Way Down Under

Double Headed F Monster

2012-01-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

winter wonderland

After settling in to my new digs and job I am surprised at how content I am with my situation. I did go through an intense homesickness for McMurdo and even Texas during the holidays, but after a few weeks of struggling with my intense fight or flight (FOF) response to situational discomfort, I am happily plugging away in my outwardly conventional life. A good friend once told my I had an extreme case of "fomo": Fear Of Missing Out. She was right. During the week of Christmas and New Years I was sunk in a dark slot that wasn't really despression or despair, but more like Extreme Fomo Gone Wild. I was missing the Mactown Christmas Party! and Icestock! And all the creative and exciting projects people do on Ice. I sound like a five year old whose not getting what they want. During a period of fomo, I will often make decisions that feel very important and necessary: I'm done with Portland, I need to move back to Texas where I know more people and how to get around easier, and mostly, deliberately keep my eye on the prize and don't settle in to any situation that does not lead back to my seasonal lifestyle. This lasted about two weeks. After a flurry of e-mails was sent trying to secure different arrangements in a variety of cities, barely disguising the FOF mania, something happened that put a stop to this crazy cycle that has driven my as long as I've been alive: Winter. As my faithful readers know, weather seems to be the one factor that seriously affects my mood. I've been disappointed in general with Portland: too sunny in general, too warm in the summer, and really not as cloudy as I'd hoped. But winter right now is wonderful...and as soon as it dipped below 35 and started snowing and raining, I've been very happy to be right here. I am still agog with knitting, and bestly, I went skiing for two days at Mt. Hood and had a blast. I knew I had to accept my situation (taking care of my dog until I can go back to the Ice), but I didn't really think I could thrive in it. All this quiet and solitude (I spend so much time alone and not talking to anyone compared to my life before) has made me see how the fomo and fof have worked together like hysterical screeching toddlers in my psyche to drive me to make rash decisions and sign up for a bunch of stuff that I don't go to, all because I don't want to be reminded of the time in my life when I had no activities to choose from except sitting in a room by myself. Now I sit in a room by myself a lot and it's really fun because I'm working on all sorts of complicated knitting projects. And when I ignore the double headed F monster I see that I am really free. And despite what popular culture would have one believe, being a middle aged single woman is about the most rockin'est situation to be in. I love having no estrogen and not having to wear cute clothes. It saddens me that so many believe the lie that one has to have a family of one's own to be happy...there is so much freaking fun stuff to do out there!

2011-12-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

In my fierce attempts to retain my antarctic persona I have inadvertently become suburban. Suddenly I find myself in a sweet little townhouse in a beautiful old farm community with jaw dropping fall foliage, ancient and funky strip malls, and millions of acres of exploding Intel factories. It is how I got a job here and why this former rolling farm country is filled with giant brand new houses and spotlessly clean streets. I thought I would miss downtown Portland and I do in some regards...but I love being able to hop in my car and drive anywhere and I want to go. I find the mass transit here limited and slow, and don't use it unless I have several hours to spare. I started knitting and have fallen in love with it and am somewhat obsessed. I've finished one sweater and one set of mitts, and am working on my second sweater. I did a vegan diet for two months and lost some pudge I'd put on when I moved here...and now I lust for legumes and veggies. Ech...I thought I had something profound to say and it turns out I don't. I had Thanksgiving dinner with one of the painters I'd known from a season on the Ice. He just deployed for a short stint and his helper dropped out last minute so I e-mailed the big boss and said hey I'm a pq'd warm body ready to go down for a short stint! I was excited for a moment, but also realizing that I was kind of digging my little life I'd created here in Oregon. Things are happening very fast...I haven't spent holidays in the states in a while so I am bracing myself for missing the exquisite holiday times at McMurdo. I was at a store selling X-mas decorations and the idea of buying any of that junk seemed totally repellent to me. As I've pared down my possessions more and more I see everything I purchase as something that I'll have to drag with me on my next move or bag for Goodwill. When I moved to Hillsboro it was the first time I'd rented a truck. Every other move was done with my car...and I have this bigger space with only a bed and a loveseat. I had originally planned on acquiring dining furniture and stuff for the porch - but after a week of living here I decided I was not going to buy any more stuff - this house is going to be bare. I'm sure I won't start cooking here, or becoming more homey - I just turned 51 and despite how the world and culture tells me a middle aged woman is supposed to be, my desires are moving towards a future even more nomadic and unconventional. I meet people here every day who have never travelled outside this state. I used to be shocked by that sort of thing, by people who didn't crave getting as far away as possible from everything they've ever known and going towards something so different and so unknown as to be unimaginable. I am content and happy right now, having new everything around me and exploring a beautiful green landscape...but underneath I am waiting for the day I can be free again.

2011-10-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

Pine Island Glacier, December 2010

Mr. Spock said having is not the same thing as wanting...and pining for something can be even sweeter. To yearn for something and work to make it happen is the great joy of life in my experience. And for some unknown and random reason, what I got was so much more epically grand than anything I had envisioned for myself. When I look at this photo that I took at the end of last year it doesn't even seem real that I was there. That I drove there. On the back side of pining and yearning is memory. I love how time sweetens...everything. And it almost seems that the tougher and more stressful a situation is the more deeply satisfying the memories of it are, as if doing something hard is really worth doing on a level we don't appreciate at the time. I'm so glad there is a maniacal child inside of me who wants things and will keep me up nights on end trying to get my attention. Sometimes my life slows down, as it has now, stateside, but the Hungry One does not slow down. I can keep it entertained and distracted, but eventually it wants me to keep churning forth with ambitious plans that keep me never really able to settle down. I was always very curious about people who wanted to have a family, and it seems that most everyone wants to do it, but I never for one single second wanted that because the daemon spoke to me very early and very clearly. It knew what I was cut out for and having children and a home was not a part of the Plan. It has been very difficult adjusting to "regular life" after driving a farm tractor across Western Antarctica (I can't even believe my fingers are typing those words!). It sounds so unbelievably glamorous and it wasn't, but it was such hard physical and emotional work that it was worth every minute of the grim parts. My biggest hope is that this time of homespun simplicity is just a surface act and that the next big thing is brewing in the loamy depth of my being where there seems to be some sort of perpetual chaos. No wonder I used to self-medicate. Self-medicating is intelligent if you're trying to fit into the straight world. Right in front of me, there is an interesting milieu, a different game to play...but I have to be on guard for settling for something as cheap and easy as pleasure, when the rewards for working for your deepest heart's desire are pretty much indescribable. There is no going backwards.

Missing DFW

2011-10-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

mid-day, end of September

Eastward, from my apt. window

The blinding Portland summer is over and the glorious fog and rain have returned. I have a job. I have a bright new yellow Fiesta. My little ancient dog is curled up next to me on the bed and I'm brewing some mint tea to sip while I knit a sweater. A year ago I was driving tractors in Antarctica and would have poo-poo'd the above scenario. I am not sure if I'm happy but I am content [deleted: long, insufferably rambling post about the horrors of going off of medication one needs to be on and thrashing around for months before going back on it, the whole time not realizing that all the horrors and psychosis are from a chemical imbalance and not, in fact, from the notion that life is "over." Also, a very long paragraph about the epiphanies gained in Taos, while being soothed, like a newborn baby, in the arms of forty women in the crone portion of their lives, sort of birthing (felt more like C-sectioning) me into that same humbling period that I was quite ungracefully moving towards. Ramblings about David Foster Wallace, about how sad I still am that he is not alive, while reading his words transcribed from a road trip into a novel. A few sentences about discovering how, when, at the end of thrashing about from self induced misery there is nothing left to do but write poems. Some stuff about atheism, stand-up forklifts, hormone replacement therapy and the consolation of winter. Some questions I was pondering: can one have adventure without getting on an airplane, can the top of one's values list be "excitement", can one be really attracted to someone and sort of repulsed by them at the same time]. So not much to write about at present...will check back in when inspiration kicks in.

The Rest of It

2011-09-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

For several years now I've been writing about my Antarctic and travel life and not the "rest of it" so much, but lately I've been doing the rest of it...living the stateside life of what people consider to be "real life." I didn't like it before I went to the Ice and I'm not liking it much now. I've been struggling a lot lately with depression and despair as I feel like I'm going back to a lifestyle that didn't suit me then and really feels awkward now. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time adjusting...I mean I live in a gorgeous apartment in a cool city downtown, have a job starting next week and delish fall weather to look forward to, but the despair is hanging over me like a wool cloak. I have been thrashing around emotionally, screeching about not being able to go back to the Ice, feeling like my whole world, my joy and my tribe are there. I've never felt so at home and so alive, and so thoroughly happy with work. Antarctica is where I belong and where I want to be, but I have to take a season off, and I am not doing well emotionally around it. It seems so strange to pay for all these things that are free down there: apartments, food, gas, movies, clothes. I am trying not to resent my little dog, who is the reason I am staying stateside, and I'm embarrassed sometimes that I feel that way. What if I was to look at this another way, and see all the good things that can come from taking a season off - hmm, I'm thinking...oh yeah, I get to experience fall and winter with darkening skies in the late afternoon. I get to ski on my days off on Mt. Hood. I get to live by myself and not have to deal with roommate issues. I get to be with Fergus. I have a notion in my head that I cannot be happy off Ice...I know I was deliriously happy in Taos this past week, and when I'm on any sort of trip or even just in an airport or on a plane going anywhere. It is the daily routine of driving to work, having to think about every meal, and just being isolated so much that really gets to me. No matter how badly things may be going on Ice I am always glad I'm there...I am not able to fall into the pit of despair that I can fall into here. I thought moving from Texas to Oregon would help that, and it did help my reverse SAD symptoms a lot, but at the end of day I have returned to the rut lifestyle I had before I found the Ice in the first place. I am so sick of my bitching and complaining about not being able to go back. I just need to get over it and deal. There is a lot of cool stuff going on here, I have some great craft projects going on, and with my new job I will have alternating 3 day and 4 day weekends...I really need to overhaul my thinking on this or I'm just gonna drive myself crazy. I have been feeling completely insane with grief lately. I will be able to go back someday. It now seems surreal and unbelievable that I even got to do that...like it was some epic miniseries that I was watching...mabye that is what is missing: the gratitude that I have found my place. I just have to learn to wait. Wait gracefully and not kicking and screaming the way I have been.

2011-08-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

I have too much time on my hands and there's not enough time for all the mulling it over I have to do. Two friends I've known for over 30 years visited me in the past two weeks and it made me realize that I'm not young anymore. Been hobbling around with plantar fasciitis and had to get orthotics. Have always taken if for granted that I could walk all day forever...many, many friends are deploying to the Ice and I'm trying not to fall into a rat-hole of gloom over it. I can go back someday. Went off of a sleeping medication I'd been on for 7 years and now am free from any type of pharmaceuticals. I am trying to prove to myself that I can be happy off Ice...I don't really believe it yet but I am going to try and find out if it's possible. I am taking time off to take care of my dog. I'm taking a writing workshop at Powell's bookstore and it is fun. I have too much free time, but a job the job my temp job as a meter reader starts in a week. Summer in Portland is still summer but it doesn't suck as badly as summer in Austin. I have come to the realization lately that if my life is not exciting and jam packed with exciting events, I tend to want to jump off a bridge. A month ago my biggest fear was boredom, two weeks ago not sleeping, and now: not being able to walk. The cycle of life seems slow right now and I like things to go quickly. I accept my situation but I don't like it. There is am amazing homeless lady in the park in front of my house who has very long and exhausting conversations with the air all day. I've been watching her for weeks, and today she was in a long, smiling embrace with a homeless man whose beens sitting on a bench a block away. I felt emotional when I saw them, and wanted to watch more but walked on. There are so many things I could do but I am hardly doing any of them. I am doing so many things but have nothing to show for it. Be careful what you wish for cuz you might get it and then wish you could go back in to the time you were the poorest...but happiest...supposedly. supposebly. I have lived in Portland 4 months and have had three jobs, three roadtrips and three visitors. I hope, that it is true, like Michele said, that there is a benevolent force guiding the universe. The sunset from my 22nd floor window is magnificent. The lights are coming on on all the downtown buildings and I am freed from the day, allowed to fall into the anonymous limbo of night.

McBridin'

2011-06-30T20:56:00.000-07:00

I saw this cartoon last night a lecture at Portland State University about Mel Blanc and his years in Portland, where he went to high school and began his radio career. The lecture was long and tedious at times, but full of incredibly interesting information about Mel, the early days of radio, and the immigrant community here in the 20's and 30's. They showed this cartoon (though Blanc was none of the voices) and I was amazed that I'd never seen it before, but the reason I posted it was because it was so profoundly delightful to me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Being on a college campus in a historic building (the one Mr. Blanc went to high school in), listening to some radio-history nerd experts gush about their topic in a geeked-out crowd took me back to those heady college days of getting to see this kind of stuff every day in class. It was amazing taking radio-tv-film classes (though the great master Ozu was never mentioned!) and the older I get the more I realize what an incredible time those four years were.

I just got let go from my truck plant job. I had done it for 3 weeks and had hated every minute of it. It was so stupid and boring and I was trying to decide which day I was going to let them know it wasn't working for me when my dog got sick and I had to take him to the vet. I was in a probationary period where I couldn't miss any work for 45 days, so they fired me for taking that time off. The dog was very sick, and the job stunk, so it was a win/win situation. It was an intersting 3 weeks though: I was really trying to wrap my head around the idea of what it would be like to stay there the 4 years I'd have to stay to get the full teamster salary, and no matter how many different ways I tried to convince myself that I should do it deep down I knew I just couldn't. I felt like my happy time in Portland was Over - the men around me seemed institutionalized and suffered from very limited thinking. I had left my dock-worker job, which seemed overwhelming and dangerous, to do this material handler job which was mind numbing and crippling to my body. I stood in one spot all day and couldn't walk after work. My knees were killing me. I couldn't get used to the schedule of having to go to bed by 9:00pm to get up at 4:30 - it just felt so wrong....I know this from the past: it is very hard to stay at a job when I don't really need a job...especially one that I don't get anything out of. I also know what's it like to not be able to quit working because I can't. I've just been pretty fortunate this past decade. I'm trying to decide whether I'm retired or not...it's starting to sound like a good idea, except for the fact that I have no health insurance. I really like hunting for jobs and interviewing for jobs, and being called and told I have the job...but actually doing the job, not so much (exception: Antarctica).

Apologies for the boring missive...I didn't even go into the complicated dealings between the two teamster unions for the two different jobs (short story: spent a lot of money, only got the t-shirt). I have two alternate contracts in my back pocket for the Ice, just because I'm not ready to close the door on it for this upcoming season. As for the title of this post, only one person knows what it refers to. I'm getting better at McBridin', and hopefully someday will be able to do it with perfection - muah! I wanna singa!

Whose Your City?

2011-05-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

I've been in Portland now for about six weeks and it has been an incredibly satisfying time. I just assumed there would be various mini-traumas of adjusting to life in a brand new city but it just feels like I'm finally home - home to that part of me that craved and Irish climate. I will always be a Texan at heart but Portland has shone like a bright star in every way. The climate has been a dream: usually about 30-40 degrees colder than Austin, cloudy most of the time, and just downright cold here in late May. I've never loved living anywhere as much as I do this tiny luxurious studio on the 22nd floor. I could be a weatherman up here as I see the storms rolling in from the coast followed by the bright patch followed by the storm..etc...and there could be no exaggeration of how the weather here has positively affected my mood. It is if I gave my soul the cold it needed so my self could start thriving again.

Living downtown is great in ways I'm sure the reader understands, and I've had fun applying for jobs and going on interviews. I came to Portland armed with three "facts" that people told me that I have found to be UNtrue: it is impossible to find a job here, people are unfriendly, and there is no diversity. All of these things have not been true for me AT ALL. I am seem to have a desirable skillset for the timing of the expanding of industrial jobs. People here are extremely friendly...a quiet sort of friendly. Not boisterous friendly like Texans on a DFW-HOU Southwest Airlines flight (those are usually a hootenanny), or practical and helpful like New Yorkers. But everyone I have met here is gracious & accomodting. Surprisingly, the teamsters I work with are the most helpful of the bunch. When I first started my dock job unloading truck trailers I was the only girl on the dock and saw a bunch of blank faces zipping around in the forklifts. This dock is a giant slab on slick concrete with dozens of lifts buzzing around at full speed in total chaos. It can be a very dangerous environment and we blaze in and out of the trailers at ridiculous speeds. We are supposed to do a certain number of bills per hour so we are all sort of racing to see who can do the most trailers on their shift. I am ridiculously slow - but I don't make mistakes or break stuff so they haven't given me the boot yet. I started out needing to ask questions about everything so I asked whatever crusty old teamster was nearest me and no matter how sour-pussed they seemed, once they realized how grateful I was for their help, then every time we passed each other on our lifts there would be a wave or a smile. I was shocked. During training I was worried we "casuals" would be resented as taking away some of their shifts, but they were all in our position in the begining of their career, and I know how good it feels to show someboday how much you know. Unlike the traverse that I just did in Antarctica (where my teammates wanted to see me go down!), these guys are helping me to succeed. It has been astonishing to be a part of this brotherhood. I've only worked 4 shifts and sometimes it just seems like the job is too macho and dangerous and confusing, and then a couple of 20 year veterans will take time out of their tasking to really help me in a really committed and focussed way. And they are NOT flirting with me. At first I thought there is no way I can do this full time...but I see it is doable. And right when I started thinking I could do this full time I got a call to say I was hired for another teamster job at a different company. So now I have two jobs, and I'll see which one I like better at one is full time and the other I can do on the occasional evening.

I've been doing volunteer work with the homeless with my boyfriend and we are having a great time. I met him in Antarctica and he was the icing on the cake of me moving to Portland. He has been my rock of support since I've been here. I found this city so confusing when I got here...I don't know why but I never knew were NE or SE was and my usual sense of direction had abandoned me. My dependency on my tomtom and Ipad for driving almost needed a 12 step program...but I've weaned off trying to look at both when I drive and just aim towards the tall buildings and know I will get home somehow. I mean, for 25 years of my life I've been driving with a paper map. Now I wonder how I ever got anywhere without these amazing devices.

As for diversity, I don't know if the people who kept telling me it was "too white" here for them to live here were basing that on data they read or on personal observations, but I know more black folks here than I ever did in Austin. My building is very diverse, as is my workplace. I haven't seem many women dock workers but there are a lot of black and brown ones.

My new job, which starts next week, will have a start time of 6:00 am, so I'll get to miss rush hour. I'm ready for full time work, and the chance to go "on the board" and get that big union paycheck. My boyfriend recently commented "it's amazing that you are having such a good time here..." and I realized he was right. No homesickness of Austin (I actually feel relieved to not be living there anymore - I could never say the word "Austin" without the word "hate" in the same sentence!), no second thoughts, no feeling of the other shoe dropping or thinking I was just running away from something. I feel like I've come home. That I live in paradise. That I've found my city.

Visual Journey of Austin-Portland Road Trip

2011-04-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

in Llano, a hour outside Austin

Daniel having some Texas BBQ! The best!

Fergus digging the drive from atop the loaded backseat

around Moab

I was doing some scrambling and Fergus decided to follow me

sliding down the rock

our route was almost all scenic byways

all day snowstorm driving day in Utah/Idaho

no wonder people ski here, the snow is amazing

all of Oregon was beautiful

home!

Room With a View

2011-04-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

my new home

view from my couch

water everywhere!

ouch, it does get sunny here

on a clear day you can see Mt. St. Helen's

Portlandia

2011-03-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

Soon I will be living on the 22nd floor of this groovy building in downtown Portland Oregon. I am finally extricating myself from Austin in summertime! I went directly to Portland from New Zealand and it was in the 40's and raining the whole week-perfect! I also was curious about hi-rise living and a brand new building was super appealing and it all felt just right. The people were nice, the mass transit was easy and the whole place felt laid back. I've also gotten call backs on a few jobs I applied for so I think my 50's are starting out right, with one more major life goal underway (moving someplace not hot).

I am not planning on going back to the Ice next fall as my little dog is very old and it's time for me to spend more time with him. I would love to see an actual winter again, but I would be fibbing if I said I won't miss going back to the Ice. My seven trips to Antarctica have been the greatest time in my life. And I will go back - just not sure when.

When I cleaned out my storage unit I couldn't believe how many paintings I had. I knew I had painted for almost 20 years, but I had no idea I had one hundred paintings. I planned on selling them all for super cheap at a garage sale and hoping I'd be okay with that - but no one came to the garage sale (it started at noon) and by 1:00pm I was totally bored and wanted to leave and do SXSW stuff. I looked around me at all those piles of canvases and remembered all the trips from the unit to my car to my friends house and I saw them just as piles of stuff I'd have to move again...so I had the bright idea that I would give all the art away! I called a few friends and they went over and filled their trunks with art, and one week later there were about 6 canvases left so I went and got them to take to Goodwill. I chucked a few treasured ones at a friends house so I have a few left. And of course there is the series I painted in '95 that I love and all those are hanging in a friend's home, lovingly appreciated. I feel like whether I sold them or gave them away is really no different. They just belong to someone else now. And I didn't need the money from them anyway. I felt this immense sense of freedom and lightness from getting rid of all those paintings. I just didn't need them anymore. Now instead of living in a dark closet for years, they are spread out at friends and strangers houses all over town. That makes me happy. My ego was never that invested in being an artist. Painting the paintings was the best part of the deal - having art shows and fans and selling them was just added blessings but I never hung out with other artists or really felt like one one myslef. But I think the another reason it was easy to give it all away was because I was much prouder of myself for making a career in Antarctica than in painting all those paintings. Doing the art was fun and easy and something to do, but getting to the Ice and getting to go for seven seasons has been my greatest joy - far outshadowing the painting. And getting to operate equipment has shown me that work can be really fun. So I ended up with one small sack of goodies from a packed storage unit. It is euphoric getting rid of stuff. Now I get to go buy brand new modern stuff for my deluxe apartment in the (dark and cloudy) sky. I start driving to Portland on April 6th. But first, a ski trip in Taos. Life is good!

Visual Journey of the PIG Traverse

2011-02-24T20:38:00.000-08:00

This is not a good forklift: one of our 3 traverse tractors

Until I got my 297C I had to load the sleds with this

my trailer coming together - we slept in those red "wagons"

This was the easy part

my sleds and krell tool

our biggest problem day: build a groomer in the field after it fell off the sled

tightening up the straps on my 3K fuel bladders. this is how we fueled our tractors in the field

lots of flat white desert

6 miles an hour for 8 days

parking at night, head into the wind (though there never was any on the trip out)

inside our PIG Polar Haven

after 5 days of storm, racing out to work at PIG camp

spent most of our time in camp digging stuff out. we got BURIED!

the one day where we were not in Con 2

there was a surreal beauty at camp

on the return trip our load was much lighter

Simon switched out with me on the second run. I stayed at Byrd as the Equip. Operator

Some Notes from Season Seven

2011-02-04T16:14:00.000-08:00

Homecoming.

That's what it felt like. On the hundreds of flights I've been on in my life, none felt sweeter than flying into Mactown from Byrd camp after the traverse to Pine Island Glacier (followed by a month of working at Byrd camp). After completing the first round trip run of the traverse, I remained at Byrd as an operator, while a British mountaineer drove my tractor back to PIG for the second run. It was a win-win situation: he wanted to drive instead of ride out to the Glacier, and I was grateful for something different to close out my season with. But that last month moved glacially show. Each day at Byrd seemed unending and I was chomping at the bit to get back to McM. It wasn't busy enough and there was nothing to do after work and no place to go. My tent was too cold to hang out in so I just sat in the galley until it was time to go to bed. The people there were kindly and good to me, which was a welcome relief after being on the traverse with boys who thought I was incompetent, but field camp life is just not exciting enough for me. It would be fun for a week or too, as a break from Mactown, but for as long as I was there there's just not enough going on.

People keep asking me how the traverse was and I keep trying to come up with a simple answer. I don't really have one. I can say I'm glad I went but glad it's over. It was grueling. Not one minute of it was "fun." We worked usually 16 hours a day. There was animosity felt towards me that was not disguised, and I was alone in my little world of just keeping myself together while trying to be a stalwart and helpful part of this team that did not want me on it. It was a strange position to be in. I had to work alongside guys who were griping about me all the time. My heart was not in it, and I'd been given an opportunity to get off the traverse before it started (but not go back to my really fun job in mactown), but I felt like no matter how rotten it could get, I may never get this opportunity again and it was just two months of my life and how bad could it be. I tend to like to put myself in situations to see if I can handle them. I guess this has its good and bad aspects, but doing what's easiest and most comfortable is not the option I usually go for. Doing something for bragging rights is. The driving days were a mixture of boredom, apprehension about cargo falling off the sleds, and the incredibly awkward mealtimes with the 5 of us crammed into to equivalent of a 4 person tent. I awoke each morning bracing myself for the day and hoping for the best: that I would drive all day and not have someone gripe at me about how fast or slow I was driving, that fueling would go smoothly without my part in it being criticized every time, and that mealtimes would not last long. I started eating quickly and then sitting outside or in my tractor talking on the phone. The boys had gotten into a routine of bullying me and I was getting sick of it. I was doing my job well but they needed a scapegoat for whatever insecurities they were going through so I used this situation I was in to practice "not taking things personally." It's one of those concepts that sounds really good but is really hard to implement while something is telling you "you should not have come on this traverse!" Gloriously, I found I could read in my tractor while it was moving! Because there was no escape from the sniping, I had to deal with my reactions to it. I found that it helped immensely, but in general I was just counting the days that this ordeal would be over. The problem was, "the boys" ,as I call them, wanted some old school operator on the traverse an they got me. They thought I wasn't experienced enough and perhaps they were right: I was a first year operator performing a heavy equipment operator job, which requires 6 years experience. I had to fake confidence in everything I was doing, and I couldn't disappear like I wanted to so I was just (ironically for being in the middle of nowhere) utterly self conscious and sometimes fumbling. I can only remember being like this a few other times and it was when I was under extreme stress from being around someone who made it clear they thought I was incompetent. Even as I am writing this I am aware that this is not the face I wanted to show of the independent woman who went on an Antarctic traverse, that the reader is probably wanting to hear about the rolling dunes of snow that sparkled for eternity, the absolutely surreal feeling of knowing that we were the first humans to traverse this path, or the scientific urgency of why PIG is a big focus of interest in Antarctic research. The science facts can be googled, but what it's like to be on a traverse is the only thing I can write about. I read Jonathan Franzen's new novel while I was "driving" and that was one of the highlights of the traverse for me. I talked to people on the phone in my tractor sometimes for hours at a time. Pulling into field camps was fun as they all were wowed by us and we got to take showers and get away from the grueling reality of our lives together for a day or so. One guy on the team said after the first long driving day: this is like a prison sentence. I felt the same way. After 8 days of driving we arrived at PIG. It looked like the previous 350 miles of terrain: flat and white. At no time on the traverse was I cold. If anything we got overhead in our cabs, and in the heated cataraft tents at night. We spent 11 days at PIG setting up camp. It was kind of nice to be parked somewhere for a while, and made so much better by the arrival of 3 Mactown friends to help set up camp. I was avoiding contact with the other pigs as much as possible, only dealing with them in a stony professional manner which was how I was coping with our messed up team. I was really looking forward to our trip back as I knew that the break-up of the boys (two of the three were staying at camp while 3 us of drove back) would end the lord-of-the-flies-esque milieu of the traverse. After 5 days of storm, and 5 days of working our asses off, we were ready to drive again, but not before I was to have my one & only screaming fight with one of the pigs. Unfortunately, it was with one that was driving back with me. I don't like fighting or yelling and it has always scared me, but this was provoked, necessary, and primal. I was shaking and hoarse at the end of it, ready to quit, ran to the other side of camp to work with the carps. Didn't think I could ever be around this person again, but the next day we sheepishly drove off in an oddly communal silence. I was relieved that the world didn't end after the million curse worded screaming match we'd been in, but it had battered what was left of my propped up fake team-player persona. By never telling these guys to f---off, I just blew up in rage. Not pretty but it kind of softened us up and mellowed us out for the trip back. The return had some dramatic sled problems in the first days, but the remainder of the trip was dead silent and free from tension. No radio chatter and three little pigs in their own worlds in their tractors spaced far enough away for privacy. I knew I was going back to Byrd to close out my season so I was happier - not as happy as if I'd been going to Mactown, but that was a ways off still. When we finally pulled into Byrd I saw one of my oldest and dearest friends from the Ice in camp to greet me and I had a great first week there. I had DONE the traverse. I survived it. I actually did a good job for never having done any of this stuff before. And now that it's been a few weeks since it's been done, it seems like the whole trip was done in just a blink of the eye. Snap, and it's over. The only hardship was mental, and I got through it.

