There but for the grace of God and Prozac

I do want to be clear. I'm not suicidal now. I have never been actively suicidal in the past. Even at my worst points, the closest I came was a passive sort of, "Maybe I wouldn't hate it if I never got out of bed again," never anywhere close to, "Getting out of bed will never again be worth it so I'm going to fix things so I don't have to."

But... I don't know why I should be so lucky. I do have amazing friends, a loving family, a full, busy life. But so do many other people, and that doesn't save them from that particular death. Self-awareness is absolutely my thing, and I've been an explorer inside my own mind, and it's not just all clover living in here. Just this week I've absolutely been prey to nearly overwhelming emotions that have absolutely no external cause. There has been no recent trigger to set them off. No unusual stress. No loss.

And yet I've sat at my office desk nearly swamped by a feeling of restless anxiety. Unable to move, yet cringing at the intolerability of sitting still. Breath shallow, heart pittering like a frantic rabbit, and a desperate urge to just not BE THERE. To be ANYWHERE ELSE. No matter what my brain tries to tell my body, even knowing the fact that nowhere else will actually be better, none of it helps. For no reason.

I've escaped to the ladies room, sat in the stall, and wept. I've literally bit back sobs when someone else comes in. I've felt desperately hopeless, completely alone, and it feels like that pain will never stop, no matter how I try to tell myself it will. I can't even pray for an improvement to my life to make me happier, because my life is really pretty wonderful. None of it helps. For no reason.

This is why I take medication. Specifically, I'm on fluoxetine, also known under the brand name Prozac. Because the cringing, the panic, the weeping, they aren't me. I'm not a frightened or even a timid person. I'm not a negative, willfully mopey person. I know who I am, and I know where I stand, and nothing about my situation right now causes me unhappiness or fear.

And yet...

Even now, when I'm thrilled every day to be the friend of wonderful people, highly accomplished and well appreciated at my job, and the brand new aunt to a brand new niece, even now I can wake up, get ready for work, go into the office on a perfectly normal day...

...and find myself in a hell of no one's making.

Because something in the chemistry of my body got jacked up along the way. Maybe at some point I'll find some way to permanently readjust it back to natural balance. But right now, it's out of whack, and medication brings things back around to normal life. For me. For which I'm lucky. Really, unbelievably, incredibly lucky.

Because we're all different. Not everyone finds the right medication as quickly as I did. Not everyone has as few external stressors as I do. Some people start from a position of doubt about their self worth, which is miles away from the position of quasi-arrogance I tend to inhabit.

So if you can't comprehend why anyone would ever take their own life; if you can't imagine life ever getting that bad, and then you stand amazed when someone whose life you might even envy dies from suicide; well, I'm not sure if I can explain it any better. I can only try to share bits of my own life to illustrate. But if you've only ever been sad for reasons, I'm not sure how to convey how different and how much more debilitating it is to be sad for no reason. Especially when people who have never faced it refuse to understand why you can't just fix it.

So be kind as much as you can. Be supportive. Build people up with belief, and don't doubt that they're trying as hard as they can. No one wants to be this way. Accept that your inability to understand might be a combination of a lack of empathy you might work on and a lack of experience no one would wish on you. But it's not a sign of superior strength, sanity, or morality. I'm a strong person. I'm a sane person. I'm a moral person. And some days I cringe at my desk or cry in the restroom for no reason.

I've never really wanted to kill myself. But I don't wonder how people get to that point. I wonder what amazing luck has kept me from it.

Pulling Joy out of the Lost and Found

I lost my father, Bob Berwick, to a sudden heart attack, thirteen years and one month ago. I'm not going to lie, I still miss him almost every day. But something has shifted in me, that I've only noticed in this last month, and I wanted to talk about it a little.

You see, every year since he died, May 3 has been a hard day for me. That's the day he passed, and also the day his father died, several years before him. Some years I consciously remember as it approaches, and feel sad. Other years, I don't even know what's making me so moody, blue, irritable, unsettled, quick to cry, etc., until I look at a calendar and realize what day is coming.

This year I didn't even remember that the 13th anniversary had been marked until two days afterward. And I wondered if I should feel a little guilty, but I knew better as soon as I had the thought, so I just... said a little grateful prayer, and felt happy to have let it go. I felt at peace. For the first year, I remembered to celebrate his birthday, and let his date of death go by without a thought. And that felt completely right.

Part of it is probably that I spent that day hard at work with friends. May 3 this year found me in the Sherry kitchen, chopping vegetables, peeling shrimp, mixing, stirring, and otherwise helping prepare in advance a bounty of wonderful food to feed the musicians of the Birdfoot Festival, due in town later in May. I got to spend that day with Tom and Tracey Sherry and Tanya Battye, amazing, wonderful, and delightfully fun people to talk with and dance with and cook with. It was a busy and an upbeat day, and I didn't once remember to grieve amid the cheerful and aromatic bustle.

Part of it is probably the medication I'm on. I marvel to look back and see how much depression was keeping me down. I was doing all right. I was coping. I was making it through just fine. But I was crying every day with no real reason, and when I HAD a reason, it was just unbearable. Living, laughing, being myself... it was SO HARD. It's ridiculous how effortless it feels to be positive now, now that everything in my body isn't weighing my soul down with chemical sadness. It's not that I think of Dad less these days. But finally, FINALLY, I can think of him with more love than pain.

For a long time, if my father appeared in my dreams, I became intensely anxious. Even asleep, I knew that this time with him was tragically limited, and I felt like I had to make him see that we didn't have long, and that I must must MUST tell him I loved him. And somehow I never could. Either I couldn't reach him, or I couldn't make him understand, and the waking from every one of those dreams was to lose him painfully all over again.

In the last month, though, I've noticed that Daddy has been in my dreams a lot, but something in my mind is... just letting him be Daddy. He's there, in the background, a solid, warm, comforting presence, leaving me and everyone else to do our thing while he watches football, lying on his stomach in the den, or sitting in his LazyBoy, smoking a cigarette, glasses down his nose, reading a Tom Clancy book.

I dreamed the other day that he had to work late, so Mom, Brooke, and I were going to Momo's together for Easter, and we'd see him there Saturday night. He'd be in time for mass Sunday morning. He pulled into Momo's yard driving a dark green truck, hauling a trailer. I saw the truck through the sliding door in the TV room, and ran out to greet him. Not because I had to make this tiny sliver of time with him count for as much as I could, but because he was my father, and I loved him and was happy to see him.

And this time I made it to him. And I hugged him and rested in his arms. And I didn't feel anxious. And I didn't feel sad. I felt only an uncomplicated happiness, the same way I did when he was alive and I thought he'd always be there.  Because in some way, I know he always will. If I ever really need him, he will be in my dreams. And whatever happens to us after we die, I feel like nothing in this universe can be real and true if it isn't real and true that he will be there, waiting for me.

