Saw Tooth

After the first artist, only the copyist
- Renny Russell 

For anyone who has a love that's returned, whose love is not spread out over mountains or poured into rivers, I envy you. I remember sleeping next to my buddy beneath the covers and and breathing in his smell of soap, detergent, sweat and dirt. Thinking that this one would last. That this was the smell I would inhale for the rest of my nights. Getting used to sleeping alone, with no one to throw an arm around in the middle of the night, legs kicking in space, my body curled into a useless crescent around a memory, this had taken some getting used to. But you adjust. There are your pillows to take the place, blankets, books to divert your attention, pills if you need them. But camping alone is the hardest. Alone in your tent, your back flat and rigid against the hard ground, feathers and nylon and foam protecting you from rocks and roots. You breath a white mist into the cold air, curling deeper into your sleeping bag. Trying to block out the dark, the quiet, the memories of a warm buddy next to you. Your ears are hyper sensitive to the sounds of clicking animals and cracking twigs, footprints, strangers, avalanches. And your exhausted heart keeps running over the well worn memories of your buddy lying next to you in a red sleeping bag. Resting your head on his chest as he wraps you in warmth.  Do you remember what it's like to be woken up to the sound of rock falling in the valley? You imagine the rocks gaining momentum, smashing into your tent. The whole hillside rolling away. You turn over and bury your face into his neck. "Just a rock fall," he says, not quite awake but still aware of your fear, kissing you on top of the head. Camping alone has been hard ever since I left my buddy. Keeping the fire going and running out the batteries in the lamp, rearranging the things inside the tent to try and fill the space.  But gradually its gotten easier just as everything gets easier. Think of a fire lulling down to coals. You become familiar with being just by yourself again. Looking after yourself. It does become bearable again.

So why did I go to Idaho, and be reminded? I got down on the ground and stirred at the embers and fed them pure oxygen. A glowing tent on a deep blue lake so far off the trail no one could ever find us. That splendid heart I once pretended to know. My buddy. His long arms that cast a flyfish reel in wide arcs and gutted the fish and folded me against him like origami.  Why pick at the scar that had come so close to healing, why, why, why.  I sat by the lake the morning of our second day in the Sawtooths, drinking coffee, knowing very simply that we would never be together. I know I love him beyond reason, I miss him more than any other person or thing on the planet.  I know that this is the very end, and, I guess, the time when everything starts over for me.

If you wanted to find me, I'd be about here


I was gunning through the last of Nebraska and into Wyoming, determined not to stop until I reached the state famous for both its violently homophobic history and its gay cowboy movie. One of the three states I'd never been to in the lower 48, my personal challenge of "48 before 21" quest having resulted in a frustrating Incomplete 4 years earlier. 

I never stopped to eat but I did pull off at a neurotic amount of gas stations,  never letting the needle fall beneath a half tank. I harbored a somewhat rational fear of having the engine die on the interstate and being forced to sleep in my seat, bolt upright, waiting for someone to knock on my window, hand me a piece of farm machinery and instruct me to put it against my forehead.

The night before I left a friend stopped by to debate interstates and state routes, sleeping hours verses daily mileage, and in general the decision to leave at all. He knelt above the open atlas on the floor as I crammed another pair of shoes into a plastic bin. "It's all about the shoes," I said aloud, "Shoes and lipstick. Brand new me." He wasn't listening. He bent farther over the map and traced his finger in a circle around the upper left quadrant of the country. "Right around  here," he said, "this is where all the nutjobs live."

"You have a very colorful way of describing the country." I said, studying the big square states with a frown, suddenly envisioning all the terrible things the crazy people of Laramie, WY could do to me and my shoes. "Oh, trust me," He'd replied. "Total nutjobs."


I was tired, not loopy yet but still heavy in the eyelids, as I passed the 16 hour mark, 17 hours, 18 hours. I slammed right through my personal record. But as I slipped through invisible time zones I kept gaining hours in the night which made it harder for me to justify pulling off the highway. I really couldn't afford to stop. I had to be in Idaho the very next day, the earlier the better because Will was there, at the western edge of the state. Will, the person I had loved the hardest, who I missed the most in the world. I don't mean to say that the feelings were reciprocated. But I didn't give a shit. The hours we had to spend together in Idaho were ticking away as I drove and drove and drove and so I wouldn't stop.I had to get there.

