Home
 Photos
 Scriptures

Scriptures
<- Previous
 		Next ->

Tenth
Gospel:

Denver-Austin


Carlsbad Caverns
Sand
Impressions
On the Road Again
Last Day in Denver
Mountain Driving
Colorado Mike
Denver
Denver Routines
Snow Sports
Housewifery
Adventures in Dutchyland
2007 The Year in Review
2008 Resolutions & Intentions
Art Car
Body Choir
Dog
Lonely on the Road
A House of Women
Organization
Master Cleanse
West Texas


Art Car

Blue Car Transformed

I damaged my car. One windy afternoon in South Austin, I’m out in the driveway sanding down the paint of my car’s trunk. You’re not supposed to do this. The great American automobile is supposed to remain a pristine object of vehicular beauty - frequently washed, often obsessed over, and always insured. You don’t want to scratch the paint.

I’m tired of the solid blue color of my 1998 Toyota Corolla and fascinated with art cars. As I will be the last to own this Corolla, I want to transform the vehicle. Through the process, I can learn how to paint a car and turn a generic auto into an object of whimsy. Sure, folks will stare.

The creative sorts I know might dream big with an art car, fantastic creations such as welding a parapet to the car’s roof, gluing on fins, and rigging up a new lighting system. I don’t know how to weld. I choose instead a simpler initial project: repaint the car. I bought a primer on Art Cars that provided painting instruction and inspiration.

I’ll change the blue color to tan and then cover the vehicle with black tiger stripes. Eventually, I can upholster the interior with fake fur and glue plastic horns and antlers to the car’s roof and hood.

Laurie’s friend Brandon, an artist, suggested transforming just a part of the car, such as the trunk. I shall prototype instead of floundering with the whole vehicle. I bought an expensive, durable enamel paint called “One-Shot” in colors of white, black, and gold (tan). I invested in brushes, a sponge, mineral spirits (for the paint, not the painter), and a drop-cloth. I washed the trunk thoroughly and then assaulted the surface with sand paper. I brushed off the dust and then applied two coats of one-shot gold. The paint peels a bit but the color is lustrous. I transformed the hood today and hope to tiger-stripe tomorrow.

I’m going crazy. Work may make me park the vehicle in a parking lot away from the office.


Body Choir

A South Austin Cult

I joined a cult in South Austin with the pleasant-sounding name of Body Choir. All such cults have pleasant sounding names like the Eternal Rejoice Church and Demon Worship. Held three nights (M, W, F) and one morning (Sunday, of course) each week in a yoga studio, Body Choir encourages the free expression of one’s humanity through collective dance and movement.

Folks show up at the yoga studio, take off their shoes, pay eight bucks, and find themselves faced with what looks like a highschool gym. Music starts, played by a facilitator, not a dj, you heathen. Body choirists stretch and then anarchy begins. No talking is permitted, but dancers can move any way they want within the respectful boundaries of those around. Body Choir is hip-hop meets contact improv meets the Peanuts characters dancing to Shroeder’s piano. Throughout the gym, I find clusters writhing, a dude curled up, two women on top of each other, and the big bearded guy squawking.

For me, it’s a fixed time –almost two hours- where I can move free of the usual social constructs of dance. If I feel like hopping like a penguin, standing on my head, or slithering through the crowd, I just do. Ideally, Body Choir provides a space for choirists to touch (let’s call it contact) each other without the sexual or socially baggage that would usually obstruct at a regular dance.

In principal, but I haven’t gotten far enough to dance much with others. Without talking, there’s a Pandora’s Box of interactions and barriers for me to breach before I feel comfortable swinging a random body across the room. Although it’s an inclusive community, I’m still running after the hot women, stopping before I get too close, and otherwise doing my own thing in the egg that I construct around me. I’m realizing that I still have issues with women and invading their space.

At the end of the dance, folks sit in a circle finally to talk. In Share Back, the hippies emote over the music, their moods, and the joy of the planet. Gag. In the following community announcements, entrepreneurs promote their cottage industries of massage, flower arranging, organic soaps, or photography. I don’t have much to say.

Alyson suggests a six-month breaking-in period to recognize and integrate within the Body Choir community. In the meantime, I’ll still show up a few times each week to wave my hands spastically like tree and pretty much do my own thing. Nonetheless, such a community like Body Choir is the centroid of venerably, progressive South Austin and could not thrive many other places.

Dog

Dobie

I have a new love in my life. Interestingly, he’s a he. I’m already worried about the relationship. We get along great, but when certain women are around, he runs after them. Furthermore, we don’t communicate that well. We may sleep together but all I get in the morning are a few licks, barks, and –if I’m lucky- a bone.

Dobie, you see, is a dog, a squat, furry, black mutt of a dog. We run around some and when he’s tired, he lays next to me. If someone approaches the house’s door, Dobie snarls, barks, and runs to greet the intruder.

However, Dobie belongs to Laurie, a wonderful roommate in the house. Furthermore, he travels daily across Austin to stay with Tom, Laurie’s ex-boyfriend. As third in line, I get an hour or so of Dobie visiting hours.

I didn’t think I would like dogs, and I don’t. I just like certain loveable dogs. Dobie, come back. You really should know who cares for you.

Lonely on the Road

Too Much Wandering

They say you can never go home again. At the end of January, I returned to Austin just to sit. I planned to recapture the chaotic madness of my almost two years lived 2001-3. Could I live here again? Has the city changed?

Sure, Austin has changed. Of the five coffee shops along the drag, only one survived: the impeccably funky Spiderhouse Café, my favorite place in the States for a caffeinated beverage. Condos rise like yuppie juggernauts both north and south, crushing the trailer park on Barton Springs Road and fleeting hope for free parking. Songstress Toni Price, one of the souls of Austin, fled Austin this year decrying the city’s transition. The Ritz Bar turned into a movie theater. Tower Records finally closed.

And yet, how many Austinites does it take to change a lightbulb? One, and the rest of the city to claim Austin was better before the lightbulb was changed. 6th Street still rumbles, stuttered, throbs, crashes, lurks along – whatever you want or will. Many of Austin bars are still the same. I used to know their drink specials and their bathrooms. Maggie Mae’s still offers two-dollar you-hollar on Tuesdays. The longhaired cowboy Ron still tinkles the ivories and his liver at Pete’s Piano bar. Lovejoy’s draft beer selection has improved even though the bartender I asked there claimed it hadn’t. Sorority girls from the university flock across the Guadalupe drag for a Jamba-Juice dinner of a smoothie and perhaps a pretzel (if they are really hungry).

The city hasn’t changed much. I have. Austin is no longer home. My flock has mostly fled. Fortunately Alyson resides in South Austin and Corky nearby. Ruben carouses in Sacramento and the Sessler lab has graduated to better-run labs in other parts of the country. With my projects for a year on the road mostly complete, I grow restless.

