All This Useless Beauty (or, Finally It's Over!) & Dub Step

I must love this title for a blogpost (also an Elvis Costello song title) because it autofills when I type it. A combination of events have had a snowball effect of making me not only okay with not deploying this season but GLAD I didn't deploy this season (wtf you say!!!). Yup, deep down I knew how childish and wrong headed it was to have the internal stance of arms tightly crossed, aggressively pouting, and announcing to EVERYONE on the PLANET (hello internets!) how UNFAIR it was that I was missing seasons on the Ice. Number one, I was choosing not to go and this was a big piece of reality I was denying. Number two, it is starting to snow & I have a job that will start at the ski resort soon (mountain groomer hell yeah), and the two most exciting things evargh: James F. from my first season on Ice reconnected with me....and, I found Skrillex.

Now these last two things happened almost simultaneously...Jim wrote me out of the blue, four years after an e-mail exchange where he appeared entrenched in matrimonial bliss and family life, where he revealed his status as single, and I wasted no time in pushing us towards a reunion. I was watching a concert documentary called Made in America by Jay-Z which had a lot of great new and older artists but when I saw the few minutes of Skrillex's set I felt that way I did in 1974 when I was riding in a car and heard Born to Run for the first time: my whole sad past melted away and I caught a glimpse of freedom and excitement and a musician that could not only provide me with endless hours of joy, but also help steer the direction of my life. So I went to iTunes and youtube & listened/watched everything I could of his and bought some tunes and barreled down the hi-way bass dropping my tiny throbbing car down the highway with just a handful of his songs being enough to push my sternum towards my bowels.

It was always the beat that got me...when I first discovered punk rock I didn't really care about (and couldn't understand) the lyrics - it was that fast beat that I could vibrate with. Not to say I don't love passionate lyric driven music, I can really get lost in Gillian Welch and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it's not so much the lyrics and the mournful mood. But when I'm jonesin' for some adrenalin powered live music it has to be the beat...I have been looking for something new now that the Gourds have disbanded and I only get to see the Riverboat Gamblers once a year - and I found it. I haven't been this excited about an artist since Marah, but the unfortunate part is that, unlike Marah, Skrillex has to play in gigantic arenas because he is so famous now.

Saturday I go find out what my schedule is going to be...it's going to be an interesting winter, living on the mountain for the first time, starting a new job, and feeing kissed by the Universe.

The Place Beyond The Pining

There is the thing, and the pining for the thing, and the are two very different things. Sometimes when I get the thing, I miss the pining for the thing. Lately I have been pining for...everything I've ever had, been or done. My life is so solitary and peaceful (though I'm kind of uncomfortable with the peace) that I just sit in reverie over things I've never really thought about before as having been so freakin delightful. I miss what my life was like in college. I miss what my life was like when I live in NYC. I miss the two hour nightly phone calls with Erica that went on for years when I lived in New York & she in Chicago. I miss that my life was all in front of me and that it doesn't feel that way anymore. I don't know if I can possibly top the deep fulfillment and excitement that the 7 season in the Antarctic brought me. I am waiting to go back, but am afraid of that I've been gone so long some key continuity will be gone when I get back. I've got to change my thinking about that. I've just got to as I've got all my eggs in that basket.

For some reason I just bought a cabin on Mt. Hood. I am in the period of serious buyer's remorse and thinking I'm going to try & get out of it right away but maybe it could lead to something really cool. I bought it so I could ski every day, so hopefully I'll get to do that...or at least 3-5 times a week. I want to impress them in Taos next year...I want to be good. But even as I write this there is a part of me so walled of to this world & place I live currently. My heart is at McMurdo, and everything that goes with that, and to some degree in Austin. I don't give a fig about the hipster Portland thing...I just want to do unbelievably fun & exotic trips, with knitting and processing in between.

It is so hot & sunny here it is shocking...but the best part is as soon as the sun goes down it drops into the 50's...something we never got in Texas. This move is doing something for me that is good - I am very busy with it & get to settle into my new place and see what it is like out there. I don't expect to like it in the summer but who knows, it could be surprising. Maybe I am a mountain girl after all. I know that of all the mountians I've been too, I really like this one. It is less intimidating than Taos, and the snow covered trees are amazing in the winter. It will be beautiful!

Pie For Joy

Wow, just read that last entry that was written almost 9 months ago and I'm always impressed with what I've written after I've written it. While I'm writing it it always seems logorrheic. I've been writing in diaries for as long as I can remember. I threw about 30 years worth of them away in a massive de-clutter, but I have one I wrote when I was around 12, and it is so sad it is hard for me to read. Probably the most miserable time in my life. I don't know why I kept that one and not the insanely entertaining and shocking ones from my college days. I could probably just have typed those up and had a memoir (albeit a 10,000 page memoir). There were thousands of entries about some boy or man that I was over the top obsessed with...don't think I wrote much about all the crazy drinkin and druggin, nor did I itemize my daily activities like some people do. It was all about the angst within, which was basically a bottomless hunger for the twisted fulfillment of basic id needs and an addiction to excitement that the bar kept being raised on until it became reckless and dangerous.

