Into the Wild...

The new movie, based on Krackaur's account of Chris McCandless' voyage into the wilderness is nothing in comparison to my outdoor adventures this evening. Wanting more than anything to make it into the woods and be surrounded by trees and leaves rather than people and their filth... I talked my sister into letting me borrow her car for a camping trip. Sickness, a sister in Chicago and poor planning on my part led me to none of the above. However, Laura and Andy did decide to take pity on me and my somewhat urgent need for naturescapes, and invited me for a hike into the wooded wilds of Lincoln, MA.
I'd never been hiking in this area before, but being with Laura, Andy and Jack, their dog, all whom had spent many sunny afternoons exploring the woods and wetlands I followed along happily like a puppy in a new park, noticing little of my surroundings and happily being led into a forested calm. At some point, Andy decided that bushwacking off the trail would bring us closer to, well, something... which eventually led us to nowhere we wanted to be. We walked into Carlisle, along long rural but populated streets and then back into the woods along a trail that we thought could get us back to our parked car. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and we began joking about getting lost in such a small wooded space. After going back and forth on a few more wrong trails our jokes turned less jocular and more, serious.
We eventually made out way to the car, in the dark, with the heroic jack dog by our sides, but tired and happily full of our fun "close call" with the nighttime wilderness. I almost got my camping trip in after all.

Now I am home and drinking hot apple cider with a smidge of rum for effect.
I was told I am to work tomorrow which has completely foiled my well intentioned plan for a vacation weekend, turning it into a mere one day off and 7 day work week, rather than the fabulous and dire time away to refresh myself.

We'll see how long this lasts. Seems I've already made the decision for change.

Never Beaten...

Two gardenias for you...

It has been a strange few weeks in great empty spaces of my head. Tornadoes followed by extraordinary calms, ever wondering when the true storm will hit. I am on guard, boarded, taped and signed, my body in wait for something that I can't quite tap in to. And so my corporeal being submitting to a measly early season cold, despite my stubbornness against it.

Something is going on...

There has been music and tension and hurt feelings and exquisite clarity.

I love when my friends surprise me with poetry and understanding and wisdom.
I love acting in accordance with my conscience.
I love travelers.
I love the idea of love.

I witnessed a memory

I didn't feel well, though had an interesting evening at work. Good people, and the millionaire who predicts my future and calls me radiance and tells me the meaning behind $500 dresses (and I believe every word he says)...
Anyway... tired and throaty and achey-chilled, I passed by the church on the corner of Marion and Harvard and saw two young lovers in the grass. She, barefoot and dancing with moonbeams reflecting off of her grin and he, bearded and serious, singing with his guitar as if the shine of the stars depended on it.
Imagine them both... 10, 30 years from now. With different lovers, new families, a wealth of experiences and friends behind them... thinking back to that moment... dancing and singing on the lawn of a church at 12:30 on strangely warm fall night.

How lovely and happy and real.
-----

And I had a crap filled day, but in my numerous attempts at fresh air and perspective I thought of these two and thanked them for the borrowed joy of their memory.

And then recieved a post card from a kindred spirit in West Jerusalem.

And then a smile from the toothy happy North Korean boy who grins so hard each day that I cannot help but laugh back at him, no matter how sour my mood.

And finally, to cheer myself up officially, I bought $34 of new underwear. (to replace the damage done by Mia)
My sister gets her hair cut when she is distressed. My friends get their nails done. I buy underwear.

Still feeling sick and disgruntled but unsurprisingly much happier in my soul.

I feel great when...

I peel an entire apple in one spiral.

This is not as funny...

