It's the end of the world (as we know it)

Escalations of violence in the Middle East.  Twinkies, the snack rumored to survive nuclear holocaust, is no longer.  Fiscal cliff looming.  I'll soon be irrevocably beyond the point where I can claim to be in my mid-twenties.

And this song keeps running through my head:

 

December 21, 2012 is two days after my 29th birthday, one day after I will probably drink too much at the company holiday party, and the day I hope to start a multi-day drive to Oregon for Christmas.  It's also the day of the winter solstice, a thing I have greatly been looking forward to in this non-daylight-saving, cold Arizona village.  I'm looking forward to the light coming back, and I believe in the power of that far more than I believe in the likelihood of John Cusack being Earth's greatest hero.

I'm far too much of a skeptic to throw in with those who believe in any Mayan predictions of coming apocalypse.  But it's one hell of a motivator.

 What if..? 

What if we had limited time, but unlimited power over our own lives and choices?

What would we do differently?

I, for one, would quit my pointless job.  Move closer to my loved ones, and the lands and ocean I keep in my heart.  I would think about what I can do in the world that would be truly meaningful - who I can teach, encourage, affect - and then I'd go and do that.  I'd eat good food, drink intoxicating things, get out into nature.  I'd read trashy books and watch all the movies I always meant to, and learn everything I could.  I'd try to laugh every day, and give credence to my dreams, and be honest and kind (though sometimes choosing between one and the other).  I'd kiss my love every day, and be thankful for the unexpected and the beautiful and the struggles and the possibilities.

And you know what?  I'm doing it, too.  Slowly, haltingly.  Sometimes with trepidation, laziness and evasive answers.  Often taking it for granted, often feeling guilty for that.  But I believe I am, as Thoreau exhorted, 'advancing confidently in the direction of my dreams.'  Moving to California feels like a step in the right direction.  The research I'm anxiously doing towards getting a Master's degree so I can teach in a classroom again is the most motivating thing I've had in my life for awhile.  Inspired by others in my life, I'm trying to be stronger, more confident, more honest - what have I got to lose?

Promethea. You must read this.

Let's focus on the "as we know it" part of the world ending.  Change is scary, and big, and unpredictable.  It's something familiar and comforting ending, sure.  But something else with such limitless possibilities beginning!  Terrifying.  But grand.  The comic book series Promethea illustrates this beautifully; "Revelations" are about changing ideas and insight as much as upheaval.

It's pretty much inevitable that things will change.  We might as well look forward to them when they do, and put our oars in the water to steer us where we'd like to go.  And anyway, we've had a good run so far...

Imagine what we can do next!

In which it gets personal/political

I've been thinking about the upcoming election a lot, and hearing a lot on the news about Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.  And I keep being reminded of this clip.

When I first saw that, way back in 2005, I was tickled at Kanye's blunt honesty (also Mike Meyers' dumbstruck face and let's-stick-to-the-script Canadian determination).  It was like someone finally announced that the emperor had no clothes.  And I laughed fiercely, because I felt so rundown by that administration.  Thankfully, lessons have been learned since Katrina and recovery from Sandy seems to be going slowly, but well.  And the differences in political contexts seem all bound up in that.

I recall the day after Bush was re-elected, and it was like a day of mourning on my college campus.  There were teach-ins, everyone was moping, and I made a t-shirt bearing an Audre Lorde quote: "Your silence will not protect you."  I was young, liberal, and felt very much on the fringes of society by circumstance and by choice.  And I was afraid.

I remember the night Obama was elected.  Gathered with friends in a cozy kitchen, we held each others' hands tightly, listening to radios, watching updates from our laptops, making tense jokes and calling out each favorable poll and electoral vote.  When things looked inevitably positive for our candidate, we trooped to the local bar where our friendly neighborhood DJ was methodically coloring in states on a big white board.  There were more blue than red, and when the election was officially called, the whole place went up in a cheer.  Crowded by the pool table, hugging my friends so desperately, felt great.  It felt like the country had accomplished something, and the next day would dawn on a brand-new society.

Well, not so much.  Politics is politics, and sausage-making and dirty dealing and hiding funding cuts in non-related bills.  Business as usual.  But a year or two ago, after listening to some story on the radio about presidential politics, I realized that I had been freed from that pervasive fear that had hold of me in my college years.  The fear that myself and my friends like me were in danger -- of losing our ability to make choices about our health, our educational opportunities.  Afraid that the freedoms we enjoyed and the beautiful world we lived in would be snatched away, wore out, locked up, before we got the chance to fully grow up in it and take the reins for ourselves.  Over the past four years, it's felt like we're slowly -- excruciatingly slowly -- making changes that can be positive in the world.  And most of all, like we're making those changes with the support of some of those in power, instead of working against a tide of greed and bigotry.

Which is not to say that it's all sunshine and rainbows.  When people in power can reference "legitimate rape" as a 'fact' and not get laughed out of the conversation and thrown out of society -- when members of the congressional science advisory committee ignore actual science and still expect to hold their jobs -- when a presidential contender can run on a platform that includes rolling back women's hard-won rights 39 years -- when these extreme (and extremely ignorant) views are a common part of the conversation, everything isn't all right.

But I don't want to go back to that fear again.  I want to have faith and pride in my country and its processes.  Even if things aren't perfect, I'd like it to be true that there are people working with ethical intentions and broad perspectives to fix what's broken in a way that helps the most people, instead of just the most powerful people.

Please go vote tomorrow, if you haven't already.  Please be informed when you do so, and be proud of fulfilling this right and obligation for your community.  Please don't stop talking to people who disagree with you.  Please keep working in your communities to fix those problems you do see, and help those people you can.

Please don't stop holding the hands of people that you love in times of worry, and in times of joy.  Hopefully tomorrow will be the latter.

Three impossible things before breakfast

One day, before I even opened my eyes to start the day, I had the following thought: "I'm going to get up at dawn and hike in the Grand Canyon."  This rattled in my brain a bit and woke me up.  Rolling out of bed, it was 5:30, and dawn was long past, strolling across the sky, merrily giving me the rosy finger for standing her up.  But getting up early to hike in the Grand Canyon sounded close enough for me.  So I did that.

