Things About Light

I learned something today about gratitude. I try, for the most part, to operate out of a spirit of love and gratefulness and humility. Sometimes I suck at this, because, like all y’all, I am human and I am not always all of those things. Sometimes I am not even any of those things. Earlier this week I was really fighting ungratefulness and a mean spirit. I am not sure why. It would be easy to blame hormones or lack of good sleep or being homesick or whatnot, but whatever the cause, I had a hard time being nice.

I didn’t really feel like writing, but all the Writing People are adamant that writing is a discipline, not a whimsical option. So I made myself write. The writing that came out of me, being in a bad place was, in a word, bad. I mean it was funny, don’t get me wrong. But maybe it was funny at the expense of people I didn’t really know… based on outside observation. Maybe it was prejudiced. Maybe it was unkind.

If my words don’t come out of a place of gratitude and love, they have no business being. It doesn’t matter if they are true. It doesn’t matter if they are funny as hell. I get this. Part of me bucks against censorship and feels like I have some inalienable right to say whatever the heck I want. Nothing that I said was SO HORRIBLE or illegal or even totally wrong, but I KNOW BETTER. I know better than to let loose words of mine that come from a place of darkness. They do nobody any good.

When the sun disappeared behind the shadow of the moon for a few brief minutes yesterday morning, it brought into startling clarity, just how much I take for granted. The world was cold. Much colder than it had been only minutes before in the light of the sun. It was dark and colorless, like the light of the sun took out every hue of green and yellow and blue and red when it left. It was the dusky colorless of the last light in the evening, when the road and the trees and the herds of whitetail deer roving dangerously among it all are the same color. This is the difference between words that come out of darkness and words that come out of light. Color and warmth are in the light. It’s just how it is.

It’s not that I shouldn’t ever be able to laugh and make light of where I am and the TRULY ridiculous things going on around me, but I know when my voice is kind and when it is not. In reality, I work with a lot of great people, in amazing places, and I feel very blessed for the years that I have done this crazy cool job.

Here is what I learned: When I am where I am supposed to be (which I try to be, most of the time), I need to be grateful and kind and humble, and if I cannot be those things, then I need to be still and quiet. I learned that I don’t like a sunless, lightless world. I want to live in the sun, in the color and the warmth. I want others to live there with me.

If the moon were a little closer to the earth, we would lose the sunlight more often. It really is an amazing thing, this astronomical system we live in. It overwhelms me to think about the infinite minutia that dictate our survival. The tiny changes in temperature, atmosphere, angles and rotations that determine how we live or die on this planet are, in a word, epic. It’s like the little changes in mood, in motivation, in voice that determine the effect of a word on the world that it lands on.

All change is facilitated either through love or through hate. Real love is born from gratitude, accepting your worth and giving it back to those around you. Hate creeps in to fill up the absence of gratitude, the ugly insecurity of the lie that you are worthless. A lie I know like the back of my hand. We are such small, insignificant parts of this giant miracle of a world. I want the change that I bring to my tiny space to be rooted in the warmth and color of love and light. I want to speak love without flattery, truth without unkindness and hope without dishonesty. I want to make people smile, and laugh, and love more.

Photo Credit: Collin Andrew

Things I Can't Say

Last week I was on a fire as a Public Information Officer, trying to juggle all of those duties AND get my writing done for my two other jobs - it was a push, but I’ve discovered I definitely prefer having TOO much to do to having NOTHING I can do, except read. And eat. And read. And eat some more. Oh yeah, and write… sounds like heaven, right? Except I find the lack of external stimulus unmotivating for the same reason that I never want to fold the laundry at home during the boring winter months… There’s always tomorrow. And the tomorrows here are very long. Only five more tomorrows til they let me come back in to civilization and be human again.

Last night the Branch Director informed us that a certain Hotsprings Resort (where we are all camped) is hosting their annual “Fairy Fest” this weekend. I got pretty excited because this terrain out here with shoulder high ferns and deep, pillowy moss reminds me of the woods along the Columbia River Gorge where my Grandma Schiffman used to tell me that the fairies lived near the waterfalls. My excitement was shot down pretty fast when Branch explained that the clothing-optional celebration is predominantly adult males. The Task Force Leader sitting next to me started giggling uncontrollably and leaned over to tell me that he had been sitting at a drop point all day applying body paint for the festival, and as soon as we were done briefing, all that would be left of him was a pile of discarded nomex. I think he was kidding… I just hope that none of the revelling “fairies” come flopping through my campsite in their glitter encrusted wings at 2 AM - it might be the first time I didn’t do the whole “do believe in fairies” chant or clap my hands to save a fairy life. Just saying.

