My year of magical thinking

This post was recognized as BlogHer Voice of the Week in March of 2010. Check out the review here.


On my first full day of magical thinking, I ate my power animal.

To paraphrase Ira Glass, each year in my life I choose a theme, and bring you a variety of stories related to that theme. At twenty two I vowed to make better decisions and become prettier. Twenty three was the year of chance & whitewater. Twenty four was the year of positive thinking. Yesterday, my birthday, I decided that twenty five is going to be my year of magical thinking.

This is the year to blur the lines between what is fiction and nonfiction, what is possible and impossible. Magical thinking is like positive thinking in HD, Native American spirituality blended with American pop psychology. I am going to see the power, the potential, and the meaning in all things. Life will be luminous, studded with the unexpected, rich in omens, visions, unexpected wisdom. Dreams are going to carry a lot more weight in my everyday decisions. Sounds radical? You bet.

And though I haven't exactly hammered out the details, I know that accidentally eating my Power Animal is not a promising start.

My friend Teo had an extra ticket to a bajillion course dinner at Twin Farms, an exclusive five star hotel hidden in the woods of Barnard. Hidden. I've been roaming this area my entire life and I have never found it. People like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates and Nicole Kidman stay there so no one can find them. I told Teo he could not have chosen a better dining companion for the occasion: I am devastatingly talented at small talk, and I adore fine foods. Little towers of beef with sprigs of parsley. Entire entrees stuffed inside a single endive. All vegetables proceeded with the word 'baby'. Baby lettuce. Baby bok choy.


And so, on my first day as a magical thinker, I was led down a walkway of tiny white lights and seated in front of a small herd of wineglasses and an extended family of forks. I was all tights and lipsticks and good posture, playing it cool, friendly but aloof. That is, until I read that the evening would commence with something called 'Lemony Squid Bubbles', and my head almost blew off my body in delight. I was doing it- I was living out my year of magical thinking! Yesterday, I lived in a world where lemony squid bubbles did not exist. Today, they were being served to me over the pink body of a crab, in a dining room whose walls had once been darkened by the shadow of Oprah Winfrey.

That's the difference between plain old 'positive thinking' and 'magical thinking'.

In case you are wondering, the lemony squid bubbles looked and tasted like citrus shaving cream, with a little hint of the ocean. And they were only the beginning. As the evening swept by, the terrifying and mystical little plates kept coming and coming, and I CHARGED. No matter that I don't eat veal and I have never tasted sea food: tonight, whatever was put before me, was put into my mouth. I used the correct fork, I sipped the correctly paired wine, I enjoyed amiable conversation with the elegant people at my table. In the whirlwind, I stopped consulting the menu before each plate. I ate with blind courage.

Somewhere between the salmon parfait and the quail eggs, two little red, round cutlets of meat were served. And this is when the evening took a turn for the macabre.


My power animal was established at the age of three, when I established a profound relationship with ducks. Ducks are my friends, my (former) pets, my connection to the animal world. Ducks are sacred. I share many, many a fine quality with that particular waterfowl. From certain angles, I even look like a duck. And never, ever, under any circumstance, would I eat a duck.

As a little girl, I could never have imagined that, some twenty years later, one would be served to me medium rare, disguised under a little beret of Creme Fresh. Never could I have imagined that I would chew and nod and say 'good steak' and someone would say 'that's not steak.' That I would pause, fork to mouth, and say, 'well, what is it?'

OH GOD. My first day of dabbling with spirituality, and I eat my power animal.

All night long, I had been swapping stories of positive thinking with the beautiful woman next to me. As the evening dwindled down and the coffee was poured, I confided to her my big mistake. She understood the gravity of the situation, as I knew she would.

'You ATE your POWER ANIMAL?' She asked, drawing back. 'Even I requested that they serve me that plate without the duck! Just the greens.'

I held my head in my hands. 'I didn't know,' was all I could say. 'I didn't know.'

My spirits were lifted when the final of three desserts was served, and the dining room was filled with strange little explosive sounds, like a bevy of keyboards being tapped at the same time. My mouth tickled. "What the-" said Teo, leaning his ear towards his plate. "Are these pop rocks?" Our thin slices of bitter chocolate, dabbed with jam and dusted with peanut butter powder, had been served with a side of chocolate pop rocks.

Somehow, this brought me back down to earth. Yes, I may have digested and enjoyed the duck. But there I was, sitting in one of the most exclusive hotels in the the US, being served lemony squid bubbles and chocolate pop rocks. It was certainly nothing I could have predicted for my first day of my 25th year, and if nothing else, my year was looking to be a very intriguing one.

My final thoughts on this night is that I may need to find a new power animal. Although I doubt any species in the animal kingdom will offer itself up, given my record.

Letter to my college-age self


Dear college Melina,

In less than an hour we turn 25 years old! A full quarter of a century, imagine that.

I've been out of college for a few years now, and I've been told I should write you a letter, a sort of 'what I know now' letter. It's true- I am much, much wiser today than you are now, even if you have better hair. So here is some advice, from me to you:



1. Pay your parking tickets. You live in the city, and someone gave you a car when it was actually pretty inconvenient to have one. So, parking tickets will happen. But if you just go ahead and deal with them, you'll only have to pay about 25.00$. And if you wait, you'll have to pay 64.00$. And then 150.00$. And then it will go to debt collectors, and then you won't want to answer your phone. It won't go away, so just pay it. And just so you're prepared, your car will be towed five times in one year, when you are a junior. Five times, Coogan!2. Stop eating food out of plastic containers. They are starting to discover that stuff is really bad. And if you are going to pour boiling water into your Nalgene during winter camping trips to keep you warm at night, for God sake's STOP drinking that water in the morning!

