Before I begin this little ditty, please take notice of my new side box, “Fun Sites To Love.” I think you, my dear and lovely reader, will love them too.

Bedtime Stories
© The Author, 2006

Sometimes, when we are lying in bed decompressing from the day’s events, I ask Shaun to tell me stories. While everyone’s mind is like an enormous filing cabinet of information, when it comes to retrieving learned information, Shaun has the fastest, most complete, and most extensive system of anyone I’ve ever known. This means that he is not only a talented test-taker, but he is also useful as a walking encyclopedia and literary anthology. He is able to recite countless stories on demand—be it Greek myths, biblical allegories, long forgotten fairy tales, or tribal lore. Shaun’s recall is amazing to behold, and I feel especially lucky that our future child and I are the primary beneficiary of it. What is strange though, is that Shaun has very few memories of childhood, and he is often blocked when it comes to recalling details about personal events.

While I am a shoddy test taker and my memories of learned things are fleeting if not put to use straight away, I am the queen of experienced recall. I can close my eyes and tell you with utmost precision about the night when my purple snow suited little body laid on my back in the snow in my family’s back yard and looked up at the sky. The moon was a crisp slice of honeydew melon and the stars were brighter than I ever remember them being in my whole life.

Earlier that day my step dad and I build a sledding ramp in the backyard hill from snow, as we did at every snowfall. We used the big, black snow shovel and our hands to sculpt two giant mounds running vertically down the sides of the track, to keep the sledded on course. Once built, we tested the track. The first couple of times down the hill were simply to pack the snow into a slick, flat surface. If we were lucky, the surface would acquire an icy sheen over the crust of it that would propel us forward at deadly speeds. After these test rides, we could determine the best location for a ramp and sculpt one.

Soon, the entire neighborhood—Jeff, Brett, Heidi, Kacie, Marty, Ben, Kyle, Andrew, Dave, and my brother Anthony (my brother Julian was still a baby)—came out of the woodwork with saucers and sleds in tow. And my step dad stayed and sledded with us, not as a supervisor, but just as one of us kids. And no one minded. I wouldn’t know how cool my step dad was for that until much later. The most coveted sleds were the snow tubes, preferred for their speed and soft landing capabilities, but saucers were a close second best. The ramp we built that day was placed on perfect pitch and was at such an angle that hitting it with snow tubes flung you so high into the air that your stomach dropped crazily on the way down like on a rollercoaster. With ramps as ferocious as these, snow tubes were definitely preferred.

Noontime became afternoon and afternoon turned orange-ish pink and night slipped into the sky without anyone really noticing it. One by one my sledding pals were called back into their homes for dinner, until I was alone. I began waddling through the snow to the garage to put my sled away when I suddenly got the urge to stop and hear what the night sounded like beneath the deafening swishing of my snowsuit. So I stopped. And it was soft and quiet. And I liked it. I let myself fall to the snow and lay in it. I wasn’t cold. You might not think it, but snow is warm. Igloos are cuddly and I have always wanted to live in one. I stared out at the night sky and watched first my breath come in swirls of steam from my lips. Following the path of the swirls, my eyes caught sight of the honeydew moon and stars that I mentioned earlier. I remembered a scene from Fantasia where the night sky was a blanket that the world was tucked into at bedtime and the stars were pinpricks of sunlight that shone through the fabric. And I thought, “why not?” and lay there a while longer.

I was eleven.

Later than winter, Heidi would scrape her face horribly on a pine tree that she sledded into while riding at top speed on a tube sled on her stomach down the side hill in the Kirby’s front yard. She didn’t sled for a while because the scabs on her face chapped easily.

While Heidi was out with a knarly face, Dave and Andy Dixon, and Kacie, Marty, and Ben Kirby would become arch enemies of myself, Jeff, and Brett because they tattled on us for swearing and their moms came to some of our houses with loaves of banana nut bread saying to each of our parents, “we need to have a talk about your child.” And we only said goddamn! The banana nut loaf visits seriously deepened the feud, and soon we found ourselves building trenches for wicked snowball fights. We built an ingenious base by creating an enormous pile of snow and hollowing out a space just large enough for one of Brett’s dogs to fit in. We put the dog inside of it and sealed the dog in with a wooden board. Anxious to get out, the dog dug a hole through the other side. Before he broke though, we lifted the plank away and the dog escaped, leaving us a nice sized cave. Andy and Dave’s dog was a mangy little fluff ball smaller than my cat, and the Kirbys weren’t allowed to have pets, so our base was much better than theirs.