Today they ran out of lunches before I got mine which means I will have to avail myself of the 375lbs of snack foods that I have been hoarding. Or eat the Frosted Mini Wheats that I stole from the breakfast line (don’t worry, I stole milk too). It’s only 10:00 and I am already thinking about lunch which is good indicator of a bad day.

BUT - Good news! I found a scratchy FM radio station today that plays nothing but classic rock. George Thoroughgood, Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd - all the greats. If you know me, you know how excited I am about this. There aren’t even news updates on this station. I keep checking to make sure and for the off chance that I might hear another human voice over the airwaves.

I didn’t sleep well since I forgot to turn my radio off and it was ALL THE WAY up in the front console of the Expedition that I am sleeping/working in and it was too far away to crawl forward to shut off. So every hour I was awakened by the crackle-hiss of “NONAMEFIRE COMMUNICATIONS HOTSPRINGS ROAD GUARD STATUS CHECK OPERATIONS NORMAL.” from at least fifteen overnight road guards. That was pretty rad.  I really can’t complain since I could’ve turned the damn thing off at any time but I just kept hoping they would go away and leave me alone. My 31st day on fire this season is starting to exhibit itself mentally, I guess. I must have slept some though, because I woke up with a knot the size of a softball directly underneath my right shoulder blade. I keep rolling it against the center console of the car to try to loosen it up, but no dice.

I was so bored today that after I finished a book, two movies, three naps and wrote most of this blog post, I rearranged my rig so that I can’t reach the cooler from the driver’s seat and I am required to get out of the vehicle and walk around to the passenger side for cold water, or more importantly, cheese. Because you know, exercise. But I outsmarted myself and started pulling non-cold water bottles from the case on the floor behind my seat. Until that became to much work, then I just quit drinking water. The cheese posed a bigger problem, however, so my solution was to just eat it ALL in one sitting and not have to face the dilemma any more. That worked out pretty well.

All of this joy was enhanced by a young kid from one of the contract crews who needed me to trim down an overgrown, torn toenail from a foot that hasn’t been showered in many, many days. He could probably tell by my cheerful demeanor and the unrepressed gagging how thrilled I was to take care of him. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. Five more sleeps.

Things About Security

So I am on this fire. The fire happens to be lying directly in the Path of Totality for the upcoming Great American Solar Eclipse on Monday. In anticipation of the large numbers of ridiculous tourists thronging into the area for the event, fire managers decided to contract out road security to an outside agency. The agency that got the contract, either by lowest bid or by Knowing Someone, is a rag-tag bunch of 19 year old kids that I suspect are all members of the same LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) group, probably out of Portland. Based on the information gleaned from several conversations, along with my own powers of observation, these kids were apparently recruited by the company owner for $11 an hour to take a two hour “unarmed security” course and sent out into the forest in knock-off black 5-11 pants to guard roads into the fire area.

Additionally, the Powers That Be thought it would a good idea to give these guys radios. Radios that are cloned to all of the fire frequencies. Ones they can talk on. In addition to 27 guys in fake BDUs calling in “SITUATION NORMAL” every hour, on the hour, they also have radio conversations that go something like this:

“NONAMEFIRE ROAD GUARD SECURITY HOTSPRINGS ROAD GUARD SECURITY ROGER HOW COPY?!?!!” (in all caps to denote drill-sergeantesque yelling - also please note lack of punctuation, emphasis or any way to determine whom is yelling out from whomelse, but somehow, they all know [I should probably take that radio class])

“NONAMEFIRE ROAD GUARD SECURITY! YOU ARE A GO!” (I guess this means he can talk?)

“HOT SPRINGS ROAD GUARD SECURITY REQUESTS A CONVERSATION ABOUT CLARIFICATION FOR HOT SPRINGS EMPLOYEES WORKERS AND CAMPERS AND HOT SPRINGS EMPLOYEES WORKERS AND GUESTS! ROGER HOW COPY?!?!?!” (huh?)

