy
  • Beauty and the beast, variations
  • Jane Austen
  • Dorothy Sayers
  • Georgette Heyer
  • Diana Wynne Jones
  • Strong girls in science fiction
It reminds me a little of Tim's 20-something to-do list: esoteric and eccentric. His included math problems and learning to speak with dolphins, so he had a creative product in mind. He was ambitious. I am not. There is so much to observe and experience, and I think that I am at the place where I'm interested in learning for learning's sake. And, it's difficult to focus on one thing. That's why I say I have no passions: what I really mean is that I have no obsessions.

That being the said, it's clear that I am, in fact, passionate about writing. In some way, shape, or form, I write every day. The question is, can I take that passion and actually create something coherent for R's imprint? I'm excited and confused by the prospect. Excited because it's new to me and has the possibility of actually being a remunerative activitiy. Confused, because I don't really know what's involved.

I'm thinking, though, that instead of writing about famous people or that earlier list of fascinations, I'd like to write about extraordinary ordinary people, people in my family, for example. Laura Ingalls Wilder is the closest model: she strung her family stories into a series of books which, while not completely factual, caught the spirit and experience of that pioneer lifestyle. All families are a product of their culture, and they all have stories that fit into the civilization's big picture. For example: women's roles changed with the advent of new careers and innovations. One result was my aunt, who, as The Flying Secretary, raced an airplane across the U.S. in the Powderpuff Derby in 1965. Women's roles were circumscribed after the War, but many had to work to supplement family incomes as the children grew older and needed more support in starting their own careers. And many wanted something meaningful to do. My Mom went back to school after we kids grew up and later took her teaching experience and love of music to start a community orchestra in a small town in IL.

There were other historical events that informed family trajectories. The Great Depression and World War II left their marks on everyone, of course. Esther, whose first husband worked at Los Alamos, left him for a woman and then temporarily left her to have a child. She lived to be over a 100; in that time frame she worked as a censor during WWII and did a similar job for 3 years in Germany after the war. Her mother supported the family during the Depression as a seamstress and a Christian Science healer. In my family, the Depression was responsible for much roaming. My grandpa played in a jazz band in Chicago during the Capone years and remembered being present for a gangster confrontation. "Keep playing," one of the gangsters growled. Dad, who as a radioman listened to Tokyo Rose, was at Guadalcanal after the Sullivan brothers got killed, and was on a troop transport that took wounded from Okinawa back to the West Coast. Mom lived through the Vanport flood. Dad went to college on the GI bill.

Then, there is the entire immigrant experience. So many stories, so many people. I remember hearing of a woman in Colorado who went crazy with the loneliness and hard work, holed up in the homestead, and held off her entire family with a shotgun. While insanity may not have been the only response, my great aunt told us that Grandma married at a very late age, mid-thirties, just to escape all the hard work of the eldest daughter on a farm.

I think I'd like to research family stories, for my family at the very least. It would be an interesting way to combine my interest in history and my attempts to find meaning in the lives that are lived around me. People have endless ways of being and creating and just living: how do we grow as a people and as individuals? How do we tell our stories, to ourselves and to others? My aunt's story is particularly tragic, of course, but it's also inspiring in its way. Her tragedy is one of mental illness within (or created by?) a stultifying society. What leads one to paranoia? What series of frustrations and attacks and sorrows brought her from the bright adventurous pilot to the ranting schizophrenic? And yet, she managed to break the mold that had been set for her, at least for awhile. She was a fighter, and it was unknown women like her who set the stage for later battles, who provided the background for the Amelia Earhearts. Not everyone can succeed, but everyone can fight.

No, I wouldn't write this for R's kids' nonfiction list. And, it's probably not possible to find all the facts of these half-heard stories. But it is possible to set that scene, that history. It's possible to find the arc of the family story. Maybe someone will want to hear it. Maybe it has meaning, in the big picture.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

A Relationship with Myself

I just re-read one of my private blogs, the blogs where I talk critically of people whom I love, where I question relationships, where I whine even more unbearably than I do in the public blogs.  I call my public posts my therapy blog, but these private posts are my uber therapy blogs.  And who wants to visit another person's therapy?

