Extravaganza

Hey kids, I've been making some good use of my spare time lately. Namely, I've been testing the limits of my camera taking photos around my apartment and my neighborhood. I've posted a slew of new photos on Flickr today and yesterday, so you should go check 'em out. You know, that little animated badge-y thingie down there on the right. Yeah, that. The one that says, "Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!" Pick it. Most of the new photos I posted are in the two folders for Olga's house and the Sylvie the cat one. Those of you who are not little furry beast enthusiasts should stick to the one about Olga's wonderful abode. Oh, there are a few more that I took the other day in the rain, as well, but they aren't in a folder. I can't afford to pay for an upgraded Flickr account at the moment, and they only allow you three folders for free. Stingy bastards.

In other exciting photographic news, I took a very long walk around my neighborhood today and took a buttload of photos, some of which turned out to be worthwhile. I can't post them all on Flickr yet because I've used up my monthly quota, but I'm hoping that renews tomorrow and I can subject you to a whole new visual deluge. I'll post just a few here for you right now (don't forget to click on them so they are bigger and better to look at! Besides, then you can have fun trying to find me hiding in one of the photos). Oh, and other good news: My PICC line comes out tomorrow! Yes! No more IV antibiotics for me. I am looking forward more than you could possibly ever imagine to taking a shower without mummifying my arm in saran wrap. Oh glorious unencumbered shower! Oh plastic-wrapless joy! I'm positively giddy.

One last little thing: Say something dammit! You people are reading my blog; I know you are because I can hear you breathing. I want to know what you think! Show me some love, for god’s sake. Don’t make my mom have to carry this burden all by herself--she’s really crazy and I’d also like to have something to read other than flippant little comments by an elfin retiree who signs all of her messages “Maaaaaahhhhhhh.”

Rain

It has been raining all morning; it has been raining all day--and not just your typical misty southern California sprinkles--much of it has been real rain. It is beautiful and glorious. I am listening to moody Icelandic music and bundled up in sweats and my warmest coat and hat: I left the front door open so I can be closer to the rain. I'm smiling.

Good Theater

I have had a weekend chock-full of quality entertainment. On Saturday four of us went to see Pan's Labyrinth at the Hillcrest Cinemas. It was excellent. It is a fairy tale in the truest classic meaning of the title. It IS a morality tale; its social commentary is poignant, whether or not you know anything about the Spanish Civil War. The movie was dark, disturbing, full of the pain and cruelty of mortal life, but infused with otherworldly beauty and strangeness. I loved it. Although there were several parts where both Lisa and I had to hide our eyes from the violence on the screen, I don't feel that this was a flaw. Unlike so many movies today, as disturbing and graphic as some of the violence was, it was absolutely essential to the story and was integral to character development. The bad guy in the story was somewhat of a caricature, but this also was fitting and not too exaggerated. He was the perfect fairy tale villain, and not quite as one-dimensional as he originally appeared to be. Another small thing that impressed me was the minimal use of CGI special effects--most of what you see on screen is live action combined with puppetry. The acting was superb, the cinematography gorgeous, and the fantasy perfectly blended with the real world in which it was hidden. I doubt everyone will like this film quite as much as I did, but I think it is highly worth your while. Just don't forget to bring someone with you to hold your hand through the scary parts, and beware the most frighteningly creepy movie monster I think I've ever seen.

On Sunday my elusive brother and I went to see a performance of Don Quixote at the San Diego Rep. I finally cashed in my free tickets that I won at the Stone Christmas party. It was well worth the wait. Like everyone else, I read the Cervantes book in high school, but can recall very little of the story other than my highly favorable impression of it. Even though most of the plot details are fuzzy in my memory, I still know enough to tell you that this play was only very loosely based on the original novel. And that is one of the things that made it so wonderful. Paul Magid, one of the original Flying Karamazov Brothers, penned the screenplay and was one of the lead characters. He turned the story into a romping physical comedy punctuated with moments of touching drama and a healthy dose of "why can't all these Muslims/Jews/Christians/white people/brown people just get along?" lamentation. The set was austere other than a luminous backscreen lit to alternately look like a glowing night sky or bright daytime. The costumes were the real visual treat--people became 12-foot high silent windmills, haystacks, towering knights in flashing silver and black, and on one occasion, a Spanish duchess embodying a cross between a Russian diva and Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts in the most fantastic skirt ever. This is not the most perfect theater production I've ever seen, but it was absolutely one of the most entertaining. There were singalongs, crazy juggling sequences, lots of cross-dressing, more innuendo than you can shake a stick at, live musicians accompanying the whole thing, and my personal favorite: a ridiculous puppet show starring several members of the vegetable family. If you have time and money this week, you must go see it--the last show is next Sunday, February 4th. I may just go see it again, if I can wrangle more free tickets. I'd like to see Señor Quixote in his camouflage pantaloons one more time.