This is not what I sat down to write about! I just got back from my fourth trip of the year...ughad why I think I could ever feel sorry for myself about anything is beyond me. All I ever wanted to do was travel and have adventures and now I get to do it. But I don't get to do it all the time WAAAAAAAH. And I can't go back to Antarctica because my dog is still alive WAAAAAAAH.

I just got back from my annual painting workshop in Toas. Jesus I cannot believe how awesome that was....In March I went to UAE and Oman and came back almost tripping with happiness. The I went to my annual ski week in Taos and that seemed even more awesome than it ever has been. And a few days ago I just got back from a 9 day workshop in Taos that I have been doing for 13 years. 13 years later I have had my heart blasted open like I have never done this painting before. I had a full on ripped up from the inside see-god-now experience and it just keeps happening every time I go there. I always go so crickly and hard-edged and angry and addled...and come back just soft as a grandma. Just drop all that shit in nine days of full on intimacy with myself. And I came back wanting to move to Taos. For the first time kind of seriously. If I can live in this former farm town now silicon valley of Oregon I guess I can live anywhere. I cannot imagine living anywhere and feeling more isolated that I am here. But when the plane from ABQ was flying over Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens and I saw all that lush green I sensed I would miss this place. I had such a great experience going to Mt. Hood Meadows this past winter, and if I worked at Toas it might not make the annual mecca there as special. So now I am looking at these affordable cabins near Mt. Hood so I can work there during ski season. I would live in the mountains, but not near any town...not near anytown near as cool as Taos. But I have to take the chance and do this one goal I've been thinking of for years so that I can get in a lot more ski days. I only did 31 last season, which is about 25 more than I usually do, but I want to ski all season. I want to get good. And having started so late, I have to do it 3 or 4 days a week to get good.

But it is only May. And I just got my new passport in the mail...wheeeee it is so beautiful and stiff! My last one got quite a workout and was floppy with wear. I'm itchin' to get those first stamps this year. I could move out of my apt. when my lease is up in June and go to India or Scotland or Africa. I'm going back to Taos in Sept. for the painting again so that will be a big deal. I feel like I should be doing something worthwhile, to help other people or something...I spend so much time absorbed with the planning and the details of my little dreams and plans. Delicious.

Tomorrow I'm driving out to look at the wee cabins again at Mt. Hood. The owners called me as they really want to unload them...The two ladies I talked to were so kind and gave me so much information about the mountain and what it is like to live there that I saw that living out there would be like living in a really tiny community..I felt like I had some friends after talking to them for about an hour each. I have seen this side of myself lately where I try and keep strangers in a conversation way too long as I need the human contact so badly...but the one lady I talked to told me that she was 85 & her son wanted her to move out of a house that had stairs so she is selling her cabin. Her name is Joy and we tried to talk several times but there were some phone & bluetooth issues, but when I finally got to really talk to her I felt a sharp pang that she was living alone and driving herself places at her age. She told me  to come to her cabin after her dr. appt tomorrow morning and I found myself wanting to offer to drive her to it. She lives 90 miles away from me but what else do I have to do but knit and scheme. When we  were getting off of the phone she said she'd love to visit with me even if I didn't buy the cabin...and I was very touched. I so appreciated her graciousness in wanting to spend time with me after a phone conversation, and I'm sure she sensed I could use a friend too...even if it's just for a few hours. The Herculean efforts I make for social contact since I've moved to Oregon are sometimes embarrassing in their desperation. But I'm not going to be hard on myself for this: I'll never beat myself up for making efforts and showing up even if the event turns out to be a bust (and oh so often it is here)...because damnit, I'm making an effort and not just sitting at home. Not one thing has come my way here...I've had to chase it all down. Life is so different now. I think the only way I could get a date with a man is to pay them. My life was so different before the Ice. Then there was the Ice. And now I'm not sure what the fuck is going on except that it's a mixed back of euphoric travel experiences mixed with a whole lot of downtime and knitting...and waiting...waiting...waiting...

And the one thing I've never had to live without, luscious and lots of attention from men, is totally absent. And that is one of the worst things about this suburban vacuum: my spinster status and the continual and draining attitude adjustment I've had to make to try and accept this really dry and awful season...nothing could be more against my nature than being asexual, or celibate, and I really really hate it. And for the first time, I have no options in that area. At least no options that wouldn't leave me feeling crappy about myself.

And I never thought I'd say this kind of thing but I'm looking forward to meeting this sweet old lady tomorrow. I just went and bought her a piece of pie for our meeting. I will take some pie for Joy. And we will have a nice visit.