I'm crying now, of course. Because I'll never stop wishing I had him here on earth with me for real. I wish that he were here to read my book and tell me what he thinks.  He'd be a tough critic, I know. But I also know that, while part of that would be him pushing me as always to be exactly as amazing as he believes I can be, at least half of it would just be him trying not to be overwhelmed with pride in me. I have the courage to do the things I do because of him. And at last that realization brings me nothing but joy.

Climbing out of Shadow

I told myself I would write this post. That it would be good for me, and might be good for others. I told myself that the first day of the new year would be the perfect time. Because I want it to be more about looking forward than back, really. And because I wouldn't have time to do it on the last day of the old year, since I'd be traveling, then entertaining. So today, I need to finally get to writing. And I'm not at all sure now how to do it.

So I just will.

Many of my friends had an amazing year in 2014. There were pregnancies announced, babies born, goals met, blessings out right and blessings in disguise, and for all of these things, I am happy and grateful. For me, personally, the vast majority of 2014 was the worst year of my life. And I've had some bad years.

Don't get me wrong. There are many little moments in a day when I mentally take a step back and marvel at how fortunate I am. I have a secure job that pays me enough that I can fill my tank all the way up whenever I stop at a gas station. I know some truly outstanding human beings, and one of the few things that brings me to moments of true humility is that the most amazing people I've ever met love me and call me friend. I have a family, both immediate and extended, that loves me just as I am, unconditionally, enjoys my presence, respects my absence, and supports me no matter what. Everything I can do to give myself the best life possible, I have done and am doing, and I'm doing it well. I was voted most likely to succeed, and in everything I can affect and effect in my life, I'm definitely succeeding, by pretty much anyone's standards.

The problem is, I can't affect and effect everything. There are things I can't control. And this year, they all crawled out of their cracks and bit me in the ass.

I won't go into all of them. Some of them were truly minor. Some of them pale in comparison to others. Some of them were really significant, and each of those really deserves their own reflections. But there was one central and incredibly devastating theme to 2014 that I want to share. I'm not really sure why. I don't expect consolation or resolution at this stage of the game. I think... I think it's out of the Prayer of St. Francis. I seek, not so much to be consoled, as to console. I'm not alone, and I want other people to know that they aren't, either, and that even someone who seems completely together... isn't always.

So, here's the thing. I was told, early this year, that I have suffered premature ovarian failure. Somewhere in my mid-30s, I basically went through menopause. I will never have my own biological children. Never.

I know there are other options. I'm not really at a place where I'm ready to actively consider them. I'm still grieving. I'm still single, so I'm sorting through this mostly on my own (and dating was hard enough before this monkey wrench got thrown in). I'm still just trying to accept the... finality? Immutability? The idea that a road I was trying to find my way into, and really wanted to travel, is irrevocably closed to me? Something like that. I see the other paths, and I'm still just not able to choose among them yet, so I'm in a bit of a holding pattern while I continue to deal with the enormity of one lost dream.

And for me, this is an enormous loss. Perhaps the greatest one I will suffer. I may find truly joyful ways around it. Or I may feel pangs, twinges, or vast surges of regret for the rest of my life. I don't profess to know. All I know is that, this year has been truly horrible for me to live through, in spite of all my seeming success. I've been seeing a therapist, and that's helped to some extent. I've been praying, seeking understanding and guidance from my God, and that's helped to some extent. I've allowed myself to just be broken, and to admit that brokenness to my closest friends and family, and their compassion and love and sympathy and support have helped very much.

And, after thinking about it carefully, and discussing it with my therapist, I've started seeing a psychiatrist. I came to realize that I was suffering from more than sadness, more than grief. That, in spite of the good in my life, the challenges and the smaller lost hopes throughout the past few years had slowly eroded my morale chemically as well as spiritually. My psychiatrist agreed that I appear to be suffering from situational depression. No matter how many ways my mind and heart try to frame optimism and hope, my body, my feelings, just can't seem to keep up. So together we discussed how we could help them get back in the game.

For two months now I've been on Prozac. I've been super lucky that side effects have been minimal, and have all faded as I've stuck with the regimen. I was hesitant to make this decision for a long time. I'm not saying I think antidepressants are the only way to go, a cure all for everyone. Pills don't solve underlying problems. But sometimes even solving the problems won't help without them, and now I'm so glad I made this choice.

I had forgotten that it isn't normal to cry every day. For me, it was. I had forgotten what it was to feel uncomplicatedly happy for a friend with good news. I remember now. I'd forgotten what it was to really have hope that life would be joyful, and not only have hope for the future, but to feel joy in the present. It's AMAZING. And hopefully, like the depression, it can be self-perpetuating. I'm looking forward to having my own feelings back, but having them back to what was normal before I slid into this depression. I'm a little afraid that I'll slide back in once I'm off medication, but I feel like I can deal with that if it happens, and deal with it positively and constructively, not just survive it, and having that feeling about my life, no matter what happens in it, is a gift so amazing that I can't begin to convey it.

So maybe this just looks like another success story in the life of Laura. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. I've made some good choices for myself, but I still have a lot to work on. But maybe that's why I'm writing this. Maybe I just want to be honest about myself. I make a lot of things look easy and sunny, even when I struggle in my own shadows. I guess I just want to reach out to other people trudging along darker paths, many similar to my own, and say, we aren't alone. People who might look like they're living the life, might also be struggling, and just hiding it well.

For the most part, I'm going to keep hiding it. Not just for the sake of my own pride, but because I don't think most people are all that interested in hearing how much I feel like my life sucks in certain ways. And because I don't want people to worry about me when really I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. I've got help now. I was never suicidal. I have lots of options, all of them good, and I can see that better now. Not just know it, but really believe it.

But if being up front about my being barren and being on Prozac can help someone else facing similar problems feel less ashamed or less alone or less daunted by it all, then this was well worth writing. Because there but for the grace of modern medicine go I. And with psychiatric help, I'm thankful to feel like I'm really living my favorite part of my favorite prayer:

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

 

On Depression, On Suicide, On Not Being an Island

I've been trying for hours to write something that completely and meaningfully encompasses my thoughts on depression and suicide. And I just can't. Plenty of people have been talking about this in the day since we learned of Robin Williams' suicide, so I keep asking why I'm bothering. But... in the past twenty-four hours, I've learned new things about people I know well, and they mean more than the words of a stranger. I hope that, by adding to what's already being said, I'll add a voice closer to home. I'll add something that will make a difference, not to the general public, but to people I know and love.

Let me come right out and say, I have struggled with depression, and I have contemplated the relief it might be to die.