SD Rep page

Foysters

Friday I went to the beach for the first time in much too long. K took me, which was especially fortunate because we decided to go to Torrey Pines, and being the geologist type of guy that he is, it was even more fun than usual. He introduced me to the fossil oyster beds (foysters!) that form a thin, dark, stratum bursting with layered undulating shell in the lower formation, the proper name of which I have of course already forgotten. I believe that the cliffs there are made up of, um, something on the bottom with numerous sedimentary layers caused by a geological process which I can’t put a finger on topped off with the San Diego Formation, which is the sandstoney rock on top that forms all those sinuous rounded sculptures against the sky. I will be embarrassed when K reads this and realizes that all his fascinating explanations have already been lost on me.

I do remember that the bottom formation possibly dates back as far as the Miocene or Pliocene, which is pretty damn old. That would make it somewhere between 23.8 and 1.8 million years old. It was a gorgeous experience to be surrounded by the history and alien beauty of the rock formation on one side and the expanse of waves, sky, and sand, on the other. The ocean was particularly beautiful. It was a cold day, and we were there in the late afternoon. The sky was a hard, glorious blue, and the wet expanse of beach between the waves and the cliffs was mirrolike, reflecting the slaty blue of the sky and the mottled grey and rose of the clouds. The waves were higher than usual, piling up in the distance like turbulent hills, limned with the light of the lowering sun.
The sun had set by the time we began our walk back to the car, and it was very very cold. The cold was intensified by the unexpected soaking I had brought upon myself when I attempted to cross a narrow space between an outcrop and the base of the cliff. It was full of roiling ocean water but didn't look that deep to me. I was wrong--I sank in past my knees and then was too slippery to climb up the wet rocks with any dexterity and flailed and clawed my way up the rock in a panic as more waves rolled in to drench me. K caught my entire ungraceful progress on film from his much drier vantage point, laughing at me the whole time (I didn’t mind--I was laughing even more than he was). I did manage to make it safely up to the top of the rock, but was trapped there by the seawater churning around its base. I had more opportunity to study the situation as I waited for a relatively calm moment, and my journey back was much less perilous and much less wet than my initial mad impulsive scramble had been.

By the time we got back to the car, I couldn’t feel the entire front thirds of my feet anymore. I was wet, sandy, and freezing. But I was happy. A little physical discomfort is a small price to pay in exchange for the full wild beauty of the ocean and sky.

Happy Green Thoughts

A quick note on why I am happy this morning. One, sleep deprivation is making me loopy--I woke up at 4:30 am today and never got back to sleep. Consequently, the other things that made me happy came about. To make the most of my awakeness at such an awkward hour, I called my friend in Turkey, and I emailed my friend in London--and he emailed me back just now--all these things inspiring a whole new population of smiles on my face. And then there is the image of my friend yesterday, who looked extra hot in her jade jewelry and her black scarf slung oh-so-sexily across her neck. Her necklace is truly a stunning masterpiece of carved variegated green jade, and it makes her eyes look absolutely amazing. It matches the myriad colors in her irises perfectly. She looked so gorgeous I wanted to take her picture, but then she got all self-conscious on me. If she didn't have a boyfriend and if I wasn't not a lesbian, I would've proposed to her on the spot. She looked that good.

