El Cerrito, CA

Being 26 means a whole new identity. Living at home, being cared for, yet feeling quite settled, self-sufficient and simple — I feel at once old and infantile.

I ask myself: Am I getting really, really old really, really fast… or am I just still really, really young? Consider the evidence:

Thursday — the night of my birthday, I went out to dinner with my grandparents and parents (I intended to treat, but then I realized I had no wallet, and so…)

Friday night — saw a high school play; was in bed by 9.

Saturday — when invited out to the city to go bar-hopping, I declined, and instead sung American Idol karaoke with my brother, sister-in-law and Dude I’m dating (I sung REMs “End of the World” for those curious). Karaoke made me giggle. Karaoke wore me out. Bedtime.

Now, Dude is a pianist (no jokes, please), so it explains this next part, but I find myself listening to a lot of classical music. This means that more and more my awareness of pop music feels thin. I was in the car with my sister and she was humming some sort of Justin Timberlake-y. “Like his newest album?” she asks.

Who? I didn’t even know he had one out. -? Out of the loop. Out, out, out.

Sunday — Dude and I spent over 2 hours in a book store. 2 hours. This is what we do for fun, people. Books and classical music, while sleeping on couches not our own. Oh, yeah — and poetry, too. (Lots and lots of poetry);

I swear to God, I’ve almost forgotten what Bourbon tastes like; I haven’t worn a bra in months.

Okay, I’m kidding about the bra part.
And as I slide down the other side of my twenties, my desire for wildfire dwindles to a flickering flame…by the time I make 30 I’ll be knitting baby socks for my cat Patches while watching America’s Funniest Home Videos. Or, wearing baby socks.

Speaking of — last night, while tastefully sipping soup with my mommy and daddy, a couple from Colorado Springs won with a video “Sign from God.” It was weally, weally funny. rather humorous. Tee hee. Ha ha. Chortle.

(God save me).

Phew! Back from New Mexico and I can’t tell you how nice this thing called sleep! In a bed, no less!

So, tomorrow I turn 26. I’ve decided to open up my birthday present to myself early. It’s a letter I wrote to myself at the new year. Let’s see… [opening envelope] It says (I’ve forgotten):

SMILE! YOUR CELLS HAVE REGENERATED FOR 26 YEARS! Still having fun?

(Please tell me you haven’t forgotten to face fear)
….Keep going keep going keep going!

Ah, yes. Shit. I remember now (gosh, I’m such a nerd, aren’t I?)

Okay. One thing I’ll miss this birthday is my birthday. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to give up celebrating me, and instead I’m going to celebrate YOU, and instead of expecting cards, presents, birthday wishes, or a me-focused affair, I’m going to celebrate everyone who’s NOT me.

I’m going to give presents tomorrow rather than receive them. In fact, if you write me, post a comment, or somehow get my attention, I’ll get you a March 22nd Day present… just because you’re you — wrapped and all. (If you’re lucky, it might even be from New Mexico…)

Happy you!

Good-bye, New Mexico! And just when I’m leaving, I see green bulbs poking their head out of the dusty ground. Looks like there is life here after all, emerging only with the conclusion of my vacation — a sort of death, I suppose.

I went for a run this morning around the track at NM Highlands University. It was cold enough for me to see my breath. As I tried to warm up, my joints stiffly settling into a run, I imagined I was still sitting in the hot springs at Montezuma Castle, right outside of town.

On another crisp morning my aunt and I had visited the primative springs, built into the ground with a surrounding coyote fence. There had been one other man there, in the hottest of the pools. My aunt and I got into the smaller, slightly cooler pool below. We all three sat in silence, the steam swirling around us. Then he said, getting out:

“You should try this one. It’s hotter than those, and you can feel the heated mineral water coming up from under you.”

I look in. It’s about 6 feet in diameter, and deeper than I am tall. I can tell immediately it’s hot. There’s no fuckin’ around with this pool.

“The water is heated by volcanic activity, our nearest volcano is right outside of Albuquerque” the man says.

He pauses and we both look skyward. Take a breath of moist air. Dangle our feet in the water.