I may not really be able to fully understand chronic depression (mine is situational; it has had a specific trigger), but I know what it is to hold hell within my own soul, to have nowhere to turn within myself that's away from pain or loss or shame. I know what it is to have spent my last drop of hope that the future will be better, and to be unable to believe in my heart the cheering things my head insists are true. And I know what it is to feel perfectly okay with the idea of not waking up in the morning.

If I don't talk about these things openly, some of that is not so much fear of what people will think as being territorially possessive of my own experience. My business is my business. I am a reserved and private person. Still, I'm very lucky to have close friends that I can confide in when I need to. I can feel the balance in my mind shifting, and when it begins to tip too far, I have my safety nets. I know I can't do this alone all the time, but I also don't want to worry or upset people unnecessarily. So I haven't been very open about these things in the past.  If you genuinely feel you need me share more than this with you, we can talk.

The only thing more that I'll say about myself is that the trigger I mentioned is grief. And grief is a pretty common part of life. I'm actually going through a lot of it right now for personal reasons, which is probably why I can't find the distance I need to be more thorough without rambling. What I want you most to know, if you're worried for me now, is that, sometimes it scares me, thinking how I could fall down this rabbit hole, and because it scares me so much, I've done what I need to BEFORE things get bad to make sure I have help climbing out. I am not afraid to ask for help. I will always seek help, because no matter what pain I'm in, I never, EVER want to hurt you. I love you too much, and I owe you too much for the love and friendship you've given me.

But I have one last thing to say about other people.  One of the things that makes me feel most isolated and alone and hopeless is someone who absolutely doesn't understand. Who thinks it's a matter of will power or determination or positive thinking. People who think, since I'm smart and talented and successful, what's my excuse for not being happy? What was Robin Williams' excuse? Isn't it kind of our own fault? Shouldn't we just cheer up, look on the bright side? Count our blessings?

This is wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. As wrong as it is to think that hunger is the fault of a child born into poverty, or blindness is the fault of the person who brain was damaged by fever. I'm not talking about the everyday blues, or even the anxiety attacks I get sometimes when I'm stressed. This is a self-perpetuating chemical imbalance that leaves even someone with my cast-iron self-esteem open to the ugliest, snidest, most sadistic of my inner voices. If you have no experience with depression, consider yourself lucky or blessed, but not superior. I don't say this to judge you or to scold you. I honestly envy you. But please, PLEASE accept that you have formed an incorrect opinion on something you are fortunate enough to know nothing about.

You don't have to empathize or understand, but remember this when you hear about someone battling demons or losing that battle. There, but for the grace of God, and your love and friendship, go I.

Where Am I?

I was digging into some old documents and found the following rambling:

I started thinking, I don't know why, about how the ancient Egyptians preserved the heart but threw away the brain (after extracting it through the nose) because they thought the heart was the center of being, the residence of thought, feeling, self, the soul.

And I thought about how I feel my thoughts coming from my head, somewhere behind my eyes, and conveniently located near my mouth so that they can be informed and shared by/with the world around me.  But I wondered, is that just a culturally created perception behavior? Could I recenter that sense of self so that it felt like the focus of my being was in my chest cavity instead?  I tried, and I found that I could.

Then I wondered, should something as precious to me as my essential and unique personhood be located in such a conspicuous place?  Maybe I should hide it somewhere.  Somewhere seemingly innocuous and inconspicuous.  Like, not my little toe, but the one next to it, on my left foot.  Could I reach inside and refocus myself such that the core of my soul settled in a toe?  I tried, and I found that I could.

So now when I'm feeling shy of people around me, maybe I can try to be braver and more openly friendly with the thought that while I interact with them, they may think they know where the real me is at, but little do they suspect that I've hidden my true self in my appendix, or a bicuspid.

I think... that I think too much.

5/26/2011

Lenten Lillies

I repose my soul
In Lenten quiet
Englobed, expectant
Deep in dark earth
Innumerable hopes
Kept close in my heart
Cool, moist, still
Chill as young spring
Contained, reflecting
I wait, I want, I wait...

Slowly spreading roots
Fine as filigree
Nascent pathways
Outstretched fingers
Feeling through loam
Around, toward, into
Fresh reserves drawn in
To arms outstretched
Reaching upward
Pressing out against
All that closes in
All that holds me still
Breaking through the shell
Breath held until...

My soul bursts forth again
Into sunlight, new as morning,
Bright as dawn-bloomed lilies. 

Some Dreams

Some dreams, the only thing worse
Than having them is the waking up
Sitting in golden sunlight amid
The rocks and rubble of broken slab
Looking out from the levee across
The river, gray and glinting and
Rustling in a warm, soft breeze
Looking up into his eyes, blue blue
Blue and deep and so close close
Catching my breath feeling his on
My cheek and his lips so close close
Close to mine and his warmth golden
Like the sun and soft like the breeze
In that moment of eternity before
That one first kiss, there's only
Ever only one first kiss and this
This was going to be ours until
I woke alone and cold in the dark.

Summer Moon

Moon, pale gold like early summer
Whispering, "Autumn..." in my ear
Murmuring weariness in rain-laced wind
Drooping, half asleep, worn thin
Nights of watching, exhausted by
Just the sight of sun
Brilliant, always, as youth
As fire-glinting joy
Ebullience without end
Leaving only listlessness
Worn out ennui in its wake
Cover with cloud your dazzled eye
And dream... 
                    ...While I
Weave words among the summer grass
Tall and wet and rustling
Thoughts like fingers following
Field mice as they whisk away
Slipping from my hands like hope
slipping from my mind like truth
Slipping from my heart like youth
Quick, cup the falling leaves
To catch and hold elusive wisps
Spilling over the ragged edge
Leaking through the smallest crack
Quick, before it slips away
A pen, a page...
                ...Anything at hand
A parched and brittle reed
Snap the point to sharpness
Prick the vein
Write in blood upon the sky
Hopes that were and are no more
Unwritten, they'll have never been
Just dry corn jostled, trampled
Lost amid the harvest
Fallen onto stony ground
Scooped up by flocks of hungry stars
Bursting from the parting clouds
Words scattered, gobbled up
And gone, gone with the faded moon
That murmured autumn in the summer heat...

Put the pen down, dreamer
You cannot write on sky.

Birdfoot Chamber Music Festival 2013 - A Musical Feast at Madewood Plantation House

On Sunday, May 19, the Birdfoot Chamber Music Festival began its second year of festivities with A Musical Feast at the Madewood Plantation House.  Open rehearsals in the afternoon and early evening hors d'oeuvres with wine were followed by a concert of selections from works to be performed throughout this week. The evening culminated in a delicious dinner by Chef Stephen Stryjewski of Cochon, where guests mingled with and met the brilliant young musicians that have come from all over the world to share their talents with us.