The first 24 hours in McMurdo were glorious. I was home. But as I discovered with my South Pole Traverser friend, your are only a celebrity for about 15 minutes...then you just wander highway one, drinking coffee and visiting your previous work center, which seemed underwhelmed by my presence and epic journey.

I had three different jobs in one season! I got to be in Fleet Ops, go to three field camps and do a traverse, which was everything I ever wanted to do, and even though it was challenging, I am extremely grateful for the chance to do it. Duty fork was challenging in a good and fun way, the Traverse was challenging in a painful way, and Byrd camp was challenging in a fear of being swallowed up by boredom way. My relationship with the Ice is starting to feel like a marriage - I'm stuck and committed...hating and loving her at the same time, slavishly loyal but can't wait to get away each February. And now I'm sitting in New Zealand, missing her. Typical.

Life and Fear

2010-10-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Soon I will be driving a farm tractor hauling sleds of fuel and various other materials across the vast desert of Western Antarctica. There will be three of us for the bulk of the journey, adding three more for half of it. I am the equipment operator and there will be two mechanics. In the two field camps we visit, I will be using a track loader to unload and stage various cargo. I have never been to a field camp before, or been on a traverse. I have only been an equipment operator for two months now, and this unique opportunity fell into my lap. I am still a bit overwhelmed by how the track of my life has changed so quickly. I had just gotten used to feeling super confident in my duty fork job (and I had been so apprehensive and fearful about it), and in the flash of a moment I will be doing something totally different. I used to work at a large University where people stayed in the same job for 5, 10, 30 years. I never understood it. I guess if they loved it and felt passionate about it I would understand, but most of these people had settled for security and retirement benefits and whatever dream they had had at one point had been pushed way underground, underneath the daily concerns of bills to be paid, family woes, and domestic routines. Having made the choice at an early age to not have a family of my own, I had the luxury of having only myself to worry about in my decision making about my future. The other day I was sitting around a room with some dear friends from here and one of them said "....there is no greater thing in life than to find someone who loves you that you can love in return...." and I immediately wanted to have a discussion with him about it because that might be true, but for some there might be no finer thing in life than to paint every day until they die. Ironically, this gathering of friends was a sort of commitment ceremony that I was having with a man here that I love. It was informal and touching and brimming with emotion - a ceremony in spirit only. In this state of bliss I find myself in romantically I can see that his words are true: there couldn't be anything finer than this! But I also know that sometimes a dream burns inside one so brightly that a choice has to be made, something given up in order to find the pearl at any price. It was never a dream of mine to drive a tractor across Antarctica. I couldn't dream that big. I dreamed of coming here & just doing anything to be here, but never did I think I would be doing something that sounded so....badass...and more importantly: doing something I have no experience or particular gifts in. As the space widens between that clerical worker I was for so many years to the outdoor rig driver I am today, it is so important for me to remember that none of this was an accident. It was all something that was deeply yearned for. I wasn't sure the form it was going to show up in but the universe knew I needed challenges in a big way. I have been so afraid so many times in this Antarctic career: the times I had to operate equipment for offload, the moment after I signed my Fleet Ops contract, and mostly, the first time I came down. The fear bundle that came up after saying yes to the PIG Traverse was so engulfing I almost changed my mind. But I also know how my mind works when some big new unknown element comes in: full on fight or flight mode terror. I know I've overused this example but learning to ski was the most concrete and informative experience I've had in learning how how big and powerful and unreal fear is. I believed the fear. I was invested in it. But when I decided to stop listening to it, my life changed in an instant. My wisest friend said to me once (when I was full of fear about deploying for the first time) that "anything hard is worth doing..." What a beautiful sentiment. In my experience I have found this to be true. My identity as a townie who loves attention and is a fool for dancing will peel away as I plow westward with nothing but flat white and my spinning mind for stimulation. I will go into it with the only attitude that makes sense: it's gonna be awesome.

who is this?

2010-10-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

I don't recognize this person as the me I knew for so long. If someone would have told me 10 years ago, when I was spinning my wheels frustrated in dead end clerical jobs, that I would be forking a 2 ton water tank to a water plant and filling it with water to take to the new Ice pier to flood the bollards, and that I would be doing it with a fun workhorse of a tractor I wouldn't have believed it. I saw a vision of what I wanted to be doing for work here & here is a photo of it. And in two weeks it's going to be driving a Challenger 55 farm tractor to the remotest site in Western Antarcitca. May not be many post from there....but I'll do a full review from Christchurch in February...love to all my readers!

Pine Island Glacier Traverse

2010-10-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

It's known as the PIG but it stands for Pine Island Glacier Traverse. It is a long traverse that will go from Wais Divide field camp to Byrd Camp and make a couple of trips to the Glacier. Unlike the South Pole Traverse which has been going on for years, this one is mapping out a new road to a really remote part of Antarctica. And I'm going on it.

All of a sudden my life has changed dramatically after a quick 15 minute breakfast conversation. I was happily doing my dream job as duty fork operator here in Fleet Ops and really enjoying it. Then I was casually talking with a friend over breakfast who is leading this traverse & he said his equipment operator had dropped out and he was looking for someone immediately. I told him to call my boss as I'm sure he'd recommend a good operator, that I'd love to go but was sure I wasn't qualified, but that it couldn't hurt to ask. I walked to work actually forgetting about the conversation and the minute our toolbox meeting was over in the morning my boss called me into his office & had me sit down and said "how would you like to go on a real Antarctic adventure?" I said yes with every fiber of my being, tingling and in shock. Why me? After 6 seasons of hard work and loving the Ice I realized I wanted more and started putting my intention there. When I got the contract in Fleet Ops I thought it couldn't get any better than that. I worked all Winfly helping support Traverse Ops and saw how much hard work was involved in preparing for a traverse. I thought, maybe someday I'll be able to do that...maybe after 5 years or so in the department. But I've only been an operator for 2 months and I get this opportunity of a lifetime. I was ecstatic for a day and then the fears and doubts attacked me yesterday. I started realizing all the cool stuff I'd miss in McMurdo, the fun two day weekends, the bonding I've done with my dept., and especially: Icestock and Offload. I will be leaving on my 50th birthday to fly to Wais Divide. This gift seems oiled into place by the Universe. It's like my blessings were there waiting for me but I just had to wait for them on their time. I did keep putting it out there what I wanted more opportunities to get off station and learn all the equipment. Be careful what you ask for in a big way! It will be my first time on the actual continent.

The irony is that getting something really exciting can feel as heartbreaking as not getting it. I cried all day yesterday and was having buyer's remorse...but after some deep talks with some evolved people I realized I was just going through my usual major life change meltdown. I will be leaving a fiery hot and passionate romance, a cozy room, and a job I love. I've never said the words "having to leave a job I love...!" But this opportunity just fell in my lap & I couldn't say no. It might be hard and grueling and boring at times (the 12 hours of driving days) but it is so different than anything I've ever experienced and so outside my comfort zone and that is what I love most. I love learning my limits of what I can and cannot do. I was so worried about my current job as an operator: that I'd mess up, that I would look like a fool, that I just wouldn't be good enough. I have rocked it. I have done a stunning job even if I'm the only one saying it. It has been incredible. Now I will be sleeping with two men in a berthing raft in the middle of nowhere Antarctica. I still can't believe it's happening. It will be incredible. We are called Piglets...hopefully, we will be the Merry Piglets... ;-)

Fun Times at the Bottom

2010-10-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

Two months into my seventh season on Ice in my new job and all is going epic-ly well and good. Running a loader nine hours a day is hard on my body but I am delighted at how good a job I am doing. My IT feels like an extension of my body as I'm in it so much, but because I can drive it to the restroom (I work in an unplumbed building), lunch and various other walkable errands, I have forgotten that my legs have any other function that pressing pedals. I am so exhausted at the end of the day that I feel I am justified in lying prone for the rest of the evening...but I am not burning a lot of calories driving all day so at the first sign of Carhartt snugness (two desserts a day diet) I went on a walk to Hut Point and came back completely worn out. I could not believe how out of shape I was from doing the thing I can do best exercise-wise: walk all day long. I'm so used to running all day long in Supply and know I was burning my food at Winfly when my loader was an icy 25 degrees inside the cab, but now the only exercise I get is climbing in and out of it and spreading forks...at my age, I need more.

We had gotten so busy in our dept. that I thought I couldn't do any more picks that week when I was told I was going to track loader school for 3 days. I was ecstatic! Three days away from my regular job, meeting new friends, learning new equipment, and mostly, letting my body heal from the incessant jostling and jarring my vertebrae go through every day. I love my job but it is hard on my body. I get to train on three different loaders with tracks (I have only operated wheel loaders thus far) so I'll have 3 more machines checked off that I can operate.

I talk too much here. For some reason my brain and metabolism spike up when I arrive here and I find myself acting like a chatterbox doll whose neck string has been pulled. I usually have some "plan" when I get here to be a "different person" than I usually am here as I think I am too mouthy most the time, but it doesn't work. Antarctica does not let me be who I'm not, and she pushes my intensity craving self to its limits. I flirt too much, talk about lurid topics too much, and am just generally, too much I think. But I have a cozy, luscious romance going on right now so I'm purring like a kitten on the inside. It is so nice to have that here.

I love this place. I love this lifestyle. It can be brutal and trying, but living one's dream life involves sacrifice and hard work. And now that I have my dreamlife I can start reaching for higher goals. It's going to be very exciting and delicious finding out what those are...

Seventh Season in Antarctica

2010-09-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post as my life here becomes one of no free time. I am exhausted, overwhelmed, and happier than I can remember being at work. So far, working in Fleet Ops has been totally awesome, challenging and fun. At the end of the day I am in a daze of being bounced around all day in my loader & never getting warm. I sometimes just move snow for days at a time. My water bottle freezes in my cab, so it's almost like working outside. My co-workers are great and I am utterly saturated in my Mactown lifestyle. I love it here. More posts later.

Collapsible German Building

2010-07-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

That is a band name we came up with in the old days when we were sitting around partying after the clubs closed and we were up all night. So 80's. So pretentious. I remember everything about that night...and could have never predicted how the next 30 years (did I say thirty?) would turn out. When the rough patches occur (and boy did I just have one) one's life feels very constricted and small...but in the darkest day before the dawn, and I am starting to see dawn, the innumerable blessings and good stuff that has happened in my life since 1980 seems almost overwhelming. And losing something I thought I really needed leaves a space for What I really needed to show up...

I posted these old photos because I lost my usb cord to my camera and didn't feel like I had enough interesting things to say to have a photoless blog posting. I took these photos back in March yet have been obsessed with this imagery for many years. They were all taken within a block from my apt, and I love them like I love my old paintings. When I started tweaking the color/saturation/etc. I started loving them even more - so that I printed 5 X 7's of them at Walgreens (from my bed in my pajamas) and have them framed and ready to hang. I'd been whining about not having a creative life anymore and had various excuses about why I couldn't do it the main one being I didn't have the space. And one morning I woke up & just did this from bed and saw how fricking easy it was. I also just made some bitchin looking business cards on the web and didn't have to go buy Photoshop(tm) or anything like that.

I will be on the Ice two weeks from tomorrow. My seventh deployment (did I say seventh?). I knew when I got off that plane in 2004 that I would do this Ice thing as long as I could - I just didn't realize how fast the time would fly by. I will have a much more challenging job this time and I am truly excited to be doing something new. A lot of friends I haven't seen in a while are coming back, and I so look forward to that first day hugging all my pals who wintered. It's going to be a very long season, so I'm going down with a fresh mental attitude and my spiritual toolkit that I rely on utterly stateside but rarely pick up on Ice.

I never blogged about Colombia: Bogota was wonderful. My friend Eric was there he was a great companion to me there. Cartagena was magical and beautiful, Tolu paradise, and the rest interesting and beautiful if you can handle the heat. I could not and got deathly ill. Went with a tour group and, unusually for me, did not bond with anyone on it - that was rough, as I'm used to making at least one super tight buddy on a trip. I travelled a lot this off season, but only one trip was magnificent: NYC. The place I've been to the most turned out to be the most fulfilling...it is the greatest city in the world, and I bet I'll still believe that after I visit the few major ones I have left.

My Austin time has been a mix of tons of fun, extreme frustration from bordedom and loose ends, and a "shock & awe" style facebook incident that made my ass fall off. That was 21 days ago, and I am recovering...and even looking forward to a new and exciting life of not settling again in certain areas of my life. Since I am turning fifty (did I say fifty?) this year, it would behoove me to conjur up the type of relationships befitting a smart, sensitive and evolved chick like myself. It's time to play big, and enlarge my concept of what I want and what I won't stand for. I made a copper pendant in the machine shop of the Heavy Shop last season and hand stamped it with the words "Never Settle," with a special date stamped on the back. There is an area of my life that I have compromised myself in and have paid a heavy price for it over the years. But I was truly doing the best I could in those moments (years)...but I have an opportunity to do something new. I'm taking my little copper block with me in my to Mactown so maybe I'll heed it's advice.

Oh, and I hope to never take for granted the enormous amount of love and support that is always available to me out there in the world. So many loving friends, family members, my adorable pooch - the clouds and trees and earth seem to support me too. When I just trust in this unbelievably loving force that seems to permeate the universe, what could I want for? As always, even though it may feel like you're getting a barbed wire enema at times, there is one thing for certain: the pain does end, and the puffy clouds that float by and make me feel euphoric remind me that all is ephemeral.

Colombia

2010-07-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

NYC 2010

2010-06-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

There are a few places on the Earth that my soul likes to call home, and one of them is New York City. I fell in love with this town when I first saw the WTC towers out the Eastern Airline window in 1978 (does anyone remember Eastern Airlines?) Having grown up in an insulated, perfectly groomed and soulless Houston suburb, New York explained why I always felt I was not in my true geographical element: I craved excitement, and NYC had a bottomless supply. I loved it so much I moved there after graduating college in 1983, so for a couple of years I got to enjoy the old gritty pre-Guiliani cleaned up city. I lived in Manhattan and Queens in the 80's, but my last three trips have been based out of Brooklyn. I am lucky enough to have 3 magnificent friends who live in this exciting borough. On one trip, I didn't even go into "the city." This time I went several times, but actually found Brooklyn more interesting to explore. Manhattan is obscene now: Times Square is like a surreal futuristic wasteland: zombie-like sneaker-clad tourists hoisting cameras at the over-the-top neon...The Bowery feels like a Vegas strip mall re-enactment of "The Bowery", and the biggest shocker: Lower East Side and Alphabet City: all sparkly. What I remember is Urban Decay - imagine a scene replete with sprawling alkies, defeated hobos, crumbling squats, blowing newspapers and piled up trash - these were/are the sights that make my pulse quicken. Though it may seem callous to want to view squalor, it exists whether I see it or not, and it always feels like something I needed to see. Plus I used to live right on the edge of the kind of lifestyle that would have me sprawled out on the streets too...I just usually had someone (some dude) steering me back to my house. There but for the Grace of God go I we always say, those of us lucky enough to have quit self-destructing before it was too late. So when I see people living feral lives in a glittering urban mecca, it not so much as a voyeur of schadenfreude as it is a refusal to acknowledge that the gap between us is as large as it appears...but where are these people now? There were Everywhere when I lived here in the 80's - they lived in makeshift villages in the parks & the streets. It's like they were rolled up in a giant carpet and whisked off somewhere as if they didn't have a right to live here. Only rich people can live here! Now, every street, every stoop, every corner, was slick. I went to a show of my now-formerly favorite band on the Bowery, and this passionate performer seemed almost deflated by the Mall of American type atmosphere that infuses the Lower East Side (not to mention that the audience was full of corn fed squeaky clean midwestern types). I mean, I went to a former apt at 4th and Ave D, and it looked like the stoops and streets & sidewalks had all been hoovered as if it were a Disneyland exhibit of "New York." I used to have to step over several generations of a Puerto Rican family whose evening ritual was the hang on the stoop and visit with the neighborhood freaks. There was not a soul sitting on any stoop there. I tried it (stoop sitting) one day at Kate's building and felt conspicuously awkward. The whole island of Manhattan had that feel - that of an exhibit where you can't muss up the pretty street. But I still have to love it, as there is no place like it in the world, but if it weren't for Brooklyn I might be in too much despair over it to ever go back.

My friend I stayed with lives in Park Slope. Another friend lives in Red Hook, and yet another in Greenpoint. I spent juicy, juicy hangs in these neighborhoods with my friends, and explored other neighbs on my own while my friends were at work. Williamsburg was a little like 6th street or SoCo here in Austin, and I was surprised by how ugly the buildings are there. Red Hook and Dumbo earn points alone for the brick streets. Greenpoint has the great views of the city, but it is kind of flat - and everyone there is white. So Park Slope, where I stayed, was the best neighborhood as far as bieng funky, pretty, diverse, and having greenery. I don't really need much "nature" in my travels, but the leafy residential blocks of New York are really spectacular. I also went to Coney Island, but I think that will be a post all its own as I've always had mythic expectations of it.

This week I just spent in New York was one of the best trips I've had in a while - and I think it was mostly because of the quality of my friends there. You have to made of certain stuff to want to live in New York. One friend I've know since we were 18, the other for 20 years, and one is an Ice pal, and we got together in various combinations to eat and laugh and see each others digs. I had the most delicious bar-b-qued meat I've ever eaten at Rich's house, followed by a Marah show in the City. Then to Greenpoint and the Black Rabbit to meet Richard and Aster for drinks, followed by a ribald time at Mrs. Kim's, a supposed "restaurant" where a bartender friend of Richard's wanted to hear Antarctic details. I wasn't good at supplying them (I always want to refer people to the ancient posts of this blog!) but this meeting turned into a sideshow of goofiness upon realizing this Antarctic query session was more a pre-planned hook-up (by Richard!), with more mixed messages and goobery giggling than a junior high dance. It was great fun though, and I met an interesting person who travels MORE than I do! That's the thing about New York: I find myself in a continual state of expecting something cool to happen, where your always meeting super interesting and engaging people who really appear to want to get to know you - even if it's only for a few minutes. I find this quite a bit when I travel (except for maybe like, Greece, where everyone was surly) but especially so in New York. If it weren't for the "Antarctic card," I'm not sure how dazzling I would seem. I pull that one out if I want to get a buzz around me.

The epicenter of this rich and precious intimate experience was K___. She has been a dear friend for almost 20 years and thank gawd she moved to my favorite place to visit. If one were to transcribe our conversations it would fill a small library, and it would not all be neurotic self absorbed shoe gaze monologues about men/work/looks minutiae. That would, in fact, be only a tiny part..because K___ is that kind of friend you pray you have in your life. She is such a good listener that she could charge folks lots of money just to perform this service for them - we talked so much my throat was raw, and even though I was going through the grieving of having just been dumped by my boyfriend of 4.5 years, she made me feel solid, invincible, "resilient as hell," as she's always told me I was.

There is this myth that New York is a noisy dirty place filled with rude and cold people known as "New Yorkers." From my first day there 32 years ago I experienced a helpfulness from people that compares to the Kiwi's level of friendliness. After two days in my neighborhood, the Slope, I was waving at all the pals I'd made at the deli, coffee shop, pizza town, etc. Each neighborhood is a small town, with village style community and sharing of resources. This is the New York I've always known. I live in a town that is described in a scholarly book as a "lonely city" where it is very hard to find community. I have always felt this to be true, though I think you can bring your own loneliness with you wherever you go. I would like to give New York another try. The Ice has some of these deliriously intense connections also - but next summer I might be Brooklyn bound.

Watching Jazz in Antarctica & Memories of The Storm

2010-05-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

I recently started watching "Treme" on television and as is typical with most HBO productions, it is an engrossing and well made series. It reminds me of one of the sweetest experiences I've had in my 6 years of working on the Ice: a core group of 3 of us (sometimes as many as 5) would gather together Sunday night and watch the "Jazz" documentary series by Ken Burns. I don't know if it was because of the situation (anything you could watch on a screen is going to capture you more at a tiny research station), or because the 10 part series was just so incredibly interesting and well made - but I found myself looking forward to that two hours each Sunday evening more than I would look forward to boating opportunities. I felt like me & Ken and Kris (the other diehard fans) were on a gilded raft, floating through an exciting journey on the history of Jazz music which was far more interesting than I'd ever imagined it would be (it's as much a history of New Orleans and race and the human struggle to create). The amount of detailed research and the intellectualism and heart put into this show is astounding. The longer I'm away from Palmer Station the more I realize what a privilege it was to be there, but when I was there some of the personalities rubbed on me like a rock in my shoe...but our Jazz screenings helped my sanity, gave me something to look forward to, and kept me highly plugged into a vein of creativity that I have only had moments of experience with. I didn't know much about Louis Armstrong before I saw this series, but now I know that he may have been the greatest musical artist this world has ever known.

But this show, Treme, reminds me of when the storm hit. Living in Texas I had to opportunity to help out when Houston got too full and folks started coming to Austin. It was so hard to get on with the Red Cross as they were flooded with volunteers, so I just went down to the damned convention center and tried to help with the amelioration of pain that our city was attempting...the donations were bursting at the seams...the volunteers were trying to make the guests from NO feel as comfortable as possible under the horrific circumstances many of them had been in at the Superdome. People got off buses without shoes or hope, and we tried our best to get them the basics as fast as possible: a bed, some food, tons of clothes & personal goods that had been donated. The red cross had told me they did not need me & would call me if my name popped up. They had plenty of jobs at the office on computers but I wanted to be at the convention center...with the people from New Orleans. Each day was dramatically different & things happened fast. Once bellies were full and people were well-rested & medicines dispersed, people wanted to find their loved ones so phone banks were set up and even a job bank was opened for people who were ready to start a new life in Austin. I went down to the convention center on my scooter one day & just said "screw it" I'm gonna get in without an official Red Cross badge - and I did. I folded in with a volunteer group, they put a wristband on me, and I wore it everyday to the Center downtown. My job was to work in the clothing area, where guests (we were to refer to them as guests rather than refugees) would come and pick out garments as they had mostly arrived with nothing. It was fun helping them - and I was ever aware that as someone who couldn't possibly understand what they'd been through, I kept quiet unless they wanted to speak to me. We could eat with the guests so everyday I got up my nerve to sit with folks and ask them how they were doing. I heard some awful stories, and saw some unlikely friendships that had developed through shared tragedy. By the 10th day or so people were partying on the loading dock of the Convention hall! There were some instruments donated & an impromptu dance party had started. Smiles were everywhere...and I began to see how quickly the human spirit can recover. A couple of sweet memories: after about a week of my clothing sorting gig, a lady about my age came up to me & asked if I could find her some sexy lingerie as she had met a man she liked in the camp. She was giggling & embarrassed to ask me, but it was a moment that made me realize that I felt quite privileged to be a part of these people's lives: we were having "girl talk"...and this was wildly different than those first fragile days when folks walked off busses in shock - some so hungry & thirsty & wild eyed it was hard to believe that these people were from a place just a few hours down the road from our lives of relative ease and comfort. We were so aware of the appalling week they had had before arriving, that we only tried to make them comfortable. So to see the smiles & dancing 10 days later was amazing. Another sweet memory is that a friend and I took an AA meeting to the Convention Center. I think we had one or two guests show up...and hopefully it helped. On my last day when I was leaving after my final volunteer shift, I saw lots of guests sitting around the outside of the arena smoking and talking. I rode by on my scooter and stopped to ask them if Austin was treating them well...they said they were overwhelmed by how well they had been treated and LOVED Texas (boy I don't hear that much!). I went back to my tiny condo and realized how blessed I was to have this tiny space that had a soft bed & frigid air conditioning. I had gotten rid of so many possessions when the storm first hit, yet I still was rich in the basics. Interestingly, when I moved all my stuff & my kitty to a friend's house before deploying for my second season on Ice (a couple had leased my condo), the house, containing all my stuff and generations of my friend's family's stuff, burnt to the ground right after my last visit to say goodbye to my kitty. I had been on Ice about a week when my friend wrote to me the news. I sat in shock for a while looking at photos of this big house that was completely incinerated and felt terrible sadness that my 16 year old kitty died of smoke inhalation, and worse, my friend lost every material thing he had (and a beloved old kitty also). For some reason that tragedy passed quickly for me (except that I still am sad when I think about my kitty), because it was mostly just stuff. There's not a single item of that stuff that I miss, and in no way compares to what Katrina did to people's lives, but it did show me my how powerless I am over the random acts of violence by mother nature. Watching Treme has reminded me of that time, when I spent about 10 days interacting with the victims of the storm. I'm not sure how those folks that I had personal interactions are doing today, and I pray they are well, but I know that for me those moments of selflessless felt like the "pearl at any price"...."for it is in self forgetting that one finds...." and what I found was something I'd only ever understood intellectually, but can only be understood through experience: the giver gains as she gives.

