t r a v e s í a

p a p e r w e i g h t

2011-11-13T17:50:00.001-08:00

The moon hung an inch above your wing, the backdrop to a stage of a thousand lights. Awash in Milky Way, a relief map sea of constellations shone below like candlelight through the inside of a hollowed out gourd. Aglow with November, you retraced the journey east to west, from Sunrise to Moonset and back, past the brown signs and the woo-loo-loo’s, into the Everglades, across a great bridge to Marco Island, and through and through to a little blue dock by the bay where a father canoed his little girl to shore one last time. She said her vows in a pretty white dress laced with love and tied herself to her sweetheart’s blue knot through tears, setting sail. Over Big Cypress and Cape Coral, past Tallahassee and into the east, they soared. Over Bermuda, dipping for providence along the North Atlantic until the wind took them south. A familiar tongue clicked below as they blew like a kite past Easter Island, over days gone and times forgotten, grazing the Andes in their steepest ascent. And when they crossed the final peak, they paused to break bread, sipping wine like Jam. They smiled and breathed and free-fell til dawn broke like an egg yolk over the Cape. There they skimmed the waters of the eastern hemisphere, tracing their initials across an uncharted coast, settling into the sands of South Africa like a paperweight.

w o b b l e t o n

2011-11-06T02:53:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there was a wide, wide world called Wobbleton filled with weebles--winged, beastly, serpentine creatures convinced monsters do not exist. Except for three friends who know better.

www.wobbleton.blogspot.com

s i n . v u e l t a

2011-08-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

Sin vuelta, saysthe ticket. I’d like the ida betterif I knew there was a vuelta in thecards. The uncertainty of our return makes me sad. Uruguay, I already miss you.Your cobblestone gutters and your caballosand your green dumpsters that look like tool sheds. Your marmalade constructioncrane, a brontosaurus seven stories high with its back to the river. Yourcreepy statue man on the sixth floor of Susan and Victor’s apartment building. YourCaféBacacay in the sombras of TeatroSolis, and your Tiempo Funky with trinkets and record albums and barrettes withbirds. Your medialunas and empanadas that don’t quite taste likeBuenos Aires. Your chivito and your Armenianfood and your Francis that sounds like Francoli. Your yerba-sipping bus drivers letting steaming water splatter, gouging plastic-coveredrolls of pesos with their thumbs and missing the old man hailing a ride. Your yellow328 zooming by on a Monday morning—buendia, says the passenger to thedriver, who mutters an inaudible response. Your escolares and your great big floppy bow ties and backpacksand pencil cases. Your pamiinching along, arm-in-arm, abrigadoin their boinas and scarves. Your sweet hellos and goodbyes. Your Spanish keyboard and your digestivos at 16:00 and your lingeringpace. Your city’s outskirts where an abandoned train station gives way to bodegas. Your hidden countryside in its profound silence.

They say travels are really a search for response to aquestion you couldn’t ask or answer at home. Maybe I wanted to see how I’ddo living 6,000 miles from familiarity. If I could enjoy that, if I could explore the languageI was afraid to speak, the mountain peak I was afraid to attempt, then maybe I wouldhave some assurance of my chosen career path.

Tell the truth, because then you make it their problem (says Sean Connery, in MichaelCrichton’s memoir Travels). Thetruth is, I loved it. For someone who shouldn’t have fit in, I surprised myself.I found a niche. And now I don’t want to leave.

But with ironic timing, the weekend winds took a turn andthe waves thrashed in protest against the brick and concrete sidewalls of the Rambla,the clouds drifting toward Punta del Este with a new urgency. Even the smoke fromthe neighborhood parilla turned away.I too, wanted to shift east, following the wind like Mary Poppins along the rivertoward the Atlantic. But daylight spilled over my last calendar square of work,an ink bottle upturned, illuminating the city’s silhouette and tinting the horizonpink toward Argentina. And the sun shone home.

I guess you can never change where home is. You try to makeone wherever you find yourself, but the crumbly edge of Earth that meets thePacific at latitude 33.619 and longitude-117.928 will always be your birthplace. And though I know I’ll be gladto see the Americas’ west when the plane dips down over Los Angeles, I’mnostalgic for the Americas’ east we’re leaving behind, and for the future here,perhaps, to which we haven’t yet arrived. One day, capás. Until then, I can only behonest about the strange mezcla of nostalgiaI feel for home and for here, and for a future abroad I have merely tasted.

Tell the truth, because then you make it their problem. But the truth is, it’sstill my problem. Just when I feel I’ve arrived, it’s time to go somewhere else,and an odd sort of multi-directional longing sets in. I suspect no matter whereI go, that sentiment will be a lifelong stowaway.

Un beso afectuoso makes for a sloppy goodbye to Uruguay, but I can’t help it. My memoryholds fondly to her enchanting countryside, her sleepy city by the sea,and especially, the hospitality of her hosts.

Uruguay, ya te extraño.Gracias por todo, y esperamos volver.

t e m b l a n d o

2011-07-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

The bus wound its way down the hill to the coastline, while Zorrillasat silent and stone-cold, lips sewn with the secrets of dead poets. Past PuntaCarretas, the white and red 121 chased the river toward Pocitos where fiveships aligned behind the bust of Mahatma Gandhi like the Sydney Opera House. Ahorse rested. Her breath wrestled with the air like a pair of steaming pistons as herhungry owner sifted head-first through a green dumpster. Past the fish stand and the highrise construction and the tero whopaused to gawk, one cautious foot poised midair. Past the Escuela Gratuita de Rugby,and the Campo de Deportes where a mother kicked the ball around with her daughterand sons. Past Edificio Augusto and the old bueys and anchors that decorate theRambla. Past the Plaza de Tomas Gomensoro where a black Labrador wore a bufanda and an off-leash mutt left agift beside a sign that read “You are responsible for what your dog does onthis lawn.” And you laughed while the bicentennial flowers shivered in the sombras of winter in July.

Winter in July, where the mate drinkers wore mittens and youwished you’d remembered yours. Temblando past oldtracks and tired trees and a tiendacalled Timbóyou hoped to return to visit. Past the father-and-sons barber shop whose chairswere occupied by a man and two boys. Up the avenue that curved toward PlazaIndependencia, where an enormous Artigas stood guard over his urn of ashes inthe dark mausoleum beneath. You spent ten dollars on box seats by the stage forthe Philharmonic’s Wednesday evening performance at Teatro Solis, and then you meanderedthrough the cobblestone feria along Sarandí, stumbling across a 1953 postcard from Virginia, a barrette with a green bird,and The Best of Harry Belafonte. You peered into La Lupa and found yourselfseated at a wooden sidetable, where you sipped tea until you were warm, and youkept your nose in a children’s book until your tea grew cold, and still youlingered. Still.

Still, inside the Mercado del Puerto where the touristsbustled and stared at meat so rare the French fries were soaked pink. You drankyour Patricia and he drank his Pilsen and you left at dusk with sueño onyour eyelids like sandbags.

The bus rumbled down Cerritos. Eighteen pesos poorer and aticket in hand, you watched the street signs dissolve, their blue platesscratched and faded against the walls and alleys of Ciudad Vieja. Past twoempty canchas and restaurantes cerrados and sidestreet shopsbuttoned closed like overcoats.

Like a chocolate bar warming in the sun, you switched on the heater and melted into bed. And you didn’t wake for ten hours.

Sunday brunch. You skipped the book fair. You wrote yourparents. Feliz dia del padre, saidGoogle. The neighbors made an asado with humoso thick you had to close your bedroom window. Then the birds scrambled in aflutter from their nests as gunshots and firecrackers and horns and whistles rattledthe afternoon out of its siestita. But no one was really sleeping. Revolutionarywar, the foreigners would think! But it was only a game. Three goals later, the buildings shook with cheers and children screamed Campeon! Campeon! while the city exploded to the tune of her fifteenthCopa.

Outside an unmarked Ford Falcon rolled by—its occupants,teenagers, honking in celebration while you made your way toward oranges and marmaladeand dos cientos cincuenta gramos of ham.

Home, and the miradorbuzzed you in. Arms anchored with plastic sacks, you winced, and the elevatormade seven flights look easy. Inside, you shed your scarf, hat, gloves, ear muffs, jacket, wool sweater, socks, soul. The bread and the olives and the yerba tucked away, you too folded yourself into the warm covers like cake batter, gone before you could say freckles or alfajores or goodnight to the shy medialuna, to the honking cars now holding their tongues (except for the periodic die-hard MEEP that pierced the midnight skies). Your dreams whispered goodnights to the sombras and the dead poets and Gandhi and the Labrador and the Campeones. A five-sailed boat soared through your cobwebs, past a laughing cow and eighteen sheep jumping ship, over the puesta del Sol, into the abyss of the madrugada.

c h a u

2011-07-02T23:11:00.000-07:00

THINGS I LEARNED IN NEW YORK CITY

I didn’t know how beautiful Central Park was until I rowed a boat through it. Or how hidden its hilly paths were until I got lost in the Ramble, stumbling into the Shakespeare Sculpture Garden, past the Swedish Cottage, into a performance of Measure by Measure beneath a striking but not-quite-full moon.

I didn't know how fast I could inhale a deviled egg until I went to Dizzy's Coca-Cola Club at Lincoln Center. Or how a jazz clarinetist sounds live, wailing like Benny Goodman in 2011. Or that the 57 crosstown bus doesn’t run after midnight. Or that a late-night ticket for Page One: Inside the New York Times meant a semi-private screening at Lincoln Center because only three people in New York City want to see a documentary at 10:30 on a Friday night in the pouring summer rain.

I didn’t know I liked arepas, or dim sum, or kadaif, or tacos de lengua. I didn’t know that restaurant doors open like shutters into the streets on hot nights when the humidity hangs in the air like a fog. Or how quickly a music venue could open its doors only to close them mere months later. I didn’t know going to a Puerto Rican jazz club in El Barrio of East Harlem meant sitting next to the bass trombonist who forgot his music stand.

I didn’t know we’d find Mark Laycock conducting the WSU Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, or that we’d see him at the Hyatt adjacent to Grand Central nearly four years after he conducted our wedding orchestra. I didn’t know WSU would play two pieces reminiscent of razor blades and sunshine (respectively). I didn’t know I’d hear the St. Petersburg String Quartet perform chamber music as it was supposed to be performed—in a small room. I didn’t know I’d hear a woman playing a saw in the subway. I didn’t know I’d miss my clarinet.

I didn’t know a farmer from Pennsylvania traveled all the way to Manhattan’s East 82^nd street Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings just to sell cheese, courtesy of his cow, Nettie. I didn’t know fresh cage-free eggs could be different sizes in one carton. I didn’t know what a homemade apple donut tasted like. Or that Augusto liked peanut butter. On a bagel.

I didn’t know how many normal people got invited to film premieres. Or what the Ziegfeld looked like on the inside. Or the New World Stage. Or the Schoenfeld. I didn’t know I would get to see Chris Rock live on Broadway. Or what it would be like to watch Avenue Q from the front row, so close you could make eye contact with the actors and get spat on when they enunciated their lines. I didn’t know the Gary Coleman character would turn to me and say "give me your money, lady! What the hell is wrong with you?!" during the pass-the-hat scene. I didn’t know I could sit by a box office at eight in the morning and walk away with $25 student rush tickets by ten.

I didn’t know we were living a mere five blocks from one of the greatest museums in the Western hemisphere. I didn’t know what an Egyptian tomb looked like, or how artists and scribes painted hieroglyphs with slight variation on otherwise identical tomb walls just to see if you were paying attention.

I didn’t know what an Utz potato chip tasted like from a nosebleed vantage in Yankee stadium on five dollar Tuesday. Or that Grand Central Station was once so dirty, a square of filth remains at the edge of its now-spectacular celestial ceiling as a reminder of its former state.

I didn’t know I’d live across the street from Martine’s Chocolates, smiling at the daily sight of a chocolate T-Rex poised next to a chocolate Wooly Mammoth in the display window. I didn’t know that out of every single chocolate for sale in her shop, I’d like the simplest milk chocolate truffles best. I didn’t know I’d live in East Village before finding 82^nd street, or how much the two neighborhoods would differ from each other. I didn’t know I’d fall in love with Mott Street and Prince and Spring and Mulberry and Elizabeth Street—East Village and its Café Gritane, its shops and street vendors. I didn’t know how many hats I’d try on without buying a single one.

I didn’t know there was a Boca Juniors restaurant in Queens. Or that the staff celebrates wins by beating a giant drum to their victory song, parading around the room with Boca umbrellas. I didn’t know we’d get whisked upstairs to a private diplomatic reception at the Argentinean Consulate when Augusto flashed his U.N. badge at the front of the line. I didn’t know we’d meet the Consul, two generals, and the State Department’s Deputy Director of Foreign Missions, who lived in Uruguay as a teenager. I didn’t know we’d get an invitation to visit the State Department office and learn more about career options. I didn’t know I’d sign up for the Foreign Service exam in midtown and pass.

I didn’t know what coal fire brick oven pizza was until I tasted the Bianca at Arturo’s on Houston and Thompson after traipsing through a thunder storm in canvas Toms during our first night in the city. I didn’t know what New York bagels were until I went to Ess-a-Bagel! before visiting Ellis Island. I didn’t know that an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and smoked salmon is not just a bagel, but an experience. I didn’t know you could find fresh squeezed orange juice on every corner in the city. I didn’t know how many people in Manhattan had dogs. I didn’t know little dogs in the city wear doggie booties. I didn’t know how much poop a great dane could produce until I saw one taking a dump on the sidewalk next to a Boston terrier.

I didn’t know what “delivery” meant until I lived in a fifth floor walk-up and ordered Pinkberry online. I didn’t know why “lunch specials” mattered until I realized what dinner prices looked like. I didn’t know what the East River or the Hudson looked like until I strolled alongside them to watch their currents flow. I didn’t know how Manhattan looked in the spring until I saw tulips lining the planters in the streets and New Yorkers “curbing their dogs” to keep the spring flowers alive as long as possible. I didn’t know what the 91^st street garden looked like apart from its screen time in You’ve Got Mail. I didn’t know how breathtaking Columbia University’s library would be until I gazed out from its lectern.

I didn’t know the dreadful power of a single mosquito, or the downside of a screenless window in the summer, or the necessity of cold showers and a small but mighty fan in a studio apartment without air conditioning. I didn’t know hot. I didn’t know squirrels would threaten mass family invasion of the windowsill after I shared my leftover Yankees peanuts.

I didn’t know how to get to the fire escape. I didn’t know how to “buzz” someone in. I didn’t know how door locks worked. I didn’t know one tenant would need three keys for a single apartment. I didn’t know certain mailbox keys are so old and oddly shaped that they can’t be replicated. I didn’t know everything was old, constantly under renovation, masked by towers and mazes of scaffolding. I didn’t know our local Webster library branch was one of the oldest in the city.

I didn’t know that it takes two hours to get to JFK from the city by subway on a holiday weekend. I didn’t know that the subway slows down in the rain. I didn’t know what a private cab was until I accidentally got in one on the way back from IKEA Brooklyn. I didn’t know IKEA Brooklyn would be exactly the same as IKEA Costa Mesa, apart from Brooklyn’s first floor parking structure.

I didn’t know that living in New York City was like living in another world. I didn’t know that the more I discovered there was to the city, the more I realized I would never be able to see it all in two and a half months. I didn’t know I’d miss this place as much as I do.

In all, I absorbed some fine culture and cuisine, learned how to walk, talk, and eat like a New Yorker, and narrowed down future dog breeds to great dane (very large poop), boxer (slightly less large poop), bulldog (normal sized poop), and Boston terrier (poop so small it is frequently mistaken for cat waste or urban runoff). I gained a sense of direction, honesty, and fulfilled nearly everything on my first-time-living-in-NYC bucket list. I even was mistaken for a local on a number of occasions. In fact…

…YOU KNOW YOU’RE MISTAKEN FOR A NEW YORKER WHEN the Spanish-speaking florist at the local corner store goes inside to ask for three ice coffees from the Korean cashier, who asks the Spanish-speaking florist if he wants cream and sugar, causing the florist to turn to you and ask IN SPANISH for clarification on whether the Korean cashier is in fact asking him if he wants cream and sugar in his ice coffee. You confirm IN SPANISH that, yes, that is exactly what the cashier is asking, and you watch as the florist replies yes to the cashier when he really only wants sugar, and somehow the cashier knows this and does not add cream. Meanwhile you swear the Spanish-speaking people you’ve met in most other places take one look at you and think you’re Norwegian or born on an iceberg or both, but apparently things are different in New York City. Apparently, even iceberg-born Norwegians speak Spanish. But not Koreans. They speak Portuguese.

THINGS I’LL MISS

Central Park: stumbling across an inflatable movie screen for a French film festival kick-off at dusk; finishing our rowboat picnic on the grass in front of La Piscine (1969); hearing "If I Only had a Brain" on harmonica at the Boathouse; getting lost; meandering through the Ramble; eating Waffles ‘n Dinges at the Great Lawn; strolling through the breathtaking cathedral of elms arcing over the Mall.

The Met: the Egypt wing; staying until closing and lingering on the steps outside while a bad clarinetist graces the neighborhood with his pitiful rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

The American Museum of Natural History: great big South American dinos. ‘Nuff said.

The MoMA Design Store: if you think the museum is cool, wait ‘til you discover its store. Sigh.

Stumptown Coffee and the ACE Hotel: Portland meets NYC; Agu’s favorite coffee + flowering jasmine tea + crack pie + the nicest public restrooms in Manhattan.

La Fonda Boricua Lounge: RIP to “a cultural center—an extension of your house,” in the words of the owner.

Hummus Kitchen: falafel, mint tea, and the molten chocolate cake; I retained a commemorative bookmark that immortalizes “how to eat hummus.”

Lincoln Center: student nights at Dizzy’s, after hours jazz, and the film society; getting to see the U.S. premiere of Toast.

Student rush tickets: worth the wait.

Running into famous people: where else can you run into Leslie Baker, Phyllis Smith, Aziz Ansari, and say “I touched Kirstie Alley’s butt three times!” because she kept bumping you at the film premiere??! Oh yeah, L.A.

Restaurants with funny names: Chicken Festival and Wasabi Lobby tie for first prize in the Upper East. What the duck?

PO YEE Wash ‘n Fold: 78th & 2^ndAve; never late and never early—predictable, consistent, and cheap as Hell. After I picked up my last load and said I was leaving the city, Po shook my hand.

Chau, New York. It's been a dream.

a j u s t a n d o

2011-06-06T06:03:00.000-07:00

You know you're adjusting to life in New York City when...

...you're willing to carry a twenty-five pound sack of laundry five blocks to get the best wash 'n fold service in the neighborhood.

...you become irritated when you have to stop at a street light.

...you brave a barrage of mosquito bites if it means a night of cool air through your screenless window.

...you recognize the myriad paths you've been meandering through Central Park's Ramble.

...you give up on using your fine new umbrella.

...you thoughtfully ration your underwear so you don't have to carry a twenty-five pound sack of laundry five blocks without some on.

...you have become loyal to a particular neighborhood supermarket.

...you become irritated when your neighborhood supermarket fails to stock adequate guacamole on the day you are planning a picnic on a Central Park rowboat.

...you are willing to walk five blocks for an eight dollar tub of guacamole.

...you use Pinkberry delivery service until you discover they won't stamp your Pinkberry card.

...you are willing to hike five flights of stairs to retrieve your Pinkberry if it means receiving a stamp toward a free order.

...you are willing to circle your neighborhood five times after retrieving your Pinkberry just to avoid the furnace, aka your brick-oven studio with south-facing windows.

...you throw your slipper at the squirrel who frequents your fire escape to beg for peanuts because you know that he will bring his entire family and enter your apartment and climb your curtains in protest if you don't make a peace offering or stand your ground in defense of your screenless window.

...you otherwise like squirrels.

...you've gotten so used to stumbling across outdoor movies, festivals, concerts, and street fairs, that you intentionally carry cash along your routine neighborhood strolls.

...you recognize the sound of your neighbor's window opening right before he subjects the entire apartment complex to the odor of his daily weed-smoking habit.

...you know the average time you have to angle your fan away from your brick-oven studio's screenless window in order to divert the odor of your neighbor's daily weed-smoking habit.

...you're willing to run thirty blocks in the blazing heat and humidity when the subway goes down if it means making a soccer game you've committed to.

...you know how to flash your UN badge to get into a private diplomatic reception.

...your nightlife begins to revolve around a calendar of free events.

...you protest when a bag lady occupies the library's single bathroom stall for twenty minutes.

...you use the library.

...you stand your ground when a middle-aged lady asks you to move from the young adult sofa section of the library because "it's for teens."

...you convince the middle-aged lady that you are more of a young adult than she is, and if the sign really meant "teens only" it should say so.

...you convince the middle-aged lady to go after the eighty-year old man who has been hogging a cozy overstuffed arm chair in the "young adult" section for the past hour and a half.

...you time yourself to see whether you can walk faster than a taxi in traffic.

...you take a train instead of a bus so you can arrive before the lunch special ends.

...you become accustomed to the uncomfortable feeling of a single bead of sweat rolling down your back between your shoulder blades.

...you take a bus instead of a train because the air conditioning is better, and you can get more reading accomplished.

...you take a cab instead of a bus because the bus doesn't show up after waiting in blazing heat and humidity in your business attire for twenty-five minutes.

...you take a cab instead of a bus and realize that it takes just as long to take a train.

...you take a bus instead of a cab because you'd rather swallow glass than pay fifteen bucks for a two dollar ride.