But, there is a point to making my musings public.  People want to know how I'm doing, and what I'm thinking, and it's a quick way to keep people posted on the more intimate thoughts, without the immediacy of the letter.  If they take the time to find the blog and read it, that's their choice.  They can ignore this blog altogether:  another choice.  It's harder to ignore a letter, so the choice there is less free.

All of this is a preface to saying that I want to revisit some of the ideas in those earlier, private posts.  They are about relationships.  I summarized the relationships of the last 5 years and questioned the validity of my current romantic pursuit.  Mainly, I was noting that I am not the primary relationship for anyone, or, more pertinently, no one is a primary relationship for me.  There is always something that doesn't quite work.  In D's case, I was too sensitive.  In T's case, I wasn't kinky.  In S's case, I was too needy.  In G's case....I just am not the one.  But that puts the onus on me, saying that my personality is at fault.  It goes both ways.  In D's case, he was too angry.  In T's case, he was secretive and confrontation averse.  In S's case, he was afraid to let me into his introvert bubble.  In G's case, he can't talk deeply with me and doesn't seem to enjoy my stories.  I realize I'm leaving out M, because that relationship seems to work as a secondary relationship.  It's always been long-distance, and he's truly poly, so the secondary relationships get a lot of commitment from him.  He doesn't use the lack of primacy as a tactic to keep me at arm's length.

Now that I am embarked on a 2-year journey away from everyone, I wonder about the urge that has led me into these failed and flawed relationships.  I was happily single for many years, and I still am very happy with my own company.  Post D, I probably needed to prove that I was desirable to someone other than him. T thought I was looking for another husband, which is completely a function of his own worldview.  I wanted to feel loved, but I didn't want to be in love or work on the difficult marital bond.  I would not be averse to finding a soulmate, but I don't see it happening, and I don't want to be without male companionship and intimacy while I wait for the long shot.

Still, that doesn't explain the wistfulness I feel at finding that G is in love.  It's confusing, actually.  It's what I want and wanted for him. We do not have that sort of relationship, so jealousy shouldn't come into play.  We were both glad the other "chose to be in my life," but it was clear that I, while an important friend, was not The One for G.  And it was equally clear that he, although a loyal, helpful and beloved friend, was not a soulmate for me.  I guess I mainly am sad to not be of real importance to him.  And even that isn't quite right.  I would have been uncomplicatedly happy if he and P had resumed their intimacy, and I had no jealousy of his commitment to her.  I felt that he would still care for me.  Why don't I feel that way now?  Is it because it's a new relationship that has displaced me?  Or because I'm not sure that she is a better option than me?  They are adorable together, and he is adorable in his obsession with her, so what is the problem?

I'm not worried about his commitment to being my backup on my adventure:  he has said that he has no problem with keeping my stuff and being my pied a terre in Albuquerque, and I believe him.  Besides, I do have other options if that changes.  And he is not like S and T, who were hurtful in their rejection of me.  He never pretended that our relationship was anything but a friendship with benefits, and I never wanted it to be anything more. While I'm comfortable with his companionship and I enjoy his quirky and inquiring mind, I don't feel completely connected to him, and I don't like his home.  I don't want to move in on him, and it would be the ultimate in selfishness to resent that he doesn't want me either.

Also, part of the reason for this nomadic existence is to reclaim my relationship with myself.  I want to be happy with who I am and what I do, in that order.  I need to be lovable to myself.  All of this obsession with traditional relationships is waste emotion.  While I remain concerned about G's new choice, the wistfulness is an emotion I need to move past. As Octavia Butler would say, "So be it.  See to it!"

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Where's the confusion?

Five days ago, hundred of  white nationalists, neo-Nazis and their ilk descended upon Charlottesville, VA, population 49K,  to protest the removal of a civic statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  Another group came in to protest the protest.  A neo-Nazi drove into the crowd of anti-protesters, killing one, injuring 19.  A helicopter holding 2 policemen crashed. These are the facts as I read them, and I'm at a loss to understand why there is any controversy over it.  Violence was perpetrated by a person who belongs to a group that espouses racism. Violence was perpetrated in the name of that hatred.  That's what happened.