On day five of the fight, we hatched what seemed like a brilliant plan. We knew from science classes that alcohol did not freeze, and we were eager to add a surprise element to our snow battle plan. That is how we came upon raiding my mom’s liquor cabinet and filling our Super Soakers with vodka. How brilliant we were to storm the Dixon/Kirby front with snowballs and squirt guns!

Of course, when our enemies all went home reeking of Absolut, there were angry visits to our homes made without the pretense of banana nut bread. No matter how much trouble that battle plan got us into, we knew that we were the victors. We could hold our heads high on the walk to the bus stop. And when we were finally ungrounded and allowed to play outside again, we were not to be messed with or tattled on.

While I can’t keep all the Greek myths I’ve heard separate, or match the names of Bible characters to the people and allegories they go with, I have stories of my own. And they aren’t too shabby either.
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How does your memory work? Do you have any fun wintertime stories?

::Random Tangent::
WARNING: Potentially Offensive Content Ahead
Shaun told me the story of the Tower of Babel a few nights ago. If you are in shock that this story is new to me, please consider that most of my family is atheist and the only religion I was really exposed to was at the freaky Church of Christ that I had to go to Sunday school at when I stayed weekends with my dad. Here I was told that women have jobs and men have other jobs and the two worlds shouldn’t collide and that dinosaurs were really chicken bones that scientist made into big, elaborate things in order to gain fame and money. I also learned that the story of Jonah and the whale was not ripped off from the movie Pinocchio, as I had thought. I argued a lot with my Sunday school instructors and I chewed on the rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom to get revenge and make everyone unable to wipe because I had made the paper all spitty and nasty with tooth marks everywhere.

Anyhow, so if you forgot, or if you don’t know, the Tower of Babel is a story about these awesome people who built this really cool tower, like a live/work high-rise building, to live in and have spectacular views, fresh air, and close proximity to the sky, which as we all know, is a thrill for us humans. And everyone lived there and it was really chill because everyone spoke the same language and got along really well living in their phat pad.

Well, God caught wind of this tower and was pissed off. He didn’t like man being able to put people so close to the heavens. As far as he was concerned, that was his job. His toes were being stepped on. So God got crabby and struck the tower down like a whiney baby chucking his toy blocks at the mention of naptime. Not only did he ruin their super cool high-rise, but all the people were flung in every which way, and then they were in new places and they forgot the language they had when they were together. So they no longer shared a common language and they were homeless.

What a jerk God is in this story! Why would anyone want to worship a bastard who gets jelous when someone makes a really cool thing? Why would people love a god who hates collaboration and peacefulness and understanding between groups? He sounds like an a-hole to me. I’d much prefer to rot in hell than to celebrate that sort of bad behavior. Although, that is easy for me to say since I don’t really believe in hell. Also, you’ve got to be pretty off your rocker to believe that the reason we all speak different languages is because a bunch of people fell off a really high tower and landed in different parts of the world. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I certainly wouldn’t sacrifice Sunday morning leisure for it, that’s for sure.

Anyhow, my apologies to those I might offend. This story just knocked my socks off and I find it incredible that people who seem perfectly sane (many of whom are my dear friends) actually believe that this stuff is true. Amazing! We are such a crazy species!

The Weasel and the Downward Dog
© The Author, 2006

I am a fan of the New Years Resolution, which from what I understand has acquired a pretty bad reputation. Always excited to better understand those that I know, I’ve been inquiring after the resolutions of people in my circle this week. This questioning has been met with abundant eye-rolls (I think people think I’m joking to ask such a thing), shoulder shrugs (resolutions just aren’t on their radar, I guess), and the occasional tirade about how the unnecessary stress caused by the pressure to have fun, set goals, when it all adds up to nothing makes the New Year nothing short of hell, so why bother even acknowledging the damn thing to begin with, why not just put up a new kitty calendar on January first and call it a day (pant, pant, pant). Some call resolutions cliché, arbitrary—they rattle off any number of labels: meaningless, formulaic, passé, desperate—but they can call it what they will. I, with my whole sentimental heart, think resolutions are beautiful.