...you take a rowboat in Central Park because you're sick of buses, cabs, and trains, and its the closet thing to an E-ticket ride, aside from renting a car.

...you realize that riding the Carnegie Hall elevator is an E-ticket ride waiting to happen.

...you decide to take the stairs.

r u i d o

2011-05-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

It takes me a few hours to recognize that I'm not hearing owls or vampires or UFOs fluttering outside the apartment with that odd-throated ruido. No, no--it's a flock of pigeons. The pigeons that live between 82nd and 83rd.

God love the pigeons--no one else does. My opinion of the pigeon species lowered when one shat on the lapel of Augusto's sport coat on his way to meet me for lunch. So you won't blame me when I tell you that I accidentally kicked one that was a little too comfortable with its trajectory on my way from Pershing Square Cafe to Grand Central Station. Sorry, buddy--people move fast in New York. You either put out your kickers or get shat on.

Actually, the truth is I intentionally try to kick pigeons just to watch with glee as they flutter away with an air of protest about them. Is that cruel? This one must have been maimed or deranged or just feeling sorry for itself because it failed to flutter away when I gestured to it with the big toe of my red shoe. The result: I kicked a pigeon. Like any rough-and-tumble New Yorker having a bad day, I neglected to apologize. In fact I think I swore instead of apologizing because I was mildly surprised to have been inconvenienced by this bird, which I actually managed to kick--let's say gently nudge--in its feathered behind. It could have been worse--I could have raised a handgun in the air and fired, only to find the poor bird fluttering down to its untimely death (ahem, DAD). I'm not that lucky of a shot anyway, nor do I carry a handgun, but maybe I should go out for one of the UN soccer teams? Augusto says no; the Mighty Snails only have one vacant position, and it's defense so he has dibs.

Anyway it didn't appear as though condolences on my part would have made much difference to this fool of a bird. If you've been kicked, you've been kicked. Better to get on about your day, maybe find some poor bum to offer you a cracker.

When I worked in the public library system, I discovered one of my favorite children's books: the Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! I even went so far as watching an off-Broadway version of the book brought to the stage. Yes it was a British guy wearing a giant pigeon costume. Yes it was bizarre and amusing in a twisted, I'm-so-tired-this-is-hysterical sort of way. Particularly the "Hot Dog Party" song.

Those were the days when I ushered at the then-Orange County Performing Arts Center. Between that play, Stomp, My Fair Lady, the National Acrobats of China, and weekly doses of the Pacific Symphony, I could die happy. Although getting an ushering gig while I'm in New York would certainly complete my experience. At least, more so than kicking a pigeon.

Easier than kicking a pigeon or getting a theater job is getting a library card. I am a proud new patron of the New York Public Library system, something that only a select few individuals in my life can truly appreciate. I have yet to visit the famed lions. I keep winding up in the two-year-old branch on 46th, where there is a prominently displayed copy of the hit sequel The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too (yes, these are real children's books). I had to fight over the women's restroom with a bag lady (no, I didn't kick her), and ever since, the Grand Central branch has been just like home.

Well, home is actually a fifth floor walk-up on the east side, where the pigeons coo sweeter (poo sweeter?) and a bushy-tailed squirrel frequents our bedroom windowsill to peek in wistfully. This morning I arranged five peanuts leftover from the Yankee game next to the fire escape, but so far the squirrel has yet to make an appearance. He must only eat hot dogs. That, or he got kicked by an arrogant New Yorker. But something tells me squirrels don't get kicked. Guess the book should have been titled The Pigeon Finds a Shoe in its Arse! Or Squirrels are Far More Clever than Foot-Loving Pigeons! Now my love of non-fiction is rearing its head.

Aha--as I write this, I hear a crackle, and it's not the ruido of the pigeon family! There on my open windowsill sits the squirrel, happily munching on my post-Yankees victory offering! Eat your heart out, Kansas City Royals!

To quote my mother, I never thought I'd be rooting for the Yankees. Although, as a little girl, I did think Derek Jeter would be worth marrying. Sorry, Derek--too late, this gal's taken. And I also kick pigeons, apparently, so you probably would have gotten cold feet at the altar anyway.

My actual spouse is a good kick in the pants himself--just ask the Mighty Snails who played to the tune of a 5-2 victory at the Roosevelt Island field. For the record, Roosevelt Island has geese instead of pigeons, and they probably would chase me if I tried to scatter them from their precious young. So I don't hate all birds. Just pigeons. They're like lemmings, really.

Ah, New York. They plant tulips in the spring and the Wurst never smells so good. And while the squirrel finds other sills to visit along his afternoon jaunt, I'm reminded of another New Yorker that I hope my shoe doesn't become acquainted with: the Bronx Zoo cobra. Now that's a Spring Awakening I'd prefer to save for Broadway.

s i e t e

2011-04-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Day 7

You know you're in NYC when...

1 ...a pregnant lady crosses on red in front of a moving vehicle without flinching.

2 ...a dog gets in an elevator with you.

3 ...the homeless guy believes you when you pretend not to speak English.

4 ...someone begs you to take their photo posed in front of a nondescript office building.

5 ...a complete stranger offers you a job when they overhear that you teach music.

6 ...you finally buy a real umbrella.

7 ...the local KFC sells bagels.

p o s t a l

2011-04-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Day 4

2:51 AM (EST)

Dear Parents,

Greetings from the Big Apple! We hope you are enjoying your two-week cruise through paradise and the Panama Canal. While you are off releasing baby sea turtles and sipping margaritas beneath exotic Central American sunsets, we are enduring a fierce thunderstorm from beneath a leaking skylight on the 4th floor of the White House Hotel (read: inconspicuous hostel whose hand-painted building sign states "$5 wi-fi" and is easily missed beneath one hundred feet of scaffolding). Really, we got lucky on this one; if we did not live and breathe by a "Not For Tourists" insider's guide to NYC, we would be dorming at the Y for twice the N and half the C. Never mind that the wi-fi hasn't been working for months. After all, it's really about character, quality, and price. For example, we pay a whopping $35 per person for a double occupancy private room (read: two micro-twin beds on rollers pushed together in a pale green 5x10 shoe box with an open lid and just enough floorspace to open a single suitcase). Yes, what's not to love? As long as we get two free towels and audible farts remain lost amidst the soothing lullaby of rainwater cascading into the rooms of our floormates (read: a well-mannered gaggle of elderly women from the United Kingdom), what could be better? And in the center of NoHo, no less? Hell, we'll let the whole Falklands War thing go.

New York, we love you. We love lugging our fifty pound luggage up three flights of stairs to board the J train at the Myrtle St. station in Brooklyn, or the next three flights waiting for us at the 6 connection, or the next three at the Bleecker St. exit, or the next three at the hostel in Manhattan (read: who's counting?). We love walking into a Think Coffee bathroom stall artfully graffiti-tagged with poetry, like "Here I sit / Broken hearted / Meant to shit / But only farted." We love the futile hunt for the famed Hallo Berlin hotdog stand, a bratwurst mirage on 54th and 5th that leaves us miffed and starving enough to settle for sub-par empanadas (read: tastes like chicken but we just aren't sure). We love getting caught in the rain on the way to a coal fire pizza joint, chasing our hats into a six lane avenue and dodging rogue taxis while cursing at the uselessness of umbrellas turned out like pockets. We love watching the pizza joint's windows fog up with the laughter of her guests while a jazz trio trades fours and the rain beats down on New Yorkers smart enough not to clothe themselves in canvas shoes or cotton sweaters.

In the end, we all know the real reason why we're doing this. It's not that we love New York, nor is it about the prestige of working inside one of the most renowned international organizations on the globe. No, no, no. We all know the real reason we're here is to enhance your Christmas letter. That's right. Who needs Cabo and Costa Rica and baby sea turtles? Pah! You can't put a price on leaky hostels, crowded subways, and appallingly filthy restrooms! And you can't find more vibrant poetry for an official Ban Ki Moon postcard--which, by the way, you can slap with a personalized UN stamp sporting your grinning intern's mugshot (read: better than a "Mother of So-and-So" t-shirt, coming to a mailbox near you). Yes, dear parents, this is all for you. You just thought we were abandoning our dog-sitting duties to chase our dreams.

And so, as the rain dances on the rooftops of Manhattan, and, as of thirty seconds ago, my very own bed, I'll leave you with these fine words from the bathroom wall: "Employees must wash anus before returning to work."

Do keep your anuses clean after a long day of sight-seeing--we certainly are doing the same.

Love,

Your Children

r i t m o

2011-04-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

An Atlanta baggage handler zooms too fast in his tug boat cart, peeling around a corner, some poor man's euphonium spiraling off the edge. Handler number two slows, stoops, examines the destination of the lost horn. So much for FRAGILE, chuckles a bearded fellow over his panini and soup. We watch a weak-wristed airport employee wave an orange stick like a Jedi while we snicker from our counter-style eatery vantage.

***

Flew in over Long Island with the Manhattan skyline pasted against a mango sunset. She's beautiful.

Next morning somebody strolls to the rhythm of the same sweet song, sung along the way to work. Or maybe he's out of work just as he's out of tune, out of cash, out of time. But a tune in his pocket nonetheless. I hear the strumming of an invisible ukulele.

There is an opera singer next door. A band in the basement. The A Train click click clicks with the rhythm of the baggage claim conveyer belt. It's yesterday again, replaying like an old film. I get eyes from the flight attendant. No, I am not Taylor Swift, I answer to her thick Georgian accent. Would Taylor Swift be standing at this baggage claim, ma'am?

A train to Broadway Junction to Morgan and out the claws of the exit doors while the subway's still screaming her high-pitched cry of agony in the chill of a Thursday evening. A woman pops the collar of her royal blue pea coat. An Indian man sneezes and for a second I think Zac Miller has followed us to Brooklyn.

Oh Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take us in. Two bags and a week to decide.

n o t i c i a s

2010-12-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

I wrote my first research report in third grade: "Mosquitoes." My best friend at the time, Vanessa, now a journalist for the Washington Post, wrote hers about bees (at least, that's what I remember). And really, the rest is a blur, except that it was an extraordinary task for an eight year old to crack open the 1992 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia (see "M") to extract all she could from the blood sucking creatures pictured therein.

Vanessa and I used to make newspapers called the E & V Daily Sun. Obviously her initial should have come first since she's the one who is now a real journalist between the two of us. In any case, we wrote the headlines, colored in our own illustrations, forecast the weather, drew the funnies. Of course, we included a coupons page.

Somewhere between third grade and now, something happened to nonfiction reporting. Like, it grew up without me, and here I am holding a handmade newspaper from my childhood wondering where the time went. Meanwhile, a draft of my 20 page research report is overdue, and as much as I dearly love nonfiction, why is it that I'd rather rewrite an entire fiction novel than work on a little 20 page report? (I did finish a novel last week, for those keeping score at home. Erin's Novel: 50,491 | Erin's 20-page Research Report: -4)

Really, all I want to do is make some popcorn, put up the Christmas tree, pretend like it's warm in here with this pathetic excuse for a space heater, draw up some headlines, forecast the weather, and make a coupons page. So, my dear Vanessa, in honor of the good old days, the news:

1980'S SPACE HEATER FAILS TO HEAT BEDROOM, BUT LOOKS COOL ANYWAY

GIRL TRIES EGG NOG FOR FIRST TIME, LIKES IT

FULL SIZE HEATER WORKS BUT SMELLS FUNNY, APPEARS LIKELY TO BURN DOWN APARTMENT IF USED

GIRL TAP DANCES AT NEWPORT PIER TO KEEP WARM

GRAD SCHOOL ASSIGNMENTS LOOM, THREATEN TO CHOKE

WHERE DID THE SNEAKERS GO AT NIGHT, WONDERS THE GIRL

THE DOG ATE MY GRAD SCHOOL LIBRARY BOOKS, SAYS THE GIRL

DOG GETS INDIGESTION FROM THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT

NEIGHBORS COMPLAIN OF FOUL ODOR, GIRL CLEANS UP AFTER DOG

SPACE HEATER STILL ISN'T WORKING

GIRL HASN'T EATEN BREAKFAST ON A WEEKDAY SINCE 1992

GIRL CONSIDERS EATING HER TWENTY PAGE REPORT FOR BREAKFAST, REMEMBERS PLIGHT OF DOG AND DECIDES OTHERWISE

GIRL WRITES PHONY NEWSPAPER HEADLINES INSTEAD OF TWENTY PAGE REPORT

GIRL GETS THIRD EXTENSION IN TWO WEEKS ON TWENTY PAGE REPORT

GIRL WRITES HOME TO MOTHER

MOTHER SAYS DO REPORT

GIRL FINDS CHILDHOOD NEWSPAPER, HAS NOSTALGIA

DOG FEIGNS DEATH OVER GRAD SCHOOL COURSE MATERIAL, LIMPS ABOUT HOUSE

MOTHER CALLS, INQUIRES ABOUT REPORT PROGRESS

SPACE HEATER COUGHS AND SPUTTERS, SMELLS FAINTLY OF CHEESE

SPACE HEATER APPEARS TO BE ATTEMPTING DIALOGUE

SPACE HEATER SCOLDS GIRL FOR PROCRASTINATING

You know it's time to take your exit when your own fictional newspaper headlines are rising up against you. I suppose writing a twenty pager is not as bad as writing a thirty pager (which, thankfully, is over and done with thanks to a highly caffeinated weekend). Still, the thirty pager wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. I'd rather bake pumpkin seeds and listen to borrowed records and go breathe the sea air. Or write a novel. Or clean up after the dog. Really, most things in life would make better alternatives.

The problem is I don't remember writing twenty page papers during my first round of grad school, although I am starting to believe that I wrote them and blocked them from my memory. Oddly enough, I do remember hearing the words "I like being a student" come out of my mouth on the first day of this new program. Yet the world awaits, sparkling, inviting--enticing me away from this computer. Maybe I die tomorrow, I consider, and then why did I bother with this twenty page report? In all likelihood, it was the procrastinating part of being a student that I meant by "I like being a student," or the part where I get to participate in rousing discussions about things that, if consumed by the dog, would yield indescribable indigestion. Or maybe it was the part about commiserating in the same boat as ten other students, navigating through a sea of papers and other strange encounters. When the boat rocks and creaks and threatens to tear us all in two, I smile, because it's good material for a fiction novel. (Where else did you think I got my material during the last month?)

Meanwhile, the forecast here from the vantage of my laptop? Gloomy--in fact, ominous. Big Ugly Storm hovering above my head for the next fourteen days, exquisite rainbow to follow. But before I duct tape my umbrella to my laptop screen, excuse me while I take care of a few things first.

What? Somebody needs to put up the Christmas tree.

f i n

2010-11-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

Eight. Eight books I've stuck my nose into within the past I-don't-know-how-many months. Eight books I haven't finished. It's not that I have anything against reading. It's the finishing part that's hard. Why is getting to The End such a challenge?

I have 17,686 words to go until I reach the 50,000 word finish line of National Novel Writing Month. If I write for three hours a day at a thousand words an hour, I'll finish in time to give my book a once over on Tuesday. Meanwhile some jackass in an Orange County noveling forum is bragging about getting to 70,000 words by Friday, though they are already 14,000 beyond the 50K goal. Go to hell.

It's not about writing a novel so much as it is about writing and completing a story. Actually finishing. Accomplishing a feat we thought impossible. Imagine.

A year ago I couldn't have imagined that I was capable of running five miles on the beach, without stopping. Five miles was more like 26,400 feet of sheer pain, or 318,000 torturous inches that I had to muster the energy to traverse, and IN SAND, no less! I didn't see that as happening within my lifetime, nor as something I could actually enjoy or make a habit of. I scoffed at the possibility. I'm no athlete. Only real runners do that. I'm not a real runner.

Just like I'm not a real writer. Or a real teacher. Or a real scholar.

We have these ideas about what we are, and what we are not, in light of what we see as real. But no one stoops down to whisper in our ear that we're allowed to imagine the possibilities. Allowed to invent our own realities.

Today I am inventing.

I want to finish. I want to feel the way I do when I pass 32nd and there is only one jetty standing between me and the pier. I get to 28th and my feet take flight like the yellow glider I saw soaring above my head back at 57th. Accelerating for a strong finish, I want to feel the way I feel when I cross under the long-legged platform protruding from the shore, my gait swift and my stride lengthening. I want to feel the way I feel when I take a victory lap like the Olympian that I most certainly am not, as though I know what it is to win an athletic competition, which I most certainly have never won, and as though the soreness and stiffness and cramp in my side doesn't exist, which it most certainly does. And it is an incredible, ineffable feeling, this invention of reality.

And you run all the way to 18th and back on your victory lap, waving at the old man who used to walk a mile every day until a busted hip slowed him down, chaining him to a walker and forcing him to remember the good days when he used to keep pace with the lifeguards in the bay. And even though the seaweed tries to trip you, wrapping its slimy fingers around your ankles, and the soil turns to quicksand as your feet sink deeply in, and the tide licks at your heels and throws you off balance in a sudden upward burst--even still, you press on. Because you are going to finish. And even when you haven't taken a dump in two days because you've been writing fifty plus pages of bullshit for graduate school instead of having normal bowel movements, and your body threatens to let it all loose now that you're moving--even still, you press on. Even with a cramp digging into your ribs like yesterday's thirty page case study, and blisters searing beneath your toes like discovering you do have a final exam in your human rights class--even still, you press on. Even with the sun threatening a hundred new freckles on your skin. Even with lifeguard supervisors driving by at a snail's pace that is still somehow 809,540 times faster than your own. Even with a November wind cryogenically preserving your ears because you were too stubborn to cover them with muffs. Even then, you press on. Because finishing is worth it. And not just finishing, but finishing strong.

Because at the end of my life's last chapter, when I'm sitting in a rocking chair and drinking a Bloody Mary, reminiscing about love letters and stories and "that time I wrote a novel," I want to be able to say I actually did it. And like finishing a five mile run, 318,000 inches later, I want to stand back and gaze across the ocean, owning the moment. Because it's not just about proving that I could, or how fast I sailed between lifeguard tower 20 and the Santa Ana River, or the quality of my running form. It's about realizing that I can, and that I can run it all over again. Write it once more, and live to tell about it. There, while the rocking chair creeks and groans, and the wide-eyed whites of the children's eyes bulge like I'm some neolithic fossil who achieved greatness. I want that, today.

And the truth is, we never run out of novel to write, or sand to traverse, because it's all an endless possibility. There are countless obstacles, of course, but the largest and most fierce is ourselves. Our inner editors. The critic that looks back in the mirror, arms crossed, shaking its great ugly head. Leave it for the pros, says the critic. But what if the line between professional and amateur was less defined than we thought? Finer, perhaps, than the sand just after the Beach King cruises past, raking out the junk?

So go on, Beach King. Invent your future. How does the story end? It doesn't matter, because all that counts is that it's ready to be written. And as they say in music performances, the most memorable moments are how you begin and how you conclude--the rest is lost in the wash of memory and time.

So here's to finishing well.

I've waited all month for it.

b a j a d a

2010-11-16T21:03:00.000-08:00

"The only way out is through." (Robert Frost)

In the thick of a snow hike, a 50,000 word novel, a sea of term papers--the only way out is through. Thank you, Frost, for illuminating the obvious, however painful a truth it may be. Life, school, jobs, stories, relationships--fiction or non, there is one direction: forward.

But then there is stalemate, you say. Paralysis. Procrastination. Like, I'd rather eat my foot than write another policy memo. Through. How do I get through?

But how did we get through the time when I worked full-time while taking eleven classes, preparing for my senior recital like a marathon runner, cork greasing the clarinet at six in the morning and making the dog howl before sunup? How did we get through when you worked a full-time east coast shift, our alarms sounding at 3:45 for coffee-making and lunch-packing and bike-mounting to get to the office by 5:00 am? How did we get through when I met eighteen bleary-eyed students in the blue-black cold for jazz in a portable where we had to rearrange the classroom furniture before and after rehearsal? Schlep a whale of a string bass halfway across campus? Capture a year's worth of research in two and a half months of writing? How did we get through then?

And how did we get through a literature review, two economics exams, eight (eight?) sets of strategic recommendations, response papers on I can't remember what, a Saudi Arabian consular event, an Azerbaijan lecture, and eleven weeks of green tea?

The same way we got through Condor Peak's fifteen miles of raw conditioning, or Joshua Tree's Wonderland of Rocks on less than a day of Class Three climbing lessons, or Ice House Canyon with a broken ski pole, or a nine degree night at South Lake. The only way out is through.

When I think of the "downhill slope" I imagine the easy part--it's all downhill from here, they say. But the funny thing is, when we're passed the halfway point, the downhill side of a snow-capped mountain remains the toughest, most mentally challenging part of my climbing experiences. It's not the "downhill"--it's the descent. The bajada that looms. The part of the hike where we stop taking pictures. Where we dial in, focusing, because it's infamous as the portion of the hike when the most injuries occur. The time when we're most exhausted, our energy spent like money at a candy store, our water jugs alarmingly empty, and our legs giving out beneath us like bendable Gumby dolls. Yes, the downhill. The momentum carries us forward, but it is a terrifying time. Like the time when the only way to make the downhill jaunt before freezing to death is to glissade down the snow capped mountainside on your rear end, screaming bloody expletives at the top of your lungs and careening out of control into the abyss below. Meanwhile, the ski pole steering just doesn't cut it and you flip over (or under) a gigantic log and lie motionless like an embarrassed seagull who misjudged and face-planted into the earth--not that it's happened to me, of course. No, I watched it happen to the two hikers who went before me, leaving me feeling exceptionally confident and courageous when my turn came around.