The beautifully preserved and restored plantation homes of the American South enshrine a cultural history as rich and fascinating as it is difficult and deeply vexed, but the intense intimacy of chamber music as a genre is amplified by the antebellum grace of Madewood.  These are the chambers this music seems made for, and hearing it here is completely unlike any other music listening experience. High, shimmering notes sparkle in the crystal chandelier. Lush middle tones unfurl along scrolls and leaves of plaster molding.  The deepest notes billow and undulate in lace curtains draped against dusk-dimmed windows. Damasked wall paper, gilt frames, dark woods, and pale marbles all capture and resonate with the tapestry of sound, both broad and intricate, miraculously spun from empty air and woven into magic by a only handful of mortals with nothing more than wood, hair, ivory, steel, the skill of their bodies, and the passion in their souls.

But this is not the insulated opulence of wealth and rank, separated in a bubble from the vibrant, chaotic world outside. The stark, neoclassical lines of tall keyhole doors in this correctly symmetrical rectangle of a room reverberate with strange, unearthly harmonics and overtones, softened by the faint murmur of breeze through oak and Spanish moss. Flame-colored roses and carnivorous pitcher plants adorn each table, amid china, silver, and wine-filled glasses. And as the most ethereal music floats up to the ceiling, it drifts into the lost, lazy wanderings of a mud dauber wasp, buzzing drowsily from window to window. Everything here conspires draw together a civilized refinement and a wild swamp savagery into a union so unique to Louisiana, and so appropriate to this festival.

After all, at its essence, the Birdfoot Chamber Music Festival is not about keeping chamber music in the chambers of the elite. If A Musical Feast at Madewood evokes and brings to life an iconic and historical view of chamber music as performance for the privileged few in a luxurious setting, this week the Birdfoot artists and organizers will surely explode that stereotype in a variety of venues, from community center to university concert hall, and by mentoring and featuring many of New Orleans’ own young musicians. They will release chamber music from an insulated, Fabergé elegance, allowing it to fan out and flow like the Mississippi delta that gives the festival its name, to live and breathe in our often delightfully unrefined city, and to take root and grow in the minds and souls of a broader, brand new audience.

Do NOT miss this.

Gull Wings Gray

Gull wings gray
And gleaming white
As mist on foam
At silver-shadowed dawn,
The vast and hollow roar
Of immensity brought near
Rolling into shore
In a crashing tumble,
Salt and sand and spray
Cut clean through
By an aching cry,
Taunting, flaunting,
Arrogant above,
Aloft on knife-edge wings,
"Mine, all this is mine
And I belong
And every day I glide,
Riding the horizon line
Between serenity and storm,
Peace and passion,
Water and wind.
In a sudden swoop
I shatter the divide
Separating sea and sky,
Then, leaping into air again,
I am mastered and I am
Master of them all
And here I am complete."

Otto - Eight Great Years

The year 2005 was not a good year.  That was the year I made the decision to separate from my husband.  Our divorce was finalized two days before Katrina made landfall in New Orleans (I still lived in Houston, but the storm did not go unnoticed there).  So it stands to reason that Valentine's Day, 2005, would not have been a good day.  And in many ways, I'm sure it wasn't.  I don't really remember. But something good did happen that day.  That was the day that, knowing I would soon be on my own, I took myself down to CarMax in pursuit of a car of my own.

I knew that the CarMax I was heading to had a Honda Civic that was dark green, just like the Accord I'd wrecked the year before.  I loved that car, and was hoping for something as close to it as possible.  I test drove the green one, but something just didn't feel right. I had a second and third option picked out from the website, so I asked to drive the white one next.  The white Civic felt GREAT, and I decided, since there's no going back, it was time to move forward.  I put half down and drove my new car off the lot.  In that first week, I fell in love, so much so that I decided for the first time that my car needed a name.  In that instant, the name that came to me was Otto.  I swear it's because I'd been reading Willa Cather for grad school, and there were characters in the stories named Otto.  I didn't see the pun until half a minute later, and I laughed out loud, sitting there in my car in the dark, on Sunset Blvd. near Ashby.  That pretty much settled it.

I moved out.  I lived in some friends' spare bedroom. I moved into my own apartment, in the same complex as my first very own apartment, back sophomore year in college.  I went to work. I went to grad school. And Otto got me where I was going.  The first months weren't all smooth road, though.  In exchange for a ride up to Caddo Lake after the semester was over, a friend offered to let me stay at his family's lake house for a few days. The sun on the cypress trees and the smooth lake water covered by lilies, the quiet magic of Caddo, was just what I needed, wound tight by end of term finals and my own personal demons.  After a couple of days, I felt myself again, and more at peace.  And it's a good thing.

We'd been out on the Cypress River on the boat, up to Jefferson, TX for chicken fried steak. When we got back, the winch to raise the boat out of the water wasn't working. We had noticed smoke on the shore, and now we realized it was coming from very near the house. We hurried up the slope to find that a tree limb had fallen into the driveway, taking out the power to the house.  The live lines had set a retaining wall for the parking area smoldering, and the upper limbs of the branch had engulfed... my car.

Otto meets a tree! - Near Caddo Lake

Really, we got off easy, Otto and I.  If I'd parked six feet closer, the main bole of the limb would have landed directly on the roof of my car, causing major damage.  The large dents and scrapes caused by the smaller limbs required quite bit of body work, and explaining to the insurance company how a tree limb fell onto my car on a clear day of calm weather was pretty amusing (the agent thought my speculation that it might have been a squirrel frat party was hilarious).  Still, there was no damage to the frame or structure of the car, and the body shop fixed my Otto up just like new.

Later that year, we got a chance to really bond.  Katrina was a horrible, horrible disaster, so when Rita threatened to head to Houston, way more of us than really needed to hit the road out of town.  My mom was between houses and my sister was in her freshman year up at Texas A&M, so I headed north to Bryan, where my godparents live.  Or I tried to.  I threw a box of Poptarts and three 2 liter bottles filled with water into Otto and hit the road early in the morning.  Over the next seventeen hours, I ran the air conditioner as little as possible.  I ran out of power in my cell phone. I went crazy quietly in my car. I heard someone else go crazy loudly in a car up ahead of me. I became entangled in a Keystone Cop style farce trying to evict a tree cricket from my back seat while traffic was stopped, only to have to suspend my efforts when traffic began to move again.

I reached Plantersville, TX at midnight, and there everyone else when either right or left, and I took the road less traveled, and went straight.  Thirty minutes later (after a final, successful stop to get rid of George the tree cricket), I was finally in Bryan at my godparents' house. And after a full day of idling and about a hundred miles of travel, Otto still had a quarter of a tank of gas left.