The Life Not Chosen...

2010-04-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

When I am not at McMurdo, or travelling, or on a ski or painting trip I am in that in-between place where I spend vast amounts of time alone, going to meetings and yoga and taking long walks around the lake. It's during these times that my aloneness sticks out as I'm floating in a sea of hand-holding couples, dodging toddlers at the yoga studio (most yoginis I see are either pre or post natal and talk about babies incessantly) or going on a tour by myself in a foreign country, which doesn't seem strange to me at all but I have since found out that people have all sorts of reactions to a woman travelling alone. I've had people pity me (they've actually told me that!), shun me as some sort of weirdo, or fence me off from their geezer husband as in their minds a single middle aged woman must be desperate for a man, any man! I should pity them, with their small minded thinking, but more I just feel lucky that I'm free to do what I want. Sometimes though the cavernous black maw of loneliness will start to suck me in and I can get in a pretty stinky spot with it. I remember once walking alone on some summer holiday & saw families & couples & kids all hanging out in yards having parties, and I had nowhere to go. I spent one Easter in a dark pit, and now make sure I have something planned long in advance for both Easter & 4th of July, holidays I can't stand but can't stand to be alone on. When Will told me that he was going to work in Taiwan for a year I felt a sharp pang of abandonment, like I was being called upon to be more independent than I even want to be. I'd assumed he'd be back on the Ice with me this season, but his glee for this exciting opportunity outweighs my selfish desire to have him with me. And as people are always telling me (and 49 years of experience has shown!): everything is going to be ok. Sometimes there's just so much change in a short period of time that my head spins...but I've gotten used to being on the move a lot, and it suits me for the most part. The common thinking (that was upended in the great film Up in the Air) is that all people need home and family and connection. But there is the sort of person who doesn't need traditional marriage and family and home ownership to belong. Some of us get our sense of belonging by serving something else...I can feel as supported and loved by the Universe in an airport lounge as anywhere else on earth...there there are people all around me who are in the exact same boat: the luxurious boat of limbo, where for some reason my mind seems to process recent events quite exquisitely.

Nuala O'Faolain wrote so personally and intimately about the childfree middle aged woman...especially that pang we can have when we see a mother lifting a particularly adorable child into her arms. I made a solid choice not to have children, but there must be a maternal part of me because I have been enraptured with 5 month old babies on occasion. They usually want me to hold them, which is a great joy to me, as it connects me to a larger part of me (and thus the world) that I am rarely in touch with. This connection is so deep & satisfying and something which I have just moments of experience with. I wonder sometimes how I missed that this gorgeous feeling was why people have families...and for a split second wonder if I've shortchanged myself by not having considered it...but then I look at our vast planet with the hundreds of countries that I still have not visited and know in my heart that I may indeed be missing out on one of the great joys of life by not having had a family of my own, but that the life I DID choose is filled with endless possibilities for rewarding experiences.

My Greenberg Problem

2010-04-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

Most people who know me think I majored in Fine Art in college because I made art for so long in Austin, but I actually have a film degree. I remember seeing "La Strada" late one night when I was in high school and it had a powerful affect on me. Woody Allen became my muse in the 70's & 80's, and after a rapturous experience of seeing Eraserhead in a hundred year old theater in my freshman year of college, I knew I would try to make films. The technical classes were incredibly challenging for me, but the viewing and studying of film was euphoric. The experience I want from a film is to be moved. I have seen so many great films in my life that I could never see another one, but this posting is about a film I just saw (and walked out of) that had decent critical reviews but was really bad, and bad in a disturbing way. Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg" is about a self-absorbed misanthropic character who seems to only be taking up space on the planet as dead weight, but is also able to get a halfway decent female to be interested in him despite his histrionics and social phobias. Woody Allen's neurotics are always lovable and hilarious, but Baumbach's just seem petulant (and really, they're dickheads). If a big tornado sucked up all his characters I wouldn't shed a tear, would sigh with relief actually. I'm thinking of those spoiled, no-lifers in Margot at the Wedding, whose crazy making and infantile needs rule the film. Only Jack Black could save it with his one great scene, that almost seemed to be making fun of Baumbach himself. A film is a mirror into the director's soul. Great acting is usually the result of great directing. If a director doesn't have heart in his film, I'm not going to get sucked in. The one exception to that rule for me is Kubrick, whose mammoth genius in his art was inspired by something beyond heart. His films feel cold and misogynistic, but as a filmmaker he is brilliant. I have seen The Pianist three times, a film I consider Art at it's highest, and no matter where one stands on his personal past life, Polanski has a heart and soul as big as the Universe and it shows in his work. I know people who stopped watching Woody Allen films after he married Soon-Yi - but they are missing out on some of his darkest and sexiest work yet. I think Noah Baumbach is considered a good young director and he does have talent, but whatever Gen-X shallow values stuff he is trying to put across is not working for me. Maybe it's personal. I lived like a "Slacker" before Linkater made the movie. I knew everyone in that film. Seeing a new Hollywood film that seems to be almost a nihilistic experiment in studied awkwardness sounds interesting, but let Lars von Trier do that! Don't try and weave it into a Ben Stiller dramcom. Because it wasn't funny when he pushed her on the bed and they had screendom's most depressing lovemaking scene EVER (it was actually "Breaking the Waves"-esque in it's gun-to-the-head disconnectedness). I tried to see the humor in it as I think it was intended to be funny, but I was cringeing, and feeling my feminist ire come up. The girl in the film is so ridiculous as to be a cartoon of a mumblecore posterchild. Her self esteem is so low one cannot understand how she able to hold a job, much less set up singing gigs. I remember when I was an overeducated beer drinking jobless slacker in my 20's...but we had passion and ambition and were intense about what we wanted to do, we wanted out of slackerdom ultimately...why would someone care about this Greenberg character who does not care about himself?

I remember it like it was yesterday: 1982, Easter European Cinema Class, University of Texas at Austin. 6 people enrolled in a class in the largest student body of any college in the nation. We had viewed a low budget Polish film about a stupid girl who does nothing ever but pick her fingernails & has a variety of boyfriend problems. Because I was 21 and the film was in black and white I was riveted, and thought there must be some deep theme - I had to think that as I had to write a 3 page paper on it. The next class meeting we discussed the film, and there was this one guy in class who wore a rumpled suit and was like the character in Henry Fool who played Henry (ahh Hal Hartley - one of a kind: utterly true to his vision), who was the only one brave enough to say what he really felt about the film. Most of us were talking about poverty and communism and existentialist despair when this guy waited til there was silence in the class and nearly shouted "This woman was a worthless character. Watching her was torment - I just felt like screaming at her "do something: read a book, do a crossword puzzle, ANYTHING!..." I don't know if he said anything else but he opened my mind up to the idea that I don't have to agree with the filmmaker. I can look with a critical eye and weigh for myself whether a character has merit or if the director has been successful in infusing them with qualities that make them compelling. Greenberg might be a great character if he had a sense of humor or a heart or some redeeming qualities but he doesn't. He's not doing anything but writing borderline personality type letters to corporations. Not nearly as engaging as a crossword puzzle. My basic Greenberg problem is that precious celluloid (if they are still using that) that could probably be put to good use in some third world country, is covered with Ben Stiller's cave man face & ridiculous "slacker" hair, and purported to be "art" because the director makes quirky films. Baumbach should just join the Dogme Collective & follow the manifesto of purity and not try to portray Greenberg as deserving of our sympathy. "Julien Donkey Boy" was so much less painful that Greenberg. It wasn't self conscious, and didn't give a rat's ass whether you cared about Julien or not. It let you decide, and didn't try to be something it was not. That is not to say I am a fan of Harmony Korine, but at least he knows his characters are unlikable assholes and portrays them that way.

Things are Really Speeding Up Here at the End...

2010-03-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

Though this top photo might look like a still from a low budget, guerilla improvised version of The Crucifixion, it is just me trying to pick up a tall friend of mine for a photo montage I was plotting called "how to pick up men." (potential title for first photo: "Trace as Jesus being helped down from the Cross"). I noticed a strain in my lower back after my third pick-up, so the montage became a triptych (shown here in rough form.) At 49.5 years old I continually push myself to do ridiculous things (like skiing, for example) to prove that I am not old yet, and this time of year (SXSW) in Austin always takes me back to when I fell in love with this city 31 years ago. South by Southwest is for no good reason utterly complicated now. It is so overwhelming with the number of bands and films playing, that I cannot imagine how a non-local navigates it. The great secret is that if you have been here forever like I have, you know all the fun and completely free stuff there is to do and you run into all your old buddies and get to slam dance with guys with bald spots, long gray beards and pot bellies. This southby was epic for me. Epic because it was only the second time I forced myself to do the whole 10 days of film and music. I reluctantly bought a film pass & was immediatley glad I did because half the fun of this thing if you spend lot of time alone like I do is that you hang out with people in the lines waiting for movies. Like the tweaky conversations I've had in the umpteen Springsteen lines I've stood in, I find lots of good film-geek pals that I cozily bond with. When the music starts to overlap with the film fest things get really crazy. In a town with no mass transit to speak of, if I didn't have a scooter I probably wouldn't do any of it. Once I surrender to the zone of mind numbing slogging to free show after free show, I am surprised to find I am having fun and that this fun feels Very Important. It starts to feel like the Most Important Thing in the Universe. I end up going home solely to sleep and poop my dog, then back out to see all this raw and stunning talent flailing itself out there everywhere. I stood in rapture watching the Riverboat Gamblers tear up this punk club at two in the afternoon, then hopped on my scooter and raced to see a film about the friendship between Mike Tyson and Tupac Shakur, where the director held a heady Q&A afterwards that stunned us (the whitey-white audience) to silence. I got to see Victoria Williams at a Taco Bar where the PA over her head blared "Number 23, your order is ready" every 10 seconds during her intimate and reverent set. She took it in stride, as I knew she would. Saw new docos on Bill Hicks, Levon Helm, and Jean-Michel Baquiat. I ususally don't view non docs at film fests, but the some of the narrative features I saw were stellar. They were: Lebanon, PA; Mars; Winter's Bone.

Oh yeah, and I saw the Gourds too.

(an aside, working on the triptych: I thought of titling the second photo "Me and My Mexican!" or "I Found/Stole Me a Mexican!").

(and the third picture: "Worth killing for, Worth dying for, Worth going to Hell for!")

So, as is my blogging custom, I am going to wring out of this experience it's deeper significance for me. For someone who used to have a lot of "scarcity" thinking (refer to 80's new-agey texts for "scarcity complex" thinking explained) as I did, it is a little frightening to surrender myself to one joyous experience right after another. It feels like I haven't earned it, and that I should have to "pay" somehow for all this joy with some future drudgery or pain. I used to let myself see one or two bands during the whole festival, and spend the rest of the time at home sort of worrying about the time in between - I seemed to need time to stare at a wall between times of having my mind blown. I was open this time to the possibility of having continual fun and it happened on a fairly regular basis. I used to think I was supposed to suffer! Is that what those 16 years of hangovers were about? I had so much fun the night(s) before I had to make sure I paid by horking my guts up for 47 hours. Because my life has been consistently filled with deeply fulfilling experiences for about the past two (or maybe six) years, I have had to come to the realization that there is no price to pay, there is no shoe that is going to drop, and as the old saying goes: the sun shines of the good and bad alike. Being sober 17 years has given me many gifts, but the longer I stay sober the more interesting and subtle the gifts begin to be. There are people in my life who say on a regular basis to me "everything is going to be okay" and "everything is always ok all the time" (I really like that one). Bruce understands when he sings "it's okay to have a good time" in one of his songs, so he must know how hard it is to give oneself that gift. It seems startling to me now the importance I used to assign to worrying. I think if there is a hell, it is made in the six inches between your ears. It is difficult not to see that the world is a wonderful place when passion and creativity exists everywhere all around us.

Final Scenes from Mactown

2010-02-17T01:04:00.000-08:00

The perfect tractor to have my name on it. And a beautiful scene from my window a la "American Beauty"

The grittiness and austere bareness of the town is what is most compellingly beautiful to me about it. Its lonely feel & detritus covered landscape make me love it like a scruffy unloved dog. I wish I knew how to line up this typeset with the photos!

Farewell Mactown...

2010-02-13T16:32:00.000-08:00

See you in six months!

My last night in Mactown was a perfect representation of why I love this station. Live bands filled with friends & familiar faces playing fun dance music for hours. It always takes me straight back to college where I spent 4 years going out & dancing to punk bands several night a week. People seemed to be having so much fun, and as so many of us are leaving today it felt relaxed and like a great big release from an exhausting season. That was the word I heard most about people's season this year: exhausting. The station had so much work to do and was so shorthanded in my department that I felt tasked almost to the breaking point. I went into autopilot at some point in the season & hit the ground running every day at work - didn't let myself pause to feel my tiredness...went home & powernapped for 15 minutes - went to the galley for a long leisurely dinner...then plowed through a long Saturday night after a full day of work & never slept in on Sunday. Sleep deprivation was just something I got used to and saw that I could function on. I had two days in a row off and have been off for another day & a half & I can feel my sore & broken body & mental exhuastion setting in. I yearn for LM Gould style sleep again!

In the "be careful what you ask for dept," I asked for something I really wanted and got it. I signed a contract to be an equipment operator in Fleet Ops next season. I am thrilled, nervous, perplexed as to why they would hire me, and hoping that I can rock the IT28 again like I did 2 seasons ago. Not only did they give me contract for exactly what I asked for, they were excited that I asked, made things happen fast so I could get a contract quickly, have been extremely welcoming and appear to be terribly excited that I am "moving up the hill." (Fleet Ops is a bit up the hill from the Heavy Shop, where I worked this season). I wonder, have they ever seen my operating equipment? They probably can see me in the Pickle running around all the time...but they seem to have confidence in me enough that I didn't have to drive around & show them that I can operate an IT (the loader I'll be living in next season)...I guess my supply/offload experience is good enough. The really exciting part is that this could open doors for me as far as doing exciting stuff on continent. I have been in a dead end dept. that does not get to go off station or fly to field camps and barely gets morale trips for everyone. I couldn't believe my ears whey my new boss was telling me that as soon as I'm comfortable I can train on the Challengers & possibly go on traverses in future seasons. Now, I've spent a big part of the past 20 years trying to figure out how to channel this strong ambition I have always felt into getting an exciting job...and it seems like it's finally happened. Someone reading this or who knows me might think that my life is exciting enough as I have chased my goals fairly relentlessly...but I always wanted good pay with a job I loved, and that has been one of the major frustrations of my life...now, at nearly 50 years old, and spending so much time & money on trying to figure it out, preparedness has met opportunity; and as is part & parcel of this process, the fears are coming at me in many forms (not being a good enough operator, I'm going to drop something really big & everyone's gonna see it, I'll cry and everyone will see I'm not tough enough!). It's so interesting to watch the mind go crazy whey the daimon finally starts taking what it wants. This is a big leap for me as far as proving myself at work. I'm lucky to be one of those people who is always on the hunt for a different job and won't settle for something "cushy." I used my bitterness towards my current dept. to propel me to find something better (to their credit, Supply is a great dept. for a few seasons - you get to learn lots of great stuff & have a fun job filled with variety-I am just done with it). I love working in Antarctica and I was afraid I would not be able to find another job here I would like or a dept. that I could be qualified to work in. I just went and asked for exactly what I wanted and got it. Another example of the adage of 90% of success is just showing up. I saw the long timers in my dept. and did not want to be one of them...it gets me into trouble sometimes but I have always wanted bigger & better - and I had felt the rustlings in my soul of desiring a challenge at midlife...contrary to what society has told me about the invisibility of the middle-aged woman, I have this to say to menopause: bring it on. I'm not gonna stay indoors and knit, I'm gonna go drive tractors!

A Couple of Pix from Icestock 2010

2010-02-09T15:12:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day is always the best day at McMurdo. Here are a couple of photos of me & my good pal Kyle dancing away in the warm summer of Antarctica

About to Pop Out of the Egg

2010-01-25T01:21:00.000-08:00

My life here is so insulated and I am so hyperfocussed on my tiny universe here that I sometimes forget that there is a "back home." Even though I love my home & family & can't wait to see them, my life here is so surreally interesting that I like to sometimes not even enter the off Ice world (by telephone). My routine is my god, and it guides & protects me. Near the end of season there is so much to write about but so much that can't be written about because this is such a small community. I felt the need to post as this blog has been neglected and I need to ping my subscribers...but this will be a letdown for someone craving information. I am here, working my arse off, thriving in the "cold" (I'm usually too warm), being energized by the busyness, agog at the parties, lying prone on Sundays attempting to "rest." It is the crazy yet dull world of a 6 day grueling workweek at a mancamp, but when the camp decides to let it's hair and guard down on Saturday night, it's a much needed release. I have had a great 6th season, I suppose I'll return - I have no idea what else I would do with myself. This lifestyle satisfies on a deep level that nothing else I've ever tried has come close to. Certainly it is filled with it's share of petty grievances and letdowns. I see that I need to be sensitive to those having a hard time. I am being so socialble that I don't have time to go too inward as I do back home...back home: what does that even mean! When I'm off Ice this feels like Back Home...and Palmer felt like going to some unusual relatives house that I barely know. This place feels a little shallow whereas that place felt too deep. A deep that wasn't the sort of deep that I like to live in, but a deep that challenged me too intensely. Here I can let it all hang out. There I couldn't. I feel so old and so young here at the sametime. It seems I've inserted a rambling diary post into a blog format. Sorry for that! If anyone's reading: I love you and appreciate you & hope you are well & thriving. I certain think I am! And I perhaps need to dissect what I mean by "thriving" - but that will be a long winded, sprawling, and hopefully epic post that I will be able to do in my solitude in New Zealand (and then, Hawaii :)). Forewarned is forewarned...!

Homeward Bound

2009-11-21T17:03:00.000-08:00

I've been in McMurdo a little over two weeks and have been so busy at work, that even without housemouse and GASH (extra work at Palmer) I feel like I have less free time. I had No Idea how spoiled I was having wifi in my room at Palmer, and the slowness of the internets here is incredible. I have tried on several different days to upload pictures to this blog & do a posting, but I have finally given up & have decided to just blog without photos. I have posted nice photos on my facebook page, so if anyone who reads this want to see those photos feel free to "friend" me.

I'm so much more comfortable and relaxed here...I have very sweet memories of my time at Palmer & the things that were good there were Very Good...but here I feel like I'm at home. I get enough walking in in a day that I feel like I don't have to work out, and there is always places to pop over into if I want some company. And on the nights my roomie goes to work, I have a blissful 4 hours of reading solidtude in my room. I'm totally loving my kindle reader, and continue to read voraciously on it.

Working at the Heavy Shop is fun and fast paced. This is the first time I've returned to a warehouse I've previously worked at and it's been enough years that it feels fresh again. There are the familiar faces and many new mechanics as well. The parts counter where I work has a line at it all day, and I don't remember it being this busy when I worked here 4 years ago. Most days I do a repetitive walk from the counter to the warehouse behind the building, back and forth so many times that I'm surprised there isn't a rut carved into it. I finally got my pickle (M4K forklift) training, and driving Elvis again is a joy. I'd forgotten how fricken' hard it was to see out of the front of this machine, but compared to the Skytrak I drove at Palmer (where you can easily see the forks), this is much more fun in general to operate because it articulates.

Now that I've been here two weeks and my routine is deeply entrenched, I need to ponder my future in Antarctica. I am in my 6th season on Ice and and on the fence about whether I'm going to be a "lifer" or not. This lifestyle is so amazing but it is also so amazingly weird: I forced myself to go out last night to hear live bands when all I wanted to do was lie in my cave & read books. I ended up having a really great time and staying up late, but it always feels like I'm a freshman in college when I go out here. The people you see every day are liquored up and hanging on each other - and as a sober person it can be a very entertaining show to watch. I am so safe without alcohol! I cannot imagine getting drunk here on Saturday nights in a town this small. By midnight the clubs look like pens of animals getting ready to or hoping to rut. I get to walk out the door utterly clearheaded and crawl into my cozy walled off bed and read until late as I don't have to get up early on Sunday. At Sunday brunch you can see the hangovers & excited energy of those that had a wild night..and I get to enjoy the stories I hear from these big party nights.

I picked up my 17 year sobriety chip here when I first got here and it seems like just yesterday I was getting a one year chip. When I first quit drinking I never intended for sobriety to become a way of life...I was just miserable and had tried everything else so I was going to go on the wagon for a while. Now most of my dreams have come true, and some I hadn't even known were waiting for me have come true also. In the midst of some of the bitterness and crankiness I can get into in this place (the Ice), it is still an incredible place for life to press upon me in ways that I don't experience off Ice: whatever stored up anger or resentments I have will force me to deal with them. I will have strong reactions and will have to take care of them myself quickly because "perception" is "reality" down here & I want to be perceived well. I don't drink or get into trouble, but I can be mouthy and squawk about the system and when I hear myself being this way I make an effort to reign it in the next day. In short, I have to be a grownup here (but in other ways, you never have to grow up here!).

There's nothing new here. No epiphanies or see-God-now experiences to gush on about. Coming back to McMurdo after a year off was like putting on comfortable old slippers & settling into an easy chair. When I first got here so many people said "welcome home," and that is what it feels like: a sort of tribal home for oddballs, misfits, and people like me who are both and especially like not having to feed or house myself.

The Voyage North

2009-10-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

These photos are from the 8 day voyage from Palmer Station to Chile. As far as redeployments go, this one was spectacular - an 8 day paid cruise to and from Antarctica. I can get so caught up in the negatives while on station that I am sometimes blinded by the big picture of the really cool stuff I get to do with this lifestyle. I hear a lot of kvetching (and do a fair amount myself) from people about various things about working on the Ice, but ultimately, for me, this was, and continues to be a dream come true. Distance and time soften the prickly aspects of the season, so that what remains are memories of what is good working on station. And the power of images to conjur memory and feeling are astounding. I know things change and perhaps someday it will be time for me to trade this lifestyle for something different - but Antarctica is still so compellingly wonderful for me: I am truly excited to be going back to McMurdo to a job I've held in the past. I'm looking so forward to being in New Zealand again, the CDC & C-17 ritual, and seeing dozens of friends. I am also looking forward to the structure and routines. I see that I need to learn how to treasure this sort of non-travelling time off. When I am on Ice in the middle of some horrible tasking, this long stretch of free time is all I think about, so I just need to learn how to relax and enjoy it!

I left station 3 weeks ago and have tried to settle into a transitional routine here in Austin but am finding that filling my days with activities and self structuring are ridiculously stressful. With hundreds of options available to choose from, I end up feeling overwhelmed after culling down to a couple of time fillers, followed by frustration regarding logistics (traffic), then chucking it all to spend the time simply walking around the local parks with my dog. One of the problems is that I feel like I have to pack my day with excitement as I only have two weeks before going back to the Ice, that I have to Blaze New Trails every moment.

I compulsively read every Anita Brooker novel years back, and even though I find her writing exquisite, her inert characters served as a warning to me as the kind of person I did not want to be: a healthy, moneyed woman with loads of free time on her hands spending endless stretches of days wandering around her large and lonely flat, incapable of goals or action. I started reading Brookner when I felt trapped in my life, and stopped reading her when my life became exciting (travel, adventure, seasonal work!) I have always been fascinated by homebody-ism, but incapable of it myself. I get a lot of creative stuff done when I have a regular home, but I always feel oppressed by property ownership and yearn to be free. I have the freedom now, and big dreams require big sacrifices. I could go on...but I'll stop now and go out and enjoy the rare rainy day here in Austin.

My Precious Half Winter

2009-10-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

This season was so different than my previous ones, and so unexpectedly challenging in such surprising and difficult ways, that I was curious when I started instantly missing Palmer as the boat pulled away (aside from the obvious teary goodbye with Will.) The place was beautiful, the food was extraordinary and all my coworkers were good people doing a good job. But I felt so oppressed by the smallness of the population that I thought I would pop with relief when I entered into wider expanses of both terrain and number of bodies. So I left with some trepidation: I was in a very coddled & protected world. I was treated well uniformly by everyone. My job was busy & ultimately, satisfying. Getting on the boat became the beginning of Unstructured Free Time - something I'm trying to develop a better working relationship with. Eight days tossing & turning on the boat, watching movies, eating & sleeping (while still on the payroll) flew by. One heavenly night at the old hotel in the square of Punta Arenas felt like my reward for the season. Twenty four hours of sleepless airplane rides later I wonder how the season seemed to be over in the blink of an eye, when some of the days seemed to drag on forever. I read so many memoirs, saw so many movies, ate so many exquisite desserts - that was part of the deal. I now completely understand how people get stuck in this lifestyle....it's so easy to keep doing. So easy, yet hard too. I met some amazing people at Palmer and on the Gould. Even though there were times when I thought my Antarctic experience was in "the red" this time, I know that I am beyond grateful that I had the opportunity to go to Palmer. I will never forget these past four months. Oh, and there's a story about the second photo with me & Jon about to swing cans. After we were done with this final part of pier ops I went inside where some people had been watching us. One of my coworkers who has an indoor job said "Marsha that looks really horrible..what you were doing out there..." and I just smiled real big & said THIS is why I work in Antarctica..to do stuff like this! To stand outside in storms doing stuff I never imagined I'd be doing.

Palmer Station, I'm not sure I like you, but I love you.