At 6am, I started down the Bright Angel Trail, one of the most-hiked trails in the park.  It starts out wide and not that steep, descending through an arch blasted in the canyon wall to thread the trail through.  Inside the arch, you can see the too-round-for-nature holes they drilled to stick the dynamite in.  Just past the arch, hikers who crane their necks back to look above the trail can see pictographs painted in reddish brown on the rock surface.  Human figures with arms at right angles, four-legged mammals, something that really looks like a monkey.  All created long before I was born or thought of, still there despite the 4.3 million people who visit this park each year (same as the entire population of Louisiana, or Ireland).

The trail continues snaking down the cliff-face, cutting broad swaths through surprisingly green country.  I was startled to meet tall supple bushes, lush flowering plants, actual grasses - very different from the stiff and pointy desert plants that populate most of the Rim country.  The trail follows the rough contours made by the Bright Angel fault, which has cracked the Canyon perpendicular to its length.  The fault provides a throughway for water and erosion - making possible the trail's descent as well as the greenery that surrounds it.  At times, I could feel the air cooler coming off the leaves, and it made me think of another miraculous occurrence that happened the other day here:

It rained.

Truly, it did.  And I got to stand in it.  The first moisture since April, everyone around here says.  I was walking to the library (naturally), when a pattering sound all around made me stop.  The sun was still beating down, but suddenly the smell of dust and petrichor was strong, and dark fingerprints were appearing on the flagstones, the log benches near me, and the sleeves of my shirt.  I stood, stunned into stillness, and watched the spots appear and disappear as they evaporated away almost immediately.  Cottony clouds scudded fast across the sky, alternating dim and bright light, and I wondered if it was raining anywhere other than on me, right there in that courtyard.  It was wonderful.

But back to the trail.  There were only a few other hikers on the trail that morning.  Most plonking past me downhill as I dawdled to look at the plants, the rocks, the view, some scat.  The book I have chosen to present for Junior Ranger Storytime is the literary masterpiece Who Pooped in the Park? by Gary D. Robson.  After emphasizing to excitedly grossed-out kids and their weary parents just how much trackers and scientists can learn from all sorts of animal sign, I find myself fascinated now more than ever with the evidence left by animals who have come and gone.  

The Grand Canyon is home to a lot of stealthy animals I’ve never seen outside of a zoo – mountain lions, ringtails – and some, thankfully, that I have.  A glimpse of a coyote streaking across a highway into barren scrub.  A close call with a tiny scorpion in my first weeks working at Montezuma Castle.  Assisting with the tagging and relocation of a too-friendly rattlesnake.  I am always awed and humbled after those kinds of animal encounters.  Something about looking into the pitch-black eyes of another being, with an intelligence so different from yours.  Magic.  But there’s one animal that has always eluded me in my wilderness travels: the Bighorn Sheep.  This was brought home each time I visited Zion National Park, where visitors enter the park through a road winding the bottom of a canyon, staring up at steep slopes towering above their RVs and midsize sedans.  There, I heard many fellow tourists comment on how they had seen a whole dang herd just that morning, why just up there, didn’t you see them?  Nope.  Never did.

So imagine my surprise when I rounded a switchback on Bright Angel and came face to face with a beautiful tawny Bighorn Sheep ewe, spiked horns on her head, just chilling in the middle of the trail.  The European hiker stopped in front of me was clearly anxious to pass her, and kept inching downhill.  She, in turn, kept shifting her sure feet and looking back at him warily.  I wasn’t eager for my morning hike to end in bloodshed, so I picked up a handful of rocks and scattered them at her feet, while making loud sheep-herding noises.*  In the Park Service, this is apparently called “hazing,” and is sometimes used to scare off endangered California Condors who land too close to astonished tourists, possibly thinking they are or must shortly be, a tasty carrion meal.  According to my coworkers, the ranger who chases away the condor is immediately unpopular with everyone in the vicinity wielding a camera, as well as the condor itself, who may likely crap itself in surprise.**  I recently heard, without seeing, a ranger do this – as many folks crowded the rim all looking in the same direction, a piercing “Yeeeee-ha!” reverberated off the rocks.  The crowd dispersed, then a red-faced ranger passed me, and at that moment I felt an up-swell of ranger solidarity.  You get ‘em, ranger.

The European hiker turned back to me and nodded a chagrined appreciation, then continued down the trail.  I waited a bit to let him get ahead, then continued wandering down myself.  After not too long, I heard scuffling from a few meters above the trail and saw three sheep kids and another ewe hiding in the bushes patiently watching me pass.  Then later, another ewe right alongside the trail, so quiet that I didn’t notice her until I was far too close for comfort, and far closer than I would ever advise a junior ranger to be.  And yes, I was that damn tourist who stopped within biting/charging/goring distance to take a picture.  But I was so eager to memorialize this initial meeting, this face-to-face introduction to a new species, like an alien meeting her first astronaut.***

Not much later, I turned back uphill, and didn’t see any sheep on my hike back, except their tracks and sign, and my satisfied astonishment at these new canyon companions, this unexpected lush foliage, this blessed rainshower.  I am always learning new things about this place – improbable, wonderful things.  When I least expect it.

*How do I know sheep-herding noises?  May I please take this opportunity to thank the film The Ten Commandments which I have watched annually since childhood.  If Moses had crossed the desert to join a group of farmers, I would have been less prepared.  Anyway!)

**Or possibly to cool down its legs.  It’s true.  They do that, since they don't sweat.  Science!

*** Except skipping the part where the alien later pops out of the astronaut’s chest.

Place-based Education

From NASA astronomer Dale Cruikshank.

The day before I started working here, there was an annular eclipse of the sun.  'Annular' meaning that the tiny moon was not quite aligned to block out all of the  sun's bright light, but instead left a searing halo in the sky, a fiery ring that made all watchers think about heat, flame, the size of heavenly bodies, and the scope of their lives.

Naturally, the park had a big to-do at the Visitor's Center, inviting astronomers to share their telescopes and selling out of flimsy plastic sun-viewing glasses for the general public.  Wanting, of course, to celebrate this celestial happening with everyone else, I trooped excitedly over to the VC... only to find zero parking spots.  And large SUVs anchored on top of the lovingly replanted native vegetation.  Nuts to all that.  Plan B was going back to the apartment and then--?  But luckily, other folks had Plans B, too.  Including a NASA astronomer who had set up his telescope and camera right outside my apartment building.  My neighbors and I stood in the parking lot, sharing beers and commenting on how bizarre the shadows looked.  We chatted with this professional gentleman (who wasn't too professional to refuse a beer himself), all of us basking in the off-light of a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of hunks of rock and gas.  That somehow seemed important, special.  Wonderful.