But what's a good story without careening? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? That's what Sonny said before he plowed into the tree? It's true. It's dangerous, it's exhilarating, and it's never the same twice. After all, the second time I begged my best friend to sled down the hill with me, we hit a tree. Cleverly, I stopped our impact with my foot, which promptly broke. You've heard the story before. Perhaps you've lived it, too.

Why hello, dear downhill. My, how you've grown steeper.

Suerte, hikers. We're nearly there, and poised for the crazy finish--broken foot, or otherwise.

t e r c e r o

2010-11-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

Three hundred hand-made invitations.

Three hundred hand-folded paper cranes.

Three music ensembles booked.

Three suitcases packed.

Three minutes down the aisle.

Three rings.

Three minutes of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.

Three second kiss.

Three pieces of French toast.

Three stretches of coastline.

Three thousand feet above the vineyards.

***

Still soaring. Feliz aniversario, mi amor.

v i v o

2010-11-06T17:48:00.000-07:00

The curtains sway to and fro with the wind, like a slow dance to Stars Fell On Alabama with Billie Holiday's scratchy tone emanating from some antique Victrola over a paint-peeling, rocker-creaking porch. Hanging lights and fireflies buzz while the breeze haunts us, and everything is alive.

A plate of yellow and green calabazas marks the season and we breathe it in because November is only once a year, and a shame to miss beneath the layers of pre-Christmas caca that line the storefronts.

Outside, November is alive. Todo vivo, moviendo. The wind plucks the strings of some invisible charango as a thousand wind chimes rattle and sound their fury.

November is a giant cajón de sastre, a patchwork quilt of oranges and amarillos, a cornucopia of otoño. It all stands in contrast to the leaning tower of books and assignments that make the bookshelf cry. Always the same cry--you should have started me yesterday! But ayer? I reply, pleading. Ayer I was in bed with my pajamas and my guitar and six unread issues of Sunset magazine, listening to some two thousand and late recording of Christina Aguilera going acoustic. And today? Today this cold wind is so inviting, and the scarves dance like a temptation, and my mittens call out from their neat stack on my writing desk beneath a pumpkin that fits in the palm of my hand. Everything breathes and pulses and squawks, and the leaning tower of books is dead as driftwood. I poke it to make sure.

So I spare ten minutes for a walk along the torn page of the earth's last chapter, and nod and smile at the changes from just twenty-four or thirty-six hours of eroding waves. And then I drag out the table for studying Voodoo economics side-by-side, dust off the chairs, and wonder whether we will make it to Thanksgiving alive.

At least, I know that everything else will. Make it alive, that is, with or without us. Didn't Ferris Bueller say something like that? Life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop once in awhile, you might miss it? So if I'm absent from class next week, now you'll know why. Bow wow. Chick--chicka chicka.

l o s . m u e r t o s . v i v e n

2010-11-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

I think I've been sleeping through the past ten weeks of class. And by sleeping I mean daydreaming.

My mind wanders like a trail of falling leaves and I'm reminded of my dream on Halloween when Buena Vista Social Club wandered onto our front patio all boinas and bongos. Ibrahim Ferrer smirking and snapping and Cachaito lugging one whale of a string bass.

I sample the homemade pumpkin Cynthia shares from a tub of brown sugary syrup, and all is autumn while we listen to Mariachi tumble across the tables. And here I'm flooded with snapshot moments of grandmothers and grandfathers and great grandmothers and great aunts. Los muertos viven, cantan. Respiran. Even here, at this cold desk where I scrawl my mind's wanderings onto a glaringly yellow notepad.

Grandma's sky painted in acrylic at dusk on her birthday; Valentine's Day and her rainbow smiles across our cul-de-sac. Making crafts out of strawberry baskets and paper while Mom rests in the hospital. Pastels smudged into a blurry blue hue on the palms of my hands. Pop up cards.

Grandpa's laugh echoes like glee, his voice in boxes and boxes of writing. His bright green sweater is Christmas Every Day and his handwriting is forever preserved--"Sing like a bird!" he writes. The hand-scrawled pages whisper of pennies pinched and better days in volumes still untold.

My grandfather is overalls, contractor's pencils, caps. His carpentry, his craft lives on in the memory of the house my father built beneath a phantom fig tree atop the clay. His motor-home driving legacy leaves me smirking. His twenty-one gun salute and hand-folded flag in a wooden box hold secrets he could never share.

My grandmother sings, her curls sixty years young, her perfect cursive underlined with an invisible ruler I could never employ. She is prayers and stories of birds and no smoking in the house and the turtle ganging up with the youngest half against the oldest. And there is Bert the dog, wagging and lumbering. And Taco, too, even though I never met the mutt. And Gigi's at the card table playing Spite 'n Malice and slapping my hand when I make the wrong move. I always lose as long as Gigi's at the table.

And I'm back in Colorado staring through a camera lens at Grandma in her checked dress with her cherry red accordion on her hands and Grandpa hanging from the post, all lanky and leggy with his wide-mouthed McGrath grin. And fifteen, twenty years back she is dressed like an Indian, all feathers (not dots) and poised with a homemade bow and arrow. Fast forward and she's just finished fashioning my wooden rubber band gun so I can torment my older brother.

And there sits my Great Aunt Marie's brass tea set on the avocado cushion of a living room chair which becomes a table for me and my Amanda doll and our imagined ten course tasting menu. As if I know what that is at age six. But I do know.

Aunt Marie is postcards and high heels and escapades from working at the U.S. embassy in the former Yugoslavia, running her secret errands that she swears make it impossible for her to ever return.

And Aunt Marie's ring glints up at me with a wink and suddenly reels me back to reality, to the present, where I realize I have just missed the last hour and a half of class in my daydreaming.

But they live, you see. And sometimes they are more important than taking notes on terrorism and ethics and genocide. Sometimes daydreams are better than nightmares.

How I miss them, I sigh.

But perhaps they never really left.

i m a g i n a r

2010-10-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

I carried it all the way home. That scruffy piece of driftwood just thought it was done traveling. It was the perfect first piece for the fireplace--chopped, tossed, eroded, encrusted, and left for dead. Never mind that it smells like fish and we don't even have a real fireplace--sometimes I just like to pretend.

I used to pretend all the time. Cuando era niña, pretending was built into my day, each day, every day. Before school, I would pretend. I built towers and tunnels for marbles and forts with blue and red mats, imagining myself into stories and scenarios and scenes where I didn't quite fit. Like the time I was April from Ninja Turtles. After school, I pretended all afternoon, until my hair came unraveled and the sun set and my mother came grinning down the schoolyard sidewalk to pick me up from day care just before dinner. And I would run to her with open arms.

It's good to pretend. My nose in the grass, I'd make-believe myself the size of a worm and marvel at the height of the green green blades. Smell the dirt and get it under my fingernails and roll down a hill until my skin got red and itchy. Peel eucalyptus bark off the trees and use it for a worm-sized house in a worm-sized world, where there were city worms trading places with country worms, and patchwork quilts for bedspreads, and matchboxes for beds. It was a big wide worm world the way I saw it under the October sky, from not-quite-nose-high and grass-stained to prove it.

And then I was Eliza Doolittle and Little House on the Prairie and Felicity from American Girl. And then I grew up a little and I was Jessie from Saved by the Bell. And then I grew up some more and I was big-hair Julia Roberts and curly-hair Meg Ryan from City of Angels. I was. Once I was even that girl rollerblading in that 90's commercial for something unimportant, like cottage cheese.

Pretending when I'm twenty five is different. Sometimes I pretend at the wrong time, pretending things matter that really don't. Once I pretended that going to church made me a Christian. If I sang all the songs and raised my hands and prayed with my eyes closed and dressed up nice and played with the kids, I looked the part. And then I realized I was just pretending.

From 13th to 19th I carried that log. It was an Erin-sized piece.

While I hauled that log, I saw a sailboat, and I composed a poem in my head that grew soggy like a piece of wet bread somewhere between 13th and 15th. The sky was the sea and the water was sky and the sail boat sailed on by and by. Something about flip flopping the world and I remember how I used to lay on my back and stare at the ceiling pretending it was the floor like in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's house.

It was this time last year I pretended to be brave when I got the call from the ER that something bad happened. I pretended all the way to the trauma center and when I saw my brother towering there over my husband's body, I couldn't pretend anymore.

There is good pretend and bad pretend. Self-defense pretend, and stand-strong-so-you-don't-fall-over pretend.

Once I pretended I was a viking. I think my name was Frig, or maybe it was Grid, and there was a God of Thunder shaped like an owl and a lot of peering through bushes and flying the masts of the pretend boat in the twelve-foot tree house my father built in the backyard where there is now a twelve-foot rotating radio antenna.

In the summers, I pretended I was a librarian. In the mountains, I used to pretend the ground was lava and the rocks were safe. In the winter, I pretended I lived in the snow. One time my viking friend and I went sledding because I wanted to go down the steep hill one more time, and I sat in the front imagining myself a brilliant bobsledder as we crashed straight into a tree. But right before we crashed, I pretended if I stuck my foot out to stop the crash it would keep us from dying. And for twenty minutes, there I lay in the snow with my viking friend beside me because I was pretending I hadn't broken my foot.

Another time I pretended that I hadn't almost burned the house down. The toaster spontaneously combusted, I told the nice firemen. He looked at me funny, like surely I was pretending. And even though I thought he probably knew I was pretending, I pretended he didn't know. I pretended for a good seven years. And then one day my story came out of the vault, and I stopped pretending that I didn't stick a knife in the toaster to depress it when it was broken. The truth is, I went upstairs to play a computer game and forgot about my toasting Eggo waffles. And then the alarm went off in protest to the billows of smoke and I went tearing out of the house because I was going to be responsible for burning the whole thing down and I was too embarrassed to call the fire department. Too much guilt for a twelve-year-old. So I pretended.

Our new log sits proudly in the pretend fireplace and it feels like fall. Not a pretend fall, but a real, full-fledged autumn coming on winter, and the leaves are starting to fly off the trees like they're supposed to when they stop pretending it's summer. I stare at the new log and the owl gift bag perched by the pretend fireplace, and the birthday card on the mantel with an illustration of a lady with a bird cage on her head. And I can pretend to be her too. Trust me, totally hot.

Soon I have to pretend to be a student and go read and write a paper about something I can't remember because I'm too busy noticing how my forearms ache. It's a big job, carrying driftwood to a pretend fireplace. I can't pretend that I'm not sore. But when I finally commit to the study time and crack open the encyclopedic-sized book, I can't help but imagine what I want to be for Halloween. Once I was a killer tomato, and Augusto was a banana. Another time we were an astronaut and an alien. A bird and a bee. Last year I wanted to pretend I was a giant squid, but life got in the way. This year, we contemplated dressing up as dinosaurs and pretending to be joggers at the Chapman 5K. Maybe we'll be scary processed foods for Chipotle's Boorito Costume Contest. I could see myself pulling off a can of Cheese Whiz or original Pringles.

When I was little, I pretended to be Belle three Halloweens in a row. A gypsy. Ballerina. I'm convinced these imagined roles never really leave us. I still pretend I'm a ballerina when I put on my ballet flats and waltz all the way to work, or Belle when I don a dress for a fancy party. Or a gypsy when I play my clarinet.

(Not that gypsies play clarinets, but I can pretend.)

Maybe we never get too old for pretend. For imaginación. Most times, it's a healthy make-believe, and we imagine our way through the day in ways that propel us forward and out of taking ourselves too goddamn seriously.

At least, I can pretend so. Imagine the possibilities.

m o j a d o

2010-10-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

I drink deeply from my tea-stained taza--the last one in the cupboard, signifying it's time to do the dishes. Outside the drip drip drop of the rain plays her music across the tin gutter flume and down into the flooded alley where insects dance into nooks and crevices to hide from the raindrops that fall like bombs.

I want to stay in, pajamas on, blanket snug, record spinning, pava boiling, while the rain drip drip drops into Tuesday. But even the garbage man works when it rains.

I get ready for work and everything is wet. Wet dishes in the sink, wet doorstep, wet windowsill because we like to leave it open. Wet bathroom floor, wet bathmat, wet towel from the last wet shower, and a long wet walkway between the mailbox and the back gate. Wet.

I'm supposed to say that I love the wet, because wet comes with fall. But really, I love being inside watching the world get wetter, while I stay dry and enjoy a never-ending pot of tea. I dread the wet bus, and the subsequent walk in the rain from bus to campus, lugging my laptop and books and articles and papers and hoping not to get wet.

It is different when you're little, isn't it? I listen to "Linus and Lucy: the Music of Vince Guaraldi" when it rains. The sounds conjure images of Peanuts dancing in their awkward two steps and Snoopy's big beagle snout, and Halloween costumes, and tricks or treats. And I want to wear my polka dot galoshes and splash in the puddles until it's time for a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. For dessert, a caramel apple on a stick, while I cut too many holes in one ghost of a bed sheet. I drift to pumpkin patches and to umbrellas at school, drip drip dropping their beads of moisture onto their backpack friends below. Rainy days mean Heads Up Seven Up and Monopoly in thirty-five minutes and giraffe puzzles missing the bottom left corner, and my desk sticky with peanut butter and jelly sandwich that didn't make it to my mouth.

Meanwhile the waves, they churn, and the neighbors stay in, their dogs steaming up the windows with the puff puff sniff of their nostrils.

Wet can be wondrous.

But it can be sad, wet. Sad like homesick. Like blue San Fransisco. Like missing my mother and father last week--something I swear I hadn't felt since I was a little girl--just because they lost cell coverage and didn't have wifi on their recent escapades across the Southwest. Sad because I wanted to call but I knew they couldn't answer.

Sad, like the silence that sets in when the CD ends. And all you hear is drip drip drop.

We have so many words for sad.

But how many words for happy? And can anybody be happy going to work on a wet day like this?

Wet dogs are happy. They smell like fish, but they're happy nonetheless. And dogs who just got back from the groomer are doubly happy to get wet despite their freshly shampooed coats. Silly dogs.

I check the thesaurus for 'sad' and 'happy' and both list 47 entries. Go figure.

Wet has 49.

On my way out, I have a choice between a black umbrella (sad) and a yellow umbrella (happy). I go yellow. And the rain falls and falls, and I can't find my galoshes, and I forget to grab a scarf, and the umbrella doesn't even stay open.

But there is yellow in my sea of gray, like a canary singing on a Monday (how dare she). She stands out, my umbrella, half-opened like the sun peeking out across an angry thundershower. And the sky is all Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and I ready my plate for the incoming feast, wondering what it would be like to be squashed flat by a pancake the size of the 71 OCTA bus.

I smile while my imagination eats its way out of a blueberry flapjack. This is, after all, the fall I always want, the fall I pine for all year long.

Fall, and I forget to mind the mojado. Who needs a scarf, anyway?

j u g a r

2010-09-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

There is this Big-Helmeted Girl pedaling around the fountain like a mad woman. She is two and a half feet tall, and she sings. La laa laaaaaaa as she comes careening around the circle. With each round she makes a couple on a date follow her with their faces in a synchronized head turn. And she squeezes her rubber bicycle horn like a triumph and she shouts and shouts. Byeeeee byeeeeeeeeeee! to the cars and trucks and buses and the exiting motorcycle gang members, without a care or a clue in the world. She is play.

And she pedals and pedals and the wheels clack clack clack over the brick pavement, and she figure eights and skates and paints her words in the sky. And I watch, enchanted.

Mesmerized at her pure, ineffable joy--her aloofness to everyone around her. Her simple, uni-directional determination to play. She is play.

And then she is gone. I look up again, searching for some glimpse of the whirring sight of her, that Big-Ole-Head of blond underneath her fiery pink helmet. And then there she is. Right in front of me.

She stares, blinks once. "Do you know where my Grandma is?" she asks. I cannot decide whether she is asking me or telling me. She is telling. "Over there--in the blue dress!" I laugh. "Okay! Byeeeeeeee," she shouts like a ribbon in the wind, and she is gone, a kite whipped up in a gust of seaside.

When she circles back, she's clutching an orange pumpkin cookie as big as her face. She stops in front of me to show me her cookie "from iHop--wayyyyy over there." But her pedals are jammed; when she tries to take flight again, they clunk clunk stuck! And she makes a scrunched face.

"Are you stuck?"

"Yeah." She blinks. "Can you help me?"

I mop up my melted heart. "Yeah!"

"Thanks," she stares again. It's like it doesn't even matter to her that I am ten thousand feet tall and from another world.

"Here, let me give you a push." And off she goes!

"Byeeeeeeee--" wafts her voice from halfway around the fountain, and she shoots off, clack clack clack clack, halfway to the moon and back.

I have goosebumps because she is the heroine of my story, my journey through yesterday's research, through student teaching, and weeping, and summer at the bay. She is me, twenty years ago, and she is me for a whole twenty minutes as I watch and remember.

Training wheels. Chocolate chip cookies half-melted in a box from McDonald's. Library books, the plastic wrap cracked and smeared with blacktop thumbprints. The fort beneath the staircase they never made me tear down. Lincoln Logs on the brown carpet in the room that looked like trains and smelled like burnt electronics when my dad was an engineer--not the train kind, the other kind. And my brother is there on the floor, and Chip and Dale are there in their cages, and Rocky and Bulwinkle are there in the black and white box on the wall while Mom and Dad shop for presents.

"I want that for my birthday," I used to declare after every commercial. But I didn't want anything, really.

I want to go back.

So I go back, I let myself. Back, back in the time machine like a windmill. And I see a girl in pigtails diving after copper coins in a senior community pool, watching Aunt Marie bob across the length of it in her sleek blue swimming cap and wondering why she wouldn't put her head under.

"Why don't you ever put your head under?" Gwynn asked me during her last week at beach camp this August.

I saw it all through their eyes--the Beach Camp Kids. The slime of seaweed exploring the space between my toes. The gigantic waves and the sand castle villages and the treasures broken and buried beneath the shifting crust of the earth. Lego Man with no arm and the suspicious pink plastic shovel and that gleaming purple seashell with a tiny hole like it was always meant for Zoey's necklace.

...

She lets Ella try a go around the circle on her bike, training wheels and all, and her hair flies! And she grins, and Big-Helmeted Girl trots alongside her, cackling with glee and reaching for the Big-Ole-Horn. And round and round they fly without a care in the world. And they really do fly.

And my side hurts, I miss it so much, flying. Play.

I miss it so much I close my eyes and I wear my Big Red Shoes and smile at Big Red Dogs and think of Clifford on channel whatever and juice boxes and original Goldfish in the alphabet bowl.

And Big-Helmeted Girl stands with Ella and her little brother on a park bench because they are scared of the cockroach.

And then it's "Let's Play Duck Duck Goose!"

And my eyes well with tears for just a moment because here all life ceases in the sound of their laughter. And I pause. I wanted to remember, I wanted to. I stare up at the Big Tall Flagpole and everything is Jungle.

Any second Woody Woodpecker will swoop down and Popeye will transform and I'll dissolve into Saturday morning pajamas and cartoons and cards and hopscotch like Rice Krispies disappearing into 1% milk.

Play. I needed to, tonight.

a m i z a d e

2010-09-12T22:39:00.000-07:00

I stir a spoonful of Mexico into Japan and raw honey meets Hojicha roasted green tea before my nose. The pava wears a hat. Yellow chrysanthemums throw their hands to the sky. Sky is bejeweled, a wind beneath her whipping my pony tail until unruly frizz finds its way to the corners of my lips. Where are we, I marvel.

One foot in summer, the other in fall, and everything stands ready, giddy, to tumble into the changing leaves and stiffening breezes of the greatest time of year. Time for sunflowers and kangaroo's paw tied in string and wrapped in brown paper, carried like a ballet dancer's bravisimo. Time for soft-baked snickerdoodles and new friends and books and books and balancing a bird cage on my head so we can be ready to entertain said friends and study said books.

And there, in the corner, the light cascades across the ceiling all craters and moonbeams, and the hint of pumpkins and September.

It is the joy of finding myself--my old studies--in the new, tying two seemingly disparate careers with the same blue string, finding the same broad wooden beams at the base. The same splinters.

It is Mexico into Japan, post-conversation stretching across a pier from Germany to Brasil, to Buenos Aires and back. It is sea gulls and this cold Pacific and the dream of a warm Atlantic tide.

A year ago this cold tide swept in so far it dusted the streets, meeting pavement and car tires and knocking sidewalk trash cans and rooftop tiles out of place. Such grand ferocity, we, too, were moved. Here. To this place. Where I now sit between Friere and Nussbaum with an Indonesian coffee label for a bookmark and the aroma of blackberry compote from my dear husband's plum cup of earth.

And he reads and reads and I write and write, scribbling beneath that birdcage and beside a crescent moon reminiscent of last year's tide. And I watch and count the clump of collected burbujas at the surface of my tea bag worn thin. I count the sighs. I wander backward to the transition last year when we slept on a mattress on the floor for four months and we ate without a table and we frequented Home Depot as much as the tourists flocked to our backyard.

And on Labor Day we smelled barbecue while we counted beads of sweat on each others' brows, and we sowed sowed sowed into this old house; the baseboards with a rented nail gun that died and became free of charge, the wood over the fireplace that was accidentally rung up at $1.00 per piece instead of $1.00 per foot. The economics! A $450 savings for someone's mistake and we absconded with five hundred feet of poplar like thieves in a candy store. And it didn't fit in the car.

There we were in the parking lot, shoving ten foot pieces into an eight foot cedan, or some such nonsense, half expecting the cashier to realize his oversight and come barreling after us. And us, in our effort to get away with the miraculous act of God's favor, cramming ungodly amounts of wood until we had no place for the passenger beside the driver. And me, slunk down into the meager cavity on the floor between the passenger seat and the glove compartment, giving blind orders to go go go! And a wide-eyed driver cursing his fate, detoured to his in-laws' for salvation. Jesus.