Don’t gag yet. Bear with me here.

In my life, and in the lives of the best that I know, resolutions are but tiny fragments to be explored in a larger, fuller life. They do not consume. They do not always stay on course, nor are they always meant to. They are reminders to ask questions, to open up to a new thing, to challenge your current reality, to linger a while longer—be it an entire year, a day, or a lifetime—on a detail that has caught your eye. And the best people that I know have stumbled upon far more interesting details than the extra ten pounds of lipids softening their bodies.

I venture that resolution-makers are bound to their love of resolutions not because of the charm of goal setting, accomplishment, or (a word I especially loathe) self-improvement, but rather because they are curious about details of all kinds and as such, it is easy for them to see something relatively small in their lives that would be interesting to know more about.

Some people call this interest in detail: “possibility,” “opportunity,” or “a new beginning.” But those kinds of words place a value on the exploration, making people feel like shit if they don’t “accomplish” anything from the interest (accomplish is another word that I think is stupidly unfair and I apologize for all the obnoxious quotation marks in this paragraph). I much prefer the word exploration to guide any resolution. And in the long run, I am certain that exploration provides more of a reward. Because no matter how long you stay true to the original concept, you are able to value whatever you gain from it. And you always gain something.

Last year my New Years Resolution was “To Write More.” Like any red-blooded American, I was itching to tack on a prize, so it was really hard for me to resist adding “…And Get Published” to complete the resolve. But I did resist. Who needs the pressure?

I started writing more in baby steps. First I started this blog to force me into writing something once a week. I’ve always been a journal-er, but I began to formulate story concepts, observations, and characters in my journals instead of strictly my feelings about my personal life (which are seldom shared in all their rawness in this very public forum). I enrolled in classes at a Story Studio. And with my heart open to chance, a publisher invited me to write a chapter for a book about Writing Center Theory. So I wrote it. And published it will shortly be.

This year my resolution has two parts. The first is a slight variation of last year’s goal: To Continue to Write Regularly. We’ll see where that takes me.

The second will undoubtedly benefit my writing goals, but also I am just dying to know more about it. Lets take the long route to its revelation, shall we?

I might have mentioned a few posts ago that through a colleague, I was invited to try a free month membership at a super posh gym. Well, I gave it a shot with a yoga class a few weeks ago. I am typically an outdoor, long distance runner (I also dig hiking, bike riding, swimming in lakes, and singing Madonna songs loudly while rollerblading), so the yoga scene was completely new to me. But I’m always up for trying something new and, in all honesty, I had no choice but to give it a whirl because there is nothing more I hate than stupid leotard wearing ladies telling me to “squeeze my buns” or sweating at a crewel, soulless weight machine and, aside from the yoga class, those were the only things happening at this super posh gym.

Wait…on that note, I have an entertaining little side comment: I want to mention that the saddest thing in the world for me to do is to pass by a Bally’s when hordes of people are all staring out the window into space while running on treadmills silently. My heart grips with the pain of the loneliness and isolation that must be felt by a person who can smell the toxins leaking out of their neighbors pores, yet is unable to strike up a conversation with them. Not that I view running as a social act, which is why I run alone, outdoors, where I move on the ground and not with fifty other people to all sides of me. And when I do pass another runner, we always exchange at least a head nod or a “good morning!” The symbolic weightiness of trying your best and getting nowhere (literally—you are running in place) is my version of absolute hell. If there is a hell, I will be sent there (along with all the other cool people I know), and the demons will torment me by making me power walk on a treadmill for all of eternity. CURSES!