It was a surreal introduction to the uniqueness of being in this place; one I wouldn't trade for anything.  An annular eclipse like that won't be seen again from US soil until 2023.  My timing's pretty damn good.

.........................

Informal education I have done in the past often focuses on the educational aspect: the facts and structure of an idea -- be it geology, physics, astronomy or the like.  Here I have the opportunity to shape my interactions with people on a larger scale, and truly help make meaning of this place.

This feels like rather a lot of pressure, but it's as much for me as it is for anyone else.  What does it mean for you, the visitor*, to be here?  What does it mean for me to be here, as a staff-person and a resident?  Here I have to take my cue from the environment.  You're here to the see the Canyon.  I'm here to make sense.  Hopefully.

Recently I went running, not as I have before, along the roads and the paved paths out to the Rim where all of humanity congregates and comments on how it's quite a nice a hole in the ground, har har.  This time I ran in the opposite direction, through the rugged tracts and service roads out into the woods.  The sun was setting, and as I rounded the corner from the sunlit housing area into the dim of the trees, I nearly ran into a female elk, who bounded off in the other direction.  Rude of me, I know.   But it was a good reminder for me to slow down a bit.  Take my cues from this place, and not assume I know what I'm talking about yet.  Maybe ever.  I have so much to learn here, and I think the more I can just live in this place, the more it will deign to teach me.

Last week at about this time, I was witness to yet more astronomical fanfare -- the Transit of Venus.  Called "the noblest sight astronomy affords," by Edmond Halley, this time I actually secured a parking spot at the Visitor's Center and joined the queues sharing the wealth of sights from amateur astronomers' telescopes.  That moderate clump of people, waiting to check out that bright ball in the sky that's there all the time, but waiting to look at it with new eyes - felt like community.  A group of people in the same space being awed by the same amazing thing.  That's what I want to create, as often as possible in my job and in my life.

I'm thankful to have the opportunity to do so.  I hope I can do it well, at least some of the time.

-------------------------------------
*Please visit me!

“Working hard or hardly working?”

Ah hah ha.  Hah.  Heh.  Uhh.

I hate that joke.  But it pretty accurately describes my first week at work.  One of the reasons why I love my line of work is that the training involved is always, “Go sit in on this class.  Learn some stuff.  Be a visitor.  Enjoy yourself.  Then do it from the other end.”  Don’t mind if I do.  I have had so much fun since last Monday, shadowing the other Rangers, listening to their particular spiels, watching how they handle chatty school groups, unruly chaperones, windy conditions.  And learning the whole time the meaningful facts and insights to this enormous Canyon. 

That’s my challenge, and my goal.  How do I encourage intimate connections to something so overwhelming?  What stories can I tell that will be memorable?  What advice that will encourage folks to be resourceful, and to preserve this park and other wilderness in their lives?  And yes, I believe I can do all that from one 15-minute interaction.  I have to.  Otherwise, what am I out here for?

My job is an exercise in the butterfly effect.  Hopefully my presence in uniform (looking fine, if I do say so myself) might expand young visitors’ minds about the role of women outdoors.  Maybe my kind words of warning might dissuade unprepared hikers from an uncomfortable, dehydrated day’s hiking, or worse.  Possibly my words transforming this gigantic landform into something familiar (a container holding a million billion jellybeans, for example) might put it better in perspective, for a family wondering idly just what is the point of keeping this hole in the ground, well, whole, when it could make a bitchin’ theme park.

I know my job isn’t strictly necessary in some ways, but I do think it’s valuable.  I don’t actively keep the lights on or the water flowing or the people within the bounds of the law.  But I do remind them to care, about each other and about where they are.  And the ease of that comes from how much fun I have doing it.  I’ve just started the learning curve for my own Canyon education, but everyone is kind and helpful, curious and enthusiastic.  I can’t wait to be on their team, doing good work and having a blast while doing it.  In a pretty rockin’ uniform.  Eeep!

Die Verwandlung

The idea of this place is still sinking in.  The immensity, the brightness and how it stands in stark contrast to how my life was just one month ago.  This has been a mental adjustment, but also a physical one.  I now live at about 7000 feet above sea level.  By contrast, the highest I ever would have been tooling around Portland was about 850 feet (Pittock Mansion).  I haven't yet adjusted.  I went on a run a couple days ago... to the end of the street.  Then I stopped running because my chest was suddenly home to a rapidly-expanding sea urchin, prickly and increasing in pressure, despite deep breaths.  So I decided to walk for a while, and after a while was able to walk/run/walk pretty normally (for a girl whose physical exercise of late has entailed shifting boxes, tooling around suburbia and sitting in the driver's seat for hours at a time).

And oh, my skin!  My hands are covered in these dry plate tectonics, shifting and cracking.  My shoulders and arms grow steadily redder, and stinging with each new sunscreen application.  My lips are evaporating pools, a rim of salt clinging to the edge to indicate where moisture used to be.  My hair frizzes and sticks out every which way.  My eyes, wary of the stark sunshine, squint and tingle in the wind.  My feet burn from blisters and the reflected heat of the pavement.  The headaches! The thirst!

Not that I'm complaining. 

I expected coming here to be a metamorphosis, and I'm willing to throw myself into that change wholeheartedly.  I have this fantasy that I'm turning into one of the local inhabitants.  Lizards, wrinkly-headed condors, tough scrub plants all seem to have a better evolutionary handle on this place than I do.

As Kirsten awoke one morning from uneasy dreams she found herself transformed in her bed into a gigantic Ponderosa Pine.

If I could choose, that would be it.  Tall and stately, with crevasses on the bark that mimic the Canyon nearby.  Long needles (useful for weaving or steeping in cold water), robust cones, proud branches supporting all manner of chirruping, gnawing creatures.  The first day I explored this place on foot, away from the Rim, I found myself on a trail that could have been in Sisters, could have been the woods on Humphrey's Peak.  Could have been any number of places where I've hiked and camped and exhausted and fulfilled myself.  The smell of hot dust and vanilla-scented bark was so familiar and so comforting.  It was wonderful to have these old friends here. 

 

What a good life.  Crown reaching to the cloudless sky, living for hundreds of years all over the beautiful West.  I could be happy doing that.

I'm here I'm here I'm here!