Finally in Wyoming, way past midnight, I started looking for hotels. And there was nothing. Miles and miles melted away with no exits, no houses in the distance, just a weird reddish light hanging over the flat countryside with no apparent origin or explanation.The night took on the quality of something that might last long past its universally allotted hours. Patterns and thoughts and things I recognized started to loosen inside my head and blur around the edges.

Nineteen hours into the day, Cheyenne, WY. I found a hotel.

Never Been afraid of the Quiet Godsy



I pulled off the freeway in Iowa city and parked in town for an hour, long enough to get a polite but undemanding parking citation folded beneath the windshield wiper. Iowa city is home to the most famous and sought after fiction workshop in America- information that matters only to fiction writers, or more accurately the tiny circle within a circle of fiction writers who go to school, and then more school, and then more school. It is widely argued that any years spent earning a degree in writing is just a delay of the inevitable absence of money, friends and sobriety that mark the lifestyle of professional writers, but Iowa nevertheless boasts an impressive resume of novelists and success stories.

I found the town subdued, heavy with the pervasive Mid West quiet I'd read about in Jonathon Franzen and Jane Smiley novels. The students walking to and from class, their steps and movements muffled beneath clogs and Iowa branded sweatpants, were either so completely thoughtless or so completely lost in their own thoughts that they just plodded down the sidewalks, accumulated neatly at the intersections and crossed the streets in small herds with pleasant looks on their corn fed faces. Nobody said a word. Even the cigarette smoking tough kids with tattoos spiderwebbing over their very exposed flesh seemed to be quite unobtrusive and ash tray abiding. The Godsy people with their Godsy pamphlets sat on the edge of the tree lined promenade with ankles crossed beneath denim skirts and minded their own business, and frankly I felt the need to punch a wall with my first, or lay on the horn, or somehow break the feeling that I was walking underwater.

Later, still in Iowa, I pulled off at a rest stop as the afternoon rolled into early evening. I had a deadline I had to type up and get in before Iowa's free interstate Internet vanished into the decidedly crappier facilities of Nebraska. In the cool, white room, two boys walked in circles, glancing at the laminated maps for many more minutes than the maps would actually demand, unless they were very, very lost, which they didn't appear to be. They were both about my age and looked friendly, one was even cute in the shaggy haired climber boy look that never fails to get my attention.

But their presence distracted me and I typed with only a portion of the attention I needed, hitting the delete key often and wondering why anyone would linger at a public bathroom off of 1-80 in the center of Iowa. They hovered in front of the posters of innocuous grain-production trivia on the walls and didn't appear to be waiting for anyone. Finally, after circling the room twice more like a lazy fish, one of the two boys approached me. He was the less good looking of the two, with the slightly mousy features and uncertain facial hair you often see on the miserable fathers who star in Teen Mom.


"Sorry...." he began and I looked up, eyebrows raised, braced for whatever unappetizing proposition he had in mind. "This is going to sound weird. But you are absolutely gorgeous."

I stared at him for a moment. The fact that he could have been a nice normal guy saying something benignly sweet didn't even register, because I knew as an inarguable fact that I was, at that particular moment in time, a couple of galaxies away from 'gorgeous'. Even with my normal amount of self loathing, I still felt relatively unbiased and neutral on the subject of my current appearance. My hair was sticky with pool chlorine and the space beneath my eyes were puffy with sleeplessness and punctuated by the double indent of sunglasses. And the clothes I was wearing were the type of purely-for-function attire you pick out when you can bet your life on nobody talking to you besides the hotel desk clerk.

"Thanks," was what I ended up saying, and turned back to my computer screen so quickly that the boy had little choice other than to turn slowly on his heal and walk away. The fact that he left without a hint of protest, and with a smile that was undeniably kind, made me feel like a total asshole. The kind of self defeating person who dreams of attracting attention from anyone, strangers, anyone, but dismisses it immediately when it (so rarely) comes. I finished my work, shut the screen and got back into my car. 4:15 pm and 700 more exits until the great plains would give way to something from something alien, moonscapey, but nonetheless faintly Western.

