Ho, Earthling!
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I Have Giant Spiders For Pets
I have lost my fear of spiders. No big deal. Just now I saw one there on the wood floor of my living room. His wingspan was at least six inches. No big deal. I just upended a glass jar over him, slid a folded utility bill under the jar (what else are those things good for, anyway?) while Mr. Spider danced over it, then took the whole thing to the front door and tossed him unceremoniously into the grass of my tiny front yard. No big deal. It’s a far cry from not-so-many years ago. When I was a kid and there was a spider in my room, usually…
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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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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,…
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I Totally Moved Here For The Dollar Coins
Last week I was in Washington, in that country that wanted me back so badly that at the border the Drug Dog took a shine to the rear end of my car and the three border guards standing around there with nothing better to do started peering through the back windows at the two boxes in the back of my vehicle and asking me questions like, “So, have you run over any animals lately?” I thought the prudent course was deny-deny-deny, so I put on my most innocent, shocked expression and feigned innocent shock. “N-n-no! I don’t think so!” I managed to stutter, innocently. That was the wrong answer. This…
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It’s Official
Next week I say au revoir to Canada, though not permanently of course. Our paths will cross again. I’ve already bought a bed. After struggling with the symbolism of what it would mean to own furniture again after feeling the heady freedom of saying “Everything I own is right here in my car!” for the past six months, I bought some. Well, one furniture. A bed. Surely that’s symbolic, too. A bed means comfort to me. Home. Warmth. Love. Not just any bed: I figured that as long as I am doing this I may as well do it up right. This is MY bed. So it’s the most comfortable…
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Home
I have a home again. At least, I left a deposit check and a lot of information about myself, and it’s my hope that it will mean picking up keys in a couple of weeks and then trying valiantly to fill a space that I already know is too big, but what the hell? Shopping for places to live has consumed me for weeks. Several times a day I’d comb through the offerings on Craigslist, looking for treasure. The perfect place, summed up in a paragraph and, if I was lucky, a couple of blurry photos. I hunted down property management companies and sifted through their inventory. I saw, after…