I made it!  After a blissful few days in Colorado -- where I got to play stay-at-home aunt to the darling, good-humored, loving, crazy six year old AND have some nourishing personal and professional conversations with the most amazingly talented, good-humored, beautiful sister -- I drove out again in the early morning light.  12 hours sped by, filled with birds of prey lazily observing the highways from their high perches, Utah's otherworldly rocks, and this one overloaded aggravating van who just would not get out of the fast lane.

Then, just when I was almost screaming with boredom of being in the car, I arrived at the National Park gates.  I meandered past elk munching their dinners, visitors uncertainly turn-signaling their ways to the best sunset vantage points, the clinic, the school, the grocery store... talking to myself the whole way, reminding myself what looked familiar and where I think I should be turning.  The first time I glimpsed the Canyon out my car windows, I shouted in reflex, "I live here now!"  But that still hasn't really sunk in.

I pulled into the parking lot of his my our (!) apartment, shaky, sore and grateful for the proffered beer.   Towards the end of the drive, I had been repeating, "Shower, porch, beer.  Shower, porch, beer," as mantra to strengthen my resolve.  I got all that AND a hot dinner.  Damn!

Today I couldn't sleep past 6am, so I unpacked my everything, the first minute of Part of Your World stuck in my head the whole time. ("Thingamabobs?  I got twenty!"  Yes, but why do you have twenty, Kirsten?  WHY?)  Thanks again to my spectacular Tetris brain, I was able to hide all my nonsense in Tiny Apartment.  And I organized and sorted and decorated 'til I was tired of all that.  Now it's mostly done, pictures will get hung tomorrow (sorry thin-walled neighbors!) and I get to get out and explore.

I'm going to all the Ranger programs I can this next week.  Reading all the guidebooks that are so conveniently already in this apartment.  Finally visiting the archeological museum.  Getting ready to memorize the facts and the feelings of this place, to share with visitors from all over the world.  Whirlwind.  Hit the ground running.

This is my front yard.  At this very moment.  FOR REAL.

Hello again!

Forgive me if I'm out of practice.  Accounting my adventures fell by the wayside last summer, preoccupied as I was by having those adventures - playing around as I do in sunshine and water and trees whenever and wherever I can.  I revisited a lot of places like they were old friends and didn't feel as pressed to document the feelings I had and stories I told myself there.

Then: fall, winter, spring.  Life, job, family, love.  Uncertainty, laughs, washing up, errands, research, learning, drinking, eating.  Portland - very much so.

You know how I like a saga - a story, a quest, a tale of the hero's there-and-back-again.  Something with movement.  So writing my workaday life didn't seem momentous enough to document.  However, I refuse to chalk all that time up as forgettable - quite the opposite.  I am lucky beyond measure to have the life that I do, and I am blessed to find small moments of sweetness in baby smiles and the sound of flags snapping in a strong wind.

Anyway, after a long hibernation, I'm moving again.  Literally.  Everyone, I've gotten a job at the Grand Canyon, and I'm moving there as we speak.  Ta-da!  I'll be doing environmental education with the National Park Service.  And I'll get to feel the sun on my face and the altitude in my lungs.  I get to come home to someone else's delicious cooking and listen to someone else's stories for a while.  Again, I am so blessed.  I'm going to miss Portland, which is my hometown now more than ever.  But I'm so excited to start a new chapter.  In such a beautiful place, with such immense space to fill.
 

Let's go!

Sleeping in the Forest

by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.  I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees.  Al night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness.  All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom.  By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

I love a parade!

... And a circus.  And a carnival.  And a dance party.  And quite often any kind of well-meaning ruckus caused by a number of people. 

Portland has been showering me with just these kinds of gifts lately, and I'm very grateful. Last night was my FIRST EVER PedalPalooza ride - Madonna vs. Lady Gaga.  I went farther from home in one go than I've ever gone before, and proved a number of things to myself.  Great company was enjoyed, fabulous costumes were ogled, Jazzercize happened at a playground in the middle of the night.  We sang along to bike-mounted boom-boxes, and sometimes started our own songs. (A cappella "Like a Prayer" in near-total darkness at Laurelhurst Park = excellent moment!)  As a newbie, I was heartened by the strong sense of community: the easygoing conversation with strangers coasting through neighborhoods, free and generous sharing of snacks (thank you to the man with the vinegar potato chips), bike maintenance advice, costume assistance, compliments.  It was very pleasant.  My knees are very tired.

But the fun isn't done yet!  Today I went to the Rose Festival Fun Center, where I haven't been in years - so long that they don't even call it the Fun Center anymore.  But y'all know what I'm talking about.  It was a drizzly Sunday afternoon, the last day the Fun Center was open, so it wasn't crowded, and all the vendors in the booths had an air of really, really wanting to go home.  But oh, the lights.  The wobbly reflections off the fun house mirror maze.  The scratching of blue sparks off the bumper car ceiling.  The sound of two dozen safety bars scraped against chain and safely latched.  Fried smells.  Things dipped in chocolate.  Siblings beating the crap out of each other with inflatable purple hammers. 

I went on two rides: El Nino, which is like the Tilt-a-Whirl except with more tilting (and apparently if you photograph it with a slow shutter speed, it looks like the end of the world - see below).  Which was fun, and I screamed a bit, and got a rush, and laughed and my hair flew in my face.  Always fun to ride a new ride - at the fair, as in life.

But then I saw it.  The Big Swing.  A perennial favorite of mine since childhood.  You know, it's the one that's like a merry-go-round, but instead of riding horses, you sit in a tiny wicker seat and they lift you high up and spin you around so that your eight year old self is flying flying flying.  This year, though, they had a Big Swing for a new generation: two-person seats, an extra measure of buckling in, and much, much taller than in the past.  Instead of being set up all the way at the end of the Waterfront, as it always had been in the past, this one was right next to the Morrison bridge, so it felt like you were swinging right over traffic, then trees, the river, the fairway, and traffic again.  I felt the same giddiness and swooping in my stomach that my babynerd self always imagined was the closest I could get to being a real astronaut. 

I know it was brain chemicals, vestibular trickery and dizziness, but it felt so familiar and goodhearted - echoes from a sweeter time, like hearing a recording of your kid-self laughing.  I was thirteen again.  I was eight.  I was ageless.  My mom was there, waving with her neck craned back to see me; my sister walking, gossiping with her friend, their hair in side ponytails.  Was I ever this carefree and happy?  Yes, always.  No, of course not.  Life has always been a series of ups and downs - the lows unimaginable from the highs, the highs insurmountable from the lows.  But if I can remember my past with joy, probably I'll be living the rest of it the same way.  Ready or not.