In a month I won't have anyone to cook for me anymore

2009-08-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

The first picture is of me tubing down the glacier behind the station. It's a good size bunny hill - long & gentle til you get near the bottom, where jagged rocks await you. As someone who grew up in a climate on par with Qatar, success for me will be represented by pictures of winter. As a child I was obsessed with a magazine ad of the Marlboro man riding a horse through an austerely silent and snowy forest with big flakes falling around him. I hung this picture on my wall and even asked my mom for the 50 cents to order the poster (this was in the 60's when you could mail two quarters in an envelope & get something cool mailed back to you). I was a 5th generation Texas who fantasized about snow because it was something I was going to have to travel to find. It was mysterious & desirable to me and I don't know why. Growing up near a sketchy coastal beach that I was rarely tempted to visit, I was amazed that that is all my friends in high school wanted to do once they obtained cars. Bloated bodies in the sun, drunk sunburnt rednecks, kids stabbing sticks into dead jellyfishes, soiled dialpers carelessly tossed into the wet sand, not to mention the lack of intellectual stimulation - it just wasn't my scene. I've always been fascinated with the almost unanimous opinion that a tropical landscape with white sandy beaches & 80 degree weather is something not only desirable but worth paying lots of money to get near. It just seems like a failure of imagination. Even here, where I am "wintering", the days are growing longer & the more daylight we have the more uncomfortable I am with it - I loved only have an hour or two of light a day. There was something almost holy and ecstatic about sitting at a desk at work during pitch darkness. It was freakin' bizarre. After a brief stint in Tejas I will be in 24 hour sun again in November...but I have loved the overcast & grey days here - it has been such a blessing after the chronic heat-wave vacations I've been taking for the last 5 years.

The second photo is penguin cute overload. Their adorable, stuffed-animal like cuteness is almost ironic against the harsh landscape. And seeing wildlife down here can soften the toastiest soul.

The third photo could probably be used as an art project if I could come up with a good enough caption, but it shows what I'm willing to do to spend June, July and August in a snowy paradise. A co-worker & I were "carpet cleaning" with no previous experience, dumping stinky toxic cleaner into this fisher-priced looking machine of dubious manufacture and quality. It's instruction manual was fat and in Engrish - and the plastic contraption appeared to have been purchased off the shelf next to the "Easy Bake Oven." Is the carpet cleaner now? I dunno. I just signed up to do it to shake up the monotony of my routine. I got some chuckles in with my co-worker as we dumped filthy scunge on ourselves every time we changed the water. I am wearing a respirator as I was concerned about the fumes of the cleaner and hey, this is Antarctica where everything is done either half-assed or on overkill. Ultimately I didn't wear it as it interfered with my glasses. But I did get a picture of me in it, which was really important. Things are getting a little more exciting as we are ramping up for another port call & I get back on the boat in a month. The Cold, Deployment, Redeployment and Pier Ops (or Ship Offload at Mactown): why I love the Ice.

Happiness

2009-08-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

"Happiness" is the title of one of my favorite films, and one we just watched here on station on what is known as "F&cked Up Friday" movie night. We try to watch things that are bizarre & disturbing, but I also like stuff that is good, so I chose Happiness. So many things about this film are great, but mainly it's a great script with some disturbing subject matter and super interesting story lines. So much about it to me seems to be like real life, just exaggerated - and it's most disturbing parts have an almost epiphanal nature to them; everyone deeply flawed, and deeply aware of it. But this ramble is not intended to be a movie review. I have been thinking about the concept of happiness here at Palmer a lot lately, mostly because the deprivation of stimulation and dearth of activities has me in a sort of withdrawel state. I couldn't wrap my head around what I was feeling here...I don't feel on edge or "crispy" like I can at McMurdo with all the crazy personalities there. I don't feel desolate or lost like I can when I'm in the "real world." But I'm not ecstatically happy either. I don't even think I feel happy...but I feel something...and I feel like something is missing. There is the reality of Winter tasking which can be very very dull & non stimulating. There are only 16 people here and they are all good natured and pleasant enough, but I came in half season and didn't bond with the original group who came down here together. I don't have juicy, bawdy, mealtime conversations like I can at McMurdo. There's no gossip here so that is probably good, but if I were to be perfectly honest I kind of miss it. There is no privacy here so there is nothing to gossip about. I'm reading a book entitled "The Geography of Bliss" where the author, who considers himself an unhappy person, travels to all the places in the world that report the highest happiness rates. What he is discovering is that what one culture considers happy may not be what another does. Americans think they need to be happy all the time or they panic and think something is wrong with them. But what if it was okay not to be happy. I used to be addicted to fun and highs and drama. Now I am attached (I won't say addicted) to having what appears to be an exciting life. I think this makes me happy. It does in lots of ways because it is the life I always dreamed of having, but built in to that lifestyle are certain miseries. A lot of us Iceheads talk about the miseries of working on Ice but we put up with it. Misery here feels sharper and more interesting than misery back home. My back home unhappiness has an undertone of panic to it, and I think that is because I know there is this wide world of choices I could choose to get out of my misery: road trip, movies, hair-cut, buy cool boots, painting workshop, adventure travel, coffee shop, internets, etc. But here, where my world is in two buildings & there is NO place to walk to, misery takes on a different quality & shape: instead of something making me nervous that I want to run from, I know I CAN'T run from it so I HAVE to live with it. And living with it seems to soften it, sweeten it, and make it less miserable...and eventually it fades away and peacefulness takes over. I used to only know thrills and freak outs. I was building toward some sort of thrilling thing all the time and when it fell apart I fell apart. Now, the pleasures are small, but they take on a deeper meaning here in a place with few options. I can read or watch movies in my spare time. People play board games & cards here on weekends (I was warned this would be the "fun" happening in Winter), which I am not interested in, so I get a lot out of the reading and films. I once heard a Bob Dylan quote that stuck with me for a long time. I don't remember it exactly but the interviewer asked him if he was happy and Dylan thought it was a dumb question because he didn't think it was really important whether he was happy or not - that there were states of being that were much more interesting than happiness. This rang true for me and appreciated hearing something vocalized that I'd always sensed and didn't have words for. Am I happy? I don't know. I usually don't know until later when I'm in a situation that is very different that what I've experienced before. What I do know is that I'm not unhappy...in this small of a town, I have to pull upon some pretty adult resources like acceptance, restraint of tongue, tolerance...all good things and probably good for me to practice. One can't indulge in histrionics in a place where you live and work side by side 24/7 with a small group of people. I feel a dearth of something here...a dusty dry empty place in my soul...a place usually filled with intellectual and creative external stimuli. But after the intitial uncomfortableness with this emply place, I saw that I was just in a new place I'd never been in that felt sort of prison-like, but that instead of panicking about it I would just explore it & live in it. I have gotten used to it & it is not so bad. I have moved beyond just thrills and angst, and settled into the middle way, which I never ever in the past would have thought could have brought any sort of happiness with it, but might.

Hurtling Towards the Half Century Mark

2009-07-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

In these self-photos I always forget to behave as a subject as I am focusing on taking the picture, so I usually end up with some sort of unflattering strained looking grimace. But on closer inspection I realize the common quality of all the most recent self-photos is that I look old. I see a neck I wish were covered up and the beginnings of jowliness. The grey hair is coming in thicker, which doesn't really bother me so much, except when I do a flat one color dye job then the grow out is more harrowing. There is so much I love about aging and I have waxed on about it the last few years, but I am finding that I need to get creative with how to incorporate the obvious aging part with part of me that wants to remain punk rock. Now I've seen old punk rockers who look really cool, and it is apparent that they have completely embraced the grey hair and wrinkles & just continued to wear the black t-shirts & jeans, and they look awesome. These are mostly guys, and my middle aged chick friends that look cool are willing to put a lot of energy into costuming & make-up which I think is great, but which I have absolutely no energy or inclination for. My personal style, like my artwork, will have to evolve based on laziness. I have never used a blow dryer or hair products so I have no idea how to have one of those cool short hair styles. Having it long & unruly seems the best option, though now I have to figure out how to deal with the grey that is not dramatic enough to grow out, but just sprinkled enough to be drab. I've never liked natural hair color, so I will continue dying it, just perhaps not one flat shade. I mentioned laziness connected with my art too...I hated taking technical classes on how to draw or paint, so I just started paining on my own, doing whatever was fun, and I started getting recognition & shows & sales when I rejected all rules on how to paint. Best of all, I was having an incredibly moving experience and tons of fun. I guess the point of all this is I plan to approach middle age with an open mind & not out of fear. I would be lying if I said I was not slightly disturbed but what I see in new photos (I especially look haggy in Antarctica, though I am much happier here), but I am going to go with it. What other choice do I have? One of the best memories I have is being at a punk rock reunion show at SXSW this past March where my absolute favorite band from the Austin scene of the late 70's was playing to a gigantic crowd. The crowd was mostly comprised of tourists, yuppies, folks who buy a wristband & want to watch music from chairs. I paid the $20 just to see the Dicks...and only wanted to be pressed on the stage, like the old days, and was afraid I wouldn't be allowed up there, but then saw about 15 of us from 30 years ago, looking only slightly older, but just as badass move in front of the seated - and when the god Gary Floyd showed up with his giant black glasses & shock of white hair and the middle aged punks shouted every word to Dicks Hate Police with fists pumping I was in that blissful spot I lived in every night in 1979-80....I felt exactly the same as when I was 18-19 years old, and here I was aged 48, with the same energy & desire to smash things up (figuratively). To see that that part of me is alive & well & happy makes me realize that the grey hair & jowls don't fricking matter. If I just stay punk rock on the inside, I will be in my happy place.

Once the Thrill of Arriving

2009-07-16T18:56:00.000-07:00

on a new station & starting a new job has worn off, life becomes the same here in Antarctica as it does probably just as much as anywhere else. The one thing that will always keep me fresh & excited is when I go outdoors - I've been indoors quite a bit lately deep into the data entry aspects of my job, but whenever I do go outdoors I'm reminded that holy crap I live in Antarctica and it is so wonderful here. Not wonderful like New York City wonderful, but wonderful like it's blowing puffy soft snow all day & there's soft pink light on the icebergs & the glacier creaks & groans & seems to have a spirit all it's own. Like a desert, it is so alive here - so alive & so wild, which, mixed with the drudgery of the work, makes it more interesting. The only walking I do some days is between the two buildings that comprise berthing & eating. I also work in the building I sleep in so could feasibly go to my office in house slippers. I'm used to logging so many miles a day just walking during my workday at Mactown, that I'm really feeling the tenseness in my body of missing all that walking. I went to the gym on Sunday, & do some yoga here & there, but if I don't want to leave here with 30 extra pounds on me I'm going to have to get on an aerobic program. My memoir reading addiction has kicked in again now that I'm on Ice. It feels wrong in a way to call it an addiction cuz it is SO satisfying. I just read "The Glass Castle" & "Without A Map" and I couldn't wait to get in bed every night to read. I've also set up a painting area in my room & thought I'd get into painting here, but I find myself more wanting just to read.

Because this station is so small & options so limited I find myself thinking about small things back home that seem like they will be extremely thrilling when I get back: riding my scooter to a coffee shop with my laptop and my doggie in his carrier on my chest, not getting up early, and most exciting: churning the wheels on my next trip. The parts of my Europe trip that were so great told me some key things about myself: I can have an immensely satisfying time travelling on my own, and, no matter how much I want to fit in to the hiking, climbing, country loving milieu, I am a city girl at heart. I like a mix of both, but the big thrills for me are in a fabulous big city. I've been to some great ones. Still many more I want to see - Moscow is at the top of the list.

The thing I am happiest about here is the weather. It is mid July and I am having my first "dream weather" summer. It's still over 100F in Austin, & I would be so depressed and angry if I were there. I giggled when I went out to move snow today in the beautiful snowfall...for the first time in a year & a half, I haven't awoken cussing about the weather...my reverse SAD was cured by moving here. I don't just like the snow & cold - I love it. I dread the day when I actually see the sun, and hope that it won't be too bad down here.

Life at Palmer Station, Part I

2009-06-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

If you can see them, I'm one of the people on the ground in the hard hats. My first week was intense, fast paced, very fun & challenging. Even though there was some familiarity with ship offloads, (USAP folks aren't allowed to work the pier at McMurdo), it was a new experience helping backload milvans & moving them onto the ship. Every muscle in my body was used & stretched and at the end of the day I felt like I'd done a hard days work. All the bits & pieces came together, and the all the people I work with are so helpful & generous that my first week, which could have been hellish, felt very supported aided by the awesome "get it done" mentality here. The food here is amazing, everyone seems to get along well with each other, and it feels nice to be the ones to help clean up our own station. This is truly a magical place, and it does not feel small or claustrophobic as I had feared. There is an air of comeraderie that transcends such feelings, and I feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity to get here. And most important, I get to be in an awesome climate, where there is very little sun, and no direct sun. and in June!

Journey to Palmer Station

2009-06-20T18:21:00.000-07:00

Still reeling from the incredible trip to England and Ireland, my usual 10 days or so of processing time was backburnered as I hurried to pack & get myself ready to deploy to the smallest of the Antarctica reasearch stations, Palmer Station (the top photo shows the wee station in the background.) The journey involved three nights in denver for "orientation" - I learned all about scaffolding & how to safely climb ladders, but it was basically back on the payroll for me, with some plush cash thrown in for travel & food. There were 4 of us going down to the station for the remainder of the summer (3 1/2 months) and we bonded in the way strangers do who are going into an exciting and unknown adventure. We ate free hotdogs at the hotel to save our cash, and on the morning we started our 25 hour flying ordeal I was saddled with a 74 pounds steel trunk to check in with my luggage. It caused a lot of flack at the airline counter, not to mention having to push this thing through so many airports that I had a pulled back muscle by the time I was on the boat. Anyway, the plane journey ended with a really fun 2 days in Punta Arenas. I was surprised at how much I liked the city, or maybe it was the buzz we were on, those of us who chose to "plow through" our jet lag and stay awake all day, as we wandered through the city for hours stopping for meals, espressos, shopping, taking photos. The third leg of our adventure started when we boarded the LMG to spend the night while it was docked, for it's 8:30am departure. We were to sail for 4 days until we got to the station. Life on board took on an epically funny life of it's own. Our routine was to sleep through breakfast, watch two movies before lunch, eat lunch and watch movies til dinner or sleep more, then eat dinner, more movies before settling in for our 10 - 12 hour death naps. The movement of the boat was like ambien for me. If I tried to lay in my bed & read I just passed out. The rough seas while crossing the Drake Passage were super comforting to me, just loving the pitching and rolling of the boat. On the 5th day we got to station & hit the ground running with orientation, working, and a happy reunion with the Willbaker!

Ireland, Part III, An Daingean

2009-06-05T00:55:00.000-07:00

The town of Dingle is on the Dingle Peninsula, the westernmost tip of Ireland, with a stunning view of The Great Basket Islands off the Slea Head tip. With some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, it has been the setting for such films as "Ryan's Daughter" & "Far & Away". The locals always talk with horror of Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman's Irish accents in the latter movie. Despite the fact that it was hotter here than any previous day I'd been in country, I walked around Dingle in a cloud of happy memories. 25 years ago my friends & I drank and sang in these 100 year old pubs until they closed, and I knew that I would return to Co. Kerry again, and have a dream of someday buying a house here, which I think I could actually swing. Since this was the last night of the jeep tour I was just going to go to bed early & not go out in the evening as my days of endless hiking had caught up with me and I was mentally preparing to fly back to the states. As I was lying across my bed in my pajamas at 9:00pm, reading one of those tacky British tabloids, I heard a little knock on my door, and knew it was my travel companions seeing if I wanted to go out & hear music with them. I sighed when I answered the door knowing I wouldn't say no, as it is insane to come to Dingle and not go hear traditional music - which I love tremendously. We went to a pub that was full of tourists & two guys were doing a pretty good job doing traditional ballads, but were doing lots of hokey stuff too...I asked if they took requests & the guitarist looked annoyed as I'm sure he thought I was going to ask him to sing "The Eyes of Texas" or some other such nonsense, but I had been wanting to hear the old Scottish ballad Peggy Gordon for so long, & when I requested it he seemed stunned, and said "I haven't sung that song in twenty years" and looked at his box player & then started in on it & I could tell they were truly enjoying doing it as it is a passionate song & it was sung quite passionately. I couldn't help but get a tear in my eye, as I first heard that song in Dingle on my first trip & never forgot it. Needless to say, I was glad I'd come out. After a few crowd pleasers they asked if anyone wanted to come sing a song with them so of course I wanted to do it, hoping they'd let me pick the song (I was dying to do "Auld Triangle") but we did Molly Malone, which was silly, but I got a few jokes in so it was good craic. We left after a few hours and on the way to our hotel heard some blistering fast jigs coming out of another pub & stopped in for some foot stomping good stuff. These guys weren't trying to please the crowd, but themselves instead, so the music was incredible. I stood outside to cool off while the sweat soaked musicians were taking a break, and had super fun conversations with some locals on the sidewalk. I'd gotten so I could tell a Cork from a Kerry from a Dublin accent, and this one guy didn't seem to have a "tick" one at all, so I asked him where he was from & he said Limerick, which, contrary to it's name, is a rough & gritty place. In Dingle, the first language is Irish so anytime we would go into shops, locals spoke Irish with each other so we couldn't understand them. They also paint over the English versions of their city name on signs (see picture) as there is always some friction over The Gaeltacht purists and those wanting to cater to tourists. I have tried to learn some Irish with online lessons, & it requires a commitment as it is such a bizarre language. It was the perfect end to my Irish experience, and made me feel like I still had plenty of dreams in my pocket to shoot for. I said an emotional goodbye to my travel pals, as they were going on for two more days of touring & I was taking the train from Tralee back to Dublin for my last night before flying to Texas (where I was really looking forward to air conditioning!). Back in Dublin I was giddy again...walked around town until bedtime, and felt sad about leaving Ireland. I have to pack for Palmer Station now, and I'm not sleeping as is my habit when I travel. I am so looking forward to spending the austral winter in Antarctica...one place that is guaranteed the hot sun will not follow me...but Ireland has stolen my heart again, as it did 25 years ago. I went again in '92 and 2000, but this trip was more like the first one: magical!

Ireland, Part II

2009-06-04T13:39:00.001-07:00

It's really hard to choose pictures to post from this country, as it seems to have been created to make gorgeous postcards from. But I am prejudiced, as this is my favorite country, and it is not just the physical beauty that startles me, but the combination of that with the people, the music, the history, and the passionate intertwining of all of these. This was my 4th trip to Eire, and it reignited some of those first feelings Ihad when I came in 1984 (ie: this is my home!). But first, I was utterly surprised to see that my tour group had only 3 people on it! The 4th person is the driver & tour guide. In a 4X4, we were able to go to places I'd never been to on my own or on the big busses, as these places are off the tourist grid. My travel companions were a mother & daughter from Louisiana, who were so easy and laid back for people who'd never travelled before. We were in a jeep that could carry up to 14 people, and it felt perfectly comfortable with two of us in back, one riding up front with the driver. They were my perfect travel companions as they eat snacks and road food instead of eating in restaurants (which drives me crazy on vacations) as we see food as fuel and not something to spend hours futzing over. This tour was interesting as it was for the more intrepid traveller, but we stayed in quite luxurious lodging. (The place I'm currently in in Dublin is like a flop motel, but I wanted something lower priced on my last nite. I'm so spoiled now that I'll pay extra next time.). Our first day was doing two touristy things but after that never again. We went to Rock of Cashel, which is stunning, and the Blarney Stone (which I skipped cuz I kissed it last time), and then wended our way down to this unbelievably beautiful place called Gougane Barra in West Cork, which was on a lake with an excellent hiking trail that was two hours straight up, and the countriest tiny church in the center of the lake. This was the day when I realized it was going to be hotter than it even was in Texas, we had all packed for chilly weather, and there is no air conditioning in this country. And the sun stays up til 10:30 or so, so I was taking my walks very very late. The group hike would be high noon, and my fellow travellers were sun worshipers, so I went on my own in the evenings, which was better for me in so many ways - mostly that I got to go as fast as I wanted. Full Irish breakfast was included in the package, so we ate with our tour guide, a sweet girl named Jean who was trying to burn her milky white skin as much as possible. They said it had rained everyday for 3 years until the day I came (I am not making this up) and there hadn't been a week like this in years. The tradeoff is we had this tiny group so we got to decide what we wanted to do, it was like we just had a personal driver who took us off roading a bit then asked us if we wanted to do this variety of optional activities. Anne & Kate were beach people, and I'm a town & culture person, so we compromised a bit. I sat in the jeep while they played on the beach, and they tolerated my gushing at the South Pole Inn. The most wrenching decision we had to make was whether to do the Skellig Islands. This is something I have always wanted to do, they were iffy (on some of the things we would all have to do it or it wouldn't go), but in the end I decided all day exposure in this ultra blinding sunshine might make me heatstroke so I didn't go. This would give us more time in Dingle, which I didn't want to have to scrimp on. Most of the towns we stopped in (Portmagee, Glengarriff) were tiny and adorable, but we'd arrive late so no shops would be open and there might be one pub. Dingle is the capital of traditional Irish music, in the Gaeltacht (which is a place I want to spend much more time), and was where I came 25 years ago and have never forgotten. The girls were all for having a day in a sizable town with shops & being on our own after bouncing around in the jeep for 4 days - so it was great to be able to all agree we wanted a day in town. But I am going to save more about Dingle for my "part 3" posting...because it is my heart's mecca. So for 3 days we ate giant breakfasts and loaded up the jeep with our bags in oppressive sunshine, got dropped off on 2-3 hour hikes in the sun (which sometimes I did anyway, because logistically I had to), & survived by jumping into cold streams & soaking my clothes. Found awesome scrambling rocks, and climbed over & down sheer rock faces to the sea, scaring the living daylights out of my new friends. There was no set itinerary, we could do what we wanted, and it was the best of both worlds: freedom & structure. At the end of the sweltering day I pulled off my thick jeans & wool socks & took a cold shower & laid around for the worst (hottest) part of the day (5-8:30pm), and then it was mercifully coolish & I went on a big aimless ramble, which has become something deeply satisfying to me. There was never any pressure to do stuff together....I hiked by myself & the girls moved a lot slower as they wanted to take lots of pix. I liked the more rugged trails & they liked the roads...so we were a great team letting each other move at our own pace. Our 4th (and my last) evening were going to be in Dingle. I expected no emotional response other that to be in this beautiful place that I came to 25 years ago & had one of the greatest times of my life. I was to be surprised at how this place affected me yet again.

Ireland, Part I

2009-06-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

I had a great time in England and had started feeling so settled in at the country farmhouse that I was a little wistful about leaving & starting my Ireland journey on my own. But I was also excited, as I enjoy they part about having to figure out to get from the airport to the lodging and striking out on that first walk around the city after ditching the bags in the room. The bus from the Dubin airport to the city center was so easy that I was already checked into my hotel room within 45 minutes of the plane landing. My private hostel room was much posher than I'd anticipated (justifying the high price) but so tiny I could barely turn around in it...but to be downtown after a week in the country was heaven. Once I get going in a big walking city it's hard for me to stop...I'll walk until the bottom of my feet are numb. I had my map of downtown & had seen the Temple Bar, O'Connell St, Trinity University, & most other walkable stuff my first evening. I was totally excited about getting up the next day & having the whole day to do whatever I wanted before joining my tour group on Sunday morning. Saturday I went to the Grafton St. area & shopped. It was super sunny that weekend in Dublin so Irish people were flopped out on every available patch of grass or sidewalk just wreaking havoc on their pale skin. The biggest downside of my whole trip thus far was the amount of sunshine - Texas in July style sunshine, and I was ok with it in Dublin as there was a cool breeze, and I knew there was no way it would keep up - that once I got into the jeep & started going West there would be fog, dark clouds, some wonderful wild and short Irish showers (boy was I in for a rude awakening!). Everyone I talked to in town said it would change, and that they loved this weather so much as to be a miracle from God. I convinced myself it would cool off by Sunday, and spent all Saturday walking on the shady side of the street as is my custom. I saw the Guinness brewery, which was amazing, and is this year celebrating it's 250th year, spitting out 4 million pints of day, of which 1.5 million are exported. I didn't go inside & do the big tour, so as not to be tempted to taste the black stuff (which I associate with so many incredible memories). I loved Dublin, and got to know it better than my previous visits. I ended my day regrettably early as I had to be at the downtown spot by 8:30 Sunday morning to catch my tour group. I had been worried that I would feel too aimless and alone in Dublin after being in a family situation in England, but the opposite turned out to be true: I was so in my element in a vibrant city full of character and intensity that every moment sparkled with focus and purpose, and I was only doing aimless things like wandering about, window shopping, and watching buskers. It was solitude amongst the crowds that I'd been craving.

West Sussex, England

2009-05-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

Be Careful What You Ask For...

2009-05-27T03:32:00.000-07:00

I am a big believer in the power of intention. My life shows clear evidence of the fruits of powerful desire made manifest. This is niether good nor bad, just proof that our outsides mirror our insides. I have studied and practiced enough Eastern religion to know that your life becomes what you think about - so I try to think of positive things, though I am not always successful, and those negative things show up in my life quite dramatically. Enough new age philosphy for now! I can't help feeling philosophical though, as the recent dramatic turn of events shows me that I am less in control of events that I often think I am. As I was on my last day in Austin, frantically tying up all loose ends in preparation for my European odyssey (actually, I was sitting at a coffee shop, trying to get in my last dose of Weird Austin for a while), I got a call (on a Sunday) from the hiring manager for Palmer Station in Antarctica, asking me if I could sail to the station on June 5th. My trip to London was in two days, I had a 5 day adventure tour booked in Ireland after a week in England, and then I was going to fly to Helsinki June 5th to take a 15 day journey through the Baltic lands, ending up in Berlin, a city I wanted to explore in depth. Long story short is I spent about 48 hours locked in indecisive torment, praying for guidance, and getting more & more information from the Ice folks that made deploying more appealing: the date was pushed back to being in Denver on June 9th, so that I could do two weeks in Europe and not have to cancel the whole trip. Also, the position they were offering me was less of a desk job than the original, and has no supervisory elements. By the night before I was to fly to London, there was no doubt I was going to choose to go to work instead of to play over the next several months. I have been unemployed so long as to be annoyed with it, and the opportunity to go to this tiny station is a rare one. These ancient and interesting countries will still be here when I want to return...and now that I have 8 months of work before me, I will have the security of loads more cash. Also, one of my greatest wishes has been to not ever have to experience summer again. I dread the months of May-September so much that I have been considering moving to Alaska for sometime now (though where I am now, West Sussex in England, has a delightful climate in May). Not only will I be at the Antarctic station during this time, but it will be DARK - something I have wanted to experience for a long time, as I am not a fan of sunshine either. I haven't been wintering on Ice because the season is too long for me to be away from my dog. My mom will keep him for a certain amount of time per year, but he is my responsibility and I do not want to abandon him completely. He is almost 12, and I will probably have to take some time off of the Ice eventually anyway when he starts to go downhill.