I’ve been here four days. I’m lonely. Really lonely. Lonely not for the first time in the year away but deeply lonely. Perhaps perpetually packing the car finally knocked the wind from my sails. Or perhaps my sojourn through White Sands called me back to civilization.

I’m finally ready to pick up what I left behind: an apartment, community, a routine, and –gasp- a job. So many of my friends in their thirties have stepped up to contribute to the world. My brothers teach university classes. Saint Tess runs an entire charter school. I want to make something bigger than myself, or at least try to. Let’s hope my contribution involves a new approach to DNA sequencing.

While waiting for work to call, I wander Austin somewhat aimlessly. Spiderhouse coffee house fronts a livingroom for all my needs of beverage, internet, and people-watching. Wasn’t the movie Slacker filmed here? Are they casting for a remake because I’d like to star…when I get around to it.


A House of Women

My Home in Austin

Every city has its housing that suit it. In New York, I slept in a concrete box of a Williamsburg loft. From the fourth floor, I could hear the construction of new apartments and watch hipsters cycle through Brooklyn’s spring on their single-speed track bikes. In San Francisco, I occupied a funky artist’s room on the second floor of a fall-damp Victorian. My roommates and I donned wigs one night for a party near the Haight.

In winter of central Texas, I find myself in a one-story ramshackle house in South Austin. This is hippie ground-zero for hippie Austin’s venerable hippie movement. As the community asserts: 78704, it’s not a zip code; it’s a lifestyle. This Wednesday brings a hippie potluck. I’ve been assumed into the Body Choir. I have my pick of vegan restaurants, and not in-your-face vegan, but quietly that’s-only-what-we-serve.

On Westoak Drive, I sleep in the house’s meditation room surrounded by four female roommates. I roll around pillows in front of a shrine behind hanging draperies. Milissa studies massage. Alyson runs a yoga studio. Bilingual Laurie helps special needs kids and may enroll in massage school as well. Rose travels a lot but revels in tango. Dobie the dog keeps me company. Half of my belongings are stuffed in the trunk of my car. The other half sits in the garage. We don’t lock our doors. If there’s an intruder, we hope she tidies up the place and doesn’t eat meat.

We don’t watch sports. We don’t even have a tv. Instead, we, -get this-, we talk. About food, travel, relationships, chakras, and joy. I learn to watch and listen. To be present.

Conversation for me formerly has been a vehicle to exchange information. I relay out and take in facts, scientific knowledge, and data points. I assert my opinion and vie in talk to be right.

In our home, we express how we are doing and support how others are doing. Actually doing is the wrong verb. Being. How we are being. I’m feeling more than thinking. In two weeks, I’ve already been present for the heady start of one relationship, two relationship break-ups, and two relationship reconciliations. It’s fun for me finally to see the female perspective.

Some days, I meditate with Alyson, eleven minutes of swirling my arms over my head while chanting. I attend her kundalini yoga class. I read Laurie’s coursebook about spiritual integrity.

I don’t smirk, I don’t mean to poke fun. For a year, I’ve been looking for a space and a culture for me to be present, to shed my go-go-go baggage, and to learn how to communicate. I’m trying to embrace everyone’s humanity. I find in South Austin the tools for personal development, although “tool” is such a male word. Let’s call it a basket of goods.

When I do re-enter the male space of the scientific world, I’ll have gained an advantage. I can communicate, organize, sympathize, and bring together as opposed to divide and conquer.

Our kitchen is a hoot. I rummage through a drawer of teas of all kinds: green, detox, cleanse, chai, and feminine protection. At a party Laurie exclaimed to a guest, “You don’t still keep sugar in the house, do you?” This is South Austin. We have alternatives. We’re replete with agave syrup and stevia. Sugar is so 2003. We’ve got berries, both gogi and acai. Spinach abounds, organic of course. Kombuchi is swilled lovingly in large quantities. You don’t pour salt from the Morton container, do you? We have pink Himalayan. Meanwhile, food recedes for me as I’m fasting for three days on a master cleanse.

Organization

Living Out of My Car

Messy? Try living out of your car for a year. Either your life will collapse or you will develop systems of organization. In five minutes or less, I can locate everything from tape to tooth paste in either the car’s trunk or the garage.

I realize I don’t need much to live. I sleep on a carpet, mooch furniture like couches of my beatific hosts, and have a few changes of clothes. Nonetheless, I do cart across the country a hookah, lava lamp, tax returns, Mardi Gras beads, and a screwdriver set. I never know when an impromptu party may require mad skills.

Oh, those answers: the tape is in the gry drawer organizer on the bottom left of the car’s trunk, next to the battery box and below the sleeping bag. Toothpaste resides in the toiletry kit in the bathroom.

Master Cleanse

Only Lemonade for 3 Days

I’ve gone off the deep end. In the course of the year, I got rid of most of me: an apartment, five couches, loads of books, and a permanent address. Now it’s time to work on the insides. This morning, a fine sunny winter February day in Austin, I started the Master Cleanse, a three-day fast designed to flush out toxins and accumulated fats.

Peter Glickman developed this crash diet to ween participants from their habitual bad eating habits. Basically, participants drink and eat only a juice concoction consisting mostly of lemonade with a little cayenne pepper. The lemonade sugars provide all the required caloric energy. The cayenne may stimulate digestion and add savoryness to the juice. Glickman recommends cleansing for at least three days and up to ten days. In the evening, I’m supposed to flush my innards with salt water. Apparently, right after the salt water rinse, I must cling close to a bathroom.

I’m starting with just a three-day cleanse. Alyson suggested adulterating the diet. I take digestive supplements, drink coffee and green tea – both without sugar or milk – to combat moodiness, and munch on a little breakfast cereal in the morning. Peter Glickman would be appalled, but Alyson suggests the additions speed up the detoxification process.

A local Austin juice bar, Daily Juice, whipped up for me a gallon of Master Cleanse Lemonade for fourteen bucks. I keep a cup and a gallon of my lifeline lemonade in my car.

I’m already moody and tired by 11:30 in the morning, probably just psychological ramifications of foregoing food. I’ll try to cut out driving, mentally-taxing tasks, and excessive exercise for three days.

I’m supposed to feel swings in energy. If I’m lucky, I’ll slough mucoid plaques from my intestines. Thai food sounds great around now. Hamburgers? Beer?