“Amazing to think that when it first comes out of the ground it’s way too hot… but then it travels hundreds of miles right to this spot and then it’s perfect.”

I look at him and nod my head. “Yeah, that is pretty amazing.” I slide in.

My organs burn in the heat and at first I want to wriggle out of my skin and melt back into the cool morning air. But I find a foot hold and stand, submerged up to my chin in 5 feet of water. 115 degrees. I breathe.

All quiets except for my pulse in my ears, and the thought:
yup…gotta travel hundreds of miles before being ready.

AND SO: PROJECT COUCH-HOPPING WILL CONTINUE…

(nearly) Every morning I write down a list of things for which I’m grateful. Here’s my list for this morning:

Today I am grateful…
1. That despite my continued No Sleep Marathon in visiting my cousin I am feeling grounded and calm
2. For the 3 hours of sleep I did get
3. For the noisy drunk people last night who gave me an opportunity to practice patience, compassion, and calmness of mind
4. That I woke up in time to direct that half-asleep still-drunk boy to the bathroom right before he pissed on my head
5. That I’m not in college anymore, nor do I live with boys who are
6. That even though my wallet is gone after being in that crazy local bar, and I probably won’t get it back — that things are fine. Nothing that can’t be cancelled, replaced, or done without.
7. For my ever-supportive mom and dad, who are faxing me a photocopy of my passport in hopes it’ll get me through security so I can get on a plane
8. For my loveliest aunt who is feeding me since all my money and ATM card went vamanos with my wallet
9. For getting to know Las Vegas, NM from yet another angle – “fascinating” little town!
10. That I got another freelance project that will support my travels — I can continue to roam!

Fun Fact: My aunt, who I love dearly despite snoring, loves the color purple. You know the poem When I’m an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple? She’s a subscriber. Only, it’s not just her clothes. Everything, always purple. Her house: painted and furnished in purple. Her toiletries: purple. She even eats with purple silverware. True story.

Morning. In the town of Mora, she and I stop for shortstack and papitas at Cowboy Kitchen. Aunt Purple. Thin coffee. Local paper. Chicken placemats. So overtaken with the relaxed morning scene, we’re halfway to Taos when we realize we forgot to tip the waitress.

Out of feelings of purply guilt, we loop back to Mora. Only thing: ^CK^ is now closed. Guilt is thick as lavender fields now, so we purchase 1/4 pound of fudge (wrapped in a purple bow) with Thank you/Sorry note and $5 belated tip (note: original bill only $13 total) and leave it with the auto mechanic across the street to give to our waitress the following morning.

This is my Aunt for you. Heart of gold purple.

Taos is dusty and hot and feels pink on my skin. Wandering around in tourist shops suffices for only so long, and the itching sensation of my own ghosts from ex-boyfriend travels and familiar rosy clouds roast uneasily my pale skin. Plenty of SPF — what to slather on for memory burn?

Out to Rio Grande Gorge, the beginning of the Grand Canyon, a yawn that gapes for miles across state lines. Clouds white as blankets and swirly like hot marshmallows — an endless spiraling sugar-stick sky.

Bridge-side, I lean far over to feel the wind evaporate me. With nothing but air underneath, everything falls away. Here above the gorge I am happy — under me I feel the kiss of absence –

Below are car parts, lawn furniture, and a rusty street sign that have been tossed over the bridge and into the abyss. I catch sight of the street sign. It says “One Way.” It is pointing up-stream.

Wrong way, I think.

Driving back across the span my cousin and aunt both gasp at the raw expanse of the gorge. I smile: Lack creates awe; it is the absence of things that gives them their power.

Back in Las Vegas the air smells thin and woody. (We are higher in altitude than Denver.) I walk through the night. Never have I felt so dead than in New Mexico, because the air and earth are dry, nothing seems to grow, dirt coats everything — so when a swatch of life appears, it is startling; vibrating pink pueblos, skies crying turquoise, raven’s black wing — these things alive and vivid strike heavy against this landscape of dead — the entire state, which I’ve come to believe has its own dry hauntings.

Never have I felt so alive than in New Mexico.

Shit, I am dying. All talk of acceptance, and finally: put to the test. Right here, right now: death is upon me. I lie, unable to move, my head a collision of silence.