Turkish Parking Garages

I just spoke to my friend who is living and teaching in Turkey. It’s nearly 5:30 in the evening there and the dogs are getting ready for their nightly musical. Apparently, there is a huge parking structure not far from her apartment building, and it isn’t finished yet but people park there anyway because “they are Turkish.” The structure is a gigantic monstrosity that she described as an “Islamic Mad Max kind of thing.” In addition to all the adventurous Turks who park their cars there, it is residence to a very large pack of stray dogs. They wander out and about in the town during the day, but settle down in the structure at night. When the call to prayer sounds early in the morning, and in the evening, every single day, the entire dog population of the parking garage joins in in a round of raucous howling. Irish (not her real name) told me about a memorable night when a visiting friend was there. The moon was rising over the black landscape, and as the dogs’ howls rose with the sound to prayer, her friend was struck by the unmelodious wailing and the moon’s austerity and said it was the most eerie and beautiful cacophony he’d ever heard.

It sounds lovely. Irish said that it’s not too disturbing in the winter with the windows closed, but that it’s unbearable in the warmer months. I suppose hearing that twice a day every day could get tiresome. Particularly when one considers that the first call to prayer begins at 5:15 in the morning. They only howl early in the morning and in the evening--the other three prayer times per day the parking lot dogs are silent because they are out roaming about the city. I can just picture these dogs, these happy Islamic prayer dogs, stopping in the middle of whatever they are snuffling through, wherever in the city they are romping, to lift their muzzles and howl along when the call comes.

Cupcakes, IVs, and Farewell

Hey kids, it's about time I shared with you some of the more entertaining aspects of my hospital visit. The fact that there were any at all was a most unexpected bonus. First, I'd like to pause to thank all the wonderful friends who called and visited; that means the world to me, it really does. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I am truly blessed by an inordinate number of beautiful, caring people whom I am privileged enough to call my friends. One night while I was there, as I was lying there futilely attempting to sleep amidst the beep machines and nurses talking in the hallway, in order to calm myself down and cheer myself up a bit I counted the number of people who had called or come to see me. I came up with a grand total of 26. That averages to over 8 per day. See? I am blessed.

Now, on to the needles! I’m not going to get too graphic; those of you with squeamish constitutions may read on without risk. As you know, I am now at home doing my IV medicines here. In order to facilitate this, they put a PICC line in my arm at the hospital. A PICC line is a “Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter.” This is different and preferable to a standard temporary IV line in that the catheter ends up in a much larger vein closer to your heart, and therefore you can leave it in place longer without risking inflammation and irritation to the vein. The line itself is a long, very flexible blue tube only about a millimeter and a half in outside diameter. It has a two-way valve at the end so you can both flush medication through it and draw blood back out the other way (which is really nice so they don’t have to stick you repeatedly for blood tests!). Mine was inserted in the inside of my upper left arm, and the end of the tube does go just about right up to my heart. I’ve seen it; I know!

More so than your average person, I suppose, I find medical technology to be riveting stuff. I ask for lots of explanations on the procedures, and the medical personnel performing them are usually very happy to oblige. I don’t think their typical patients really want to know all the gory details. After being wheeled down to the first floor in a blanket-swathed wheelchair by Pedro, I was taken to a room full of hoses and tables and cameras and x-rays and huge pieces of medical machinery that looked like torture devices from a 1950s science fiction movie. Thankfully the technicians were all very friendly and had a great sense of humor. They not only allowed me to take photos of everything, they occasionally posed and even showed me a photo of one of the doctors that they had vandalized and turned him into a giant cockroach. And they gave me a cupcake!

I was placed on a long table (more toasty blankets on top) with my left arm stretched out on another little table next to it. Jeff used a sonogram to find the vein in my upper arm. It was fascinating--he showed me how if he applied pressure to my skin, the vein pretty much collapsed on itself. This is one of the ways you can differentiate it from an artery, which otherwise looks like an identical black circle on the sonogram monitor. Arteries have much thicker walls, so they don’t compress as easily, not to mention that there is a lot more pressure inside them. I asked for a copy of the sonogram photo, and he graciously autographed it for me after only a little bit of badgering on my part.