And yet, there is controversy.

People talk about free speech:  okay I get it, the neo-Nazis have the right to protest. But why do they have the right to protest in someone else's back yard?  Is the statue federal property?  Is it art? Does it belong to anyone but the people of Charlottesville, VA?  Did the protestors actually attend City Council discussions and raise protests then?  Did they even have the right to do so? I don't know, and the people defending these haters don't say.   Because, the reality is, the reason for the rally was not to protest the proposed removal the the statue.  The reason was hatred, hatred that the Confederacy does not exist, that there are people who do not want to glorify that ugliness,  that people of color have rights, however those rights are abused and denied in this culture.  The rally was not about free speech, it was about muscle flexing. 

Still, let's say it was about free speech.  Next, we have the free speech of the counter-protestors.  Did they attack the neo-Nazis? Did they run a car into them?  Did they kill anyone?  Not that I've heard. Did they have a right to come in and protest?  As much right as the white supremacists had to hold their rally, I'd guess. 

It seems to me that the basic tragedy is that people are taking their battles into innocent people's homes.  Charlottesville, VA, did not ask for this confrontation. The other tragedy is that people are not listening to each other, but instead are actively ripping into each other.  That being said, I not-so-respectively disagree with Not-My-President, who says the violence came from Many Sides.  Who started it?  The white supremacists who held their rally in a space where they were not needed, wanted, or invited, from what I can tell.  Who killed and injured people?  A white supremacist.  Who defended that action?  White supremacists. 

And....old friends, neighbors, and people I care about.  And that is the reason for this post.  I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that people I care about could hold views so diametrically opposed to mine, and that they could argue so speciously for those views.  One person actually claimed that neo-Nazis and liberals hold the same core values.  (I'm still waiting for an explanation of that statement.  Bigotry and racism were never core values of any liberal I met.) Others go back into history and say the United States was founded on racism and has a long and not-so-proud history of that.  Granted.  But, the  United States has also a very proud history of fighting for people's rights (not to mention the climate, but that's a rant for another post).  And, while one can claim that all wars are economically based, I will always believe that one reason WWII was fought was that Nazism as espoused by Hitler and his thugs is evil.  Lord knows, victims of the Holocaust paid that price, and the United States would never had said, as Not-My-President says, that there were faults on both sides.  To find that evil resurfacing in my country is...I don't have the words. Unconscionable, frightening, heartbreaking.  Wrong.

But okay, let's say that those apologists are right.  Hell, they ARE right.  Our history is tainted.  People have a right to free speech.  People have a right to defend themselves.  I get it.  BUT...Where does that make it okay for someone to drive into a crowd of people who hold different ideas?  When planes were diverted into the Twin Towers, we called it terrorism.  And it was.  When a neo-Nazi drives into people protesting against white supremacists, what do we call it?  I'm not sure.  The apologists for that action are not sure.  Domestic terrorism, I'd say, in a normal place.  But my country is not normal. 

There, I said it.  Our lives under Not-My-President and his white supremacist supporters and his climate-denying cabinet and his Republican Congress are NOT NORMAL.  We are spending our energy fighting battles that are precipitated by insanity, On Many Sides, as 45 would say.  The many sides of the insanity include the science deniers, the bigots, the greedy haters.  Their insane Many Sides are driving the national debate, are turning us away from factual issues like Russia's involvement in the election hacks, like 45's conflicts of interest, like his treasonable use of social media to share confidential information.  And in this climate, we have the resurgence of anti-Semitism, the violence and fear caused by anti-Black and anti-immigrant sentiment.  It's too complicated to say that this has happened because of this president or that president.  But, it's clear that 45 is not the man to unify this country:  he built his platform on hate and disunity, and there is no reason to believe that he does not hold with those opinions still. 