That was our first year.  We've been all over Texas together, from Houston to Big Bend.  In 2009, Otto came with me to New Orleans.  He got his brake tag and a plate with a pelican on it. We've had our break downs here and there, but he still gets 34 miles per gallon on a good day, and no less than 28 on a bad.  I've kept him well maintained, and he's been something I could count on while I went through so many other changes.

Otto takes me home - Near Medina Lake

It had been in my head last year that I might buy a new car in the next couple of years.  Well, a used car, new to me, at least.  When some friends mentioned they would be selling their 2006 Prius, I had to start doing some hard thinking.  When they made me an absolutely fabulous deal on it, the decision pretty much made itself.  I was getting a new car.  And I would need to find a new home for Otto, knowing that any trade in offer I got would probably be auction block prices, and he might just be sold for scrap.  I didn't want that.  Call me sentimental, but my Otto is still a damn good little car, with 70K miles left, easy. That's a good five or six years, give or take, with continued maintenance.

Otto on our last trip - Near Big Bend National Park

I have a friend who didn't have a car, and took public transportation or had to bum rides or walk wherever she went.  I could only see this as an opportunity to get a little return to put towards the new car, and give someone else, at a great price, what Otto has been for me since the day I bought him: independence, safety, and freedom.  My friend was more than happy to buy my little car.  Yesterday, ten days short of what I've always considered his birthday, Otto got a new home.  Today he is titled and registered under someone else's name, with brand new plates and everything.

I'm liking my new car a lot, but it doesn't have a name yet, and I'm not sure it ever will.  I don't know if any car will ever mean to me what Otto has.  We've been through too much, during the hardest time of my life.  But I know this was a good... no... a GREAT decision, because now I know that this great little car has gone on to mean just as much to someone else.

Isaac ~ It begins

The wind gusts get stronger and stronger, and there is a constant patter of rain.  Sharp through these sounds, I hear a frog croak emphatically from the courtyard next door.  It's such a vast, turbulent world in my eyes, and I am a giant to this frog.  I hope he shelters safe in his little nest, and I shelter safe in mine. Today has been tense.  Fitful showers and fickle breezes under a gray sky all day.  The first rain shower began just as I left Matassa's, where I was picking up some last minute supplies.  That was about 8:05am.  The air was hot and sullen and the rain sporadic and light most of the day.  It seems now like it has decided to storm in earnest, but for now I do still have power.

I keep thinking of baskets with too many eggs.  Like the two window panes beside my bed, above the back door.  My drawing board is now wedged flush against the wall, between those panes and my night stand.  Like the shutters that I had to wedge shut and couldn't latch because I couldn't open the window from the inside.  They're now tied tightly with an octuple thickness of twine, in addition to being wedged.  The walls tremble now in the stronger gusts, but I remind myself that this house and its neighbors have been around for worse storms, and are still standing.  We're going to be fine.

I wanted to get some sleep in before the worst began, but I'm just too keyed up.  I listened to the radio for a while, trying to get some info on what to expect, but it just made me irrationally nervous, so I turned it off.  I've started a jigsaw puzzle.  I have my Nook fully charged, and a full library to read by candle light.  I may nap on the couch for a while, too.  I some extra hours worked and had a relatively calm evening, with all my preparations made.  I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

I believe I'll post this now, while I still have internet.  I'm sure I'll have more to report down the line. I expect to be up most of the night, and completely drained by the time we next see the sun.  Better rest as much as I can while I can!

Isaac ~ Pre-Storm

The early morning sun is bright in a brilliant blue sky and the air is clear as crystal and eerily still, except for the occasional fitful stir, making light silken flags and delicate fronds twitch nervously, but leaving all else still.  The office buildings stand silent, giants locked in still waiting by some curse. I see more people on my walk, but they are all strangely mute, speaking in hushed voices, except for those rambling with illogic and unreason on the corners.  As I reach a stretch of street where the traffic thickens, I realize the stillness that has me on edge has been deepened by the dearth of traffic on more distant streets, Rampart, I-10, thoroughfares normally gently humming on the edge of hearing at this time in this place, but now virtually silent.  The city knows what is coming, and even the pigeons are mostly absent.  It's such a pretty morning, and so surreal.

The day passes as all days do, with talk up and down the corridors about plans to leave, plans to stay, staying safe either way.  On line updates are my brain-breaks, and towards the end I turn my thoughts to what I can take with me. What I can work on without internet when the power goes out, as long as my laptops have some battery left.  What I need to get at the store. Checking again to see when and where the storm will hit, how big it might be.

I leave work and the sun is wandering vaguely in a drift of high cloud.  The sky is gray, the air hot, and the sporadic breeze of the morning has become more intense, more insistent, more constant.  I get home, and for hours I'm closing shutters, stowing potted plants, making lists, taping windows, checking the lists to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, returning calls to my mother and some friends, reiterating my plans, reassuring everyone that I expect to be safe, that I've done what I can, that we've been told to shelter in place, that this is not Katrina, that I'll text everyone on Wednesday when the storm has passed.

Finally night falls, and I've done all I can think to do for today.  Tomorrow I will hit the store one more time, since they expect water pallets in the morning.  I'm tired, but I can't wind down just yet.  I grab my camera, and prowl the streets.  After a trip to the river and a glance at Bourbon Street, it's time to go home.  There is laundry to finish, lists to check again and update, and a printer to move even farther from the windows.

And then sleep.  If I can.

Birdfoot Chamber Music Festival, 2012

This week New Orleans has hosted brilliant musicians from all over the world as part of the very first Birdfoot Chamber Music Festival, an endeavor spearheaded by friends of mine from the New Orleans dancing and musical community.  Tonight I went to the first evening concert.

Chamber music.  A chamber, a room, but somehow more intimate.  A space only the privileged few might enter, and to enter that small auditorium and be awash in unparalleled music created so close by felt intimate, and was a privilege.  When you listen to an orchestra from the mezzanine or balcony, most of the sound reaches you, the purely music part of the music experience.  But up close, you hear the touch of horsehair to heartstring, the breathing, the thud of heel to floor that punctuates music as a physical art.

And the physicality of music seems most evident in the playing of instruments that are people-sized or larger.  The pianist's shoulder blades jut out with a tension suspended in the breadth of the chord he pounds out from the keyboard.  Each knob of his spine is the next step in an arpeggio.  The cellist must hear the notes she draws from her instrument not only with her ears, but with her knees as they embrace its body, and in the resonant throb beneath her breast like a second heartbeat.  The cutaways in the back of her strappy black gown reveal the muscles straining to express the visions of the mind in tones that both rive the soul, and mend it.