Anyhow, so I’m at this yoga class at Super Posh Gym and it’s before the New Year so the class only has me and another woman in it because no one has decided to prioritize those ten pounds of lipids softening their bodies and flock to the gym yet. The instructor is in her mid-twenties, soft and relaxed looking, with the most welcoming, non-pretentious attitude I’ve ever encountered in all my time frequenting gyms on short-term freebie memberships.

At first the poses she instructs us to do seem easy. Yeah, I think I dig yoga. Its relaxing, its peaceful—I can do this. Then the instructor walks over, and gently, kindly, shifts my body.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

There is stress searing my muscles in hideous new ways, there is heat and sweat and my cowardly, secret inner-sneak starting to imagine reasons that I could invent to let me walk out of the class right this instant but I don’t so the chicken shit desire manifests itself in my body wiping out but trying to be discrete about it by attempting to cheat the poses just a little, teensy, weensy bit to make them easier. And right before I find the way to cheat, the instructor saves me.

“Surrender to the pose,” she coos, “Surrender and breathe through it.”

And I do. And I surprise myself by falling a little deeper into the position, by seeing something a bit past the discomfort. And soon, I am only the breath. I am just breathing.

Walking to the el to go home from the gym that night I felt beautiful: my organs loved me and sang happy songs of oxygen and blood inside my body. My mind came back to the instructor advising me to surrender. And the concept of surrender has been churning in my mind ever since.

My whole life I’ve been struggling against something. I am a Pisces, and the image of two fish bound to each other’s tails and swimming upstream is an accurate description of my life. As early as elementary school, teachers were telling my mom, “Truly certainly marches to the beat of her own drum.” I go against the grain. I am a force of resistance.

While much of my familiarity and comfort in being the voice of descent has been beneficial in my activism for civil rights, my lobbying for socialist agendas, and my simple curiosity about things that go against the status quo, I wonder how often I resist surrender when I might gain much more by doing so. I wonder how often I’ve struggled against myself like I did when my inner-weasel attempted to get the best of my downward dog.

This year I’m going to dedicate myself to exploring the concept of surrender. I’m sampling different yoga studios and gyms in my neighborhood and around my workplace that will help me delve into the concept further. I’m sure there is much to be read on the topic, including works by our Buddhist friends, and I am eager to write more about the applications of these practices into daily life. I trust that my innate self-discipline and the high standards I set for myself will keep me from diving off the deep end in this exploration and waving a white flag at every oatmeal raisin cookie and military dictatorship disguised as The White House I come across. I am not looking to convert. I am interested in the concept of balance.

So, my second new years resolution for 2006 and beyond? Explore surrender.

Now. That wasn’t so bad, now was it?
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How does surrender play a role in your life? Read/watch/see/hear anything good on the topic lately?

Walking back into our apartment after nearly a week and 1/2 away from it was strange. Our place smelled like thousand-year old dust and our cat was a feral, wild thing. I never noticed it before our late night homecoming yesterday, but our apartment is curiously sparse; the walls are plain and broad and the furnishings dot our bare wood floors miles apart from each other.

This impression could be the result of just getting back from our friends Allyson and Jessie’s homey L.A. apartment decked out fashionably with amazing art and filled with our favorite friends laughing, talking, and playing games, which was preceded by the eye buffet of the Seqouia National Park, again preceded by three days of Christmas Family Bonanza in Michigan. Wow. I think we cut our own, personal little hole out of the ozone with this trip.

However strange it is to be back, I am happy. I think you know when your life is going well when you don’t dread coming back from vacation. My job is fine, I get to spend every day in love and loved by the most awesome guy I’ve ever met, and I like who I am and what I do almost as much as I like wondering who I will become and how I will become it. And as much as a part of me marvels at how anyone is able to find the one place in the world where they feel at home, the more I visit other places, the less surprised I would be if we came back to Chicago after grad school to plant roots. If I have to live in civilization (and not on a mountain top or a secluded nature preserve), Chicago is my favorite place of all the places I’ve been so far. But there are many places yet unseen.

Shaun and I both were lucky enough to have today off work to recoup, do laundry, get groceries, and chase the musty smell out of our humble abode. We just ate yummy homemade Vegetable Barley Soup and now its time to catch up on our Netflicks.