As the line was inserted (they numb up your arm really well, and use a fairly big needle to guide the catheter in, and just carefully measure the length and feed it all the way up the vein), they used a special camera--I can’t remember the name, sorry--to check the placement. There was a large discoidal lens centered above my chest, and it basically takes x-ray photos, but in full live action! A movie! I was totally fascinated. I could see the monitor easily from where I was lying, and watched as they they threaded the line in. It was rivetingly entertaining--I was really enjoying watching my lungs inflate and my heart beating its weird sideways spastic beat. I could see my ribs moving as I breathed. When they were done, they took a “snapshot” of the finished placement of the line for the records. Here it is: you can see the PICC line coming in from the right hand side (that’s my left arm) and angling down along my spine toward my heart. Neato, huh?

Well, the fun had to end sometime. After taking one last photo of Chantel in Karl’s camouflage radiation suit (I asked her to try to look like Karl in the photo; this is her impression of a cantankerous southern white guy), she wheeled me back up the hall to await my escort to my room on the 8th floor.

After I’d been back for a while, my roommate, Edna, whom I’ve grown to really like, admitted to me shyly that she had missed me while I was gone. There is something about being laid up in bed in a small room surrounded by alien-looking medical equipment that can act as a strong bond between we humans. Edna cried when I left the hospital, and I was very sad to leave her. I kissed her on the cheek twice. She has a wonderful, caring family and a lot of faith to carry her, but I knew she was still lonely and missing her home. I didn’t want to leave her. She has my phone number, and I sincerely hope she calls me soon. I want to know how she is faring.

Mending

Hello my friends--I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I’ve had several people tell me they’ve been checking my blog daily to see if I’m better and have been repeatedly disappointed. My recovery continues to be a series of ups and downs; no steady upward continuum, unfortunately. I suppose I just need lots of time at this point. Which is difficult for me to adjust to--I am not the sedentary type, and it is very frustrating for me to be out of work. I know that I could be using this time to do all those things that have been nagging me for months, like purging a few years’ worth of old paperwork, organizing my jumbled heaps of photos, and practicing my piano playing--but somehow it’s just not going that way. For one thing, my medicine schedule is pretty intense: I have to do some form of IV meds four times per day, plus two hour-long sessions of nebulizing. Sometimes I can consolidate my bouts of medicating, but not enough to keep it from consuming a large part of my day. Alas.

I have frequently found myself in a state of pensive calm this past week. Or you could call it zoning out, daydreaming, withdrawing from this careworn world. Whatever it is, it’s provided me with a few small answers to a single looming question preying upon my mind lately: what am I going to do with my life? So far all I have is this: learn to swing dance, take guitar lessons, and start painting again. A good start. I need more joy in my life. However, art, music and joyfulness won’t pay my bills for me. Reality sure is a pain in the ass. Hence my withdrawal into my daydreams and longing for poetry. I think I will spend the day there instead.

here are just a few of my favorite photos I took while in the hospital:
night sky from my room


IV stands outside the elevator


daily nurse assignment


shiny backlit gauges on my wall


Point Loma, San Diego Bay, and the ocean from the front of the hospital on my floor

Back!

Hey kids,
I just got home about two hours ago. I am experiencing some unpleasant and unexpected emotions. I was so very very excited about the prospect of being discharged and coming home, and getting to sleep in my own bed and reunite with my kitty of insanity. However, now that I have been home for a little while, I find that I am terribly depressed. It's because I'm all alone in this house. While the hospital is a lousy place to go to get some sleep, it is never ever lonely. There is a constant stream of nurses, visitors, lab workers, respiratory therapists, doctors, cleaning foks, acupuncture doctors, and nutritionists all ebbing and flowing through the room like a human tide. It was kind of like a big party the whole time I was there, but with lots of medicine and plastic tubing and needles and not enough chairs. At any rate, I am feeling very alone right now; it was so sudden. I had thought I wasn't going to get to come home until tomorrow morning. I just haven't gotten used to the change of pace and the loss of constant company. I will further this update soon when I'm a little more rested--I have many hospital adventures to relate.

