I Hold These Truths to be (Pretty) Self-Evident

Salt Creek, Death Valley, California
December, 2009
Photo: Cox

'Fa-la-la-la-la, another end-of-year wrap-up.'

I'm not going to hide it. I've been avoiding this post. We're two, me and this bedeviled blog, and the occasion seems to merit a generic birthday candle photo, top-ten list or resolution of epic proportions ("Fifty Pounds in Fifty Days!"). At the very least I should post a group of folkloric-themed lessons born of the year's experiences. Yes, I've been anticipating this moment for weeks: the convergence of MCY's second anniversary with our decade's close and the end of my monumentally shadowy year.

I had hoped to rustle up some mustard seeds to bury alongside 2009, but the truth is that I dug really deep this year, all the way down to what I thought was the bottom of the well, and well, I found no truth. In fact, I found no bottom. So, in 2010 I'm going to have to keep mining.

It's three days past this blog's birthday, a day into the New Year, and I'm halfway through a Wendy's Chicken Club and a champagne flute full of Sauvignon Blanc. I'm writing by the light of my weeping, dehydrated Christmas tree's tiny colored bulbs. Everything new could be old again. I could be Alice and the Rabbit having tea with yesterday's OneKate. The point is, time is irrelevant. The New Year is whenever I say it is. I've heaved this beloved blog over the 2009 finish line so that it can land smack dab in 2010, diapered and dapper as a fledgling bunch of font instead of the haggard old man it would have been if I'd left it lingering in last year's time zone. Today is going to be its birthday.

I walked along the trail pictured above in Death Valley three weeks ago. It's the trail one finds at the end of the trail near the park's only body of water, a thin stream called Salt Creek. The trail has no end. I followed it until I became too conscious of being alone and when I stopped I christened it "My Road". If only I could have known this path existed in all the years I wanted to walk one just like it. I found it on a naked, solitary desert salt flat. At least now I can conjure a line when I need one. After I got back to camp, I wrote the thoughts below. I think I came closer to finding a grain of truth in that chilly evening's musings than I was able to touch in my whole, heavy year of reaching for one. Now, onward.

12/I Don't Know/09
Death Valley
Furnace Creek Campground, Site 83

I don't like to find things from home tucked into this notebook -- horoscopes, letterhead with my notes on it: "to do", "to get", and the like. I'm tucking them into a back page somewhere to be discovered later. I'm writing by headlamp (pause). Excuse me, I had to tend the fire. I'm the fire-keeper here. I'm by myself. There's no one else to tend the fire. I'm horrible at it, actually. Earlier I burned my finger, thinking (well, not thinking) that a stone wouldn't be hot. I moved it to accommodate a log. Still, my fire's been burning for a least an hour and I consider that progress.

What did I see today? Did I think? Yes, I thought about what I saw. I thought about thinking. I thought about the long shadows on the cool dunes. I thought about my husband. I had periods of intensely missing him. Then I felt empty. Not in the way I always do at home--empty of direction in a panic-stricken way. I felt empty of care. Empty of judgment and opinion. Empty of need to decide. Anything. Pleased to be. Pleased to watch bodies tiny as pinpricks climb smooth, sculpted dunes while I did whiskey shooters in the sun. Pleased to drive long, empty stretches of road that looked as good in my rearview as they did out my windshield, thinking of nothing but how strange it is that salt flats look wet in the low sun. Pleased at how easy it was to let go.

Pleased to be west. Pleased to see red walls and washes, cairns and drainage. Pleased to move. To be cold in a tent at 3:00 a.m. To be alone and not feel scared. To be alone, feel scared and get past it. To run along a trail for fear of rattlesnakes. To realize the sound that I fear is rattlesnakes is really my Prana Yoga pants rubbing between my thighs. To hear the small voices of everyone I know come poking through and to ignore them. To truly understand that silence is a sound. To believe for a moment that rocks make noise.

To understand that I've learned a lot and to be okay not saying what any of it is. To feel centered, apart, calm, at peace, apathetic, relaxed, awestruck, alone, indignant, joyous, bemused, and grateful to the benevolent provider...and to not even care that I just wrote that sentence or what it means.