Stinging whiteness licks me with her pin-tounge as I try to let go. Relax into it she hums, consuming deathjaws over, wave-heavy, I try, try, but I can’t exhale; I try, try, to give over then lungs clench and I cannot surrender to death. Either I’m not ready to go, or I’m still afraid to die.

What’s the difference?

and something else you know what else huh? Too much reading of the Eastern philosophy is dangerous for one little Western girl.

* * *

You’d expect to be able to get sleep in 3 days. You just would. You would. But apparently you belong to a family of snorers.

Night One: room with Auntie, who snores at Volume 10.

Night Two: resort to sleeping near Cousin (who’s on couch) on floor of family room.
Your dear Cus, however, click-click-clicks from the back of his throat like a rabid clock.

Night Three: You plan to have Cousin sleep on mattress in room with Auntie (the two, creating a symm!phony of night music!) and you on the couch, but a surprise beer pong party puts you back in bed with Auntie-pie.

You begin to think you’re asking too much, you light sleeper you, so you get up at 1am and join the party. Silly you! You’ve been going about this all wrongly wrong! Change paradigm, when in Rome! Grab trail mix, hit doobie! Chat-chat-chat it up! Stand up, where’d gravity go? watch weed haunt the empty corridors of your brain, angry old demons reawoken vaporize then thicken into sooty despair, mix dangerously with meds, you take a step 1, step2, st3p andyou’re fa lli n
g (n
ow)! donkdonk head on the corner of the door face=awoodbite
ohmygod don’t f a i n te v e r y t h i n g {w h i t e

* * *
I wake up. to under God’s crockpot inferno awash his raspberry heat. I walk. into this blessed fire — an assault so assuredly i am dead.

* * *

Enough with all this creative writing for myblogshit — there are ghosts, and I’m the only one. I am ghost, haunting this house, this world, these people, I stumble out, and boo them, spoil their fun, ghost their business, haunt their world, and long after they’ve gone to sleep I remain forever trapped in my silence, pacing around the world of the restless, puttering in my silence, stiled, waiting to pass on into that next world, knowing it will never come.

And I could be anything: angry. wanting. moaning. but no — sit accepting. no reason to haunt any empty vessel but myself. everyone knows that all ghosts, like clowns, are really just lonely alone underneath.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

1.
The TV was left on all night and it fuzzes with soft whisper of melody — an American melody — that hums in every corner of this house. I woke early before life, and moved beyond snoring, into the flavor of stillness and steam make tea. Haunted? No, I don’t believe it, unless by “haunted” it’s with moist skeletons of life, bones crackling under the weight of living, shuffling from room to room with heavy skin; flshing about in underwear, purple toes and mouths, agape and useless, filling up their bellies until the day their bellies hold no more.

We will never hold enough.

2.
San Miguel Chapel, the oldest church in the U.S., is a melting pot of history, religions, deaths, politics and culture. Architectural layers lie over a sacred kiva site, with fires and bodies and ghosts and histories of its own. But I have stopped believing in ghosts. The cash register is ringing in the background against choral music, and I see us confounded for our sleeping death; we wander on in one long lifedeath dreamsleep — and from the nothingness we are pretending we are not a part of. There are death-bones upon us, everywhere, dreambodies about. I smile in the rafters at these ghosts — although Reason, that cage, drags heavy my lids, sandkicked, these eyes — but I sense it, I sense it, I sense it, somewhere in the pit of Myyoubless-ed, deep next to my Weholiness — I see that all this is the same is the nothing.

3.
God Damn. Maria’s (555 W. Cordova Ave.) has the best vegetarian tamales with green chile. You see? Sopapillas? Like holding soft honey clouds in your mouth. Eat them, hold them, eat them. Also, if you meet a server named Eric tell him “good luck on breaking into film, it’s good to be a hippie, and Shannon the Tea Drinker says hi.”

4.
Also, now that we’ve moseyed into recs, Zele Cafe (201 Galisteo) has not only nice smelling coffee and a quiet place to sit, but the smilingest-est employees ever. Stop in for your fresh-baked pan needs as well.