Got the Hookup

Hey Chilluns. Welllllll, shee-it. Looks like I am hospital bound. I get to go lie down for hours on end and get needles stuck in my arm dripping medicine into my veins. Here's the funny thing--I am actually almost (ALMOST) looking forward to it. Those of you who have known me through my other hospital visits know what a startling and disturbing revelation this is. Well, okay, truthfully I'm not really looking forward to it at all--I still frigging HATE hospitals; it's just that I am harboring this unreasonable hope that being hospitalized is going to make me feel all better right away and then all of my life's problems will be solved. I know this is irrational. My doctor even told me on the phone that I shouldn't think that a few days in the hospital is going to magically make me back up to 100% operating capacity. Weeks, it might take, he said. Weeks! Jesus god. I know he is right, but as I said before, numerous times, and probably 10 times just in the last hour and a half: I am tired of being sick.

The problem is most likely this: you see, there are these gross little microbeasties--yes, the technical term is bacteria, but I believe microbeasties is much more appropriate in this case--called pseudomonas (aeruginosa is the species I’ve got). It’s a very common strain of bacteria. For people with normally functioning lungs it doesn’t present any sort of problem. But for folks like me who don’t have working cilia, or for people with CF, pseudomonas is a ratty little curse. Once you are an adult it is much harder to get rid of; in fact, it usually can’t be completely eradicated once you are colonized as a grown-up (children seem to be able to get rid of it completely with treatment). I have had this stuff for at least 7 years now, and every once in a while it rears its slimy green head and makes me sick. This time it is just taking a lot longer for me to recover than I’m used to, and I’m not taking it very well.

Pseudomonas on wikipedia

As far as the impending hospital arrival goes, I'm not sure when I will be checking in. I'll update you as soon as possible. Hopefully somebody can loan me a laptop or an ipod so I don't go out of my mind while I'm in there. At least I have two new books to read!

Groan

Well, good morning. It's four a.m. and I'm up and about, eating cereal and wishing I could sleep. I finally gave up on trying after lying in bed awake for over an hour, listening to my lungs rattle and gurgle and feeling like there was a small child sitting on my chest. I am tired of being sick. At this moment, I feel like calling my doctor and telling him to put me in the hospital, to do ANYTHING so I can start feeling better. Sheesh. I will call in a few hours, and see what happens from there. Heck of a way to start off a post, huh?

Two thoughts occurred to me (well, quite a few more have, but only these two are civil and worth writing down) as I sit here in my zombie-like state. I already told you about K's visit yesterday, and how much it cheered me up. I didn't mention one other thing that he did that made me happy. At one point while he was here I felt really guilty because I honestly don’t have money to spend on ANYthing, and so K bought me a mocha at the coffee shop. We then walked a block to this amazing used book store by my house and I proceeded to buy myself a $4 copy of ”The Philosopher’s Stone” by Colin Wilson. This is where the guilt set in--I told K that I felt like I had swindled him into buying me coffee when I seemed to be perfectly able to spend money at the bookstore. He would have none of it. He told me it was okay; after all, “This is a BOOK we’re talking about!” What a great man. He is right--there should always be money for books, even when you can’t afford to feed yourself.

The other thought occurred to me just a few minutes ago, while I was sitting here at the desk munching on my peanut butter Panda Puffs (hey kids--they're organic!). I was eating out of one of my mom's old Corelle bowls. This is all well and good, except that I noticed that it just didn't seem to taste as good as usual. Aside from the early hour, it is the bowl. Just the other day I broke my favorite bowl--it was a beautiful all-black small stoneware bowl that a dear friend of mine had thrown himself on his pottery wheel. I had been eating out of that bowl for years and years. It was the one I ate from nearly exclusively--if I had used it and it was still dirty when I wanted to eat again, I would wash it out rather than get another bowl. I ate everything out of that bowl. If someone else happened to use it, which was rare, I felt startled and violated. I was very attached to that bowl. I know, it is just a thing, but it is a thing infused with a lot of sentimental value for me. An object which has been created by the hands of a good friend is priceless. And somehow, my food just doesn't taste as good eaten from a plain white porcelain bowl as it did from that little black vision of pockmarked glossy beauty.