3. A boy named Jake will lock you in a small basement room for a long time during a party in your 5th year, but don't worry, you'll be let out eventually.

4. Other than that, you are perfect. Keep on trucking- I look back on some of your wilder moments with great, great pride.

Love you, mean it,

Me

PS....Most things get better as time goes by. And some things get better, and better, and better. You have no idea how good it will be:








Perpetrator


Just the other morning, the police disrupted the idyllic main street coffee house in Montpelier, Vermont. They were after me. Of course.

If you have read this blog before, than you are already familiar with the scene of me working in a public location. Writing is always a challenge, but it pales in comparison to the challenge of avoiding the unsolicited comments and conversation of strangers that seem to befall me as if by magnetic attraction.

On this particular morning, Capitol Grounds was packed. The shrill blast of the milk steamer and conversations of customers blended into a cheerful, cacophonous white noise. I was typing, leaning forward in concentration and every so often rubbing my forehead with my right hand. Typical stuff.

And then the police came in and broke it all up.

Let the record show, counselor, that these events took place on the morning on March 10th, 2010. I had risen early and driven an hour up 89 to have breakfast with an old friend. She called to say she was going to be a little late, so I took the dogs on a quick walk before tying them in front of the diner. I ordered corned beef and hash. The two of us ate for approximately 51 minutes, and afterward I took the dogs for another little walk around town.

It was early spring in the capitol of our rural state, blue and calm and a warm 48 degrees in the sun. Montpelier is an eclectic town of local-food restaurants and book stores clustered around the gold-topped State House. I tied up the dogs in front of the cafe, ordered an Americano and opened up my laptop. From my seat at the window I could see the dogs, sunning themselves like seals and accepting the steady stream of attention offered by the people passing by.

I was halfway through my work when a policeman in his blue starched uniform entered the building. He was talking with the woman behind the counter, and I was unaware of his presence until he turned towards the cafe and announced, "Excuse me! Can I have every one's attention, please!"

The place fell silent. There must have been fifty people there, all looking this young, crew cut officer of the law. He was unusually short. He hooked his thumbs into his gun holster, leaned back on his heals and addressed the crowd. "Who is the owner of the two dogs tied up outside?"

I raised my hand. Fifty heads rotated in my direction.

You know that sudden, irrational guilt you feel when you see a police car on the interstate? You think, oh my God am I speeding? I'm speeding! Did I use my glove compartment to store illegal drugs again? Did I? I don't think I did? Oh god, maybe I did and I forgot? Logic goes out the Subaru window- this feeling is instinctual.

Well believe it or not, I have nearly kicked that instinct. I used to date a cop, and judging from the stories he used to tell me, he was very, very bad at his job. This guy could have had his own CHiPs-esque sitcom. Getting a glimpse of the more human, slam your thumb in the patrol car door and cry while giving a ticket side of the police force had negated my fear considerably.

Regardless, when this police officer outed me to the entire cafe as the perpetrator, I ran through a quick mental checklist. Had the dogs been barking? No. Had they made a mess of the sidewalk as Hometeam has been known to do on certain irritable banker's floors? No. Is it illegal to tie your dogs up on the street? It wasn't yesterday. Were they out there smoking a fat spliff? Were they?


"People are concerned," said the cop, still addressing the entire coffee shop. "There have been a few calls, people wondering if those dogs had been abandoned." Oh. Of course people suspected these two healthy, pure breed dogs were abandoned, at 1:00pm on this sunny day on that busy sidewalk.

"Well....they're not." I offered lamely. Everyone was looking from me to the cop to me again. The officer paused.

"Well, I just need- okay, you know what? I'm just going to go around and talk to you."

He walked around to my seat, and I was aware of how sheepish and embarrassed he looked. I was fondly reminded of my ex boyfriend. "Sorry about that....so---uh...." he brought out a little notebook from his back pocket. "I just need some, uh, some information." I could tell he was ad-libbing. "What's your name?"

I gave it to him. He wrote it down.

"And what's your birthday?"

I gave it to him. He wrote it down. I wondered what he'd ask for next. "You know officer, those dogs haven't been out there that long." He scratched his head and looked down. "I know. I just, I'm just required to have a conversation with you. And okay, I did. Sorry about that. You have a good day." And he walked out.

I turned back to my computer, feeling the eyes of fifty strangers boring into me. What were they thinking? Did they want me to skulk out of there without making eye contact, load my neglected dogs into the back of my car and head for home, where surely there was a dirty toddler and a screaming infant neglected in a crib?

Actually, just the opposite. The rest of my understandably unproductive work day was punctuated by people interrupting me, RE: the dogs. "Hey- beautiful dogs you got there! What are those, shelties? Such well behaved dogs!" Their comments smacked of support and solidarity.

Alright people, I thought, as you were. Public humiliation is nothing new to me. This may have phased some, sure, but compared to other glaring moments in my life, like falling down an entire flight of stairs in front of Lorenzo, my former future husband in Chile, this occurrence did not register on the mortification scale. I thought it had been pretty funny. And totally ridiculous.

Eventually I packed up my laptop and headed for the counter to pay, where the barrista apologized profusely. "I suggested he go around to everyone and ask them if they owned the dogs," she explained, "but he said it would just be easier to announce it to everyone. I bet that was really embarrassing."