Wishing Lord that I was Home



She didn't think she would become the type of person who took pictures of broken and abandoned structures across America to make some point about nothingness and existence, but she did. At every gas station across the great plains, as she wiped the windshield free of insect bodies and butterfly innards, she spotted another desolate something to aim her lens at, an old hotel or restaurant, their signs toothless with missing letters, right angled against the brown and bronze striped landscape. The fact that three years ago this type of grotesquely open, unfamiliar landscape would have left her feeling empty, and more than slightly nauseous with homesickness, made the flat calm she felt today contrast with such defiance that she smiled to herself in victory. Her softy-soft summer was over and done and she had developed at least some semblance of inner coarseness, or aloofness, a light but effective callous over the parts of her she used to pick at until they oozed.

The fact that this sort realization, a realization of one's own inability to be so thoroughly defeated as to never stand up again, is a hallmark of anyone in their twenties who bothers to do even an inch of self reflection- that this sort of watered down self-epiphany has been the catalyst for countless tattoo artists to ink countless butterflies and Chinese characters into the ankles the lower backs of girls who will later pull down the waistline of their jeans to expose their branded skin while using terms 'road trip' and 'metamorphosis' interchangeably- this didn't bother her one bit. Nor did it dampen her enthusiasm to know (and she did know, somewhere in the tightly wound coil in her brain that every now and then grew hot with cynicism and annoyance for herself and everyone else she knew) that this type of solo motor trip, from the painfully bleached motel towels that can be thrown on the floor for someone else to pick up, to the wandering and often erotic thoughts that the mind churns out after being alone for 26 hours- was not anything new, by any standards, or unique, and didn't hold enough profundity to keep a candle flame glowing.

That's the thing about being all by yourself, you can think whatever you want without letting the unoriginality of your thoughts become a bother.

The very impracticality and social irresponsibility of driving yourself alone across 3,ooo miles and the notion that people like her- those who knew better but did it anyway- were the very reason the world was going to such hell, had very little impact at the moment. Every mile of her trip was selfish and solely for the purposes of her benefit. It was perfect, dangerous in the generic sort of way, and indulgent, and felt unreasonably earned.

The Big Midwest Fiction Blur



The autobiographer would like to point out that she has already outperformed her last road trip due to the fact that she has not yet mistaken a public fountain as a jacuzzi.

The autobiographer would also like to point out that, at somewhere West of Chicago, she is making relatively good time.



As well she would like to make it public knowledge that she has not yet bought any food. No hamburgers, no gum, no milk shakes, no chips, no snacks of any sort. For this she would like some recognition. She would also like a hamburger.



Amazing how listening to the latest Great American Novel and 1,000 miles on the same highway just makes the Midwest slide by outside the window. At night the waters of the hotel pool are so thickly chlorinated that when she immerses herself she feels instantly medicated. Alone in the water, again, she slips down and lets the water close above her. So many cities circumnavigated today. Cleveland, Toledo, musical Chicago, fearful Detroit. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. A sign, out of nowhere, illogically, towards Memphis Tennessee.



The autobiographer thinks it would be prudent to sleep now.

Swimming Alone in Utica

I am swimming alone in Utica, New York. Five rainy hours into my race across America. I glide through the warm aqua water, very pleased with myself with how the trip is going so far. First of all, my packing job is close to Godliness. Or at least it was until I realized that, with the bike rack, I couldn't open the back door of the Subaru, so I had to sort of slither into the back, with my legs thrashing around halfway out of the car, digging through all my crates and throwing clothes and shoes around like confetti just to find my camera. I thought I'd be really good at documenting the trip. Turns out, Utica at night looks like anywhere else at night, and I look just the same in front of my Utica hotel mirror as I do in front of any other mirror. Disappointing. I would have thought I might be thinner or something.


Anyway, I'm happy with myself. Not only did I so far not forget anything (except I did forget one thing, but besides that one thing, nothing) but I also managed to choose a hotel that offers mini cheesecakes and free ice cream bars. Which I'm not going to eat either, because I want to give in to the romance of the open road and waste away to nothing. That's why I'm swimming laps. And for dinner tonight, I think I'm going to have a hot bath.