Nonetheless, I’m at an ideal place and time to fast. I await a possible job in San Francisco, am surrounded by supporters in Austin, and intend to focus on getting my mind and body ready for whatever life throws me this year. I’ll stay home, meditate, yogacize, and stay close to that bathroom.
Fast Day 2

I didn’t have breakfast this morning cause I’m not breaking my fast. Instead, in the a.m. I drank more of the drink, a spicy concoction of water, lemons, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. I consumed a gallon of the master-cleanse mixture yesterday and I’ll stop by Daily Juice to pick up today’s gallon.

This 3-day fast has progressed differently than expected. I hit the wall early in day one, about four hours after I started fasting when I missed the first lunch. I thought about food incessantly or rather the thought of thinking about food. I wasn’t ravenous, but thought I should be. Glickman, in his diet, claims that the master-cleanse drink should contain all the nutrients I need.

The combination of hunger with coffee made me manic most of the afternoon. I couldn’t focus. Driving almost turned into a bumper-car exercise as I headed the wrong way down one-way streets. I grew grumpy vainly looking for parking near the university.

The sun set and I didn’t miss dinner. Food became an abstraction. “Oh, people actually eat those things? Why? What’s that feel like?” I’ve got all I need, my drink. I didn’t get tired until midnight.

I may be suited to fasting because I’ve never treated food as an essential. I like to cook, but I don’t like to eat. I eat because it’s necessary and makes me feel good (or bad depending on how much of the chocolate cake I consume). I rather have a pill for a meal, or a drink.

I pose a question to the nutritionists out there: is this 3-day fast healthy? I hope to strip away toxins and excessive fat, but perhaps I’m needlessly depriving myself of energy. I have two days to go. Think healthy thoughts. Not about bagels.
Fast Day 3

Each morning, I trek over to Daily Juice for my day’s ration of the Master Cleanse lemonade. I pick up a gallon and then swill it all day. It’s my lifeline so I get anxious when I’m away from my bottle. Thirsty? Drink. Hungry? Drink. Grumpy? Drink. Anxious? Drink.

Tuesday’s concoction was spicy; Wednesday’s seemed thin; Thursday’s is replete with excess maple flavor. As a chemist, I’m annoyed that Daily Juice’s formula for its Master Cleanse changes so much. Not only does this juice company make juice for a living, but also they sell me my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I demand consistency in a changing world.

At the juice bar, I ran into an Australian on her fourth day of the Master Cleanse. She aims for a full ten-day slog where I’ll stop after three full days. The Australian and I discussed weight loss, grumpiness, and the all-important issue: what we will eat first when we break our fasts. I shall thrash through a bagel with butter at Bouldin Creek Café in South Austin. The Austalian suggested a big bowl of pho at a Vietnamese place in East Austin on Oltorf Avenue.

Drinking my meals has made me aware of food. I don’t miss the caloric content; I miss the taste. I want the spicy yam at Veggie Heaven, a yellow curry at Madame Mam’s, even a little taco from Trudy’s would be worth ten bucks. Mealtime comes and I have all this time. For dinner, I drink a few cups of lemonade.

Nonetheless, I sleep well, I wake well, I live well. I ran six miles yesterday, danced for two hours, and hopped about the city. If I’m losing weight, I hope it’s just fat. Alyson is surprised I haven’t pooped out my colon’s contents. I tell her that with a liquid diet, I don’t expect solid waste.

I almost threw up after yesterday’s salt rinse.


Break Fast

Just a Bagel

BOULDIN CREEK – A bagel. After three days of only liquids, I ate a bagel at Bouldin Creek café. With butter. I’d like to report that this break-fast bagel was a veritable paean to joy, a remembrance of all foods solid. It wasn’t. It was kinda hard, doughy, perhaps not toasted enough. I did like the sesame seeds, but I scattered the bulk of them over the purloined New York Times I found on a couch in the café.

I’m not grumpy, just surprised that after three days of skipping meals, I wasn’t so eager to return to the world of food. My stomach somersaulted over the course of the afternoon perhaps due to the petite pickles.

I’m back to dining. With a clean palate slate, I can reintegrate food as I deem fit. Vegetarian? Sure. Vegan? Maybe. Macrobiotic? Possibly. Raw foodie? Okay. Only carnivorous? Probably not. I feel obligated to eat and drink properly for a few days. I should cut down on beer and carbs, switch then to purer vodka and steaks.

Maranda pooh-poohed (not a good word for Master Cleansers) last night my mere 3-day fast. She urged me to plod further on to ten days of the Master Cleanse to experience fasting for realsies. I shall fast again, perhaps annually, and now that I know my life doesn’t collapse on a liquid diet, I may try a one-week fast. Now, I must go look at myself in a mirror to see whether I lost any weight. And then explore the refrigerator. And then a buffet.

West Texas

The Empty Highways

West Texas. You’ve seen it in the movies: flat scrubby desert, churning oil rigs (smaller than you think), white pick-up trucks passing at ninety miles-per-hour, and most of all – nothing. As the sun set, I drove from Loveland, NM through Pecos to Fort Stockton, TX on the loneliest highway 285.

Night came and I put on the car’s high-beam headlights to pick out jittery roadside rabbits. Brightly-lit oil platforms dotted the otherwise dark lunar landscape. Were the derricks planted on the ground, floating on the ocean, or anchored to the moon? The road lay forward, needle-straight. Just to the left, I followed hypnotically the reflective orange Bots-dots. Just to the right, a white line provided a suggestion. Rain fell. With no topography, I couldn’t tell when to turn on the windshield wipers.

I can see how people drive off the side of the road. There are no reference points. Fifty miles per hour feels like one hundred. Curves ahead break unexpectedly. The car’s headlights illuminate nothing larger than a rabbit. I dozed at the wheel.

With nothing in the foreground, the blackened landscape turned into the imagined streets of my youth. I couldn’t see into the distance, but these were suburban Massachusetts lanes. It was winter and my mother drove us home in the dark past fallow fields. Had snow fallen?

As I drove through west Texas, a glower would occasionally pop the horizon. The amber would grow larger. I would turn off the high beams. I could track an on-coming car a mile ahead. What would it be like to swerve into the oncoming vehicle? The truck would pass and I followed its red tail lights in the rear-view mirror. It was a lonely road.


Carlsbad Caverns

The Most Beautiful Caves in the World

The most famous caves in the world glitter under the New Mexico-Texas border. Waking to snow one blustery morning in Artesia, NM, I too wanted to sink under ground. Like Bilbo on a quest, I made my way to Carlsbad Caverns.

The caves are known for their limestone formations, called decorations, and their bats. Unfortunately, it was January. Mexican free-tail bats do what sensible people do in the winter – no, not flock to the mall like rats, but go south for the season. When I visited, the bats had already vacated their darkened corner of Carlsbad Caverns and packed their RV’s to Mexico.