So to tie this ramble in with the title, even though I was meticulously planning & researching every aspect of this trip, there was a seed inside of me that felt like something was off about it, that is was not really what I wanted, and was sad that I had not gone to Palmer with Will in March...I would have deployed if someone was not able, but the boat sailed & I thought my opportunity was gone. I would have never guessed in my wildest dreams that I would be able to go down for half the season. And all the while I was making plans to fill in the gaps between tours on this Europe trip I could not ignore that my heart was not in it. It felt lonely doing it all by myself...and I couldn't quite get a handle on why I wasn't into it - even though I know from experience that once I get on the plane I get into the travel groove. I am also staying with a wonderful family here in the English countryside so I will not have a chance to get lonely as I will be with a group in Ireland also. At first I balked at how much money I was going to lose by cancelling the one big tour, and having to buy an expensive one way ticket back to the US, but now that I've gotten my travel itinerary for deployment, the money issue seems irrelevant...I would not have changed my plans for McMurdo or Pole, but for Palmer I'm sure it will be worth it. I will not have time to recuperate in Houston before getting on the plane again, but deep down I asked for adventure beyond the "planned" adventure I had going, and that is exactly what I got. The Siren Song of the Ice is more powerful than my small plans, in this case at least.

Adventure Bound

2009-05-14T21:13:00.001-07:00

I took this photo in Taos last week, and it speaks more to the beauty of the place than my photographic abilities. The combination of the unguessable time of day, the clouds that look painted on, and the flatness of perspective that evokes a postcard-like feel make this one of the most intriguing pictures I've taken. The lushness of the sagebrush foreground contrasted against the sears portrait studio backdrop-esque mountians almost make it cheesy, but at the same time this sacred spot at the penitente church on sacred Indian lands is very special to me and the girls I go out here with, so this is a rapturous photo to me. I've blogged about these painting workshops for years...this was my 12th or 13th one - it is the deepest spiritual work I do, and I feel so grateful to have found this teacher and this work.

I less than a week I fly to Europe for 5 weeks. I am doing this trip alone, and am amazed how much resistance I'm feeling as it gets closer. Almost 3 weeks of it will be on tours I've arranged, and, it's not covering huge land mass areas, but many different tiny and interesting sounding countries will be explored. As a native Texan, there is a thrill in being able to drive across an entire country in a few hours - it just seems amazing. So I will be visiting England, Ireland, Finland Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany. The Finland-Germny portion is two weeks with an adventure tour operator, and the other tour is 5 days on a jeep doing the southwest coast of Ireland (sigh). I feel strange telling people about my life when the economy is bad & people are losing jobs & struggling. I went on two luxury vacations within 3 week of each other and now I'm going to Europe for 5 weeks - I am on the other side of the economic spectrum: flush, money to spend on non-essentials, not only non-essentials but on my "dream" life - when is the other shoe going to drop? Oh yeah, there is no "shoe." (Only the "habit" of guilt, then punishment). It is not in my nature to "enjoy life." I am used to it feeling like a struggle.

When I was a child I fantasized about travel & moving & seeing places I'd never been to. Going to Helsinki feels very exotic to me, as Istanbul did two years ago. I realized that my childhood dreams have come true, but at the same time feel a gravity in my soul. I'm not sure what it is but it feels like with the achieving of a certain status that one has worked hard for comes with some sort of responsibility to one's fellow man - a responsibility to show that dreams are there for a reason - and there is a price to pay for one's dreams, but that's the subject of another posting (long). Travel emboldens me, makes me confident, and makes me want to spread the word that anyone can do this - it's not really all that expensive, but there's a lot of super detailed planning & compiling of details that goes into a trip where you're making all your reservations and plane flights. It was the journey of getting here that was so heady: the seed of the dream, the first taste of it on my first trip to Europe 32 years ago, then many years of daydreaming & scheming & spottily getting to travel, then working my way into my current lifestyle of working 1/2 the year & travelling all I want in the other part. And now I understand why it's the journey that is more important than the destination - because like Spock said in one of my favorite episodes "having is not the same as wanting." Once you get there, there's a little bit of "now what?" There was a time when I couldn't imagine how one got it together enough to by a car, a house, have a stable realtionship. I have never had a desire to have a domestic life, my own family, or to do yard work. I was just designed for something else. I found it and worked for it...but there are moments when I am alone, like now, between trips, where I trying to find the point of it all - was it to show I could do it? Is my life an example to someone whose afraid to "go for it" as my life shouts "go for it!" I am aware that I am not doing this travel to entertain or pleasure myself. Maybe I am doing it to fill time before going back to the Ice, or to have something to blog about, but hopefully there is a deeper reason, reasons I am not even aware of yet. The way I feel after a particularly good trip (this year: skiing) is a joy I never knew existed. And to have new feeling states has got to open up my world and touch those that know me. I love it when I find myself in a place where I can encourage someone to follow their passion, and I see that little spark in their eye. I am really feeling the difference of age too. When I travelled to Ireland in '84 it was about romance and drinking and being the brash Yank. Now I will be more attuned to subtleties (no drinking!) and most look forward to bonding with the people I meet in the tour group: my "family" for the week! So there are some pedestrian feelings amongst all this - I used to just envision my travel life like that scene from "Braveheart" where he is traipsing amongst the Highlands, shrouded in mist, being mythologized in voice-over. The nuts & bolts of planning temper the romance, but the underlying excitement of the unknown will always be my motivation. I don't know what this trip will be like, but I'm sure it will be full of new experiences, and that is one reason I don't feel bad about spending all this money on this trip. The money I "saved" last year has all but dissappeared, but the money I spend on travel will never be regretted.

I used to have a recurring dream where someone was handing me very beautiful jewels and I would run away & not take them. I did not trust that someone was giving me something so beautiful without a catch. The life I have now is the jewel I have let myself grab - and I cannot just say I am lucky...there is some luck, but mostly, I yearned for it, then made it an intention, and focussed on it until it became a reality. Mountains beyond mountains - step by step, anything can be made manifest.

A Mishmash of Meanderings

2009-04-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

When I finally decided to stop saying "I hate Austin" and I "hate this f__king hot sunny weather" I was surprised to find I had a really great week being in hometown. (God, I can't wait til I start travelling again so I have something to really write about!). I was utterly sick of hearing myself say this to every single person I met - I would insist they know this about me in the first few minutes. I had turned into someone I heard complaining all the time about something they could easily change by moving! But the truth is...I don't hate Austin. I love/hate it. So, on Monday I made the decision I would not tell everyone how much I hate Austin & the weather here. I am usually semi-panicking about how to fill all the hours of the day so I signed up for 3 volunteer shifts at three different places. All were really fun & I felt like I'd been at "work," and the places are so grateful to have you there. I felt myself wanting to complain about the sun (it has been what 99% of people of the earth would describe as "gorgeous" weather here these past two weeks- 80's, breezy, sunny, cloudless skies) but I would stop myself and just agree that is was nice or not say anything (no reason to LIE & say I like it). What I realized after a few hours of this was that I wasn't really saying anything, and miracle of miracles, I was enjoying some peace - I seemed to sort of recede into (a usually unwelcome) ordinariness when I wasn't complaining, and this wasn't as dowdy a place as I thought it would be. And then something even stranger happened: I walked outside & didn't immediately say "fuck" under my breath when I saw the sunshine, and I didn't just endure the pain of it, it actually was sort of pleasant. And then I saw my biggest fear wasn't that I would never be able to find a cool cloudy place to spend my down time, but that I might have to accept the parts of me that are like everybody else. Horror of horrors!

And then it rained. It rained for so long and so hard for one full day that I did not leave my apt. I laid in bed & drank coffee & read two books and felt a joy beyond imagining. I love rain so much. Then the sun came out the next day & I decided not to act like I was in the seventh circle of hell.

One of my volunteer gigs was at the local food bank warehouse. I was on a crew with the IT department of the Whole Foods flagship store here. Our job was to take giant triwalls (they call them "tubs") of baby diapers and feminine hygiene products and separate them into 10 lb. boxes & stack them on pallets. We got a little assembly line going and the IT girls were giggling as the men looked shell shocked trying to discern all the different types of fh supplies. The food bank get donations of tons of this stuff from stores & individuals. The stores can't sell any package that is torn, so about half our products were torn and this one macho guy's job was taping up all the torn packages of maxi-pads, tampons, and panti-liners. He humbly & caringly taped every little tear, and the girls were taking photos of them with their cell phones. This one guy was holding up a triangular box with a perplexed look & went over to inspect & it was a box of panti-liners for thongs. Even us girls are overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of choices of these products, so we got a kick out of seeing all these guys handle all this stuff so graciously. Another part of the shift I had to package baby diapers with this 17 year old boy. I was as confused by the diapers as the men were about the thong liners with wings, and there was a point where we realized we'd screwed up our tasking as we'd been told to write the weight on the packages (the boxes were torn so we packed them in their cellophane wraps) & we had been writing the weight of the box and not the weight of the CHILD the diapers were intended for. I've spent about 3 minutes of my 48 years around infants so I didn't think anything when the packages rolled by me all saying "5" or "3" on them...so our team leader came by & said, no "it's the weight of the BABY you write!", so we spent about 10 minutes trying to find that information on the box. Sheesh! (all along I'm thinking, where's the giant "tubs" of birth control people!) Then we had to do adult diapers. I tried to make a joke that we'd covered the human secretion needs from infancy to decrepitude in our shift, but no one laughed, as my crass humor is not universally appreciated. I had so much fun at the food bank I decided to volunteer at the Reggae Festival Saturday night. I stood & took thousands of peoples money as they poured into the show. I got a free t-shirt out of the deal, then buzzed home to meet a childhood friend who took me to an avant-garde theatre piece late night. It was called Tennebrism, and was a two person show about Jesus, Joy Division, and Caravaggio. Local avant garde theatre always makes me love living here so much, that I realize I have to live in a city that has culture. Aside from the reggae festival (which I can hear from my apt right now!), and all the music & theatre, the Hot Rod show was in town too...there is just always so much going on here.

I also saw two great movies this week: "Adventureland" and the Swedish film "Everlasting Moments." I've never seen a bad Swedish film, and this one had the enveloping gorgeousness of say "The Best Intentions," that incredible film about the relationship between Ingmar Bergman's parents. I also saw one terrible flick (Observe & Report) and one mediocre one "State of Play." Every time I went to the movies this past week my intention was to see "Gomorrah," but no one wants to see it, and when I went by myself to see it today, the projector was broken...hmmm...

So, I figured out a way to make life in Austin not only bearable but enjoyable: do volunteer work, and stop complaining. Seems like I'd have a lot to do as I have a 5 week trip to Europe coming up, but travel is so easy now there's really nothing to do. I bought the tours, the airline tix, some of the hotel rooms...and the rest I'll just wing. I will also be visiting the Motherland: Scandinavia. Yes, I have recently discovered that Kendall, my last name, is a Viking name (Kindahl), which then became Kendal (an ancient English name) when the Swedes settled in the Lakes District of England (WAY before 1066) where the town bearing my surname is located. I plan to visit this town on my way to Helsinki. So, keep reading, exciting stuff is coming I promise!

"explaining your nomadic lifestyle to annoying parents"

2009-04-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

Luckily, I don't have annoying parents, but if I did, thank god for the internet so I could find out how to deal with them. Think of all the poor sods who had problems before google existed. What did they do? My StatCounter(tm) embedded in my blog shows me the google searches that pull up my blog. This (the title of this posting) was one of the funnier ones, and unfortunately they would not be able to get help from my blog, as I am too old to have to explain my lifestyle to anyone! But I remember those fragile years fresh out of college when you have no effin' idea what is going on & what you are going to do with your life. I felt blindsided by reality; I thought my college degree was going to get me a "job" of some sort, but I quickly saw I was utterly on my own to figure out what kind of life I was going to have. Because I started off in office work, that's where I was 20 years later when I finally got the 'nads to live my dream & quit secretarian' to go work grueling long hours outdoors in Antarctica. I just saw a Springsteen show & he was singing about the working class and moving up out of the "cold lumberyard," and how ironic it was that I went from a cozy office life TO the cold lumberyard. Literally, my last and most badass job on Ice was in the lumberyard at McMurdo, trying to pull out 16 1" x 4" x 20"s in 40mph winds in negative 5 weather and figuring out how to unstrap the load without it falling over the hillside for the whole town to see - doing more physical work in two weeks that I can remember doing in a whole year. And the best part was how fulfilling it was at the end of the day. There was a notion when I was growing up that the "trades" were for people who didn't go to college & were somehow less valued, but I think the secret I've seen is a trade can open up the world of work possibilities for someone. I have mechanic, electrician, plumber friends who are doing very high paid work in exotic locations all over the world & seem to be resistant to layoffs. Earning a college degree was heady and exciting and full of hard work, but it taught me nothing about the world of work. My work ethic was engrained in me early in my life, and that is why I've had success at my jobs. Luckily, there are a handful of jobs at McMurdo for non tradespeople that are not desk jobs - and that is the place I find myself having the most fun.

Working seasonally has changed everything for me. I no longer own property. I am allergic to buying stuff because I have to move it around so much. My "down time" in Austin is spend trip planning because nothing else makes sense anymore. I bought art supplies & tried to do some arty stuff now that I have my own apt., but it was only entertaining for an hour or so, and because I know I can do anything right now, sitting in my house making stuff isn't as much fun as it used to be. When I painted for years I knew I was on a work/pay mortgage track. Now I on a 1/2 year of freedom track...I have a big trip coming up: London, Scotland, Finland (a bunch more Baltic countries), ending up in Berlin. It is written in some people's DNA to be adventurous or nomadic or to do artwork in a cozy home environment. If you "go with what glows" (Natalie Goldberg) for you, you don't have to explain anything to anyone - and besides, if someone is uncomfortable with your lifestyle, it has nothing to do with you - it is all about them.

And if this wasn't enough, I get to see Springsteen this week

2009-04-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

Closing week on Taos Mountain has surprisingly good weather for this time of year - cold with lots of snow. I have never skied powder before so it was thrilling and challeng

ing. But the skiing is only a fraction of why this past week was so amazing: there was hardly anyone on the mountain, lots of single people at the hotel (I'm usually tacked onto meals with families), and the friends I made this week I will never forget. I was just at the ABQ airport feeling that pulsing, incredibly centered feeling one gets after a powerful life-enhancing event, and wondering why this ski week was as mind blowing as the painting workshop that I also go to in Taos - and it must be because of the incredible positive energy and genuine happiness radiating from the people I am around. My whole being felt like a crotchety old caterpillar bursting from it's cocoon with high tech quick dry fabric wings, black & glossy like my budget ski costume. Almost floating (instead of tumbling) down the steep terrain without effort as the week went on. (I actually saw a video of me skiing this week and I looked more like an armadillo than a butterfly on my turns). And this transformation is mirrored in the bonding aspect of the intense social connections as well. The hugs goodbye are filled with moist eyes as we've gotten so close having had every meal together, running into each other on the mountain, and sharing about our jobs (?), romance status, travel goals, with a bit of gossip thrown in as in this small a community their tends to be a lot of drama going on. But my non skiing transformation during this week was in my perception of myself of a slacker, addled type person, to someone who people find interesting & worth talking to, worth inviting to their homes in countries that I love (an am about to visit). I tend to think people are going to find me obnoxious & self-absorbed, but this week I felt true respect radiating from my new bffs...skiing seems to elicit an Antarctic-like camaraderie, and as if God himself was hitting me over the head with the physical manifestation of my deservedness, a beautiful pair of skis was given to me by an incredibly lovely family from Chicago, a gift so generous I was speechless. They had bought a new pair in Taos & didn't want to hassle with taking the old ones back & selling them, and they knew I didn't have any and so now they are mine. I felt so ridiculously unworthy of such a gift, yet I said thank you and stored them at the St. Bernard for next season. It feels like a sign. Like I should move there for the next season & embark on yet a new career: ski-bumette...and there was one special young man: English, just graduated from Oxford, there with his whole family: mom, dad, two younger siblings...he was going to extend his trip & travel to the Grand Canyon, Vegas, LA and San Francisco. He told me of his plans & I encouraged him to alter some of the logitics (absolutley NO hitchhiking!) and gave him my BART card with about $10 left on it. To be able to advise someone just starting out in life, and seeing that open-eyed, youthful eagerness to explore foreign places is just so much fun. My French Canadian gal pal Val, Toni - the amazing fashion goddess, Rex from Amarillo, Tex from Japan, Mike from San Diego...we were the bawdy dinner crew. I didn't think any week could get more amazing than my first one. The second one was. I didn't think there was ANY WAY my 3rd week could get more amazing than my second - it was WAY more intense. I keep waiting for the goodies to stop flooding it but they won't stop.

And I get to see Springsteen this week.

I talked to Will on the phone today & was breathlessly reporting my exciting time skiing. He is settling into what I hope will be a very rich experience for him at Palmer Station. I said "I may not go back to the Ice but may go work in the ski village instead!" And later I thought, oh he might be disappointed if I did that, but then I realized if I hadn't met him, I would've never learned to ski at all...ah the ironies of life.

13th Day on Skis

2009-03-29T19:55:00.001-07:00

I had so much anticipatory dread about coming skiing this year...the trip is arduous with the severe altitude change, and I had a hard time justifying the expense as I haven't worked much in the past year, but after this morning's glorious run I have no doubt it was the most intelligent thing I could have done. I am not a natural on skis. My first week was very difficult: my fear & resistance level so high I knew something was going to have to break by day 4 or I was never gonna leave the bunny hill. Today was the first time I saw people that were more beginner-y than I am. It was thrilling. I've progressed. I was really scared at first as I'd assumed I'd have to start over but it came back very quickly, and my adored teacher of the past two years, Smitty, met me at the ski off & after watching me do one run down the bunny hill he said c'mon we're going to the top of the mountain. Areas that scared me last year seemed easy this time. I was grinning almost the whole time. I wasn't just sweating it out & hoping it'd be over soon, I was truly enjoying finally having the control and confidence to do full runs without falling & scaring myself so much that I'd fall. And I must have picked up speed as we covered so much more ground than the last run last year. And I didn't fall down once - this is truly significant. And I'm skiing on nice fairly new snowfall for the first time. And this is closing week & there is hardly anyone here - it's awesome! And then there is the 2 hour dinner with all my new friends I just met, where the conversation went from the technicalities of skiing to holistic medicine with lots of laughter and incredible French cuisine. I feel lucky to have found this particular ski lodge with it's funky European-ness, and the dedicated skiiers who have been coming here faithfully for years. Jean Mayer, the ski master, chef, and owner of the hotel, is in his 70's, and has an infectious joie de vivre that is inspiring. The people that ski here are serious skiiers - there are no nightclubs or distractions or shopping, just the mountain. I felt like such an outsider when I first saw this world - I didn't think I could ever be a part of it, and 4 years ago I had no desire to be a part of it - but it is a world of people who have a shared passion for a sport that is endlessly interesting and where you never stop learning. By my third hour I had progressed farther than I can remember at any point in my babyhood of skiing. I could feel it, and asked Smitty for confirmation. He said there were people who had been skiing many years who were still in a "death grip wedge" (or snow plow as some people call it), and I saw a lady like that today: she had been skiing 30 years, had to be helped out of the chair lift by her instructor so she wouldn't fall, and has never left the bunny slope. I hope she is having a good time, and I am so glad that I crossed that line of fear & went for it because that could be me. I remember when I had made the decision to not leave the bunny slope & my instructor tricked me into going up to the top of the mountain. That was day 4. I had to change my decision to progress, because getting all the way down the mountain with my resistance would have been torture, so I did the thing I did not think I could possibly do: let go of control & dive forward straight down the run. That was the moment that I lived the bible quote about (paraphrasing) "when I was a child I thought like I child but when I became a man I put away childish things..." When I decided to go for it, I began my journey as a skiier. I was told I would be doing blacks on day 15. Something I could not have imagined on day 4, 8, or even yesterday. If it was up to me, I'd still be on the bunny hill. The most amazing thing I have learned by skiing all of my mornings with an intructor is the incredible value of being pushed - and pushed hard. Doing something one is not naturally good at has it's own humbling value, but being pushed by an expert who believes in you when you don't believe in yourself is amazing. I know so many people who say they ski & have never taken lessons - I don't know if I would have stayed past the first day if that were the case with me. Comfort zones are not good for me. I need to spend quite a bit of time in the world of unknowing & awkwardness & discomfort - that world that pushes you to keep moving forward and discovering what comes next in your personal evolution. I know people who live by the opposite philosophy: never move any faster than the slowest part of you wants to go. I found this very interesting as I tend to take not well thought out action when I'm in a panic, but I tried NOT doing anything and I saw the beauty of that line of thinking, and its probable value in certain areas of life (ie: personal relationships), but what I get out of being pushed past what I think are my limited abilities is an enormous amount of confidence. I can't get confidence just sitting around hoping for it, I have to earn it. I earned some today. Yea!

Luxury Problems

2009-03-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

The past couple of weeks have been filled with ennui, excitement, the surreal experience of SXSW, saying goodbye to Will again for an Antarctic winter season, and the acceptance than I will have to wait until October to go back down to the Ice. But the wheels are already in motion for to be rehired again, so now it's just a matter of filling the time until I go back. I feel like I should be working, but this time I really cannot find a job - even my usual temporary gig at the University is not available as they are having a hiring freeze. Fortunately, I have a cushion, three trips already planned, and a beautiful swanky garage apt. to live in for the few days in April I'll be here in Austin.

I bought a sxsw film festival pass and I have seen four documentaries that have been astounding. I don't know if these films will be available for the masses but they were each so good that I have been floored after each screening. The first one I saw was "Sons of A Gun" about three mentally ill men living with their alcoholic caretaker. They had lived with each other so long they were a family, with all the affection and bickering that goes on in normal families. But when things went awry in the "family" there were catastrophic consequences, and near the end of the film, you find out who the sickest member of the family is...it is heartbreaking and heartwarming to live so intimately with these men on screen. Most folks see around 3-6 films a day during the film fest but I've only done one each day - what I've been seeing is so good I want to go home and process the feelings around it & not just go get back in line for another movie. The second film I saw was "Rene," a Czech film that followed a boy for 20 years as he was in & out of prison. He didn't appear to have anything mentally wrong with him & was highly intelligent & handsome, but was a career petty thief who seemed to be socially broken from a young age. He wrote books in prison that were published, got "f&ck of people" tattooed in giant letters on his neck, and would get out of prison only to be thrown back in a few months later. Very depressing, yet again, you felt like you lived with this man on his sad journey, and you wanted so bad for him to embrace one positive thing about life to make him go straight, but he seemed utterly incapable of it. The third film I saw was called "Motherhood" about 6 women who'd lost a child each, and were taken to a poor town near Cape Town, South Africa, to volunteer in orphanages of kids who'd lost their parents to AIDS. The most striking thing about this film was something I've heard & seen over & over again: the people who have the most materially are the unhappiest, and the poorest folks know how to band together in their grief & support each other. It seems so logical to go be with all these parentless children when you've lost a child, but it was very tough for the women, but they were all enriched & transformed by the experience. The last & most affecting doco I saw was "Over the Hills & Far Away," about a Texas family who go to Mongolia to see a shaman to treat their son's autism. Mongolia is on top of my destination list so I was interested in this film, and what happens is absolutely amazing, and I am not going to tell it here as anyone interested in docos, or who is a parent, should see it. I only saw 5 films with my pass, but without it, I don't know if I would have seen any of them...so it was truly a treat to get to see these films.

I have quite an adventure planned for the summer: I had booked a container cruise that sailed from London to Buenos Aires, but cancelled it for a variety of reasons and have instead used the same tour company & booked a trip that begins in Helsinki & ends in Berlin two weeks later. It goes to 6 countries I've never been to so I'm pretty excited about that. It is strange doing adventure travel like this without Will, but going with a group will be fun & organized and I'll do much more than I would do by myself. After seeing the Mongolia film, I may tack on a two week Mongolia trip (with a tour operator also). After the Eastern European trip Will & I did two years ago, I saw that travel is easy. You just book a train or plane a few days ahead at the internet cafe & find a hotel on hostelworld & off you go. I plan to go to the UK a couple of weeks ahead of the Helsinki tour & stay with my old friend Julie in her country estate, pop over to Ireland & try to hit a few Islands in Scotland before flying to Finland.

With all this, I can still find a reason to feel off kilter and forlorn in the middle of the day. I miss working. There is a hiring freeze at my usual gig. And mostly, I know Will and the Palmerites are on the LM Gould on the beginning of an incredible journey (and getting paid for it) and I didn't make the cut. I am so happy for him but am sad I am not there to experience it. Even with all this exciting travel planned, the thing I am most looking forward to is getting back to the Ice.

Collapsible German Building

2009-03-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

I am currently house sitting for a friend who is gone for a month. I am in South Austin, near everything hip & groovy, in a 60 year old house in what has become a very expensive neighborhood. I haven't lived by myself in 4 years, and before that I lived by myself for the majority of my adult life. I was afraid I might be lonely but that is not the case.