It was finding lead paint--layers and layers of it, everywhere, slapped carelessly across recessed lighting, caked onto cupboard hinges, so thick it peeled from the walls in great sheets. And the radio batteries dying, 88.1 wailing and fading into a static hum. Lo and behold, the black and purple mystery paint job some strange creature of the night felt compelled to grace the kitchen cupboards and bathroom walls with. It was power sanding the hollows and finding a recessed cutout for a non-existent bathroom medicine cabinet. Ripping out some sorry excuse for a sink and stove and wishing we could send the carpet back to the 1970's. It was papering the hallway ceiling with the pages of Michener's Space. Watching Mami sewing fabric and Agu screwing tracks for panels of rice paper to glide across the dirty glass panes.

I remember the day when we unexpectedly stumbled upon a Saturday morning when the major work was done. It was ready to be lived in, this old house, and for a split second, I didn't know how to go about the living. And then the house helped me remember: the garden. It would always be an unfinished, ongoing project.

It started with the ceremonial ripping out of an overgrown mess, sifting through the jungle of weeds and plastic rocks and cigarette butts until we had dirt, ready for tilling. He planted his garden. Our garden. And we watched it bloom, fall into spring, until poppies took center stage and made their debut and neighbors stopped to exclaim, "It hasn't looked this good in over a decade! And, by the way, my name is Joe," and so on. Muriel from five blocks down, together with Emma the cocker spaniel, complimented us, and followed with an invitation to come see her roses.

Today we have a new plant to bury in the earth, to water and watch grow. Her name is amizade, and she is yellow, and she smiles like a beam of sunlight, like an invincible summer.

p a r a í s o

2010-08-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

In one hand, an old fashioned cinnamon roll the size of my guitar's cherry wood soundhole. A brown paper napkin smeared with frosting in the other. I scrounge for two crinkled dollars smelling like pocket lint and copper for the ferry across the bay.

Six AM, windows down for the breeze and they take my money like a drive-thru restaurant order. I take in the view.

It's a double rainbow arcing over Balboa like somebody's dream. The top of the bow is broken by a cloud, and our ferry heads right toward it like a tunnel.

We dock and I drive across to the pier where nobody notices the gargantuan arc hovering from pier to pier. I've never seen a rainbow from start to finish before. I get halfway through my roll and still no one stops to stare. A flock of pelicans skims the water beneath the bow. Nobody. A school of dolphins poses for the camera I don't have, playing tag all grace and sleek and warm in the pale colors of the dawn. It's real, isn't it? Or am I imagining?

Paraíso. Just another day in paradise.

m e m o r i a

2010-08-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

The pictures erode, dull, blurred in the wash of time. A few isolated snapshots remain distinctive, marinated in the mind's crockpot. Memories rich in flavor hold the sharpest pangs, the explosive laughter, the vivid sky.

I journey through my eye's scrapbook, meandering through that daydream of a weekend in San Francisco when we borrowed a tiny red Fred Flinstone car and ambled the angled streets like a tortoise. The corners of his lips curl in a smirk at the curious stares of pedestrians and vehicle passengers. And we wind, wind, wind our way down Lombard. To the top of the world, to the crown of some royal dead's head, we spiral upward like a lock of hair. Coit Tower is a girating mystery, and we park Fred Flinstone in a narrow space labeled "Motorcycle Only." Mock the statue of Columbus and the flower pollen on the ski jump of my nose and hug the hilly curves until a clearing. Agu's hat takes flight at the sight of Muir Beach and we lean. With a log for a seat and a husband for a chair, I watch a thousand arm hairs rise in startled protest to the cold wind. Sausalito's fish and chips and ships and sailors and a lonely park bench by the Espresso shop. Red velvet slivers over a setting sun. Home by dark. Crickets, fiddling their soliloquies over a blue lagoon. Room service.

b a i l a n d o

2010-07-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

Getting dressed up fancy and dancing all night to a live band is a tick mark off my bucket list. The balls of my feet are numb with rhumba, cha cha, salsa, and however else one can imagine moving in reaction to the music of nine time Grammy award winning pianist Eddie Palmieri and his latin jazz orchestra. We za za ZEE za in a crowded dance floor over two trombones, a flute, maracas, bongos, and a cowbell clanging its hemiola across the hall. Eddie cracks bold jokes and the polyrhythm takes over a swarm of happy feet and dancing souls who couldn't care less who was watching and definitely weren't watching whoever was caring. A perfect end to a master's degree program I began in 2006.

We smell like the fish we ate for dinner by the time the evening overlaps with morning, and it's into the dank San Fransisco air for us as we evaporate out of the club and onto a crowded sidewalk to vie for a taxi.

***

I sink into the sheets still pulsing with the conversations of auxiliary percussion, and I dream of more dancing to La Malanga and Vamonos Pal Monte and El Rumbero del Piano where everything moves with loose precision and everyone is giraffe-neck-tall and my curls are an acacia tree in a washing machine. I can't stand still.

Unconcious for much of the morning, we make a slow rise like bread, winding our way downstairs to Sofitel's restaurant for a basket of petite baguettes and breakfast pastries. Three shot glass sized jars of jams and honey accompany a tiny butter dish with a silver serving platter lid. Egyptian chamomile, french press coffee, berries over homemade yogurt. Tastebuds tap dancing, and it's another croissant, s'il vous plaît?

Dusting away the crumbs that missed my cloth napkin, I can't help but test drive a cowbell-style hemiola on my juice glass before we leave. The fork to glass has an impressive clang for a fancy French restaurant--a point only my father would appreciate.

Soon we're poised for a different kind of test drive: the Smart Fortwo. And she's red. I dance at the thought.

***

3 1

2010-06-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

"San Francisco? I used to live in San Francisco with my wife. The city has many memories for me," tells Ali, a restaurant employee at John Wayne Airport. He recommends Georgia, a pizza place on Clement St. between 2nd and 3rd. We order a plate of french fries and Ali returns to punctuate his story.

"I was married thirty-one years before I lost my wife," he shares, bending to lean forward against the restaurant table. "Thirty-one years felt more like thirty-one seconds." He raises an eyebrow and brings us our tab. We promise we will enjoy our time, our trip--each other--while we can.

Our trip is a post-graduation surprise weekend in San Francisco following one helluva master's thesis, and the vacation enjoyment kicks off with a goody-filled Virgin America flight, our cherry red luggage far less comfortable in a shameless shimmy of a conveyor belt journey through a jungle of objects relegated to the cavernous cargo hold. We order complimentary drinks and snacks and squint as the Newport coast grows distant beneath our red and white wingspan. Soaring over the bay toward SFO, we spy wind surfers like paper boats in a flooded side street. Touch down brings taxi drivers, including ours--convinced that Augusto is from Iran.

"You look Iranian," he nods, peering at Augusto from the rear view mirror. Upon discovery that Augusto is from Buenos Aires, it's "You look like Maradona!" followed by small talk about the imminent World Cup. He spins a yarn as we pull up curbside to our hotel, telling "In all of San Francisco, they call me Maradona because I drive fast, like this"--he gestures with a weaving motion.

"What's your name," I ask as we exit the cab. "My name is the middle name of Barack Obama," he tells me, and I reply "Hussein!"

"Yes, that's right! He made it easy for me," he adds. We thank Hussein and make our way to the eighth floor.

From our room at the Sofitel, we have minutes to gaze across a lagoon view, make a quick change, and float downstairs to catch a cab. To downtown we go, Bono serenading With or Without You over the radio.

I snap pictures like an authentic tourist and we tip the cab driver for helping us make our 8 o'clock reservation at Yoshi's Sushi on Fillmore St.

The restaurant is a maze of modernity--long dangling lamps, low-tabled corners cushioned with pillows and plated with seasonal, simple catches. We order "Kobe Beef Sushi" and "Big Band Nigiri." Eel, yellowtail, salmon, brane, albacore--we begin to see starfish when we close our eyes, basking in the sizzle of live jazz. Ka kee ka rim shots and stick clicks accompany our meal, and I hum along to Dindi while my nose hovers over the rising steam of a cup of traditional Genmaicha (bancha with roasted rice). The dessert platter is on its way as our fingertips tap teacups one Bossa Nova beat closer to the ten o'clock performance inside the jazz club connected to the restaurant.

Eddie Palmieri is headlining with his Latin jazz orchestra and the music of La Perfecta. My high heels can't wait to dance instead of conduct--it's about time!

***

l í o

2010-04-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Standing at door 15 of the concert hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, I am giddy with anticipation for the imminent Pacific Symphony performance of Paul Dukas’ L’Apprenti Sorcier (the Sorcerer’s Apprentice).

Inspired by Goethe's eighteenth century poem, Der Zauberlehrling, the orchestral work opens with an ethereal mist as clarinet melts into oboe, dissolving into flute, conjuring the image of a tiptoeing apprentice weary from the thankless deed of lugging pails.

As a graduate student weighed by my own pails, the lugging is familiar. I, too, find myself tempted to zap a broom to life—who wouldn’t love for a faceless stick to finish the dishes, water the plants? Clean the toilet, check the mail. So I relate to the apprentice as the bassoon nudges at what is to become a snowballing disaster of an event. And when the floors are awash with the mess of it all, here I, too, can relate. After all, what human being has not attempted their hand at some distant and intimidating master’s craft, only to find herself neck-deep in unfortunate consequence?

Desperately bailing the water from the flooding basement, the forlorn apprentice churns to impending doom until, when all seems lost, the sorcerer arrives.

Convenient, I say.

The old codger restores sanity and wins the Nobel Peace Prize and scolds the apprentice with an angry brow.

And as charming as this might seem to a seven-year-old seated before an animated version of the piece, only at age twenty-four does it occur to me that I have become the apprentice, and often looked to the master as sorcerer.

At the risk of discounting the wisdom of those who came before me, I must say how foolish I have been.

After all, what educator is not permanently apprenticed to her craft? When, if ever, does one arrive at mastery of a learned practitioner’s knowledge? Surely that bank is ever widening so that the more we learn, the more we recognize as remaining to learn. Like a broom-multiplying, flooding scene of mayhem, experience can only lead us into a deeper, wiser sense of reality—that the wisest of all know what they do not know.

And yet the concept of master and apprentice—puppeteer and puppet—is embedded in the musician’s craft. There is the music lesson itself, in which student sits, forlorn, while teacher commands performance from her marionette. There is the master class, too, in which student stands, forlorn, while teacher commands performance from her standing marionette. And there is concert, in which students poise, dressed nicely, but still forlorn, while conductor (again) commands performance from her poised marionettes. How mind-numbingly robotic.

But shouldn’t we be marionettes to the music, allowing the magic encrypted within the page to breathe its enchanting breath into performer and audience alike? Indeed, the conductor is producing a show of smoke and mirrors without intentionally allowing the performer space to experiment with interpretation, and time to think critically—to be moved by the art rather than forced by the artistic director.

And yet, one wonders, how many concerts have we attended, unaware of the undemocratic, illusory puppeteering possible when voices are silenced and the conductor assumes his sorcerer’s hat?

I wonder.

Whistling the lilting bassoon line from L’Apprenti Sorcier, I waltz past the high school attendance office and my eye glimpses a curly-haired copper top of a girl whose spirals fly in the wind of a swaying swing. She is a hand-penned drawing on an office tear-off calendar square, and beside her vivacity is a quote from Flora Colao:

“Life is playfulness. We need to play so that we can rediscover the magical around us.”

Even if it means flooding the basement.

I wink at the swinging girl.

s o l

2010-04-20T18:59:00.001-07:00

Outside in the sideyard, a baby bird looks forlorn and disheveled. She is not far from the nest, but she has been lost since last night. Each time I approach her to pick her up, she flutters out of control and bonks into the plants. Perhaps if I catch her by surprise, I can pick her up and send her flying back to the nest. But she resists. And now it’s pouring rain.

I guess when it rains, it pours.

I yank my galoshes off the doorstep to keep the insides from filling like polka dotted buckets. Our newly planted seeds, on the other hand, can use the extra watering. Avocado, cerulean, mustard, pumpkin, and plum—the brightly painted ceramic pots sport shades we later discover to be our household paint palette. The garden is beginning to bloom in tiny purple blossoms, bending and winking and flirting with the greenery. Never enough of that where we dwell.

The sky looks pissed all day—the wind talks back (ala Ingrid Michaelson). The clouds, pouty-faced and threatening to burst, are finally ripping open, and it is somehow surreal to hear the long-anticipated sound of the rain tink-tonking down the neighbor's tin drainpipe. As though somehow it’s not really rain—like an April Fool’s prank with a hose, or a Truman Show episode. Like it’s all invented.

Maybe because I’ve been inside all day confined to these four walls, trying desperately to crank out some substance for this damn paper before it eats me alive. And so I have a sudden urge to jump outside, to wake myself up, feel the salt droplets splatter on my nose and cheeks and eyelashes and remind my senses of what it’s like to be alive. And then I’d waltz to the donut shop in galoshes and a yellow overcoat looking for a croissant. And the last glimpse of light would peak out just as I duck inside that shop, in the distance there, hovering above Catalina like an egg yolk spilling across a lavender sky. And then I’d reach out and have the sun for breakfast.

I can almost go there, just to live in a dream. Bleary-eyed with an eye-splitting headache, my sense of time is skewed. I throw my head back and close my eyes to type like a blind woman. And Norah sings on. And I wanna wake up with the rain fallin’ on a tin roof…while I’m safe there in your arms…so all I ask is for you to come away with me in the night. Come away with me.

Wish I had enough olive oil to make him a pizza.

Wish I’d stop wishing and get something done.

Wish my fifty-seven page paper would multiply like the brooms and water in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice until it’s all finished and then some—and the big old wizard has to show up and glare at me for overdoing it. Wish I was there.

But I’m here. Upright in bed like a Blue Tuesday. I’m getting all schooled out.

Nightingale, sing us a song…of a love that once belonged. Nightingale, tell me your tale. Was your journey far too long? Does it seem like I’m looking for an answer to a question I can’t ask? I don’t know which way the feather falls…All the voices that are spinnin ‘round me try to tell me what to say. So can I fly right behind you, and you can take me away?

Blue Tuesday brings a longing to be scooped up and set in a safer, dryer somewhere. Sometimes there’s no rest for the weary. But I hate to be the victim of my own story. After all, it’s all invented anyway. I find myself asking “how did this weariness get on my game board?” the way Zander teaches us to consider changing the game when the wrong pieces threaten to win.

Game on. I leap up and throw open the front windows. Aha! It IS sunny! Peering through the slanted drops, there is the sun—and the clouds with her, all bouffant like an eighteenth century hairdo. I pull on my galoshes and raincoat—what good are they indoors, anyway—and I’m halfway to the donut shop when I realize I’m still wearing my pajamas.

So the sea churns with laughter and some guy on a bike stares at me like a five hundred pound cow has just fallen out of the sky and landed on my head. And my pockets are jingling with loose change, and the sky is aglow from post-April Showers, and the donut guy says “$1.25; enjoy, Sunshine.”

I think if I sit too long I grow moldy.

Sunshine. Sol. Sometimes we just need a game change.

v i a j e

2010-04-05T18:54:00.000-07:00

I crane my neck to peer upward at the towering trunks quickly surrounding us as we venture into the woods. My enthusiastic hiking partner tramples patchy snow muddied by the boot prints of ambitious travelers who went before us. The snow tells its own story, its tiny crystals making their cycle from ice to liquid.

I stop in my tracks to smell aged tree bark, cracked and red like the tired skin of a giant.

We hop over bubbling springs (as gracefully as one can hop with a fifty-pound pack strapped to one’s hips), and the birds serenade us along three miles and two thousand feet of elevation gain.

We skirt the mountain and arrive at a breathtaking view. There in the distance, ranges layer in blues like tissue paper pasted to the horizon.

On all fours, we crawl along the protruding edge of Suicide Rock, settling on our stomachs to stare out across a valley. Wind and wing are the soundtrack to our gaze, as two birds float before us, feathers outstretched in nature’s best hang-glide.

Before me is a peak I have already climbed. Never before have I found myself in the position of observing a prior journey from a new, refreshed vantage.

I reflect in disbelief, finding it difficult to fathom last year’s feat. Tahquitz Peak looms in its commanding position over the valley.

It’s different looking at it from the other side.

I think back. Over a year since our last backpacking trip. Over two years since beginning our marriage. Over four years since beginning the master’s and credential programs. Over six years since beginning my studies at Chapman.

I sigh with a breath deeply rooted in nostalgia. What a journey it’s been.

And along the journey, I’ve learned a thing or two. I’ve learned that nothing replaces preparation. I’ve learned to pack for all possibilities. My bag bulges with essentials, including map and compass, headlamp, spare batteries, food and water, first aid kit, waterproof clothing, waterproof matches, firestarter, and emergency shelter. My mother’s 1972 orange Northface sleeping bag is crammed into a compression sack, bursting at the seems. Baggies of chips and pirate’s booty. A deck of cards.

I’ve learned flexibility means there is no such thing as bad weather—only inadequate clothing (anonymous). I’ve learned courage—not just to make the journey, but to face crisis; courage to respond when the trail disappears, when suddenly faced with the jarring realization of smallness (shrinkingly so) in a vast wilderness.

I’ve learned the necessity of camaraderie, that I may never hike alone. I’ve learned that only in the company of another can one contribute to an ongoing collaboration that leads to a better practice. I’ve learned to ask myself what my contribution will be.

I’ve learned to document the journey, to tell the story, that others might benefit from what I have experienced. And while I’ve learned to document, so too have I learned to absorb the scenes before me without the aid of a camera or a pen.

I’ve learned to be present in all circumstances. To know what time it is, whether time to pause or rest or time to move or stretch. Time to triangulate, micro navigate, or trust one’s gut. Time, perhaps, to bandage one’s wounds and press on.

I’ve learned to be present in whatever moment I may find myself in. Only in acknowledging the present may I become free from it, able to move forward, lest I remain in stalemate with a reality I refuse to accept.

I’ve learned to never stop learning. To find new educational opportunities worthy of devouring or savoring or exclaiming over with a colleague. And to force-feed myself when my intellect loses its appetite. I’ve learned to drink deeply of knowledge, to re-cultivate curiosities, and to constantly till the soil of my mind.

I’ve learned to ask “are we there yet” with a child’s persistence until arrival at a destination worthy of celebration.

And today, I think I may have arrived. This arrival at this particular destination need not be my last, nor is it my greatest accomplishment. Yet it is another milestone of a seemingly endless journey which, thus far, has proven to be fascinating.

I, for one, remain engrossed. The story that has unfolded like a map before me has proved not only capable of capturing my attention, but capable of troubling it, boggling it, and teasing into a greater, more profound existence. In the long run, I hope the story will do the same for the spectators. Perhaps it will even rope them in—after all, isn’t that what makes stories great?

At least, that’s what I’ve learned.

***

h e r m o s a

2010-03-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

"You can't be neutral on a moving train," notes the late Howard Zinn. In choosing decisiveness, it is far nobler to elect an imperfect progress than to impede all advancement in favor of a safer, deadlier paralysis.

As a nation, we often remember the words of Katharine Lee Bates in times of pride and patriotic passion.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

But let us also note her forgotten words, less often sung:

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

Democracy is a tilling of the nation's soil--a perpetual work of preparing the land, her laws, and her people for cultivation. It is a cultivation which gives way to a more mature fruition despite our nation's mere breath of history. It is a cultivation fostering the growth of justice, the nurture of mercy, and the necessary education of humility.

Today we observed democracy.

America, you are beautiful today.

p r i m a v e r a

2010-03-20T01:00:00.000-07:00

They sing, the birds. It's a nonchalant song--chit-chatty and oblivious to the juxtaposed construction noise in the alleyway. Outside our bedroom window, birds whistle the morning into afternoon.

On the verge of spring, the sea licks the shore, chasing and teasing my bare feet like a game of cat and mouse. My trot turns with the tide, intent on racing the sun to the pier, and winning. I time my footsteps with the puddled-out prints of a faster, stronger runner whose gazelle-like stride propels me forward against my body's will. My airway tightens and I turn backward to momentarily ignore the sunset's stare, cold shouldering the expansive, long legged pier.

And then there are whales--elegance of expression as a mother and calf soar seaside in a synchronized dance. In awe, I forget the sun race while marveling at the timing and grace of a rare mammalian arabesque mere arms-length from the shoreline.

My gaze is interrupted by the crunch of mollusk exoskeletons. Beneath the pads of my feet, a constellation of washed up seashells is embedded in the sand-swept shore. Hues of pink fanned into golds and stripes of purples and spotted blacks--they shimmer like forgotten jewels ablaze in the reflection of the west-setting canvas. I turn sunward, dodging the shells like a tire jumping exercise, the whales evaporating into dusk like a mirage.

Bite-sized birds with pencils for beaks pause to prod at the sand. They scatter forward in a frantic deeky deeky dee of a flutter tongue foot hustle. They, too, play cat and mouse with the tide, fleeing on two feet and then two wings like tiny mechanical wind-up toys.

At the pier, a pair of pink-beaked pelicans saunter, awkward and clownish. Fishermen string them along with yesterday's catch for the sight of ray finned fish caught midair and swallowed whole, sliding down a flume of a gullet. It is their song and dance.