“NONAMEFIRE ROAD GUARD SECURITY HOTSPRINGS ROADGUARD SECURITY YOU ARE A GOOD COPY 10-4 BUDDY AND I WILL BE IN YOUR 20 IN APPROXIMATELY 30 MINUS. OR PLUS. IN AWHILE. OVER. ROGER. HOW COPY?!?!?!?”

“HOTSPRINGS ROADGUARD SECURITY ROGER COPY DO YOU COPY THAT? OVER AND OUT. ROGER.”

“NONAMEFIRE ROADGUARD SECURITY ROGER THAT’S A GOOD COPY OVER AND OUT.”

“HOTSPRINGS ROADGUARD SECURITY COME AGAIN THAT WASN’T A GOOD COPY!”

“NONAMEFIRE ROADGUARD SECURITY ROGER THAT’S A COPY. UH… COPY!?!?!?”

It goes on like this for hours. I don’t really mind since I have been stationed 10 minutes out of cell range for the last 5 days where there isn’t even FM radio reception and it’s the only entertainment or human interaction I get. It’s more fun when I am sitting close enough to watch them in action though, stopping carloads of nice hippies that are just trying to get to the nudist colony at the hotsprings for their eclipse orgy.

One of the guards has something that looks suspiciously like a ninja sword sticking out of his utility pants. One of them has a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag draped ceremoniously across the back trunk of his 1997 Honda Civic. One of them is wearing a bullet proof vest. One of them stands guard with a can of Deep Woods Off™ Bug Repellant in his hand like bear spray, ready for action, during every encounter.

They take their new, $11/hr job VERY seriously. We have absolutely no fear of any Pacific Crest Trail hikers accidentally penetrating our fire perimeter as the poor bastards follow the more than 100 mile detour along narrow, winding roads past at least 8 of these guys. I am sure the guards are also giving all of the Japanese tourists who are visiting the area for their Eclipse Fertility Rites an excellent taste of ‘MERICA.

Perhaps the funniest part about all of this is that none of the roads that they are guarding are technically closed, so the guards can’t actually stop anybody from driving down them. They’re mostly here for an “educate and orient” the public kind of role, which they are totally NAILING.

Me, on the other hand, I will be out here, riding out the Eclipocolypse near the boundary of the wilderness, isolated and cut off from civilization for 14 hours a day. We tried giving a ride to some of the PCT hikers the other day (way back when I had a partner for the day) who were totally over the whole 100 mile detour thing, but it took us out of our division and WAAAYYY up this road that may have doubled as a creek bed in the recent past. The hikers were nice though, and from Germany. Why someone would travel across the world to carry a backpack through the mountains is beyond me. Haven’t they heard of Disneyworld, air conditioning and NASCAR? I am sure our security guards could set them straight.

I am trying to alleviate my boredom by little fits of yoga and pretending to not have dozed off when the Division Supervisor drives by. I only have eight hours left to go today and I have already had second breakfast, a brunch and two lunches, so you could say that my life is on point, for a Hobbit.

I would just like to point out that every other EMT on this assignment is staged in full cellular coverage. I even went out and bought a second phone with a Verizon line to complement my AT&T coverage so I could avoid this. Instead, I get squirreled away at a remote camp to keep me “safe” from eclipse crazies (because the Dungeons & Dragons Security Forces and dirty firefighters are WAY better), with no shower for nine days and only one bar of cell service when I go down to the gravel pit for breakfast and dinner. How do I rate? What is the universe telling me? All I know is that it’s going to be one epic shower beer.

They're decorating trail signs to coordinate with the tinfoil hats the visitors are wearing. 

Things About Life.. and how it ends ❤️

Some days it feels like death is everywhere we turn. My Facebook feed this morning was like a heart wrenching funeral procession. Detective Elise Ybarra, killed in an accident outside of Abilene. Brent Witham, the 29 year old Vista Grande Hotshot who was killed by a tree last week. Sergeant Jonathan M. Hunter and Specialist Christopher M. Harris, cut down in Afghanistan by a vehicle borne IED. I sit at my little station of insignificance and fight back the tears.

Young, strong, beautiful, all four of them. The best of the best. Our protectors. Full of life and passion and courage. And now gone. I feel desperate to somehow make it stop - to beg the universe to spare these ones, our future. But it is, and always has been, the way of our human world. We are born, we create, we destroy and we die. Some of those deaths are untimely, like these four. Some are far too late.