I have heard this about motherhood: the first time the baby throws up on you- not spits up but really bblllaaarrrghhhhssss- and your first concern is for the baby and not for yourself, then you know you're really a mother. That is the way I felt, not as a mother but as a writer. You know you're a writer when life throws up on you and your first thought is 'This will make really good material!'

I considered this as I untied the dogs. A man was approaching me on the sidewalk, punk looking with a swagger, over sized headphones over his ears. He was rapping out loud and spitting as he walked. And I thought, 'Yeah, come over here! Spit on my shoes! Tell me something crazy! This will make the perfect end to this story!'

But he didn't. He swaggered past without a second glance. And as I took my neglected, starving, totally unloved dogs for their third walk around town, I have to admit I was a little disappointed.

Not suitable for children

That's me. I'm not suitable for children. More accurately, I'm not suitable to have children of my own. Just look what I do to my pet- ON PURPOSE:


Miles & miles of adventures through mud-season Vermont meant that Hometeam desperately needed a bath. However, this photo shoot extended what for her is a humiliating and miserable experience. Was it worth it? YOU TELL ME, FRIEND!

The sudden disappearance of the Seven Teacups


Right around two years ago in an Omaha zoo, a shark was born via immaculate conception. A baby shark had been born of a virgin! It came as quite a surprise to the zoo keepers, as Mama shark had been resoundingly celibate- she hadn't even been dating. There had been no shark companions of the male sort in the tank in recent memory.

The Zoo keepers called in a bevy of biologist who proclaimed the baby, if not a miracle per se, at least the product of an extremely rare occurrence and worthy of much observation and research. And then, in front of their eyes, the infant shark was stung by a sting ray and killed. Gone. Born of virgin and dead from a sting ray barb in a number of hours.

When I heard about this via an obscure news podcast, I immediately thought of a man named David Bosworth. David was my favorite professor in college- he was casual, he came to class in flannel, he was brilliant and also brilliantly mustached. But above all, David really liked me. He also really liked my writing, which did not help my popularity in Intermediate Short Story Writing 304. Students in creative writing programs are not famous for liking each other. And this particular class, to their credit, had the guts to really show it.

David introduced me to the idea of extended analogies-small stories and occurrences that can be related to life in a much broader sense. 'If you keep your eyes open,' he told us, leaning far back in his chair, 'you will find extended analogies everywhere. Pay attention to them.' On the last day of class, he handed out a photocopied news paper clipping. The story was of a man who filmed skydivers for a living. He would leap out of the plane with a video camera to record their terror and thrill. But this one time he had leaped without his parachute; he had simply forgotten it. And you can imagine what became of him. An extended analogy of literary ambition David had scrawled on the top of the page.

And so when I heard about the short lived second coming of a shark, I immediately recognized an extended analogy of life. The miraculous and the useless swimming side by side in the same tank. Killer!
This morning, an extended analogy that I was in no way emotionally equipped for fell out of the computer screen and into my lap. The earthquake that struck Chile on February 27th rattled the very foundation of the country. Houses collapsed sideways and enormous parades of boulders were unleashed from mountain sides. It did the same inside of me; it reconfigured my heart and my head as if they were flimsy wooden structures. I began to miss Chile in that searing, sucker punch to the gut kind of way. I miss the rivers, the students, the other teachers, our unusual and voracious lifestyle, the amiable, tenuous, incredibly intricate life we had constructed together.

Then today, I reached for my computer and read that the Siete Tazas are gone.

The Sieta Tazas (Spanish for Seven Teacups) were a string of perfect waterfalls on the Rio Claro, a dazzling necklace draped into a deep canyon of black volcanic rock, exceptionally clear and bubbling. For the country of Chile it was a source of pride and income as a profitable national park. For kayakers, it was heaven on earth, and so remote that only a precious few have made it there.

I spent a few weeks on the Rio Claro last fall with New River Academy, sailing off curling lips and passing dizzying days deep in the canyon, staring up at the sky. It was vivid, pristine, and very cold. We slept by the river in a wooden cabin without electricity, we ate well and drank hot chocolate boiled in huge tin kettles.

One day we got stuck inside of the canyon. Jammed together in a tiny eddy and faced with an unrunnable rapid, we realized we would have to climb out from within the deep vertical walls. We bit into roots, swallowed dirt and scraped for footholds against the cliff. The self rescue took hours, and that night we fell headfirst into our beds, fully aware of our lungs expanding in and out. Despite exhaustion I lay awake all night, feeling claustrophobic in the total dark, heart still crashing against my chest wall. The air tasted very thick. It would have been a gorgeous place to die, but it was an even more beautiful place to be living.

When the earthquake struck, it opened up a fissure in the earth that swallowed up the water that fed the Siete Tazas. Literally overnight, the river disappeared. The Siete Tazas is now a dry, black, empty vein split through the earth. The school is scattered throughout Chile, I am separate and far away, and that wild place we loved so much is now vacant, gone, abandoned.


***
Ever since that last year in college, I have searched for extended analogies the way I look for neglected quarters on the sidewalk. I find them sometimes in newspapers, or come across them on the radio or inside stories told by friends. They are a way of feeling that your isolated experience is part of something collective and universal. They are like little wiggling arrows on a big road map. And when insurance denies you and rows of zeros blink like eyeballs from your bank statement, you are alone and far away from your friends, you sleep late and lose little pieces of your mind over breakfast, any glimmer of direction is encouraging.