5.
(Last tour-book stop:) Went to buy chocolate morsel for parking lot attendant who had generously given reduced parking rate (Thank you, Mr. Minnasota!) when, for some reason, a bead store (503 Old Santa Fe Trail) caught my eye. (I don’t typically bead). I went inside and bought a heart locket (I don’t typically wear “hearts” nor “lockets.” To pay, I set down my newly purchased book of poems by Lorca (I’ve never read a poem of Lorca in my life). The woman working there exclaimed how Oh! [enthusiasm] How Lorca was one of her favorite poets. And she, too, was a poet. I asked her to send me some of her work. We exchanged emails, and I don’t care if none of you readers out there aren’t excited by this chance encounter, because I am.

6.
Note to self — Approve course of action for future use: follow instincts, find heart, meet like mind.

7.
Note to self II — Don’t write about not caring what your readers think.

8.
The parking lot attendants had undergone a changing of the guards. No Mr. Minnasota, so I gave the chocolate treat to Mr. India instead. He seemed happy Mr. Minnasota wasn’t there to receive his gift of thanks.

9.
Tomorrow Taos.

Ready to leave the state again? Here we go on a [...]-long project where your author takes you along as she travels, staying on as many figurative couches as she can — and thus explores the inner and outer worlds in which we live.

Time to hop on board! Weeeeee’re off to: NEW MEXICO

First stop: Las Vegas, NM

Eaaaasy, easy, easy-easy every(breathe)thing Easy
from the 6am wake-up call (darkness, Tao, datemuffin, dairy: “I’ll see your strawberry yogurt and raise you a keylime pie”)
to the 10am flight out of Sacramento (wait.wait.wait.wait) to the San Diego layover (children on leashes, men on phones, women on pedestals), swing around to Albuquerque, grab that too-small Budget car (coyly:”Upgrade?”…Smile big…Thaaaank you) and like flying I drive, over dusty rose dirt layers, turquoise streaks of air, thinner currents that carried bursting cactus spines right into already fractured chest. Yes, dears! The palatte of New Mexico!

My eyes return from color-heart palpatations; my brain returns to Reality; my speedometer returns from 105mph (car must be rigged). Drive into Las Vegas, a town awash in dust. Every tree barren, every yard gravel and dirt, every brick pale and frowning. But no matter! Instantly, love. This is the home of a university, junior college, and the state of New Mexico’s mental health hospital: Character, character, character.

A finger raises. I follow its line. “That’s the building where they did lobodomies. Boarded up now. A friend took recording equipment in there and recorded the silence, played it back. If you listen real close you can hear nurses voices, and screams,” my cousin explains.

“No shit.”

“No shit,” he nods. “Creepy shit.”

Back to his house, a serious serious serious Guy’s Pad. Four funky old couches (is that where I’m sleeping?), beer bong table, other bong table, bong, Playboy, Playboy poster, Playboy screen saver, guitar-vocals playing in background, flat Dr. Pepper half drunk in kitchen.

House likely built in 1800’s, with suspicious basement, strange windows built into bedroom doors, storage space, high ceilings. There is talk of locked doors and shuffling at night.

“I’m tellin’ ya’. This whole town is haunted.”

Sounds like tomorrow we take a visit to the Chamber of Commerce and see if we can’t find out some more history on this ghost business…

A great video about Web 2.0, with some interesting responses on YouTube — all perfect examples of the conversations enabled by the form.

[For some reason I'm having a difficult time embedding, so I'm just gonna provide the link.]

We’re on!

APRIL 28-29
SLINKYFEST SPRING 2007

*To find out more, visit the new Slinky website here.

Okay!

So we’re done with all that change goodness and moving on… and you know what that means! As the rains come and go and Spring begins to unfold, the creative elves are coming out of hibernation!

(Wait — you say — I didn’t know elves hibernate.) But they do! And they’re dusting the sleep-dust out of their eyes and working overtime to get ready for:

THE SPRING 2007 SLINKY FEST!
Happening this April! [Date TBD]

So get your crayola caps on, start revving those creative engines, and start your projects!

Details forthcoming on the Offical Slinky Webpage.