Violin, viola, violoncello, the syncrony of their bows is a dance in unison, with now and again one dancer stepping out with a spring and a flourish, then merging seamlessly back into the chorus steps, until all diverge into reels of their own, only to rejoin suddenly, intuitively, into the shared pulse that moves them.

This is a music that speaks of Life.  Not just the life of a single person, though that's there, but LIFE as it is created in the space amid people.  The four on the stage.  The eighty in the room.  The hundreds, the thousands that brush against and bounce off of each other every day like Brownian particals in a sunbeam.  The billions that flush the face of the earth with living blood and hearts beating each a rhythm of its own.

The music is the briefest of conversations between strangers, as riffs call and answer from one player to the next.  It is the intimate discourse over years of friendship when a melody is split and shared, when each player expresses only some of the notes.  It is the reflection that comes alone in thought, almost unaware of the discourse that surrounds and informs it.  And it is the teeming of individual thoughts as they unspin unshared but simultaneous and harmonious... or discordant.

This music is life, each bar containing the unexpected, in spite of the illusion of notation on a page.  Anything could happen in spite of, because of, the best laid plans.  And as the music jerks into silence and you wonder if it can ever go on, with a gasping breath, sudden and literal, the musicians are jolted back into meter with all the drama of electrical cardioversion.

And as the magic unfolds, there is, all along, the page turner, solemn and correct, performing the stately, reverent ritual that marks the measure of each eternal moment, reminding all caught up in the endless ecstacy of a sublime phrase that this, too, shall pass.  Time is a process not to be stopped, and the most divine music is a march, slow or fast but always inexorable, toward it's end.

There are two Birdfoot events left.  Party in the Piazza tomorrow, 5/25, 5:30-8pm at Piazza d'Italia, Lowes New Orleans Hotel, 300 Poydras St. for $10.  The Gala Celebration, Saturday, 5/26, 8pm, Dixon Hall, Tulane University, $25 for adults, $10 for students.

Go, listen, live.

Saturday Night at the Myrtles

This past weekend I spent a wonderful evening and morning with some amazing women out at the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana.  In addition to being an absolutely gorgeous property, the Myrtles is chock full of fascinating history, and is really, rather, quite haunted.  Now, this was, in fact, a bachelorette party.  But I'll let someone else immortalize the randier details.  I want to talk about the spooks!

We arrived at the Myrtles just in time to check in and deposit our baggage in the Coco House, a spacious cottage brought over from the Coco Plantation, and head across a wide lawn to the courtyard amid the main buildings for the mystery tour.

After a brief history of the building's construction and the lives of the first two owners and their families, our tour guide Zach began leading us through the rooms.  First he led us into Mrs. Stirling's day room, where the third lady of the house would conduct her day to day business and take her daily nap.  This is apparently the favorite room of one of the house's more active haunts, a slave girl named Chloe, who was mistress to the second owner, Mr. Woodruff.  Zach told us of a time when re-enactments were staged on Halloween, and a young woman hired to play Chloe was so terrified by the apparition of a woman confronting her as she paced the room rehearsing her lines that she turned to flee to the safety of... the adjoining bathroom.  The door slammed itself shut before she got there, she ran smack into the door, and fell to the ground screaming, swearing she'd never set foot in the house again.

From there we visited the haunted mirror in the foyer.  The custom in Victorian times, as Zach explained, was to lay out the dead for viewing in the comfort of their own homes instead of in funeral parlors.  While the body rested in the house, all mirrors would be draped with black cloth to prevent the soul of the departed from being drawn into the mirror and trapped there.  But someone must have missed this mirror at some point, because you can clearly see the image of what looks like a face trying to get out on one side of the glass.  Along the other side are what appear to be a child's fingerprints, and an eerie weeping or drip pattern in the middle.  These very same markings have reappeared multiple times, within weeks of the mirror being disassembled, thoroughly cleaned, and re-silvered.  This mirror is the only area of the house were photographs are permitted, and I got some good shots of the markings.  Others did as well.  More on this later.

From the foyer with the mirror, Zach led us to the dining room.  Here it was that some of the other active presences suffered the hurt that parted their restless souls from their earthly bodies.  Remember Woodruff's mistress, the slave girl Chloe?  Chloe had been brought into the house as a nanny for the Woodruff children, but fell suddenly out of favor when she was caught eavesdropping on her master's important business meeting.  As punishment, he had her ear cut off and banished her from the house.  But Chloe had an absolutely fool-proof plan to get back into the family's good graces.  She intended to win back their favor by nursing the two Woodruff children back to health from severe illness.  And not one to wait for chance ailments, she made them a cake infused with oleander.  Sounds like a snap, right?  Well, Chloe misjudged, and the cake ended up killing both children, along with their mother, while Mr. Woodruff was away on business.  When he returned and learned the truth, he had Chloe hanged from a tree on the property.  Today many visitors have reported seeing a dark, young woman wearing a turban, with a fold of cloth draped over the left side of her head, just the way Chloe wore her head scarf, to hide her missing ear.  Such a figure has even been photographed on the property, along with the shadowy images of two children.

From the dining room we were taken to the ladies' parlor, where the ladies would withdraw after a meal.  Zach reported that every medium that visits the Myrtles finds this to be the psychic center of the house's mystical energy.  The bedroom above is known as the doll room because of the antique dolls that have adorned the mantle piece over the years.  As if dolls weren't creepy enough on their own, there have been stories about them, as well.  As we listened to these tales, I felt something brush along the back of my arm.  I turned to see that the nearest people behind me were strangers standing over a foot away.  I gave a mental greeting to anyone who might be a bit closer than them, the gesture was not repeated, and all in all I'm proud to report that I was not actually wigged out.  It really wasn't very dramatic.  I might have simply been in the way, or maybe someone was feeling friendly to their visitors.  The room was really too lovely and comfortable to feel creepy.  I have to say that the few encounters I've had with the departed have been domestic and soothing, and that's really how this felt.

From there we were shown the gentlemen's parlor, where the... fourth? owner (or possibly the third) was shot in the chest by a stranger who rode up to the porch on horseback one dark night.  Legend says that he reeled back into the room, turned, and with his young son, with whom he'd been playing in that room, fled deeper into the house.  He made it up the first seventeen steps of the central stair, where he collapsed, just short of the top, into his wife's arms, and died.  To this day, visitors sometimes hear his faltering steps on the stairs.

In the final showroom, the children's dining room and later the game room, we were shown the photo of Chloe between the general store building and the main house, and the shadows of the children on the room by the dormer window of their room, and our tour was concluded.