"You should rename the cafeteria 'Om-Nom-Nomsi'"

LIFE!  Ah, there it is.  The little things that I didn't know I missed, or didn't really miss until the interminable downtime of the plane ride back.  Laundry is more satisfying (and efficient!) if dried Venetian-style, on a line in my backyard.  I've adjusted back to this time zone again, though while cat-sitting Mishu, she was doing the best she could to keep me waking up at the crack of dawn.  Head-butting my stomach.  Annoying, but cute.

I think the best part has been going back to work.  [Nerd!]  Yeah, well, it's a pretty cool job.  I've been spending a lot of brainpower thinking of demos for our upcoming OMSI After Dark, themed on beer.  OMSI After Dark, if you're unaware, is a magical evening in which we open the museum just for grown-ups, and play and drink and push each other and act ridiculous.  I, happily, get to contribute to that ridiculousness by making up Cool Things To Do - With Science!  My brain is honed for this.  If you give me any topic, I can come up with a handful of metaphors and hands-on activities right off the bat, and my mind will keep percolating on and on and on about it (I couldn't get it to stop if I tried).

So it was with a sense of relief that I started keeping my giant hardback journal by my pillow, to capture those hazy half-formed work-relevant ideas that dance in my head like sugarplums in the early hours of the morning.  It's been... interesting.  It's led to some very catchy titles ("Grain to Growlers: Homebrewing Live In Person") and some very oddly-written concepts.  I'm pretty sure, in sleepy scrawl, one part reads, "Pirates - Breakfast beer" which I think is code for beer being a greater source of nutrition in historical communities.  Then again, there's also: "Pol Pot in Pac Man" which I knew writing down was a bad idea (I don't even know), but I felt obligated to keep a complete record.*

Anyway, shameless plug:  OMSI After Dark is the last Wednesday of every month; this month the 29th of June, from 7-11pm.  This one will be an extra-super-special beer fest version, and you even get a souvenir pint glass!  See the OMSI website for details.  PORTLANDERS!  Now's the time.

*We're also getting a video game exhibit, so this isn't quite as crazy as it first reads.

How Was Your Trip?

Oh God.  Overwhelming, wonderful, uncomfortable, awesome, gorgeous.  A true series of adventures.  Lots of looking.  And walking.  Old and beautiful stuff.  Deep and ranging conversations with a dear friend.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And yes, Shirley, I came back.  I briefly hallucinated changing my return ticket to meet my family in Mexico and extend the whirlwind, but I couldn't find 2,000 coats, each with a one-Euro coin left forgotten in the pocket, and 38 hours of traveling to get there seemed a bit much.  Plus, now that I'm back, it's hard not to imagine everything in my life singing "Hello Dolly" (It's so nice to have you back where you belong...): my fluffy bed, my not-at-all-broken-into car, soon my kitty and routines and to-do lists.  Comfortable, comfortable.

Because these last two weeks have been decidedly uncomfortable.  Not in a negative way, but in the way that means I couldn't eloquently ask for what I needed when I needed it (miming, shrugging, smiling, badly-pronounced fragments).  And I didn't know where I was going or how to get there (street signs are passé; likewise consistent spelling of place names).  Sometimes I didn't even know what exactly I was eating (but that I never regretted).  It was so far out of my comfort zone, and yet I got to soothe those parts of me that love love love a psychedelic sunset, a quiet lapping sea, the nearness of unspeakably old things, the solitude of holy spaces.  These things were right like breathing, and made me feel like I'd been holding my breath for so long before I found them.  Magic, sometimes.  Mmm.

But here's a more solid recap.  Because "How was your trip?" "Oh, like breathing." is entirely unsatisfying.  To sum up, Sarah and I were on the Greek island of Paros for about a week, then went to Verona, Venice and Milan, Italy before winging it back to Athens for a couple nights and heading home.  (Typing it so straightforward like that, I still can't believe this is my life.)  And now, a list!

• Modes of transportation taken (in order of appearance): walking, bus, light rail, plane, taxi, ferry, train, vaporetto (like a bus, but on water.  Ah, Venice), diagonal people-mover.
• Best food: gnocci with pesto, Venice.  OR feta-stuffed calamari, Paros.  OR whatever fatty meat cutlet I ate at the community festival in Verona.  OR...
• Best drink: Prosecco by the barrel (really, they sell it like that!), Venice.  OR free white wine "because we make the restaurant beautiful," Paros.
• Best Gelatto (yes, this is its own category): Creme de Grom (vanilla with chocolate chips and biscuit pieces), Milan.
• Best killing time during a rainstorm: Greek-language scrabble and hot chocolate, Paros.
• Bodies of water I dipped my toes in: Adriatic Sea (Laguna Veneta), Aegean Sea.
• Best unnatural animal behavior: Cats eating potato chips, Paros.
• Funniest church: Great big Byzantine thing with Baby Jesus SUPER EXCITED about the bird he was holding while Mary looks so very bored, Verona (?).
• Sweetest church: Cliffside grotto not four feet from the waves, with its own broom, Paros.
• Number of nude sunbathers: 1.5, Paros.
• Hours spent listening to the same deodorant jingle while waiting for a train: 2 (interspersed with the trailer for Una Notte da Leoni 2), Verona and Venice.
• Incredulous looks from Sarah at something I said: So many, Everywhere.
• Emails sent/received: 4-ish, Everywhere
• Newspapers I pretended to know how to read: 4, Venice, Milan.
• Bed most like a hammock: the one next to the one I slept in (four to a room), Venice.
• Most cross-cultural musical moment: Band phonetically translating "Paperback Writer" and other Beatles hits, community festival, Verona.  OR "Sweet Home Alabama" ringtone, Milan airport.
• Euros to my name when I boarded the flight home: €0.01, Athens.

Ciao!

 Love,
 
Kirsten Valentine

"Monks, everything is on fire"

The Decemberist Vespers at Trinity Cathedral tonight was a beautiful idea.

Holy one, you reveal yourself in the water of life that flows from a distant, unseen source; in the campfire that brings comfort in the dark; and in the first light, shining through the smoke, cutting through the void, bringing us the dawn.  Your love burns so bright it consumes us completely.  Help us to come out the the rain and welcome the light, and walk in it always.