I should be angry.  I should be fighting the good fight.  But I'm not. As I was in November, I am heartsick.  I'm heartsick when people I used to like say "gee, if you're gonna criticize me, I don't want you to be my friend."  I'm heartsick when people whom I respected for researching their opinions are now using that research to obfuscate and attack and divide....and hate.  I'm heartsick when I visit the national parks and realize that heritage is under siege, that the property owned by the people will likely belong to the 1%, and the resources the lands hold will be squandered while their uniqueness is destroyed, the rest of the world following.

And all I can do right now is to stand, as much as possible, with those who, in their flawed and beautiful ways, are fighting the good fight.  If ever there was a good fight, the fight against bigotry is that.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Walking

Years ago I read a book by Rebecca Solnit about walking.  There is a lot in that book to delight, inform, and enlighten, but the main take away for me came in the first chapter.  According to Solnit, the brain works best at 4 miles an hour, which is the average walking pace.  Since I read that book, I often find myself coming back to that thought as I hike and walk and ponder. 

For years, my walking was utilitarian: growing up in small town Illinois, I walked to school and to friends' homes, when I didn't bicycle or bring my violin to before-school rehearsal. It wasn't until my brother came home from Reed College in Portland, OR, that I walked for pleasure.  He took my sisters and me on a hike through Starved Rock State Park.  It was a revelation in more ways than one.  I still recall his boiling potatoes in their skins and packing the cooled potatoes for our snack on the trail.  I was appalled at the idea of eating a cold potato; potatoes were supposed to be eaten hot with lots of butter and sour cream.  He said, "You'll be very glad of these when the time comes," and he was right.  It was one of the most delicious snacks I'd ever had.  But the real revelation was what it was like, being in the woods and walking the trails.  I still remember inching down a dry water-carved stream bed and looking over the edge of an ancient falls site.  The rock was smooth and sculpted, and I'd never seen anything like it. Since then I've hiked through splendid mountain scenery in Oregon, through Welsh fields to Offa's Dike, up the waterfalls of the Columbia River Gorge, through the amazing Bryce, Kodachrome, and Zion park canyons in Utah, around Ayers Rock, and on and on,  But I still can see that dry fall in tree-dappled sunlight, close by the Mississippi, still taste that firm cool potato liberally sprinkled with salt.

Despite that experience, though, I did not yet become a hiker.  During college, my walking was limited to going between campus buildings and to the local bars.  On my 19th summer, I was working on Macinnac Island, MI, and I used to walk the 4 miles to the opposite side of the island to watch the sun set.  In Portland, I walked to the store and to the bus stop and to work. I didn't have a car for a few years, and even when I did, I preferred to walk and use public transportation.  I remember being appalled when I came back to IL and witnessed my sister driving the mere half mile between her house and Mom's and the even shorter distance to the local coffee shop.  What had happened to her? Didn't she remember the mile-plus we used to walk to school?  In Portland I walked that far just to get from my parking place to my destination! (And, how did she stay so skinny?)

Those were the years when I learned to hike.  My first mountain hike, Saddle Mountain, near the coast, was incredibly arduous.  I had slippery shoes, with light brown leather uppers and spongy soles, not real walking shoes or hiking boots. There was a washout early on and it took 3 people to get me across:  one standing below the skinny slippery trail, one standing on the other side of the washout, and the third standing behind me.  They passed me from person to person.  Later, as we crossed the saddle, with the sheer drops on either side, I stopped regularly to get my breath and my nerve.  The last bit of trail was a switchback up a steep cliff.  At each switch an iron rod was hammered into the rock, and chains hung from the rods, showing the path.  I pulled myself up by the chains and then I was at the top, a level, loosely rectangular scree-covered space the size of my studio apartment.  I was looking west down the Columbia River towards Astoria and east and south towards the Cascades.  It was such a clear day I could see all the way to Mt. Jefferson to the southeast, and Mt Rainier to the northeast.  The peaks were like stepping stones between those points. 