PROCESSing

This time tomorrow I'll be in the desert.

Crazy part is, it'll actually be a real desert. It'll be the kind with dunes and dust and rolling shadows that trick your eyes. It won't be the desert of the soul, the parched graveyard of the mind, or the dark night of the spirit. Nah, it won't be any more of that existential shit. It'll be the kind of dry I can hold in my hands. If I can stumble through one more urban day, one more day skating on this glass and iron grid, I'll get on a plane and wake up in Vegas. And then I'm going to drive.


The idea is to pitch my tent in Death Valley, pour a bourbon, make a fire and think about this:

PRODUCT VERSUS PROCESS
or....

prOcess versus PRoducT
or...

OCESSP sveRUS prOCTDu

I finish my semester this evening. I want some kind of internal brass bell to ring. A button. A gong. I want Anthony Michael Hall to punch me in the shoulder. But what I've got instead is, well, creative process, which looks a lot more like a bunch of work halfway through its life cycle, some inspired, some shit and all of it only breathing if I fill it full of my helium. Somehow this feels anticlimactic.

Last semester, after reading the equivalent of the Library of Congress' bibliography section on international politics and the Middle East and acing a final and three major papers, my husband and I went out and drank a paycheck's worth of wine. The first toast was along the lines of, "here's to doing something tangible and easy to toast to!" This semester's toast will be something like, "here's to coming up with some solid concepts and then getting a little off track after workshopping them, but finally accepting that taking a bit of breathing space will inevitably restore buoyancy to your craft!" Salut!

This was a process semester. Scratch that, a process year. I'm seeing this whole school-slow-as-molasses thing as an exercise in forced process. It's like that scene from A Clockwork Orange where the guy's eyelids are forced open with those little metal prods so that he can bear witness to the atrocities of the world before him. I will be forced to surrender my need for a moment of conclusion. My consciousness will be scrubbed of words and phrases containing the likes of "content", "pages", "bang it out" and "nail it".

I will get comfortable with the following idea:

I AM NEVER FINISHED.

And if I can't get comfortable with it yet, I'll just get drunk and go hiking.

Happy Hollowdays

Oh, Gawd, it's good to be back here, layin' down font in my tiny piece of e-real estate. It's like diving into a warm, electric swimming pool. This blog, my unrestricted voice, home of shit poetry and endless depressive job-hating, blonde strand-coveting exploits. It doesn't have to have a market or a point, page views or analytics. It doesn't have to be search engine-friendly. It can just be a little square of space and I can just show up, walk around, post, scream, yell, cry, pontificate, paint, shatter into a million pieces and glue myself back together sideways. And I don't have to care if it makes me any money or determines my future or gets me out of my job or gets me in any doors or buys me freedom or gets me sponsored or opens my days or makes me in any way better or more accomplished or successful...or stops...the...gerbil wheel...even.for.a.second.

November went down like a shot of vodka. I hardly remember it. It says here I last visited the ranch on October 23rd. Well, shit. Since then I've gone another year grayer (but you'll never see it), spent Thanksgiving in jammies drinking Moet, bought a near-eight foot tall Christmas tree and filled it full of sparkly things and am now staring down the final two weeks of my semester. I've written fiction, for God's sake. Real fiction. Well, fake stories about real people that I've imagined. I can't believe it. I'm halfway through the required manuscript, which is due in a week. I'm still not sure where it's going, but if that isn't this year's fuckin' t-shirt slogan, I sure can't think of a better one.

I think my Korean herbalist may have reset my internal hard drive. Since Halloween I've been drinking a vicious brew I named "the hell broth", a mahogany-colored liquid packed in cellophane bags printed with stags that I've been downing twice a day before meals. It's meant to strengthen my liver, which in Chinese medicine is responsible for a whole lotta goin's on, including anger, mood, headaches, muscle pain and imbalance. The instructions were strict: no alcohol, pork, fried foods, fats, sugar or raw vegetables while on the regimen. I did pretty well for most of the course of treatment, except for the Moet, which in my mind isn't really alcohol but is more of a tonic. I've noticed over the month an odd sort of sedation. In someone like me that's beyond obvious and more than welcome. It's hard to explain to people that you're taking something you don't understand the contents or the effects of. I guess it's also hard admitting that I don't understand the power of my mind over the health of my body.