I may be happy, but I am no longer going to be a cheerful person because I had to leave my dog behind in Vermont. This broke my heart. I cannot see myself being cheerful or friendly any more. Instead I'm going to dress fabulously, wear lipstick, and red heels and be mean to everybody. But anyone who looks deeper will see that insisde, my very broken, dog-sick heart is sitting around wearing sweatpants and eating cheesy puffs and wanting to talk about it.

Don't get it started.

Tomorrow I will warn you is going to be a perfectly awful day. Sixteen hours of driving at least and it won't even be enough. This is my very first roadtrip and my first night in a hotel without either my dog or my school. Instead, I have an apple to keep me company.

Between Cities


When I first arrived in Boston, Cassie took one look at me and did the thing that best friends do. She dragged me bodily out of her apartment, down the street and directly to her hair stylist to schedule a same-day appointment. She said tilted her head to the side and said, "you look profoundly stressed." And I nodded and said, "tough week." And she took care of it from thereon out. On Newbury street, we ducked in and out of expensive, colorful boutiques like the wooden birds on a wind up clock. She put different flowered headbands into my hair and held me at arm's distance, hands on my shoulders, examining each one with her designer's eye. She murmured things like "The blue one is nice, but the green one will pop more..." as if maybe it was the most important decision in the world, and the entire direction of both our lives hinged upon which silk hair flower we bought. Then we sat down at on outside cafe, she ordered us both coffee and slapped the new Patagonia catalog onto the table for the next hour's indulgence.

We swept through the city beneath the sidewalks, in the dark place that smells like steam and metal and popcorn, and the sound of avalanches and screaming wheels rush through every fifty seconds. I'm still just as fascinated and terrified by the third rail as I ever was. I swear I spent the first eight years of my life trying to stay as far away from that thing as possible, never fully trusting myself not to just run across the yellow line and jump intentionally, the way part of you is afraid that you'll just throw yourself off the cliff after you've topped out. Are you familiar with this feeling?

Then again, I sort of love the third rail. It so perfectly embodies the take no shit attitude of Boston. There is a live wire going running through the train, if you touch it you'll die. And if you die it's your fault. So stay back. Or not. Whatever. Every living creature in Boston, from kid to rat, knows you'd better stay behind that yellow line. That, and the only way to ever cross the street is to run for it- which is a very dangerous thing in Seattle, not because of traffic but because even the most minor jay-walking offense will get you arrested, and a string of clueless Seattlites will bumble along behind you, assuming the light has turned.



I'm glad I still know enough about my home city to find obnoxious ways to educate my friends who moved there from elsewhere, like singing the complete Get Charlie off The MTA song and doling out the history of the Big Dig. Unsolicited information, maybe, but still worth sharing. And I'm happy to know that there is still so much about Boston that's buried deeply but permanently in my brain. Like I said I wanted to get a pair of shoes and Cassie suggested Government Center on the green line and I instinctively said, "Well how about downtown crossing on the Orange Line?" And I thought, it's been 17 years since I've lived here, how could I possibly have remembered that? I guess the childhood years are formative or something. Especially since we didn't own a car back then and dad made his career out of Boston's public transportation.

In the evening, Austin took us out to a fancy French Cambodian restaurant where everything was a 'fusion' of something or other and the drinks all included cucumber vodka. The menu was a prix-fix deal where we ordered everything up front and it just kept arriving on little plates throughout the night, from the crispy jasmine rice with ground pork in coconut curry to the almond-lace cups of papaya mouse. The three of us have so much in common, from the dramatic bullshit of elite Ultimate Frisbee to a shared history of both the Academy at Adventure Quest and Woodstock Union High School, 8th grade theater, 10th grade French class, white water and photography and everything in between. The only thing we don't share is religion which really doesn't come up unless I ask some stupid question like, "Wait- do you guys pray- like, actually pray? Together? What should I do tonight when you pray, should I like- take a walk or something?" I guess you could say I'm as uncomfortable with religion as I am with people doing lines of cocaine in front of me. Kind of like- I know it happens but- woah. The fact that Cassie and Austin are two of the kindest, most generous, most fun, most compassionate and most 'with it' people I've ever known just makes it all the more confusing to me. But so far, well, they're pretty damn tolerant of my intolerance.

Well that was officially a tangent.