Usually I find them to be pretty amusing. Like the guy falling and the shark snared in his own tank- both bitingly ironic, and irony is funny. But when the earth opens up and swallows one of its most exquisite creations, it's not exactly funny. It is bizarre. And in terms of the analogies that could be drawn, it's potentially explosive, too dismal, with too much of an element of serious melodrama. I don't even want to touch it.

So I've decided I have to think about this the way an impartial scientist would. It is a matter of geology: tectonic, random, and definitely sad. But in terms of metaphors and figurative language, I think this time I will excuse myself from the table.

Photography

I will be showing a selection of photos at Woodstock Coffee & Tea in Woodstock Vermont for the month of August, 2010. Every piece is for sale. I hope you drop by and check it out!

- Melina

The Story of The Wilder Coast



The Wilder Coast Was Born out of Discouraging Algebra.

Two years out of college, Melina was living in a basement, in the home of a man who collected floaty pens as a hobby. The studio apartment cost 850.00 a month, about half of the salary she made as the public relations director ("whipping girl") at a failing kayak shop. Like many people before her and many to follow, she woke up one day to the realization that the math was not in her favor

In two weeks, Melina packed up seven years worth of life in Seattle and flew back to her parent's house in Vermont. On that day, The Wilder Coast was created. Torn between the perimeters of the country, she expected to spend the next few years bouncing back and forth between coasts, deciding which was the wildest and therefore more appealing.

The Longest Coast

Instead,  a few months after returning East, she took a job with the New River Academy, an internationally traveling boarding school. (The blog came dangerously close to being re-named 'The Longest Coast', but thankfully she didn't know how to change the title at that point).

Generally typed on confusingly foreign keyboards in the last few seconds of pay-per-minute Internet, Melina documented her first semester as a teacher in the world's most alternative high school in incomprehensible half stories and vague references. As the school's English teacher, photography teacher, and public relations coordinator, she had about four other blogs and websites that needed daily updating. Terrible spelling, incomplete sentences and a refusal to capitalize the letter "I" set the tone for the early posts of The Wilder Coast, which read primarily like this.

The Learning Curve

Fortunately, that time was short lived. Following in a long tradition of work vs. blog hostility, The Wilder Coast became a point of contention almost immediately. A student's parent complained when a prescription medication was mentioned in a post; it was a legal medication prescribed by a doctor, but either way the entire staff had to sign away their right to blog while at work.

Many notable stories that would have made VERY GOOD posts passed during that time, but Melina was unable to record them.

She picked up the blog again that summer of 2009, polishing up the writing and finally learning to spell. During that time, the blog crawled from infancy to childhood and began to appeal to a broader audience- aka, people who were not Melina's direct relatives. With popular posts such as This is Not Our Fault, The Wilder Coast emerged as a source of empathy and amusement for the generation of hopeful young people hitting the wall of a record-scary economy.

With a more cautious (aka 'not so dumb') writing ethic, Melina was able to continue updating the blog throughout her second semester at New River Academy with no issues (that she knows of).


Full Time Poverty Writing

In January 2010, chronic migraines forced her into early retirement from teaching (after one whole year). She  moved to North Carolina and continued to write and learn web code. The Web Code went well, but Southern Living did not, and after six months she moved back to Seattle.

A year and a half since its inception, The Wilder Coast has been viewed by over 34,000 people in 80 countries, and continues to grow in readership every day. In January 2010, TWC was accepted by BlogHer, a major online publishing network.

Now a full time writer supporting herself through freelance content writing, coins she finds on the sidewalk, and blog revenue, she lives in what some would call 'squalor', but she calls 'better than the Subaru outback I used to live out of.'

The Author

Welcome! 
....to The Wilder Coast, a blog of huge adventure and an unusually creative life, written and created by Melina Coogan. This page is meant to provide cliff's notes that will help you understand who she is and what she's referring to. This is a great place to start if you are a new reader.

Melina
 ....has three tattoos and plenty of scars. She can be described as:  25 years old, full time writer, natural blond, photographer, white water kayaker and dog owner. She is talkative, adventurous, clumsy, and generally in high spirits. Her editor described her as bizarrely pleasant. Her now ex-boyfriend described her as the most stubborn person on the planet. She describes herself as always up for a good meal. There you have it.

Adventure Quest
......the reason for the compass tattoo on her foot. The Academy at Adventure Quest was the alternative, traveling circus high school she attended with a bunch of other kids who are now big time kayakers, or dead. Most of the kids at AQ were white water kayakers, but Melina belonged to barely-known division for rock climbers. The ups: leading bad-ass routes every day in Europe, New Zealand, Mexico and America, and getting tutored by incredible teachers who are now some of her closest friends. The downs: spending every waking second with a dozen high school boys in the midst of their monstrous adolescents. It pretty much evened out.

Ultimate Frisbee 
....the reason behind the "this could be heaven" tattoo on her back, and the obsession of a lifetime. She captained her college team, coached two high school teams to national Golds medal victories, played for an Elite team called Seattle Riot, and was completely owned by the elaborate ultimate social scene. Ups included: consistently playing the in the finals of Nationals. Lows included: consistently losing in the finals of Nationals.

Seattle
....the reason behind her aversion to any coffee that is not ridiculously overpriced. She currently lives in the Emerald City, where she lived as her former college student incantation, studying writing at the University of Washington, walking around the huge, beautiful campus in the cherry blossoms or the rain, holding a coffee cup. Everyone walks around holding a coffee cup there- even after the coffee is gone. She wrote a lot of papers, won a big scholarship for fiction and a big award for poetry. She used the prize money to pay off the credit card debt she had just learned how to accrue. In a nut shell, Seattle is heaven,  an unaffordable one, but she'll figure that out eventually.