I am in heaven. I had been living with a friend this past year in an 800 sq. ft. house, and before that lived with my boyfriend or a roommate in a tiny dorm room at McMurdo. Now I love these people I lived with dearly, but the bliss of living alone I had forgotten. I have to force myself to leave this cozy quiet nest. I never turn on the a/c whereas my previous roommate ran it if it were over 60F outside. I never hear TV or radio or play music. I have just been hypnotized into peace with the gentle sounds of cars driving by, the ceiling fan humming overhead, and the train that rumbles by at midnight. I hear the tinkling of windchimes somewhere and my little dog is nestled next to me on the bed. I feel myself wanting to fiercely hold onto this privacy and control over my environment. I have yearnings sometimes to buy a house (because it is a good time right now) to use as investment & for rental income, but after living alone for 5 days (with the added bonus of wifi in my bedroom again!) I wonder if I just want to buy a house to live in again. After 4 years of the seasonal, nomadic lifestyle and feeling like I'm really getting the hang of it (ie: travel more, stay in Austin less, roll with houselessness); at the same time, the more nomadic I get, the more delicious this ephemeral "rootedness" experience I'm having now is (and had for many years and completely took for granted). When I first got a job in Antarctica the thing I was most afraid of was having a roommate. I don't have good experiences with roommates in general, and I have to assume that I am the difficult one to live with. I am usually too scared to communicate with them, and often feel like I am in a prisoner/jailer type situation. I am highly particular about the temperature of the house being what I want it to be when I'm just sitting around (which is mainly what I'm doing in a house). I don't ever want to hear television when I am not watching it. If it is my house I own I expect the person to stay in their room & be quiet, which is how I am when I live in someone else's house. But last summer I shared an enormous old house with a man who was so quiet that I often did not know whether he was there or not. He didn't have a car so I truly didn't know without knocking on his door, and later found out he was hardly ever there, but when he was was as sylphlike as a cat, silently padding along the acres of hardwoods, like watching a character in a movie with the sound turned off. The perfect roommate. Some people are loud & come from noisy families. I grew up in a house where you could hear a pin drop 24/7 and I think that early programming has stayed with me. The one time that I felt I was truly going insane was when I was living in a condo where I could hear noise above me & on one side. For me it was a nightmare - and this condo complex was right on a major highway, which was why most people moved out eventually. Ironically, I find highway, train, traffic noises very comforting.

This is a boring post. Now no one will ever want to be my roommate - haha! Oh, and the past few weeks has shown me that my reverse "SAD" is getting worse. It was in the 90's last week. It is in the high 80's this week & I can hear the annoying condensers & lawn equipment already. The relentless, stabby feeling sun is always out, and this year, once again, I tried to "toughen" myself up & have been going on two hour walks every day around the lake. There is dappled shade but a good 1/2 hour stretch of sun beating on my head. That is what kills me: the exposure. I have to come lay in bed for several hours with a "sun headache" until I can get up again. This hot and sunny weather compromises my life to the point where I don't really have a life in this climate. I am just waiting for cold or clouds, or travelling to find it & it's rarely there. We had a glorious winter month where it was very dark & cloudy and not above freezing for a long time. I was so happy. I loved that movie "Frozen River" because of the snow and ice everywhere. I changed my mind about doing the trans-siberian this summer because I decided I want to do it in the winter, when there are no tourists and plenty of beautiful snow. I chose the container ship because it leaves from London (where I've heard it is cloudy, but not on the four occasions I've been there) and arrives in Buenos Aires in the Dead Of Winter. I was never into Goth or vampire stuff, but I must have vampire or mole blood.

Film Review: "Two Lovers" has been touted as "art," with stellar performances by Joaquin Phoenix and others. It was pure shite! Here's this super loser guy whose around 30, lives with his parents, tried to kill himself by jumping into like 5 feet of water in the first scene, and has not one, but two gorgeous women wanting to sleep with/marry him. And I mean really beautiful! One of them is Gwyneth Paltrow, who is a goddess in my book, and I don't even like blondes. And usually I find Joaquin very sexy, but in this film he was so pathetic & had such low personality marks that I could just never buy why he was able to get both of these gorgeous babes to sleep with him. His room looked like 12 year old boy squalor central, and he was a delivery boy for his dad's dry cleaning business. He had been institutionalized, and from this film you'd think he was the only available bachelor in the greater NYC area. I mean, I lived there too, and dating was rough, but there were plenty of guys to choose from. The odds were good but the goods were odd. Now these women were co-dependent messes, but usually if you are model gorgeous, that is not a factor. The funnest part of viewing this film was taking the piss out of it with my friend Jaime, who made me laugh so hard near the end that I never regained composure. I guess the thing that was most surprising is that I never cared about any of these people. The director didn't make any of them lovable - only the sweet blue-eyed father of Phoenix's character conjured empathy from me, but not a whole lot because there was no tough love, no consequences for his son's reckless, narcissistic behavior. It was actually refreshing to see the rich lawyer sugar daddy, because, even though I think the filmmakers wanted us to see him as a sleazebag, he was such a strong, self assured character that he was actually the most likeable; not all wishy-washy, self-absorbed and goal-less like the love triumvirate. Don't waste your money seeing this one, unless you have some irreverent friend to go with you and laugh at how pathetic everyone is!

The Pearl at Any Price

2009-03-03T07:24:00.001-08:00

It's interesting if you are someone like me who has had very strong dreams and desires all of their life, who at times thought they were "pipe" dreams or the "six impossible things before breakfast" style of thinking which happens to me upon awakening. Before I get out of bed I'm planning the painting supplies I'm going to buy that day, the scuba class I'm going to sign up for, the travel plans I have to make. I've always known I wanted to travel, but in actuality, I haven't done a great deal of it (not as much as I see some Antarctic workers doing). I don't go off for months at a time. I do have an old doggie that I love dearly and spend time with, so I do a lot of short trips, but I want to do an epic trip. So I've taken a step in that direction and booked a cabin on a container ship that sails from London to Buenos Aires in 32 days, stopping many places in Europe, Western Africa, and South America.

There was a time in my life when I couldn't imagine that I'd have the freedom and money to do this sort of thing. But I wanted it so badly that that must be the reason it has come true. I kept myself "free" for this. I never had children as they were not a part of the grand design for my life. I sold my house and found seasonal work in a place that has transformed the word "work" for me because it is so fricking fun. And then there's the extras: getting to meet Werner Herzog IN Antarctica, and having him do a bit part in our film (wow!). Having had a bunch of art shows with no art training - just the vision in my mind of having it. Discovering the nervous tweaky excitement of being on a stage & winging it in improv classes. Being almost fifty years old and feeling an excitement and possibility about the future that I had when I was 18.

This is how life is interesting: when the Universe is holding your dreams right in front of you and saying "Take This!" if you are like me you go through a whole doubting process about what you really wanted in the first place because you are scared to take it. There were years when I could not see what was being offered & downright refused it. I had a recurring dream of some beautiful lady trying to hand my gorgeous gems & I refused them. I am hardwired to not think there's a lot of good coming my way so I've had to really say "yes" to all the opportunities that I can afford that come my way and sound like they fit my soul's yearning. When I was about to call to put my deposit on this container ship adventure I started thinking "that is not what I really want to do, I really want to do the Trans-Siberian rail journey," so I started looking into that & started thinking of how it could be uncomfortable, then thought that the cruise could be "boring" and as would be my old behavior, was going to blow the whole thing off & suck it up for another horrific Austin summer so I could "save money."

Thank God I'm older, know life is short, and hate summer badly enough that I'll do anything to get out of here! The interesting thing about having your dreams come true is that there is a moment where you don't believe it, don't trust that this is really it, or are just too scared to say yes; I think that is part of our human condition: when the thing we want most is put in front of us, it is hard to recognize. I have some strange wiring that says I don't deserve this stuff (who does?) and that life is supposed to be a drudging slog to the grave. For me to treat myself to all these goodies I can do brings up a lot of ugly mind chatter, but I know from experience to say yes. There's even a part of me that thinks I'll be "punished" for doing these things for myself...it's old programming - and I can ignore it, but at least I don't let it run my life anymore - I did for a long time. And this isn't just about me having a life of leisure & fun, it is more about oiling a machine in my brain that is actualizing me as a person, and being open to the fact that the pearl changes so I have to remain open minded and flexible (I could decide I want a home and white picket fence next week, and have to go through the hard work of making that happen).

The "pearl at any price" (OMG I just googled that phrase and a recent posting of mine came up - wow, I just keep rehashing the same stuff I guess!) is such a strong strong parable for me. I don't know the bible well but I know this phrase is about (secular version) giving up everything for that thing that gives you life. When you start to live it, you see you are not giving up anything. You are just stopping saying "no" to it & surrendering to the "yes." My favorite moment from the Academy Awards this year was when Philp Petit, the subject of "Man On Wire" ran up on stage when that documentary one best in the category. When it was his turn at the mike he said only "yes!" and then did some goofy magic tricks. If you haven't seen this film, it is in every way an example of someone who said yes at the first offering and kept saying it until his life was so damned interesting they had to make a documentary about him. He is like a giddy child that found his pearl early and chased it with reckless, artful abandon. I found my pearl long ago too, and everytime I pay the price of saying no to the negativity in my mind around it, it feeds me in bigger, shinier and in more unexpected ways.

I've Been Cheating on My Blog

2009-02-24T20:14:00.000-08:00

I feel like I've been "cheating" on my blog with facebook. I've been blogging for several years and facetubing for only a few months - & whereas I have some responsibility to my readers & myself to at least attempt to make an interesting blog posting, there is only the quick "status update" on friendbook, and that addictive, stressful time waster of looking at everyone else's status, which eventually leads to me comparing my life to theirs. Is someone doing something really cool & I'm not! (probably). Am I doing something really cool and want everyone to know! (most definitely). I've seen some of my more embarrassing character traits in the months I've been doing facebook - comparing, one-upping, bragging. On the positive note I have had some rich reconnections with people from 30 years ago, but other than that it seems to be a stressful and competitive dance (I'm sure there are lots of healthy people using it with much more benevolent feelings.) Like a committed relationship, writing requires work - and though it is probably obvious that a lot of work does not go into my postings, the writing is in itself rewarding. Since I am someone who has been writing all of their life (and has to really work to make stuff not too long), fb requires nothing but a clever quip. The status updates I enjoy are the ones where someone is "drinking coffee" or "about to go to work." I probably have too much pride to write about stuff like that, so I wait until I'm going on a trip to update my status, because, of course, I have to appear interesting at all times. So I use the word "cheating" because fb does not require me to have to labor through writing. And whereas I used to sit in coffee shops & blog fairly regularly, I now find myself facebooking, and it feels really important & interesting while I'm doing it ( just like drugs!), but ultimately it's a letdown. It's not the real thing. I know fb is not a substitute for a blog, but I have many blogger friends who are now on facebook who are doing the same thing I am: updating their fb status while neglecting their blogs, yearning for the vein of gold that is tapped into when one keeps writing. I know lots of people who say they "can't" or "hate" to write. And these are very intelligent & articulate people. I don't believe them. I think they are just not in the habit. I have been doing this for so long (not "blogging" per se, as that was only invented a few years ago). What I loved about creating this blog was that I got to have the satisfying writing experience that I'd had in college all over again - just being able to go on about something that really interested me, but at the same time having to work to make it make sense. No one is grading this though - and it's probably about a "D."

I was in Denver last week at the headquarters of my Antarctic employer. It was a heady experience seeing the familiar faces & feeling as if I were rejoining my "tribe" again - though I was not there for deployment purposes. The office is in a generic suburban office park, barren and sterile, the people your average slump-shouldered office workers, but this building & these people represent my Great Love. I can honestly say I would work there for no pay - that's how much I love it. I used to use up so much energy explaining to folks who thought I was crazy to want to work there how awesome & life changing it was - but I don't waste my time doing that anymore. I think the non-Ice life is crazy: traffic, house tending, gardening, having to feed myself - it's all so weird to me now. I was always so uncomfortable with my life when I worked 8-5 in an office & went to my home every day. I always knew it wasn't me - and when I found the Ice I found what was me - at least what was important to me. Life is pared down to so little down there that my soul has time to flourish! The energy usually spent driving around, grocery shopping (which I never did anyway), messing with a domicile (was never interested in it) is completely freed up to find new heights of creativity and solitude in the mind. I took a season off. I miss it like I'd miss my arm if it were missing. I've learned my lesson: no more "taking a season off." It has f&*d me up!

Not to say there isn't something to learn from doing things which go against oneself. It is fascinating to get off track, to get lost, to feel like the bottom has dropped out, even to fall apart. It is ok to do something different to see what happens. It is interesting and probably necessary to "fail" now & then. In improv class when we make a mistake, we bow and proudly say "I failed!" and everyone claps. It is the only time we reward or applaud in class. Failure meant you took a risk. So, really, you didn't fail. I used to be terrified of being thought of as a failure because that is what I thought I was deep down. Now I feel more like I just try different stuff & some of it works out & some of it doesn't, and in the grand scheme of things it's all really okay. I mean, I'm just a speck in the Universe. Who the heck is going to care about my paltry little life 5000 years from now. What a relief, no?

Plan B

2009-02-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

Lately I keep hearing myself say I've gotten "off track" by not going down to the Ice this past austral summer. When I first went down in '04 I knew I didn't ever want to do anything else. This was "it" for the rest of my life, as long as they'd let me go down. After four seasons and for several different reasons I decided to take a season off, and I've felt off kilter and funky about it all season. I've wailed to whomever would listen that I'd turned my back on my "dream," that I was sabotaging myself as I sometimes do, and basically just conjured a bunch of sturm und drang that clued me in to the fact that I was once again not living in the present, not appreciating all the really groovy stuff I got to do by not going to the Ice, and most insightful for me: seeing how I believe there can be a "wrong" decision and that I don't act in my best interests. I had a contract doing something really cool & badass at South Pole & turned it down, and would not have done that without a good reason. I had several good reasons, but the point of this particular ramble is that I don't trust the flow of my universe sometimes, and like to kick myself mercilessly about about a decision, instead of just saying 'what's next!' It's part of my grass is greener problem, which I am not having now as I am in one of my blissful states: a painting workshop in San Francisco, a city I love, with an amazing teacher and some beautiful yummy girlfriends.

I debated on whether to post this photo as it has a creepy cheap porno vibe that I assume is a result of my computer camera and hotel lighting combined with the awkwardness of trying to photograph myself with a laptop. That, the headlessness, and my stance as I try to get the shirt in right for the three second countdown give it a tawdryness that looks like I'm trying to post a saucy photo (lol!) of myself, but is betrayed by the hilarity that those who know me see I found a Hello Kitty shirt where she's sporting my glasses (and their "flocked!"). I would be in trouble if I lived here buying uber cute shirts (this one was a whopping forty dollars! And probably not available at my local Sanrio shop - and an aside: I get in touch with the creepy consumerist in me: after an intense and humbling walk through the Tenderloin, checking out Glide Memorial and all the cool cheap restaraunts, I was suddenly in the sparkly White world of a shiny mall, transfixed by Japanese tsotchke, and treating my credit card like monopoly money as I do on trips. $92 and 3 Hello Kitty clothing items later, I am weaving my way back to my hotel near the 'Loin dodging people shouting at me, conscious of my bright pink Sanrio sack being toted through acres of grey homelessness.) and ultra nerdy glasses frames. Going into Sanrio (or the Haight) here is dangerous for me, as I call myself a non-shopper, and in the past I had a 1000 item HK collection that I eventually dismantled and sold, but was a joy to collect in an odd period of my life in my early 30's. I have this gorgeous photo of the Golden Gate bridge in blinding sunlight, but I posted a GG photo when I was here in June, when it was nice and COLD, but now it's warm and sunny. Oh well, my frenemy the Sun, loves to follow me wherever I go...but I digress...

I have been waiting to hear about a winter job on Ice that would start in March or April, and now I won't deploy unless someone drops out. I will go to Denver in a couple of weeks to do the pq process & enjoy some snow sports, but I have already decided that I will wait until the final boat has sailed, and then I will deploy Plan B, which is ramping up my solo travel activities to include a big trip to someplace I've never been, possibly a long freighter cruise, or a summer working in Alaska. My Plan B sounds like so much fun that if Plan A falls through I won't have too long to shed tears. I'll just have to kiss my honey goodbye again, and carefully monitor funds so I can make it til next summer deployment...where I'm sure it will feel, once I'm down on Ice again, that I never left, and that I am back home.

oh yeah, I forgot: it didn't fit in the photo, but the bottom of the shirt says "Talk Nerdy to Me"

Improvise or Die

2009-01-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

As my loyal readers (which appears to have dropped down to about two, maybe) may remember, I am a big fan of improvisational acting and comedy. I have been taking improv classes in Austin for 3 years, but because of my seasonal work on the Ice, I have never taken it to the "next level" of risktaking, which would be performing with a troupe - but one of the reasons I don't do that is because I have learned about myself, ironically, in improv, that the things that I am most afraid of are what I need to move to the next level: trust and commitment. Yesterday we had an exercise where we had to walk around with our eyes closed and let our classmates "take care of us," which is a very difficult concept for me to embrace, and which goes hand in hand with trust. I broke out in a sweat, was afraid I was going to crash into people so didn't take the risk of trusting them. Improv can slam you with your fears like no other sort of therapy or self investigation because it continually forces you to act on your first impulse, and if you can't do that, you whole life flashes before you of how you've deferred to convention rather than to your true self. You immediately see it as a big shiny mirror for your whole life: you find out how good you listen, how easily you give and take, how controlling you are, and if you have any buried shame, it will surface, interestingly enough perhaps while you are playing a scene speaking only in gibberish acting as a human with monkey-like mannerisms. Aside from these grim sounding therapeutic aspects (and that awful monkey tainted improv scenario!), improv is so much giddy fun that you get in touch with that little kid who just knew how to play (yesterday we did a sports commentator scene with an ultra slow-motion race where the contestants were miming deodorant application while I was turbo-commentating on their "race." It was hilarious!), which brings up another topic I've been discussing with my middle aged friends: how we played as kids versus how I see kids playing today. (And before I go off on that topic I want to linchpin this sprawling and nonsensical posting with it's dramatic title: I don't mean to "die" in the conventional sense of the "meat body" decaying, but more in the sense of never having lived. Improv can get you so in touch with life, and all it's beautiful & horrific edges, that to never know that level of life, for me at least, is to be dead. Dead like that beautiful Joyce story. Dead as in numb). Anyway, I work on a campus no one over 30 is walking around with an i-pod in their ears, but everyone under 30 is. I never see students walking around talking to each other but they are almost all talking on a cell phone (the ones without earbuds in). I am sitting in a coffee shop right now where everyone is on a laptop with earbuds in (I am wearing earPLUGS as I can't write with music playing, as it is here), which I like because I came here to write, but if I wanted to talk shit with my buds, I'd go outside or to a noisy coffee house. But anyway, when we were kids in the 60's, we had an old barbie, a stick, two crayons, our imaginations, and no one hovering over us EVER. We made up elaborate stories & plays & dramatic scenarios inspired by popular TV shows of the day. We drew & painted & wrote & ran outside in the evenings until dark and had to completely entertain ourselves. We had no special classes or sports events we needed to be shuttled to, and no one pressuring us to do anything except be quiet inside the house. Because I never had many toys I don't need hardly any now. I've been writing almost daily since before I even spoke, so that has always been a fulfilling pastime, even if it nets me nothing except the simple pleasure and occasional joy of doing it. I sometimes wonder how these kids will turn out who have all these expensive entertainment devices handed to them on a frequent basis. I have my own absurdly shocking intimacy issues, and it's taken me about 16 years to figure out a non self-destructive way of coping with them, and I am curious how the children of today (who care to) will start their practice of undoing their high tech addictions - or if they'll even need/care to. I just started facebooking & have a love/hate relationship with it because it is a truly great and horrible thing at the same time. I have used it to pursue a chicy job I am waiting to hear about, but I also call it the "satanic time waster" as I can log onto it for "just a minute" and find myself sucked in an hour later looking at what everyone else is doing, comfortable at my safe distance, indulging one of my favorite guilty pleasures: spying. But I'm always relieved when I finally log off & go on a long walk or pet my dog or do something not on my computer. Which reminds me, I'm tired of this already, it is a beautiful day, and I'm going to go walk my dog! So pedestrian...yet almost radical in it's shunning of technology.

Intimacy of the Mundane

2008-12-28T08:13:00.000-08:00

The top photo was taken in a small town in the Netherlands last year. The second in the elaborately art deco train station in Sofia, Bulgaria, the third in Yellowstone National Park. Because I have been having to blog at times lately without having had an "adventure" to blog about, I've been having to write about the mundane, which then feels like an adventure. I was listening to NPR the other day and a scientist was being interviewed who asked the question "would you rather go rock climbing or stay at home?" I turned up the volume as I was super curious about the kind of person who would want to "stay at home," since to me there is only one answer to that question. The scientist went on to talk about brain chemistry and how people who crave adventure derive a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from these experiences whereas the stay-at-homers brain functions differently. He said these were hardwired personality traits, and they must be as I've craved adventure/travel/intense experience as my first conscious memory. I've always also thought the homebodies were lazy, scared, or "squashed creatives," which may be the case with some people, but for many is just a personal preference. I always liked a place to come to to take a breather between adventures, but the discomfort level I feel about being "at home" more than several weeks always pushes me out the door. But as I've had the ability to do whatever I want for the past several years, I can now see the value in what I took for granted for so long when I was a homeowner & had a structured life. I can see the value but am not ready for it yet. I sort of want both lives but feel I have to commit to one more than the other. Adventure always wins. And it wins because it connects me with an intimacy that I don't feel when I stay home. Lately though, and upsetting to my m.o. I have been having these incredibly rich and connecting experiences in my daily, non-adventurous life. A lot of it is because I have gone deeper in my yoga practice, and that in itself is a joy beyond description, but more of it is just being awake to what is around me in the present moment. The "adventure" of being not in Antarctica for the holidays: the surreal X-mas frenzy, the beauty of early sunset and black skies after 4 seasons of 24 hour daylight. I suppose it's what one would call an inner adventure. Being on stage in an improv class is not at exciting as waking up in Istanbul, but it is incredibly satisfying nonetheless. I get so hooked on thrills and the "new" that sometimes I rigidly refuse to accept something familiar and mundane as satisfying, but wall has been torn down, and I now see that it's all good, it's all interesting and fun and exciting...just in different ways.

Ten Degrees in Texas

2008-12-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

That's right. Today, with wind chill, it's 10F degrees in Austin. It might actually be colder here than at McMurdo, which is one of the reasons I don't really miss being there anymore. Because my mood is so affected by climate, I have been borderline ecstatic in this cold & cloudy season. Finally out of the heat & sun, my soul smiles and my energy level escalates dramatically. I'll be finding out about a job (hopefully soon) that would take me out of the country again in March, but if I don't do that, I plan to immerse myself into the creative community here in Austin again. We have an amazing local theatre, endless art classes, and daily film listings that would make any film geek cry. I find myself so many times not doing anything because there are too many choices, but really missing the culture when I'm somewhere that doesn't have any. This photo was taken at my favorite dive restaurant, The Omelettry, one of the Old Austin Institutions. I've been eating here for 30 years, and apparently so have many of people seated at the counter, as they seem to be superglued to their stools, grey beards skimming the tops of their heuvos rancheros. Nothing makes me happier than being in a place in Austin that is unchanged from when I arrived in '79 (though I was also born here), and except for the occasional Lexus (Lexii?) in the parking lot, the Omlettry is unchanged. Some of my more foodie friends berate me for eating at these places because the food is not "good." It's eggs & bacon for crying out loud - how good does it have to be? I'll take an atmosphere I like with marginal food over great food in a "hot" restaurant any day. I'm from the old "die yuppie scum" school (that sweet motto was spray painted on the sides of the punk clubs we patronized) & am aware that a part of that sensibility still lives in me, though it is a dated notion. I am too old for it & should probably eradicate it from my cadre of character defects, but I still get some pleasure from it, as Austin is full of yuppies now and it's getting harder & harder to dodge them. They keep finding our funky battered haunts, run off the punks & semi-hobos, and glitz up the place with neon & liquor infused coffee drinks. Effin gag me. I didn't know this posting was going to turn into a yuppie rant so I'll have to eventually get back on track. Apologies to any yuppies reading this - though I already know none are, and before I go all Denis Leary on you, I have to get back to the photo. For some reason I had my camera in the restaurant the morning I took this. While I was proudly boasting like I always do to the 18 year old waitron that I've been coming here for 30 years (apparently, I'm going to be one of those obnoxious old people) I noticed a photo on the fridge (conveniently located in the dining area) that is a still from a documentary about the relationship between Werner Herzog & Klaus Kinski. I don't know if this particular still is from "My Best Fiend" or "Burden Of Dreams," but I had to snap the photo as I really admired the text someone had put with it - it says "I need more coffee!" while Kinski strangles Herzog. Oh so many connections! Long time readers will know I had the privilege of hanging out with Herzog in Antarctica 2 years ago. Long time friends know I went to film school here & was wildly influenced by Herzog's work in the 1970s. Also, Tarantino's "Deathproof" had a really long scene in this restaurant, and obviously Q. knows of all these cool old "yuppie proof" haunts, as many of them feature in his films shot in Austin. I think the lowbrow exteriors keep them away. Or possibly the size of the parking spots.

Why am I writing about Austin in a blog which is supposed to be about Antarctica, world travel, and a big puffy cloud? Well, I'm not in Antarctica right now nor travelling, so I have to write about something. It has been very cold, and ominously overcast for many days (ie: feels sort of Antarctic, yet covered with clouds), so that is somewhat related. I have been seeing some incredibly awesome art and avant garde theatre lately, and just had a second interview for a job which may take me far far away for many months - and that always makes me sentimental for a place that I haven't even left yet. And this is the longest stint I've spent here in 4 years and just had to force myself to start liking it again. I have accepted that the yuppies won't go away, but there is always a place I can go where I'm guaranteed never to see any (and not just Terlingua and Moloka'i!)