Anyway, Boston was a nice little foray back into city reality, where people walk everywhere, and walk really fast because they're in a great big hurry, and girls get up an hour early to put a solid effort into looking good, and there are all these places to eat, everywhere. Exactly what my let's-sit-here-and-watch-the-leaves-turn- ass needed. Plus I got three pairs of shoes out of it.

Now I'm back in the ultra gorgeous slow lane watching smoke roll out of my chimney and the grey fog of autumn settle down over the tall grass in the pastures. But I'm not sitting anymore, I'm packing and cleaning out the car, because it's time to get a move on and book end this country. Boston to Seattle and every (Northern) thing in between.

Decaffeinated coffee and a full country atlas awaits.

Run Baby, Run

Horrifying things have been happening to my friends. First it was Ben falling, which is too ridiculously bad to comprehend, but there's more. I haven't written because I keep waiting for the air to clear. The internet seems way too informal a place to write about nightmares.

Anyway, so, I haven't posted in a few days and I'm sure you understand. The good news is I went to Boston because I had to change the scene. It will be nice, tomorrow, to write something indulgent about streets and subways and silk flowered hair clips and coffee. If you feel like reading something inane and soothing than come back in a few hours. And then I start the trek back to Seattle, driving across the country alone with a camera. So, yeah, watch out for that.


Fear of Falling

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.


My ultimate gratitude to Nate for sending me this quote. The eloquence and illumination were so desperately needed.

Ben

This is a post for my friend Ben. This is not going to be well written; there isn't really a way to write this stuff. I remember a day many years ago when we were just teenagers. We were climbing a wall in Vermont, two pitches. Ben had just discovered the wall and was so excited to show me. When we topped out, he swept his hand towards the view and said, "Look- look around." The hills unfolded for miles and miles in all direction, draped in an early summer haze. We couldn't see a single road or house or light. I remember exactly how he looked standing up there. He had this quiet temperament, very sweet and shy and genuine. And we both loved our home state so much. On the way home, in his tiny little car, he told me about a new bouldering area that had just been discovered in the Whites. "Two hours of hiking, then it opens up like Shangri-La," he said. He was gleeful. "Do you want to go?"

I remember funny things about Ben, like the drawn-out way he pronounced his sister Daisy's name, and how he always had chalk on his hands even when he wasn't climbing. He was so peaceful and focused that Sophi and I called him Zen Ben. He was just a skinny, muscle-ripped 18 year old boy who exploded in competition and always wanted to go outside. He was just so quiet and sweet, I can't say that enough. He was the sweetest boy.

When I moved to Seattle was the same time Ben moved to Colorado to study physics and chemical engineering at CU Boulder. And something happened to that skinny boy- he became this gorgeous young man- I mean gorgeous, and a completely insane climber. He really became the pride and joy of the Vermont climbing community.

Last Friday Ben fell 800 feet from Long's peak in Colorado and died. I miss him and this is so terrible and we're in shock. I don't think the world should have lost someone like Ben. If there is any peace to be had by his family, I hope they find it in time. For the rest of my life I'll remember Ben and all the wonderful things he was.

Outstanding minds of the well traveled and overly clever

Up here in the the season is starting to turn. The slowest red flames engulf the trees and things under your feet begin to crunch. I was fifteen when I met my friend from Israel, in the breakfast line at our boarding school. Somebody came up and gave him a package from home which was addressed in squiggles. I looked up at him and said, "But you don't have an accent." It was the beginning of the semester, this time exactly, when the light travels from straight up to sideways.


And ten years later here he is to take in the last of summer with me. Yonton is a good boater and a good business man but even better, he knows books. He can read them backward and forward. Two years ago I had time to kill during a very stinging winter. In the mornings I waited tables and hid from the beer delivery man who would always try and bite me on the ear. In the evenings I'd sit in front of the wood stove, poking at the logs with an iron poker and listening to Yonton read out loud over the phone. We share a love for Foer, Helprin, Murakami, Keret. He introduced me to a book called The Nimrod Flip-Out and tries to explain Hebrew double-entendres as I scratch my head and say, "wait, what?"




On his recent trip to Vermont we fought over lyrics, dreamt of stardom, debated pop music and went over yet again what a bad speller I am. We went out to a movie and then sat at a bar and I got all woozy off a shirley temple, played it off like I was drunk. We scribbled down ideas and rhymes into my gold-lined notebook from Bar Harbor that I keep in the glove compartment. And, of course, we went outside and looked around.