New England
....the reason for the Vermont state tattoo on her leg.  She was born in downtown Boston and raised in rural Vermont. A New England liberal for life and wicked proud of it.

Kayaking
....the reason for the big scar running through the Vermont State tattoo on her leg. She first kayaked at fifteen, hated it, and refrained from the sport entirely for seven years. At twenty-two, she inexplicably drove herself to a pool session and re-learned to roll. She learned to kayak for real in a miserable Seattle Winter. It was not love at first sight. It's still not love: it's an all-consuming ambivalence. Yet  for some reason, kayaking has been the vehicle for all of her employment since college: blogging for a kayak guiding company, working retail and doing PR at a kayak shop, writing copy for a raft company, writing and interning for Paddler magazine, and teaching at a kayak high school. She has kayaked, however reluctantly, all across the US, Canada, and Chile.

New River Academy
....again, the reason for the big scar running through the Vermont State tattoo on her leg. For one splendid and eventful year when she was twenty-four, Melina worked for The New River Academy- The Academy of Huge Experiences, a kayak high school created by a former AQ teacher. She traveled throughout Chile and North America with a dozen wonder-teenagers, a handful of drop dead handsome men and two hilarious women as her coworkers. She did PR for the school and taught literature, creative writing and photography classes. She gained big time experience on some major rivers, and even got some 'stout' waterfalls under her belt- although she'd never, ever use the world 'stout' seriously. Although she had to stop traveling and teaching due to chronic migraines, she still works for Huge as a web site copy, curriculum writer, and general fan.

You 
....reading this blog, is the reason that she gets to write all day. She is extremely happy that you choose to read The Wilder Coast. She hopes you will read often and comment freely. She hopes to get to know you, too.  

Life without love

(In response to Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds)

they do not live as we do, from passion to passion, each consecutive loss a wound across our stomachs, thrashing. They are alone to themselves, content as only children growing up in the countryside, wandering curious through woods and haylofts, warmed by early sunshine, at ease with their solitude. They are not shaken (as we are) by the roar of a freight engine barreling along steel tracks, nor do they feel the glow and stab of a star falling through the lofty black attic of the universe, hurtling into the sudden beam of headlights. They do not ache at the thought of its brief flight, caught for an instant by those driving home late on long empty roads, pulling alone through the dark tunnel of night. And playing the radio they may come across the last bit of an old country music song, shredded by static yet still enough to remember- just barely- what it was like to have a body in the seat next to them warm and half asleep against the window. Thank God they will say, to no one, to the gaping black barns abandoned against the roadside, the dark blue upholstery of the car, Thank God. I came so terribly close.

still life with strangers

I am sitting at a cafe in Burlington, Vermont, picking at a way overpriced salad (someone please remind me why I ordered a salad?) I'm grumbling to myself because a creepy looking man on one of those scooter type things has been parked outside the cafe for 15 minutes messing with Hometeam and blowing cigarette smoke in her little face. She can't defend herself, and she's got a useless mother who is too chicken to go out and save her because I really don't want to deal with that guy. I need to teach her how to brandish mace, or at least how to shout "I NEED AN ADULT! I NEED AN ADULT!"

I'm so distracted by this situation that I haven't written a thing since I've been here. I have my laptop out and I'm blinking alternatively between the screen and the window. Then this younger, sharply dressed character walks in, sits down next to me and says- out of nowhere, we hadn't even made eye contact- "Is that a really big laptop, or are you just happy to see me?"

"Um....it's a really big laptop," I say. I'm thinking, it's not that big. I'm also thinking.....Really??

"Ha Ha!" Says the man, slapping his thigh. "Good answer! Great answer!" He laughs his way to the counter. I stare out the window and continue to watch the man bad-touch my dog. He's been joined now by a lady, a big lady in a big pink sweatshirt that reads- in puff paint- MY GRANDKIDS KILLED SANTA! It is accompanied by an illustration that I cannot make out from here. And honestly, I don't want to.

You just can't make this stuff up.

When the well dressed man sits down with his coffee, he turns to me and as if we'd been previously engaged in a lengthy conversation. "Soooo......" He cranes his neck to get a look at my keyboard. "What have we got here....Dell? Toshiba?"

I've got nothing much to write, but I dip my head anyway and start typing furiously, hoping to give out the "hard working I've got a deadline" vibe. I do not mean to be rude, but I know this type (and by 'this type I do not mean gay....in case for some reason you thought I meant that.) They are perfectly harmless, but once you've returned their attention in any way it can be hard- nay, impossible-to shake them.

So this is what I've written. And actually, these past 20 minutes have been a fairly accurate snapshot of my life right now. And I can't help but find that just a touch discouraging.

Myelogram

For Stephanie Jones Jordan

To catch up on her story (these will open in separate tabs: part1, part 2, part 3, part, 4, part 5

***
This is the point that life slows down, as if she is moving underwater. Her husband, mother, sister, father are on the phone with doctors, hospitals, pain specialists, administrators. The soonest she can see a neurologist is four months. While she's waiting, she visits twelve different doctors. Twelve- that's a dozen- that's a carton of eggs. Only each egg is a different hospital visit, a different series of tests and questions, a different doctor- all of them backing away and shaking their head. We can't help you, they say. It's too risky. You have headaches now, but if we tried to help you you might end of a quadriplegic, or dead. It seems no one has experience with spinal leaks, especially leaks in the upper spine.