Bats or no bats, I had picked a great gray day to wander 750 feet underneath the high desert. Underground, the weather stabilizes at the same comfortable temperature year round. The cold air sinking from above mixes with the warm air below. The air circulates every thirty-six hours through the caverns obviating the need for mechanical circulators.

Way back when, in 1915 or so, a ranch hand heard a legend about smoke coming up from the desert ground. He tracked the smoke’s source to find clouds of bats spreading at sunset. Bats mean caves. The rancher explored and discovered a massive cave. Soon bat guano was mined from within for farm fertilizer. Few, not even the park service, realized the extensive grandeur of the underworld. Pictures of the cave interior eventually traveled to Washington DC. Carlsbad Caverns became a park in 1932 with the farm hand as the first ranger.

Carlsbad may not be the biggest cavern – the largest lies in Borneo; or the longest – it’s in Kentucky; but Carlsbad is known as the most beautiful cave in the world and that is enough for me. Stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, soda straws, and decorations stud most available surfaces, except those places broken off or worn away by decades of tourist hoi-polloi.

I descended the large natural entrance to the cave, down the paved switchback path into the darkness and warmth. Although the caves seem like they drip water everywhere, only five percent of the caverns are still active. The silent majority of the caverns are calcified from the time limestone last deposited back in the wet ice age. Surface water takes two weeks to filter through the soil down below.

I meandered mostly by myself through two large sections, the first was the path to the subterranean lunch area and the second was through a part called the Big Cave. Voices travel loudly underground. I was fortunate to visit in slow-tourist January than in the manic summer. In the afternoon, I joined a guided tour of a sequestered section of Carlsbad. Our group of about twenty paraded through the King’s Chamber, the Queen’s Chamber, and the Papoose Room. We saw limestone formations with dramatic names like the Frustrated Lovers, the Bashful Elephant, The King’s Bellcord, and the 7-Foot Soda Straw. Many of the caverns were named by the cave’s first explorer.

Surrounded by other retirees and led by two eager, green-suited national park rangers, I felt returned to a simpler time of the 1950s and a typical, plodding car journey across the US. Pop, Ma, and the kids would stop to spot bears in Yosemite and geysers at Yellowstone. While underground, our tour group was sheltered from the politics of the surface world. We had all we needed minus the strife. There were bathrooms below, even a luncheon counter. I could stay awhile and forgo all that I had planned, until the park turned off the lights at closing time.


Sand

Two National Parks

Two days, two National Parks, each awash with sand. The state of Colorado claims four National Parks. One of them, Great Sands, lies tucked away in the south central region of the state off of highway 25 that runs vertically north-south through Denver. Great Sands is a new park, incorporated from a state facility in 2000, after dump-trucks hauled in more sand.

Often destinations are further than I think. Leaving Denver before eleven in the am, I planned a mid-afternoon arrival at Great Sands. I got lost in Walsenburg, CO. I pulled into Great Sands at four o’clock to find a visitor center deserted except for a lonely park ranger who urged me onward into the sands.

I pulled my car in front of the highest sand dunes in North America. Prevailing winds push the gray sand into the mountain slope. Snow and barren trees ringed the dunes. I couldn’t find a trail in the park so I heaved-ho into the sand and climbed up the dunes.

A few other hikers similarly poked about. A woman walked her two dogs. Snowcaps of the Rocky Mountains loomed to the north. As the sun descended, I jumped back into my car. I made tracks over the New Mexican border while the fleeting light fled.
***

Colorado has gray-brown sand. New Mexico excels in white-white sand. South of Santa Fe, south of Albuquerque, sand blows across White Sands National Park. I bust through the gate of the park by three and headed on to the moon. As I drove into the park, the dunes grew on either side of the road until they could engulf the car. The pavement ended and a road of sand started. Dunes speckled by wheaty vegetation gave way to unblemished piles of salt.

Although I could have rushed through two quick boardwalked trails, the park has just one trail of note, a 5-mile loop into the sand desert. I parked the antlered car by frolicking families. Let’s see, just me, hiking alone, what do I need? Water, a coat, a phone in case I get lost, a flashlight if it gets dark, and a camera to record my last looks.

I headed into the sandy morass. And left the people. For two hours on my five-mile meditation, I didn’t see anyone, or really anything either. Since the sands shift under the winds, there isn’t a paved trail. Instead, hikers follow one post after another, looking ahead for the next orange ski pole. If I couldn’t find the next pole, I would return.

I clambered over dune after dune. Mountains dotted the horizon. Clouds lay low. Long shadows textured the sand piles.

Hey, my phone works. I sent a few text messages: hey,I’m in a sand pile.lol.B great 2 see u here.Dudek. I called Mike and Sage. I’m hiking alone through a national park at the end of the world and what do I do? I call civilization? I put the phone away. I followed footprints of other hikers and the paw prints of large, clawed animals. These prints looked cat-like. Do mountain lions eat unwary travelers in the dunes? Would I get attacked like Luke Skywalker by the sand people?

I thought of whom I would tell about this trip. Where did I need to travel by dusk tonight? Should I take a job soon? What would when I got to Austin? I was everywhere but in the park. Halfway through the sojourn, I packed away my scheduler. I would concentrate only on what I could see or hear around me. I could see only white sand and orange ski poles. I couldn’t hear a damn thing.

I blanked. I read once about a traveler that chooses to get into nature. Instead of the snap-snap photo, walk, and leave of the national park tourist, this traveler lays down to join in the topography. From the top of a white sand dune, I surveyed the horizon. No people. No critters. I layed down and looked at the sky. I carved out a sand cushion for my back. I closed my eye. And the other eye. And the third eye of intuition.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. And some more nothing.

Then it came. Revelation. I was ready to come back. In all my travels, I had gone away now as far as I needed. In the park, lying vacant on a sand dune on a trail that few take, I had reached the edge, an end of people, urban objects, growing things, even color and sound. From this edge at the dark outside arm of the galaxy, I could turn back, witness the active world, and rejoin it. Back to living things, people, community, even –gasp– work. I can do it.

During my year wandering the country, I collected the fortitude, skills, and easy confidence to be me wherever I go. I no longer need a trip to lonely Bhutan, a get-lost in teeming Shanghai, or a plunge down the Amazon. I had my trip. There will be other trips, but for other reasons. In the blankness of the sand, I had reached the farthest point of this walkabout.

With an attempt to embrace humanity, I trooped the last mile back to the car. A few vehicles had parked next to mine. Perhaps I should have signed the trail registry before I hit the empty trail.

I joined a sunset stroll led by a guide. The park ranger answered my questions. Mountain lions do not enter the park. In White Sands’ long history, there had been only one death due to exposure. Other tourists had been killed in vehicular accidents and certainly some have committed suicide. “Suicide?” grimaced one woman. In all this nothing, I could understand. The sands eventually cover, absorb, and obliterate the remains.