The pier shades the sons of fishermen who pass time making sport of dirt and debris. With sticky fingers and salt-soaked sweatpants, messy haired young ones fashion wigwams out of sticks thrice their stature. Along the coast, we count four, six, seven handmade man-sized structures. Our elderly neighbor, Al, even stoops seaside to collect forty some pieces of bamboo, turning a behemoth of a rainstorm's after-wash into plans for a porch enclosure.

Always nesting, the birds.

We've spent months nesting ourselves. Coaxing plants and hanging lamps, collecting birdcages and seaweed and washing the walls with colors worth the dwelling.

Al spent eighty some years nesting along the golden coast. His stories unfold before us with the musty smell of an old chest, less frequently opened in the eighteen months since the passing of his beloved wife. Sand-encrusted and barefoot, we knock post-sunset to inquire about wooden carvings for sale in the living room window. We leave with a lifetime of history and the gift of two handcrafted chickadees. He hugs us and asks for nothing in exchange. "What do you do?" he asks me, the sun now away on its nightly vacation. Smiling at my response, he notes that he received a certificate for playing clarinet at the Newport Grammar School in the third grade. His tale is evidenced by a barefoot childhood mugshot together with classmates along the 1930's Newport Beach boardwalk.

We promise to return--after all, someone will have to exclaim over his lovely hand-constructed bamboo patio enclosure when it's finished.

Always nesting, the birds.

On St. Paddy's we stop again to visit Al after another evening run. He leans in his door frame like an eighteen year old version of himself, recounting his day spent in sunny San Clemente with four buddies from the Newport Harbor High class of '40. I mention my upcoming concert and he chuckles, recalling his experience rollicking with a bass drum on a boat some sixty years past.

***

A thick 45 crackles to life with a piano solo emanating into the near-twighlight like a nostalgic aroma. My fingertips caked with earth, I scoop fibrous roots grown stubborn in the soil, pausing to watch garden spiders dart from their homes to newfound nests beneath the window frame. I detangle the weeds' grip on our plants while birds make light of a new season. In the stillness and the lugubrious purple shadows, the pianist sings like a yellow nightengale, cooing from an imagined overhang of weeping willows above a rowboat lit by fireflies and a waning moon. And the birds twitter in yellows too, like pianos in polyphony. All to a dance. We sing, too--whistle, even. Passersby get stuck in glances.

Because today it is spring. Today the sun toasts the continent's edge and there is jam somewhere, someplace delightful with croissants piping hot in brunch's finest hour, and a slowing pace. And laughter, and freedom. Play.

And as for the birds?

They've figured it out, the lot of them--that we never stop nesting, do we? Not even an eighty-something; there are bamboo porch walls to be built! And certainly not a twenty-something, toying with her honey-soaked teabag like a paper boat in a flooded gutter.

Permission to nest. Endlessly. Cheerily.

A wink and nod to the birds. At last, spring.

***

e n e r o

2010-01-30T02:44:00.000-08:00

Enero stretches before me like a new decade. From my sidewalk vantage, its a kaleidoscopic scene of glass and shell and plastic scattered, glittering, across a lavender rain-swept shore. It's inviting and fearful all at once.

The third storm of the week tears in some other city while I stand in its after-thought, wondering. In the midst of every moment I've wanted to capture this month, every scene or every feeling worth evoking from a photographed inspiration, my camera has been elsewhere. MIA. Given the inconvenient trend, I wonder how I will ever record the memories of this stint by the sand, this season of coastal living?

The sunset breathes out over us like a sigh wishing on a dandelion. I lose myself in the wash of color, the flying ships, the sea chanties of vagabonds clad with harmonicas and castanets and loose fabric. Bicycle spokes whir. Birds' wings flap and flutter and my head girates in this paradise of a world. And even in the slowing of moments, in the hand-holding and the staring into the jagged horizon of Catalina, sun dipping behind, I'm tongue-tied. Empty-worded, so to speak. No film, no thousand words a print. In the barefoot slap of skin against wet tide, I'm left awestruck, dumbfounded, and feeling at a loss to remember the rapidly dissolving sequence of breathtaking mental images, now logged somewhere unretrievable in the abysmal bank of my mind.

I clap sand-crusted shoes over the welcome mat with nothing but a vague recollection of the afternoon's views, yet a determination to write them into permanency. And yet it is impossible. It is a constant flux, unforgiving as a seaside torrential rain, and dynamic as a momentary rainbow glimpsed in a spout's refraction of dusk's last light. Like a hummingbird, time hovers with the brevity of a batted eye lash, and I gasp at its sighting only to lose it through my fingers like sand in a sieve.

And so, I'm torn between retiring my camera and pen, and rallying, batteries charged (pencil sharpened?). But in working so diligently to absorb what is soon to evaporate, aren't I bound to miss something better seen from my own two eyes and not my Canon's lens? Or am I dooming myself to rely on blurred-out images haphazardly committed to memory?

Here I recall two scenes I couldn't capture, cameraless, yet wanted nothing but to ctrl + s with my mind's eye:

The first, a spectacular post-storm ocean, churning with two story walls of water. Saturday morning surfers and strollers alike gawked at the sight of monstrous waves rising like science fiction creatures.

The second, an iced-over harbor, crystalized in the chilled blue of pre-dawn January. Crossing a bridge, I glimpsed the bay, frozen, bobbing gently in the momentary stillness before a bustling weekday.

I couldn't help but scowl at my inability to capture these images.

Yet perhaps the capturing is not the point. Perhaps it is the drinking in that matters most. The part where I inhale the scene before me, and in so doing, internalize it in a way that goes beyond mental picture. Perhaps it's only then that I become a part of the scene. Otherwise, can I ever move past the role of onlooker? Mere spectatorship is reserved for tourists--and not, ultimately, why I moved to the beach. I moved to be moved, after all, morphed by the enrivonment, that I might somehow take shape or find freedom in the midst of its breathtaking flux.

...

So it seems, for the first time, I've given up on capturing it all. The leash on my camera uncinched, I'm finally ready to enjoy the views without the obsessive need to document them.

After a desperate and futile attempt to capture the sea, I give the sea permission to capture me.

I promise I'll try to recap a word or two.

...

a r c o . i r i s

2009-11-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

Could have been. Astronaut, seamstress, interior decorator. Tractor driver, mechanical engineer, department store cashier. Could have been a sky diver. A manicurist. Librarian. Could have been.

In my ninth week of student teaching, I am a broken record stuck on Could Have Been. What compelled me to choose music teacher? I could have been a dish washer. Like raisins, my hands are shriveled and sore to the touch as I finish the last of the earthenware plates. The towel soaked through, I smear water droplets away from a fork shaped like legato.

And then I hear it. The celestial voices of “O Nata Lux” soaring in some distant cathedral with paint-cracked ceilings and figures rosy with their constant flight. The line ebbs and flows, motion captured in stillness, colors still reverberating long after the phrase touches down and folds its wings. I am lost—dissolved—in the inner movement of Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. At rest, at last, I drink deeply of such requiem, sighing with a sigh that brings Saturday morning sooner. The fog rolls in, blanketing an ageless coast, and the blood pressure of a thousand souls sinks in unison like a foot of toes pressed firmly into the sopping sand.

“Agnus Dei” coos the chorus, here.

It was the clarinet in the fifth grade, all plastic and nickel and chipped bamboo. Forced together backward, her shrieking sent the dog howling, kick-starting it all. And before that it was the toy piano, her metallic tonk tonk and fat keys waiting like candy for my sticky fingers. But even before that it was the matching game of sound to photograph—a business man’s dress shoes ground against the sidewalk’s loose gravel in a nameless onomatopoeia. And still before that it was the cassette tape of Bach on marimba while winding toward Idyllwild for a weekend in the clouds. It was If I had a Hammer. The sloshing lub dub from within the womb. Tongue clicks. Rain.

And so my culprits are in good company—too many to cast blame.

I live in keys. I live on Ivory Street, next door to chromaticism and minutes from Korean folk songs. In the dusk the moon sheds her stuff across the sea like a sneeze of powdered sugar, while I stand, staring, mouth agape, pulse slowing like a dying metronome. Inside I bleed blue.

He almost died on Wednesday. I was busy being a credential student—he was busy catching the 5:30 train. I was slapping the desk with laughter—he was snapping his glasses in half. I was oblivious—he was unconscious. A Spanish-speaking man found him in the bushes and called an ambulance, then disappeared. Mami said it was an angel.

It’s a fragile existence when you get a phone call from the local trauma center that your husband has been admitted to the ER. Without any information, you carry a ghost of yourself to the garage, and you drive. You swear as you get caught in traffic. You swear this is the nightmare you might still awaken from. You swear you’d never take the carpool lane alone. You swear you read the book of Ecclesiastes and the rain falls on us all. It’s your turn, you guess. Yet you almost miss your turn—the hospital’s on the right. You park in space 21, numb. You run to the lobby where your mind plays your horror film on fast forward in spackled flickering cast against a lonely alley wall. From somewhere behind your eyes, you watch your husband beep beep beep in surgery. You spy a disfigured face. You fear he’s brain dead. Paralyzed. Cold. Already gone. You identify the body. You sign the death certificate. You carry his broken glasses in your purse. You come home to an empty house you scraped and sanded and painted and toiled over, together. He’s in the walls, you see. You can’t bear to live here. Can’t bear to leave here. You slink to your parents’ where you find yourself detached, headless, in a guest bedroom once your own.

“I’m going to be fine” he reassures you from inside a handsome neck brace.

You never let your guard down.

“Can you wiggle your toes?” you ask, eyes flooded.

CT scan: negative. X-rays: negative. Whole body blunt trauma. Observe for two days. Two chipped teeth. Ran out of Band-Aids.

You ate your sister-in-law’s leftovers. The flowers came. You kept your orange bracelet for seven days. You weren’t ready to be a widow less than a month after your twenty-fourth birthday.

…

“O Nata Lux” soars through the stained glass, and recovery moves over me like the sunlight twice crept across a moist windowsill. While a sleeping husband heals, I, too, begin to heal and nod and wane as the night passes into madrugada. In the inevitable chill of tomorrow’s five A.M., maybe I can crawl into the enveloping warmth and arco iris of these chords. Maybe I won’t wonder Could Have Been. Tomorrow it’s enough to just be.

…

o r u g a

2009-09-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

...

It's the month of September that calls me back to my ink and paper. It's a golden afternoon, lazy and long-shadowed with gnats meandering and Maggie marauding. It's the puzzle on the cherry wood table and the candy corn and the school supplies. It's the distant flute working intervals and a neighbor's dachshund roughhousing with the dirt. It is autumn.

Autumn, and I need a sign. Some kind of figurative reassurance that it's okay for me to be a work in progress. And then I see it--there on the pavement edging toward the gutter, a tiny, endearing, fuzzy caterpillar. On my way to AP Music Theory, I stop in my tracks, grinning. My hands find their way to my hips while I stand in disbelief, shaking my head and laughing aloud.

I get it, God. I'm the oruga. I don't have to be the butterfly yet. In my earliest stage of teaching, it's okay to inch along--to crawl, even--in the gutter of all places. And there's something delightfully relieving about having the sense of divine permission for that.

Then, a week later, a second sighting. Same fuzzy, endearing caterpillar! And the most reassuring part? It's still a caterpillar--just in case I thought I was supposed to be progressing faster. Phew.

Two days later, yet another friendly beast makes an appearance. (What do I look like, Noah's ark? Mother Earth? Dr. DooLittle?) Pulling into the garage, car momentarily idling and right hand poised to remove the key from the ignition, a tiny field mouse raises its head up from the hood near the left windshield wiper. Suddenly I'm face to face with Ratatouille--and I picture a toque on Remy's cousin, little Nepetiz, as he studies my incredulous facial expression. A familiar choral warm-up surfaces to the back of my mind: Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight, mighty nice.

After the caterpillar, I'm grappling for a meaningful mouse metaphor. Meek but mighty? Small fish in a big pond? I'm running out of cliches. Enough of Mice and Men, I suppose--I'll stick with the caterpillar imagery. Besides, mice don't transform the way caterpillars do. Like a good crescendo, I have to give myself room to grow and somewhere to arrive.

For now, though, I must say I think I've found that somewhere.

I've found it at the pier.

She stands fast, the pier, like a mezzo soprano poised to wail. She watches as the tide stretches out, so far that great heaps of seaweed lay tangled and bare before the shore, teased out of hiding. The fishermen bob along, their baskets to the brim with flip flopping fish, tossing fluorescent bait into the calm windless night beneath the waxing moon. She bathes in the moon, the pier, letting the oils and the light, like dancing fireflies, tickle her limbs.

Over her wooded slats the lines groan in high shrills, slackening and growing taut with the tug and pull of the tide. As the sky grows dim, the tongues of men click in familiar refrains. Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, and Spanish overlap in the foreground, radios abuzz in the background with sports casts broken by static. French fries in greasy hands, and ketchup-stained fingers outstretched like octopuses, little ones scamper like short-legged barrels of clothing, teeter-tottering and prodding at their fathers' suffocating catches.

There are strollers and lovers and gazers interested only in each other, unimpressed by the perpetually morphing landscape. Overhead a plane with an Eskimo face on its tail makes a left turn over the ocean and sheds its beam of light across the disappearing tide. And while happy passengers dream of caterpillars and mice and music theory, making their presumed landing by city curfew, we too drift home to dream--four doors down--where the crashing sea's soliloquy takes its exit and evaporates to a pocket of our minds. It almost seems a dream just sleeping here, so near the earth's edge and the water's preface.

And while I am nowhere near the preface of my own story, let alone my future cocoon hibernation, at least I've finally found a somewhere.

Here's to more glimpses of perfectly okay imperfection in unexpected nooks and crannies--whether backyards, gutters, or car hoods.

And here's to the pier, where I forget to mind my imperfection.

Finally, home.

...

t e m p o r a l

2009-08-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

...

My life is in tupperware. Home--boxed into temporary containers. Leftover stew--similarly boxed into temporary containers. Teaching supplies--stuffed into magazine files and clear plastic bins (how momentarily useless). Come to think of it, even my substitute employment is temporary. I am boxed into this season of eventual, in-between living.

Everything is only for now, as they sing in Avenue Q. Your hair is only for now. George Bush was only for now. "Except for death and paying taxes, everything in life is only for now."

I have a strong aversion to tupperware. Something about the difficulty in hand washing and drying the stuff, and the way its walls retain the character and odor of any previous inhabitants, makes the whole concept sort of revolting. And yet, we have tupperware. Everywhere.

I have to mention here that I discovered my parents' 1970's roots in a color display at the Smithsonian. "Look, it's our tupperware!" a twelve-year-old me exclaimed, at the familiar sight of our avocado, orange, and mustard lock-top items.

Are these containers telling? Are things in my life, as they appear, well-contained? Under control? Like the San Jacinto fire, I'd say 5% contained. As for the other 95%, it hangs in the balance. What will tomorrow bring? Who knows. I think I've finally stopped worrying about it. And with my Boldo mint tea beneath my nose, why bother flinching at the thought of more curve balls?

First it was Detroit scoring seven runs in one inning despite our fervent and ever-hopeful Angels in the Outfield wing flapping ("ya gotta believe!"). Then it was a conduct-a-thon hoop of fire contest for a position teaching a single section of instrumental music. Then, the music lost, it was a sightreading fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants hoop of fire. And as if that weren't enough for the week, it was a flat on the way to wall scraping adventures in Newport. I'm realizing the possibilities are beyond the limits of my imagination, and if anything I should stop trying to contain the inevitable. Life is, after all, just like curly hair. You can't control it. You can go to great lengths to fry it straight, but it always curls back. Might as well work with it. Resistence is futile, right?

Like the inevitably stubborn curl, there is some predictability amidst this crazy flux. The moon still waxes, spilling her brilliance across the ebbing Pacific late into the evening. Kids still go nuts for sandcrabs, and the castles will still erode into amorphous pits and peaks as summer wanes. Late September, school supplies will go on clearance, and Autumn will make her late blooming stage debut. A moment after we digest Thanksgiving, Christimas carols will come and go, and it will be 2010 before I even finish my tea. And I'll have to pause by the shoreline with a fresh cup of it, steaming my throat into the new year, as I wonder where on earth the tide went.

And so it goes, and so it goes. And so will you, soon, I suppose. --Billy Joel.

Listening to "Road" on George Winston's Autumn album, I remember a line of poetry penned in years past: time, time slows, slow down. I catch it, pausing in your smile.

Here's to pauses throughout the rest of this rapidly advancing rhinoceros of a year. And here's to tupperware, God love it. May these temporary containers not reek of their contents. And may we be more or less prepared for the unexpected surprises that inevitibaly burst out of them.

Except, perhaps, for the stew--I'm ill-equipped and disinclined to deal with a culinary explosion in the microwave.

That, and my cleaning supplies are packed away in boxes.

...

e n f e r m a

2009-07-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

...

Thundershowers rolling overhead, I pause from my reading to listen to the the crack-and-downpour ballet, complete with rhapsodic symphonic accompaniment, on the other side of the glass pane. From within the flat, a pulley system hoists up the wooden slats of blinds, letting in the flood of afternoon light like a broken egg yolk over an English muffin. Only today the sun is conspicuous in her absence, as I peer across the backyard of Barracas, Buenos Aires, a neighborhood keeping her hands in her pockets and her hat firmly tucked around her ears, awash in this cold winter storm.

In my left hand, Fahrenheit 451. In my right hand, an oversize juice box. And in the pit of my stomach, sick. I'll spare you the sorry details, but suffice it to say that I managed not to drink enough water despite my father's parting advice to "stay hydrated." I don't know that I did things much differently this year compared to last year's trip, or in Spain five years back. Yet somehow, it happened. I am in bed, post-nasty (now exiting from the bathroom pipes to the glorious sewer), and my limp self is drained, sheepish, and weak, slowly returning back to color and good health with the company of Bradbury and a seemingly bottomless box of jugo de manzana.

And in my slow digestion of apple juice, it just so happens that I had thought to pack a book worth digesting equally slowly. I begin to read.

"In the late afternoon it rained and the entire world was dark gray" (Bradbury, 2009, p. 19). I steal a glimpse afuera—outside—where the cold, wet world is decidedly colorless, its vivacity temporarily smeared away like a sidewalk chalk drawing, soon to be redrawn.

Here, I pause and rewind, flipping back several pages of ink and paper until zeroing in on the sentence that arrested me when I first picked up Fahrenheit.

He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb. p. 4

In class last semester, this is the sentence I would have picked to transcribe and read out loud. I read it again, and for a moment my breath ceases in my chest, and I hear nothing while my right brain directs a gloomy film somewhere behind my eyes. A thing inside me that lay dormant for the past six years lifts its dopey head to see it all from these fifty words.

It's been a long time, fiction and me. I gave it up somewhere between the Compendium of Western Music History and Copland's Clarinet Concerto. I filed it away in a distant cabinet, rusted and cobwebbed, and threw away my set of keys (the library card).

Admittedly, I never forgot my library card number—I had it memorized by heart, as was characteristic of the Book People of Fahrenheit, in which all things read are never truly forgotten. 3502957849. I used to check out fifty at a time, and when I worked at branches with a slower pace, I may or may not have changed my books' due dates from two weeks to two years (quiet please—there are some things the public library doesn't need to know).

Yet, at which turn does a fanatic like that become lost? Where does she decide to burn the books, so to speak?

At some point I decided that I couldn't read fiction. It wasn't real. Non-fiction was reasonable, at least, practical and useful in wide-ranging content. I once picked up a book, for example, about understanding the mystery beneath my car's hood, and I read the chapter on how to detect an overheating engine, only to stop my Corolla before blowing a gasket that same evening. I decided it was a sign. Had I had my nose in a murder-mystery that morning, I could be dead. Well, maybe not dead—but certainly out of an engine.

But that sentence. It triggered in me the reminiscence of a past love. I was introduced to Bradbury in high school when I read The Illustrated Man. I don't remember what prompted me to read it, but I do remember becoming deliciously sucked into Bradbury's vividly painted descriptions. Every sentence was crafted, carefully woven and choice, often calling for a second (or third) glimpse.

Fahrenheit 451, stuffed away on a clearance shelf at Target like a dime store novel, was equally delicious and certainly worth my pocket change—and Bradbury's (2009).

I didn't know it, but I was literally writing a dime novel. In the spring of 1950 it cost me nine dollars and eighty cents in dimes to write and finish the first draft of The Fire Man which later became Fahrenheit 451. In all the years from 1941 to that time, I had done most of my typing in the family garages...I was driven out of my garage by my loving children, who insisted upon coming around to the rear window and singing and tapping on the panes. Father had to choose between finishing a story or playing with the girls. I chose to play, of course, which endangered the family income. An office had to be found...Finally, I located just the place, the typing room in the basement of the library at the University of California at Los Angeles. There, in neat rows, were a score or more of old Remington or Underwood typewriters which rented out at a dime a half hour. You thrust your dime in, the clock ticked madly, and you typed wildly, to finish before the half hour ran out...I finished the first draft in roughly nine days. pp. 167-168

I can relate to the ticking typewriter with the likes of my pathetic laptop battery, inevitably claiming longer life than reality holds true. Like Bradbury, my grandfather was a writer, and so learned how to type. In fact, Grandpa went to the second world war not as a foot soldier, but as a clerk. I regret that I have never used a typewriter so as to appreciate the frustration that he and Ray must have experienced at the sticking keys (or ticking clock, as in Bradbury's case).

Back at the dime store shelf, I spied Fahrenheit 451 on clearance during my recent spring semester at the College of Educational Studies (CES). Our instructor Jan Osborn had mentioned reading it with her junior high school students. So I wanted to read it. I can't place the last time I desired to read a book solely because someone else had read it. And fiction, no less. Imagine!

