Situational Hippiedom and Tandem Adventures

In an attempt to quell the lingering blues that have been nagging me for so long, I’ve been making a concentrated effort to spend more time out and about and with my friends. During the past three days I’ve done some really significant socializing. I’ve been to Jen’s house two times; we lazed around on the floor and various articles of furniture, ate a lot, discussed future communal baking opportunities, and I got some serious dog therapy. I love having a friend’s dog that I can borrow for walkies, and of course, he loves it as much as I do. I just tend not to show my enthusiasm by panting and grunting so much. And I get some extra social opportunities thrown in because everyone who sees you on the street says hello when you have a dog. Jen told me it’s also a great way to get dates. So far this has not proven true.

Monday night I got to go to dinner with Louie, a friend whom I used to work with at Stone. I still work at Stone; he’s the one who took off to go pursue a degree in music at Humboldt State. Louie is great company, and he likes good beer, of course. At some point during dinner, we got sucked into the ever-present argument about whether or not I am a hippie, on account of my somewhat hippie-ish values regarding trees and being nice to other people. Why won’t this discussion go away? I don’t believe we ever came to a conclusion about me, but we decided that Louie is a situational hippie. Down here in southern California, particularly in Oceanside, where he lives when he’s not at school, he is definitely somewhat of a hippie--he’s got very long curly hair, a laid-back friendly attitude, his family is 80 percent vegetarian, and he’s a musician. Up north in Arcata, however, he’s nowhere near hardcore enough to be a real hippie. He doesn’t smoke pot, he bathes regularly, his hair is not in dreads, he hates the Grateful Dead, and he’s just too darn responsible. I had never realized that hippiedom was such a relative thing.

At any rate, Louie and I stayed up WAY too late that night talking (mostly not about hippies, thank goodness), and so he stayed here on my couch. The next morning after we got up, he sat down and played some utterly gorgeous pieces of classical music on my piano. It was bliss--sitting on my futon feeling the breeze sifting in through the open window, staring out at the profusion of greenery glazed with early afternoon sunlight, and listening to some really beautiful music made at the hands of a friend. We tried playing a few new pieces and noticed that he and I are just about equally as bad at reading music, although he actually knows what the words on the side mean. He even knows about timing! I’m glad that his education is working so well...and then there’s the fact that he actually practices every day; perhaps I should try that. Then we went to breakfast (at noon) at the Big Kitchen and stuffed ourselves silly on good food. Although I suppose that my fondness for the Big Kitchen does nothing to support my protestations of non-hippieness.

Last night I called up Alegra (no, she’s not fast, so quit asking). She was up for some spontaneous company, so I drove to her place in Pacific Beach. She is lucky enough to have inherited her family’s house on a fairly large plot with a big front yard full of fruit trees. It’s very peaceful; far enough away from the main drag to not feel like you’re in the shallow, too-hip world of PB nightlife. She was in the process of trying to use up her multitudinous carrots from her Be Wise Farm CSA box and was making a very yummy carrot ginger soup. Or, as we decided it was more aptly called, carrot GINGER!! soup. She had used fresh ginger root--and a lot of it. I brought her some tabouli that I had made in exchange. After munching on homemade yumminess, we headed out to the beach for a late-evening picnic. It was all very romantic but she didn’t even hit on me. Geez.

We rode her clunky and fantastic tandem bike down to the boardwalk--it was the greatest! We didn’t crash or fall over or anything. I’m not even sure that I’ve ever ridden on a tandem bicycle before. My only complaint was that in order to not throw off our balance, I couldn’t look to the sides too much and spent much of my time scrutinizing the print on the back of Alegra’s shirt. But it was all worth it. Her bicycle has a wire basket in front and three, yes THREE bells on it--one in the front and two on the back to compensate for the obstructed view. And sitting so close together meant that we could hear each other really well and we shared our respective “breaking down in front of the fire station and hanging out with firemen” stories. Hers was much better than mine, particularly since it involved the very bicycle we were riding on at the moment. We finally found a good bench without glaring lights to obscure our view of the waves, and sat ourselves down with a tiny bottle of champagne, organic dark chocolate truffles, and some of the best damn cheese I’ve ever had in my life. Lovely!! Alegra really knows how to show a girl a good time.

More adventure was in store on the way home, however, as the front chain slipped off its gear and got horrifically jammed when we had only pedaled half a block away from the beach. We tried to no avail to get it out with our fingers, and ended up walking halfway back to her place before we ended up at her friend’s house. Doesn’t that just happen to you all the time? You’re sitting at home relaxing and watching a movie, and then two grease-smeared young women show up at 10 o'clock at night asking to borrow some tools to fix their tandem bicycle? It took some effort, but we finally pounded the chain out of where it was jammed between the two gears, and after some prodigious hand washing and a little chit-chat with our friendly savior, we were off again. We managed to make it all the way back to her place with no further mishaps or need for assistance. Which was good, since there weren’t any fire stations around.