Impressions

Thoughts from the Road

Do no judge so quickly. I can conjure up a story as good as fact from a fleeting impression. On my jaunt through the country, I decide a place from a glance. We all do.

Truth of Consequences, New Mexico, proved more dull than the guidebook advertised. I looked for spa resorts, but instead I just got gas. Albuquerque is likewise a strip mall wasteland. In Albuquerque, I endeavored to stay in an old-time Route 66 hotel to soak up the historic car-culture I swam within. Instead, I spent a night in the dreary Stardust motel just off highway 25. I did have a morning coffee at Albuquerque’s hippest coffee shop while reading about Heath Ledger’s death. I’m drawn to universities. I made a U-turn on the University of New Mexico’s campus and wondered what tenured professorial life could be like for me in the New Mexican desert. I made a quick getaway through Las Cruces to pick up a sandwich at the most fantastically lesbian deli south of Taos and west of Northampton.

Someday, I want to pause longer at each of these destinations. I want to vet each place properly and dowse for their centroids of activity. In the meantime, Albuquerque shall be known for bad hotels, good coffee, and a strange university. Las Cruces abounds in lesbian deli’s. Fort Stockton, TX, a veritable west Texas wasteland, has nary a reasonable place to eat.

I’m cruising south down highway 25 from Albuquerque through southern New Mexico in a beat up blue Toyota. I’m hitting eighty miles per hour in the desert. Behind me, my car overflows with all my belongings from a yoga mat to the silly clay antlers zip-tied to the front of my car. This is America – hauling stuff from one far-flung part of the country to another with stops in between to see the biggest ball of twine and a collection of upturned Cadillac’s in the dirt. Sure, Europeans do move, but perhaps not much outside their own country and then with the help of a team of movers and the support of extended family.


On the Road Again

Somewhere in the Southwest

ARTESIA, NM – I wake in a bed and breakfast. My bedroom has been decoratively crammed with all things southwestern: purples, pinks, and greens; jagged pine lintels; and rough carpets with blocky Navajo designs. Outside in the falling snow, I can smell the mined oil that claims this town. The little-known New Mexican town of Artesia runs halfway between better-known, UFO-ey Roswell to the north and cavernous Carlsbad to the south.

Artesia, New Mexico? Why I’m here exactly, I do not know. Well, I do know: Lonely Planet recommended a hotel – it’s full – in Artesia. Leaving Denver, I didn’t plan to board in Artesia, much less pass through it. Nonetheless, here I am. The proprietor of the Artesian bed and breakfast joked with me last night, “Don’t worry, everyone else staying here is a federal agent.” Is he right?

I’m on the road again. I find parts of travel a conflicted experience. On the one hand, I want to stop at every roadside attraction. I missed the Billy-the-Kid gun-slinging site. I could have turned off highway 25 to go west to gawk at a large array of satellite dishes in the desert. I’m not gonna make it to Roswell, even if they offer an all-important ATM for my bank card.

On the other hand, I track the white numbers on the green reflective board of highway signs. These numbers list the miles to the next destination. I motor through, hustle-hustle, so I can get out of the freakin’ car and stop driving for the day. 264 miles to Las Cruces? Sure. I calculate driving times. I make math games for myself. 98 miles. 1.2 hours. Now 54 miles. What’s 50 divided by 80 times 60? Push, push. Go, go.

Travel is about priorities. I can’t see everything so I make sure I see my essentials: the National Parks. I blow through the ghost towns and highway diners so I can savor an extra hour on the park trail.

I still try to let life lead despite the tour book. I’m in Austin, Minnesota? Random. Well, I had best see their SPAM museum as I’ll never again be this close to the Hormel Factory.


Last Day in Denver

Escaping Winter

MLK Day, my last day in Denver. Snow fell lightly Monday and the city streets emptied on the 3-day weekend. In the afternoon, I hiked to the Botanical Gardens to survey snowy plants for one of their free-admission days. Despite the cold, I enjoyed my frigid  march on empty paths. Zen resides more quietly in winter. Within the Botanical Gardens’ tropical conservatory, hoards climbed throughout a cloud forest. I poked fat cacao pods on a “chocolate” tree.

Mike and I planned a blow-out dinner at Domo, an innovative restaurant that specializes in rural Japanese food. Due to the slow MLK night, Domo sadly closed early. Instead we ate at the other end of the food spectrum, at a tacqueria, the same one where I engulfed my first Denver meal two weeks prior.

After burritocizing, the outside temperature dropped to five degrees and then maybe lower. We stayed in Mike’s thankfully warm apartment. On a computer map, Mike located the weather front. Butte, Montana recorded –27oF. Leadville, CO suffered a heavy frost. Denver’s five degrees in comparison felt balmy.

Earlier in the day, I had packed up the trunk of my car with my files, the big bin, and electronic components. I dreaded the final pack-up the next morning and the eventual drive outta Denver. Yet, I couldn’t stay longer – what would I do in Denver? The road now seemed aimless.

In the morning, I scrapped the frost off the car windows. I got a last coffee from the barristo at the neighborhood bookstore. Once I left city limits, my mind was back on the road and Denver quickly disappeared.


Mountain Driving

Moving from San Francisco to Denver

The first week of October, I fell asleep in San Francisco. After a bizarre, wandering dream, I awake the first week of January in Denver. Yes, Colorado. Although I can rationalize how I got here, my tortuous life plunks me down where it will almost randomly. I now visualize standing in the middle of the North American continental plate, one mile up.

Towards the end of December, I choose not to renew the lease on my sublet in the Western Addition of San Francisco. I had spent three months in the Bay Area, enough time to map the centroid, plow a routine, and discern whether I could live in California for the next several years. The coming of the New Year, for an equally random number of 2008, pushed me to move on.

I spent a day in San Francisco packing up my belongings once again. During my California stay, I had accumulated two more coats and assorted sundries that blinked electrically. Still, I carved out space in the car by depositing all my kitchenware – knives, plates, glasses, pots – in Bobby’s apartment off Market Street.

Housemate Carl let me stay until the second of January. That evening, I drove out of San Francisco, not looking back through the rearview mirror. I wasn’t “done” with the Bay Area. Not only did I know I would be back (someday) but also my itinerant travels had taught that life was wherever I ventured. San Francisco will transform into Denver. The Golden Gate bridge set will be dismantled, the wood used to construct the backdrop of the Rockies.

I pulled the full car into the capitol of California. Ruben welcomed me in Sacramento. We got up to our usual shenanigans of drinking, eating, watching fucked-up shit, and staying up late. The cartoon “Robot Chicken” was followed by the excellently twisted film “Gummo.”