Jordanian Taxi-napper; Sylvie vs. the Tissue Box

Today was brightened considerably by an unexpected visit from K, Frances Goodman's husband. He just got back from visiting her in Jordan, and stopped by today for a long chat and some yummy Lebanese food at Mama's Deli. K told me a great story (one among many) about FG while we were eating. Apparently, about a month ago, she got into a taxi with a driver who was on his first day on the job, and who really didn't know the streets of Amman at all. They got horribly lost. He didn't know where they were, and neither did FG. To compound matters, he spoke almost no English whatsoever. Thank goodness FG is learning Arabic! Apparently, their conversation went something like this: Driver, speaking the only English word he can come up with (trying to discern where FG is from): "British?" FG replied (in Arabic or English, I'm not sure), "No, I'm American." At which the driver said frantically, and in the only complete phrase he appeared capable of uttering in English, "I am not kidnapping you!" At this point, FG told him, in Arabic, "Of course you're not kidnapping me, you don't even know where you're going!" And the taxi driver laughed uproariously. At least they both thought it was really funny. I find it bizarrely hilarious that the only English phrase he knew involved kidnapping.

???

When we got home from lunch, Sylvie provided further entertainment. She has been playing with a tissue box for the past two days, and today she really got carried away. She discovered the opening in the top where the tissues came out, and poked various appendages through it which got stuck repeatedly. The best moment of all was when she launched herself through the entire length of the box, so that she had two legs sticking out each end, and then STOOD UP. Holy crap, it was funny! She was all stretched out and rectangular and robot-y looking. I wish I could've taken a picture, but she hopped out of it too quickly. To console you over this great loss, I have provided a series of photos of yet another tangle she had with the box around the same time:

More on Drugs, no...wait...WAR on Drugs!

Hey kids! I couldn’t resist posting another fabulous Asylum St. Spankers video--although I realize that if you weren’t able to read the previous post during the 2 minutes before I wrote this one, you will see this first and these references to “first” and “another” are completely meaningless and really likely to make you all confused. And if you weren’t before, you probably are now! ANYhow, these people are pure gold, and this is an energetic and dance-worthy commentary on the ongoing War on Drugs. This one is a bit tamer than the first one, but has a lot of references to, well, drugs, oddly enough. I also recommend two viewings--one to just enjoy the song and listen to the catchy lyrics, and a second time to read the very pertinent facts scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Maybe you are one of those amazing people who can do both at the same time. I, however, am most certainly not.

Enjoy!

Read before you Watch!

I apologize that I’m not really writing anything important or telling you what’s up with my life. Truthfully, it’s a bit unpleasant at the moment. I’m getting sicker rather than better among other things. So in the interest of a nice little diversion, here are two fabulous video offerings for you. These are musical performances by a crazy and politically left-minded sorta bluegrass (sorta not) group called the Asylum Street Spankers, a band that I anxiously wanted to see when they performed here last year (only a few blocks from my house, no less), but wasn’t able to. Bummer. Now I really know what I missed! These videos are not for the easily offended or people who are outraged by others making fun of things that really aren’t funny at all. I believe it is human nature to turn unbearable situations into humor as a survival tactic, and I really appreciate it when artists come along who are as good at it as these folks are. Without further ado, have a look!

A word to parents: the video contains bad words, or words that sound like bad words. Keep the 5 year-olds away while you watch! Unless you want them prancing around the house for the next 2 weeks gleefully shouting “Asshole!” at the top of their lungs. Oops. Sorry.

Enjoy with my blessings and good cheer.

Candy Dispenser

Wow. A friend of mine just emailed me this photo and I needed to share. I have nothing witty or important to say; no stories about how this relates to anything. It just makes me smile. A lot. Smiling is a very important thing to do with your time, so I hope this photo encourages a few upward facial muscle motions for you, too. I was given no context, no explanation, nothing at all to shed any light on this picture. In a way, that makes it more fun. It raises a lot of questions. A lot. I feel that I shouldn't share mine with you so that you can let your own imagination run wild. Enjoy!

Over Belled

I almost named this post "A Preponderance of Peppers," but that would have been, well, ponderous. I am at work and waiting for my coworker to get back from lunch. In the meantime, I want to tell you about what was on my menu this afternoon. It was just too good not to share. Last night I accidentally made myself a really delicious dinner. I had meant to simply boil up some fresh ravioli and perhaps smother them in some sort of pre-prepared tomato stuff. Well, I had no pre-prepared tomato stuff--it's a rarity in my pantry. Then I looked over and spied the three gorgeous bell peppers that I had been sent home with when I left Olga's house on Tuesday. Not a green pepper in the bunch, they were a luscious portrait in shades of orange, gold, and red.