Below, for your reading enjoyment, you’ll find a little moment in time captured from a blog entry written while we were on vacation but without Internet access.

Oh yeah, and Happy New Year!

My Ancient and Depraved Colonel
© The Author, Wednesday, December 28 2005

The skin of a Sequoia is amazing to touch: the consistency of a parched patch of wood is almost that of a flakey, soft croissant; the texture of a water-heavy piece is tender and spongy like wet cardboard. The bark of a Sequoia is 31 inches thick and the feel of it will haunt you.

Yesterday we took a seven-mile hike through the surrounding areas of Cedar Grove Village, the location of our snuggly hotel in California’s Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Park, and ended up at the General Grant Tree Trail. Since U.S. settlers did much of their exploration of the Sierras after the Civil War, a whole slew of trees have ill-fitting patriotic namesakes. If I were to name the world’s largest living things, I think I’d skip petty human war heroes and go with something a little more grandiose: Zeus, Gorgeous George, The Bearded Lady, The Big Kahuna, or simply Fatty MaGee. Although, in all honesty, any given name is meaningless: delicious 2,700 year-old silence reigns supreme here.

On the trail, with my neck thrown back like a Nebraskan tourist on Chicago’s Malignant Mile, my mouth gaped as my unblinking eyes filled with the sinew, tangle, and force of the 311-foot Sequoias above me. There is something wicked and ruined about the majesty of these trees; their mutant claw-like limbs jut obscenely miles up the trunk, their shallow roots emerge gnarled and twisting from the soft earth underfoot. These mammoth, unapologetic creatures remind me of a description of a character named Andrea from my current reading, Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees. Andrea is said to be “a tall, very tall, man, with a ravaged face of great breeding…” In the same passage, Andrea greets the Colonel with another phrase fit for a Sequoia, “My ancient and depraved Colonial.”

Ancient and depraved indeed.

Today we trekked up to see the largest living thing on the planet: The General Sherman Tree. Before a so-called virgin birthed a man named Jesus, while Romans stormed wildly about Europe, a not-so-distant settler from Asia may have seen this tree as a germinating seed, softly shedding its tiny seed coat onto the ash-rich soil after a fire thrashed fiercely here in the months before. Growing up to three feet annually, the tree would soon loom above her and she would notice and love it and fear it. So respectful were her peoples that it is rumored that they would not dare set up camp in a Sequoia grove, for fear of the powerful spirits that lurk amongst the muted, freakish trees. How did humans ever stop worshiping the earth? How did we become so separate and unmoved?

Freezing rain sent us back to our hotel earlier than I would have liked, but its better to be safe than to find ourselves dead or in a horrible situation created by winding mountain roads, a wimpy Geo-metro, and merciless ice.

Now that the rain has calmed and our tummies are full of tuna and crackers, we are off in our ponchos to hike a nearby 6 mile trail called Park Ridge, which doesn’t require driving to get to and boasts spectacular views of snow covered mountains. I like listening to the snow crunch beneath our boots as we walk and thinking of nothing and saying not a word but knowing love and all the rest just the same.

Tomorrow we drive to L.A. and there will be talking and laughter late into the night. But I am here now. Completely and utterly here.

Edit Wednesday Night:
Pushing ourselves up the cruelly steep mountain trail, we paused for a moment to look at the craggy hills surrounding us and we wondered how many predators knew our exact location and the best way to sink their teeth into our clumsy, sweaty, fleshy bodies. At first we guessed 50 and revised it down to 20. In any case, I felt something’s beady little eyes tracking us and licking its chops.

By the time we were a quarter of a mile into the hike, a thick, creepy fog descended upon us, making any mountain view impossible. So thick was the fog that we missed the sign that indicated our trails end and we didn’t know we’d done it until we ran into a sign for yet another trail.

We gazed upon a total of six pretty munching deer and we heard one coyote howl and bark. We smelt a gamey smell that stunk of the spray of a big cat. Although that could have just been our B.O. We felt our caves swell up to three times their normal size and noticed the beginnings of incredibly steely buns.
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In what mind set are you entering 2006?