I first met Jan as a staff member in the CES. There was an excursion taking place—an event of the OC Literary Society—and Jan had extra space in the limousine. I was granted permission to be whisked away from my office day job, under-dressed as I felt, to a lavish author's luncheon where I was privileged to meet the writer behind a novel that I hadn't read. A dozen or so sat around a square conference table and took turns asking her questions. I had one.

I often fog up the displays of antique shops around the circle at Old Towne Orange, dreaming of becoming the owner of an old-fashioned writer's desk. The well-loved kind with dinged up wood, shelves, tiny drawers for letters and stamps, and a roll-up front with an ancient key. This, next to a window--be still, my heart.

"What does your writing space look like?" I asked the author. "No one has ever asked me that," she replied, taken aback. She launched into a calming description that gave us a window into her world (and her window overlooks the Long Island Sound, if I remember correctly).

From the vantage point of my window, rain. Prostrate in this foreign four post bed, and empty stomach (save the apple juice) churning me forward, I return to reading and re-reading Bradbury as if devouring a ten course tasting menu one morsel at a time. I savor, and exclaim over the exquisite colors and textures. With a meal, the taste escapes at the unfortunate moment of brushing one's teeth with the cursed palette-cleansing paste, whereas words are far more lasting. Far more powerful.

This was perhaps the greatest lesson of my recent spring semester in the College of Educational Studies: the power inherent in literacy is unparalleled. Picture a tow truck driver bumping into his former school teacher and reciting Frost's The Road Not Taken to her astonished tears. The teacher? Jan Osborn. Never before has an instructor so richly instilled the beauty and purpose of literacy in me, as Jan has.

And I'm not the only one to walk away from Osborn changed. Josh Nothom ('10) concurs, commenting "Jan's class is indeed the pinnacle of the social justice vein that Chapman's College of Educational Studies claims to be born from. In my opinion, she is an indispensable member of the faculty."

Classmate Crystal Maurer ('08) agrees, noting "the way our case study was structured made me take great interest in my work." Crystal refers to an in-depth analysis of focus groups and the incorporation of teaching strategies emphasizing literacy (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) in single-subject secondary classrooms. "The literacy strategies" stood out to classmate Marissa Gohl ('08), such as "the poem for two voices"—two poems whose words are written as a musical duet to be read aloud by two voices simultaneously. A cellist, Marissa jumped at the opportunity to marry her subject area of music with literacy. A musician myself, I composed a poem of onomatopoeia, mimicking the sound of two clarinets in improvisatory scat. Ruben Lopez ('10) performed the piece with me at a subsequent class session (laughter still resounding).

Still, the class was more than poetry and laughs.

"The highlight of the semester," Ruben nods, "occurred every Wednesday night after Jan's class when Ben, Josh, and I stayed until 10:00 P.M. in the parking structure discussing issues brought up in class and how we are going to change the world...literally. Josh even began writing a charter. I learned so much from those discussions. Their input really helped me solidify concepts introduced by Freire, Finn, Kumashiro, and Greene and eventually led me to the point where I began to take a critical look at what I was observing in the field."

It takes more than good theorists to entice a group of students into a weekly ritual of after-class discussion. It takes good teaching.

Osborn enlivens theory, embodies strategies and purpose to educate, facilitates fiery dialogue, and closes each session with the same electric energy she opened with, still seizing between the walls long after 6:30 P.M. Until Osborn’s instruction "I have never had a class," adds Crystal Maurer ('08), "where I felt everything was so meaningful and I was accountable for my work." For many, this past spring semester was the first instance of passionately desiring to read and write about one's thoughtfully chosen texts. Josh Nothom ('10) notes Osborn's agility in blending support and challenge, commenting "she pushed me to do my best on every project," though simultaneously "she was a harsh critic." Josh adds that "her criticism was always welcome" and that Osborn "is also very much in tune with the enormous burden that many of us have chosen to take on...thus providing a strong support system for all of us who truly embrace the term 'social justice educator.' ”

Instructors like Osborn set the bar for Chapman faculty. Writer Ray Bradbury (2009) recalls his experience crafting Fahrenheit 451, the piece that sets the bar for my writing.

Between investing dimes and going insane when the typewriter jammed (for there went your precious time!) and whipping pages in and out of the device, I wandered upstairs. There I strolled, lost in love, down the corridors, and through the stacks, touching books, pulling volumes out, turning pages, thrusting volumes back, drowning in all the good stuffs that are the essence of libraries. What a place, don't you agree, to write a novel about burning books in the Future! p. 168

There was a day when I, too, wandered upstairs—only it was to the third floor of the Leatherby Libraries, to lose myself in the stacks of music history. I wove between Beethoven's scores and letters between composers (likely written on those coveted wooden writing desks, darn them all). I grasped at musty spines of oversize volumes, cracking stories and inhaling their scents. It was like having a séance with past greats. I even settled down to the carpet where I curled up with a fascinating record of correspondence, only to fall sound asleep in the midst of the collections.

Here Bradbury (2009) would chime in, musing on a hypothetical:

Let’s imagine there’s an earthquake tomorrow in the average university town. If only two buildings remained intact...what would they have to be in order to rebuild everything that had been lost? Number one would be the medical building…the other building would be the library. p. 183

Indeed, the library is central to civilization; it is "our brain," as Bradbury (2009) put it, asserting that "reading is at the center of our lives" (p. 184). Of course, literacy is not the mere teaching of books, nor does it merely exist in the context of the library’s walls. As Bradbury alludes, literacy is far more—it is the very avenue for a powerful self-expression at the root of humanity’s existential freedom (a point lost in even the university classroom, at times). Paulo Freire’s (1970) voice resounds here, his words reminding readers that “to exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it” (p. 88). Society’s potential to progress depends upon this ability to identify what may be wrong with the world, in order that it might be bettered—a process which necessitates literacy. Thus the high call to what Freire (1970) deems the fulfillment of humanity rests on those who teach, that students find purpose in literacy not merely as a means to get to (or through) college. This leads to a wide-awake humanity, free to wonder, relate, and understand.

After all, what is education if teachers fail to cultivate students who are conscious of their world? And what is education if teachers fail to equip students with the literacy needed to change it?

And the truth is, even university students forget the answers to these questions. Even university students lose the love for wandering upstairs only to fall asleep with one's nose in a book, dreaming of antique desks and quills and ink blots. Even university students can turn from texts, finding nothing more than hollowness, and much preferring to burn the lot of them. Someone has to spark, to rekindle and stoke the flames that have, perhaps, gone out with a whisp in years past.

...

The sun now set, raindrops tap dance on the balcony near the bed where my eyes threaten to close in much the same manner as on the day amidst the music stacks.

The story finished—and I won't tell you how it ends—I set it aside, its pages curled from a night of having its words slowly devoured. I snap the juice box top closed. I listen. My stomach gurgles what I decipher to be a muddy "goodnight."

And as I drift off to sleep, my mind carries me alongside the lyrics of a familiar Simon & Garfunkel tune (1966).

My thoughts are scattered and they're cloudy
They have no borders, no boundaries
They echo and they swell
From Tolstoy to Tinkerbell...

Goodnight, Bradbury. Thank you for reminding me that I do love to read—and not just non-fiction.

After all, I may or may not have thrown my water-damaged 1939 orchestration textbook into a Huntington Beach bonfire.

...

Works Cited

Bradbury, R. (2009). Fahrenheit 451. New York: Random House, Inc.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum.

Garfunkel, A. & Simon, P. (1966). Cloudy. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme [Stereo LP]. New York: SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.

...

r u b í

2009-07-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

...

...

She lies patiently on the wooden floor, chin to paws, tail tucked round haunches. At the sound of my typing, her triangular ears perk up, fox-like head elevated to survey the scene. And then, the piercing bark commences.

Scampering down the hallway, Rubí is the picturesque chiquitita perra that is so often spied on brisk morning jaunts with well-dressed Argentinean companions. She is bashful, trim, affectionate, and calm as a pond--until disturbed, that is, and then she imagines herself Rin-Tin-Tin, a fierce Super Dog poised to fend off the shady ladrones with a snarl thrice her stature.

We can't help but take this fifteen pound marvel for a stroll. Timid, she hangs behind Augusto and barely keeps pace as the neighborhood of Barracas bustles about us. Given her vantage point a mere six inches from the earth, the city sights and sounds are grotesque monstrosities, and her intimidation seems only natural. Cobblestone callecitas and jagged curbs--mountains. Pools of murky mystery liquid--lakes. Abandoned construction zones--deserts. Ah, Rubí, the adventurer. She takes a vague whiff of a neighboring dog's gift to the sidewalk, and ambles on.

Plaza Colombia is a small enclosed park where, we learn, dogs are not allowed. This is our unfortunate discovery after venturing into the plazita with our slightly-less-than-eager adventurer. Poor Rubí, excluido de la sociedad. We could sulk, heads hung low, but instead we press on to San Telmo's Parque Lezama, where we stop to watch the spinnings of a colorfully painted carousel, and ward off a few Godzilla dogs in the process. Tail between her legs, Rubí moves tentatively when nearing a sauntering bulldog. I have to wonder what the bulldog thinks of the world--if only dog thoughts could be captured like Doug's in Up. Perhaps this one's dogtag would read FONZI, and he would voice his commentary as ¨hijo de puta¨ in a thick French accent, responding to an ungrateful owner shoving a plate of yesterday's fish before his wrinkled muzzle.

When a weimaraner sporting a blue bufanda gets a little too curious, we yank Rubí away and veer to another vein of the park's sprawling pathways.

As the late afternoon sun begins to lick the distant skyscape, we decide to toddle home ourselves, Rubí the adventurer weary from her fearless traipsing through mud, over mortar, and in winter no less.

...

The lift sweeps us up to level 4, E, where we drop our scarves, and Rubí's leash. Free, she scurries to her lime green water bowl for a hard-earned drink. I collapse on the bed for a hard-earned nap, and we hear the tango volume increase for what will soon be a hard-earned meal. Actually, make that a no-earned meal--we are graced with Gustavo and Lili's fantastic accommodations and culinary stylings this week, as we drink in Buenos Aires from the vantage point of two adventurers, sixty some inches from the earth.

And it's a nice view.

...

...

n u e v a . y o r k

2009-07-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

...

"New York? I like it and I hate it. I love it and I despise it. Copenhagen you can have. Freeze your pants off on Labor Day." --my NYC cab driver monologue, 7th grade Musical Theater class.

...

From Delta's LAX Sky Club, we snicker and point as our cherry red hard-shell luggage shimmies up a conveyor belt to Virgin America's underbelly cargo hold.

One raisin bagel later (toasted with peanut butter, banana on the side), we make our way to the gate downstairs. Entering Virgin's Unicorn Chaser, our faces are met with a purpley-pink glow, and we're quickly absorbed in the in-flight (or pre-flight, in this case) touchscreen entertainment system. Leaning forward--our noses in the media--we first tune into CNN and Current TV, then mess around with the available video games using the controllers attached to our armrests. Augusto is playing a game involving a military penguin when we grin in agreement--if only Virgin America was Virgin Americas; we'd love to fly to Argentina in this tech-friendly mood-lit playpen.

Soaring over the canyons of Utah, the Rockies, and the Great Lakes, Virgin carries us just past Atlantic shores toward a warm welcome upon JFK's tarmac.

Luggage in hand, we board a taxi and ask for Midtown. "Oh, heavy," comments Hassan the cab driver at the embarrassing weight of our larger suitcase (contents include a cowboy hat and a painting, among our coats and scarves). Forty-five minutes later, Hassan pulls us up to the sleek, French Sofitel on 44th St., in time for a wash, a change of clothes, and reservations at Le Cirque.

"Sir, Madame?" we're greeted at the gateway to our Manhattan culinary adventure. "Our reservations are at the chef's table," we respond, leaving out a lengthy explanation of our love for the movie Ratatouille--and our secret desire to discover a rat directing a shaggy-haired chef from the vantage point of a clean white toque. "Oh yes, right this way." We're ushered to front row seats of the kitchen, where our evening's entertainment is already unfolding.

Several courses and glasses of wine later, we are basking in the gluttonous delights of vacation. "We came to New York City for the food," we tell Ming, Chef de Partie de Amazingness, who asks us if we're in the industry. We're not exactly chefs...But we're fans, we explain. So we're in the eating industry, you could say. We like a good meal.

Ming, we discover, is from LA. He will be a featured contestant on the next season of the Food Network's Chopped.

"They gave me this mystery basket, right? And I had to come up with something from the ingredients..." We commiserate as Ming recounts his unfortunate culinary disaster involving broccoli, jam, and a crepe gone wrong. "I didn't make it to the next round," he chuckles.

Ming points out the various stations and positions in the kitchen, and we smile at the Poissonier, who looks like the kind of shady figure in the back who could rob a bank with a ballpoint pin, or kill a man with his left thumb. He is reserved, keeping to himself while endlessly sharpening his fish knife between orders. Another Chef de Partie de Amazingness, a Rotisseur whose name we didn't catch, has been a contestant on Iron Chef. He is the classic round-bellied and red-bearded giant you are pleased to find working with a tiny pot--our favorite kind of cook to spy in a kitchen. Several of the chefs are clad with baseball caps, and all look like the kind of unassuming, every day New Yorkers you could expect to bump into on the subway, without having the slightest clue of their highly skilled occupation or artesenal employer.

Following the food, the dessert, and the conversations with the cooks, our waiter gives us a tour of Le Cirque. We learn that the restaurant recently relocated to its current home in the famous Bloomberg building as we glimpse a wall of photographs detailing the colorful (and black-and-white) history of the family-owned business. In a couple of weeks, we discover, HBO is re-airing a documentary (A Table in Heaven) on the relocation process of the fine institution.

...

As our taxi honks and slips between vehicles, riding lane lines and maneuvering in stunt driver fashion, our eyes reflect the massive structures ablaze with neon. Times Square is a circus of lights, alive and pulsing with digital motion. Bystanders' cameras click and flash on corners, capturing the electricity. Everyone seems a tourist in this pocket of the world.

...

...

The conversations continue to unfold as we scurry up Sixth during commute time the following morning. We keep pace with the nervous sidewalk speed limit as hundreds wind their way to work. Tucked between two shops is Zibetto, an espresso bar the width of a bowling alley lane. Tiptoeing into this closet, we order cappuccinos and croissants. As the New Yorkers trickle in, we eavesdrop on an amusing business woman from the financial district who has apparently come to collect her free coffee after winning a bet regarding the monthly Bloomberg data. "I don't trust those Bloombergers," responds the barista in an Italian accent. "How's the OJ machine working?" inquires the business woman to the other barista, who is also Italian. "Better," he responds with a smirk. The machine won't fit the pomelo halves but performs beautifully when producing a shot glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. The bar, now crammed with sixteen regular customers, never seems to slow down. Finishing our juice, we pay our tab and slink out into the already-hot city day.

Up Sixth, also known as Avenue of the Americas, we run into a massive statue of a Cuban revolutionary. His plaque delineates his story as an exile, residing in NYC for a stint. His leadership in the independence movement earned him a larger-than-life replica of himself on a horse, and the details are astounding (right down to the horse's genitalia--yes, we looked).

The foliage of Central Park looms overhead, and the city skyline temporarily disappears in this natural sanctuary for squirrels, birds, and astonishingly well-behaved leashless dogs. Like the surrounding buildings, now out of sight, the trees tower above us and create a canopy of shade and solace. Amidst hilly inclines, bicyclists, and ballparks, our favorite spot is the lush sheepherder's meadow, reserved for quiet activities.

...

Our third and final item on the half-day's agenda is "Hot Dog Stand." But not just any hot dog stand. We are on the hunt for the infamous "Hallo Berlin" hot dog stand, famed for serving up the best wurst in the city. Their restaurant resides in Hell's Kitchen, but their notorious cart awaits on the corner of 5th and 54th.

The cart is nowhere in sight. "Where's the German guy?" two business men ask a nearby bagel stand worker. "Is he coming today?" Augusto leans in, hearing "I dunno. Sometimes he comes--sometimes not. Always late, that guy. Sometimes he doesn't come strolling down with his cart until noon." It's 11:48. We slip into the GAP across the street, as its cool bursts of air beckon weary pedestrians inward. 11:55. No Hallo Berlin. 12:03. Nothing. 12:05, we decide to journey down 54th to see if we can spot "the German guy" strolling toward his infamous spot. Not a German hotdog man in sight. We reach sixth, and say to hell with it.

At sixth we give in to our appetites and order ordinary hot dogs from an ordinary hot dog stand. Despite our disappointment at the mirage of Hallo Berlin, we're pleasantly surprised with the ordinary. The lemonade helps. Dressed in bright yellow and orange, I laugh out loud when I realize I look like a hot dog myself.

...

"How's business?" I inquire of our cab driver, Haggar, on the way to JFK. "Eh, so-so. It's too hot today," he scoffs. His cab threatens to break down, sweating under the east coast heat. Augusto, buckling his seat belt, snaps a picture out the window. "You don't trust yellow cab?" Haggar questions with a smirk at the sound of the buckle's locking click. "Every driver different. Some drive smooth, some crazy...Sometimes you have to be a little bit crazy," he offers. It's the same in Buenos Aires, I note. Haggar, afraid that his cab is malfunctioning, pulls over to check the oil, then precedes to roll down the windows for the remainder of the trip. He charges us a reduced cab fare for our patience. Wind torn, my hair looks like something that crawled out of Central Park's southern pond as we enter the airport.

...

...

On the runway for two hours beneath a slow-moving thunderstorm, I finish a sudoku puzzle while awaiting takeoff. The Atlanta sunset greets us in the south, just as our connection leaves without us. Ann Marie, a Delta employee at the international re-booking table, says we look like lovebirds and finds a pair of seats for us on tomorrow evening's flight. She asks if we're recently married, and we say yes, batting our eyelashes as she hands us complimentary toiletry bags and meal vouchers. Though we spend the night in Atlanta without our luggage, we enjoy the free stay and extra rest, returning to the airport for the sushi dinner we skipped in Manhattan.

...

Our trip began three days back on a Sunday evening in LA, and it isn't until Thursday morning that we arrive, weary but enthusiastic travelers nonetheless, ready to begin our sequel adventure in Buenos Aires. Gustavo greets us in his sweats at the ascensor to his flat. Our suitcases roll into the guest bedroom, and before long we roll out to Ave. Monte de Oca to catch Bus no. 12.

...

f r a g m e n t o s

2009-06-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

...

I can imagine cousin Laura seated at the table in Saenz Peña sealing a crackly brown paper envelope, treasured contents tucked snugly within.

I've waited to open it for a good eleven months. Slicing the edge, the estampillas spill out onto the desk in vivid hues.

......

Los colores, los diseños--ellos me sonríen. Estampillas de cada esquina del país forman una colcha de retazos sobre mi escritorio. Mientras mis manos están arreglando los pedacitos preciocos contengo mi respiración, y algún momento me voy a reventar. Tengo un picazón. No me puedo mover un dedo. No quiero estropear mi creación, mi arte.

...

Eleven months post-Argentina, an inevitable return is mere days away. Piecing together a patchwork collage of stamps to cover my new journal, my mind turns southward, carrying me like a hot air balloon carries honeymooners and stubborn old squares across hemispheres.

...

¡No no no, no lo tocás! Todavía no ha terminado, exclamo. Me cierno como la madre de pollitos. Alas extendiendo, los protejo de brisas traviesas y estornudos bruscos. Pero hasta que pego los pedazos, todos permanecen fragmentados.

...

I'm glued to my list as though my attentiveness to its scribbled details will yield some semblance of order in the ranks and files of stuff-to-be-packed. But in getting ready for a trip, things are always messy. And amidst the mess, I see my life--fragmented, lacking glue. It's almost art, but it's all so fragile, and I fear the hopelessness that follows a scattering of pieces to the relentless wind. In some kind of symbolic effort to hold things together I tape my cousin's gifts to the cover of a small wide-ruled notebook. I just wanna be ok, be ok, be ok, run the broken record lyrics across the patio of my mind.

...

...

Just give me back my pieces. Just give them back to me please. Just give me back my pieces. And let me hold my broken parts.

Funny, such a desperate message wrapped in such a peppy ukulele tune. I hum along to my mental strumming. Mapas, rutas, guías. A sack of regalitos. Piles and piles of clothes, grouped and categorized, neatly folded, tucked, and occasionally crammed where helpful.

I sigh when I get to the scarves. I would try one on, just to imagine the biting cold as we step into the winter air that is July, but the sweat is already beading on my nose at the thought (probably because we're headed to New York City, first, and we're planning on a sushi dinner, a bagel breakfast, and a hot dog lunch beneath an afternoon thunder shower in Central Park). All this before flying south for the winter. Buenos Aires will be a far cry from New York's hair-dryer-in-your-face summer.

Except for Chaco, that is. Sunny skies and warm breezes are on the ten-day forecast for Saenz Peña--so there's no sense in worrying about rain soggying Laura's stamps.

...

Suitcase living furthers my sense of fragmentation, but I try to keep the pieces together. I hate to see things scattered.

...

Unless it's a flock of unsuspecting pigeons cooing along an urban sidewalk, in which case all bets are off.

(Yes, that's me scaring an innocent family of birds on a lovely Spanish afternoon. Sorry, aves. Some pleasures we never grow out of.)

...

a v i s p a

2009-06-06T00:14:00.000-07:00

...

For a week, my gym shorts have been awaiting rescue. They lie forlornly in the dryer, lonely and forsaken. But the naked truth is this: a rogue wasp has taken up residence in our back patio, and for a week I have been avoiding the inevitable showdown.

