Way Down Under

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

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.