The exhilaration of that moment is what got me back down the mountain. A lung bursting ascent was followed by a toe-bashing descent, blisters, and a pulled groin muscle.  But it didn't matter.  I was hooked.  I never became a backpacker, nor did I climb to the snow-capped peaks, but from that moment on I was a hiker.  Even asthma and vertigo didn't keep me away from it.  But other life events did.  As I write this, I start to wonder if the lack of regular hikes did not lead to my depression in the years since I connected with D.  He had bad knees, and he didn't like me to go with other people on my days off:  he wanted me to himself.  So, although I still did go hiking, it was not nearly as regularly.   When I switched jobs to Portland State, I started walking to work in the morning and busing home at night.  Eventually Carbon came into my life, and I started walking with her twice a day. Moving to Albuquerque, I discovered the Sandias and the open spaces there and in the Rio Grande.  But that wasn't until I left D and acquired G and others as hiking partners.And, I rarely hiked alone.

Before that, D and I walked through the nearby Arroyo del Oso, often fighting.  I had learned in counseling sessions that the worst place to fight was at a table:  you were faced off against each other, in a confrontational position.  Walking, you were moving towards the same goal, together.  Well, the theory is good, and it's true that it helped keep me on an even keel to put my energy into moving my feet instead of into the adrenaline rush of rage or the heart-hurting sorrow.  But, it didn't solve the problems.  Eventually, it was in the course of a walk with a friend that I realized my life with D was in serious trouble.  And, it was through a walk that I told D that I was leaving.  At that point, we were no longer moving together towards the same goal.

 So, through the years I've hiked and walked, and it usually is an excellent way to communicate with another person or travel short distances. It's my default for both activities.  However, what walking does for me alone is another matter altogether. Back in Portland, I had begun taking walks on my work breaks. It started out as a practical measure:  if I was walking in the neighborhood, no one could interrupt my break with a work issue.  But it also had the side benefit of helping me think through barriers and emotions.  That's when I remembered Rebecca Solnit and the brain's ability to work better at 4 miles an hour.  There is indeed something about walking that helps one think.  The scenery changes, but slowly, and while noticing things like the raccoon family walking across the street in the hot summer sun, or the cherry blossoms whirling down in the spring wind, my mind also is working away at the latest issue, without my being aware of it.  It's like a waking dream, a walking dream, in fact.  I write haiku in my head, I photograph scenes with my eyes, I breathe in the scent of daphne, I listen to the sounds of wind chimes and bird calls.  And, while I'm absorbing the world through my senses, my body is stretching and the oxygen is filling my lungs, and that too is benefiting my brain. 

It's so obvious that walking nurtures the soul as well as the brain.  For years, I used labyrinths for a walking meditation. For years, I would go out for a walk to calm the fidgets out of my muscles.  I would think a mantra of numbers (1 and 2 and 3 and 4...), in rhythm with my steps.  And then, I would start thinking coherent thoughts:  things to write, things to say, things to do. Or I would take pictures of an amazing tree or some fabulous clouds.  Walking jump-started most of my creativity, in fact.

But it also was necessary from a physical perspective.  While I was taking care of E, I would go out for a half hour walk up the mountain, never going too far, just getting a break and some exercise.  She and I would go for another walk before dinner, about 10 minutes up or down Vista del Oro. Later, when I moved to Taos, I would take walks on the trail by campus during my lunch break, or I would walk around the neighborhood and watch the sunset.  Then, for no good reason, I stopped walking.  I was sick for months on end, I was exhausted, I needed to do school work on my breaks, the Sandias were closed due to fire danger, it was too hot, it was too windy.   Those were just of few of the bad reasons I had for not walking.  When I saw the psychic in February, one of the things she told me was that I needed to get outside, to walk.  It was one of the many things she said that resonated with me and one of the reasons I thought of pet-sitting as a way to spend my time.  It would force me to walk every day.  I would no longer be able to plead exhaustion or being too busy with other things.  Walking would be part of my job. 