And then, at the other end of the pendulum swing, I listen to my friend talk about her husband of 44 years, now in his early 70s, diagnosed last year with dementia. She is walking through a reverse dating process with him as he gradually forgets the woman that he pursued relentlessly over four decades ago until she took his hand. Their plans for travel together after they retired have evolved to a quiet life near the beach. But she says they've had a good life, a good time together, and she will be strong. Her friends ask her why she isn't freaking out and she says because somebody has to make sure he knows it's ok. Everything is ok, even as he loses touch with what is real and lives in a world of long-acquainted strangers. She is a rock.

Life is so beautifully short and fragile. I want to gather the ones I love up close to me and never let them out of my sight, but then that short life would be lost in worry and false and ineffective control. So I will let them live, bigly and beautifully, the lives they want, to find joy in the time they are given and I will be grateful for the moments and days and years that I am a part of that joy.

Love your people. Love your life. Chase joy hard because soon enough, one way or another you won't have that option. And that is a good thing, since if it went on forever it would lose its rarity and value. Maybe time running out is a gift...

Things About Guidelines

You guys, I suck. As a general rule, I am kind of terrible at hearing/following/adhering to guidelines. Which is to say, I am not good at general rules. I happen to be working in a capacity at this time that is largely about guidelines and general rules. You can imagine how well that is going. I am learning a lot about rewriting and redoing and relistening and revisiting and pretty much re-everything in this role. Here is a working list of the guidelines I have broken on this fire assignment so far:

1) no open toed shoes in fire camp
2) remain at least 10 feet from open water without a personal flotation device
3) don't use the word "monitor"
4) don't use the word "watch"
5) don't use the words f*** s*** d*** or b*****
6) sleep within fire camp perimeter
7) don't take food out of the kitchen area
8) don't throw food scraps into the bushes
9) don't feed the animals
10) don't scare the public
11) practice good hygiene
12) be nice to people

We're not gonna talk about which rules I am breaking out here...

I would like to say how sorry I am for my transgressions and offer proliferating regret, but since I am working on self-love and self-acceptance, Ima just roll with it and accept the occasional hand slap and look of profound exasperation from my immediate supervisors.

Not following guidelines has garnished me a whole collection of rejections from several places where I submitted writing samples in the hopes of a payoff. Part of me wants to blame my homeschooled renegade background, but really, I am just more excited about what I have to say than I am about instructions. It could be that I am resisting the hardcore overdose of rules that I grew up under, but even then I was pretty intolerant of being corralled between the lines, as my parents will attest.

Maybe guideline follower is one of those things that I have never been and I should work on, but sometimes then I feel like I would just be like all of the other lemmings marching toward the cliff of conformity without ever asking why.

Guidelines are created by and for a litigious world, where individuals refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions, i.e. wearing flip flops in fire camp. Everybody wants somebody else to pay the price for their poor choices. But if there are rules, then nobody else can be blamed, right? I don't see that working very well. Humans are messy animals that will find a rule that has not been made yet, break it, and cost others so much that it will demand the recourse of a new guideline the rest of us are stuck with. Too many rules are just a symptom of a much bigger problem, I think Ima keep bucking them, and working to solve it.

Marcus Squirrelius likes Skinny Pop. 

Things I've Never Been

I have never been much of a morning person. I usually don't like the way that I feel when I wake up, all disoriented about life with puffy eyes and low expectations for another day just like the last 7,864. Lately, for a variety of reasons, and people, this is changing. Suddenly, early morning walks with good coffee and the sunrise seem like a great reason to wake up. Especially if they are with Somebody.

I realize that there are a lot of things that I have never been that I would like to be, and a morning person is just one of them. I've never been rich, for instance, but I would like to give it a whirl and see how it feels. I have never been with One Person for the Rest of My Life, but I fully intend to. I have never been to Turkey, but that's gonna happen someday (maybe once they get some things sorted out...). I have never been floating in the Dead Sea, I have never been in such good shape that I was proud of myself. I have never been published - like for REAL. I have never been the owner of a Jaguar, or the Mother of Dragons. (Ok, that last one is disputable, right Hal?)