Introspection

I have spent much of my afternoon reading blogs written by other people--people who are delving into matters of much more sociopolitical relevance than I do on mine. This bothers me. Not because I feel inadequate or incapable of discussing situations more pressing than how my doctor’s visit went today, but because I am not doing so. I am not doing so largely because I’m feeling mired down with survival tactics rather than real honest-to-god living. I’m having a difficult time confronting all the myriad things I find wrong in the world around me because my own life is snaring so much of my emotional energy. Even though I feel justified in not being able to devote too much of my energy to crucial cultural events, I can’t help but think that someone who feels the way I do about social affairs has no business ignoring the world around me.

That said, I really think you should take a look at what others have to say: this is a blog entry about an artist who has more nerve and courage than I could imagine; I don’t think I could even have watched her show without running out of the room in squeamish terror. This blog post is by my friend who has been in Jordan for nearly a year; my favorite posts of hers are always the analytical ones where she digs deep into the core of human relations and the often ensuing psychological fallout .

I have been thinking rather intently of late about what the hell I want to do with my life. I’m a little old, I admit, to still be in the early stages of figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, but that is the truth of where I am. I had a great discussion the other day with a very kind, enthusiastic, and friendly young woman at Stone. She had taken my tour and somehow got me to talk about my Master’s in Education and my brief dabbling in the teaching profession. She is a teacher herself and is thriving at her job in Santa Cruz. She listened patiently to my reasons for not feeling up to teaching in the public education sphere--too damn many students to take care of, which strips you of much of your ability to actually CARE for them; too many restrictions from the administration about how you can teach in your classroom (don’t flunk too many students, it makes us look bad! Who cares if they’re reading at a second grade level as a high school junior?); etc. I enjoyed her non-judgmental sympathy and acknowledgment of our educational system's shortcomings, even though she has managed to flourish and maintains some real enthusiasm about her job.

Last weekend, after our dance troupe’s performance at the fair, I stayed at Evie’s house for a while. At one point, her cousin, Jessica, who is a beginning teacher, shared a lot of what she’s dealing with at her school. J is the kind of teacher I always thought I would be, but in reality, I’m just not strong-willed enough or don’t have enough guts to be that person. I’m not being overly hard on myself; I’m just finally coming to terms with who I am. Yes, I’m disappointed that I will never be that hero-teacher. But I simply don’t have the nerve to stand up to an entire school administration and say “Screw you, I am going to give those students who plagiarized their papers zeros and I don’t care if their parents call you to bitch about it.” This is the kind of thing that J does say.

Jessica is an inspiration; she is the epitome of what a teacher should be. She cares about her students deeply but doesn’t let them get away with sub-par work. She has been written up four times in the past month--as far as I can tell, mostly for being a good teacher and standing her ground. She wouldn’t let ROTC come into her classroom to recruit her students. Good for her! Specifically, she got written up for telling them “F- you. You’re not talking to my students!” Particularly when they had actually asked to speak only to the minority kids. I’m not kidding. They apparently didn’t want to enlist the white kids who were ostensibly much more college-worthy or would complain too much about being used as cannon fodder.

Through these conversations I’ve had with other teachers lately, I’ve realized that I have been right in my nagging feelings that I’m not a good fit in the public school system. I am chagrined about my shortcomings, but I’m being honest with myself and that’s a bit freeing. Constant battling with administrations and being asked to defend myself and my actions would require more psychological energy than I possess, not to mention that I am simply not as courageous as I’d like to be and probably would do as I’m told and then feel resentful about it and disappointed in myself for caving in. I need to turn this disappointment into something else. Use it as fuel to get my ass in gear and find that career niche that I really do fit into.

Please submit job offers to my secretary, Bob.

Deranged Knee

You may remember that I hurt my knee on my last archaeological survey. Something inside it has gone wrong. The medical phrase for that is "internal derangement." Really. Specifically, Mike the friendly physical therapist thinks that the most likely cause of my problem is a small tear in the meniscus cartilage that lies on top of the tibia bone and keeps the femur from scraping it when you bend your knee. It's not really that problematic except when I use it extensively; most of the time it doesn't even hurt unless I squat down for more than 30 seconds or climb something fairly steep. Still, it needs fixing. I can’t spend the rest of my life avoiding hills and stairs or walking more than 1 mile at a time.