The neurologist passes her off to a neurosurgeon- another 4 week wait. The surgeon performs a myelogram, an injection of dye which courses through her column and illustrates where the leaks occurred. Her insurance company has by this time thrown up their hands- for an injury this rare, it seems as if all procedures are ‘experimental’. So she pays out of pocket for the myelogram, ten thousand dollars.

The myelogram is hell. Over and over she voices her fear, but the nurses and the radiologist only nod, instruct her to lie down. The neurosurgeon never even walks into the room. Instead, it is a medical student performs this enormously risk procedure- his first ever. As she lies on the silver table in the antiseptic room, shivering and clenching her teeth to hold still, she starts to give up a little. Starts to sink away a little bit, starts to give up. She can hear the radiologist hiss at the medical student- not there! Not there! Okay- Now inject- that’s too much! That’s too much!

Her modicum of comfort arises from the the presence of flouriscope- the radiologist can watch the entire path of the needle into her neck by way of x-ray. This technology was absent during the shot that caused the injury, all those months ago. She remembers thinking, well, at least this way if the needle misses, I’m going to be a paraplegic, not a quadriplegic.

What she doesn't know is that neither the radiologist or the medical student had even glanced at her charts. Nobody knows that this entire tragedy began with a faulty needle to the spine.
As she is wheeled out, a nurse whispers to her, "I'm sorry. I had no idea this was such a risky procedure." During the hours of recovery, the head of the department meets with Steph and her furious mother. The doctor sighs, rotates his wrists so that his palms face towards the sky. "Look, this is a teaching hospital. We should have told you that. This was a horrible procedure. I don’t know why they didn’t look at your charts. I don’t know why. But the good news, is that the procedure went off well. And we looked at your dies, and we didn’t find any leaks. You should be getting better any day now."

Yeah, any day now.

They tell her to stay down another day. She stays down for two- her practice now is to double the amount of time they advise her to lay flat. But on the third day she sits up- and her spine springs another leak- ( actually, another ten leaks, but how could they know that yet?). The headaches come barreling back, vision tunneling, throwing up over the toilet, and she is back to square one.

What follows is only natural. Crying jags that last for hours and hours, panic attacks, waking up at night to find she cannot breath. As the days pass with no answers, no improvements, the reality of her situation begins to sink in. She thinks to herself, I don't want to live like this anymore. She thinks to herself.

Look- I don't know how to write about this anymore. I can't do it justice in words, I'm not sure anybody could. I want to hurry and rush through these articles just to get to the end, to the happy ending. But the happy ending hasn't occurred. Not yet.

(Any day now....)


Famous in a Small Town

Bad day. My home town was mean to me and I, in turn, destroyed my home town. I will begin at the beginning.

The wedding is over and the bride and groom are sunning themselves in the Cayman Islands. I'm stuck here in Vermont for two weeks as I wait for my MRI, which is scheduled for the middle of the month. In case you have never seen Vermont in mud season, let me tell you that it is misery. The lustre and brilliance of winter has melted into shabbiness and filth, huge piles of snow crouch defiantly on the sidewalk, and the twisting tire tracks in the mud roads freeze into deep ruts in the evenings.

I decided to take both dogs, Hometeam and my parent's dog Latte, into town to run some errands. To begin with, it took me forever to get out of the house. Nothing new there. Then on the way out the door I ripped a giant hole in my jeans against the side of the barn.

'Hey- relax!' you say, 'It's just pants! You could have easily gashed a hole through your leg!' In theory I agree with you, but having spent the morning reviewing my finances, I took a decidedly darker view of things. The way I see it, I own one pair of jeans- one- and based purely on my current income, I will not be able to afford another one until I am eligible for social security.

Now my pants provide the world with a window into my thigh, and things will be quite drafty south of my waist for a while.Then I got in a big fight with the woman at the bank.

I have a habit of picking up any lose change that I come across, and squirrelling it away in a
cheerful polka dotted tin. Some day after I find enough, I will put it into a high yielding online savings account, amass a few hundred thousand in interest, then write a charming book called "Spare Change" or "Spare Penny For Your Thoughts" or "The Wishing Well- How My Wishes Came True One Penny at a Time."

Today, after scouring the couch cushions, I had aggregated enough change to fill up the tin. So I was bringing it to the bank to be sorted and exchanged into bills, always a fun occurrence. At the bank outside of town, a nice white haired lady directed me to the other branch of the same bank, in the lovely stone building in the center of town. That branch had possession of a coin sorter machine, and they would be happy to help me.

I leashed the dogs up and headed for the other bank, where I happily explained that I'd been sent there to use the coin sorter. After a long ugly look, the large lady behind the counter, Diane, asked to see the coins. With a flourish, I presented her the polka dotted tin.

'This?' She asked, blinking at it. 'This is it?'

'Well, yes.' I felt deflated- this was an entire month's worth of coin hunting!

'And they sent you here? They could have counted this themselves at the other bank.'

'They said you had a coin counter here.'

'Well, we do but it's such a small amount it's going to be faster for me to just count these out by hand- Linda! LINDA- look!-' she held up my tin to someone in the back room. 'The other branch sent her here to count this!'

'Can't you just use the coin sorter?' I asked again.

'I am not going to bother. It will be faster this way'.

'Diane, please,' I said, 'Be reasonable, it's a coin counter, it's a machine, how could you possibly be faster-'

I was interrupted by the sound of coins hitting the counter as Diane poured out the tin. She shuffled the coins around with a single chubby finger and one by one began stacking up the pennies.