"Never Been" is one of our great excuses. I've "never been" a runner. I've "never been" good at art. I've "never been" good at relationships. I've "never been" into reading. I've "never been" good with money, or organized, or on time. I don't want to "never be" anything, really - I want to always be something, and to be a lot of things at least once in my life, including a runner, and good at relationships, and definitely rich. I hope that if there is one example that I set for my kids it's that we can be the things we've never been as soon as we decide that we want to (KIZZIE!!!). There are so many things that I have never been and so many things that I have every intention of being someday, and now seems like the perfect time to start being.

puffy eyes sunrise

Things About Meditation

So I have been reading all of these books lately that talk about meditation. Meditation isn't something I've really practiced getting good at because well, I'm me and holding still for more than 30 seconds is REALLY HARD if Game of Thrones or Vikings isn't on TV. But It's something I've decided to work on since stillness and focus and direction all seem to be recurring problematic themes in my life.

Today I set the timer to meditate for 10 minutes, which seemed to be the agreed upon reasonable starting point for most beginning meditators according to a variety of self-help authors. I decided to lay on my back because sitting hurts my hip and I didn't need that distraction, so I got in a savasana-type pose with one hand on my heart and the other on my belly to really connect and all of that stuff. The first 5 seconds went really well.

I closed my eyes and practiced the words I had decided to say in my head to help me focus on not focusing on anything. "Air in - air out." I said it a couple times but then I realized I was fighting really hard to keep my eyes closed so I opened them to remove that distraction. That's when I noticed the texture of the ceiling was like a topographic map, but in reverse, where all the low areas are actually raised. Like topography in negative. Then I realized I was not focusing on not focusing and redirected my thoughts. "Air in - air out."

"Air in- air out, air in - air out...my nose... air in - air out... my nose... is so weird. I hate it in pictures." uh oh. the wandering... "AIR IN - AIR OUT. Not that I like any pictures of me, but those ones I just sent with my bio for the articles REALLY make my nose look weird. And they're not very professional. I should look into getting some professional head shots done. Then the photographer could like, airbrush my nose... oh crap. AIR IN - AIR OUT." I could tell I was slipping and I am pretty sure I was less than 2 minutes in. So I laid my hands out to my sides to remove the distraction of contact with my body and decided to switch to the word BLUE instead of all the other words because I was kind of bored with them.

Plus blue feels calm and serene and like the thing I would want to focus on if I was focusing on nothing. Not blue like depression or sadness. But blue like water and air with clouds floating in it... how many minutes I spent reconciling myself to the new word I was going to silently chant, I have no idea.

"Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue like the sky. Like the sky over the ocean on that one beach in Brazil... where was it? Oh yeah, Ilha Grande, when Hal was super hung over and I took 7000 selfies because I was basically alone on the beach all day, but it was fun. The sky and the ocean were almost the same color. Oh crap. BLUE. Blue. Blue. Blue." When I was able to stop the chatter, I could almost see a blue haze behind my eyelids. "Blue. Blue. Blue. Like that Keith Urban song. I don't know if I really like him. I mean, as a person he's ok, but his music... meh. And that stupid song with Carrie Underwood. UGH. Make it stop."

"Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. What size are these underwear? They feel like smalls. They're binding a little. But they're so cute. I mean the fact I can even get into a small... UGH. Blue. Blue. Blue." This is my mind, people. I spent the last three minutes of my "meditation" writing this blog entry in my head. But you know what, it's a start.

Things That Fascinate me: Total Eclipse From the Start

1927 map of eclipse pathways

In 3340 BCE, a bunch of Neolithic Irish Priests documented a series of celestial events onto a pile of rocks. The Loughcrew Cairn stands as the oldest recorded total solar eclipse in human history. These petroglyphs mean that people have been chasing eclipses since about 160 years before the wheel was invented.

Ancient cultures saw the total eclipse as a religious experience, usually a bad omen, a premonition of destruction, or in the case of an ancient Chinese emperor who wanted to know what had caused the sudden darkness - the imminent beheading of some hapless astronomers who didn’t know. What ancient Chinese records DO say about the event in October of 2134 BCE is that “the Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously.”

Rahu swallows the sun

Whether it was a Chinese dragon, a South American Jaguar or a Scandinavian sky wolf, most early people had some theory about the creature that consumed, and promptly regurgitated the sun in the middle of its daily course. In India, the floating head of the demon Rahu occasionally caught the sun and moon in his mouth, but, lacking a body, they slipped out shortly after, according to legend. Ancient documentation on clay tablets found in a Syrian cave reference an eclipse that experts say took place in March of 1223, BCE. The Holy Bible itself makes note in the book of Amos, chapter 8 verse 9, of an 8th century Assyrian (now Iraq) eclipse that took place: "And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day."