Goal #3: With a litte help from my friends

`

It's a place!  It's a place I'm going to!

Oh lord, guys, it's really happening.  I'm going to Greece!

My dear and talented friend Sarah is creating genius with her bare hands at a writer's colony on a Greek island (I know, doesn't it just smack of romance?) and I will go and meet her when her time there is up.  WHAT!  I'm sorry, I have to shake my head a little after every sentence and realization that yes, this is indeed going to happen.

A vacation to Greece has been such a pipe dream of mine for so long - something I've done little more than ponder and picture when I can't fall asleep at night.   But months ago Sarah announced she'd be going, and I declared I'd be coming too.  Even then, it was unlikely - the same level of conviction with which my childhood friends and I declared when we grew up we'd all buy houses on the same street so our kids could play together.  Yes, let's.  What a beautiful dream.

But Sarah was really doing it - and me?  What did I have to lose?  Egg money burning a hole in my savings account, it was possible.  And more probable now than it had ever been.  And so, with much delay and anxiety (No, I have to concentrate on moving first.  Oh, but I have to do my taxes before. I just won't feel right until my art supplies are organized and...  Okay, okay, I'll do it now!) I bought a plane ticket.  I nearly bit my credit card in half while pushing the PURCHASE NOW button, but dammit, there's no going back.  Forward only!

So I've built my castles in the sky.  Now I need to make foundations under them.  Foundations made of sturdy backpacks, up-to-date immunizations, travel books and language CDs.  And a million other things I haven't even thought of yet.  I'm green.  I'm new.  I've never been off the continent.  So...

Help me?  Please?  I don't really know what I'm doing.

 You might.  All you people out there, with your international backpacking language-speaking jet-setting experience.  Any tips for a fresh-out-of-the-gate world traveler?  I've got the loan of a backpack already I think will work nicely (thank you Sue and Natalie), but I have so far to go.  Any of you know anything about Greece?  Or possibly Italy or Istanbul? (Secondary destinations.  The conversation went like this: "Any chance we'll be political prisoners?" "No, I don't think so."  "Oh hold on, we can see whirling dervishes!  And Turkish baths!  Okay, let's go.")  What should I pack?  What shouldn't I pack?  Do I need to buy more comfortable walking shoes?  Do I need to learn how to say more than Thank you, What am I eating, and American Embassy in three separate languages?  What's a hostel like?  Teach me, world!
 

 Passport, tickets, money.  Passport, tickets money.  Those travel sickness pills mustn't be working.  I still feel sick and I've taken four already.  And I've only traveled up and down the stairs.

"and hide the wish that we were where you are"

.

 

American Sonnet by Billy Collins

 

We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser
and it is not fourteen lines
like furrows in a small, carefully plowed field

but the picture postcard, a poem on vacation,
that forces us to sing our songs in little rooms
or pour our sentiments into measuring cups.

We write on the back of a waterfall or lake,
adding to the view a caption as conventional
as an Elizabethan woman’s heliocentric eyes.

We locate an adjective for the weather.
We announce that we are having a wonderful time.
We express the wish that you were here

and hide the wish that we were where you are,
walking back from the mailbox, your head lowered
as you read and turn the thin message in your hands.

A slice of this place, a length of white beach,
a piazza or carved spires of a cathedral
will pierce the familiar place where you remain,

and you will toss on the table this reversible display:
a few square inches of where we have strayed
and a compression of what we feel.

I can hardly contain myself

What've you been up to?

I have a lot of loved ones in distant places; and though I am an entertaining communicant (if I do say so), I've never been consistent.  At the end of long intervals of quiet, I find myself answering the above question, which tends to follow on the heels of Man, it's been too long!

Lately I've been answering this question with, "Oh, I'm packing."  "Not much, still in the process of moving."  etc.  But I'm here to tell you: it's all lies.

Food, clothes and bedding have been in moved in for awhile.  A place for everything, and everything in its place - I'm even at the level of detail where I'm buying an over-the-door-shoe-holder (which fits perfectly.  Win!).  So I'm hardly still schlepping back and forth waiting until I can actually inhabit this new place.  I'm here.  Habiting.  It's good.

So... what have you really been up to, then?

Excellent question.  I believe I would call it sorting. Winnowing.  Editing.  Spelunking through cavernous boxes, unearthing 27 years of historical artifacts.  And putting them in a big pile to get rid of.

Horrors!  My scrimp-and-save upbringing + my career in museums drooling over authentic artifacts + my love of stories = a fear of getting rid of ANYTHING lest it become that much more useful and beloved and necessary the moment you drive away from the Goodwill donation box (and you can't reach back into those big metal boxes - your arm would get stuck and people would stare).  But.  A few things have happened to me over the past couple of years to wean me from that cemented way of thinking.

Once upon a time...  I moved to Arizona.  It was temporary, and I knew that going into it.  I also knew that I'd be in a place that itself would keep me busy, doing interesting work and sharing housing that felt like summer-camp.  Thinking ahead, I packed light.  Which for me means one very full carload.  In four months, there were few things I'd left behind that I truly missed, and some things I brought with me (volleyball, knitting supplies) that I never even used.  And I survived - nay, I thrived!  So the idea of what I "need" to live shrunk three sizes that day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...  Then I moved back.  Back to Oregon, to Portland, back to the same house I grew up in, three blocks from the hospital in which I was born.  There's a lot of history there. And though it's all meaningful to who and how I am today, these things and locations and mementos are also snapshots of how things used to be - and aren't always relevant to how I want my life to be now.  More than anything else, I think, that grated on me for those many months living back at home.  It's hard to live differently when everything around you is the same.  The fact that I was home during Dad's second bout with cancer (tko, btw) made it completely necessary that things be different from the last time I lived at home.  We were all ready to put this thing to bed and move on; maybe in a different direction, but most important is to move.

When suddenly...  So I did.  Move.  Hooray!  The sense of accomplishment I still feel about that is far out of proportion for the act itself.  Finding a place to live is a normal, adult thing to do; and pretty low on Maslow's hierarchy to boot.  It's not something I should have to crow about.  Anyway, then came furnishing a house - which I hadn't had to do in quite a while (temporary, well-stocked SCA digs didn't need my housewares).  So I began a process that basement spiders will remember forever as The Great Upheaval.  Boxes of flatware, wine glasses, salad spinners and the like were moved out of my parents' basement - a place they'd been since arriving from Massachusetts and my own Great Upheaval.  Standing in a new and empty kitchen, pulling items out of carefully-wrapped newsprint (thanks, Dad) and repeatedly muttering, "Huh.  I didn't know I had that," made me wonder if I really needed to have it at all. 