I just couldn't let this go. 'I'm sorry but- if there's a machine here, how could it possibly be easier to do it yourself? It's a machine!'

Diane did not look up at me. 'Because there are not enough coins to warrant using the machine.' She had taken on the tone of an irritated 2nd grade teacher.

'Yes but what difference does it make-

'It's easier for me to count it-

'But it's a machine! it's a COIN COUNTER! It COUNTS COINS that's what it does!'

'Listen' she hissed, learning forward. 'I'm not going to get up and go over there for this. I'd have to go and put the coins INTO the machine, and then take them OUT of the machine. This is much easier." (I'm not making this up).Next to us, an older man had handed over an envelope to the teller in the next window. She walked behind Diane, clicked on a small machine, poured in the coins with a satisfying jingle, and in two seconds returned to the counter. "Six dollars!" She said cheerfully, handing over the money.

Diane continued to slowly count out each coin. She had moved on to the nickels.

Finally, she was finished. "Ten dollars and thirty seven cents." She said, pronouncing every word carefully. She handed me the money.

At this point, I had declared Diane my enemy. I was about to open my mouth and tell her how ten dollars is A LOT OF MONEY TO SOME PEOPLE and you SHOULD NOT MAKE
PEOPLE FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. Do not judge me. Do not shame- but at that moment Hometeam urinated on the rug.

I don't know what was up with her, she's never done that in her life. And if no one had seen it, I would have whisked her out and not mentioned it. (I'm only being honest.) Unfortunately for me, a few customers in line had witnessed the crime and were looking at me expectantly. Knowing there was no bathroom in the bank, I yanked both dogs outside and tied them up in front of the restaurant next door.

I ran to the bathroom to grab some paper towels, and returned 20 seconds later to find Latte lying lose in the middle of the sidewalk, her leash dragging. Hometeam was gone. In an instant, I realized what I had done. Unknowingly, I had tied them up to one of those weird, tube-like cigarette holders with the base full of cigarettes. In my brief absence, the dogs had dragged it halfway down the sidewalk, where it had toppled over and broken in half. Hundreds of rain drenched cigarettes butts and red tobacco juice had spilled all the quaint corner of Main Street and Elm.

I found Hometeam two blocks away outside a ladies' clothing store drinking from a puddle. There was a middle aged man standing outside his car watching her. "Ohh..." he said to me as I ran up. "I was just waiting here because she looked like someone may have lost her"

"YEAH AND SHE'S A BAD DOG A VERY BAD DOG" I grabbed her and jerked on her leash. The man got in his car, but not before hitting me with a look reserved for bad dog owners and women who hit their children in the grocery store. And I would have BEEN one of those people if my dog were a child. And we were in a grocery store.

At this point, the mess I had planned to clean up at the bank had already dried into the carpet, so I just walked in, approached the counter and said to Dianne 'By the way, my dog peed on your carpet. Sorry.' As I walked out I was thinking 'DON'T YOU WISH YOU HAD JUST USED THE COIN SORTER NICE AND QUICK??'

I brought the dogs back to the car and tied them up on the meter. I reached into the trunk and grabbed a box of Bunny Grahams I have stashed for emergencies. In my frustration I ripped the bag open and the little bunny cookies flew everywhere, a tremendously exciting event for the dogs. At this point, my phone rang.

I wouldn't have bothered to answer it except I recognized the ringer as being a foreign number. It was my school, calling from Chile for the first time since the earthquake.

"Hello?" I asked. I heard the crackle of static. "HELLO?" A young, well dressed couple was approaching me on the sidewalk. I kept shouting at the phone. The dogs and I were taking up the entire sidewalk, and the couple had to sidle over the snowbank to get around me. The moment they passed, I heard a voice come through the other end of the phone line. "OH MY GOD CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" I shouted.

The couple swiveled their heads around, the man looked bemused but the woman shot me a dirty look. I covered the mouth piece and mouthed the words 'Earthquake! They were in the earthquake!!!' As they passed, her in her stylish red wool coat and he with smart suit jacket, I could see their pace quicken.

I could only imagine what I looked like to them, standing in a sea of bunny grahams and shouting into a phone, completely blocking the sidewalk with my unruly dogs. They turned the corner and I could picture the man saying soothingly to his wife, 'Oh, now, let' s just take pity on her. Did you see those torn jeans? She probably only has 10 dollars and thirty seven cents to her name.'

'Mmmmm' the woman replies, slipping a gloved hand through his arm. 'I wouldn't even bother to use my coin sorter for that amount.'

Earthquake in Chile

This morning, February 27 an 8.8 earthquake struck Chile. For comparrison, Haiti was a 7.5. Both New River Academy and World Class Kayak Academy are in Chile. World Class was already at the Futa, far South of the epicenter of Concepcion, Chile's 2nd largest city. But my kids were in transit and we did not know exactly where they were.

It was an agonizing day of frantic communication and studying maps, until one girl was able to text her father- they were on the Ferry already heading towards the Futa. They were all safe.

David Hughes is still missing. He is the director of the program but this semester he has not been traveling with them. Collectively, the families of the students/staff and I have called the Red Cross, American Embassy in Chile and our Congressmen.....

I created a Disaster profile for David with his description, and where I think he might be. Google has an amazing "I'm Looking for someone: Chile earthquake" thing online. I last heard from him the night before the quake and he was in San Alfonso del Maipo, which is about an hour away from Santiago. I hear from another parent that he was planning on being in Santiago today.