Yonton lives in the searing, overly crowded, garbage strewn, crime ridden, run down, decrepit city of Asheville, North Carolina. I believe he needed this rural getaway just as much as I needed someone to play with.












When we hiked to the top of Dear's Leap near Killington, we looked across at Pico ski resort and spotted the curving alpine slide that runs down the entire face of the mountain. We sprinted down the trail and bought an endless pass and split the rest of the afternoon between chairlift riding and full throttle-ing it down the slide.







So here's to decade of friendship to the boy who has introduced me to: the chocolate lounge, The Mighty Boosh, extreme buoyancy, the sublimely botched English of Everything is Illuminated, Israeli short stories, central park bouldering, and much more.

No, maybe that's it.


I think of you every time I wet-exit or read.

The Brain Saw

YM. Not just the name of a fabulous teen magazine anymore. So much more. Those two letters carry some real weight because they stand for Yonton & Melina. They also are Yonton's full initials but whatever.

Yonton and Melina, two minds that rotate around like holy rolling street smarting blades of miraculous wit and semi-fradulent soul. Give us a little gasoline, pull our engine start chord and we'll straight up level that spurious forest of the stiff and the studied, the pretentious, pretended, pompuous, precious and put-on, straight down to the deforested soil of roots and funk and that's where we lay down our fresh tracks. It's a phenomenon I like to call The Brain Saw.

Let me break it down a little. Yonton is visiting, and we're writing some music. And let me tell you that this little ditty: c= fl (speed of sound in meters per second = frequency in hertz times wavelength, the rule of sound, how could you not know that, do you not remember learning that in school, how come l stands for wavelength, why not W, wouldn't that make more sense)- well, sufficient to say, rules were meant to be broken. EVEN THE LAWS OF PHYSICS.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go slam another shirley temple and see what sort of clear-cut induced landslides of creativity I can cause.

feeding Seth


On Sunday evening, my friend Seth called me from upstate. He was standing in the driving rain beneath the awning of a Sunoco station in a town up North. I had not seen him for years. I knew him because I use to date his delightfully maniacal brother, but Seth and I were friends in our own right. And now he was biking across the country, from Seattle to the Atlantic, and his gear cable had broken outside of Montpelier. I put down the phone when I heard this, flew to the car and drove with the wipers slashing sheets of rain off of the windshield. It was completely dark, and in the rain the interstate felt like a tunnel. An hour North on the interstate and a few miles of state route and there he was, leaning against the wall of the closed up gas station with his bike beside him, my friend from another life. With a beard.

I spent the better part of his visit feeding him. Cooking for Seth was like an extreme sport. As I cooked him bacon and a dozen eggs for breakfast in the morning, he plowed through an entire huge loaf of bread, carefully toasting each piece and taking a jar of jam and a stick of butter down with it. We made chicken pot pie and corn chowder, thai peanut sauce with rice noodles, pasta with a sauce that cooked on the stove all day. We ate peach rhubarb pie and Ben and Jerry's ice cream, slices of caramel apple cheesecake, cream scones and pistachio sponge cake with chocolate centers. We ate huge plates of heirloom tomatoes from the garden- everything from the garden, chard, zucchini, cucumbers. We drank coffee and wine and Vermont beer and margaritas with crushed salt on the rim of the pint glass. And he was only here for two days.Seth told me that as he spun through North Dakota and the Upper Peninsula into Canada, he craved one thing -okay actually he probably craved many things but this was one of them- jumping off of high places into water. And after he got to Ottawa and saw an exhibit of elaborately balanced rocks by the river, he got it in his head that he wanted to stack rocks.

So that's what we did. We swam and balanced rocks on the riverbank, and when it rained we went to the cafe in town and played mancala and read the New York Times.




I took him on a long walk around the land, up to sugar house hill and through the upper field. We talked nonstop for two days and, I don't know, we just had a good time. I really like it when people come and visit me out here. I especially like it when they come hungry.



The house of colors

You have to start somewhere. And I heard this thing, it was on the radio. I was driving on route 14 and I remember my hand moving up and down on the steering wheel thinking it felt soft and alive like somebody's cheek against the back of my hand. How absurd. The program on the radio was about colors. How the blue sleeping pill placebo will put you to sleep but the red one will be ineffective. Variables accounted for, extensive research, significant margins and all that.