So, today, as I walked the two dogs that are my current charge, I found myself thinking, yet again, about Solnit's words.  I thought, even though she wrote a whole book about walking, in her luminous prose, I'm going to write a blog about it. And maybe I'll find that book and read it again.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Preparing to be a nomad

We put 5 more boxes in his storage unit in the basement of the building, and he fingered the chicken wire that separates his space from his neighbor's:  it has come loose from the staples that moor it to the flimsy wooden framework. Well, he had warned me that I shouldn't keep anything I really care about in there.  And I won't be.  He's put my art on his walls, the art that is not replaceable, and he'll be using my TV and air purifier once I finally move for good.  I figure I have about 10 boxes left to pack up and deliver:  1 of shoes, 3 of books, 2 of dishes, and the rest of clothes and odds and ends. Belongings that I care about are going with B to her IL basement, along with Grandpa's old slant-topped blonde wood desk.  Those belongings are basically paper:  legal docs, photos, travel journals.  The violin and some music will be with me, and that's the only thing I own of value, other than the electronics:  ipad, PC, iphone, and J's camera, which technically I don't own, and which I'm still debating about bringing with me.  The idea is to travel light, after all.

As I packed up the current batch of boxes, I wondered at myself.  Why am I storing this stuff?  Most of it has been in cupboards, unpacked boxes, and closets, unused since I moved to Ranchos de Taos a year ago.  If I haven't missed it in the last year, what's the point of keeping it?  I'm guessing it's a mix of reasons.  In the last 5 years I've already weeded out things that I am missing now, and I can't bear to pare down 58 years of a life any further.  It appears that I'm nesting now that I no longer have a nest, now that my life as a nomad is 5 weeks minus one day away.  My last day of paid work is May 11, and I'll leave Taos that night, to leave my car in ABQ with G while I go north for the sister trip.  Then back to pick up the car and drive west for my summer in CA and the start of my....adventure?  escape? self-indulgence?  Depending on the day and hour, it can be any or all of these for me.

Today I glanced through a blog by a young German man who spent three years traveling:  his was a true adventure, funded by many years in a high-power job.  I wonder what he's doing now.  There doesn't seem to be much since he finished the blog in 2011 and wrote a book based on the blog in 2013.  I wonder what I'll do with my nomadic time, and where I'll end up, and what I'll do then?  It's too early to retire, really, except that it's too late to start a new career.  I can't muster enthusiasm for much of anything but what I'm doing now:  eating, reading, knitting, and packing, and, the odd job interview aside, no one seems to muster much enthusiasm for me.  Am I both too old and too young?

No, I'm just too tired.

In some ways, drawing out the packing process is a good thing.  It's emotionally exhausting to find homes for this collection of objects, some useful, some sentimental, most neither.  It's best to do it in stages. But, what I really should be doing is exploring my current home, fitting in the last visits to favorite places, checking out the places I never got around to visiting: the murals at the Plaza, Fossil Hill, Millicent Rogers Museum, DH Lawrence Ranch, trails on Taos Mountain, Pot Creek, and, of course, Ra Paulette's Caves over by Ojo.  Not to mention a last visit to Ojo Caliente itself.  I doubt I'll do any of it ,though.  In addition to the incremental boxing up of my life, I still have a job, and I'm still taking classes.  Finishing those commitments is a self-respect-worthy thing.  Not only should I do it, I want to do it.

Still, I get tired just thinking about what I haven't done.  The weight of opportunities missed and days wasted is crushing at times.  But of course, there's more than that, and, looking over at G, I realize that my time has not been misspent.  I've had his growing friendship for 4 years, as well as the friendship of many other people, and I am now picking myself up and exploring options for my third act.  Five years ago at this time I was preparing for the move to ABQ, and the move happened on my birthday weekend.  I spent the ensuing five years recovering from the various losses, losses that were physical, emotional, and fiscal. This year, on my 58th birthday, I'll be playing with dogs, and enjoying Sonoma County.

There's not much to complain about.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Snippets

1. Snippet # 1:  Reunion
I spent my Christmas break in Petaluma, CA, visiting E.  She was 101 in July, 2016, and it had been close to 2 years since I had seen her.   Although there are signs of deterioration, she is still able to go on road trips and enjoy them.  So, in the course of my 5-day visit, we went to the top of Mt. Tam,  into the Muir Redwoods, over to the Sonoma Coast, through the Sonoma Valley,  into cheese factories and wineries.  The weather was perfect:  blue skies, crisp air, clear light.  