In the morning, I snuck out of Ruben’s apartment to my car. Unlike my last hung-over Sacramento departure, I had possession this time of my ATM card and gas in the car. I drove east to Reno and not back to San Francisco.

Perhaps five hours of fitful sleep is not proper preparation for a day’s drive across the Sierras. Still, I turned up the car’s CD player loudly as I summited at Donner Pass and descended into the valley of the Nevada desert. I retraced my drive of previous July but eastward across Nevada and without Holly as a driving companion. After that July relentless push west to the Pacific, the drive back east felt like a defeat, an admission of retreat with little gained. I could still press on across the Mississippi to New York and back to Boston.

My debit card stopped working at gas stations. I switched to the credit card. I found lunch in Reno. I ate dinner at Wendover, a casino town for Mormons on the Utah/Nevada border. I planned to sleep in Salt Lake City. As I gazed from the knot of highways, the tabernacle looked too complicated and devoid of hotels.

Instead I drove up into the mountains. The hotels at Park City, Utah proved too expensive for they catered to resort skiers. The helpful staff recommended Wyoming. Just before midnight I pulled into Evanston, WY. The lobby television blared election results from the Iowa caucus.

I had a day to cross Wyoming and descend into Colorado. I drove eighty on 80 from Sacramento to Denver. The mountain passes lay clear over the Sierras and Rockies. However, drifts of snow blanketed the highway in central Wyoming. I hit snowy spots at seventy miles per hour. Only once did the car veer into the other lane. My fingers tensed around the steering wheel. Two wrecked cars had been pushed to the side of the road. One of them had smashed windows.

I lunched in Cheyenne at –ug- a Wendy’s, my concession to life on the road. From his work, Mike gave me sketchy directions into Denver. Just before dark on Friday the fourth of January, I pulled in front of his apartment complex. I could rest.

Colorado Mike

Roommate

Mike and I met way back at Stanford graduate school. Apparently, he hated me on first meeting. Heck, I would have hated me too. After getting his Ph.D at Stanford, Mike moved on to Manchester and then settled in Denver for an extended bioinformatics post-doc.

I knew Denver for I had visited at least three times while I struggled in Boston. From Boston, Jet Blue offered a convenient flight for a weekend away. The flight arrived in Denver Friday at eleven at night, departing Sunday at almost midnight. I could savor two nights and two days in Denver. However, each time I returned to Boston Monday morning at five thirty, with three and half hours of sleep, and struggled home for a quick breakfast and then straight to work. After a few bleary Mondays passed out on the lab bench, I couldn’t travel like this anymore.

So why not stay for little while instead? Denver lies sorta en route between San Francisco and Austin.

Mike put me up in his boutique, one-bedroom apartment. I took over the livingroom couch. We quickly became an old married couple. While he pushes the frontiers of science during the day, I shop for groceries, cook dinner, clean his bathroom, and check out the city’s museums. Despite his job, he stays up later than I do. I’m learning to compromise. He gives me daily suggestions of places to explore.

Denver

City at 5280 feet

A kid on a walking tour asked me about Denver. I’ve visited the mile-high city at least four times, and each time I realize the Colorado air immediately. Denver shelters a few Victorian houses, but is not San Francisco. Its grid of residential streets, chock-a-block with low brick dwellings is not Providence. Its clutch of skyscrapers is not Los Angeles or Salt Lake City. It is Denver, a wild-west, high-prairie town. In good weather, the snowy Rocky Mountains loom over the city to the west.

For my year on the road, I find myself early January in Denver. Beat writer Jack Kerouac, born in Lowell, MA, strikes out first for New York City. Hearing stories of a wild man in Denver, he moves on to meet Neil Cassidy in the skid row of Denver’s Larimer Street. From there, the two travel further west to San Francisco. Trouble ensues and they backtrack to Denver, New York, San Francisco, and Mexico.

I literally (ha) retraced Kerouac’s steps today. Two English doctoral folks, tour guides affiliated with the Denver library, offered an “On the Road” walking tour of Denver. I met up with the group at the library one chill morning.

College students from SUNY Potsdam joined the tour. They had flown to San Francisco to explore beat North Beach at City Lights bookstore and Café Trieste. Yesterday, they had ridden the rails of Amtrak through the snow from San Francisco over the Rockies to Denver. It was their whirlwind tour. That evening, the would board the train to press on to New York City.

Hefting copies of “On the Road,” our group walked to Writer’s Corner at Larimer and 15th street. The docents read pages from the Denver section of Kerouac’s book. We moved on to the far corners of the city, covering lots of ground. We peeked into two bars at which Kerouac once drank.

And here I was poised precisely on the road. I had driven to Denver just a few days ago from San Francisco. I might push on to Austin in a couple of weeks. The day before, I had published a collection of travel essays. Like Kerouac, I searched now for the wow, a sense of America’s vastness, and a feeling of home.

I spoke to a few fellow walkers who inhaled my story. One docent surprisingly was from Belgium. We exchanged faltering Flemish. Another guy told me to read a new book “Who’s Your City?” to find more systematically a proper place to rest.


Denver Routines

Domesticated Dudek

A few days into Denver and I constructed a routine. Mike wakes late, between eleven and one. By then, I’ve eaten my breakfast and ventured to the neighborhood bookstore for a coffee. While Mike works all day and some of the night, I write, visit a museum, check out a neighborhood, deconstruct clothes, take photographs, and plan for the weekend.

Mike doesn’t return until after eight most nights so I find food somewhere. I’ll eat again in the late afternoon or else pass out from hypoglycemia. The winter sun sets over the Rockies at five. I try to get outside at least twice. I discovered a great local movie theater that serves up grub during the film. I gravitate towards thrift stores, pawing through old clothes.

I like this city. It’s easy.


Snow Sports

Rockin' the Rockies

Before I arrived in Denver, Mike warned me that Colorado can be barren in the winter. With snow on the ground, hiking and rock climbing would be treacherous. Still, winter provides its own diversions. Saturday morning, Mike and I drove on highway 70 into the Rocky Mountains. We lunched at El Rancho, a roadside restaurant, for a buffalo cheesesteak and a view of the Continental Divide.

For this Saturday, a bunch of snowshoe manufacturers offered free rentals around Echo Lake. The go-getters arrived at nine and snowshoed all morning. Mike and I pulled in at one o’clock when some booths motioned to close up shop. Nonetheless, a benevolent snowshoe team offered to rent us shoes for over an hour. We slipped on booties and strapped on shoes and headed across a frozen lake.

Snowshoeing. It’s sexier in concept than in practice. Like with telemark skies, only the front of the foot is strapped to the shoe allowing leverage to walk from the ankle and knee. I cut into the snowy hillside. Despite the snowshoes, I sunk a foot down into the whiteness. Either I’ve gained a bunch of weight or else snowshoes don’t tackle powder.