Why I Went to Hawaii

2008-12-03T20:52:00.001-08:00

Honolulu, Waikiki

2008-12-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

Oah'u was a nice change of pace from Moloka'i, but I believe that small raggedy Island will forever hold a special place in my heart - if you crave a funky non-tourist experience, got to Moloka'i. So I think I was expecting, once again upon exiting the airport in Honolulu, some Disneylandesque type beach experience for adults, and once again, I was pleasantly surprised. Honolulu is unpretentious, has the grittiest Chinatown I've visited in the US, and has the busy seaport action that makes me want to drop off resumes. There were lot of homeless people on Waikiki, cohabiting seemingly well with the buff and bronzed jogging set. I feel a comfort level being somewhere where homeless people can sleep in parks & on the beach (they can't where I'm from) and where gay people can feel comfortable walking down the street showing affection (which they CAN where I'm from-yea!), so each day in Hawaii provided more reasons to see it as a really great destination (and a lot shorter plane ride than to New Zealand!). The U.S.S. Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor is powerful & touching, and hiking Diamond Head Crater at 6:00am was a great morning workout with stunning views. We stayed in an old hotel on the harbor which deserves it's own posting - I may have to start another blog called "Lodging David Lynch Would Love." Built in 1962, the Ilikai Hotel is the one that Jack London is on top of in the opening credit shots in Hawaii Five-O. The daily scene there could be the subject of a minor film-fest bound documentary, it was so full of resident characters and odd shops. But I know one thing for sure: if I ever buy a condo again (worst purchase of my life!), I'm buying one built in 1962. I never heard even a faint sound from the surrounding units (and after Moloka'i, I was a little shell shocked from shared-wall noise). So, Hawaii is just about perfect it seems. If it had a 60 degree season at all I would seriously consider moving there. We did take a day trip to Maui on Thanksgiving day, so we saw all five islands in 3 weeks. I love it when things I expect not to like, or feel ambivalent towards, end up being really awesome. Now I'm back in Texas, where the consolation is that is 50 degrees and rainy. Yee-ha!

Moloka'i

2008-12-01T15:19:00.000-08:00

This small, rural island is visited by less than 1% of all tourists who come to Hawaii (and most of those come for one day, to do the mule ride to the leper colony), but the solitude and lack of tourist attractions make it feel as if you are someplace utterly wild and lawless. These photos are from the famous mule ride down a very steep cliffside, filled with switchbacks and slippery rocks, that could only compare in pucker-factor to forking a 4000 lb. load to the power plant in early Winfly. I didn't know that mules will walk on the EDGE of a sheer cliff face, scaring the bejesus out of you, while "faking" tripping over rocks. All us city folk were sweating from places we didn't know we had sweatglands, and probably would have been in tears if it weren't for the stunning thing that we were doing: going down the side of a cliff to visit the Kalaupapa Peninsula, which aside from being possibly one of the most beautiful spots on earth, is a still functioning colony for people with Hansen's Disease (formerly known as leprosy). There are 24 patients still living in the community, and we were allowed to spend a couple of hours there visiting various buildings and photographing the postcard-like scenery (the residents stay indoors while the tour is on), before getting back on our mules. The mules always walk in the same order, and they had me on the first one, "Kumu," which means "teacher" in Hawaiian. The guides must intuitively know who to put in front, as I am as wobbly on a mule as any flat-city bred girl could be, leaving me shrieking as I held on for dear life to my small saddle knob, while the local guide laughed & told me to kick Kumu to go faster. The mule truly seems like he is going to go straight instead of turning, but most of the fun of it was how freakin' scary it is. The history of the colony and of Father Damien (recently canonized), who gave his life in selfless service to the patients, is quite inspiring. It was an unusual tour as several emotional landscapes are traversed: the giddy mule ride, the heart wrenching facts that were presented to us about the suffering at the colony, the dread of getting back on the mules (it as a much shorter trip up). Moloka'i feels very different from the other islands. It really tests one's ability to be without "toys" (there was free wifi but I consider that essential, like coffee, and hey, don't even get me started on how great it is to be swilling coffee on the spot where it's grown!). Once again, I am suprised at how interesting a place Hawaii is.

Kaua'i, Hawaii

2008-11-26T21:39:00.000-08:00

This is the island that South Pacific, Tropic Thunder, Jurassic Park (I), Blue Hawaii and all sorts of other movies were shot on. It is stunningly beautiful, very laid back, and full of roosters, hippies and yoga studios. The Waimea Canyon is filled with waterfalls and slippery difficult hikes and the Island is 85% undeveloped. I liked it much more than Big Island, as it was filled with many funky towns filled with artists shops. There appears to have been zero updating of any of the buildings since, oh, 1970 or so. Any development, or even a fresh coat of paint, is seen as threatening to the abiding feng shui of earthiness that permeates the place. I didn't have time to do the Movie Tour Bus as I would have liked, but the two days spent here were truly wonderful...oh, and it rained the whole time except for when I was on top of the canyon rim, taking these pictures...!

Big Island, Hawaii

2008-11-26T20:37:00.000-08:00

I had negative preconceived notions about Hawaii, but they were all smashed as soon as I found that most of the it is wild and ruggedly beautiful. In the same day you can be boiling hot and freezing cold. I snorkled for the first time, which was incredibly fun. We also went to a luau, and to the top of a volcano where it was 30F degrees and 14,500 ft above sea level. There were very few tourists and no kids anywhere! Driving around the Big Island is no fun, as the roads seem to be continually under construction, but the diversity of climates and interesting scenery was astounding. I was afraid it would be hot, but the clouds rolled in every afternoon to cool things off.

This Should Probably Just Be a Diary Entry....

2008-11-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

but what the heck - the idea that someone may read it makes me leave out all the whininess that my paper diaries tend to reflect. Plus, I can't read my handwriting anymore, and I type faster than I can write, therefore almost getting through the "stack" that is forming this early morning during a time of change: moving out of where I was living in Austin, homelessness, going to Hawaii right when the weather here is getting delicious & dark & stormy, no plan after I get back - true an utter limbo (47 years old, occupying a twin bed at my parents house, my car filled with all my worldly possesions, yet feeling so undeservedly blessed as the richness of my life is overwhelming), but a good limbo: not flailing about in a panic, but luxuriously mulling over my options, while ramping myself up with assaultive action for whatever path I decide upon: I could ski this winter! I have a potential possibility of going to Palmer Station, I could even do Improv in Austin...it's all wide open at this point...

My last posting was so embarassingly bad that I thought I'd better wait til something happened before I blogged again, but "something" is always "happening" and James Michener wrote for 2 hours every morning no matter what, and I have found that doing that presents one with all sorts of surpises & opportunities. The words will start to find subject & meaning without too much help from me, and just banging away at it with no particular direction will eventually stir that inner pot of juiciness that keeps me alive & curious and questing for that pearl at any price that all creative endeavors provide one with. When I painted with oils, that connection was immediate, continual, and lasted for the 20 years that I painted. Seeing a band I really connect with can do that too...I just saw TV on the Radio & they were incredible (though, the elements that made that show so incredible weren't just about seeing the band). And for the last 4 years, even though I haven't done it consistently, participating in the improv community in Austin has filled the creative need. I won't go into Antarctica & it's Impact on my life as I've written reams on that already. The fact that I did not go down this season has gotten my pot so stirred that I realize I am so completely free to choose what direction I want my life to go in, and I am really thinking about some very big and different things. I need to start making more money. I have only ever had really low paying jobs - I am practicing the mantra that it is possble for me to obtain a high paying job that does not require me to do some mind numbing desk work (criminies: most of my low paying jobs were about mind numbing desk work!). I am not sure I am ready for a non seasonal life, but I am thinking about it. The last 10 months I have lived in an 800 sq. ft house with an old friend and when I moved out 4 days ago the relief was overwhelming. Before the Ice, I had owned my own home for 15 years, not cohabited with anyone except for about 5 of those, and completely took it (the fact that I always has my own house) for granted until I started this seasonal life, sold my house, and started rooming with someone in the off season. A few months is ok, but 10 is too long unless I am in love with the person, and even that has a host of issues, but I digress...so having basically payed rent for 10 months & then actually gotten an 8-5 job back in this "real world" really showed me why I bolted to another lifestyle as soon as I found one - there is absolutely no reason for me to have a low paying dumbass job in a sucky climate like Texas when I have to pay rent, gas & everything else in a very expensive city. If I'd had my own place, I would just be covering my bills with my pay and have no extra $. On the Ice, I got used to my entire salary being "gravy" money - I would buy an occasional soda in the bar but that was only because I felt like spending a dollar so my wallet wouldn't freeze shut. What I learned from working stateside this time is that it's going to take a super fabulous job with a high income for me to stay here. There's just going to have to be something that is more shiny & thrilling to me than the Ice to make me not go back there. I never believed it was possible but I have decided to enlarge my thinking. It's all about possibilites now, and I think that magical night November 4th has helped me see that.

Schadenfreude

2008-10-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

Like a Sienfeld episode, I have nothing to blog about, so I am going to try and create something from nothing - my improv training should come in handy here - and I've also decided to further challenge myself by entitling this posting first with a gorgeous word that was chosen simply because it looks and sounds magnificent, and not based at all on anything going on in my life that has its elements. But by the end of this tome-ette, hopefully I will have lynch pinned my thoughts somehow to justify the post title. Perhaps the musings will concatenate in a way to suggest the German "loanword" with the bittersweet definition.

This photo was taken with my laptop internal camera. I was eavesdropping on this incredibly surreal conversation going on behind me, and even though I've always wished I had those spy glasses where you can see stuff behind you that were always advertised in the back of Mad Magazine, I usually just turn around & check it out, not having any kind of pride about those sorts of things (and because of where I am, chances are I know these conversants). So I got the clever idea of launching the camera application & pointing it in their direction (my back still to them); but I soon lost interest in the conversation as the photo became more compelling to frame (ooh - industrial, B&W, and Eraserhead-ish!), made more interesting as I'm doing it backwards, while hovering the laptop in the air. I'm sure it was obvious to the other 40 people in here with the exact same laptop what I was doing. (This could have been "schadenfreude"-ish if I would have been delighting at some talk around someone's pain or misery, but a homeless guy was asking a gal for her knit cap (it is, after all, under 85 degress here now), and it was sweet because she gave it to him, and it was safety orange, and he didn't just want any hat, he had to have hers. He said he had been looking everywhere for one. I guess when you're homeless, "looking everywhere" doesn't mean the same thing to you or me - as you can't swing a dead cat around here without finding orange beanies for sale....)

ok, next:

In 4 days I will celebrate sixteen years of abstinence from alcoholic beverages, and two weeks after that I will turn 48 years old, an age that I never would have considered would rock this goodly - and aside from how old my neck looks, everything about late forties kicks butt. I am fit and healthy and it is Autumn: my season of uber happiness. The knowledge that my life is half over is making me dig deep into my psyche to discover those one or two dreams (knocking around in there with the 50 or so others) that I want to start working on before I relax into my extended dirt nap. I just saw the film "Outsourced," and once again India is on my radar as someplace I'd like to spend several months. I also want to live in the Gaeltacht in Ireland to learn Irish. There's also a rumbling (yet disturbing to me) desire to resurrect an anciently wanted "Cinderella Dream," though before those of you who know me start laughing I have spun it into a version I can handle: think the 60's movie version with Leslie Ann Warren, but with some "Sid & Nancy" touches, the costuming and the music, not the drugs. And a with a Gripfast 8 hole steel toe instead of a "slipper." Get the picture? Though, really, if I were deeply honest, I've already gotten to live that one out...(no schadenfreude here, unless the reader is laughing at my Cinderella Dream, which I've never confessed to having as it seems super uncool, in which case, I'm laughing with you, so I'm not miserable (unless I'm laughing just to keep from crying), so it doesn't count).

Still with me...?

At some point during this time of trying to come of with something worth blogging about I read a story about some American tourists who got on a bus in Africa, and at one the stops a man got on with a rooster, didn't have bus fare, & tried to pay his fare with the rooster. The Americans bought the rooster from the man so he could pay for his trip and when they all got off at the same stop the local man invited the tourists to his home for a meal. He was a widower who lived in a small hut with his two children, was very poor, but scratched together a meal for all of them. The Americans had a wonderful time, and when they left, gave the man back his rooster (I was wondering how the hell they were holding this thing the whole time! I wouldn't have any idea how to hold a rooster - I mean, was in a sack, or were they holding it upside down by it's (what I'm assuming are) scary feet?). I heard Johnny Lydon (one of my personal heroes) tell Conan O'Brien that the Garden of Eden wasn't in the bible or in the sky but in Africa instead. I have experienced first hand the incredible graciousness of people who have very little (usually in "emerging" countries)...I don't think they sit around and wonder what to do with their months of free time like I do. The reason I tell that story is because it struck me how I used to live my life thinking there was so little for me (which wasn't true) and I had to hold on tightly to whatever stuff, money, love (insert...anything) I thought I had - and this story shows a generosity without clinging - a way of living I aspire to, and have moved slightly closer to in my 16 years of not trying to change the way I feel with chemicals, which was based in a feeling of never having "enough" (which was false). But I don't have to travel around the world to see this sort of non-clinging to stuff - I just talked to the gal who gave her beanie to the homeless guy - she is homeless too. She is singing loudly while listening to music on her laptop. Homeless people with cell phones and laptops...what a crazy place.

I have run out of finger power & have not justified the title of the post so I'll just pull something from the random stack of topics in my brain, in a "use this word in a sentence" style: "the last time I experienced schadenfreude was was seeing the governor of Alaska being interviewed by Charles Gibson. I enjoyed her discomfort & awkwardness." I'm sure my karma is coming soon.

Limbo Beyond Limbo

2008-10-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are surprised to find out I have a filmmaking degree. I think they thought I majored in Art or English or have some random Liberal Arts degree, but I was one of a handful of kids in the early 80's doing incredibly involved technical and creative 16mm film making at the University where I am currently a wage serf - which I now would not be able to get into as the requirements are so much stricter, and the film progam is recognized as top notch, as it was even then when there were just a handful of us doing it. The technical parts were incredibly arduous, but the chaos of shooting and editing and sound synching suited my nature. I partied so much in college that it is a miracle I got through, but we all seemed to be able to do that while we were making films, which I don't think is uncommon even today. I mention me having a film degree because about two months ago I was called for an extra role in the new HBO biopic about Temple Grandin, one of my personal heroes. I had stood in a cattle call line about two years ago for a big Hollywood pic being shot here, & the local film casting folks still had my picture. The reason they called me was because I was, at that time, 118 pounds, and they wanted skinny girls to fit into the 50's & 60's clothes for the period piece. I told them I weighed more than that now, sent them a pic of me in a bikini & never heard from them figuring that extra 5 pounds knocked me out of the running. Last night they finally called (around 8:30pm), and asked if I could show up the next day for a role that was bigger than an extra, so it would be a more intimate scene, where I would actually be seen in the movie for a few minutes. I thought this was cool & said I would do it, then told them I had a recent dye job-they didn't like this & told me I'd have to dye my hair before I came in, and have it set in "hot rollers," and bring pantyhose. I said I didn't have any hot rollers or pantyhose & thought it might be too late to go buy hair dye and they started asking me if I was really "stoked" or not for this role and that "they had held it special just for me" (???). I didn't ask why, then, they were calling me the night before for this special role just for me, because I would actually like to work on a film before I croak (actually, I am quite proud of the short film Will & I made in Antarctica for the film festival). The phone call became more bizarre as I talked to three different girls & they kept telling me their names and they were different than the first time they told me, and there was lots of noise in the background and that sounded like they were calling me from a crack house. I was still planning on going to the set when I reminded them that I had some small tattoos - and the girl on the phone asked where they were & I told her & she said "sorry we won't be able to use you..." & kept apologizing & acted liked I deceived them as she said she couldn't see them in my mostly naked picture. I said that's because they are not so obvious...anyway, I got off the phone relieved not to be dealing with these bozos..until I walked over to the shoot today (they happened to be shooting near campus and I know the secret signage that indicates where a big film is being shot) and saw all the teamsters & giant generators & millions of dollars of equipment & amount of bodies needed to pull of a production. I am a big fan of HBO made programming, so was curious about the incredible unprofessionalism of the talent people I'd dealt with on the phone. Anyway, it was a micro-drama that gave me something to write about. And because writing always opens the floodgates for stacking more topics...I was thinking about conversations I'd been having recently about the state of being in limbo versus being tethered and how that means different things to different people. I, right now, am in limbo beyond limbo. I am not on the Ice, have a job I am quitting in two weeks, am moving out of my room in early November, going to Hawaii for 3 weeks, and after that have no idea what I'm going to do. I usually "tether" myself by some non-negotiable trips I have to do during the year: Taos in March & May, San Francisco in June...and usually the Ice for half the year - but the Ice, my singleminded focus of the last four year, is not happening this year. I am so free it's ridiculous. Getting this full time job has been great for my sanity & tethered me to life somewhat, but I am only enjoying it because I know it's going to end. There's always such a relief I feel when I know something is ending or changing. So starting in May I went from having a job at the South Pole for austral summer, to not having one, to working the ski season in Jackson Hole, to not doing that, and then asking for a job at South Pole for winter, and being immediately rejected (!). The problem I'm having now is not the fear of being in utter limbo, it's not knowing what I want to do. I worked so hard to get myself into this position of not being chained to a job, city or mortgage...so I should just enjoy the fact that I'm in this luxury position instead of worrying about it. Sometimes I wonder if I'm squandering my creative energies, but it takes so much energy to manage this lovingly chosen limbo, that maybe that is the creative act. And nothing makes me more certain than I am living the right life for me than working at UT again, where I'm surrounded by people who don't have the choice to quit & run off like I do. It is so easy for me to see tethers as chains...

the next day...

In the airconditioned comfort of my favorite new coffee hangout in Austin, Epoch. What makes a local coffee shop great? Old blown out comfy couches, super groovy new down-tempo music played at a volume where you can still type & read, and a band of locals you eventually form a "tribe" with. This one also has excellent pizza. It's mid October & still in the 90'sF here in Central Texas, but I have made peace with my heat hating side as the mornings & evening are blissfully nice. I got an e-mail from a friend at McMurdo this morning....I worked with her in the Heavy Shop three seasons ago and though I have accepted I gave up my job on Ice this season, I was not prepared to be stricken like I was when I saw the photos of her in one of the big red South Pole Traverse tractors. My heart seized up, as if something very very important to me was no longer mine - tears streamed from my eyes as I scrolled down to the pics of the pristine mountains across from the butt-ugly but lovable station. For a variety of reasons I decided to not go back to the Ice this season, and despite my grieving not being there, I have found reasons to appreciate being stateside. But I was not prepared for how deeply the Ice is woven into my blood, body & cells: any opportunity to talk about it sparkles me. No matter how much I stand by my decision that is ok for me to take a season off, there is a hole in my soul in the shape of my friends & the lifestyle of Mactown.

But while I sit here torturing myself, the world is unfolding around me in subtle & interesting ways...I get to be here for this incredibly bizarre & epic presidential election. I get to experience a temperature that is somewhere comfortably between 100F & not -40F (the extremes I've been in the last 4 years). I get to have deep & intimate conversations with wonderful people. I get to see tableaux like the one pictured, that someone lovingly created on the bar at Epoch, and reminds me that I could never live anywhere that did not have these sorts of fringe places peopled by fringe characters. I am so comfortable with them.

2008-09-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

Faced with the prospect of no trip on the horizon until November (Hawaii!), and two more months of potential triple digit temps here in central Texas, I did the most logical thing any adventurous, cold-air loving soul would do: got a temporary job spending most the day walking around outside at a place I worked at for 14 years in my pre-Antarctic life. I was going to go to Ireland for a few weeks, or drive to northern New Mexico again, but I was gripped by my ancient, ingrained work ethic persona (even though I was born in Austin and dress like one, I am not a "slacker" in my soul!) & decided I needed to be busy & spend the day doing something I'm being paid to do instead of trying to dream up ways of passing the days. I also wanted a sort of work solidarity feeling with my peeps on the Ice, as it was "time" for me to go back to work. So I got a temp job at the University of Texas, (which I also graduated from 25 years ago) walking around tracking down professors and grad students to tag newly purchased inventory. I have tagged mostly brand new computers, some strange lab equipment that apparently does something with live frogs that I probably don't want to know about. I have a giant binder of millions of dollars of stuff purchased for UT Athletics so I'll be spending lots of time at the stadium tagging everything from racing sculls to batting cages. An immense, state university is a fascinating place to work - I could never work at an office park or in some environment where you don't have a rich environment to balance out the soulless work going on in the cubicles. When I first took this job I was angry at myself and wondering if I did the right thing, as "going back to UT" (as we've always referred to it) turned the knife that was in my heart about not being on the Ice this season. I felt like a puppet that someone else was pulling its strings - why am I staying in this oven city for two more months working 8-5, missing yoga, travel & sleeping in, doing this grueling work? After 3 days of work I know why: because life is more interesting when it surprises you & doesn't follow your own script (who was it that wanted a job?). Something in me knew this was the right thing to do for now even though it's not "exciting!" or in a "foreign locale!" After 3 days of hard work I am not complaining ceaselessly like I was about the weather - I don't have time to navel gaze as I'm so busy organizing how I'm going to do my day. I interact with people so much that a huge contact void is being filled. I thought I knew what I wanted but like I heard Bob Dylan say "getting what you want is just getting what you want." And he also said something about the state of being happy was not as interesting as other states one might be in. I get that. And some good people I hang with have a great saying: you may not get what you want but you always get what you need. Having a regular job dials down my neurosis to a very low hum, whereas endless hours of free time will have me in a mental tailspin derived from self absorption. I have experimented with this for years: quitting jobs I hated & trying time after time to "self-structure" so I can make art, but it never works. I need structure. And I need external structure, preferably by a large institution. I've had jobs with small employers and it always made me nervous - I like the womb like feeling of the massive employer (UT has 25,000 staff members). So, like an adult, I have made peace with my decision, and tomorrow will happily run around all day applying little silver stickers on laptops, frog cleaners and centrifuges...because right now, I need to be identified with the tribe of the "employed." My identity was so tied up with being "that chick who works in Antarctica," that I've been lost for a few months knowing I wasn't going back. But I still am that chick, because I will go back, just not for now....

It Began with Bruce

2008-09-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

Thirty three years ago I was riding home from high school with a friend & her brother in a car, which was significant for me as I almost always rode the school bus, and was envious of people who didn't have to ride it. I remember what I was wearing, that I was sitting in the center of the back seat (I don't remember who the other two riders were), and that my friend's brother turned up the radio volume knob and said "hey listen to this new song, it's really cool," in his understated math-geek style. I then heard something that exploded in my soul and electrified every nerve in my being. I felt what all the gurus & mystics talk about when they describe a spiritual experience in regards to there being no awareness of time, space or separation of bodies. I felt new blood & life rushing into me & a confidence that my life was going to be greater, wilder and more adventurous than my 14 year old self could possibly imagine at that point. I had a fleeting glimpse that the universe was going to unfold for me in outrageously abundant ways and I'd better hold on for the ride. This feeling can still overcome me with the opening bars of certain songs, but it began with this one (see t-shirt in photo). I saw Bruce for the first time in 1980 at the former Summit in Houston on "The River" tour. I still have the $8 ticket stub (it was also the only time *I think* he played "Drive All Night," my all time number one Bruce anthem tune). I was deeply entrenched in the punk rock scene in Austin at the time, but would always return to Bruce in the wee hours - and all my non-Bruce friends would roll their eyes, like all non-Bruce people have always done. "I don't get it" they say. Or "all his songs sound the same." I made a few converts, usually by talking them into seeing a live show, or by forcing them to participate in late night "lock-ins" where I would play his albums over and over. There is nothing so beautiful as seeing an ambivalent Bruce person transformed after a show. After that 1980 show, which was nothing short of transcendental: the parting of the audience as he strolled into the center of the hushed bodies, as if the Pope himself were coming through - I didn't see a show for a while. I sort of lost my enthusiasm after "Born in the USA" came out (that embarassing dance training!). I lived in New York City when that tour started in 1984, knew a live show would be a heartstopper, stood in line all day & bought 10 tickets, went to Ireland and fell in love, ditched my return plane ticket & didn't get back in time to see the show in Jersey (I still haven't seen Bruce in Jersey, man!). I felt really bad as some of those tickets belonged to other people who didn't get to see the show either. I saw a couple of solo acoustic shows in the '90s but didn't get that fire back until the E Street band reunited in 2000. After that first Texas show in Dallas I wasn't sure I would be able to return to "normal" life again - I have never seen anyone give that much. I don't know what my expectations were but not that a middle aged man would come out as blisteringly raw, powerful and inspiring like he did in the '70s. I went on to see the Austin & Houston shows, and then in 2002 tour did the "GA line" (which is an epic journey in itself) & stood leaning on the stage as he held my hand for half a song while starting into my friend's eyes. My hearing was ruined from that show, but being that close to Bruce & Li'l Steven was worth the fascinating and surreal process known as the "GA line." (for short: spending four days of 24/7 ritual to be one of those people who are all standing near the stage). This past April, I saw Bruce in his most recent tour in Houston. As usual, I held my breath in the beginning knowing I was in for a ride - and this show was epic among shows. I was trying to pin the right words on it & finally read them in one of the reviews of the show: "a brain meltingly good show." That's exactly what happened: my brain melted, and like I do after every show, I race home & get online & plot my life path to go to every show possible & then don't do it. The one show that looked really good was his last one - at something called "Harleyfest" in the Midwest, but I didn't bother with trying to get tickets as they were really expensive and I couldn't get my Bruce-pal Kate to go with me.

So last Saturday I'm riding back from the shores of Green Bay (where this photo was taken) to Chicago. En route we encounter thousands of Harleys near Milwaukee and then get stuck in a massive traffic jam. My friend said this was a big annual music festival that is really prestigious & has great acts. Being from Austin I usually take these comments with a grain of salt - and it was blazingly hot out so I was not tempted as I would otherwise be to follow the rumbling bikers into town. I found out a few days later that Bruce had played his last & longest show of this tour that very night in Milwaukee at that music show known as "Harleyfest." I kicked myself for a little while for not knowing that I was just blocks from the Boss, but regrets don't do me a lick of good.

A good friend told me I suffer from a deep case of "the grass is greener" syndrome. I've been thinking about this a lot as it is playing itself out like a giant Technicolor psychodrama in the part of my brain that makes decisions. I had to make a very difficult choice this year: whether to go back to the Ice, or spend the ski season in Jackson Hole with Will. The first time I went to Antarctica was exactly like that moment in that car 33 years ago: like waking up from a dull tired dream into a new and exciting world, full of romance and creativity and living on the razor's edge. I did have a job on Ice this upcoming season, and the whole time I knew I could go, I felt tormented about what I would miss out on by not going to JH. When I finally said no to the job and yes to Will, I mourned not going back to the Ice and am torturing myself over what I am missing out on at McMurdo! I watched me put myself through this exhausting and self-defeating ritual, and with what tiny bit of middle aged wisdom I have finally had to just tell myself that there is NO wrong decision, and that whatever I choose will be good no matter how it pans out. And what I finally realized was giving me so much heartache about this decision was that I was having to decide between two things I really wanted - whereas I'm usually trying to escape some yucky situation by replacing it with something that seems better, but that usually ends up yucky too. So to be in a situation where all the choices are good? Wow - now that's something new -I realize the enviable situation I am apparently in. The best part about the decision I made was that I'm doing something different, something that involves a lot of unknown and risk taking, something that will present new challenges, yet living someplace where I know I'll like the weather!