Today is the last straw. Today, I reclaim the shorts. Today, it's the wasp--or me.

...

Armed with gardening gloves, a fly swatter that couldn't be long enough, and a bottle of Windex, I make my first approach.

The blessed avispa is hovering at eye level just beside the dryer, taunting me. Like a boxer, I begin to dart side to side. I size her up. I have a sinking suspicion she is inwardly mocking me. I lose the fly swatter in favor of a hand on the nearby door knob. Secure, yet terrified, I inch forward.

I realize amidst my deeply courageous efforts that my gloves will not protect me from a dreaded sting to the face. And surprisingly, I don't have a beekeeping suit lying around the costume shelf (though, ironically, I do have a bee costume).

Now the nice thing about bees is that they die after they sting. Wasps, on the other hand, live long peaceful life cycles of evil. I tighten my grip on the swatter.

"TAKE THE SHORTS!!!" emanates my tribal cry, as I charge forth in near hysterics. Exerting far more force than necessary to squirt Windex, I send a stream of "Mountain Rain"-scented chemicals at my nemesis.

She dodges the mountain rain with an effortlessness that makes me want to gesture with America's favorite finger (the one reserved for pointing at things disliked).

Curses! (No, literally--expletives sound as I skittishly turn and pound pavement to the opposite end of the patio.)

Reaching a safe distance of twenty-five feet, I turn, panting, and risk a tentative look at the whorish beast that may have followed.

No sign of her highness.

What am I thinking? I am a human being, for the love of gym shorts. This thing has nothing on me!

I return to the disputed territory, this time determined to be unmoved. I pick up the swatter.

There she is. Floating amidst the fence's shrubbery, she thinks herself clever.

You? ...Are a wasp. Tom Hanks' voice of Woody in Toy Story comes to mind, as he sizes up Buzz. You are a TOYYYY!! You are a child's PLAY THING! You're an ACTION FIGURE!!!!

Wasp. I spit the 'p' in the nuisance's name.

I give a provocative warning spray.

She flits aside, seemingly unphased. And then I deluge.

SPRITZ SPRITZ SPRITZ -- DIE! MOTHER-DUCKER SONNOVA... -- SPRITZ SPRITZ SPRITZ

She retreats to the patio ceiling, where I redirect my aim. Then, out of nowhere, she lunges toward me! Swatter up for bat, I stand my ground and hold fast to Operation: Death to Wasp.

SPRITZ SPRITZ SPRITZ -- YOUR MOM'S A WASP! -- SPRITZ SPRITZ SPRITZ

...

I'd love to say the story ends with me standing triumphantly over my enemy's corpse, although I can say a lengthy retreat occurred, at which point I reveled over the boldness and valor of my noble humanity, and the pathetic cowardice of pesky insectdom.

...

And so, dear friends, Avispa continues to flirt with death. With each of her hostile returns, I solemnly pledge to defend the dryer space with somewhat inefficient chemical blasts, somewhat ridiculous verbal threats, and a continued reveling in the small but distinct windows of time that the pest retreats in shame. And though I may have yet to see the day when the wasp falls to the hand of woman, I rest well knowing this: at least I have my gym shorts.

Or, well, I'll have them as soon as I get to the dryer; in all of my reveling I forgot about the shorts.

...

a j o

2009-06-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

...

Driving home from a humble retired teachers' potluck, I nearly forget that I am controlling a motor vehicle when I glimpse to my left the most breathtaking sun-soaked clouds to grace the skies. The surging oceanic cumulus is a royal lilac, restless beneath a brilliant yellow-orange glow the saturation of wet egg yolk. Above, a second layer bubbles like a superficial seafoam lapping gently at the shoreline to erode the castles of the day. Between this water molecule sandwich, the most mesmerizing scene of all pours forth: a wash. It falls in blues angled at forty five degrees, whilst golden rays beam through the mist. The rainfall is smeared as though by a great hand's fingertips dragging traces of color from a pastel chalk drawing. Like sidewalk art dissolving in the rain, the picture is gradually swept away.

As I zoom north, the scene transforms in a mere matter of seconds. The subsequent moment I steal a glimpse, the appearance has changed. The third, and fourth glance--also different. The turning earth is just that--turning, in constant flux, however predictable.

And yet it is not predictable. The sunset's palette is like none before. Predictable, yes, as the sun will surely set. But predictable? No. Never this stunning. Never these hues. Never the same twice, not even for a moment.

I drink it in. My eyes are as wide as our eBay-purchased Italian cappuccino saucers.

Such is life: predictable, yes, but predictable? No. Like none before, and never the same twice--not even for a moment.

...

Embarking on a new season, a new career, a new destination, the scenery is in constant flux. Though predictable, it pours forth differently with each day. Like none before, and never the same twice, the hues morph, fade fleeting, and then burst forth anew in fresh, unimaginable artwork.

I can hardly keep up with life's perpetual shift. Mesmerized, I gawk, but the colors have grown dim or more vivid before I've finished my gawking. The only stillness is my eyes---all else has pulse, direction. But my eyes, steadfast as lake water, smooth as glass, take in the energy. It is gripping.

I long for my camera--instrument of stillness, thief of motion. I long to capture time's progress before it, too, progresses. But lacking a camera, I have only my eyes.

Yet my memory fails me, and the image is lost. Like faulty film, I'm left with a blank slate. All that remains is the metaphor that surfaced to mind. The words haven't drained like the color from the now blue-black skies. Words linger as a savored meal's after-taste on the palette. But one mustn't wait too long to record the words, lest they rot. Podrida, like a foul mouth odor. Like garlic breath.

"I don't care for garlic," came the comment from a conversation on vegetable gardens. Jule, a retired educator and great grandmother, went on to explain "I grew up in Illinois." I lean in for this rare opportunity for conversation with an eighty-something-year-old black woman who has seen more history than my textbooks. "Southern Illinois," she clarifies, "in an Italian neighborhood." I brace myself for impending comedic material. "Every night, everything smelled like garlic. It was in the air." Here it is! The face of disgust that could end all faces of disgust. I crack to pieces, laughing so hard I have to slap the table.

In the McGrath family tradition, something is deemed deeply humorous when one has to slap something to express the joy of the soul.

"It's not that it's bad food--it's just...Well, people wonder why I can't stand garlic anymore." Here I recollect the rotten cloves of garlic that went forgotten for months in the abyss above our refrigerator.

...

In the evening cool, the sky's colors have retreated for their nightly prayers, and I find myself rolling the sunset's description around in my mouth. But recalling the dinner conversation, I figure I had better spit it out before it turns rotten. I would hate to get the irreversibly potent olor de ajo on my breath, or worse--lose my appetite for words. Some things we shouldn't let spoil.

Here's hoping we can capture this life's perpetual motion before our words leave us. Because we don't always have a camera.

And here's hoping distinctive aromas aren't overdone, nor tired skies squeezed dry of their vibrancy. Because we all need a little garlic.

Well, that is, except for Jule. She's had enough ajo for one lifetime.

...

p r e n d a

2009-06-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

...

Paintbrush in hand, a splash of color across her cheek, Alejandra gets down to the business of bringing her designs to life. Like a bandoneonista pumping a milonga into the cold night air, she too must work the art into existence with nothing but her bare hands. Such is art. Yet, within it there is much freedom--her hands tell of this story, as she transfers it to fabric.

LamericaTee's handcrafted designs begin with a photo, and end with ink pressed upon cotton. Inspired by street graffiti, Lamerica artwork takes its roots in candid photojournalism. Documentary-style images captured in the Americas are recolored into two-tone graphics, printed on special paper, and then meticulously affixed to state-of-the-art palettes for precision silk screening.

...

From start to finish, the process of transforming a single image into a handmade work of wearable art can take weeks. The time and finesse required far exceeds that of a computer-automated factory print job. LamericaTee is, after all, made of love.

Graphic designer and studio artist Alejandra Rivero is the love behind LamericaTee. Rivero's eye for design has built bridges across cultural divides. Her heart is evident in her work, with paintings and photography that explore the commonalities and rich variety among people groups in the Americas. Rivero's work suggests that humanity itself transcends the borders man has created; indeed, living souls can be boundless in their ventures and relationships despite the hatred and fear that continue to plague world nations. LamericaTee highlights the life and vivacity that is possible in scenes unbound.

Like a fabric, we join at the seams, forming a garment that is borderless. It is this journey over borders, this bleeding across the page, that leads citizens of the world to find in common their very humanity.

...

f l o r

2009-05-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

...

The book is alive. It hasn't always been alive, to me--I regarded it as ink and paper for so long, rather than the closest thing I have to the person of Christ. While the orange on the kitchen counter rots, its vibrancy soured, insides devoured, here is this text, life-breathing to my dry bones. On this war-torn page, eleven years aged and unbound, the words bubble forth like a fountain of youth.

As a tactile human being, it troubles me that I cannot sense Christ the way I can sense flesh, or fear, or phonation. As one suspended in a void and blindly groping to feel, I find myself out of touch with God. This is the daily human struggle to sense an abstract being--and not a struggle I wish to mask with Christianese or hollow emotional experiences. I'd rather stare face to face with the reality that Christ--God with skin on--no longer walks and breathes on earth. It is a reality that often upsets me, making me wish I were alive thousands of years ago instead of today.

And so, the tangible paper is like a letter addressing my need for sensing God. "To Her Need," I imagine it reads in a hand-written scrawl to my attention. But here my imagination schreeches to a halt. This word was not written merely for me, myself, and I. Nor should I imagine Christ himself to life. Instead, I let the words persuade me of his existence, assure me of our maker's authenticity. The text is arresting, feeding my desire to relate to an invisible God. Its pages, frail but wise, smell of seventh grade as I press my cheek to a cool collection of chapters that have fueled me, befuddled me, and stricken me over the past decade of my still young Christianity. Centuries after Christ, this word is all I have of him. It is precious. Mysterious. Confounding.

I trouble the word, the knowledge, the Church, the culture--"after all," as Soong-Chan Rah writes, "without a disturbed sense about ourselves, why would anyone change?" Surely this troubling makes Jesus smirk, for he himself taught in this same manner, throwing questions back at their questioners. I sigh deeply knowing that humanity as a whole can relate to him, feel nearer to him through these words. Relationship becomes possible, however strange. This is powerful literacy.

I pinch myself. I feel pain--I know I am alive, and yet my soul decays within me. I can feel it sinking in upon itself like the rotting orange. The only antidote is the book. I bury my face. Everything is decaying--entropy, entropy, sings Switchfoot. And yet, He restoreth my soul.

Next to the rotting orange is a small bud vase containing a bouquet of miniature lilies that has been miraculously evading death since March. The flowers are finally at the end of their rope, their petals brown and shriveled. Amongst the lilies cranes the giraffe-like neck of a decorative stick that came with the bouquet. The stick, seemingly dead from the beginning, has sprouted roots and tiny green leaves, while the other plant life slips away.

So, too, souls return to life with the words of this book, like E.T.'s sunflowers returning to bloom from their wilted, withered state.

From the vantage point of having finished another semester (more or less), I feel a freedom I've been missing for a long while. Pedaling home on Walnut Ave., it's as though a weight has been removed from me, yielding a lightness and a clarity that I had grown numb from not feeling.

...

"Is it pizza yet?" I inquire, my bicycle put away, and my book beside me. "Not yet," replies my husband.

Fourteen minutes and four slices later, we dissolve into midnight online television. A season withered, another sprung anew--as if surfacing from a spelunking expedition, I sense today what I haven't sensed in over two years. Light. Peace. Today, I am alive again.

Out of the trenches of a tired, mechanical pace, I've taken my exit. After all, it'd be a shame to miss California in the spring. I'm past due to shake off the dust, and the life-giving book imparts its vivacity where monotony had become deep-set.

As my head meets the pillow, I rest, words still working through me like sugar through the bloodstream. Maybe there will be a new flor, when I next awake. I've long awaited the blossoms.

...

a v e s

2009-05-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

Three years ago on Friday, we stood on the corner of Wilshire and La Brea with a big green sign.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” read the hand-painted sign—now a banner on my office wall. Emma Lazarus’ words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty are yet to ring true in the United States. Her sonnet compels me forward. I long to see it become reality.

Three years ago on Friday, helicopters gawked from above as masses stood to name their world. Hypocritical, they cried. I am not illegal, implied. These were words faces bore, painted in red, white, and blue.

Three years ago on Friday, I watched as men, women, and children marched to demonstrate their love for the land. They didn’t ask for much; only the right to live and breathe with the same freedoms citizens hold dear. Freedoms citizens were born with, despite having done nothing to earn such freedoms. But freedom isn’t earned, is it? Still they sing, these birds. They sing to get out of their cages. Do you hear their song? Do you recognize the words? At times it is as though no one is listening.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Give me them, yes. Give me laborers who will toil tirelessly until the soil groans. Give me poor workers who will settle for less than six an hour, under the table, their sweat beading, rolling to the kitchen floor. Give me huddled masses, yes--the young and faultless, eager to learn, though we educate them in a foreign tongue.

Three years ago on Friday, I wrote a poem confessing my shame. “Today I am ashamed,” I wrote.

Joel Westheimer offers something positive to replace such shame. He defines two types of patriotism: authoritarian and democratic. Whereas authoritarian patriotism refers to “resigning one’s will, right of choice, and need to understand to the authority,” democratic patriotism is characterized by “the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought.” While an authoritarian patriot finds his or her emotional base in “gratitude for having been liberated from the burden of democratic responsibility,” a democratic patriot finds his or her emotional base in the forgotten line of poetry by Katherine Lee Bates: “America,

America

, God mend thine every flaw!” Or, as Lincoln put it, “to sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of human beings.” Democratic patriotism is to join in the process of perfecting the union, to give ear to legislation, to speak out for those whose voice is largely muted.

Speak out, for example, against a rhetoric of xenophobia and hatred eroding efforts of diplomacy. Speak on the Statue of Liberty and the grace for those she beckons. In reality, it remains a limited and selective grace--a grace, though existing, that requires a long-suffering preparedness to take a number, take a seat.

But for some, to take a seat is to starve. To watch children in one's own care wither in the shadow of a teetering economy.

I long for a more perfect union. However idealistic, I believe in the power of democracy. I stand for the grace emblazoned on our nation’s shoreline monument. And I find myself sharing in Lincoln’s view when recollecting April 30, 2006—the night we painted our big green sign with Lazarus’ famous lines. As a democratic patriot, the love of my country is defined by the extent to which I care for the best interests of her inhabitants--even those unnumbered, undocumented, unaccounted for. Even those who reside here in the margins, lacking so much, and yet in want of so little. Those awaiting the legal status required to access Emma's grace.

One conclusion can be reached; the authoritarian interpretation of history that America has already achieved perfection is simply inaccurate. We must realize the reality, as politically charged as it may seem, that the process of perfecting the union is just that--a process. We have not yet arrived, and we must not give up our pursuit of arrival. Tiring as it is, it is everything.

In classrooms and textbooks alike, the idea of an imperfect union is dangerously "political"--a route reserved with caution tape for brave individuals of established tenure. As Westheimer describes, “being political is an accusation most often reserved for exploring views that are unpopular”—“views, not surprisingly, that come from critical, reflective, and democratic forms of patriotic teaching.” What’s more, “the idea that ‘bringing politics into it’ (now said disdainfully) is a pedagogically questionable act is, perhaps, the biggest threat to engaging students in discussions about what it means to be patriotic in a democratic nation.” It’s true. Despite its dirty connotation, politics is simply a process that allows inhabitants of a country to articulate and negotiate varying viewpoints in order to clarify and come to agreement upon values. In this sense, politics becomes the diplomatic drive toward the more perfect union we continually find ourselves re-painting and re-envisioning. As a result, controversial issues are addressed, rather than silenced, and thus perfected. Like rocks tested and tossed in their currents, legislation is worn and sanded until smooth. Educators—whether history teachers, or otherwise—share a responsibility to highlight the complexities and controversies of the human condition, lest the rocks retain their imperfections.

...

Meanwhile the undocumented patiently pay their tithes, taxes, and mortgages, awaiting the promise of America's liberty creed.

Time to listen to the birds.

...

[Read one blogger's commentary on the realities of life undocumented.]

[Individuals fleeing economic hardship: hear their stories.]

[See what Canada is doing regarding immigration.]

...

t a h q u i t z

2009-04-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

...

Set for an adventure and a weekend away, we pile into cars and ramble up the mountain. Papi's truck bed is tightly packed with duffel bags, hiking gear, games, grub, and enough water for a small continent. Destination: San Bernardino wilderness.

"There is no place for me in this world. I don't belong out there, and I don't belong in here. So I'm going out into the Wilderness. Probably, to die." --Nacho Libre

Well, a cabin in the wilderness, and probably not to die. The lights stay glowing until 4:00 am, when the hat, thimble, horse, car, camel, and shoe all lose to the scotty dog. We are not rising early for the hike, after all--although we do rise early for Ashley's banana pancakes. It's not until 2:00 pm that we find our way to the trailhead.

Armed with snacks and a God-given walking stick, we proceed up the 2,300 foot ascent to Tahquitz Peak. As we near the top, three miles feels like four. We strain for a glimpse of the fire lookout perched atop the peak. Five minute break. "If you could have any meal right now..." Bacon-wrapped filet mignon. There is also discussion of "would you rather drown, or die of thirst?" and "bests" (childhood cartoons, film soundtracks, sequels--Toy Story 2 was okay). When the conversation drifts to "worsts" we recollect field trips, memories, and movies that would be better off in a landfill. Jurassic Park 3, Mafia, and the Cell. "I'd like to have those two hours of my life back." Then it's "hey guys, can you slow down and bond with us?" to the trailblazers leading the way.

Reaching the summit, we document our accomplishment and have just enough time to snap photos before the peak is enveloped in a gray mist. According to the Sierra Club, "Tahquitz Peak is named for a leader of the Soboba Indians, Chief Tahquitz, about whom there are various legends. In one story, after changing from a loved to a hated chief as a result of evil spirits, Tahquitz' body was destroyed by his tribe, but his spirit escaped to the present Tahquitz Peak. Thunderstorms in the area are evidence of his presence. Legend has it that his spirit still lives there with a rattlesnake and a condor, although the watchful fire lookout cannot corroborate this." Though we have no thundershowers to speak of, the clouds continue to roll over the peak like an incoming tide. It's astonishing how quickly the weather turns. The mountain masked in fog, we cinch up our sweatshirt hoods and weave through oak and pine, the breath from our conservations evaporating in bursts of air. I stop to gawk at boulders and trunks. The view, once stretching clear to Palomar, is obscured in the fog (and mystic in its obscurity). "Can you paint with all the voices of the mountain?" comes the Pocahontas refrain, naturally.

After a four hour jaunt, the clouds break overhead. We arrive to our truck in the long-stretching shadows of early evening, in time for a sunset drive. Steak & potatoes (and s'mores) await, thanks to friends gettin' fancy with the spices. Then it's "Win, Lose, or Draw," an old school digital Pictionary game that leaves us in stitches over "state room," "subway," and "salmon." Sunday brings crepes and coffee. Some work on fitness while others work on Tetris. When the time comes to pack our things, it is hard to leave the mountain behind. Thankfully, Dad's wisdom rings true: "The mountain will still be there." A good reason to return.

...

...

m a d r e

2009-04-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

...

Saturday night we stumble into my parents' home for Christmas in March. Celebrating the birthdays of my brother, father, husband, and sister-in-law, we devour croissant sandwiches and beloved snacks. We muse over down booties and fools careening off Mt. Everest and ear plugs that don't quite get the job done. My dad understands me. My mom pulls me aside--"what do we owe you?" I remind her that she accidentally purchased a pay-per-view soccer game for Augusto. Argentina 4 - Venezuela 0? "Oh yeah. Guess we're even." Wallet disappears. Hysterical laughter. We open gifts, and even I receive one--like the little sibling who feels left out otherwise, explains Mom. She's right.

We stay until we fall asleep sitting up, and the sandman beckons us to putter home.

Back home, I'm left to figure out my homework for the week. Pondering, rolling over words like a mint on the tongue, I whittle out a poem. A special nod needs noting here--to Pablo Neruda and his poem "Bird," after which mine is modeled.

Woman

It was passed from mother to daughter
the whole laughter bit.
The day went round in fits of hysteria,
went fading into the dusk,
in melodies which breathed a sigh
through the stubborn winter
to where blossoms were budding through
the thick frosted soil -
and there, spring sang out.

When I returned from the longest season,
I stayed nostalgic and waffling
between snow and sun -
I saw how March melted,
how newness is wafted
by blustery gusts,
and from time to time I caught myself transforming,
the product of my mother,
the curtain of chestnut hair,
the wide toothy grin;
I saw it all from my mother's mirror.
I had no more hope
than she who birthed me,
the wild, kinesthetic gestures
of a brilliant woman on a ray
which dances out of the fog.

...

Now it might sound silly, and certainly does not fully capture my mother, but the words nod to the woman who came before me, wiped tears, cleaned messes, and fashioned me into the woman I am today. She still mends my things, sewing back missing buttons and closing up holes. Sure, I can sew a button. But it feels better when she's the one to fix it.

After an evening of birthday-centered family time, it's not the ones with the birthdays that I'm focused on, but the one behind the scenes who made it all happen. Mom. Who ordered the croissant sandwiches and bought the beloved snacks? Who ensured that each birthdayer had their favorite dessert prepared for their consumption? Who saw to it that everyone--even the poor little sibling--had gifts? Who sprinkled confetti on a green tablecloth, and lit candles, and cleaned the house? Well, I suppose Dad helped. And Maggie was there for moral support (everyone needs a good loyal spaniel for such ventures). But Mom. Mom is in the details.