We joined a trail and trekked through the woods to a cabin. Mossy lichens hung from the trees. The only wildlife I spotted were two golden-retriever dogs. The lake ice had rippled from wind and cracked. It was winter in Colorado and we clammered through afternoon snow.
***

There was no way I was gonna spend two weeks in Denver in January and not ski. Unlike in San Francisco, some Colorado slopes lay just an hour away from the city. So one Tuesday morning, I rose reasonable early and pointed the car west into the Rockies. I had skied Winter Park over a year ago, so I tried instead Loveland, the ski resort favored by the locals.

At Loveland, I picked up skis, boots, and a half-day ski pass for four hours of skiing. Trail map? Who needs a trail map? All afternoon, I efficiently rode up the lifts and skied down one trail after another, avoiding black trails but otherwise sampling all I could. It was Tuesday and windy. The mountain lay empty. Due to weather, a lift had closed.

I gladly borrowed Mike’s warmer gloves. Mid-afternoon, the winds picked up, gusting through four layers of clothing. The skiing wasn’t bad; it was the ten-minute freeze sitting on the metal lift chairs that cocooned me. The water froze in my backpack’s water bottle. A whiteboard at the top of mountain warned about frostbite. Still, I had paid for four hours of skiing so –dammit- I was gonna ski for four hours.

For me, skiing isn’t about speed or tricks. It’s an exploration of the countryside. I find new trails and survey the forest like a fur trapper. I didn’t fall. I swung my hips more but really I tackle most slopes with ye ol’ modified snowplow.

I got lonely. I talked to a fellow retiree about the weather and her drive from the Berkshires. The snowboarders avoided this dork. Nonetheless, it’s Tuesday and Colorado and I’m skiing without a worry except for the occasional bump and a fork in the trail.

Housewifery

Settling Down

When I studied at Stanford, I collaborated with a group at Brookhaven National Labs on Long Island. The project blossomed necessitating my visit for a week to Brookhaven. Veteran Hadley accompanied me to the east coast. The collaboration did not work out at planned. For a week at Brookhaven, I railed against two old science men who were neither flexible, accommodating, nor gracious. Eventually, I holed myself up in my hotel to drink Long Islands on Long Island. I complained to Hadley. She explained their behavior: “When you are old and single, you no longer compromise.”

Myself now old and single, I fear I’m losing the ability to compromise. Until I left Boston, I had no roommates for ages and I have never lived with anyone I have dated.

Yet, a few days in Denver, Mike and I settled into a pleasant domestic routine. He decides a food schedule. During the day, while he makes bank with that work thing, I shop for groceries and prepare dinner for his return home. I join the other housewives at Whole Foods, trolling the aisles with a trolley for snacks to make hubbie happy. He’s hard to make happy. He doesn’t like goopy foods; I’m not a fan of unusual meats like liver and tendons.

Surprisingly, we thrive in Mike’s one-bedroom apartment. The livingroom couch folds out nightly into my bed. After midnight, I ritually remove cushions and replace them before noon. We don’t agree on all issues, but I’m trying to make space for concessions. I can hack this domestic marriage thing.


Adventures in Dutchyland

The Birth of Book Two

It’s a girl! From snowy Denver, I publish my second book, thrown wide to the world January 2008. If the last novel, Burn, was a boy born April 2007, this one is a girl. Written entirely in the Netherlands and edited mostly in San Francisco, Adventures in Dutchyland chronicles my time in Holland when I toiled as a post-doc at the Technical University of Eindhoven from July 2003 until November 2004.

The travelogue commenced with Stanfordian Mikal. He urged me to get on Livejournal, a fancy new blogsite. Yes, blogging. So from rock ‘n’ roll Austin, I wrote frivolously for a few months to prepare for the foreign sojourn ahead. When I arrived in Holland, I found myself lonely and bored, a stranger in a strange land. I wrote in the empty hours about the bicycles, French fries, colleagues, Dutch customs, the tax office, everything. With few to talk to, I talked to myself.

I return to the United States. I unsettle in Boston. Two years pass, one novel got written. I realize I’m sitting on three hundred pages of Dutch travel text. One morning, in fit of frenzy, I endeavor to shape the text into a form palatable for armchair consumption. I planned to finish editing by fall 2007. With the joyous distractions of driving from Boston to California, summer came and summer went. Though once settled in San Francisco, I spent mornings at Café Abir, drinking coffee and editing.

I chucked the Dutch travel sections I found most melancholy, most unnecessarily personal, and most salacious. What remains, I hope, is a travelogue for those I met on the way and for those about to go on their way abroad. The writing is decent, although the story – jotted happenstance – is hardly cohesive.

I photoshopped together a cover of twirling windmills. I manipulated a photo of the Kinderdijk mills to feature the blues on whites of Dutch Delftware china.

Trusty publisher Lulu.com handles the printings. As with Burn, a reader pays fifteen bucks for the book. Lulu charges ten bucks for printing and a dollar for profit. I pick up four dollars for each copy.

So off rides the second book. Perhaps fewer shall read Adventures in Dutchyland than Burn. I’m pleased that I can shop this book around to my family and at cocktail parties. Lacking the randomness, drugs, and sex of Burn, in Dutchyland I’m just a shmoe trekking over the low countries.

I will try to put out a new book every year until I’m forty. With the publishing date of 2008 for Dutchyland, I can rest some on my cluttered words until 2009. The next oeuvre fictionalizes Holly’s life in San Francisco as an eccentric dominatrix who confronts a staid psychiatrist. This book I’ll actually need to research. Um, pass the whip please.


2007 The Year in Review

A Year of Change and Travel

2007 began in Boston at the Red Tail arts space for a killer New Year’s Eve party. For the transformation theme, I whipped off a tuxedo at midnight to put on something else even more ridiculous. The night grew long. 2007 crowed early as a year of transformation.

And yet for the first day of 2007, I was still trapped in Boston, still working for E-Ink, still vainly striving for a life I could not find. I sampled Boston’s Burner community, but the scintillating tech-geeks spent the weeks between parties locked into their reclusive apartments. I was restless, grumpy, and bored.

As winter closed, I waffled on leaving work. The PDEPID project moved forward, but I found myself making test parts like a robot and not enjoying my colleagues. My two-year work anniversary, February 14, came and went.

In the meantime, I hopped the bus to New York. Party, party, party. First, the Whiskey & Whores show at the Eagle with Justen and company. Then watching the sun rise in Bushwick over the Danger House roof covered with frozen whipped cream. Boston had its own adventures: Bunny Bar Hop, Leonid’s birthday, Leslie’s kinky red birthday, and the KatieHazard birthday. Many took over the Montauk Yacht Club for a magical Gatsby weekend.