Fast forward a few hundred years and people started getting wise to the repeating pattern of the eclipse. It probably helped that they started traveling more too (now that they had wheels) and discovered that the once-in-a-lifetime event happened fairly routinely, just not often in the same place. By the time that humankind had graduated into the Anno Domini they were predicting when and where the next total eclipse would be and all making up all kinds of theories that had nothing to do with giant mythical creatures. Less dramatic? Hardly, considering the vastness of the cosmos that were just beginning to make sense to astronomers.

The first photograph of a total solar eclipse in 1860

But what is it about a total eclipse that is so captivating to human audiences? Rarity seems like an unlikely motivator when the event occurs every 18 months somewhere in the world, and yet more than seven million people are expected to make the trek to experience the totality in August of 2017.

Dubbed the Great American Eclipse for the sweeping course it cuts across the entire nation like a beauty pageant sash, the August 21 path of totality makes its first all-American appearance in Lincoln City, Oregon where local law enforcement have issued preparedness warnings that residents should stockpile and prepare to shelter in place before the hordes of eclipse chasers descend upon them.  The shadow will move east/southeast across the country, leaving a path of partiers that some brilliant website analyst describes as “ 20 Woodstock festivals occurring simultaneously across the nation”, before finishing the visit along the beaches of  South Carolina.

Unlike comet-tracking cults and celestial doomsday believers, eclipse chasers appear to be cut from a completely different cloth. You won’t find end-of-the-world gibberish on eclipsechaser.com - rather, the community is a scientifically driven, curious group hailing from every imaginable background who all agree on one thing: there’s nothing like it in the world.

“The feeling of the eclipse when it happens, you can't describe it, it's like magic.” 30 year old Latvian IT consultant Agnese Zalcmane told the Daily Mail in 2015, “One minute the sun is shining then it starts getting darker but it doesn't get dark like it does in the evening or at dusk - it goes dark very, very fast. Within half a minute it's completely black and it is something that is very strange to experience.”

Seasoned eclipse chaser Rhonda Coleman tells the Bend Bulletin, “We depend on our sun for everything. You can’t help but feel a little dread when it starts to lose strength, when it starts to lose power, when it starts to dim in the middle of the day — when it’s not supposed to...For just the short period of time, everybody’s just looking up at once. It’s this beautiful connection to the family of man.” The experience seems to draw strangers together into intimate throngs with one purpose. Author, eclipse chaser and psychologist Kate Russo describes the experience in one of her books on the subject.

“You can literally feel the ominous shadow before it arrives.  The temperature drops.  The wind picks up speed.  The Sunlight slowly dims, bathing the surroundings in an eerie twilight that produces colours with shades rarely seen in the natural world.  Then it is time. Moments before totality a wall of darkness comes creeping towards you at speeds of up to 5,000 miles per hour – this is the full shadow of the Moon.  You feel alive.  You feel in awe.  You feel a primitive fear.  Then – totality.” Something akin to the ghost story your older brother told you late at night in a shadowy tent, the total eclipse haunts the experienced viewer with tenacity.

Hotels, campgrounds and resorts that were booked more than a year in advance are facing scandal after they scratched all reservations and jacked the price up to meet demand. The Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, Tennessee, falls directly in the path and is hosting an Eclipse Party on the day of the event, showcasing country stars (pun intended) and celestial-themed food and drinks. Google is rife with websites featuring eclipse chasing tips that range from where to get your eclipse glasses ahead of time (or better yet, make your own!), to the best weather pockets along the path of totality. Granted, it’s the first total eclipse in the United States since 1979, but the good news is if all of the eclipse glasses are already sold out and your favorite central Oregon resort is booked up, you’ll likely have another shot on April 8,  2024 when a total solar eclipse will climb the U.S. from Texas to Maine on a northerly route.

For more info, check out this article from Forbes magazine.