......

Mom is in the details of my life. I bring Mom-in-me to class when I laugh with a wide-open McGrath guffaw. I bring Mom-in-me to rehearsal when I use my hands to tell a story. I bring Mom-in-me to the children's section when I react to a clever book.

Mom teaches me how to laugh, how to love. How to cry, and pause. How to keep going.

How to forgive, and be honest. How to savor. How to care.

How to read.

And so there's Madre in me. Like one woman's fragrance impressed against another in an embrace, her vivacity is there, lingering with me, ineffable.

...

Although the sticker on my bicycle bell has entirely eroded with the weather of this California winter, the words on the sticker remain in my mind with each jing-jing.

"I love my mom," says the sticker.

I do.

...

a u t e n t i c i d a d

2009-03-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

...

I don't know how this guy did it. I mean, it's one thing to survive entirely on snow for a weekend in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, during winter no less. It's another thing entirely to survive in the 1800's.

While sleeping on a blanket of crystal beneath the milky way, I recollect the infamous story of John Muir doing jumping jacks into the wee hours of the morning to keep warm. I'm tempted to do the same as the full moon rises over the mountain crest and beams into the faces of exhausted backpackers, noses poking out from within cinched mummy bags. We lie on the snow like multicolored caterpillars--alien invaders in an untouched wonderland.

The snow at our backs is packed solid and sturdy, and the ice is nearly blue in tint, sparkling under the spotlight of the now waning moon. Despite the number of times I've seen photographs and film of snow, no picture captures its beauty. The eye alone catches it dancing in seeming stillness, bathed in moonlight in temperatures of eight degrees. The snow has never looked so alive. And I have never been so cold.

Days later, I find myself on the third floor of Segerstrom's harp-shaped hall, listening to a choral concert. From my vantage point, I cannot see the entire stage, so my eyes wander to my shoes as I focus on the sound of the ensembles. The outstanding choral music reputation of the group precedes them, yet there is something lacking in this evening performance.

At first, I cannot put my finger on it. It's beautiful, yes. At times, the intonation is perfect, holy even. Matched vowels--next to Godliness. Yet, I can't feel it. Like a lifeless body in the snow, I'm numb to the music. Where is its life? Its core? I soon realize that I am listening for the dancing, the vivacity, the very meaning that can often be heard energizing phrases up and over bar lines and into the souls of a captive audience. And I hear nothing. It is as if I am looking at a picture of snow, rather than seeing it with my own eyes. The sound is not truly alive.

Finn's commentary on "make-believe school" comes to mind while I listen, now cringing, to this "make-believe choir." Make-believe school is when teachers wink at students and students wink back. Order is maintained in exchange for passing children through years of worthless schooling. Such a model is the norm rather than the exception, and perpetuates education that domesticates students into blue or white collar jobs based upon the perceived potential of their social class standing. As with the choir, the entire setup seems a facade. Though a group of individuals with mostly stellar technique singing mostly top sirloin choral literature, their voices project an emptiness that I cannot swallow. Meaning is nonexistent. I cannot clap.

In a break between pieces, the director comments that "99% of the children in the world do not have a musical experience like this," the response to which is rapturous applause. Are we really applauding this? I find it appalling--especially considering the make-believe, meaningless nature of the music--and my instinctive reaction is to raise hell in verbal objection. I am in the wrong crowd.

While the privileged few enjoy their concert, my mind wanders to other things. To snow-shoeing, to class, to student teaching. To the frightening (infuriating) possibilities of projecting empty words, whether in a vocal music setting or otherwise. To the challenge of a classroom that is liberating in its authenticity. To an education that is threatening to a culture of power. The music dissipating into the bowels of the concert hall, I lose myself in my wonderings.

...

Strapping our snow shoes to our boots and buckling our backpack waist belts, we set off for the two hour hike out of camp. The snow reflects the scorching daylight, blinding my camera. I, too, squint and make a motion to hibernate, but we plod on toward the buses that eventually carry us home to a bed who never greeted us so fondly.

In my sleep, I dream of the snow--the supportable crust that held me for three days and two nights. Snug with the memory of the life and autenticidad of the cold, I want to educate with the same qualities. If I teach like a mere picture of a schoolteacher, it's just make-believe.

...

...

s e m i l l a

2009-03-04T00:36:00.000-08:00

...

Step, step, move pole...Step, step, move pole--slowly, to the tempo of Chaconne from Holst's First Suite, we edge up the face of Bighorn Peak. I resist the urge to peer over my shoulder at the steep drop off below. Sheepishly, I steal glimpses upward at the faint and disappearing line of hikers trekking toward the ridge. The angle of ascent sends adrenaline shooting through my veins at the same speed I would later careen down the slope of the mountain. Hitchcock's Vertigo comes to mind, Herrmann's suite still fresh in my memory from the concert hall on Saturday...

From the nosebleed section (Grand Tier), it's easy enough to feel vertigo from one's stadium seat alone. The music of Hitchcock's eery horror movie elicits the sensation of dizziness and weak knees, accompanied by a desire to grip a hand rail or hug a tree. In the third movement, orchestrated in the string section's stratosphere, one imagines a male protagonist standing on the roof of a skyscraper, hair whipping in the gusts...

The wind teases us on the peak, where we favor radio silence over conversation in order to focus; in rhythmic strides, we plod toward the final ridge. Persistance earns us a breathtaking panoramic view.

...

From Bighorn Peak

...

With the birds (do they get vertigo?), we drink in the neighboring peaks, the Ontario airport runway, Palos Verdes, and Catalina. Heading back brings an invitation to slide (glissade) feet forward, pole in hand as makeshift rudder and brake, down the icey snow.

Two obstacles stand in my way. First, the memory of twelve-year-old me fracturing my foot when sledding uncontrollably into a tree, ala Sonny. Bad move. Don't want to relive it. Second, the much more recent memory of losing my balance and blasting down the slope (Shiiiiiiiiii-- WHAM, ski pole self-arrest into the snow. Safe, I sigh, as I cling to my pole).

After avoiding the breakneck glissade, and consequently swimming through the descent along the steepest face of the peak, we arrive at a gully. With the encouragement of good friends and leaders, it's here that I shed my fear of sliding. Off I shoot, gripping my instructor's boots, only to discover that glissading is the best part of the hike. Like children, we race to the next glissade spot, eager to fly down the slope like human bobsleds. I find myself using my ski pole as an oar to gain speed. When momentum is gone, Matthew rolls himself down the gully, giddy. Augusto takes a step forward and winds up waist deep in snow, to the tune of my uncontrollable laughter.

In the midst of our frolicking in the wonderland, something is rekindled; it's this kind of child's play that restores in me a sense of innocence and optimism about a fallen world. I recall Saturday evening's premiere of the James Howard composition, I Would Plant a Tree. Inspired by the following quote attributed to Martin Luther, his work is a simple, musical act of hope. Did Luther smirk? His words echo through the five story theater, and through the canyon in the shadow of the 8,500 foot peak: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

Howard writes "It’s easy to believe our world is “going to pieces.” We are presented daily with a terrifying variety of dooms. Somehow, despite the onslaught of catastrophes, both present and predicted, humankind sustains a blind determination to be and grow. I’m a pessimist by nature and yet I’m awed by our perpetual desire for life and connection. In the face of so much fear and anxiety what’s the source of our defiant hope? What carries us so powerfully toward that unlikely conclusion?

With so much evidence to the contrary, what’s the thing that urges us to make a reconnection with our higher-selves? Is it grace? Can I call it that? And when I say the word, can I mean grace not in a specific, theological sense, but more as a quality of acceptance?...I think at bottom there is...a yearning to return to a state of innocence and unquestioned purpose. Confronted with the idea of the world’s imminent demise, Martin Luther replied that he would plant a tree. No prayer. No deeper thoughts. Just a simple, innocent, physical act of hope."

Post-holing through powdery snow, Luther's simple hope envelopes my being. That something as airy as hope could propell me through the fear and the self-doubt and the negativity is astonishing. Howard's work leaves me with a semilla of grace in the midst of a week I had long left behind.

Grace. She covers the shame, sings Bono, removes the stain. In the crook of the Angeles National Forest, the lyrics breathe an unmatched purity into weary bones. Having climbed another peak, another mountain, this state of innocence is my own unlikely conclusion.

...

...

e s c a l a n d o

2009-02-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

...

MEEP MEEP MEEP, goes the alarm in the blue-black cold of 3:00 am. We snooze until 3:45. Painful to turn on the bedroom light after a mere four hours of z's.

We load the truck, pick up valiant hiking buddies Matt and Dawn, and floor it to Long Beach. Around 5:15 or so, we are just in time to take the last available seats on the back of the bus.

WHAP. CLICK--clickity clickity--CLACK ... Tinkle tinkle tinkle--thump--shuffle ruffle ZIIIIIIP ... WHOOSH! CLACK clickity clickity click. WHAP. (Repeat onomatopoeia sequence every sixty seconds or so.)

Mental note: only sit next to bus bathroom if you have ear plugs.

Sun rises and we give up trying to fall asleep in the thirty second intervals between eager hikers on charter bus potty breaks. We start in on the empanadas. Upon arrival at Joshua Tree's Campsite No. 3, we have 45 minutes to get our act together. Thankfully we practiced tent-raising with Matt and Dawn on our landlord's soccer field of a lawn around 9:00 at night two days before. But despite the best efforts to prepare (see previous post), we realize we forgot to bring something with which to drive in the tent stakes. So we bend the rules. Who needs a mallet for tent stakes, when you have Augusto's foot?

...

It's quickly time for Rock Climbing 101. Dave, who reminds us of Dawn's dad, goes through an outlined demonstration of climbing techniques. He makes it look relatively painless, and we are relatively enthusiastic about giving it a try. Helmets strapped and stretchy pants cinched (Nacho Libre would be proud), we split into small groups to attempt the moves. I am amazed at my boots' ability to stick to large, awkward boulders. It's like Spider Man meets Wonderland of Rocks.

Boulder hopping is just the beginning. We traverse the rocky terrain up a gully, nodding at bizarre plants whose arms branch out of crevices in oddest of form. And the rocks--it's as though two warring giants went at each other, and the rubble is all that remains, suggests Augusto. He points to a rock formation looking strikingly like a hand, another like a face. Giant body parts.

We fee, fi, fo, fum our way into a narrow chimney--our first test. Counterforce and scissoring bail us out, but as we continue on our way, we wonder how Santa pulls it off. Next we squeeze under a low-hanging boulder and face a daunting vertical wall. This piece of rock has hand holds and foot buckets, but still requires a sense of confidence that is difficult to muster after watching larger, stronger male classmates struggle over it. On my first attempt, I lose my grip, and with my grip goes my sense of security--or maybe the sense of security went first, and then the grip? In any case, down I slide, my clothes and hands tearing from the abrasive slope. Dawn has my back.

Defeated. Deflated. Discouragement sets in after my wipeout. Several students pass and make the wall, and then it's time for me to sweep up the shards of my ego and dig in for take two. The biggest challenge is keeping myself from focusing on the previous struggle.

I take a deep breath and try not to think. I listen to the leaders. I try to trust my boots. And before I have time to be afraid anymore, I've made it. It wasn't graceful, but I've done it. Now I feel like I'm bending my own body's rules.

As we gain elevation, we reach an exposed section where the climber must push themselves up on their palms, and hoist up to a ledge as if hopping over a brick wall. Sounds easy enough, except for my serious lack of upper body strength. I wind up pulling myself forward until I'm lying on the ledge like a beached whale. Through my hysterical laughter, the instructor suggests that I use my knees to prop myself back up--another climbing no no. Another bent rule.

After making it past this point, my quads and my psyche are toast. Normally I'd be craving a juicy animal-style burger from In-N-Out, with extra spread for the five orders of fries I would happily consume with my former roommate. Yet my body, still churning with adrenaline, can hardly take the thought of food. It's all I can do to choke down some turkey jerky. I have been avoiding water, too, due to the serious lack of places to split off and whiz away.

But then, here comes a tub of brownies.

Now, I think the leaders have a pretty good idea that we are feeling spent by this time. The brownies aren't saved for the peak, but rather they are liberally distributed right here and now. This unusual act of kindness either means we are in serious need of encouragement, or we are about to turn back.

Meanwhile, this is the best brownie I have ever consumed. Well, best brownies. I've hastily swallowed at least four. I think that tops my list of bent rules for the day. But I could care less. At this point in my digestion, I have survived three of the most mentally and physically demanding points in the climb to Peak 4277. Elated but exhausted, I am ready to collapse on the ground, with no regard for the cactus behind me. Yet, I haven't made it this far to poop out before the peak.

The leaders are having a suspicious pow wow while the afternoon sun sinks lower on the horizon. It is getting too late to get back before dusk. The thought of this takes the wind out of my sails (if there is any wind left, that is).

But there's a choice between making the last leg, or turning back. Time to rally. Let's do this. Second wind.

A couple of people decide to turn back while the remainder of the group will go on, although we will probably not be back before sunset. Fine. Headlamps are in our packs for a reason. Now, how hard is this peak? Is it worse than what we've done? It's not worse, but it's not any easier, explains our head instructor. Alright. I'm going for it.

The trick is, explains Becky, not to look up at the peak to see how far you've got to go. I take this to heart, truly, and put on mental blinders against looking up or down. I look straight ahead. Step by step. Rock by rock.

And then, there's Neal, handing me a mint Milano cookie. So there was a bag of treats saved for the top.

...

For the first time, I glimpse the view from the peak. It is breathtaking. Gazing across the desert eclipses the pain and struggle and sweat.

Astonishing to reflect upon how far we'd come, and all that we'd accomplished, with nothing but an introduction to rock climbing in the morning. We had made it up a class 3 climb, just shy of needing ropes, but using nothing but our bare hands, feet, and friction.

There is time for snapshots, vertigo, and penning our names in the peak's telling log book. It's filled with poetry, funny one-liners, and thoughtful anecdotes that climbers saved for their mountaintop time.

Our descent begins, and I discover my previous sliding skills are now useful. In single file, we make our way back to a plateau, take our last rest, and then head down a different face of the peak for the next several hours. City lights sparkle in the distance as the daylight grows dim. In the darkness of the gully, our headlamps glow like a trail of fireflies hovering above the rocks.

We reach camp by 6:45, ready for a change of clothes, a potluck meal, and a smokey fire. Brie and crackers make their way to my tin pie plate. Tomatoes, too. Fleece blankets keep me warm, while apple pie and coffee warm Augusto. Happy Valentine's, love. It feels good to be alive.

I crash at 10:30, down booties and all. Like that sense of motion after returning from a long boat ride, I still feel as though I'm tediously descending the boulders.

If life were an endless up or down, it'd be torturous. Good thing for the weary mornings and the campfire evenings. Good thing for arrivals, rest, and dark.

...

Snug in our Taj Mahal of a tent, we doze away the night. The campground settles into a symphony of snores, and I am ready to sleep like a rock. With the calm of nightfall, and a newfound respect for the Wonderland, there is closure and peace. Night scribbles her own log of poetry, taking note of the solid, the majestic, the demanding course upon which we had set foot. Darkness having stretched out across the desert--us stretched out in our parents' faithful 1970's mummy bags--I ponder: if I had known we were going to scale a thousand feet of vertical boulders, I might have chosen to sleep in and watch season four of the A Team instead.

Sometimes it's better to be in the dark.

...

...

p r e p a r a c i ó n

2009-02-13T18:21:00.000-08:00

I spend twelve grades muddling through piano books, reeds from hell, field shows, and finally, coffee-infused mornings on a Fender Strat. I spend another four years cataloging literature, working through music theory and history, practicing Stravinsky in the basement, arming myself with pedagogy in the library, scrawling pages of handwritten observation notes in classrooms, screeching on my secondary instrument (viola; God love my poor voila instructor). I conclude my bachelor program by composing the worst fugue ever written in the history of form and harmonic analysis. Check, check, check check check.

Then it's off to graduate school, where I gain an office upstairs and a professional library. Check, check. I create a "studio" space in my home for future students. Check. I decide to start accepting students. Check. I create a blog for my future students. Check. I create marketing materials to self-advertise. Check. I chicken out, and decide to hold off on offering private lessons. Erase checks.

But life is not a checklist, is it? Dear Lord, I hope not. At some point I have to live it without needing one.

In preparation for a two-day hiking trip in Joshua Tree, my index finger runs down a list of items to bring along. Ten essentials? Check. Optional camp chairs? Check. Balaclava? What the duck is a balaclava? A new Greek pastry?

The day before we hiked Condor Peak, my father said something brilliant (he often does this). At this point you're done preparing; you just want to go out and try it.

Dad, I think you nailed it. Actually, I think you nailed my whole mentality during this chapter in my life. I feel like that theme song lyricist from "Saved by the Bell: the College Years" (please don't laugh) who wrote I'm standing at the edge of tomorrow, today. As if I'm on a cliff before a drop-off where I've got to launch myself and hang-glide within the next twenty minutes. Except this feels like the longest twenty minutes in the history of man (aside from the moments leading up to our processional entrance, Dad, which takes first place). Yeesh, who asked for this kind of nerve-racking nonsense?

Not that I know how to hang-glide, either, which is where the analogy falls short. But let's say I did--let's say I'd studied the art and science of hang-gliding at a reputable and pricey (two words that go together) four-year institution. Let's say I'd dreamed of hang-gliding even as a young girl, starting small with launching paper airplanes off stairway banisters at my pesky older brother. Let's say I then graduated from hang-gliding school, and then navigated my way through a treacherous post-baccalaureate preparation program. In wrapping things up at that program, I can then see my imminent flight in the not-so-distant horizon. I am no longer years from my descent...but moments. It seems that my knees cannot stand still, nor can my heart beat at ease. I am terrified because I don't know whether I will fly or fall--and more frightening still, where I will land.

Despite my education, there's a point when checklists fail and intuition takes over. Withitness. And good humor. Instinct. Quick thinking. Improvisation. None of this can be rehearsed (this, according to countless books designed for teacher preparation, in preparation for what one cannot prepare for). The whole thing gives me a headache.

Just give me the freaking job. That's what comes to mind. I mean, when does the preparation end? I think the answer is never. Am I comfortable with that? Of course not. Incredibly uncomfortable thinking that I will be uncomfortable, standing awkwardly on a podium somewhere, staring at a sea of indistinct faces. They squint up at me, a curly-haired Mrs. Rivero, pointing a stick, poised for the preparatory beat.

The preparatory beat is one of those largely unnoticed yet hugely significant moments requiring thoughtful calculation, finesse, and delivery on the part of the conductor. Within this single swoop are the ensemble's first indicators of the music's tempo, style, dynamic, and articulatory energy. For winds and vocalists, it also serves to synchronize the entire group of musicians--be it nine or ninety in sum--in a unison intake of air during this momentary pulse.

Whew. So much to convey within the constraints of a single beat. Can one preparatory beat really contain so much?

Can one preparatory education really contain so much? Can all that I need to know possibly be crammed into the constraints of my memory during this short stint (which has, ironically, felt so long)? And can I really retain the breadth of methods and pedagogy and theory and strategies I've been presented with?

My guess is no. My guess is only a robot can do that. And I'm not Wall-E. I'm just E. I'm just one flawed human being finding value in the multifaceted nature of music and the education it can offer. Armed with this, I prepare for take off.

I read and re-read the flight manual. Check. I self-inspect my vehicle. Check. I reflect upon my knowledge and my past mistakes. Check. I remember the lightbulb moments in my training. Check. And then, I smile. I crumple up the checklist, and chuck it off the cliff--sorry, Sierra Club; it's the only trace I'll leave.

The anticipation for "the real deal" is what I can hardly take. I'm good at paper-and-pencil tests. And checklists. But like tomorrow's hike, let's get to it, already. Like Dad said, I'm done preparing. It's time to go out and try it.

The longest twenty minutes of my life starts now, and ends whenever I finish Day One of my future first teaching job. If God has a sense of humor, and I believe He does, it'll be a Wire Choir. Just because I stink at the viola.

d e s p a c i o

2009-02-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

...

Rusty. Bicycle brakes, knees. Spanish, school, office. Waking up. Walking. Writing. Rusty at it all today. A certain stiffness has slowed my tempo. Adagio. Maybe even lento. Meanwhile, my calendar needs changing. On a normal day, my hands would fly to flip the page. Today, I want to savor the month that came and went like flash-fried panqueques in rum. Where did January go? New Year's--we popped champagne in Idyllwild and taught a chocolate lab how to snowboard. Interterm--set aside my school supplies in favor of a map and compass. Saturday's sixteen mile hike left me thirsty.

...

...

On the 31st, the mountain gave us permission to join her at the summit. Scrambling up four hundred feet of loose rock brought us to a peak, where January wrapped things up, and hungry hikers unwrapped lunches. Mine was a hunk of salami together with a handful of peanuts. Inside my pack, melted cheese everywhere. M&M's didn't melt? It's the candy coating, offered Dawn. Laughter to tears. After eight hours of climbing over four thousand feet, jet boil coffee makes its way into Augusto's blood stream. On the return, the late setting sun casts shadows in gulleys, and a warm glow follows us along ridges. Marveling at how far we've come, the distance stretches out into the night as we trek down a frog-filled canyon. Thirty stream crossings, Augusto counts. Three blisters, I count. Boots off. Filet mignon never tasted so good. I clean my plate. Dawn helps me with the garlic toast when I slow down.

Despacio. Despite my tempo, time plows forward, and the phone jingles merrily in five minute intervals. Monday doesn't help, but the memory of the mountain does.

...