Favorite Books

• Never read a book all the way through I'll stick to the King James Bible

The Urban Turkey

Moose and I were taking a leisurely stroll Saturday evening hoping to catch the sunset at the reservoir in Cleveland Circle. He puttered along happily observing his vacation surroundings while Leigh and I did a speed catch up on our lives over the phone. Suddenly I tuned in to my walk and noticed ahead of me there was a strange creature moseying forth along the sidewalk of Beacon Street. After a double take, I realized that this creature was a large wild turkey, maybe 2.5 feet tall, strolling without indication of the slightest anxiety of it being in such a foreign urban landscape.
There were few people around. I stopped to share the moment with another human being, (Moose was not very taken in by the sight) and exclaimed to the first trio of people passing by "Look! Its a turkey! Do you see it?!"I had a strange moment where the trio ignored me and my claims completely, and for a second I believed I had entered a portal into an alternate universe where I was invisible and the cities were populated by strutting fowl.
Alas, they were merely foreigners who did not recognize that my excitement was directed at them and not the dog.

I still did not notice them, or anyone else, blink at the sight of the giant bird...

And wonder now if the sighting was some sort of majestic angel bird encouraging me to send money to PETA or begin campaigning against the unnecessary consumption of poultry in order to ' give thanks.' (Think about all of the turkeys readying themselves for slaughter....!)

"She's got the urge for going so I guess she'll have to go..."

My parents, quite possibly knowing me better than I knew myself at 17, added this Joni Mitchell quote to my high school graduation yearbook baby photo (a charming photo of me with "My First Barbie"). I think I had been going through a Joni phase then, which I haven't quite left. Now Joni is played by myself and others far too frequently at the coffee shop in one of the many early morning play lists which will be put on every day because we are too sleepy to remember the names of any other artists. Too often the "folky rocky bluesy am stuff" is on when I get to work at 8, and day after day I will hear the same Joni, Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg, Ray Lamontagne and Neil Young songs so that by 9:30 I want to chuck scalding hot coffee into people's faces while singing Dylan's "ONE MORE CUP OF COFFEE FOR THE ROAD, BITCH? CREAM OR MILK IN THAT YOU, UGLY SKINNY BASTARD! GET OFF YOUR F--king PHONE!".
At least it is no longer Norah Jones,( who I have wholeheartedly banished from my shifts via punishment of dismissal) whose voice once made me think of a candlelit love, and now makes me want to simultaneously vomit while forcing a fork into my skull and amputating my left leg at my shin.
So, Julie, this lovely woman comes into work yesterday all beauty and smiles and pleasantly asks how I am and, am I by any chance thinking of a new trip?
I had just walked out of the kitchen after losing myself in thoughts of travel... of my friends in Japan and contacts in Argentina. Of the benefits of South America versus Asia. Of opportunities to make money versus opportunities to explore.
I had been awake for a long time.
Her question made me blush.
"You have that look on your face." She smiled, knowingly.


And today I read this:

"When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. he has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. "- Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Steinbeck, at the age of 58, begins another destinationless trip that he realizes is a thing beyond him. It is not a something he admits to love about himself... saying things like "I fear the disease is incurable". He wanders not because he chooses, but because he is a "victim" and though he never claims to dislike his restlessness, he also never claims for it to be convenient, healthy or under his control or reason. To embrace loneliness, solitary train rides, language barriers, sickness and endless hours of waiting, uncomfortably in small seats with entire cultures and starry skies passing us by all for the sake of seeing something, or learning something new, to many is insanity, but to many is the purest form of joy.

I'll never forget my dad asking me "what are you running away from?" when I left for NZ. I answered defensively then,(and probably still would now.) So maybe I am afraid of loving people too much in one place, or loving a place itself too much to never want to leave it? But I think that is all besides the point. Wanderers are just as flawed as those of us who choose to stay standing in one spot. We just seem more briefly flawed perhaps, to more people.

All this occurs in the wake of my dream, where I am being tugged by a dog on a leash whose name is Journey. We are flailing through an early spring campy/foresty site... and I am indeed the one being "walked."

She's got the urge...

Sunset...

What a gorgeous end to a gorgeous day.



Mia ate another bra today. Ho hum.

senses...