She fell the first night, splitting open the thin skin on her left forearm.  Her daughter took care of the ER visit, and I wasn't aware of the incident until the next morning, but the rest of the visit I started each day changing the bandages and examining the arm for radiating red or pus.  She was disoriented, convinced that she was at her aunt's house in Bakersfield, instead of her sister's house in Petaluma.  But otherwise, she was her own wonderful self, delighted to see me and to be with her family.  "Oh I'm so glad you are here, did anyone tell me you were coming?  It almost makes up for that great disappointment."   She was referring to the visit I had planned in October, that was canceled the morning of the flight because of the violent attack of vertigo.  So, her memory is intact for some things.

It was a special time, a renewal of a special bond.  It was possibly the last time I would see her, probably the last time I would see her able to go out and about.  I ached as she said "when will you come back, why don't you move to California," as I replied, "I'd like to."  Her niece drove us to the airport on that last day, and the conversation consisted of telling E that she was going to her home in El Cerrito, and I was going to my home in Taos.  That we were separating again.  That I was not staying with her.  A final hug, and I walked into the airport.  I had a cold, but that's not why I was sniffing.

2.  Snippet 2:  Politics
I delivered my rent check and he said, "So, it's 2017 and the world hasn't come to an end."  I nodded, "Not yet."  "Give him a chance," he said.  I mentioned the new Cabinet appointees, and the denial rocked me.  "He's not a racist....I don't believe in Climate Change either."  I walked away.  This is the other side of it.  I'd like to believe that Trump supporters are thoughtful, that they voted him in because they don't like the status quo and they don't believe he is a sociopath (or that it matters in terms of what he can do).  But, some of his supporters, maybe most of them, are like my landlord.  I am frightened.  I read my Daily Action text and call the number to protest the first action of the new Congress:  a breathtakingly cynical attempt to do away with ethical oversight.  And then the Sociopath tweets "no, no, no" and the media says, "ain't he great."  I feel played.

How can we be proactive instead of reactive?  How can we stop playing the Sociopath's game?  A friend says, it's just the pendulum swinging.  It's what we do, why do you get so upset about it?  But I find it impossible to be philosophical about it, and I cannot be comforted by the thought of the pendulum swinging back.  So much evil will be done on this side of the swing.

3.  Snippet 3: Friendship
In the laser music room at Meow Wolf
She spent her 70th birthday with me in Santa Fe.  We walked the Rio Grande Nature Center, we went to Meow Wolf, we checked out the Indian Fair, we froze in the Glow at the Santa Fe Botannic Garden.  We had a lovely meal at the Compound, and the busser who shared the birthday brought us free desserts.  

She is the only friend from Portland to visit me here, and has done so faithfully every year.  We have explored Chimayo, Taos, the Agnes Martin room at the Harwood, Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, Jemez Springs, Bosque del Apache, the VLA, and Albuquerque Luminaria tours.  We have talked, she has analyzed.   In the 30+ years we have been friends, we have traveled together, eaten memorable meals, drunk memorable wines, listened to wonderful music, and....talked.  She is argumentative in the best sense of the word:  she observes, questions, and thinks.  No offhand comments allowed:  you have to defend your position.

She claims to be organic in her approach to travel, to life.  "You'll retire when you want to stop working, when it's time" she says, dismissing my agonizing over budgets, health care,  and What Will I Do?  She says live in the moment, be content with what you have.  Or words to that effect.  

G says similar things.  "You're a dreamer," he said today.  I'm not so sure about that.  I know I'm tired, tired of being sick, of having no energy, of having no focus, no reason for existing.  Today, as I stood in his shower, enjoying the feeling of the hot water on my back, I thought about living in the moment.  Yes, this moment is good, but is it enough?  Am I enough?

When I was visiting with E, I overheard her talking about me with her niece.  "She's so kind, so genuine," they agreed.  I smiled at the time, almost saying "You know I can hear you, right?" but instead letting the eulogy run its course.  Now I wonder....is a life of friendships enough?  Lord knows I am a careless friend.  "You never call, you never write...."  