Things About Being Famous

 

I am almost there. I can pretty much taste it. It’s a very short matter of time before I close the gap between myself and Jayden K. Smith and become the world famous writer you all knew I would be. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time, sandwiched between reading “You Are a Badass” (highly recommend) and writing stories about Billy Ray Cyrus (don’t worry, he’s not really changing his name), obsessing over how to get people to share my writing on the viral scale that Jayden K. Smith’s hacking threat spread. Maybe if I was more threatening. Maybe if I had hacking skills. Maybe if I had a name like JAYDEN. Then I would be famous by now. I thought about shotgunning out a blog link out to every single contact I have on Facebook. (In case you didn’t know how pseudo-popular I am, that’s about 628 people, give or take the ones that will unfriend me after my most recent blog post wherein I didn’t capitalize The Lord’s Name.) (I apologize.)

If I shotgunned out a blog link with a minor threat of 14 years of bad luck or puppies dying tragically if the material goes unread, or worse - UNSHARED (gasp!), and at least three of my “friends” succumbed to my manipulation by sharing, and another six shared it accidentally because they are Of a Certain Age and don’t know what the Facebook buttons are for, I would increase my audience by at least 13%. That’s a lot when your audience is currently 6.5 people, and at some point, someone’s great Aunt Ruth is gonna share that piece of vital literature with her entire social network and her interweb savvy great-grand-niece would be some super cool literary agent or publishing house employee, or even the editor of a Small and Insignificant Magazine, but she would read me, and WANT me, and I would be FAMOUS. Two steps from a book deal, y’all.

I am dreaming here. I can see it now. In between worrying that Google Docs is going to suddenly realize that I have used up ALL of their internet space with my constant rambling and shut me down, and wondering if I bought a sophisticated pair of booties to wear with skinny jeans if people would take me more seriously, I am conjuring up a picture of where I am headed, and it’s frighteningly exciting.

Ever since I watched Romancing The Stone, I knew I was destined to be an eccentric writer with a messy bun and stacks of random literary starts scattered around my airy, high-rise big city apartment like so many tiny plants, just waiting for the exact right amount of sunlight and moisture to germinate into flourishing specimens of literary AWESOME. Except I would have more dogs than Kathleen Turner.

Of all of the GREAT IDEAS and CREATIVE VISIONS that come to me in my dreams (no, really, they do, but they’re kind of weird), I have yet to settle into the focus that is really the thing that will get me where I want to go. I, in predictable fashion, am all over the place like a ping pong ball in a zero gravity capsule, floating indiscriminately in and out of lost food particles and droplets of drool. I need a weighted vest to hold me down to my couch and brain blinders to keep my mind tracking down one path. THE PATH. I have proven that generating material is no issue at this point, cranking out thousands of useless words every day with no specific mission other than PAY THE BILLS. But it’s time to direct all of that wanton energy into something good. Good enough to get big. Big enough to open doors for All The Things (see video below).

But then I am gonna need things like trendy photographic head shots for my professional portfolio and business cards. I have business cards right now but I am mildly embarrassed to give them out, maybe because they don’t have a trendy head shot on them. Or maybe because I don’t like my phone number. Or maybe because handing out business cards makes me feel too much like a grown up. But only grown ups make the Big Bucks so I guess it’s time to embrace the business card suck.

Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling to basically express my displeasure at how much work it takes to become famous. Not that I am against work, but… If you know of any shortcuts (i.e. literary agents looking for the Next Big Thing, etc), I am all ears. (And feel free to share me with your great Aunt Ruth.)

Things That Are Seedy

When I was a kid, I remember my mom referring to “seedy hotel rooms”. Actually I am not sure if she was referring to hotel rooms, but I felt like when she used the word “seedy” it must be in reference to hotel rooms, because what else can really fall under that classification. For that matter, what in the world does “seedy” even mean? In my juvenile brain I imagined something like a dried up orange, sour and sticking to your teeth, and definitely hard water stains in the bathtub. That is seedy for sure.

I started hashing through all of this on a recent sleepless, yet thought -provoking night at a hotel room that could probably pretty fairly be considered seedy. I was trying to be thrifty since my employers had been reticent to pay for the nicer hotel the last time I needed one for work. There were hard water stains on the bathtub for sure, but no dried out oranges to speak of. If I had to define seedy I would probably say it something akin to the opposite of “classy”, i.e. low quality, unkempt, and questionably legal. The ACTUAL definition of seedy is much better than mine:

Seed·y ˈsēdē/

Adjective

1. sordid and disreputable.

As I lay contorted in a bed with undefinable lumps in it, I decided it would be helpful to develop an identification strategy for anyone who wonders if they might be staying in a seedy hotel room. Here are the parameters I came up with.