This is always a dreaded time of year for me. The minute "Santa Baby" starts playing in Food World at the start of October, I'm pretty much ready to smash a pecan pie into the face of cheer. I used to find it sad that some people wanted to spend Christmas at the bottom of an Old Fashioned, thinking that being jaded during the holidays was a cliche. Well, it is. But so are fireplaces and holiday home makeover shows. What can I do? This season is an emotional minefield. I've come to accept that it's better if I have an escape plan. This year it's the desert. I can do trees and carols and family and the whole biz if I can just go see some southwestern sky and breathe some red dust. I believe in the cleansing powers of the desert. Get me to a place where I won't hear "White Christmas" for at least two days, and I'm good to go.

Death Valley, here I come.
Should be all clear out there.

I Will Not Think

I've been told that if my pulse does not improve I'll be put on herbs. This is Chinese medicine for "get your shit together."

I've been meditating with a back full of quills on the long bed in the small sleeping closet at the acupuncture office for several weeks now. I'm trying to figure out a way to process my emotions so they don't make me sick. To learn, as I've been instructed, to imagine that emotions are like a picture frame and mentally drape a sheet over them when I don't want to feel them. To see emotions like food. To take them in, digest them and then pass them--never storing them as pain. There are apparently all these ways to picture emotions and do something about them. I've been picturing ways to picture picturing them. Or something like that.

As my doctor turned out the lights and left the room last night he asked, "Do you have any questions?"
"Yes," I replied, pleadingly. "What can I do? Can I cut anything else out, stop eating eggplant, use more fresh ginger in my diet, perhaps add a little light jiu-jitsu or something?"
"There's nothing else you can do. Except...worry less. Ponder less."

Now, to be fair, he said this with a small hint of the desired irony that one with a back full of hot needles would demand in a moment like that. And then he left me in the dark. And I thought. I thought about thinking less. I thought about pondering less. I thought about worrying less. I worried about worrying less. And then I made a small vow. For one week (let's not kid ourselves here), I'm going to imagine a sheet. And when the grinding machine begins to chink, chink, chink away, churning itself into nothingness, I'm going to put up that sheet and let those thoughts hit it.

I'm not going to worry.
I'm not going to worry.
I'm not going to worry.

Okay, let's revise.

I'm going to worry...less.
I'm going to worry...less.
I'm going to worry...less.

And after this one week, I'm going to see what worrying less has done.
Because hey, I sure know what worrying does.
(Insert blank space here).

Ill Wind

Well, it's official. I won't be representing my country in the Ironman triathlon in June. For that matter, nor will I be able to continue my work as a fit model, UN Goodwill Ambassador and Dan Brown's ghostwriter. It's all become too much. I'm overextended, outwitted, undernourished and ornery as hell.

I've developed these cravings, see, for pickled foods. I'm waking up nights wanting gourmet doughnuts and grilled cheese. None of the usual fare satisfies. Don't want beer. Can't be bothered with caiphrinhas. Don't wanna feel altered. Just wanna feel hidden.

It all started when I heard about Muir drinkin' that pine needle tea to get more "sequoiacal". Purple juice, restoring color. I thought, 'I'm only drinkin' this here Kool-Aid. Somethin's wrong.'

I don't see sky. My roof is these fluorescent bars. I've gotta see something mightier than silver, more ancient than chrome.

I miss mountains.

The electric city is electrocuting me. Blue wire, red wire, motherboard. I'm plugged in at the fingernail. Muir said "overcivilized". That's too kind. Overdone, overzealous, overboard, overwhelmed. Over it.

I went to see my acupuncturist last week. I sensed the wind element, the presence of which had sent me to bed for days with migraines and a piercing pain that crawled along my spine like a spider wearing stilettos. He said my lungs were exhausted. In traditional Chinese medicine they govern growth and maturity. In his strangely stoic and well, "sequoiacal" style, he explained its root cause as "too much sitting on one problem for too long."

