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The Great Raw Experiment: Day 1
Art imitates life. Or is it the other way around? It’s so hard to tell these days. Over at Causecast, one of the things I’m writing this about week is raw food. And either because I’m so highly suggestible or because it seems like a good idea (or both), I’ve decided to go raw. For awhile. What does this mean? Well, for me, since I’m not going to join Mel Gibson with the Tiger Diet (go on, click on that), and I think that re-creating familiar cooked foods with some weird substitution (a raw counterpart) is both useless and a waste of my energy at this point, I’m basically eating…
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Community
I think I’m going to start a commune. Or host an orgy. I don’t know — which one is quicker? I moved week before last. I was able to walk, more or less, and I hired two semi-enthusiastic 20-somethings to take my paltry items and put them in the smallish truck I rented and take them out again 10 miles farther west. And I even had time to buy a robin’s egg blue sofa and a butter yellow leather chair, and they were even delivered the SAME DAY, after which I looked around, my head still slightly spinning on its axis, and said, “I’m home.” The next day my-neighbor-the-artist knocked…
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Brilliance
Q: Does time really slow down when you’re in an accident? A: Yes. Oh yes. I bought a motorcycle. The whole idea originated at about the time I fell out of an airplane, when doing things that made my heart stop and that created the World’s Largest Sudden Outburst of Endorphins made a lot more sense. I left New Zealand with the conviction that above all else, I must procure a motorcycle license, and soon! The class to get the license was sort of funny. About two-thirds of the students already owned motorcycles, had been riding around illegally on them for years, maybe, and were just now getting around to…
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Letting The Voices Take Over
It’s not often that we get to know, right at the moment it is happening, that the moment has come after which life will never be the same again. I live a dramatic on-the-surface life (juxtaposed with the under-the-surface what’s-she-going-to-do-next aspect, but we’ll leave that one under the surface for now, because this is my blog and I can show you what I want to, and hell, do you actually know what percentage of this (if any) is completely made up?) so I have those moments often. The first one that I recall with absolute certainty happened in the back-room semi-office where I did my work and spied on my…
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Wandering, Times Three
At 24, on weekends (when I had them off) for a while, I took to walking through the too-large, too-empty colorless high-ceilinged rooms of my new house, walking slowly past the new furniture, wondering where my soul had gone. Time stretched into frightening nothingness and it seemed that by walking — slowly, endlessly walking — I could somehow fill that void. It’s easy to find ways to fill up the void. Having a job that you take home nights and weekends, every night and every weekend. Having children. Then having more. Letting life revolve around you, propelling you round and round, always in a different direction, any direction. There are…
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Where I’ve Been Lately
Yeah, I’ve sort of missed blogging, but I’ve been busy. It’s this alternate-reality thing. No, really. A few weeks ago I discovered I can slip into this other form of reality. It’s way cool and yet sort of frightening at once, so of course I like it, I’m fascinated by it, and I can’t wait to do it again slash never want to do it again. So this is what happened: Matthew put on some music, and I became immobile. Went somewhere else. Spent an hour looking up at the skylight and the trees and whatever other little slice of outside I could see, the rain dripping on the glass…
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Acid
I am about 3 weeks late on a deadline. I am never late with deadlines (except for a notable exception because I can’t seem to operate Google Calendar). But this one requires going deeply into something, something I just don’t want to touch. But I have to. It calls to me, whispers to me at night just as I’m drifting into sleep and makes my eyes snap open as if on springs and my heart suddenly pound. I push it away with safe thoughts, good thoughts, and push my leaping heart back into my chest. It wriggles, fishlike, for a moment, then lays still, obediently pushing blood into my arteries…
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Skydiving
Yeah, so I jumped out of an airplane the other day. It’s well known than New Zealand is famous for bungy-jumping. When we got here there were countless airport brochures covered with alluring photos of smiling people about to hurl themselves to their doom. I thought about skydiving and it seemed sane by comparison—only a little daring like a walk on the foot-high barrier next to the path instead of on the path itself, rather than bungy-jumping daring of hurling yourself right off the cliff next to the path. I could do that. “Karen’s going to go skydiving,” Matthew remarked to his mom right after we got here. (He had…
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Spider Dance
The room where we’re staying here in New Zealand is teeming with life. That sounds so positive and lovely stated like that, “teeming with life,” doesn’t it? Like we’re in some fabulous wildlife sanctuary filled with tiny playful monkeys and exotic butterflies and mysterious yet-to-be-discovered species. Or that maybe we’re in a magical underwater world where each teaspoonful of this watery bedroom contains an entire ecosystem. Nope. We’re talking flies and spiders and tiny worms. Ew. One night I counted twelve spiders hanging from the ceiling corners. And why wouldn’t they be? There are at least 20 flies in the house at any one time; surely one must stumble into…
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Notes From Down Under
So, we’re in New Zealand. Once what I imagined as a rather exotic faraway place, one not all that high up on the List of Places I Might (Hopefully) Go One Day, now it’s mundane. Almost. Here are some things I have noticed: Pies. Every small shop/bakery/grocery stocks pies. Savory pies. With meat in them. Delicious, actually. Coffee. Kiwis are almost as serious about coffee as Portlanders are about theirs, though I am still not quite clear as to what either a “flat white” or “long black” is. I settled for a mochaccino because a) I always order a mocha when I order coffee out (about once every 3 months,…