1. If you walk into the room and smell wet carpet, it’s a pretty sure sign you’re at a seedy hotel. Chances are also good that where you smell wet carpet there is wet carpet and it will be a relief to discover that it’s mostly from the leaking air conditioner, and probably not from that suspicious stain by the bathroom door.
2. If you find yourself playing the “floor is lava” by yourself, leaping from bed to table to entertainment center to cracked bathroom tiles to avoid carpet stains, you’re probably in a seedy hotel.
3. If the table you lept to from the bed does not support your parcours adventures and breaks into 5 pieces, you’re probably in a seedy hotel.
4. If the paper cups wrapped in saran wrap by the coffeemaker are so biodegradable that they biodegrade during one episode of House with a little bit of ice water in them, chances are good you picked a seedy hotel.
5. If it sounds like there is a middle school game of twister going on above you and they all brought their toddler siblings with them, you might be staying at a seedy hotel.
6. If the guy in the room down the hall has his door open and an ACTUAL boom box stationed to blare into the hallway some unrecognizable cross between mariachi and Celine Dion, yeah, you’re probably there.
7. If the coffee for your room is two scoops of folgers in a zip-lock baggie…
8. If the circa 1987 wallpaper still matches the bedspread and the paint is rubbed off of EVERY CORNER, it’s a good sign.
9. If there is hair in the bed BEFORE you get in it, well, that’s just gross.
10. If there is no discernable difference in color, smell or viscosity of the shampoo, conditioner, body lotion and shoe polish - good chance you’re at a seedy place.

of course I have. 

Things About Loving Myself

The Universe has been talking to me a lot lately about self-love. Self-love is a concept, much like self-forgiveness, that has never sat well with me - violating my self-flagellating conscience with associated character flaws such as Pride, Arrogance, Selfishness and Self-Righteousness. But what I am slowly coming to understand is that self-love, and even self-forgiveness, is a much different thing than the justification of flaws. It is the acceptance and acknowledgement of flaws. It is the graceful peace that come with understanding that I AM WORTHY of love because Someone saw fit to breathe into me the Divine Spark that we all possess, each differently and independently.

I am not worthy of love because I am part of creation as a whole, I am worthy of love because I am A CREATION - unique, specific, flawed, imperfect and 100% ME. These are hard things for me. Hard to get past the guilt of perceived failures and sins and hard to see through the ugly opaque sheen of mistreatment and being told for far too long in far too many ways that I am unworthy. But I have been listening to the wrong voices. Certainly not the voices that created me. Certainly not the ones that matter. But the loud, clamoring voices, the ones desperate for power over their own perceived unworthiness.

So here I am, at 40 years old, learning about self-love. Learning about myself, and how to love it. It’s a tricky thing, because for every thing I can find to love, I can find the ugly underside of that same thing to loathe. I have decades of practice at this. I am a professional at self-disqualification. But I am finally realizing that the only thing that has kept me from BadAssing my way through life is this method of self-destruction in my own head, and I am kinda over it.

So here’s to finding all the things about myself to love. And to loving all the things about myself that I find. When I think about how I love other people, it’s all the little things that make them THEM that come to mind. Like how they sigh audibly when they feel content. Or how they drum their fingers when they think. Or that deep-rooted sparkle and wild eyes behind a genuine smile. So I am trying that with myself - noticing the little things and loving that they make me me. Like the fact that I don’t like to write with my shoes on because it makes it hard to think, or that I feel a compulsion to rinse my hair in cold water, or that my laugh sounds a little like a sea lion with a head cold. Once I start to love the little things, maybe I can move on to the bigger things - like my hard headed unwillingness to ever settle for BLAH. Or the way that I can feel the pain of other people, physically, really, truly. Or the gift of childlikeness that I know I possess when I am not murdering it with cynicism.

Back when I was a kid and believing in all of my fallen darkness, I also believed so much in the redemptive power of faith. I BELIEVED in things unseen. I believed in the Desires of My Heart. I believed in Happily Ever After and True Love. I got bitter when all my believing took a little longer than I expected to pan out (still waiting?), but bitter isn’t a good fit for me so I think I will go back to believing, and it seems like the place to start is learning how to truly love myself. There’s a lot more life in believing. There’s a lot more life in hope and love than there is in fear and loathing. Feels like an upgrade for sure.

what's not to love? amiright?