And it's true enough.   I think about C, my freshman year Resident Advisor who passed 3 days before Christmas, leaving behind a teenaged son and a coterie of heartbroken friends and family.  I learned about it through a text, the texter having learned about it through Facebook.  What a world we live in, where friendships are created or maintained through social media, where you learn the most heart-rending news browsing through your iPhone.  And where your grief is shared and assuaged through the pixellated pictures and memories and anguish posted through the special Friends Of group on Facebook.   

Through the shock, I process.  Why am I so upset?  She was important to my life 40 years ago, but I haven't talked to her since.  Some of my fellow advisees have seen her, talked to her, written to her, but not I.  I friended her on Facebook after the 2nd Spider reunion, and I've followed her posts, and she has responded to mine, but that does not a friendship make.  Or does it?  What comes through, shiningly, as I read the posts of fellow mourners, is what a friend she was.  She was kind, she was genuine, she was thoughtful, she was present, she was incisive, she was supportive, she was creative.  She was beloved.  And she is gone, leaving behind her beautiful poems, her unfinished book, her teenaged son, her husband, her friends, her family, the pictures and gifts and memories and love.  Is it enough?

Will it be enough for me?  I do not have her gift of friendship or creativity, I have not changed the world one iota for the better.  Is it enough that I have, outside of my carbon footprint, not changed it for the worse?  Is it enough that, occasionally, I give back to those who so unstintingly give to me? 

4.  Snippet #4:  Rituals
My friend sent me a picture of my Portland house, as it now appears.  My aching heart is soothed:  the outside shell looks good, and I have hopes that the garden will have roses in the future.  They didn't cut down the walnut or destroy the shed.  

I think about the years I spent there, and the rituals that I no longer follow.  I no longer throw parties to mark the annual holidays:  Halloween pumpkin carving,  Thanksgiving turkey from Otto's, Christmas cookie baking, New Years Day jigsaws and mulled wine, Bastille Day wines on the deck.  I used to make lefse and julecaga every Christmas and decorate the house.  I'd harvest pussy willows every spring.  I'd make winter wreaths from the red dogwood clippings and the Oregon grape,  summer wreaths from the my friend's lavender and my old-fashioned hydrangea.  I'd make paper from the junk mail and send out holiday greeting cards made from the homemade paper and origami. Every month I would respond to the changing environment:  certain hikes fit certain seasons, and every August I'd take the basil harvest and make ice-cube trays filled with pesto.  Every birthday was celebrated by a trip or a hike or a special dinner:  the common denominator being the celebration with a beloved friend.

Now my rituals are sharply curtailed.  I go out at sunset and take a picture of the sky, of the light on the mountain.  It gets posted to facebook, along with a haiku.  I make popcorn with garlic and brewers' yeast instead of cooking a dinner.  There is no pesto in the freezer, no yeast for baking bread, no oven in which to bake the bread.  I made no lefse, and the julecaga I made in Petaluma was dry. My friends don't drink, and the wine deliveries from my wine club get turned  back by UPS because there's no one to sign for them.  While I do harvest sage from my landlord's garden for sauteed buttered sage, the garden yields no other food or craft material.  I spent my 57th birthday alone.  Now I sit in the evening, knitting and listening to audio books.  And time passes, unmarked.  I am not comforted by the quiet assurance of ritual. The future does not beckon, it leers.  

Snippet #5.  What now?
I've spent the last year working a reduced work schedule:  30 hours a week, 10 hours unpaid FMLA.  The idea was that, instead of quitting my job, I'd keep the health insurance and figure out what's wrong with my health.  I've been tested and drugged and overhauled, and the net result is....nothing is wrong?  But, I still get migraines and nausea, and now I've started my annual winter cold with attendant cough.  Is it just the way my body ages?  The areas of weakness just get weaker?  What do I do?  

I have so much I'd like to do, so much I'd like to write about:  Meow Wolf, the changing seasons, the sculpture at UNM Taos, the future.  But all I seem to be able to manage are these snippets, and now it's time to make a salad for a late lunch.  I guess that's a reasonable outlet for my creativity.  It's at least a moment worth living in, if not enough for a life.