I've managed to create a smell that has forced the combined memory of my mother and I in warm kitchens on cool nights, covering school text books in Shaw's paper bags, and spreading papers across the dining room table, it is the smell of ballet shoes and sulfurish water bottles and bare blistered feet and recipe hunting and sharpened pencils and bonnie raitt wafting in from the living room and the evening news from the family room . It is a a garage door opening and the dog barking and my father sneezing so loudly and the phone ringing and my friend Amy asking if I can sleepover this weekend.

The recipe for this dreamy series of soothing recollection is simmering tomato sauce and baking zucchini bread.

Today's Poem, from Poetry Daily

The Same River

Yes, yes, you can't step into the same
river twice, but all the same, this river
is one of the things that has changed
least in my life, and stepping into it
always feels like returning to something
far back and familiar, its steady current
of coppery water flowing around my calves
and then my thighs, my only waders
a pair of old shorts. Holding a fly rod
above my head, my other arm out
for balance, like some kind of dance,
trying not to slip on the mossy rocks,
I make my way out to the big rock
I want to fish from, mottled with lichen
that has dried to rusty orange, a small
midstream island that a philosopher
might use to represent stasis
versus flux, being amidst becoming,
in some argument that is larger
than any that interests me now
as I climb out dripping onto the boulder
and cast my line out to where the bubbles
form a channel and trail off in a V
that points to where the fish will be.

Jeffrey Harrison

Mia

I was convinced that I should get a drink after work.
I had two.

I missed tha last train.
Took a cab.
I got home and half of my new shoes,
the ones I never would wear but love (with heels, even)
so cute...

There was half a shoe on the bed.
grotesque , sort of like half a limb.
Blood in the form of tiny scraps of plastic and paper littering the sheets.
That and the cover of e.e. commings 100 selected poems.



Dogs are a lot of work and certainly a lesson in patience. I don't think I am making enough today dog sitting to cover a new pair of shoes, a book and a bra, all of which Miss Mia have "had her way with".

Good thing I like the cute little thing.

And then?

Words are funny.(Odd. Not haha)
In that they can never quite reach where they need to reach...

----------
Where is the italian in the blood?
(Garlic, tomatoes, oregano...) etc.

----------
"Buona notte" she sighs.

--------
Something about whales and cuckoos makes the instruments sing. I Understand This.
It is all in the sunset and breezes through the leaves.

Just when I thought I had cut all ties...

So there are very few people I know, and only one that I would still call a friend (and he in Australia, so it doesn't really count) that still work for my former company... the one that killed a small part of me and still encouraged the better parts of me to resist the world that it is a part of...
Anyway. Mia, my current lover, the girl who wakes me up each day with her face on my breasts, licking me seductively... and I are out for our evening stroll. We are sitting on a bench overlooking the Charles River. It is another in a string of perfect peach colored evenings. Along comes a large German Shepherd whose name I cannot remember but means "little boy" in Swedish, and "fuck" in Danish... He and his youngish preppy friendly owner, Johnathan are coming back from the Park Street dog park. We get to talking about dogs, leash laws, Boston... He is Swedish, here for a few months doing research with HMS. We are making easy and casual conversation and I ask him if he had been to Boston before moving here last March. "Just once." he says, adding, "For a birthday party."
"That must have been some fun birthday party, to fly across the ocean and all"
"It was! For a man who started a company, just over there" He pointed in the direction of the Museum of Science. ""EF Education. It was incredible. He hired Elton John and put us all up in a four star hotel!"
"You went to Bertil Hult's birthday party?" I ask, completely astounded... not that this young man knew Bertil, who he practically grew up with as a second father, but that the world of EF continues to follow me.

------------------------

I am again smoking out the apartment because I needed to eat something and all I had was this frozen organic pesto mozzarella pizza that I bought last week from the Co-op and refuse to microwave. I have now nearly eaten the entire thing, and feel fairly ill. The good news is that I biked back and forth and then walked back and forth between Medford and Boston a few times today so must have at least burned a quarter of the calories I just consumed.

Turns out it is another night in with a lovely dog. It is soberingly sad that I have spent the most romantic moments of my summer in the company of dogs. So soberingly sad that it calls for another glass of wine.