After an hour and a half’s wait at the doctor’s office this morning (!), I was told that I am going to be referred for an MRI of my knee and to see an orthopedic specialist. I hope it helps. I worry that whatever is wrong in there isn’t bad enough to be obvious and I’m just going to have to live with it. That probably isn’t true, considering that I can consistently make my knee click in this really odd way by bending my leg toward my butt. I think what I’m really worried about is what Mike told me--that if it is a cartilage tear, the only two treatment options are leaving it alone until it heals by itself (two years potentially) or surgery. I like neither of those.

In the meantime, I continue to make poor use of my time off: spending too much time writing blog posts instead of looking for a place to live, for instance...

Chocolate Mountains

As tasty as that title may sound, it refers not to anything edible, but to a jagged range of hills in the northeastern portion of Imperial county. That was where the last survey I worked took place, and it was really amazingly lovely. That was a whole month ago, and I am just now downloading the photos from my camera. I have been too consumed with other matters to bother with it until now.

I just received some fabulously good news this morning--my worker's compensation claim (for my knee injury incurred on said Chocolate Mtns. survey) has been approved and they are going to write me a check for the past month that I haven't been able to work. Thank god! I was starting to be very very worried about how I was going to pay my bills this month, not to mention that I need some extra funds to be able to find a new place to live.

Now, on to the photos! I will only post a few here; the rest are on my Flickr page (click on the little animated badge on the right), so be sure to check them out. I can't really tell you how gorgeous this area is. I would love to be able to go there again. Seeing as how it's not accessible to the public, and that it's a military firing range, that may not happen anytime soon. I don't suggest hiking around out there unless you don't mind losing a few limbs or possibly your whole self in the undertaking. One morning when we got horribly lost on our way out to our work site (it was an hour away from our hotel in Calipatria), we found ourselves in the middle of a very eerie and fantastic tableau. There were dozens and dozens of mangled and rusting tanks sunk into the landscape for target practice, and even more ominous, hundreds and hundreds of bombs sticking up out of the sand like upended metal fish. It was exciting in a frightening sort of way. We beat a rather hasty but careful retreat--after Matt snapped a few photos. I don't have any of those, but I'm not sure they would really do the scene justice anyhow. The camera lens can only capture a few tanks at a time; they were so huge and were scattered over a really wide area.

At any rate, here are the few photos I promised. These are a sampling of the fauna we saw during the survey; be sure to click on them to make them bigger, they look waaaay better that way. There are more landscape photos on Flickr, as well as detailed descriptions; I'm too lazy to type them out twice.
Unidentified but beautiful snake (June 14th--I just learned that this is a coachwhip snake)

Very tiny baby tortoise. See the sand grains clinging to its shell for scale.

Very cool desert iguana

This isn't a good photo, but these lizards are REALLY hard to photograph; they are lightning fast and very leery of humans.

Photographic Medievalness

As promised, I now have just a few photos to share from my eventful Memorial Day weekend (see previous post for details). I would have had them up much sooner, but my internet connection has been rather churlish and spiteful lately. I think I've gotten it chided back into proper behavior for the moment, touch wood. I don't have the one photo that I was boasting about previously, and I apologize--you know, the one with me throwing a sinister look at the camera as I sip from a skull. I know you are all wound up with anticipation, but you'll have to wait it out...I'm sure that no one else finds it as riveting as I do anyhow. I was told that I don't look sinister or threatening at all in that photo, just cute. Hmph!

I also apologize that we have no photos of the other colorful war attendees: the guy dressed up in the amazing Pan outfit, complete with hooves and furry legs (or was he just a garden-variety faun? He didn't have a set of pipes on him), the belly dancers in the ramada dancing to some really outstanding percussion, the singers from the "Bawdy" version of the bards' concert (of course including terrible songs about sheep complete with inflatable lipsticked ewe), the fighting, and all of the other merchant's booths. Of course, I do think, as do numerous other SCA members who told us so, that Kiva Han was one of the best booths at the event. We had no visible PVC or cheap tarps, darnit: lots of tassels, tapestries, a wooden booth and counter, and a lovely little pavilion on the side with low tables and hookahs and full of rugs and pillows to lounge about on.

So here are those photographs:
This is another version of the one at the top. I included two because various people had their eyes closed in each version. This is all of the Kiva Han women except Anna, plus a few hangers-on.


This is Kiki and me in our fabulous hookah lounge. Lounging.


Kiki and me standing in front of our lovely coffee booth. Pretty much all of our costumes are borrowed, but the jewelry is ours, dangit. Check out Kiki's gorgeous necklace!








Kiki looking beautiful, as always. She really doesn't need to cover herself with adornments and makeup to look good.





















Me modeling my sparkly outfit (all mine except for the blue hip scarf, by the way) that I bought at the previous war in February. Sparkly!!