As we were enjoying a relaxing dinner in the Carriage House Restaurant on the grounds, a woman who had been on our tour came to our table to show us a photograph she'd taken at the haunted mirror.  I was unfortunately away from the table, so I didn't get to see it, but she promised to e-mail it to us, and I can't wait.  Apparently she'd caught Natalie, one of our group, in her shot of the mirror, and, clinging to Natalie's side, was the apparition of a small child.  I think it's significant that Natalie is the member of our group who has a little girl of her own.

After an evening of nuptial talk, bachelorette games, and wedding cake vodka, we all went to our beds for the night's repose.  Only one of us, though, had anything like a restful night.  I dreamed all night that I was lying awake in bed, afraid that the haunts were coming.  At one point in my dream, a small, ghostly white puppy came over and wanted to play, and I reached to touch it.  It felt so real, and when I looked over at Nathalie, she said she could see it, too, but I knew it must be a ghost puppy, because it was playing tug'o'rope while hovering a foot off the ground.  Then I dreamed that I was laying stock still under the covers, knowing Chloe was in the room, but if I stayed still, she'd let me alone.  In all of these dreams, the details of the room itself and my sleeping arrangement, on my back or on my side, and Nathalie on the other bed, to the left of mine, were exactly true to reality.  I only knew they were dreams because I'd wake up from them, realizing I wasn't actually afraid, and didn't actually sense any presence.

Jayna reports that she dreamed of ghostly figures materializing around her, coming nearer and nearer, while she was unable, in spite of every effort, to reach over to wake Ellen, her bedfellow, or even move or speak at all.  Ellen, in turn dreamed several times of turning over to look at Jayna, and seeing a corpse with shining blond hair.  Nathalie's dreams intrigue me most.  She dreamed that the little girl came to her, and that she spoke soothingly to the child, telling her what a happy place this home was, that the owners took beautiful care of it, and that this was a good place for her, and she did not need to come home with Nathalie, but should stay here!  The girl in her dream, she says, was around six or seven.  I had thought the Woodruff girl was younger than that when she died, but when we questioned our guide for the history tour the next morning after breakfast (Zach again), he told us that the boy was nine and the little girl seven at the time of the tragedy, a detail that had not been in his tour the night before.  Eeeerieeeeee!

The history tour had more info on southern, antebellum customs and architectural details of the house, which was wonderful.  Afterward, as we lounged in the row of rocking chairs on the front porch, we called Zach over and got him to tell us more stories of the ghostly goings on.  In spite of the terrible night sleep we all of us except for Jeanne had, the ghosts are much more playful than terrifying here, by all accounts.  This place is very most definitely worth a visit and an overnight stay.  If staying in the main house is too potentially scary for you, there are cottages like the Coco House and Caretaker's House, as well as a block of rooms in a new building behind the Carriage House Restaurant.

But I'd definitely like to come back myself and stay in the main house at some point.  In... any room but the doll room, though!

Meditation on 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum

Image borrowed from The Chinati Foundation Website. For more information, visit them at www.chinati.org.

Over the holidays I visited the Chinati Foundation, in Marfa, Texas, to see Donald Judd's 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum. Housed in two abandoned artillery sheds in the vastness of West Texas, each work fits into the same outer dimensions and is crafted from the same material: sheets of aluminum about three quarters of an inch thick and polished to a satiny shine.

The works fill the glass-encased space of the bunkers, airy above the concrete floors and amid the brick pillars. The tour for these spaces is half an hour, total, which didn't give me nearly enough time to give each work the attention I wanted. I found them fascinating and soothing and compellingly contemplative. Not nearly enough time to examine each of the 100 works, but enough time to write a poem upon them, penned into my little notebook as I wandered around and among them. I hope you enjoy it. I think I'll send it to the Foundation.

Meditation on 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum

Fleeting glimpses of

Endlessness encapsulated,

Caught in the corners

Of light and shadow

Where sharp hard sheets

And obdurate joinings

Flicker, fade, evanesce,

Boundaries flooded, washed away,

In a spreading sprawl of mirrored time...

Time arcing though blue sky with the sweep of

Planets slanting over ageless mountains swept by

Shifting sunlight, shimmering, in the metal mirage and

Then, with a millimeter sideways slip of focus, suddenly

Edges,

Lines,

Planes,

Solidity,

All endings

Coalesce into prismatic space,

A single moment...

Infinity inverted

One hundred times.

I call this one... Egg Poem. Not much ring to that...

Break, heart, and be done.

Crack like an egg, expell your gold,

Be barren, empty, dry.

Don't grieve, for what never really lived

Can never really die.

Don't look for the tiny, featherless bird;

If you see it, close your eyes.

The little love that was never born

Was never meant to fly.

Break, heart, and be done.

(I know it sounds a little angsty. There's nothing really new going on. It came to me as an image, though, a new way to look at some old things I've been working on.)

Another New Orleans Just Like in the Movies Moment

This one is right up there with the time I met a guy with my same rainbow umbrella, and his iPod was playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (see Silver Lining) But this one is better.

Some time during the day last Wednesday, February 2, I realized I still hadn't paid my rent. I think i have a three day grace period, but I am RARELY late on rent, and I pride myself on that, so this initiated a minor panic attack. Still, I recognized that I had options. I would just have to act fast.

Normally on a Wednesday, I'd drop the check off on my way to Rock'n'Bowl for Swing Night. Only there was a private party last Wednesday, no Swing Night. Now, I avoid moving my car at all costs, since I have street parking in the Quarter. But there's always the St. Charles streetcar, which runs right by my office building, and has a stop two blocks from the realty office where I drop my checks.

So that's the only reason I got on the streetcar that day, and ended up sitting a few seats back from a young man in a fedora who sat down on a side facing seat, pulled out his Macbook, and started typing. A few stops later, and old blind man was helped onto the car, and sat down next to him. They began talking about the Superbowl, how Green Bay was going to win, historic football games of note, it was just one of those wonderful moments of incidental acquaintance where everyone within earshot becomes a friend.

When the old man reached his stop, the young man mentioned that he'd left behind some stuff he need to work on, and he helped the old blind man off the streetcar and across the street as if they'd been friends forever. I was pleased and touched to be reminded that there are such effortlessly NICE people in the world, and I texted a good friend about what I'd seen, as one of those made-my-day moments.

But that's not the end of this story.

Last night I decided that there were too many distractions in my apartment, and that going down to the coffee shop for a few hours to finish my book would put me in just the right frame of mind and environment to do some writing afterwards. So I packed up my things and headed down to Community Coffee, on the corner of Royal and St. Philip. (I love living in the French Quarter.)

I was waiting at the counter when he got into line right behind me, the young man with the Macbook. With all my usual finesse, I turned to him and said, "You were on the streetcar. You helped the blind man across the street."