What I learned from Bruce is to keep asking myself "is anybody really alive in there?" And to follow the path that feels most alive. And sometimes, life is so abundantly alive, you have to choose one path over the other...a condition I like to refer to as "luxury problems."

"Talk about a dream...try to make it real...."

Door County, WI

2008-08-28T10:03:00.002-07:00

It's been a while since I've written, but I've been away from wifi & cell service for the past two weeks. I'm staying in an enormous old house in Door County, WI (top of the peninsula), specifically in Egg Harbor. The house is right on Green Bay, which is great for swimming, sunsets, and goose watching. I'm with my oldest & dearest friend, her family (which includes two great kids) and a variety of friends & family members who drift in & out for various lengths of stays. The summer heat is not brutal up here, so it is livable, and my favorite town here, Sturgeon Bay, has very affordable housing. These are my favorite photos so far (taken a few steps from the house), as they come at my favorite time of day: when the sun starts to set and I heave a hugh sigh of relief....thank goodness summer is almost over!

Made From Corn

2008-08-10T17:31:00.001-07:00

I was just about to toss this plastic cup last night when I decided to read what was written on it. I would love to tour the plant that makes corn into plastic cups. I don't know if you can read the back but it says "fully compostable." Interestingly enough, I just read an article in "The Sun" magazine today about a 90 year old Nicaraguan woman who made corn tortillas from 4am to midnight for the Sandinistas-to give them energy to fight the Contras; Esperanza says "corn is the strength that we subsist on...a person cannot work, cannot think, cannot exist without our corn." This stirs up all kinds of thoughts, like how much Reagan was hated on my college campus during the Nicaraguan conflict, heated talk over beer & cigarettes about the SNLF, and the idea of taking a raw material & turning it into something unexpected. It's interesting that this cup looks exactly like plastic, like did they have to take the "cornness" out of it so it wouldn't freak people out (because it's more reassuring to drink out of petroleum by-products), or does processed corn look like plastic anyway. Did this cup use 20 times the resources to make as a plastic one? Or, even more intriguing, did some Banksy influenced guerilla artist just print this on there, making an urban hipster hoax, to give people like me something to blog about...

Go See "Man On Wire"

2008-08-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Frenchman profiled in this documentary lives the Helen Keller quote: "Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

Even More Remote

2008-08-05T19:53:00.001-07:00

This place I went to in Way West Texas isn't even on the map. The road to it is marked by a short black line that turns into a long grey line. From now on I will always know what the "grey" line on a map means: do not drive a low-rider Ford Taurus on this road! For 2 hours I twisted through the mountains on an unpaved & obviously rarely traveled "road." Thank goodness the scenery was jaw-dropping, otherwise I would have had only my abject terror to focus on. I drove across giant boulders praying my tires wouldn't get punctured. One section of the road was 90 degree drops into dry creek beds while in my panic I thought I heard the faint strains of the deliverance theme song, saw some Hills Have Eyes types darting my periphery, & the standard cliche: circling vultures. Fergus was bouncing so much in his seat I had to strap him in. I mentally inventoried my water supply (1/2 a hot bottle & a rapidly emptying dog dish), wondered if I had a flashlight, and started to remember than the reason I had never come out here was that it required a "high clearance" vehicle. I only remember being this scared one other time: driving on another "grey" road about 10 years ago looking for a scenic route to Jerome AZ. I cried like a baby on that trip, but on this one I just focused on breathing and going 2 miles per hour. When I finally saw the sign for my destination I was so releived, but incensed enough to let the owners know they need to warn folks like me on their website. This is a part of Texas that makes comfortable regular, paved road West Texas seem soft & easy. This is hardscrabble "No Country For Old Men" country. The worker at the Springs said "I've never heard of a Taurus making it through Pinto Canyon." I thought he was perhaps new to the area, but later found out he was a native Terlinguan (wiki it-makes Luckenbach look like the Taj Mahal). Yikes. Now that my driving adventure was over, I could focus on the resort: small, funky, relaxing. Fergus running wild with packs of hounds, nude toddlers everywhere, and, unfortunately, their skidmarked tiny undies. After a quick once over of the pools & grounds, I power napped (my energy sapped by my death defying canyon adventure!), but was harshly awoken by one of my two most hated sounds: lawn equipment! I swear, as much as I hate California, I would move there in an instant if I could afford to live in the town (I believe it is Carmel) the has outlawed all motorized/gas powered lawn equipment. I almost had to laugh though, that at his remotest of remote places were one would expect nothing but quiet, I was subjected to an obsessive maintenance guy with his weedeater that you could tell he was in love with. His other tool of the trade was a medieval looking machete, so I'm sure the weedeater was a huge energy saver to him. One of the naked toddlers was fond of screaming loudly for no apparent reason, but hey, we were one big happy family by nightfall, all swapping stories in the communal kitchen, bonding over the unspoken fact that it is no small feat to get out to a place like this. There was one other lady travelling by herself, and I'm always pleased to see this as we are a small, but significant tribe. I have become that sort of woman I always secretly hoped I would be: middle aged, fit, dressed sloppily but not un-hip; not asexual, but definitley not enticing, and with a wee precious dog that shows a commitment to having a lovable companion to share the adventure with. The only other male guest there was named Fergus too. Wow. Two Irish-named mammals at Chinati Hot Springs on the same day. And he was all the way from England. The next morning my city persona took over & I bolted from the Springs in hope of good black coffee at the town at the bottom of the road. After a wrong turn (into a dry creek bed), I backtracked & finally made it to the town of Ruidoso - population "zero" it would appear. There were no buildings, certainly no coffee shops, and I even forgot about the coffee when I saw the giant wild boars racing along the road with me - wow again. I realized I was in a part of the country that has more animals than people. Wild burros & horses were spotted too, and the burros came up the the car & were very freindly. (If these are donkeys, forgive me, I don't know the difference). There was something surreal about the road from Ruidoso to Presidio: it bordered Mexico & you could see the canyons and all sorts of unidentifiable...lodging was all I could figure it must've been. Really put things in perspective for me. I live in my self-abosorbed, luxury problem filled life here the coddling bubble of city life, and a 10 hour or so drive to the deserts of my own state show me a lifestyle that I know nothing about - I wont try & guess what sort of living they eke out, but I admired them for putting togehter a home base, especially the ones out of scavenged materials. I once read a New Yorker article about the floating slum of Lagos Nigeria where everything is made of scavenged metal. I saw that today on highway 170, and it was nice to see that a lot of homey touches went into it. I feel that I am city girl in my soul, but there is something about ultra remote locations with nothing to do but visit with people that will have me put everything else on hold. When there are no places to go or things to do, people sit around and talk - about 10 strangers who are no longer strangers by the end of the evening. Can't believe I waited this long to come out here. Next time I'll bring Will.

West Texas

2008-08-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

It may look like Tucumcari, but West Texas has a whole different vibe. These photos were taken in Alpine, Marfa, and Fort Davis Texas, the gateway to the Big Bend Park. I've been coming out here since '92 and consider this my "runaway" place (or "run to" depending on what's going on in my life). It's very isolated and a long, long drive from a big city. There is no Wal Mart and almost every business is locally owned. About 10 years ago I secured a contract on a house in Alpine as I was convinced I was going to move here. Now that house has tripled in price and it is still only about $120K. I have to resist looking at real estate out here because it IS so affordable, but life in this small a town I'm not sure I could swing. Alpine is the biggest of the cities (pop. ~5000), where I stay at a 1940's lodge with my dog (bottom photo). Fort Davis is probably the prettiest of the towns as it has the McDonald Observatory nearby & lots of interesting mountains & rocks. The "Sleeping Lion" rock (also pictured) was something I wanted to climb, but when I drove up to it there was a fence around it. Marfa is the most interesting of the towns - with a population of just about 2000, it has become a swanky artists' mecca - and not your dreadlocked slacker coffee shop artist, but big name NYC artists with loads of cash fixing up the derelict buildings and filling them with cutting edge art, which juxtaposes sharply with the low income local adobe dwelling population. The best part of this trip this time is that it has rained a lot - at 85 degrees F it is twenty degrees cooler here than in Austin. 85 is still way too hot for me, but that's as good as it gets for a seven hour drive. There is no traffic. There is no noise. The sky is so beautiful that I got tears in my eyes watching the violent thunderheads rolling west last night. The relief I felt getting out of Austin was overwhelming. I had gone through a couple of weeks of "negotiating" my salary with the Antarctic folks which left me feeling empty (they said "no" but I keep my integrity), so I knew I'd be recharged out here. I miss my daily yoga class, but I brought a dvd & am trying to do it in my tiny room without knocking a decoration off the wall. I also recently finished a climbing class in a bouldering gym in Austin, and I'm itching to get back to climbing, and to try it outdoors. I know this post is uninspired so I'll keep it short. This blather is just padding for the photo of the grain elevator with the dark cloud above it, which I drove the wrong way down a one way street to get a shot of before the sun came back out. Actually, the other Marfa photo (with the water tower) has a dark sky as well. As far as my personal photographic ambitions, I live for this sort of shot. When I was taking photojournalism in 1980 in college, I raced out on one of the 10 cloudy days I have witnessed in my life, and did about half my assignments. Even before the professor told us, I knew the power, beauty and color saturation of a sunless photo. I guess my second favorite type of photo is crumbling buildings, so I got photo goodness on this day.

2008-07-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

Gaaak! I found out I accidentally removed my stat counter from my blog - I just thought no one had looked at in in a month, which would be unusual, as someone inevitably at least happens upon it by accident through a random Google search (an interesting one: "mohawk, pictures, smooth"). I've had this blog for two years before I installed the counter & now I don't know how I survived without it (remember before they invented caller ID: horrors!). I am not currently on a retreat or vacation of any kind so I don't know if I can blog about my life in Austin and still sound like a dynamic and interesting person. Let's see, I drink coffee for a couple of hours in the morning while surfing the net and inquiring with various travel companies if they have an opening on their tour of Labrador/Arctic Circle/Greenland (plotting my escape from the sticky Texas heat), and then decide I don't want to spend the 5-10K. I take my dog for a walk, though it's a short one as it's already boiling hot. I go to yoga, which makes me feel terrific, then hone my rock climbing skills at the Rock Gym I just started taking classes at. Like the skiing, it is very challenging & lots of fun. I ride my scooter as my primary form of transportation as it gets 100 mpg, and I have notice that this is turning into a scooter town. 4 years ago I didn't see too many scoots, now you can hear us beeping thru the night in moped solidarity. Another thing about nightfall in Austin - it is glorious. I fall in love with the city again. It is the one time I feel content to be outside. Riding after 9:00pm when it falls just under 90F degrees with a slight cool breeze is joyful. But since I've owned the scooter I've always felt really sad when I have to leave Fergus at home as he loves going to coffee shops with me but I never want to take my car. I've investigated different ways of trying to transport him on he scooter in the past but always decided I would be too nervous with my "precious cargo" if I dropped the bike. Well, for some reason a few days ago I just marched into PetCo & bought one of those front baby-holder type things & brought it home & when I stuffed him in it & walked out to get on the scooter for the first time he acted like "why did you wait so long?" So now we have been going on evening jaunts & he loves it (look closely at the blurry photo & you can see his wee fuzzy head). The looks I get from people in cars & one the streets is hilarious (I'm hoping it's not a "that poor woman is using a dog as a baby-substitute" look - but no, this is Austin, where you hardly ever see a white person with a baby). I always complain about my life when I'm at "home" but it reads like it seems like it should be really great. I guess it's as great as it can be for being in such a bad climate. I recently read in an Eckhart Tolle book that there is a type of person who cannot be happy unless they are travelling to unfamiliar places. I must be one of them. I can be "happy," doing my routine here, but not ecstatically living out the dictates of my daimon. I don't feel fully alive until I see that road stretched out before me into the unknown (or have hit that "make purchase" button on the airline website!).

I have a decision to make & it will be difficult: I've been offered a job at the South Pole that sounds really fun, but if I take it I won't see Will for 4 more months (and seeing him will be fun too!). How do you decide between love and....love?

Frisco, Fog, and even more Fun

2008-07-11T13:40:00.001-07:00

I went to San Francisco to do the Master Class version of the painting workshop I've been doing for years. This retreat is different from the one in Toas, as it is for seasoned process painters so the teacher pushes us to greater depths of creativity. But the best part is that I get to be in this awesome city, which I'd move to in heartbeat if I was rich. The photo from Chinatown was taken halfway through the workshop, on our 1/2 day off. We were just giddy from the process & the over-the-top-ness of Chinatown was the perfect place to spend the afternoon. I am lucky enough to have met my fabulous friend Gwinn at a workshop in Taos in 2003, and her mom has a house in the Potrero Hill neighborhood in SF (worth moving there for Farley's alone! World's coolest coffee shop). So I get to stay in one of my favorite American cities (and the most expensive) for free. Gwinn's nephew stayed with us for most the week and I was forewarned that I would have to play Monopoly every night until my eyes burned with fatigue. I said I didn't know how to play & hid in my room pretending to be "writing," so I wouldn't have to get my ass kicked by a 10 year old at a board game. Well, I was ordered to play by Gwinn's mom as she was cooking dinner & someone had to take her place - and lo & behold - my super competitive, greedy persona kicked in and I discovered I loved playing Monopoly with a kid. The last time I had played I was probably 10 also, and my dad, a gifted businessman, left my sister & I homeless & penniless within the first hour - so my memories of Monopoly was that it was very for skilled businesspeople only. But everyday I bolted from the painting class to rush home so could play with this darling boy. Its was one of the gorgeous treats from the universe that I could have never asked for.

The other photo is the 2nd one I have in my Entire Photo Collection that features actual real live fog! My other fog photo was taken last year in the Highlands of Scotland, with Will (my darling boyfriend currently residing at the South Pole), and that fog was hard to find, as my frenemy Mr. Sun followed me Everywhere else in Supposedly Cloudy Countries. Anyway, I promised not to rant anymore about the sun (currently 100 degrees in Austin Tx :-)), so aside from the fact that I can wear a sweatshirt in June, SF has too many good qualities to name - but some of those are: Walkable! I lost 5 pounds just walking everywhere. Adults! There's grown ups everywhere, hardly any kids or strollers, and no giant waddling people like you'd see, say, on the Wisconsin peninsula (it's be tough to walk these streets if you weren't fit). Gorgeous architecture, friendly people, Alcatraz and other cool touristy stuff, and Farley's: a coffeeshop I could live in.

Crabby Old Mexico

2008-07-02T13:05:00.001-07:00

It might seem strange that someone who becomes semi-hysterical when it is above 70 degrees and sunny, who goes all stabby at the thought of "swimwear" "tank tops" and "shorts", who would rather have a sharp stick in the eye than go to a sunny beach would go to a resort in Mexico in June, but that's what this icy-wind, arctic-cold loving blogger did. I went to a yoga retreat for 7 days in a jungle eco-resort outside of Sayulita, about 40 miles north of Puerta Vallarta. Eco-retreat means no electricity which means no air-conditioning. It must also mean tiny portions of food: vegan, vegetarian, ayurvedic (?) healthy food. Translation: no Tex-Mex. Despite all this, and for what has become a theme with this year's travel, I had a very very good time. I did almost no yoga! I laughed & hooted it up with my new friends while we climbed through the jungle from our palapas, squealing past the horror movie feel of what we were told by our hostess was the "crab migration" (imagine thousand upon thousands of defensive & noisy crabs rushing away from humans like a stabby, moving carpet ala the parting of the Red Sea. Imagine the foliage next to you crackling & shaking with hundreds of crab bodies as you stroll by trying to gaze out at the ocean while trying not to feel like you're in a movie adaption of a Stephen King novel). Reeling from the information we received that these critters would come inside our cabanas, we stumbled the sheer verticals to coffee in the am, drenched in sweat from our aerobic climb. The resort itself is fabulous: hand built in the jungle without the aid of earth movers (maybe they rolled the logs in over the crab bodies?); all palapas completely private and open air. As you can see from the picture, you could sit on the pot AND be tickled by local fauna (or was that... - no it WAS a palm frond), without having to go camping. The no electricity part didn't really hit me til it was dark & there was no lighting along the steep path to the cabanas or beach (that's when the crabs really gave you the heebee jeebies: backing up into a defensive stance, waving that one macho (or so they think) jumbo claw menacingly, black beady eyes hyper focused on the giant foot about to smash it). Luckily I had a flashlight, which I read by, and we had oil lamps in our cabanas - but life took on a magical quality with no wifi, cell phone, and the crab invasion that kept us alert. I honed my rock-scrambling skills on the big boulders lining the Pacific coast, did some jagged-rock-dodging, deep-water swimming, walked through the jungle everyday to visit the colorful town, giggled with all the new gals I met as we all met up for dinner every night to tell of our daily adventures. Some hardcore types took all the daily yoga classes (the classes were held in a building too high up for the crabs), but I was having so much fun not doing yoga that I didn't pressure myself to do it - and I was getting used to the crabs! It rained 5 of the 7 days so I was deliriously happy about that (that's why the crabs were out: their homes were flooded). Or course, a lot of the retreatants felt their vacation was "ruined" by the rain, but they eventually confessed in "closing circle" that the rain had made things more intimate between us (hello!). [warning! "reverse SAD" rant ahead: the seeminngly common notion that only cloudless blue skies with relentless sun is the preferred weather condition for every single day has always baffled me. Do these unimaginative sunburnt masses not know the heart pounding excitement of a violent thunderstorm, the soulful melancholy of dark clouds hanging like a mysterious grey curtain hung by a wizened old poet-god, the bracing and hope-filled day of promise provided by an icy breeze. I go on this rant under several aliases on several forums so I'll spare my Way Down Under loyal readers]. And these people were all Texans for pete's sake - you'd think they'd like something different than back home. I expected a yoga retreat to be all serious & PC, but it was like silly summer camp for post-menopausal women; and filled with crassness, irreverence, and barking spiders. There were two newlywed couples, which was really nice to see (aren't they on the endangered species list?), and of course the dependable warmth and hospitality of the locals, which is one of the bright spots of Mexico. Having been in Oaxaca and Chiapas on my last trip, I had forgotten how gringo-ized Jalisco (super touristy state I was in) was. Even the prices this far north were about the same as they would be in Texas. The street dogs were fatter and there was much less trash strewn around, but we didn't have those super cheap and delicious meals that were found closer to Guatamala. Oaxaca and Chiapas really felt like you were in a foreign country, whereas Sayulita was more like San Antonio. As far as travel destinations, Mexico is not high on my list - it is (relatively) convenient to get to for me and I really wanted to go on this yoga retreat-plus I have been many times. It is not far enough away for this Texan to get excited about. I have realized that the farther away, the more I yearn for it (unless it is some blank, buildingless pristine island in the middle of nowhere). So my next trip was to San Francisco, which is really as close to paradise as one can get for a large American city. I was so looking forward to the groovy coffee shops, the intelligent looking adults everywhere, more dogs than kids, Chinatown, pearl tea, and mainly mostly & with uberglee: fog!

Taos: almost Heaven

2008-05-24T14:56:00.001-07:00

I have been going to Taos for 7 years now and my heart still starts beating with happiness as soon as I start the ascent into the mountains...it is the only place I've been to in the states that feels like a foreign country - it's so weird and beautiful and laid back. I used to go and spend my time only at the historic Mable Dodge Luhan House (pictured), which is insanely cool, doing this painting trip, but now I have two reasons to go, as nearby is Taos Ski Valley where I go skiing in March. I always make friends with all these incredibly rich and successful and really interesting people. I spent 10 days with all these great women and on our last evening we raced wild & free sans clothes (not pictured) during a long, glorious, blue & gold sunset at the penitente church area. Parts of me that lie dormant all year emerge during my days in Taos: I buy extravagant things (note the trapper hat) whereas I am usually painfully frugal with myself, I feel in love with myself like I do at no other place (well, one other place), I feel gracious & generous & full of life. I think about moving there, but it just hasn't felt right yet. And it's so cliched but it's true: the light and colors of the sky and shadows all seemed to be infused with some sort of spiritual essence. You don't see the billionaires & movies stars that supposedly live here...just dusty trucks with broken windows & rangy dogs spilling out the back. Lots of old and new hippies who work the ski valley in winter & do odd jobs the rest of the time. It was kismet that I ever ended up here: I was in an Austin bookstore in the art section. Picked up a book with a wildly colorful cover ("Life, Paint and Passion" by Michele Cassou), read it one sitting & KNEW I had to meet this woman. Looked her up on the web & called and got in last minute in a February workshop within a few weeks of finding her book...so now I've done 9 of her workshops and the experience of doing the process painting is equal to the jaw dropping splendor of Taos. It's almost too much yumminess in one experience. Aside from going to Antarctica, nothing has ever felt so right.

Tucumcari

2008-05-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

Fascinating in its desolation and brimming with American detritus, Tucumcari (could it's sister city be Oodnadatta, South Australia?) is a visual feast for those who like the offbeat, but there's no need to spend more than one night in this derelict town. It's a ghost town with boarded up buildings, scraggly locals and nothing going on. It is devoid of bodies except for the odd stream of Route 66 fetishists passing through. The Blue Swallow provided spotless, comfy lodging with personable owners, and a communal vibe that contrasted sharply with the shady characters that pestered me when I tried to take a sunset walk. I ended up getting a wee bit scared when 3 locals on Harleys were following me down the sidewalk trying to engage me in conversation. And I am not usually scared of much. So much cool rehab potential in all these funky old buildings- someone with money could turn this into an artists' mecca - and beautiful murals painted on everything. Scored a 9 on the funky-meter, yet had a spooky, "opening shots of 'Andromeda Strain'" vibe...

Cadillac Ranch

2008-05-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

I'm embarrassed to say I've been a Texan all my life and have never been to the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo (it IS a two day drive from Austin for you tiny state dwellers), but I finally made it. It made me swell with local pride & I wished the cows would have stuck around (for the photos) but they always bolt when gawkers arrive (I read that on tripadvisor.com).

I had stayed overnight in a wonderful B&B I found online, with extensive garden ponds where giant koi fish ate out of my hostess' hand like hungry puppies. I stayed in their beautiful Victorian home and lounged around like some obscure relative who rarely visits but is warmly welcomed. After a sumptous breakfast I headed out to New Mexico to stay at an old Route 66 Motel in Tucumcari. I will hopefully post some fab fotos of the strip that I plan to take tonight when all the neon is winking. I realized I had the key still from the B&B in Amarillo, and it is now in the possession of this cool Belgian couple I just met who rode into the motel on a Harley, who said they would drop it off on their way through Amarillo tomorrow. They flew to the states to do all of Route 66 on a bike - they were sunburnt and shaken by the brutal wind out here - I wish them luck. I met another couple here who have seen more of the US than I have - she is Kiwi & he is Irish and they are driving around the entire country. Being from two of my favorite countries, we had much to gab about. Also had a long fun chat with my hotel neighbor, Lisa, who is from the east coast and likes to travel the same way I do. It's great to run into a kindred spirit in this incredibly spirt-infused place...it is so rare I run into solo women travellers who are "winging it"! Hopefully we'll inspire other women to do this too...

Tomorrow I head to Toas & begin the journey into the psychic abyss that is labelled a "painting workshop"...I will be staying in the Mabel Dodge Luhan House adjacent to the Taos Pueblo, listening to coyotes howl at night, painting 8 hours a day in silence surrounded by a powerful and unnamable energy that pushes us into the unknown.

I'd better go, as the famous New Mexican sunset is about to start ;-)

Road Trip - Texas Legs...

2008-04-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

What the Heck did we do before the internets as far as making travel plans? I was researching places to stay on my road trip from Austin to Taos, NM & stumbled across this B&B (in Lubbock) that had a restored caboose in the backyard. I hit the "reserve" button so fast I didn't even look at the price - I'm realizing more & more that unique lodging is a big part of road trip fun. It was so much funkier & luxurious than pictured. It's perfect for one person, and from reading the diaries, it is primarily used for a honeymoon night. Lubbock itself was a surprisingly cool town. The big University there was directley across the street from my caboose, so I spent a lovely evening hoofing around the really pretty campus, bathing in a famous 2 hour panhandle sunset. It was a long drive from Austin, but my next travel day was a short one to Amarillo, which is where I am now, lying in a 100 year old victorian house, where I just watched a movie on TV with the hosts - funtimes! The drive from Lubbock was so easy & the landscape so interesting: I'd seen bits of farms & farm equipment before but never on this level. I was looking for clusters of tall buildings to indicate "downtown" while approaching Amarillo, but there were only enormous and imposing grain elevators and jumbo sized heavy equipment everywhere. There cannot possibly be a job shortage in this part of the state as I've never seen so many trucks, tractors, train cars and highwaymen - possibly a hundred miles of cotton crop and tons of edgy & ominous looking cotton gins. I also spent half the day at Palo Duro Canyon State Park - it is stunning, and like everything else around here, I'm the onlly one at it! I went to this cool WWII Glider Museum outside of Lubbock, which was really fascinating, and I was the only visitor so the elderly volunteer gentleman walked me around & was so happy to see a solo woman there I think. No expense was spared for this museum showcasing these fascinating planes. Travelling alone can be challenging: a burst of anticipation when hitting the road in the a.m., followed by the comedown (turning into ennui) of hours of highway time that you tell yourself is interesting because you've never seen it before (and usually IS interesting); the afternoon dip in mood after the day's activities are squared away and you have a long evening in your lodging to contend with (I usually walk in the evenings, or read), the yearning towards bedtime so you can turn tourist mode off & research on the internet stuff to do for the next day...but I also feel the courage & chutzpah that is required to daily confront one's aloneness on the road, and the very obvious knowledge (acquired after 7 hours of driving) that one's attitude is completely a choice - and the delight that every person I've encountered has displayed a saintly level of cordiality - but this is Texas, so it's to be expected :-). Tomorrow is day 3 of my trip and I will be out of my home state by afternoon & into cooler mountain temps. I'm travelling on old route 66 to Tucumcari so there should be plenty of hokey picture ops.