Did I say I miss mountains?

Busy Bee

MUSE

Well, things have been hoppin' around here. Sho' nuff, after writing the post below I felt compelled to go and visit my aspirational arm ornament in person. Now, in fourteen years of New York City living I've never been inside a designer store. Not once. But I actually broke the fourth wall for the Gucci. She'd been replaced on the pedestal by a hot little purple number so I had to seek her out. This gave a sexy, black-clad store clerk the opportunity to ask what he could do for me. I described the bag in question and he led me right to her.

"This one's special. We don't have another one like her", he said. Of course not. "She's got a real unique edge. She's sophisticated without being dated. She's playful." 'My God, they get right inside of you', I thought. He put her in my hands and I ran my index finger over each of her weighted, pristine details. The gentleman behind the counter described the features that made her uniquely a Gucci. The zipper pull, lining and structure. The irridescent metallic fabric. I slipped her over my shoulder and strode to the mirror. I watched her dangle from every angle. I was wearing jeans and a pair of black Chuck Taylors, but I coulda been in a Mugler bandage dress and a pair of Fendi booties. She transformed me. I brought her back to the counter, traced the stitching on her underbelly and stepped back to take her in. She was mine.

And then I walked away.

I got myself a little gig this week. I'll be writing about beauty trends for Examiner.com , a culture site with readership in 109 cities. This means great exposure and maybe a little ca-ching, but mostly the opportunity to report publicly on my product fetish and tell you all about critically important things like how to wear the half-black, half-white manicure in real life. You know, world news and matters of national security. Hey, at least you'll be outfitted in the event of another financial crisis. Don't say I didn't warn you that the strong brow was back for fall!

I saw U2 at Giants Stadium with my husband, who is their fan. But before that, I saw Muse open for U2. Muse is my new muse. I can't stop listening to them now, despite having had them on my ipod for 3 years and being pretty into their huge, dramatic sound. Think Queen in a mash-up with Metallica and Radiohead. Throw in a frontman in a pair of really tiny red jeans and a huge white piano and you'll have Muse. Fist-pumping and showstopping. Made up entirely for the fact that a huge Jersey gorilla of a man asked me to move out of his way during the first song in U2's set, which froze me self-consciously in place and kept me from moving for the duration of their show. "Stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it"? Bono didn't know the half of it.

Better than all of that, I saw Fanfarlo at the Bowery. Beautiful and strange and Swedish. Trumpets and saws and fiddles and guitars. A small, buttoned-up frontman with a butterfly vocal that flew out and soared above all of our funky, stoic heads. Such romantic lyrics for such a young gent. I feel so lucky to live in New York, to be able to stand on two legs at midnight and listen to six strangers play me music I can sway to.

Life is good in the electric city.

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

All I can say is, never underestimate the power of a glossy patent handbag.

This slick sack? We've begun seeing each other. Well, it's not formal, actually. I see her and she just sorta stares back, invitingly. I haven't introduced myself yet. She's kind of a loner, actually. People tend to put her on a pedestal. She sits astride one just so in the gleaming Gucci ghetto on on Fifth Avenue and 54th Street. She's worth two paychecks at least, maybe three, and I usually find those kinda girls pretty intimidating.

I'm afraid that if I brought her home I'd have to stop wearing mom jeans. Girls like these usually demand a certain garment-related savoir faire, and bare minimum that you can at least stand in heels for longer than fifteen minutes without pulling out your pair of Chucks. There is a school of thought that these kinds of gals encourage your A game. But secretely I wonder if just like the awesome patent ankle boots from Bond Street that seemed so brilliant two years ago, she'd really just spend most of her time at home in curlers waiting for a "special occasion" at which to make an appearance.

Thing is, though, I want her. I know it's cliche but she just gets me. For one, we're both in touch with our dark sides. She loves metal, she's soft-bottomed with all the pinches and tucks you'd expect from a sophisticated woman of a certain season. And the best part? It looks as though after a long, late night she broke her heel and fell into a pool of gasoline. If things were to get too hot she could burst into flames in a second. That's just the way you'd want any good broad to be: nice and shiny but never precious.