And somehow, with a smile and a laugh, it wasn't weird and awkward, and I was able to tell him how much I had appreciated seeing someone doing something so nice. He thanked me and held out his hand, and said, "I'm Bera, like Yogi, but only one R." So I introduced myself, then it was my turn to order.

I got my coffee, and sat down at a table (with other empty tables nearby). He did come to my area at first, but he needed a power outlet and couldn't find one, so he walked away. Looking around, I realized I was sitting right in front of one, and had been hiding it, and since he was still hovering at the other end of the coffee shop, scanning walls, I went over to him and told him I'd found one.

I offered to move to the next table, but he said the cord would reach, and I didn't have to move. Then he saw my book, Sandworms of Dune, the last of the Dune sequels by Bryan Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. He asked me how Bryan Herbert's Dune books were, and that launched a discussion which also touched on Greek tragedy, PTSD, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Then we both subsided into our respective work for the next hour or so, until CCs closed down.

Standing outside the coffee shop, we talked about Clash of the Titans, both the old one and the new one, other movies, Greek epics, aural poetry, Middle English literature, Steinbeck... and where I was headed next. I said I was headed home, but I'd probably stop at Lafitte's to see if anyone I knew was around to say hi to.

"What's Laffite's?" he asked.

"Laffite's Blacksmith Shop? How long have you lived in New Orleans?" I returned.

"A week and a half."

So I told him to come with me, and I explained a bit about Jean Lafitte and the blacksmith shop and bar, and brought him to read the information they have posted on their doors. We went in and I bought him a drink (a Coke, because he doesn't drink much). He let me pay, but said that I needed to let him buy me a drink in return soon. We sat down near the piano in the back and talked for another hour about, well, life and everything. It was that sort of evening.

When we left the bar, he gave me his number ("In case something comes up. I'm really good at lifting things.") and I texted him back with mine and my name ("Ah, Berwick, that's the English/Scottish you mentioned.").

So I had a great evening, just out of nowhere, and I've definitely made a new friend...

And all because I was late with the rent. What kind of lesson is that?

Big Bend ~ December 29 ~ Driving and Packing

What with an entire day spent sick in bed and miserable, this trip has been a bit of a disappointment, but still, not completely so. Today I was well enough to drive from one end of the park to another, reading all the exhibit plaques along the way, stopping at all the overlooks. When I start home tomorrow, I’ll go up through part of the park and drive the leg from Panther Junction up to Persimmon Gap, picking up the only leg I’ve missed so far.

Today I felt again a sense of the spirit, the energy of this place. In a swamp, so very many things are alive and teaming that there seems to be a life-force that’s an aggregate of the multitude, that all the interconnected lives breathe an eerie spirit that stirs the murky waters and the Spanish moss. Here the many lives are thin and dry and brittle, and the essence that stirs in the wind whistling over the rock and sand is the breath of the land itself. Here, where the earth has heaved and gasped and bared its bones, its essence seems to pervade one as though it were resonating from the rock itself. One vast entity, not a myriad, a singular minimal power binding the elements together under the thinnest film of animal and vegetable.

Maybe the best part of this trip has been that for once it hasn’t been too cold to go out and enjoy the stars. Just now I packed up everything I didn’t need for the morning and didn’t mind leaving in the car over night, and I sent and loaded it in the trunk. I glanced up and was instantly captivated.

In sneakers without socks and wearing my nightshirt under my jacket and knowing I should really go up to bed to get an early start tomorrow, I found myself instead wandering away from the lights, into the darkness of a gravel sideroad. The desert grasses rustled around me with the wind, with water from hidden sprinklers misting the putting green, with Javelina, who knows? And me, sleepy and still sick, I only wished I could wander farther, leave the human lights altogether, and see only brilliance of the stars.

The stars! How could I have lived so long without picking out Cephus and Scorpio and the Pleiades and Cassiopeia, along with Orion, who moves me to tears whenever I catch a glimpse of him dimly in the city lights. And how do I not know more of them? How have I forgotten? And how long has it been since I actually saw the faint gossamer trace of the Milky Way? Why do I live so far away from where I can see them all? The only thing that’s ever made me want to go honest-to-goodness, middle-of-nowhere, no-shower-no-toilet camping is the idea of a perfect darkness on earth around me so I could see and know the millions of lights above.

My eyes have been turned down to this surface world, and that isn’t a bad thing, but I was touched, moved, almost broken by longing in those brief minutes I spent looking at the stars. I remember I used to do it all the time, when I lived out in the country. I forgot, fortunately, how much I miss it. Tomorrow, back to civilization. Tonight, soon, to bed. But the moment of this trip will be the starlight of tonight.

Big Bend ~ December 28 ~ Sick

One of the worse things that can happen on vacation has happened. I got home last night feeling exhausted (to be expected) and chilled (not quite expected). I took my temperature and found I was running fever. I felt a little sick to my stomach, too. That resolved into hunger at one point, so I ate some bread and cheese. That turned out to be a mistake. I was fevered and nauseated all night and most of today. I’m mostly glad it didn’t hit me on the Ward Spring trail. I only met two people coming back ans I was headed out, and no one on my way back.

I didn’t even make it to the end, to the spring. I’d thought it was just my usual hard time with the thinner air, and the fact that I’m really not very in shape. I’d climbed down and back out of one wash and almost fallen asleep when I stopped to rest. When I saw the next downhill stretch, the tall cottonwood trees around the spring already in sight, I knew I just couldn’t do it. I’d already frightened myself by the nearly drowsing off.

It’s a real danger, hiking by myself. If I’d slept until sundown somehow, I’d have probably still found my way back to the car, since I had a flashlight and the Garmin. But I’m glad I didn’t have to find out, and I’m REALLY glad I didn’t start throwing up out in the Chisos foothills. The ravens perched nearby must have known something, but I disappointed them.

Tired as I was, I didn’t want to quit after Ward Spring. I drove up into the Basin and walked the Window View trail. That one is a sidewalk, pretty much, and I’d have to be pretty badly off to not be able to manage it. Then I stopped at Terlingua Ghost Town, but the inverse sunset on the Chisos wasn’t very dramatic and the porch of the store was pretty crowded. I saw a man in a number 8 Manning Saints jersey, and thought about striking up conversation, but I didn’t feel like it. I came here to be alone, after all. And when I got home, I found myself sick.

So today I’ve been all alone indeed, shut up in my room, away from the mountains and the desert I came here for. And even if I feel well tomorrow, I won’t be doing any more hiking. I should be able to drive and walk a little, which will be nice, but I’m sad to have missed so much of my time here.

I am, at least, feeling mostly better now. I walked around Lajitas some while the sun set. I’ll probably eat some bread and honey in a bit, if I keep feeling hungry. Here’s hoping that doesn’t ruin tonight!