When I was packing all this up  - a long time and many miles ago - it seemed important to keep these things.  Holding onto the items that furnished my life was a kind of sea-wall between me and the vast unpredictable change I was facing.  But relatively quickly I learned to love that change.  It's never stopped being big and unpredictable, but I'm enjoying the ride.  And in doing so, it's best to travel light.

So here I am, parting with what is long-overdue to be parted with.  I'm still the conscientious eco-citizen with a 'mending is better than ending' mentality, so don't haul out the dumpsters yet.  There's friends with similar interests to be gifted, donations to be made, books to be sold (hopefully).  I'm hoping to get some photos of some of the noteworthy items up here, or get word of it out in the ether for those who want them - if y'all can forgive a Pollyanna kind of moment - I've found such joy in passing things along to people who I know will love and use the things I've been neglecting.  It rivals the joy I get from finding a really good Free Box.  We'll see which impulse wins out in the end (or if they come to a healthy understanding), but for now, Cinderella mice and I are sweeping out the corners, letting the light in.  It's tough, and there are hurdles: saying goodbye to things that have been friends.  But worth it. 

From here on out, we travel light.

Goal #1: Home

Close on the heels of the last post, I believe I have a solution to Goal #1.  And don't you dare accuse me of only reporting my hypothesis once I have a satisfactory result.  Because I've already accused and forgiven myself, so there.

But the important part.  Guys, I have a place to live!

After many a month Craigstlist emailing (getting duly spammed in return), driving to possibilities that were really too far away to be feasible, procrastinating, making excuses and procrastinating some more.  After making lists and reading through checklist-filled books of Oregon Landlord and Tenant Law.  After crying to the powers that be, "Why can't I just find a cozy carriage house somewhere?  Some earthen hobbit-home?  Is there nowhere in all of Portlandom that has a tree fort for rent?  And what is that Welcome sign doing in those Pullman train cars over by OMSI?"

Really, is this too much to ask?

But patience and luck (and a number of reality checks) prevailed.  Ta-Da!

Mine!

Isn't it pretty?  It's the upstairs half of this duplex, shared with a couple peeps.  One of those windows way up there will be mine, probably by the middle of the month.  Oh boy.  It's insulated, gots new windows, and a programmable thermostat.  The solar-powered lizard that regulates my body temperature purrs at the thought.  It's a short bike ride, or even a walk(!) from OMSI.  As well as some pubs (at least one of which has regular trivia, and another that has a fire pit and free jukebox), the Hawthorne food cart pod, Burgerville, a liquor store, oh man, this'll be awesome.  Please come visit.  I need to navigate my way to the closest public library, cheap gas, and WinCo, and then I will be Totally Set. 
'S really all I need in life.

Now on, on to the more measurable to-do lists!  The Tetris-brain of packing!  The many milk crates slowly transformed from transportation to furniture!  The LONG overdue and emotionally fraught process of Getting Rid Of.  But I think I'm ready.  I got nothin' but time, and the motivation to build a life I want to live in for awhile.  Surround myself with the useful and beautiful, and pass along the rest of the Things (vivid sense memories and all) to someone who could get use out of them.  I have this plan to force myself to cohabit with all my Things - whatever I'm left with after giving some away.  Through that process, I figure I'll be better able to determine what I really and truly need.  My hunch is "very little."

By happy coincidence, I just recently finished The Amber Spyglass on CD, and have been saving the last HP for just such a hands-busy, mind-occupied occasion.  Purr, purr.

EDIT:  It's done.  We did it.  We have it now.

Tonight my roommates and housing manager watched skeptically as every doorknob was jiggled and every switch got flicked.  All the windows opened and securely re-latched.  Shower turned on and toilet flushed - at the same time!  Armed with tape measure, digital camera and WD-40, Butchie here put on her no-nonsense face, amended some legalese and when she finally walked out that door, silver keys jangling in her back pocket, she was reasonably assured of the stability and security of her cozy new nest.  Boom.

Let's Go.

At first I thought, "Let's ease back into this.  Like into a really hot jacuzzi (invented by the Greeks, as Shirley informs us, but let's not give too much away just yet...) or taking a small bite of the soup you know you put too much cayenne in, but you're going to eat it all anyway."

Then I thought, "Nah.  Punch it."

So here's the short version:


January
New Year's drunk and dancing with the family.  Dreams of punching a rhino in the face.  Restarting ropes and silks class having lost untold muscle strength.  House-sitting in leopard-print, pool-tabled, sunken-tub Mid-Century Modern finery.  (Only locking myself out once.)  Birthday brunch for a woman I deeply admire.  Opening a new exhibit - Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science -  media, fancy-pants Gala, mummies needing security.  Only slightly losing my mind.


February
Lots more OMSI.  Nessun Dorma live!  Keeping the flu at bay.  Giving up three dozen eggs, having a very cute (though skeptical) ride home.  First time snowboarding.  White girl facilitating semi-awkward diversity training.  Suddenly moonlighting for the Grants department?  OMSI Educator Death Match. 


March
Who can tell?

Now and now and now
Here's what I did want to tell you.  I've had these goals, you see.  Since mid-January, sure, but they aren't resolutions.  I'm not going to call out parts of myself to say 'Stop' to.  At the least, I won't do that here.  Instead, I've got these things I want in my life.  And I'm going to get them.

1.  Get a place of my own to live in.
2.  Hike in the Grand Canyon.
3.  Go to Greece.

Oh yes, it will be done.  This year, because why wait?

Another world, another day, another dawn.  The early morning's thinnest sliver of light appeared silently.  Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.  There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic.  Creation holds its breath. - Douglas Adams: Life, the Universe and Everything.