Santiago was hit severely, a 7 on the richter scale. But I know that internet is working at least in some places in the city. I do not understand why he has not contacted any of us. I am filled with nightmares after creating his profile and scrolling through all the " I have reason to believe this person is mising/ I have reason to believe this person is dead/ I have spoken to this person since the earthquake."

The families and Kara and I have all been talking and we think that he is probably unable to get to internet, or busy helping other people. But either way I am too panicked to sleep. I'm just writing this to calm myself down. David when you read this and laugh at me for being dramatic, please send us a message that you're alright.

Here are some photos from the BBC website.

Click here to support Disaster Relief

The Nocturnal Among Us

Read my post about my sister here here. Now, here are the secrets:

This is Anna's latest CD. Produced by JD Foster, this is her most vivid, stark, honest recording yet. You can buy this CD by clicking here.

She took the title The Nocturnal Among Us from a poem written by my cousin Caitlin. who died when I was 15. Caitlin was a writer. The art on the cover is from my cousin Ali. Her Art is incredible, but it will haunt you.

This CD is dedicated to Nate Labreque and the kids from Team Adventure. Team Adventure, part of The Academy at Adventure Quest, was a kayak team my sister was part of for years when she was a teenager. Unfortunately, the team spun on the axis of a horrific and shattering secret. The song "So Long Summertime" (on the CD) is written about just that.

Her CD Release show is scheduled for friday March 5th at the Fremont Abbey. Find out more and listen to her music on her website. Anna is going on a National tour directly after the CD Release Show, so make sure and catch her. Pre-sale tickets for the show are available for purchase here, or take a chance at the door. Be part of it.

She got the talent. And the cheekbones.


My sister is a professional musician with the kind of voice that will stop traffic. I think I know how she ended up with all the talent in the family...I'm pretty sure that before we were born, we made some sort of deal wherein she got the talent, and I got the naturally blond hair. Do I regret this deal, now that I'm a real person? Sometimes, but then I go look in the mirror and think YOWZA! Good deal! Anyhow, I could go on (and on) about her music, but instead I'll let you listen to it yourself. Go ahead. Enjoy it.

She lives in Seattle and has for over eleven years. She is extremely well known out there and has played in those big venues with the electric stars that glitter overhead. Whenever I attended her shows, I would waltz passed the long line and say, "I"m on the guest list" and they'd wave me through. This more than made up for the fact that whenever I introduced myself in that town, or produced a credit card with my name on it, this is what I got: 'wait- are you....are you related to Anna Coogan??"

Anna spent a few years training to be an Opera singer at the Mozarteum in Austria, before deciding the hell with this and giving up Opera forever. Now she sings...I don't know how to describe it, but it's hip and beautiful and it's all her own. However, those La Traviata-trained pipes of hers can still really fill up a theater. Meaning to say, she's got a powerful voice. She has the vocal chord equivelent of a Dodge Ram Truck. Whenever we're talking I find myself saying "Anna- ANNA I'M RIGHT HERE I'M NEXT TO YOU STOP SHOUTING." And she'll say "OH SORRY," and keep right on going.

On the day she was married, I was walking down 6th avenue in downtown Seattle during rush hour. It was after the ceremony and I was heading towards a nice restaraunt to have dinner with the family. And suddenly from out of nowhere I heard: "LIIIINA!" Only it was more like "LIIIIIINA!" (Which is the biggest text I have ever used on this blog, in case you are wondering.)

I stopped and looked all around. And there she was- Anna in her wedding dress shouting my name from TWO FULL CITY BLOCKS AWAY. During RUSH HOUR. I could barely even see her.

What amazes me about Anna and what she's doing is how much courage it takes. We are both trying to make it in alternative routes- me writing, Anna music. After so many hours/weeks/years of putting out our best possible effort- exhausting, draining, often disheartening- our success is wholly based on whether or not we have managed to attract the attention and demand of total strangers. After a point, whether we sucseed or fail is completely out of our hands- which can be excruciating, considering what we do is so personal.

I get to hide, in all senses of the word. I hide behind a screen when I write, and most of my interactions with readers is through blessedly impresonal email. I chart my readers and revenue through Google Analytics, which boils everything down to numbers and graphs. Let's say that on a certain day, nobody looks at my blog. Nobody so much as opens the page and has a glance. I get a little zero on the chart for the day. Thankfully, this doesn't happen anymore, but it used to. A lot. But the beauty of it is that nobody has to know. I can go drink a big pina collada in a coconut and stew over my total failure and unpopularity. But I am certainly not going to tell anyone about it! My little secret! And let me tell you, the past few years have been studded with big coconut drinks.

Anna doesn't have it so easy, so hidden. She faces her success or her lack of it with every single show, meaning there are lots of people in the audience, or there are not lots of people in the audience. When she was just starting out, she would open mics with just a handful of people scattered around the tables watching the overhead TVs. Once- I swear to God- I travelled with her to Bellingham, WA where she co-played a show with a woman who spent her portion of the time talking about her Cat ("we call him The Captain"!) and when, during that moment, I ran out of the place laughing hysterically, I don't think there was anyone left in there.

Thankfully, it didn't take long until her talent spring-launched her into success and she was playing sold out shows in huge venues like the Triple Door downtown. Not to mention a festival in Europe with David Gray and Lucinda Williams. But still - every single time she is putting her entire self out there. I could write my most deepest and darkest if secrets, things I should never tell anybody and share them here and still, that would not come close to 'putting myself out there' the way my sister does, and will do for the rest of her life.

I know one thing: I could never, ever, ever do it. But I'm so thankful she is able (willing, eager) to do it, and once you hear her sing, you will be, too.