I finished my first novel, Burn, after two months of editing and a month of typesetting. I eventually sold over thirty copies, each with trepidation at the book’s weirdness. Still, the first book initiated the second, Adventures in Dutchyland, almost finished by the end of 2007. I can write and get it done.

John Major called. He and hubbie Tom were moving within Brooklyn from Williamsburg further east to a condo they bought. I could stay in their Williamsburg loft for May and June as long as I could live without furniture.

I set a close date for E-Ink: May 1, international Labor Day, a fine day to leave work. April progressed with a flurry of selling, trashing, and giving away. I parted with seven rooms of furniture. Mid-April, Tess and I drove around Jamaica through coffee plantations and down beach roads. Jamaica ‘twere my sole stint outside the US in 2007.

May. I was free. Retired with about forty-thousand dollars in the bank, I bid farewell to Boston and visited brother John and his family in Oneonta.

With a suitcase and a duffel bag, I moved to Brooklyn. Spring had awakened New York and the budding hipsters cruised the streets on single-gear track bikes. It was gonna be quite the two months of exploring Manhattan during the day, hitting the parties at night. I frequented the neighborhood bar, Metropolitan, where I amalgamated into the set. Vic Thrill, Wolf+Lamb, Rubalaud, Danger Parties, 3rd Ward. I ran the bridges, the parks, and the riverbanks.

I help move John and Tom up four flights of narrow stairs into their new digs. I fought the evil Brooklyn landlord. Dirt and his forty thousand volts grabbed me. Kyle visited for a drop of acid in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Waking one Williamsburg afternoon, I realized the year’s quest: to find a city in which I could thrive. I planned then to sample Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Austin, two months spent on each beauty-pageant contestant.

I couldn’t drive across the great country all by myself. Within a week, I bought a car in Boston, a 1998 Toyota Corolla, for $3500. I got it registered, insured, and packed with my belongings. Mid-July, I flew Holly to Brooklyn. My last night in New York, I met up the white masses on the Brooklyn Bridge for One Night of Fire.

Holly and I drove west, young man, taking the northern route to avoid the heat. On the way, we stayed with David and Jeremy, brother Ray, and Tess. I landed for the first time in Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Wyoming. We hiked through Yellowstone, the Badlands, Devil’s Tower, and the Black Hills.

End of July, I hit the Pacific Ocean just south of Eureka. I settled into Holly’s apartment in Arcata for all of August. Stretches of domestic bliss were punctuated by tensions. My belongings lay boxed in the living room. My car demanded new tires, struts, and suspension. I worked on Burner projects. During the day, I ran through the marsh, over the beach, and up into the Redwoods. During the night, Holly and I cooked, watched a movie, and fell asleep. She dyed my hair blond. I didn’t die.

The Burn came and went. In Black Rock City, I felt both lonely but also finally part of the Pop Science set. I had never spent so much time just chilling in a geodesic dome. I came into my own as a leader of zaniness.

After the Burning Man festival, I decompressed for two weeks in Arcata. Nature sparkled, but besides the farmers’ markets, Humboldt County did not sate my appetites. I drove mid-September south down the California coast. I held Holly’s camera flash for a wedding in Gualala. Parked for the first time in San Francisco, I locked my keys in the car. The locksmith cracked my windshield.

AJ and Fiona initially put me up in their Redwood City house. I futilely searched for a San Francisco sublet and possible work. Carl answered my call; I moved for three months to the Western Addition of San Francisco. I reconnected with Ruben and Eleanor. Sacramento felt like an easy breath compared to grid-locked San Francisco.

October and November teemed with a big party every weekend: Love Fest, San Francisco Decompression. I flew out to New York for their Decompression and another look at Brooklyn. A rainy hay bale party back in California at Half Moon bay. Anon Salon and Dr. Rick’s house party. Halloween at Mighty. We were young and crazy.

December. I forego renewing my lease in the Western Addition. I ran after rabbits with a running club. I interviewed twice at Pacific Biosciences. The job looked good, but I wanted to wait for spring 2008.  Still, I may have found a home in San Francisco that supports my work, creativity, love, culture, and growth. I grew closer to Linh. We skied by warm Lake Tahoe.

I returned to Boston for Christmas. I met my far-flung Boston friends, many of whom tackle melancholy and apathy. My parents entertained but home is no longer for me as I feel I can’t be myself there anymore.

New Year’s Eve and I’m frolicking in a San Francisco Convention center with AJ, Fiona, Linh, Bobby, Ruben, and Eleanor. Perhaps they thought my tiger coat odd. The following day, I packed up for the road once again.


2008 Resolutions & Intentions

Another Year Attempted

2008 RESOLUTIONS

FRIENDS AND FAMILY. Do remember those that have helped me out on my way in 2007. Get back to a consistent phone-calling schedule and send out e-mail once again. Call Mom and Dad once a week, but realize you don’t need to revisit Wellesley until Christmas. See John’s family at least once this year. Send gifts. Remember birthdays. Treat everyone with unconditional gratitude.

LOVE. Don’t be such a slut. Start finding mates that could be permanent matches instead of good enough for right now. Communicate better and set clear intentions. Explore your kinky side.

CHARACTER. Continue to be myself in all its weirdness. Realize that I don’t have to be everywhere at once. Be grateful and focused on those that are closest. Shifts gears from party all the time to building in a workshop at home. Cultivate stillness.

WORK. Give time and intellectual energy to my workplace, but at the same time make the job rewarding, satisfying, and full of growth. Make work a cheerier place to spend a chunk of time.

COMMUNITY. Settle down. Find organizations in which I want to be active. Set up a routine. Contribute. Mentor others. Teach skills.
2008 INTENTIONS
 
    Health

Get health insurance
Get a physical check-up
Run half or full marathon
Yoga every other day
See someone about posture (chiropractor?)

    Wealth

Invest in my IRA
Save $1000 each month
Get Ray, Dustin, and Tess to repay debts

    Career

Pursue the Pacific Biosciences job
Don’t compromise on a start day (March at the earliest)
Take job seriously

    Art

Join an artists’ collective
Publish Adventures in Dutchyland. Sell at least five copies
Start the next book BDSM
Slam poetry
Make pants
Make an Eye-Ball Vest
Build an art bike
Build peacock attachments for art bikes
Devise a free-standing sculpture
Spin fire
Take photographs again.

    Travel

Live in Austin
Go to the Burn and Transformus, possibly the Firefly Festival.
Tour the southwest
Visit New York City at least twice
Ski at least two days
Travel internationally (Tanzania?)
Camp at least once.
Visit four national parks.

    Love

Ask at least three people out on a date. Probably not at once.
Post at least two dating site ads.
    Entertainment

Throw a big party or help others do the same.