Dateline: Cabo - SJD Aeropuerto

I know, I know, my Spanish isn’t actually that good.  But I’ve become rather attached to it.  I noticed this when I passed a pale, plump (German?) couple walking up towards the lobby as I was passing them downhill to go run on the beach.  “¡Hola!” I said, by habit.  They started and mumbled something reflexively.  And when the tour guide quizzed all his passengers at the end of the “desert safari” Mom and I went on, telling them (not asking, no – telling) that they had to speak seven (siete) words of Spanish, I cheerfully (tipsily) offered: pueblo, fiesta, pequeño, chicas, playa, cholla, tortugas! (Nouns – the linguistic domain of toddlers and tourists.)  Ha ha! And when a man in a shop asked me (en Español) where I was from, I actually understood his question… the second time.  However, my brain/mouth connection was still at half-speed, and by the time my face assumed an “I’m thinking really hard,” expression to buy myself time, he had asked again in English.  So I gave up and answered in English too.  But masquerading as bilingual in a tourist town where not everyone makes an effort beyond “Dos mas,” felt pretty good.  I think I like this Learning thing.  Maybe I’ll keep going.  Then I’ll annoy Everyone with my butchered accent!

Other highlights

Food:  The posole at the very touristy Fiesta was delicious.  I also had a Caesar salad with the dressing made tableside for the first time, fancy fancy.  And ohh so good.  I would change my life for that salad; and I do enjoy it when dinner is the show.  Let’s see… there were an uncountable number of tasty fruity drinks – I’m pretty sure I consumed a small island’s worth of coconut milk this past week.  I also was able to identify nopales in a salsa that was infinitely better than anything I’ve ever made nopales into.  I handmade a warm, happy tortilla (Mom handmade a warm, enormous pizza-sized tortilla) in a press, on a big skillet and munch munch munch.  I had fried cheese sushi (weird).  All manner of sea life that used to be happily floating along kindly graced my plate, then my stomach.  All in all, the lack of turkey and dressing didn’t seem so bad.

Flags:  The fiesta we went to reminded me a lot of the luau (man that took me a lot of trial-and-error to spell) from the Maui family vacation when I graduated high school: a good show, put on by a hotel, for people who don’t know better, but like a spectacle.  And it was fun.  Traditional costumes from many Mexican states, crazy abuelita characters and dancing with machetes.  Games, a burro (for some reason), then a mock Carnivale, so we all abandoned our tables and followed a parade around YMCA-ing.  And hey – remember the Macarena?  Mom does!  It is a cross-generational dance for sure, because P. Lily was not too shabby herself. 

You know what else Mom does well?  Tequila tasting.  Which was a part (initially not a big part, but a part) of the desert safari she and I went on.  I have recognized in myself that I feel disconnected from a place unless I can name its parts.  So I walk through a landscape going, “What’s that bug?  What kinds of animals live here?  How is that plant different from the ones I know?” endlessly until someone can answer my questions or I find out for my own self.  Only then do I start to feel at home in a place.  This is my third trip to Cabo, and each time has been marked with a kind of surrealism – it’s fun and all, a vacation, a break from my life – but it doesn’t seem like any kind of real life here.  Not just not mine, not anyone’s.  People don't really live like this – manicured lawns in the desert that are never walked on except by armies of gardeners.  Flamingos, swim-up bars, infinity pools.  Candles constantly lit and maintained, ashtrays raked and stamped with logos.  Toilet paper made into intricate flowers.  I ask you!  

So, this time – in an attempt to get a taste for Mexico outside of a gated “community,” I signed up (and Mom kindly agreed to come with) for an afternoon of hiking, plant identification, handmade tortilla-making, possible baby-turtle watching, and tequila tasting.  Our guide was affable and couldn’t pronounce my name.  He settled on Kristine, which I was fine with, and he said it a lot, because it was obvious I was paying attention when he talked about September 16^th being more important in Mexico than Cinco de Mayo, or how pouring one out for your homies is kind of an extension of Dia de los Muertos traditions, or what made the cactus in this area different from the Saguaros I’ve seen.  If he was amused by how enthusiastic a student I was, he was a bit shocked by how enthusiastic a drinker I was.  We tried the tequila blanco (distilled then bottled – no waiting! – my favorite) next to the reposado (aged at least 2 months – tastes smokier, like whiskey) and the mescal (made from green agave instead of blue agave – tastes like gasoline) for good measure.  None tried more than me and Mom, except for maybe our guide, who kept “sacrificing himself” on the blanco, the limes, the salt.  He, Mom and I were the only ones to “sacrifice ourselves” on the worm at the bottom of the mescal bottle, though thankfully we didn’t have to drain the bottle to get there.  Even so, it was a buzzed and blurry Jeep ride back to the hotel.  And for all the pep talk our guide gave us at the beginning of the safari (how we “weren’t like other tourists” because we were choosing to get up early and go away from the cantinas and t-shirt shops, I did while away my last full day in Mexico in a stupor, getting baked by the pool.  God bless the USA.

Fun: I’ve made a decision to spend the rest of my life barefoot in a bikini.  I might have to make some lifestyle choices (and some strategic negotiating of the OMSI dress code) but I think it’ll be worth it.  For serious, though: Running barefoot on the beach is my new crush.  Oh sure, it helps that the water is warm and the sand is mostly free of rocks and the sun is always out.  But it’s certainly something I’m going to try again at home… maybe in the spring.  Because I’m pretty sure a necessary part of running without shoes is being able to feel your feet.  And the ocean here is quite a bit more temperate than the one I grew up with.  Swimming in it was similarly amazing.  It’s like that part in Alice in Wonderland where she cries so many tears that she is buffeted about in a great salty sea and washed away to the next part of her adventure.  Being tossed and pulled here and there by water that tastes on my lips like the most comforting part of a childhood tantrum is a humbling experience.  A big, warm, wet hug. 

And speaking of wet hugs and tantrums, dear sweet Pea.  I love this child.  Pulling her through the water (assisting, really – she’s a dang good swimmer); spinning her around and upside down; dancing in the grocery store; answering her questions and then the questions that come from those answers.  I don’t know if the opposite is true, but she is such a good influence on me.  Reminds me to be patient, point out all the cool things around, to welcome the simultaneous terror and excitement of trying new things (Shrimp cocktail! Stewed pork!  White wines! – This last one was me, not her).  And when we were leaving the hotel, taking our final views of the pool, and the beaches beyond, she listed the things she was saying good-bye to: “Bye boats.  Bye flowers.  Bye sand.  Bye ocean.”  “Bye happy hour,” I chimed in.  And she turned to me with her Serious Face under a flouncy red hat and said, “No.  Happy hour is always with us.”  Out of the mouths of chiquitas!