I sauteed an onion, two of the peppers, and some spinach in a bath of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and oregano and thyme. It was amazing! Not only was it incredibly tasty, it was beautiful to look at. When the ravioli were done, I spread them out on the plate and dropped a large pile of the pepper "sauce" on top in the center. It looked like something you'd find in a fancy schmancy restaurant--well, except for the cheap thrift-store stoneware plate. Best of all, it was a satisfying surprise after what I had originally intended to eat for dinner--a real feast for all of my senses. All hail the simple round beauty of the bell pepper!

New Fire

Many of you already know that Logan has, as one friend put it, Run. This is distressing. Yet, unbelievably, I don't feel chagrined about my previous exuberant post. I still feel lucky. What?! Yes. My previous exuberant post is just a testament of my relentless (and sometimes nonsensical) optimism. No matter what kind of shit happens, I always expect the best of people. With the exception of our president. Ahem. I like this quality about myself. Others may see it as naiveté, warrantless positivism, me being a doormat, ignorance, flat-out idiocy, you name it. But I really do feel that things will work out, and I probably will write another exuberant post the next time something happens in my life which thrills me and that I feel is the most unbelievable good luck. I have sent out countless messages about such situations the past several years. Some of you may recall these three in particular: my three different teaching jobs--all instilling me with a fierce sense of victory and an unstoppable conviction to go out there and save the world through my newfound perfect job. All three lasted less than seven months. Do I feel chagrin about my initial enthusiasm and passion in the light of apparent failure? No. Am I speaking like Rumsfeld? Lord, yes! I know you are curious, so I will tell you this: Logan has a friend going out of the country for a month who needed a house-sitter. In the interest of saving money, she chose this rather than to move in with me.

My cat just fell out of the window. If anything can cheer a person up, it is a cat scrabbling about on top of a double-hung window and falling off, tangling herself up in the blinds on the way down. While I'm a bit (perhaps more, but I'll never admit the extent of it) depressed about my current situation, I still feel excited about this year. I have never felt the turning of a new year with the power that I feel in it now. I truly do feel that something new has happened; the past few days have been laced with a sparkle that I can't explain. Hope. I enjoy this in spite of, and perhaps because of, not knowing where this tiny spark of optimism is coming from. I feel that this is a truly new and shiny year more keenly than I have in nearly a decade. I have had some mildly philosophical discussions about New Year's Eve with a few friends during the past few days. It is an arbitrarily marked event, of course. It has no basis in reality or any intrinsic value or meaning. Each civilization has chosen a different moment at which to celebrate the turning of a new era, a new season, a new chance to get things right this time around: the renewal of the world.

The Aztec, in particular, had a new year ritual of which I’m particularly fond--probably because it involved fire. This particular ceremony was carried out once every 52 years, at the end of a full Calendar Round cycle. The Aztec calendar system is far too complex to explain here--I highly suggest further reading to you. The end of the 52-year cycle was a time of great trepidation for the Aztec--there was no guarantee that the world would continue; everything was in a state of flux, balanced upon the whims of the gods, who could decide that they had had enough of these silly humans and wipe them out if they chose (the Aztec believed that this current era was the “Fifth Sun”--the fifth incarnation of human creation; there was no guarantee of the perpetuity of this era, and the end of the Calendar Round signified a particularly vulnerable time in the cosmos). The night of the new year, all fires in the entire Aztec metropolis and outlying villages were extinguished. Every single one. I can imagine families sitting huddled in their huts around their cold hearths in the dark, full of fear of the unknown, wondering if the world was finally coming to an end. At midnight, priests watched the stars to make sure they would continue in their eternal paths. If the Pleiades crossed a particular point exactly at midnight, it was a sign that the world would continue and new fires were kindled (in the chest of a sacrificial victim) and carried by runners to every household. This was like the sun coming up again, granting life to humans by the grace of the gods once again.

This relates to us all, even today; we humans have always possessed a great love for ritual, ceremony, and pageantry. I am no exception. The designation of a new year, arbitrary as it may be, is a chance at renewal for all of us; we can start with new fire, a clean slate, refreshed and reborn.