It got me thinking about how to make things better by starting with the most basic things.



Maybe it's a little like believing in magic. But I'd rather call it psychology so let's call it that.

When I went to this country:



with these people:



I was really happy. Not always, but most of the time. Variables accounted for, extensive research, significant margins and all that.



There were colors all over the place. Chile is an unreasonably colorful country. When I close my eyes I can remember those colors and being underwater and very little more. But the colors are all encompassing; everything falls inside of them and fits.



I am sitting here thinking about being an adult in America, and how it means streamlining your wardrobe into black and grey, professional and serious. Wobbling between rooms that are cream and eggshell, shades of beige all polite and understated. Graffiti grows like unwanted weeds on the walls in the city as you kick away the pieces of creativity in your head to make room for all the quantitative that must take up residence.

I am thinking about what it means to be an adult. It means doing things with a person and then pretending that it never happened. When you are a teenager you are utterly incapable of this. In college you are figuring it out, trying to master this skill and it hurts like hell. And you know when you are an adult, because you really can pretend that nothing happened. You don't even really have to pretend. Because you really feel nothing.



Think back to the blue that put you to sleep and the red that leaves you kicking at your sheets. I'm moving North soon to a place where my score at the present moment is as such:

friends: 0
job: 0
place to live: 0

This I've never done before. I've always had at least one of these things, why else would you move somewhere?

I'm moving North with an accumulated score of: 0. And fall has already come, fall is bedazzling but brief. And when autumn is over, winter side steps in, and winter is white. White and black, and that's the good part of winter. The rest is just grey, the color of ash on snow. I'm worried about myself living in this:




And I'm asking you what to do. Paint the walls of my house the color of tropical fruit, pay extra attention to the color of bedsheets which will either put me to sleep or keep me awake, or better yet attract people to my bed or repel them, not that I'm ready to deal with that yet. Should I wear only jewel tones and drape myself in scarves and beads, and constantly keep the music on and every day wake up with the goal set firmly in my mind that I will keep the driveway cleared of snow, and brush away the powder from the road signs, and get on with it?

Or should I just give in, be white for a season, disappear into the center of the zero, the alabaster of rural snow.

I don't know what will help and what won't. What is worth the effort because after all, we only have so much. What do you think. And where are you going to be, this winter?

Today, Wednesday.


Today. Wednesday. I am sitting in the cafe of a bookstore pretending I am in Paris, France. I've been there twice before. I broke my school's "buddy policy" which was never enforced and explored it myself. It was evening, rainy, I remember riding the metro and feeling a little thrill of escape- I could never come back again! But then I was robbed by the police of almost $200, and I decided maybe I wasn't ready to make a break for it in France. I was fifteen.

***

The man working behind the counter, an effeminate boy with an androgynous name and curly hair down to his shoulders, is telling his friend about buying rope. He is squeezing chocolate syrup in a wavy pattern across the whipped cream of her drink. "I've been saving up for it," he tells her. "A nice long length of rope."

In my head I'm thinking, he wants this rope so he can hang himself. In my ideal world, everybody is constantly saying interesting things, even if it means some of them are wanting to off themselves. But he seems perfectly cheerful, and there is such a harmless manner about him with his glasses and porcelain bone structure. "A length of rope is just a good thing to have around." His friend, a stocky girl dressed in black and wearing a horrific necklace made from a ring and two strips of leather, nods in agreement and sticks her face into the whipped cream.

"This drink is going to make me very happy." She informs him.

And then he says, "A pizza cutter is also a good investment."

***
The truth is, I haven't traveled alone much, but I bet I wouldn't like it. I love myself just fine but I really, really love the people I travel with. Step across the ocean with me and instantaneously, you become more interesting and elegant, more beautiful, a better story teller, more photogenic, a better conversationalist, all sorts of things. You will become my favorite group of people in the whole world and everything we encounter is brilliant and worthy of the envy of others. This is with the notable exception of Quincy Saul and Mike Mann, who at the time of our trip to New Zealand were 16 and intolerable. By the time we made it to Mexico a few months later, we'd come up with some sort of treaty of silence and ignoring each other, and then they were alright.